California wormhole?

‎We have been in the southern end of the okanagan valley for the past week hitting the wineries, but were looking for a good photo op. It feels very uncanadian, and reminds me of the coachella valley in southern california around palm springs where we stayed last autumn. They didn't grow vines there, but similar scrubby hills and lots of fruit and market garden agriculture on the valley floor where the irrigation can reach. Ok, the coachella doesn't have the big lakes strung along it, and is much broader, but it really does feel similar.

The canadians claim this is their only desert, while Wikipedia says it's semi-arid steppe ( and of course wiki is always 100% true). And it does have some local ski resorts in the hills to the east, so could be almost perfect....

Winter in Whistler - in comfort

Mark has always wanted to spend a ski season somewhere, and I like to keep warm, so I've been frantically looking for an 'affordable' apartment in Whistler. Today I found one! It's only a one bedroom/1 bathroom (with a tub!) and a sofa bed for guests, but it's in the village centre. We can walk everywhere (or stagger, depending on how much apres is done) so the car will only come out for airport runs.

Now we have to find somewhere to store Badger for the winter.

And bookings are now being taken for the sofa bed :-)

Committed to Whistler

‎We have made our first financial commitment to wintering in whistler in the form of my lift pass. Early bird deal took about 300 bucks off, so worth doing. Now I just have to keep telling myself that if I ski 2 days out of 3 and manage 100 days on the snow it's less than ten quid a day.

And the only way to get any refund now is a doctor's note or coroners ‎certificate...

Welcome to Whistler

‎The view from the lunch table.

After an interesting journey down the sea to sky highway involving numerous hairpin bends and a 5km 15% downhill gradients that completely fried the brakes in Badger - series clouds of smoke for the following cars to enjoy - we have arrived in whistler.

This campground is about 11 miles south of the resort - its not the one we plan to stay at for the winter which is closer in, but it's cheaper for a few days and doesn't have a bad view....

Done with the north

‎Our last official "northern BC" nights and call hence to have a final look at the aurora from the latest solar storm didn't come to much - high cloud and the remnants of the super moon made the skies too light to see anything, or at least distinguish the lights from the clouds. So we are done with the north now, on the hwy 97 down south.

Of all my half baked ideas, heading north late in the season has worked well. We got to see the aurora, which was the main reason, but coincidentally matched the salmon running and spawning which in turn led to being able to see the bears up close feeding on the salmon. The fall colours were spectacular, and ‎seeing the mountains and forested hillsides and valleys with a first dusting of snow was a bonus. I would love to come back up and drive parts of the Alaska Highway in the winter with snow all around as they have in the tourist brochures, but maybe just in toad. I really don't want to buy and fit snow chains to badger.

So now we are heading to Whistler tomorrow for a couple of days research to check out what the town does and doesn't have, along with nearby places‎. Then we are probably going to head inland for a month or so to check out the Okanagan valley. There are supposed to be about 60 wineries in a 100km stretch - that's only 2 a day on average. And the forecast for the next few days is 27c, so a last blast of summer and shorts...

Glaciers, bears and fish

From Meziadin Lake we had a day trip to Stewart, then across the border into Alaska again to visit the 'ghost' town of Hyder. Along the way we drove past Bear Glacier

saw a couple of large black bears

Then headed up the mountain to see Salmon Glacier

and this is a close up of the crevasses - amazing! 

Then to the Toe of the glacier - where it melts and trickles into a stream

On the way back, we stopped in at the Meziadin Fishway to see the salmon jumping. There were so many, at least one every second!

A fish ladder has been built at the edge of the river to help the salmon navigate their way upstream, as only 1% can actually clear the weir. 

And after all this hard work of swimming upstream to spawn, this is where they end up

Tomorrow we carry on our journey south where the weather is warmer

The view from the breakfast table

Meziadin Lake in central BC, glaciers in the distance, and we've caught back up to late summer as its warmer and the trees are only just starting to colour.

How's your hump day going?

Goodbye Alaska Highway...

... we've completed it from start to finish and back a little way again. It was fun driving back through Watson Lake in the snow and freezing temperatures

Hello British Columbia! You will be our home for the next 8 months. We're heading down Highway 37, aka the Stewart-Cassiar highway. The locals seemed unperturbed by a Badger rolling on by:

From our campsite today we've seen a bald eagle watching a bear feeding:

And a mile own the road, we saw this:

What will we see tomorrow?

Back in Canada

Came through the border this morning with no problems - in fact quicker than either of the Alaskan - registered cars ahead of us. So a few more days kicking around the yukon then head down into BC and sort out what we are going to do for winter....

Too late

‎Winter caught us with a light dusting of snow overnight in Tok. I guess its true what they say about alaska having only 2 seasons - august and winter.

Heading south for the winter

We've seen what we came for, its now cold and wet in Fairbanks and there is snow forecast for cold spot microclimates along the alaska highway that we need to take back, so its time to start heading back down to BC and try to catch up with the autumn again.

Aurora round 2

After being cloudy all day it started to break up over fairbanks late in the afternoon and by dusk was clear overhead, so we grabbed the florida parkas and headed up to cleary summit, a hilltop about 20 miles out of town. Ribbons came out fairly early and a few hints off to the horizon but they never really amounted to anything. cloud cover came back in by about 12:45 so called it a night.