Careful what you wish for.....

So, Jason thought he was being funny last night with that mutiny stuff... now I'm in Ft. Nelson, British Columbia, and I couldn't really tell you where he is....

OF COURSE I'M KIDDING!!!! Though, after 12 hours of driving, give or take an hour or so, I'm surprised HE didn't mutiny and tell me I had to take my turn! I have yet to drive the truck, though I'm not going to complain. I thought I would be bored out of my mind, but sleeping takes up some time, and Harry Potter on CD is pretty entertaining, too. It's a good thing we've got that, because there was pretty much nothing to look at today... at all!

We are now in the Pacific Time Zone, though we didn't realize that until about 8 tonight, when we thought it was 9. Thank goodness for cell phones that automatically pick up the change, or we wouldn't have ever caught it! (Oops, got that wrong on the phone tonight, Dad!) We only have one more time zone to go!

The big highlight of the day today was getting to Dawson's Creek (NOT the TV show), BC, and the start of the Alaska Highway. I thought it was so cheesey that Jason wanted to stop and take a picture at the sign.... imagine my surprise when we had to wait our turn! Everyone seems to stop there to mark the milestone - whether they're going or coming. The tripod came in handy again, and I was able to get a shot of all three of us under the sign!

According to Jason, who read the little plaque near the sign while "walking" Fred, the Alaska Highway was built during WWII in about eight months. We drove the first 200-ish miles of it today, and will hit a bunch more of it over the next 5 days. I'm not sure where we break away from it, but I think it's when we head toward Anchorage from Tok. That will be on, um, uh, Thursday, maybe? Ack... I can't remember anymore!!!! All the days are starting to run together!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was it for pictures from today, so I'll move onto the ones from yesterday. As Jason mentioned, we drove through Banff and Jasper National Parks yesterday, which are both in the Canadian Rockies. All day we just had amazing (I think I've used that word a LOT on this blog!) mountain views, glacial lakes and wildlife! We made sure we took plenty of pictures from Lake Louise to send to Papa since he said he always wanted to see it. I don't know if pictures can do any of the views justice, but I'll try.

I tried to get Fred to look at me... you can't really see it very clearly, but that's a canoe off his right ear. He was MUCH more interested in the canoe than my camera. This is at Lake Louise.

This is another view of Lake Louise. The sun was in and out all day and there was a ton of fog (ok, maybe they were clouds) in the mountains, so it was tough to get a really good picture.

The next couple pictures are from just a random place we pulled off the side of the road. It was pretty cool to see the sun shining through on one mountain face, with clouds and fog hiding parts of the mountain tops! And, yes, that's snow. We saw a LOT of that yesterday... some of it right along the side of the road where we were driving.

Look toward the bottom of this second picture... check out the color of the stream! Seriously... all day, we just had incredible views like this to look at. I highly recommend a drive through Banff (a neat little town, by the way), and Jasper National Parks if you ever find yourself in Alberta. The area may have replaced Montana already as my new favorite place!!!!

And, of course, there was a ton of wildlife to look at, too. Luckily, most of the animals attracted a large crowd, so we had time to stop the truck before just zooming past the good stuff.

Here are a couple of big horn sheep hanging out on the side of a hill. I got another one of a HUGE sheep right next to the side of the road. But, I had to try to get a shot of him through the bushes he was grazing on, so he's a little hard to pick out if the picture isn't big enough. His horns were about as big as the one on here, though!

And, here is the money shot.. a BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought the SPAM Musuem made the trip, but I think maybe the bear sighting was better. We were maybe 150 yards away from this guy, who didn't seem all too concerned about the crowd watching him eat some greens. After a few minutes (of us being there... I don't know how long he was really there), he just turned and waddled back in to the woods. It was just too cool to see a REAL bear, in the wild!

And, finally, here's a shot of our Kozy Kabin at the KOA. If it had been a little nicer out, we may have enjoyed the porch swing and stuff a little bit more, but it was pouring when we got there last night, so we were just happy to not have to set up the tent in the rain! But, if anyone is ever up in that area, we can highly recommend the KOA in Hinton, Alberta!

That should do it for tonight. I have to say that I'm having a tough time picking out just the right pictures, and I'm pretty sure we're going to get kicked off blogger at some point for posting too many of them, but I just have to share!

Tomorrow we head to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, a quick 6 hour drive from here. (It's all perspective... today was 12 hours!) From there we go to Whitehorse, our last stop in Canada!

We're still loving all the comments and emails! Keep 'em coming!

Love you all,

Becca