And We're Off

Snowed about 4 inches at the house Sunday. Welcome to shoveling!
Oh - and then it snowed about 4 inches on Monday too. Thank goodness for the snow blower.

And to quell the questions - A moose dropping is about the size and shape of a golf ball. Too bad they leave about 2 dozen golf balls at a time. Plus I caught all kinds of guff for describing us as middle aged...

But back to the START of the story...
Late August and the house is all packed. Luckily we stood our ground and stopped them from loading the bed until the very last thing. Little did I know that an air mattress would be a part of my life...but that comes later.

We loaded up the very necessary items the packers wouldn't pack in our two cargo containers and some things we thought may be needed on the AlCan in the little SUV that could. I convinced Robert we didn't need to carry the propane tanks with us. One can of gasoline and the ammunition was enough. Squirt's bed was set up the back seat and rather high on top of the coats and "just in case" towels/blankets. (He didn't understand he would be living in the car for several days.) With a full water dish and full gas tank we said good-bye to our Houston house and neighbors and headed north.

Over the first four days we stopped off and saw family and friends in Oklahoma and Kansas. Then we got serious about driving to our new home. We left early Sunday planning to drive between 500 and 700 miles a day. OK - we really didn't plan. Our plan was to drive until we were tired of driving. The total trip (from Houston) was about 4500 miles give or take 100.

Made it through Nebraska and stopped in Wyoming the first night. Beautiful evening for a walk and we gained an hour of sunlight by crossing into Mountain time zone. I didn't know how important that would be later. May have to wear jeans tomorrow as it is a little cool here in the high plains. Glad I packed some.

Monday morning up and off to Canada. Going through Wyoming and Montana, we saw large herds of antelope and a lot of road kill. There were also these giant windmills - huge - spinning away making electricity. There weren't a lot of trees in this part of the trip - nothing to block the wind for the windmills. Saw a lot of interesting signs discussing where to put on and take off tire chains.

As we neared the border, I had the passports and rabies vaccination certificate ready for inspection. We had to wait a few minutes for our turn to talk to the customs agent. We declared everything we needed and passed right through with no problems. On to Lethbridge for the evening. We walked to dinner and around the town for a little while - may have to get a jacket out.

Tuesday morning we headed north again. According to the Milepost, Canada doesn't allow radar detectors - a bit of a frustration. We passed through Calgary and Edmonton with little event. We ate lunch in a quaint little town and filled up with gas in a 20 mph gale (where's my jacket and gloves).

We spent the day traveling through British Columbia watching the fall colors become more and more prevalent. I was lucky enough to see my first moose in the wild. Unfortunately - it was road kill. That has to be a shock to hit a moose. (Definitely getting cooler. I may have packed too many tank tops for this trip.) British Columbia was also where we had our black bear encounter. Past Edmonton, we saw a car about once every 30 minutes or so. We had just come up over a little knoll and I noticed a tree trunk by the side of the road. I remember thinking - what an odd place to leave a tree trunk- so close to the road. Then the trunk got down off of its hind legs, watch us go by and then crossed the road. Due to light traffic (ok - no traffic) we stopped and watched it for a couple of minutes. They are amazing animals.

As I mentioned before, we typically drive until we are tired and then look for a place to stay. Being a bit concerned about what we would find, I had actually created a tentative plan in Houston before leaving. (Did I mention the GPS?) An important tidbit for GPS usage is to know if it is calculating miles "as the crow flies" or actual road miles. The little GPS said Whitehorse was only 600 miles away....my hand calculations were more like 900. That's when we discovered how important the setting was and how critical the Milepost. We decided we needed to do some real planning and actually try to find hotel rooms. Robert did an excellent job while I was driving.

We finished the driving day at the famous town of Dawson Creek. (Hey - did you know we lost cell phone coverage somewhere...after Edmonton.) This was about two hours after Squirt was ready to get out. I was pretty sure he thought we were lost and he was never going to see home again. Dawson Creek is the start of the Alaska-Canada (AlCan) highway - the only road to Alaska. We had moved into Pacific time zone which was really good. We needed that extra hour.

Only a couple more days to home!