Welcome to...Canada.

This should have been written a long time ago.  I suppose it should have been the first entry.  It would have been, if I was that organized.  Oh well.

We asked for Alaska.  Most people are shocked to learn we wanted to come here instead of jockeying for Germany or Hawaii, but there you have it.  Rick and I have talked about Alaska for years, and when we finally got the chance to go (and get paid for doing so), we took it.

Because I'm a planner, when I was packing for our summer in Arizona I also wedged what little winter wear we had into the suitcases. Over the summer I installed a roof rack, obsessively checked the weather report and booked hotels.  I even hunted down snow chains for my van, no small feat with a seasonal item in an area that doesn't usually need them anyway.  (As it turns out, my snow-preparations were unnecessary; even though the year prior had seen 18 inches by mid September, we didn't see any snow on the road at all, and the first substantial snow was in mid October this year.)  It would take 55 hours, 48 minutes to drive 3,460 miles with five kids, two cats, and a husband I hadn't seen in two months.  I had extra gas, stuff for sandwiches, a full spare tire, a shovel, cat litter, a full medical kit, and a trusty dog-eared copy of The Milepost, the go-to atlas for Alaska and particularly for the Alaska-Canada Highway.  There were a few bumps, the largest of which was the massive stuffed polar bear that Aeryn had acquired over the summer at the flea-market and which she insisted had to come with us.  We crammed it into the luggage carrier, hugged our Snowflake family, shoved our obese cats in their carriers, and started the drive.

The first day we made it to Salt Lake City.  Mostly desert, some mountains, full of Mormons.  Not much different from Arizona except the mountains are bigger and the Mormons more plentiful.  (We'd made the drive to SLC already at the beginning of the summer, so perhaps we were a little jaded.)  Day two took us to Great Falls, Montana.  We had a lovely but too-fast visit with some friends in Idaho.  Montana--well, they aren't kidding when they call it "Big Sky Country." I've driven all around this country but that is the longest horizon I've ever seen.

And on the third day, we went international.  I spent more time gathering paperwork for the border crossing than it took to actually cross, and half of it wasn't even needed.  It took longer finding a bank to exchange dollars for loonies than it did to jump countries.  (Fun fact, the first thing after the border-station is an LDS church.)  We took a quick breather at a tiny museum and visitor's center in Alberta to celebrate, and then dug in for a string of 10 hour driving days.

Frankly, most of Canada kind of blurred together.  It is incredibly clean, which you don't really notice until you get back to the States and see the first front-yard full of junk in 1000 miles.  (Americans are slobs.  Trust me.)  Everyone we met was really friendly, eager to talk and share information about road conditions and make suggestions about places to visit, either on the Al-Can Highway or Alaska itself.  There's something about long stretches of utter wild that make you crave the company of other people.

Food wise, it was interesting.  Our first stop was at a Safeway to get Kinder-Eggs, which were one of the loves of my childhood in Germany.  You probably haven't heard of them.  They are small, hollow chocolate eggs with a toy inside; Americans are considered too stupid to eat them without choking on the non-food item within, so they are banned from importation to the States.  Seriously.  It's a thing. 

The big pizza chain in Alberta is called Boston Pizza; it is supposed to be just fantastic, but we didn't love it.  The further north you go, the smaller the towns get, and the bigger the portions.  We had breakfast at a bright orange restaurant/hotel that catered mainly to logging crews and truckers.  The waitress and cook seemed amused when we ordered the girls each a short-stack of pancakes; we were quickly and politely told that one stack would be enough.  Sure enough, each pancake was roughly 9 inches across.  This was a pattern that held throughout the rest of Canada--huge servings of anything, usually covered with gravy. 

And then there was British Columbia.  This was the one glorious, golden day of the trip.  Due to a quirk of the planning process and Canadian geography, we only had 6 hours between stopping points, and I am so glad, because this one day made the trip worthwhile.  We saw herds of forest bison, Dall sheep, caribou, and black bears right on the side of--and sometimes right on--the road.  We drove on windy roads past vibrant, icy turquoise rivers and towering, snowy mountains.  We had massive sandwiches at a tiny diner, and met a couple Arizona Mormons who worked in Alaska during the summer and were on their way home with their over-friendly dogs.

A dozen or so reindeer on the road marked the beginning of the wildlife.

We saw around sixty bison over three hours. They were just chilling on the side of the road.

The bears were the coolest.  I stopped to get a picture and then this guy started walking towards the car.  We got the hint.

Can you believe how clear that water is?!

These trees were everywhere.  It was like being in Lothlorien.

Pictures like this made the cold worth it.  But it was still effing cold. 

The highlight of the day was Liard Hot Springs--a natural hot spring in the middle of a forest marsh.   There was a half-mile boardwalk from the campsites to the spring.  It was ridiculously gorgeous, despite the bear country warning signs.

Though initially unsure because of the hot sulfur-smell and the fact that it was about 40 degrees outside, the kids loved the springs, and had to be dragged out. (*Aside* The low point of the day was getting out of the springs, because it was 40 degrees outside, and the changing rooms were open and friggin' cold.)

After BC, the rest of the trip was a little dull.  Not as much wildlife, though we met some wonderful folks during lunch on the side of a gorgeous lake.  We stopped at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse, a fun museum about the last ice age and the Bering land bridge. 

Rick and Brenna nerded out with the docent about this skeleton.  Rick found the spear marks on the leg bones; the docent was impressed.

Organizing the animals in the kid's center was Echo's contribution to the exhibits.  The kid may have OCD.

The Yukon itself was rather desolate after the bounty of BC.  It makes sense, I guess, but I remember it being really cold and really grey, with dark, severe pines and rocky, barren mountains.  We passed the grey miles by reading Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson.  (Hilarious, but not as good as her first, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir.)

7 days after beginning, I was glad to finally be back stateside, even if it was on the other side of a foreign country.  There's no place like home.  Canada was nice, though, and it was a nice start to our rather rocky first months in Alaska.  But that's another post entirely.

They have to warn people about fueling their planes at the gas station.  It's a whole new world up here, people.