Advertisement
Published: July 13th 2009
Edit Blog Post
We planned today as a crazy long drive so that tomorrow would be very light. It didn’t exactly work out that way, though. We again got a late start, and started seeing wildlife. First, we saw a black bear being lazy on our left. (We didn’t stop for pictures.) We then saw bison on the right. (We didn’t slow down for pictures.) Jeff then saw a brown bear on the left, something we hadn’t yet seen. We drove ahead just a little bit to find a place to turn around, did so, took a few pictures, drove back toward Watson City to find a place to turn around, and finally headed back in the correct direction. We then saw more bison, horses, and then another new species—Stone sheep. There were a couple groups and we took pictures at each. We decided at that point to only slow down for new species or a really great shot of bison (for my scrapbook page today), because we weren’t making good time.
Then the rain and construction delays started. We were stuck for 15 minutes the first time, 20 minutes the second. Thankfully, the third wasn’t more than a few minutes, but we
were getting low on fuel. Jeff has run the truck dry once before and it was a 2-hour delay (because you can’t just pour in a bit o’ diesel and have it start right up). We then hit fog so thick you couldn’t really see the side of the road, let alone anything in front of you.
Then the wildlife started again. We were following an RV who slowed suddenly. Jeff noticed the bull moose they had spotted, so we slowed, too. I was just getting ready to take pictures when a truck went screaming past us, spooked the moose who ran onto the highway and fortunately was not hit. He took off into the woods on my side, but came back out enough for me to take more photos. We’ve looked for bull moose whenever we’re in their territory (Maine, Alaska, BC, etcetera), and this is the first we’ve seen. Yeah!
Not two minutes after leaving him, we crossed a bridge and saw a black bear lounging on the left side of the road. No stopping. We saw 5-6 more after that around Ft Nelson and toward Dawson Creek, including a cute little one who popped his
head up from grasses on the side of the road, but decided not to stop. We also had a fast, sleek dark brown creature race across the road in front of us. Aside from our cruise to Juneau and the Denali animals that were really too far away to be seen clearly anyway, we’ve seen more wildlife today than the rest of our trip combined. Cool!
I have to tell one story that isn’t ours. While we were at Denali, Jeff’s parents stayed on the Kenai Peninsula. Floyd decided to do a 2.3 mile hike along the Russian River. He got up to the top and found a grizzly fishing and then eating his catch. He has a not-too-fancy camera but got some amazing photos. He was very close to this bear. I hope to convince him to post the photos somewhere, but it’ll probably be on facebook. Actually, it’ll probably be me doing the posting.
Conversation of the Day:
(after we stopped to take pictures of the Stone sheep)
L: Bye, sheep!
C: Bye, sheep!
L: See you on our next Alaska trip!
Animals Noticed (unique to the trip):
Stone sheep
Mink
License
Plates Noticed: YK, AK, WA, CA, AB, ON, VA, GA, BC
High Temperature: 68 (Fireside, YK)
Low Temperature: 51 (Summit Lake, BC)
Miles: 544.8
Total Time on the Road: 11:23
Advertisement
Tot: 0.175s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 39; dbt: 0.0661s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Snowhawg
Bob Kribs
Bull Moose & Grizzly
Congrats on spotting both the bull moose and grizzly. The pics are great!