Nancy, Where Are You?

Sunday

We had a great time with Bill and Mary Ann at Lake Louise, Moraine Lake and Banff but have now left them behind as we continue our journey towards Alaska.

Fairmont Hotel in background - Banff

ND, me and Mary Ann inside Fairmont

We took the gorgeous drive to Jasper stopping at many places to take pictures and even hiked to a couple of waterfalls. The lakes were breathtaking with mountains in the background, the water so clear and the color of Indian turquoise.

Bow Lake on the way to Jasper

We got to the city of Jasper about 4 p.m. and began going into one hotel/motel after another but couldn’t find anything for less than $200. We finally found the Pine Bungalows on the other side of town. There was no telephone, no TV, no internet (they are just like Yellowstone!) We had to pay $166.77 for the evening. We couldn’t believe it.

IT WAS A GOD THING . . .
    Hyder, Alaska . . . We got up at 5:30 threw on our clothes and went out to see the bears. We only saw one and decided to leave at 7:00 ready or not.
    Driving towards Dease Lake we were held up for an hour while a helicopter removed trees from a mountain in connection with a hydro electric project. Later I was driving and I’m sure I fell asleep, the next thing I knew I was jarred awake as I drove right into a ravine. The car was tipped on its right side, Nancy and I both thought we were going to roll over.   We were racing through the underbrush until somehow (it was a God thing) I was able to guide the car back up onto the gravel road where we slid around until I got it under control. The fact that neither one of us was hurt or that the car could still be driven was a miracle. Needless to say Nancy took over. We drove on to Dease Lake which I thought was going to be a big town but in actuality it was a gas station, two restaurants and thankfully a motel. As we pulled into a restaurant we heard a terrible sound that sounded like scraping. We looked under the car at all the wheels but everything looked okay. Some man in the parking lot listened to it and said it sounded like a rock was stuck in the wheel. We inquired about someone to look at the car. We were told about “Turtles” and “Charlies.” We went to Turtles first, I got out with two dogs barking at me and called and called for someone but no one came out to help us so we went to Charlie’s. He was sitting in a lounge chair acting very uninterested in our problem. I asked him if he would look at the car. He did and said he thought it was a rock in the wheel. He said if we backed up it should release the rock. We did and it did. By this time it was 4:00, we hadn’t eaten. We decided to eat at the Cafe, Rumors. The girl who waited on us and asked what we wanted to drink, we both said “water.” She asked if we wanted hot or cold water! We thought that was very odd.   We have never been asked if we wanted to drink hot water. It was 3-4 hours to the next town with no guarantee that we could find a hotel with vacancies so we decided to check into the only hotel in Dease Lake to the tune of $149. This was very basic: we couldn’t get on the net and there was a fan instead of air conditioning.

8-16 (Thurs)
    We left Dease Lake at 8:00 this morning after ND had made the coffee in the lounge and made people mad because she brought the hot water boiler to our room.
    We laughed about running off the road yesterday (not that it was funny at the time.)
    We drove four hours to Watson Lake. We thought it was going to be a big place and compared to Dease Lake it was however that isn’t saying much. We were so glad we didn’t venture on last night because there probably would have been no place to stay. We went Sign Post Forrest and put up our sign that said, “Buddy Dyer Blvd.” People bring signs from all over the world and hammer them up on the posts. It was actually started on 1942 by a homesick GI from Danville, IL while he was working on the Alaskan Hwy.   In 1990 a couple from Ohio put up the 10,000 sign. The GI who first started the whole thing visited with his wife 50 years later and could not believe how much the whole thing had grown.
    After eating lunch at Kathy’s Cafe we set off for White Horse, another 5 hours away. We marveled at the many huge lakes we have seen today and for that matter since we have entered Canada.   The scenery is just beautiful.