This town is most famous because it marks “Mile 0” of the Alaska-Canada highway. We ate dinner in the RV and headed out to go find the official marker of the beginning of the Al-Can highway. We drove around for a bit and it didn’t take us long to find it!
Happy Canada Day! July 1 is a day set aside for the celebration of the enactment of the British North America Act of 1867, which united three colonies into what is now Canada within the British Empire. The Canadian flag was not a rare sight to see as many Canadians proudly displayed them in anyway possible. Festivities such as parades and fireworks have been going on all day, but we traveled for most of the day so we didn’t get to participate. There are fireworks tonight, but considering it doesn’t get dark until midnight, we will not be attending. We woke up this morning and got back on the road to make a dent in the many, many miles we have left until we are back on American soil. We spent most of the day driving, but we pulled into Dawson Creek this evening. The campground we are staying in has wireless internet, so I have been able to catch up on our blog posts for the past few days! This town is most famous because it marks “Mile 0” of the Alaska-Canada highway. We ate dinner in the RV and headed out to go find the official marker of the beginning of the Al-Can highway. We drove around for a bit and it didn’t take us long to find it! This a shorter blog post because all we really did was drive today, but it's necessary if we are going to get to Alaska anytime soon! As we venture further north, the sun sets even later, and rises even earlier. It's 10:30 pm here and the sun hasn't even begun to set, quite the adventure! Also, you will notice in our pictures how much the climate has changed, and even though we are farther north, we have traded jackets and pants for shorts and t-shirts! We plan to be out of Canada in the next few days and into Alaska! I'm not sure when I will have internet again, it's pretty hard to come by out here, but I'll keep you posted when I do!
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We started the morning off at the campground and headed off to Lake Louise, about 30 miles from Banff. It was absolutely shocking how crowded the area was, and it took us quite some time to find a parking spot anywhere close to the trailhead to the Lake. We walked the short little trail that ended right on the shore of the Lake, and it was beautiful. Even though the sun was not out and shining, we could still see the deep blue tint of the water. Mountains surround Lake Louise on one side and on the opposite shore is a huge hotel. I am still amazed at the amount of tourists in Banff National Park, and there was no shortage of them at Lake Louise. After taking a ton of pictures, we headed towards Moraine Lake to explore some more. Moraine Lake, in my opinion was much prettier. It was less populated by tourists, and the sun was just beginning to come out when we got there. Zach and I found a trail that led to an overlook and hiked up to the top. The overlook was a 360 degree of the Canadian Rockies, looking off into a valley on the back side of the lookout, and over Lake Moraine in the front. Zach and I spent awhile up there taking pictures and enjoying the view, but we headed back down to join up with the rest of the Jan Fam. Our goal destination for today was Hinton, right outside the gates of Jasper National Park. Jasper National Park is right next to Banff National Park and is part of the Columbian Icefield Parkway. When we arrived at the Columbian Icefield Center, it was still raining, but the rain let up just long enough for us to enjoy the glaciers- and this glacier was what I would consider an actual glacier in my mind. Although Banff has taken full advantage of the natural beauty of the park and turned it into quite the tourist industry, we were still able to enjoy it without getting too caught up in tourist traffic. Across the street from the welcome center was the Athabasca Glacier, and we were able to drive to the base of the hill and hike up to the base of the glacier. Athabasca Glacier, due to climate change (caused by both human activity and natural shrinking) has been slowly receding over the past 100 years. At one point, the glacier covered the entire hill we hike up, the parking lot, the street, and all the way to the base of the welcome center. It is estimated that in the next 100 years, the glacier will be completely melted and in its place will be a lake at the bottom of the hill.
