June 8, 2009

We left Ft. Nelson and drove along the Testa River Valley and into the Northern Canadian Rockies – another beautiful drive. We stopped at the Muskwa River overview and took pictures of the Muska River and Stone Mountain.

We drove over Summit Pass, the highest pass on the Alaskan Highway at 4,250 ft., and into the McDonald River Valley. We saw many Stone Sheep on the road coming down off the pass. Towards the bottom we saw a moose.

We stopped at Muncho Lake which is a beautiful blue-green caused by a lot of copper oxide leaching into it.

A little ways beyond Muncho Lake we saw a bear and also a number of bison.

We then entered the Liard River valley where we encountered a lot of smoke in the air. The young man at the Ft. Nelson Visitors Center told us there was a fire here but that it was going North and there shouldn’t be any smoke in the valley. When we got to Liard Hotsprings Provincial Park, where we planned to spend the night, it was so smokey that we were concerned about Rex’s asthma. Consequently, we spent about an hour in the hotsprings and then continued on to Watson Lake.

After we left Liard Hotsprings we came upon firefighters mopping up fire along the road for about 30 miles. We even had to stop while they washed red fire suppression slurry off the road. We are glad we were not in this area earlier. We saw more buffalo and a bear with 2 cubs by Irons Creek. We saw a total of 6 bears on this drive – wow! The only animal we haven’t seen yet is a Caribu – hopefully soon.

We passed into Yukon Territory before arriving at Watson Lake around 4:30 pm. This made for a long day and we were all tired. We are staying at Downtown RV Park, which is just a few blocks from all the sights we want to see.