Mom in the Mtns

Hi everyone!  Thanks for your concern and well wishes yesterday via my blog and twitter, I appreciate it!  Yesterday was awful and I was barely able to sleep just thinking about driving even further.  But today was warmish and there was no snow falling so we decided to head out.  And we’re so glad we did!  The views today were INCREDIBLE and I am so happy that we decided to drive up here now!  Andrew drove very slow and was extremely careful, especially in the higher elevations where the roads were a bit tricky.  But overall we had a really great day and we are so insanely excited to get to Alaska TOMORROW!!!!  Ahhhh!  I have the whole trip report up over on Bearly Alaskan so check that out for pictures and details! Here are a select few pictures of my favorite things from today:

1.  Big mountains

2.  Crazy wildlife – never saw bison before!

3.  Quirky tourist stuff.  This is the signpost forest in Watson Lake, YT – there are thousands of signs in there!

4.  Beautiful sunsets that last for hours because it stays lighter longer up here  🙂

It was so nice having a perfect day of driving today after what happened yesterday.  It was also fun seeing wildlife all over the place, and I couldn’t stop staring at those mountains!  It reminded me why we’re doing all this in the first place.  We are starting to think that maybe the travel gods wanted to haze us before we got to Alaska to make sure we really earned it!  Since today finally felt like a road trip again, here are some more fun stats:

Cups of coffee:  1, because I was terrified I’d have to go to the bathroom a lot if I had more and there were barely any places to do that today!  No lie, there were so few rest stops open (only about 1 per hour) and I was kind of amazed by how far away from civilization we were today.  Between Fort Nelson and Whitehorse there were only a small handful of hotels/motels and restaurants, most of which were connected to the hotels and had a gas station as well!

Best food:  In the middle of nowhere there was a place called Northern Rockies Lodge and we stopped there to have lunch since there was literally nowhere else to eat for hundreds of miles.  We shared a french dip sandwich and it was soooo good!  They said they get their groceries shipped up from Edmonton once a week and it costs a fortune but they want to have fresh food for travelers.  Loved it!

Best car dance song:  Bills Bills Bills – I will jam out to any old school Destiny’s Child!

Craziest thing we saw:  Two drunk guys stumbling around the signpost forest at 5 pm.  We got out of there pretty fast!

Scariest moment:  We saw a momma moose and baby moose on the road up ahead, and the mom was staring us down for like 2 minutes.  We had heard horror stories of mom mooses charging cars if they think the cars are threatening their babies, so we were really relieved when she starting walking away from us!

Give us more good thoughts for our trip tomorrow, and pray that we make it back through the border!  I am NOT driving that whole highway again!

Have you ever seen bison or moose in the road?  Where’s the pretties sunset you’ve ever seen?