The glacier was massive, so we were not able to hike up all of it, but after we had hiked high enough to get some cool pictures, we hiked back down and headed towards Jasper National Park. Shortly after we got back in the RV, the sun came out- the first time we were able to get pictures with direct sunlight since we had been in Canada. There is an easy way to look for and find wildlife in National Parks. All you have to do is drive down the road looking for a mass of parked cars on the side of the road. Once you have found this make-shift parking lot, you have also found an animal. We came across a bunch of cars on the side of the road and sure enough, there was a black bear about 10 feet off the side of the road. By the time we parked the RV at the end of the line and walked back to where the bear was, the bear had decided to cross the road and began casually walking across. This bear was quite adorable, and just casually strolled over to the other side of the road and continued to walk right in the woods. Our next stop was the Athabasca Falls. The Falls are known for being incredibly picturesque, and the actual Falls did not disappoint. A plaque on an overlook over the falls said that the cusp of the waterfall used to be about 100 feet from where it is today, but because of the massive amount of water flowing over the falls with unbearable pressure, the waterfall is basically eroding itself. The Athabasca Falls was the last stop of the day, and we drove straight to the campground after that. Along the way, my dad spotted a male elk on the side of the road, with quite the extensive set of antlers. It was very docile, and Zach was able to get within five feet of the massive animal. We continued on to the campground, and checked in about 9:30pm. We continued on to the campground, and checked in about 9:30pm. Sunset continues to become later and later, and now the sun sets around 10:45 here- and we haven’t even made it to Alaska! The sun also rises around 4:30, so there is a lot of daylight to take advantage of! (Luckily, we don’t take advantage of all of it though). We were starving when we got to the campground. Not willing to wait for something to cook in the Dutch oven, we headed into town and found a restaurant. When we got back, the sun was finally beginning to set, and we are headed off to bed!
We rolled out this morning, and headed for the Canadian border! We had been staying around 30 minutes from the border. After much discussion about whether or not we would have to throw away all of our fresh fruits and vegetables (which some said we would), we were pleasantly surprised with how simple and easy the process was. We pulled into the drive-thru Customs Office and thanks to the friendly guard, we were in Canada within five minutes! Our first stop today was Calgary, Alberta where we were hoping to meet up with one of my mom’s best childhood friends, whose family has been vacationing in Canada. The VanEyk family currently lives in Montana, near Glacier National Park, and happened to be in Canada as we were passing through. We hadn’t originally planned to meet up with them, but thanks to Facebook, we knew we were going to be in the same city at the same time. We met them outside the Aerospace Museum. Everyone had a great time catching up after so many years! After loading everyone back up, we headed towards Banff National Park, about 3 hours away from Calgary. Banff is Canada’s first national park, and is quite the popular tourist destination. We pulled into the campground around 3 pm, and let’s just say that Canada does its campgrounds a little bit differently than we do in the United States. The campsite was literally a parallel parking spot in a row of other parked RVs. Quite practical, but also quite different. In search of something to do, we headed out to the main road and found the Hoodoo Overlook Trail. For those of you that don’t know what a hoodoo is (which I had never heard of either), it’s basically a gigantic stalagmite growing on the side of the mountain- here’s a picture for clarification. The trail was paved, and had a few gorgeous overlooks of the river below and the Banff Springs Hotel off in the distance. We hiked back down the trail and headed into Banff Town to do some exploring. Banff is by far the strangest National Park I have ever been to. On one side, there are beautiful, snow capped mountains surrounded by wide open fields full of wildlife, but right down the road is basically Canadian Gatlinburg (as many Americans call it). I guess because there are so many full time residents in the park, it is much more developed than our Yellowstone or Glacier National Parks. Although Banff is quite different, it’s not disappointing in the slightest. After dinner, we were bound and determined to find some animals during our first day in the park, so my family headed out in search of wildlife. We drove around for a while, quite unsuccessfully, but we eventually came across a group of sheep on the side of the road. There were quite a few of them, and they even had two babies with them. Continuing on our search, we even stumbled across two grizzly bears. We were not able to stop to get good pictures of them because a park ranger was trying to scare them away from the road and back into the woods. We circled back around, and by that point both the bears and the park ranger were gone, but in their place was a small group of female elk up on the hill. It’s amazing how much wildlife we were able to see in such a short period of time. More about the Cranberry- it’s absolutely filthy, and I have convinced my parents to not wash it the entire trip (with the exception of the windshield and front windows). Just to give you an idea, here is a picture: This trip has been absolutely incredible, and it’s amazing to think of all the things we have already seen so far-and we haven’t even made it to Alaska yet! 3,000 miles later and we have seen 5 national parks/monuments, taken over 2,500 pictures, completely caked the Cranberry in a layer of mud, and made countless memories along the way.
We woke up to a brisk, windy Montana morning. We ate a good breakfast and loaded up into the Cranberry to head inside Glacier National Park. Sadly, it rained for most of the morning and early afternoon, but we didn’t let that stop us from exploring.
