my travels in pixels

Stewart, BC & Hyder, AK We had decided to take the Cassiar Highway instead of continuing on the Alaskan Highway just before Watson Lake. My original copy of the Mile Post had said it had 15% gravel roads, but my new copy said it was 100% paved, yay. We knew there were some long sections on the Alaskan Highway that had road works, with one being about 15 miles long, so we really wanted to avoid that if we could. We had also heard that there were bears down at Fish Creek in Stewart/Hyder, which was a big draw card for us. The Cassier is a lovely drive. The first 30km has permafrost and the forest hasn’t got over a wildfire that happened a few years ago, but it is still more interesting than the Alaskan Highway. On the second day we saw seven bears on the side of the road. We decided that we had come to the right place. As soon as you turn off the Cassier to go to Stewart, you get to see one of the few blue glaciers in Canada right next to the road. Stewart (Canada) and Hyder (...

After our trip to Lake Clark we started to head back to the lower 48 (states). Lindsay had rung the Fisheries and Wildlife office at Haines and found out there were six bears fishing in the river, so we were pretty excited. While going through Tok, Lindsay decided to weigh our trailer which came in at 11,000 lbs! The guy at the weigh-station noticed that our truck looked a bit lopsided and on closer look we realised that a suspension airbag had collapsed. The local RV repair place couldn’t help and we rang the place that had installed them – 3 time zones away. Yes they were under warranty but Utah was a little too far away right now and their nearest store was in Juneau – 438 miles and a ferry trip away; so not an option. It was 200 miles back to Fairbanks, 4+ hours in the wrong direction. I was a little worried that a sign on the highway said “no studded tires before 15 Sept” which meant that it could be snowing in two weeks! During the last couple of days I had noticed that the leav...

Lake Clark, AK About 18-months ago I researched where we could go to photograph some bears, and decided on Silver Salmon Creek Lodge at Lake Clark and booked it; so it has been a long anticipated wait. The booking included flights from Soldotna to Lake Clark, accommodation, food and a guide to take us to photograph the bears and a boat trip to photograph the puffins. We chose August as this is when the bears are fishing for salmon and our whole trip has been based around this holiday within a holiday. Prior to our flight from Soldotna to Lake Clark it pretty much rained for two weeks, apart from about four days, which we spent looking around the rest of the Kenai peninsula with day trips to the towns of Kenai and Homer.  On the way to Homer you see a number of beautiful snow capped mountains, with glaciers and mountains greeting you as you drive into town.  We also went down to the Russian River an hour away a number of times as we were told that we would defi...

We had booked our campground in Denali National Park a few months ago and are two weeks earlier than we planned. For a $4 fee we changed it and only have to wait a couple of extra days. We can use the extra time down south. We were advised to try and get into Teklanika as it is further into the park but it was booked out. You can’t drive around the park yourself, you have to pay for either tours or the shuttle bus. Instead of the usual 100 yard rule between you and an animal, it is 300 yards! The camping spots in Reilly Creek campground are excellent: large, level and private which doesn’t lend itself to meeting people though. We pay a bit extra for our sized site, but at least we fit. There are people picking blueberries and cranberries at the back of our site. The mosquitoes are not as bad as we were led to believe, we have encountered much worse in Canada, so that is a relief. The first afternoon we listened to a ranger talk on Denali Park, how it came to be, what it is most ...