"Like a Miami Freeway"

Some weeks ago and several blog entries back, I whetted your proverbial "whistle" with a picture of the three of us standing in front of one of the most spectacular sites I have ever witnessed, the Salmon Glacier. I promised, after a hiatus that "I will wax eloquent" and speak about some of the other places we experienced along the way back home to Denver, Colorado, where we are residing until the beginning of November. Recollecting the sights, smells and personal impressions of our grand adventure surprisingly runs easy for me since what we experienced was so out of the ordinary from previous travels of years past in "the lower 48," a phrase spoken often by Alaskans. To see, for myself, brown bears running through a river outside of Hyder, Alaska - a momma bear showing her cub how to trap the fish and not just run after it, or, experiencing an emotional high all day long as we traveled higher and higher up the mountain, climbing to enormous heights on steep hillsides thousands of feet above deeply gorged green verdant valleys below, to then be surprised and delighted around another high mountain turn in the road by the grandeur of the splayed Salmon Glacier and several other nameless glaciers spilling and cascading off steep valleys, slopes and ravines. Oh, then was the warning signs outside of Stewart Alaska speaking to year-round danger of avalanches as we passed the snow-shoot just on the other side of the river valley a hundred yards away. There was Jade, Kitwanga, Prince Rupert, among many other towns, the l-o-n-g road east inland across British Columbia, colliding at towering Mt. Robson at 12,972 feet, then jogging to Jasper the quaint tourist village just north of the Columbia Ice Field, further east to the metropolis of Edmonton, Alberta, then the delightful travel-back-in-time Ukrainian Village, the plains of Saskatchewan, and last-but-not-least a certain little-known national park in the Badlands of North Dakota named after our 26th President. There is still a lot to share with you all.

To accomplish all that is promised, I will whittle away at this travelog account over the next week (or so) starting with the statement made by a young lady who described the road ahead when we stopped at Jade, British Columbia. When inquiring of her about the road south, she promptly said, "It's like a Miami Freeway!" What an interesting statement out in the middle of nowhere.

There are two main highways (and only two) that run north and south through northern British Columbia, Highway 97 and 37. Since we traveled up 97 we thought we would travel down on the recently completed and paved 37, staying as close to the Pacific as man's labor of road building would allow. You see, emotionally, we didn't want to leave Valdez, the Prince William Sound and the salt air (or at least I didn't), so, we thought let's not say goodbye to the ocean yet and travel south and then west to Stewart BC, Hyder AK and then eventually to Prince Rupert BC! We turned off the Alaskan Highway 1, just shy of Watson Lake, a bustling diry frontier town stretched along the highway, heading south not really knowing what we would face for several hundred miles and with no idea where we would stay for the evening. Once again in the Lord's hand, we ventured down the road which turned and twisted side-to-side and up and down. The highway in many spots was more like one and a half lanes in width and most of the way the first hundred miles there were no sides to the road and no guardrails of any sort. So, reverting to my old country driving technique on dirt roads, one drives in the middle except when you come up on a blind hill or blind turn in the road. All was well except the unsettled voice within. We trusted in the knowledge that others made the trek and what the Mile Post guidebook told us. This road of British Columbia is more remote than it sister highway, having been completed on back in the later 70s as a dirt road and just paved in its entirety. Our first stop, beyond finding roadside parking for a night of rest, was the "town" of Jade, more like a dot on the map, a jade store and a couple of houses. Jade BC and the surrounding region boast over 80% of the world's green jade production. I understand from talking with the locals that virtually all the jade is exported to China for cutting and the making of jewelry and then it is imported back into Canada and the USA. Purportedly, there is only one jade cutter in all of British Columbia housed out of Vancouver and the quality of the cut products do not compare to that of China. We learned about the various grades of Jade through and example set for display only, and then we purchased a gift for a daughter who has been dutifully handling our mail in our absence, and a fine piece it is. It was that lady who sold me that piece of necklace jewelry that spoke of the road conditions south. She, having grown up with dirt roads and roads that were not connected, the paved road she described ahead of us was wondrous and wide to her eyes, and yes, it did get better the farther south we ventured, somewhere along the road a bonafide center line appeared along with sides to the road. So, we experienced a "Miami Freeway" in Northern British Columbia, having seen about as many bears as we saw other fellow travelers, minus transport trucks heading north.

Diverging off of the normal pattern of reporting, I want to share with you a tidbit to save some money along the way. We stopped at a grocery store in Deese Lake about 2 PM, filling with much needed gasoline and a few groceries. It was raining, the parking lot muddy and we were hungry, but not for the normal prices they would charge for food. There was a small deli in the story selling among other things hot chicken and french fries. The deli was soon to close having served what lunch hour they had, and we picked up good fried chicken and all the remaining french fries for just over $4.00! Apparently, timing is everything, and to eat outside the normal time frames can save you dollars, or at least so you can put those dollars into the gas tank, which was the arch enemy of our pocketbook the whole way. Well, no doubt, both of us need a break, so I will depart with a couple of pictures, one of mountains we saw from the road as we departed from Alaska and the other of a glacier we passed below its toes as we ventured toward the coastal inlet of Hyder.

Notice the car in the picture to gain a perspective of the size of the glacier.