At one point, the rain slowed and we decided to go exploring on foot for a while. We parked the car and began hiking down to Sunrift Gorge, not exactly knowing what we were hiking to. About 300 yards into the trail, we stumbled upon a young deer with developing antlers. It was not startled in the slightest by our presence, so we were able to get within 5 feet of him before it darted off into the woods. We kept walking down the trail and eventually came to Baring Falls, an unexpected surprise. The waterfall was breathtaking and Zach and I were able to climb halfway up the falls. A sign nearby stated that there was a boat dock 0.3 miles down the path, so we kept walking. The trail ended right on the banks of the lake, with a beautiful panoramic view of the lake and the surrounding mountains. The boat dock was not gated off, so we were able to walk out onto it. The water was crystal clear and you could see directly to the bottom even at the end of the boat dock. After climbing back out of the Gorge, we loaded back up in the car and headed to another side of the park to find some glaciers. Let me preface the glacier search with this: I am apparently the only one on this trip that is uneducated on the types of glaciers there are in Montana. I thought that a glacier meant a large chunk of gorgeously hinted blue ice floating near the edge of the water or nestled in between mountains. I was terribly wrong; however, I was still not disappointed. The guard at the entrance to the Many Glaciers Road area of Glacier NP told us that just up the road was a view of the Salamander Glacier. My family drove around for awhile, thinking that the glacier was just around the corner, and eventually found ourselves at the end of the road and in the parking lot of the Glacier Park Hotel before we realized that we must have already passed the glacier. It was so cold and rainy that we decided to head back to the campsite, which was luckily only 10 minutes away. When we got back to the RV, we googled what the Salamander Glacier looks like and apparently Glaciers this time of year are just patches of snow and ice near the peaks of mountains that are there year round. Nevertheless, it was still beautiful, but I felt incredibly inept when we couldn’t find a glacier that was supposed to very closely resemble a salamander. For dinner, we decided to experiment in the Dutch oven some more, so we cooked what we call a stew-pack (a bunch of vegetables mixed together) over the fire. It was delicious, and let’s just say that there was not much left over. After dinner we walked around the campground for a while, and a few of us took showers. At the campground office, the lady at the front counter told us that the bridge directly after the entrance to Glacier was featured in the Forrest Gump movie during his cross country running. We were quite curious, so we loaded back up into the Cranberry in search of the Forrest Gump bridge. Luckily, our bridge search was much more successful that our previous glacier endeavor. I am never ashamed to share embarrassing stories about myself, so here is yet another one for the list. I decided that the only appropriate way to remember our time on the Forrest Gump bridge was to take, yes, a video of myself running across the bridge. As I was running, a car passed and the driver rolled down the window to shout “run, Forrest run!” as I ran passed and he even slowed down the car enough to see my response. Taken off guard, a startled expression ran across my face, to which he responded, “wait, that’s from Forrest Gump, right?”. By that time, I knew what he was referring to, and all I could do was smile and reply with “yes, indeed it is”. I have to say that was the highlight of my day. The sun was just beginning to set behind the mountains, and the pictures were absolutely incredible. After driving around for a while and enjoying the little bit of direct sunlight we had left, we headed back to the campground. The one thing about the sun out here is that it doesn’t set until around 10:30, so we always enjoy a beautiful sunset right about the time that everyone is ready to head to bed. The time change is only two hours earlier, but getting up early to head to the next destination and making the most of all the 19 hours of sunlight we have is quite exhausting, but absolutely worth it.
We won't have cell service for a few days- which means no blog posts for awhile. However, I will write a post for everyday, and upload all of them once I have wifi again! We spent last night in a Wal-Mart parking lot, along with quite a few other RVs and woke up early this morning to get back on the road. Zach and I slept the first few hours of the trip, but everyone was up and running by the time we got to Bozeman, Montana. We planned to stop in Bozeman to meet up with the Duffy family- friends that live in Nashville, TN. We met outside Costco and made plans for lunch before we went inside Costco to get food for the long journey up the Al-Can Highway (Alaska- Canada). After loading a cart full of groceries into the RV, we followed the Duffy’s to the Central Copters, Inc. (one of the Duffy family businesses) hanger. The hanger was filled with varying models of helicopters, and we even got to watch one land! Then we headed over to MacKenzie River Pizza for lunch, which began in Bozeman and has grown in the past 20 years to include a few other chains in the North Dakota, Idaho, and a few other states. I have to say, I think it even beat the pizza we had yesterday. After lunch and a quick stop at a frozen yogurt place also owned by the Duffy’s extended family, we said our goodbyes and loaded back up in the car. We greatly appreciate the time that they took to show us around Bozeman! We spent the majority of the afternoon in the RV playing card games, reading, listening to music, and working on blogs and time lapse videos. The roads are no longer 6-lane, flat highways, but rather two lane roads winding in between the Montana mountains. At one point, the road was packed gravel with no lane divisions- quite the adventure in an RV. The campground we are staying in tonight is nestled in the valley of mountains, surrounding the campground on three sides. The campground is in St. Mary, MT, right outside of Glacier National Park. The drive in was absolutely stunning as we wound slowly through the mountains. I enjoyed a short run through the campground and I can definitely tell that there has been a significant altitude change. After settling in for the night, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset around 10:15 pm while we cooked macaroni over the fire in a Dutch oven. So, more about the Go Pro adventures. We have been filming a time lapse video of the journey so far and Zach has been working hard to compile the footage into one video! Here’s just a glimpse of the video and what beautiful sights we have already seen! The link is below, I hope you enjoy it! More to come soon!
