'On The Road Again'. Willie Nelson
I prefer the 'Canned Heat' song with the same title but the lyric of the above is more appropriate. We are on the same road again - The Cassiar. Although backtracking, the C is so stonkingly fabulous that we don't mind. We are at Dease Lake and I bet that you didn't know that 92% of all the jade mined in the world comes from around here. As you would expect, almost all of it goes to China.
Critter count:
1 black bear
1 cow moose
1 child moose
1 wolf
1 red fox
A good selection of critters but, alas, no decent photographs just fast disappearing rumps.
On our drive from Tok on the Alcan yesterday we went through the area that gave the army engineers so much trouble back in 1942. For well over 100 miles the road is over permafrost. The effect of the permafrost on the landscape is very strange. Trees grow, but are stunted and very thin. It is like driving for ever through a bonsai spruce forest. The photographs give no indication of just how bizarre this looks so I am not posting them!
We also passed through Snag, Alaska, which was first settled during the Klondike Gold Rush. No one lives there now but it does hold the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in North America -81F. Think of that! I cannot begin to imagine the cold that they get here in the long, dark winter. We are experiencing reasonably warm weather and, of course, at this time of year it barely gets dark. There is just a strange twilight for a few hours. The main effect of this, for us anyway, is that it seems so much earlier in the evenings than it actually is.
We have passed through hundreds and hundreds of miles of burnt forest on this trip. Some fires are started by humans but most are from lightening strikes. They are an essential part of the cycle of the boreal eco system in the Yukon and Northern BC. The first plant of the regeneration process is the, appropriately named, fireweed. This provides a vivid purple carpet beneath the blackened stumps, which stretch for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see.
Tomorrow we will continue down the Cassiar and take a side road down to Stewart (BC) and Hydra (AK) for a very special reason: Fish Creek. More tomorrow. We will be sleepless with excitement, well I will anyway. I daren't mention the 'b' word just in case it jinxes us. All things crossed.
Critter count:
1 black bear
1 cow moose
1 child moose
1 wolf
1 red fox
A good selection of critters but, alas, no decent photographs just fast disappearing rumps.
On our drive from Tok on the Alcan yesterday we went through the area that gave the army engineers so much trouble back in 1942. For well over 100 miles the road is over permafrost. The effect of the permafrost on the landscape is very strange. Trees grow, but are stunted and very thin. It is like driving for ever through a bonsai spruce forest. The photographs give no indication of just how bizarre this looks so I am not posting them!
We also passed through Snag, Alaska, which was first settled during the Klondike Gold Rush. No one lives there now but it does hold the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in North America -81F. Think of that! I cannot begin to imagine the cold that they get here in the long, dark winter. We are experiencing reasonably warm weather and, of course, at this time of year it barely gets dark. There is just a strange twilight for a few hours. The main effect of this, for us anyway, is that it seems so much earlier in the evenings than it actually is.
We have passed through hundreds and hundreds of miles of burnt forest on this trip. Some fires are started by humans but most are from lightening strikes. They are an essential part of the cycle of the boreal eco system in the Yukon and Northern BC. The first plant of the regeneration process is the, appropriately named, fireweed. This provides a vivid purple carpet beneath the blackened stumps, which stretch for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see.
Tomorrow we will continue down the Cassiar and take a side road down to Stewart (BC) and Hydra (AK) for a very special reason: Fish Creek. More tomorrow. We will be sleepless with excitement, well I will anyway. I daren't mention the 'b' word just in case it jinxes us. All things crossed.
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