my travels in pixels

As this was taken from inside the car, it doesn't show the gradient Ever since Lindsay heard there were bears in Bella Coola he has wanted to go there. Me, not so much, you see we had heard horror stories about the road in. They call it the Freedom Highway. It's the steepest road in North America, it's narrow, windy, unpaved and wait for it, has an 18% grade. What does 18% mean anyway? Shouldn't that be degrees? It descends for 43kms, with 9km of very steep descent. Anyway, it sounded scary. Maybe not for a car, but we would be towing a heifer lump of a trailer behind us. We rang the ferry to see how much it would cost, but they said they were booked up for the next few weeks, did we want to go in mid October? An aerial view of the switchbacks -  Photo from:  Bella Coola Blog It was just over 1,100 kms from when we got off the ferry from Vancouver Island. Drive down Canada 1 to Hope and continue on it north. We stopped off the first night at a rest stop alon...

Hayden Valley, Yellowstone, WY The south entrance to Yellowstone was open the day before we were due to drive through, but it only stayed open for three hours. So when we got to it the next morning it was still closed which meant we would have to take the long way round. After going back through Jackson Hole, route 22 had a warning saying “no trailers”, so we had to find another alternative. We ran into a few blizzards along the way and texted friends to see if they knew what the roads were like – they had seen people sliding off the roads the day before! We also rang the road conditions number for Yellowstone: most of the roads were still closed and they were recommending snow tires or chains. As we got to the western entrance the sky seemed to clear up and Lindsay decided to ask the rangers what the roads were like: a bit icy, but he decided that it looked clear and the number of cars around would have cleared the roads. He was right. We made it through to Mammoth campground w...