youtu.be/mdht67t0sfc This is kind of a short blog post because we didn’t have quite the adventurous day today that we had yesterday, but the nice thing about my family is that it’s all fun, no matter what we are doing. Whether it’s walking around the Badlands, gazing at Mount Rushmore, or spending hours driving to the next exciting location- we enjoy it all. Books are read, games are played, and even more memories are made. Last night was the first night that we spent in a designated campground. We stayed very near to Custer State Park, around 20 minutes from Mount Rushmore. Waking up early this morning, we arrived at Mt. Rushmore around 30 minutes after they opened and enjoyed a sparsely populated park for the first little bit that we were there. On our 2007 Out West trip, we visited the monument; however, with being so close, we decided to visit again. It still amazes me how small the memorial is, not to underestimate the miraculous work of Gutzon Borglum and his other drillers, but it is dwarfed by the surrounding Black Hills. My family is a huge fan of the National Treasure series, watching the first one for the first time on our way to Washington, D.C. and Boston (where much of the movie is filmed) and enjoying the second one because of the film locations around Mount Rushmore. The Presidential Walk pathway is very recognizable from the movie; however, the trails do not lead to above the monument where the movie’s secret tunnel opens into the Black Hills. However, as I just learned today, there is actually a tunnel opening located on the backside of the carved faces, opening into the Hidden Hall of Records repository originally planned by Borglum. Although Borglum died before either the faces or the repository were finished, the government took over the repository building and there are currently tablets with our nation’s history (including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and many other important documents) buried underneath a 1,200 lb. slab of granite. It's amazing how much has changed since 2007! After visiting Mount Rushmore, we drove over to the entrance of the Crazy Horse Memorial to meet up with some friends also visiting the area. The Snyder family, also from Chattanooga, has been on a three-week dinosaur dig around 45 minutes south of Newcastle, Wyoming. Ivan and his dad, Dr. Keith Snyder, are currently on their way home and decided to stop by to see us before making the long trek back to Tennessee. It was great to see some familiar faces! Ivan recommended a pie shop just down the road from Crazy Horse and we were eager to check it out. We stopped by a small, locally owned restaurant named Pizza Works before finding the pie shop. The owner of the restaurant came out and began talking to us. He was incredibly nice and told us that his was the only pizza restaurant in Custer that made the dough in house and used fresh toppings (rather than shipping in frozen vegetables). This definitely showed in the pizza because it was some of the best pizza I have ever had! After lunch, we walked down the road to the Purple Pie Place, and it exceeded our expectations. After enjoying slices of apple and cherry pie, we loaded back up in the Cranberry to head back into Custer State Park. Ivan also suggested that we visit Sylvan Lake, where part of the National Treasure movie was filmed and we immediately headed that way. The lake was absolutely stunning, with beautiful lake surrounded by sheer rock faces coming directly out of the water.
After getting back on the path, Zach, my dad, and I decided to run ahead and climb up onto a rock on the opposite side of the lake so that my mom could get a picture of us. We never quite figured out which set of rocks were the filming sight of National Treasure, but I will be comparing pictures in the next few days to try and figure out. We met back up at the car, loaded up, and headed for Needles Highway. I got to drive through many of the one lane tunnels along the Highway and the views on either side were breathtaking. Zach got a Go Pro before the trip, and has thoroughly enjoyed mounting it on the dash of the RV and the roof of the Cranberry (more on that another day). After awhile, we switched drivers and Zach was able to drive through a few of the tunnels. We were going the opposite way that we travelled back in 2007, but the views of Mount Rushmore were still beautifully framed by many of the tunnels. We are back in the RV now, headed towards Glacier National Park in Montana. We left the campground and decided to take a different route in order to avoid back tracking; however, as we were heading out of Custer, a policeman pulled us over to inform us that the road we were headed towards would eventually turn into a dirt road for 11 miles. Needless to say- not RV friendly.
