June 13th

THE DETAILS:

WEATHER: It’s windy today. Started out at 51 and the sun rising over the mountains making the river look golden this morning! Most of the day we were in and out of clouds with occasional rain. We even found ourselves in a snow mix again. It is so dry here that even when the roads get wet they don’t stay that way long. I noticed my dishes get dry faster and a shirt that I got wet was dry within 30 minutes. The high today was only 58. I think it will be electric blanket weather tonight!


DISTANCE: Left Toad River BC at 9:00 am and arrived in Rancheria, BC around 6:00. There were a LOT of stops today. A lot of photo opportunities and we took a 30 minute hike to see some water falls just before getting to our camp. It felt good to walk. Sooooo, that’s 286 miles in 9 hours! HA! What terrible time we made… but what fun! We found ourselves in out of the Yukon Territory at least 3 times today. The Alaskan Hwy. just weaves between British Columbia & the Yukon Territory. Tomorrow we will make it more permanent.


Last night as Gary and I sat down to eat we noticed 2 bull moose across the river in water up to their bellies eating off the bottom. Their heads would dive down deep and then would raise their heads and chew as the water ran off their antlers. Amazing sight. Later when we sat down for a game of cribbage there was another moose down river even closer to our camp. This place is beautiful! BTW, I forgot to mention that yesterday we crossed the Pacific Time Zone… that puts us 3 hours behind you guys now. Soon we will cross our final time zone…. Alaska time! I also forgot to mention yesterday that we drove through a mixture or rain & snow showers!! You never know what you’re going to find in these mountains!

Well we found a lot in the mountains we traveled through today!! We’ve seen 2 big bull moose and at least 9 or 10 bison!! They are not spooked at all when you pull over and take a picture… they just continue to eat. At one point there was a large wildlife viewing pull off that we figured we wouldn’t see anything but to our enjoyment we saw two rock sheep in the distance. They were both females and they meandered amongst the rocks until they were finally right down next to the road and we were able to get some close up shots of them!! If that wasn’t enough we got our first sight of a cinnamon bear! That’s right, thanks to Rick we know the difference between a grizzly & a cinnamon bear. Grizzlies have the hump on their back. He was young & small but intriguing non-the-less. This has been, by far, the best driving day we have had yet. Starting out in a beautiful campsite and then driving through some spectacular scenery and topped off by all the wild life. all on a Sunday! Thank you Lord!

Once we left the beautiful drive through Muncho Lake Provincial Park we continued to descend into a more flat area between mountain peaks. It would have been a much easier drive for Gary except the wind continues to blow and it’s difficult sometimes with gusts up to 25 to 30 miles per hour to keep the RV steady.

We have now settled down for the night in another nice campground. Nothing like last night though. We have run into so many nice people. Last night we spent about 45 minutes talking to some people who live north and east of Baltimore, today we took a hike with some people from Canada and tonight there is a couple of guys on motorcycles from Arizona setting up right next to us. Camping is interesting.


CRIBBAGE COUNT: Gary 3 Debbie 4

PS: Dave, get out of there while you still have time! And the answer is, "NO", we are not stopping to support your habits!