Well, the “why not” journey continues, and we are loving it so far! It amazes me how much we have already seen, and we have barely been on the road for 48 hours! My favorite thing about long trips in the car is watching how quickly the scenery changes. We went from the open grass prairies with staggered eroding rock formations in the Badlands last night, to the heavily wooded Black Hills Forest Reserve this morning, and will find our way to snow capped mountain ranges in the next 12 hours. That’s why road trips are so memorable- you get to see the changes as you go along, rather than walking off of a plane in a completely different place than you left. It’s the board game tournaments, the books read, and the hours spent looking out the window that make road trips so special, and I can’t wait to continue on this journey. We stopped for two hours last night to give the drivers a break, but we were very quickly back on the road! St. Louis was the first notable city that we drove through and although we didn’t stop at the arch, it was visible off in the distance. We drove all day to get to Badlands National Park, a 245,000 acre park protecting eroded rock formations, while also boasting the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. The Lakota Indian tribe (the original inhabitants) first coined the term “mako sica”, meaning “bad land”, due to the extreme temperatures, lack of water, and rugged terrain. The drive through the park is absolutely stunning, with breathtaking views of the vast prairie and staggered rock formations on either side of the winding road. It took us about an hour and a half to drive, with plentiful stops at all of the pull-offs for pictures. We stopped in the visitor center to get our National Park Passport Stamp Cancellations, continuing a tradition that began when my family first started taking road trips. My grandfather did not have a stamp book, but he now has one and is excited to get more stamps! Along the remaining drive, we were all able to stop and get great pictures, which I will be uploading onto the “Pictures” tab above. Very close to the exit of the park, we came across some very friendly and curious goats. Many of them were perched above the road on rocks, but quite a few were enjoying the small patches of grass along the side of the road. They were not afraid of the cars, and had no fear of walking right in the middle of the road. The end of the Badlands drive dropped us out right outside the city of Wall, South Dakota, where the famous Wall Drug Store is located. It was established in 1931 and although business was dangerously slow in its early years, the founder’s wife had the brilliant idea to advertise free ice water to travellers along the route to nearby Mount Rushmore. Since then, business is booming and the Drug Store brings in around $10 million a year. We also began the exciting addition of stickers to the back window of the Cranberry, and we plan to add a sticker for all of the places that we visit. I don’t plan to keep the stickers on the window forever, but who knows? Maybe I’ll get too attached to them by the end of the trip. spending my summer any other way. We are already 1,500 miles from home, and I can’t wait for the adventures that lay ahead!
The extreme distance and length of this trip always begs the question- why? To which I so often respond- well… why not? Why not take a month long road trip to Alaska? When the idea was first proposed, I was slightly apprehensive about being gone for a whole month. I knew I would miss out on stuff with my friends and other events, but here’s the thing- this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I just couldn’t let pass. Who knows if I will ever get the chance to do this again with my incredible family. It’s a chance to make unforgettable memories, and I can’t imagine The Jansen Family, with the addition of my grandfather Larry Johnson, embarked on a month long journey today! We plan to travel from Chattanooga, Tennessee all the way to Soldotna, Alaska with a route totaling around 10,000 miles round trip. This adventure will be filled with stops at National Parks, national landmarks, and many, many miles of open fields and mountain ranges. We are towing the Jeep, affectionately known as the Cranberry, adorned with cheesy car paint because..... why not? I am, for lack of better words, a huge fan of pictures, as many of you already know. I tend to take a picture any chance I get, partly because they are fun to take, but mostly because nothing quite brings back a memory like a picture. There is just something so fascinating about attempting to capture a fleeting moment with a solitary image. The most interesting aspect of pictures is that there is no way to completely capture the moment in which they are taken, they simply act as a reminder, a mere glimpse, of that point in time. That’s what makes memories so special. That being said, I plan to post tons of pictures along the journey- all the candids, the selfies, and of course, the posed family pictures.
What We’ve Done So Far: The First Day on the Road We pulled out around 6pm today, and are aiming for St. Louis before we call it a day. I started The Fault in Our Stars as we left, and promptly finished it three hours later- definitely a good read if you have the time to sit down and read it all the way through. Zach has watched a few Bruce Willis movies, and we have been switching off drivers along the way! |