Alcan and I Will

We left the campground at Dawson Creek and stopped at the museum about the Alaskan Highway.



The Alaskan Highway (also known as The Alcan) is a long road from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fairbanks Alaska, over 1,500 miles. Dawson Creek is known Mile 0.

It was built in 1942 after Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. President Franklin D Roosevelt ordered the road to be built for getting supplies from the lower 48 states to the Alaska Territory. While it was being built, the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and occupied two Aleutian Islands.

The Alcan Highway was built by the US Army. Some of the regiments were African Americans and some thought that they couldn’t do it. But they did.

It was not easy work. They had some good and bad weather. In winter it was very cold and the food was often frozen. In the summer time it was mosquitos who were the problems.

We have seen a lot of wild animals on this trip so far. We have seen black bear, moose, wild horses, prairie dogs, antelope, buffalo bison), deer, caribou, mountain goats, mountain sheep, and pheasant.


I like to look at license plates at home. I have noticed on Canadian license plates that some of them descriptive words about them. For example: Friendly Manitoba and Beautiful British Columbia.

Today's Mileage - 581 km
Today's Route

Trams, Alberta, British Columbia--Oh My!

We left our RV park and headed for the Jasper Tramway. The tramway goes up Whistler's Mountain and from the top there was a beautiful view over the park, valley, and town of Jasper. The length of the tram ride is 2,000 meters and the elevation gain is973 meters. It takes 7 minutes to get to the top.






The drive to Dawson Creek was loooong! We drove through a lot of nothing. In Dawson Creek there is the Pioneer Village. The world famous Alaska Highway starts in Dawson Creek.

Total Miles - 325

Today's Route

Glacier Facts

The source of the Athabasca is the Columbia Icefield. When the glacier moves it carves rock and creates a valley. The ground up rock on the side of the glacier is called the lateral moraine. At the bottom there is the terminal moraine. The ground up rock that enters the river is called rock flour and creates beautiful blues in lakes and rivers.

Glaciers are very thick. Where I stood the ice thicker than the Eiffel Tower is tall.

In the winter time this glacier grows 15 meters, but in the summer it loses 25 meters. The glaciers is getting smaller every year.

Rockin' Rockies

From Calgary we drove into the Canadian Rockies. The Canadian Rockies encompass the Banff and Jasper National Parks. First we stopped in Banff and walked along the Bow River. Banff was really interesting. I liked the different country flags in front of the Clock Tower Mall on their main street. I liked our walk along the river and there was a pretty bridge.


Traveling from Banff along the highway through the Rockies was scenic. Animals are always in danger near the highways and there are lots of animals in the Rockies. So the parks people decided to build crossings just for animals. These are large bridges crossing the highway that are designed to look like the land around them. The highways are fenced so that the only way the animals can cross the road is by the bridges. These bridges are used by 11 species of larger animals including Moose, Grizzly Bears, Elk and Deer. Currently there are 2 bridges in Banff National Park and since they began monitoring in 1996, there have been 183,000 crossings.

Next we stopped for lunch at Lake Louise. The lake was mostly frozen and there was lots of snow but the sun was out and it was pretty. I looked in the viewing telescope and saw the glaciers across the lake.

We left the lake quickly because we wanted to make it to the glacier that we could go out on. We drove the Ice Fields Parkway and didn’t stop along the way because we wanted to get there. Not stopping was ok because it was snowing most of the way up there. What we did see from the road was beautiful.


We made to the Columbia Ice Field and took a bus up so far and then got on a snow coach to go up on to the Athabasca glacier.




There 23 snow coaches made and 22 were at this glacier. The other one is owned by the US government and is at the bottom of the world in Antarctica. Part of the route to the glacier is a steep downhill then up hill on the ice.

When we stopped we went out and looked around. It reminded me of one of the Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back. The mountains reminded me when a snow speeder went around a corner and you see some rock just like by the glacier.



I also saw footprints that reminded me Tuantaun tracks.




We ended the day by staying in Jasper.


Total Miles - 256

Trip Route

On the Road to Canada

From Medora we drove all day northwest towards Canada. We could see far but we didn’t see much. There was a lot of open land and really small towns. We spent the night in Fort Benton, Montana. I have been there before because I went on a Boy Scout canoe trip on the Upper Missouri River that started in Fort Benton. We spent the last night of that trip at the Fort Benton Fairgrounds.

Fort Benton is described as the birthplace of Montana because it was a trading post for the northwest. The paddlewheel boats could only go as far as Fort Benton on the Upper Missouri. The boats would unload their goods and then the goods would travel overland all over to places like Portland and Seattle.

On the riverfront in Fort Benton there is a statue on a dog named, Shep. I thought the town was cool because they had a statue of a dog.

On our way to Great Falls we saw that it snowed a little last night.

Today we crossed the border into Canada and headed to Calgary. Calgary is the only big city that we will be going through on this trip. For the first time on the trip we were stuck in traffic.

We headed downtown and parked our RV towards the Calgary Tower. The Calgary Tower is the third tallest structure in Calgary and was built to commemorate Canada's Centennial in 1968. The views are fantastic. One part of the tower has a glass floor that you can walk out on and feel like you are floating.


Tonight we are staying right next to the Olympic Park where the 1988 Winter Olympics were held.

Today's Mileage -- 362 Miles
Today's Route

A Close Encounter at Devils Tower

Spearhead Valley

We spent the night at the Whispering Pines RV park in Spearhead Valley. The valley looks like the Sierra Nevadas in California. I was surprised, I felt like I was back in California. I didn’t expect to see such a pretty valley in South Dakota. When we were driving we stopped and looked at a pretty waterfall along the road. It was named Bridel Veil falls like the one in Yosemite.

Devils Tower is a huge volcanic plug in Northeastern Wyoming. When I first saw it I thought WOW! It was formed by Magma pushing up from the center of the earth about 50 Million years ago. It came up and filled a space in sedimentary rocks and then cooled. As it cooled it fractured into columns. Over millions of years erosion of the sedimentary rocks exposed Devils Tower. It is like Morro Rock in California. It is 867 feet from its base to its summit. It’s not flat on top but rounded.

The Indians called it bear tepee and it was sacred site. Even today Native Americans put prayer cloths on trees in ceremonies.

We walked around it and it looked different all the way around. We also saw many people climbing the tower. It looked really hard to me. While we were there we saw one guy make it to the top; that was cool.

As we were leaving we saw a Priarie Dog preserve. There were lots of prairie dogs all around us. It made me feel big in the land of prairie dogs! There used to be a lot of praire dogs in the US but now there are only about 2 percent of them left. They were cute.


Wyoming is the home of many firsts:
1st US President to have been a park ranger, Gerald Ford
1st female governor
1st public library
1st National Park, Yellowstone
1st National Monument, Devils Tower


Belle Fourche, South Dakota, is the geographic center of the US. In 1959, the government named it the center after Alaska and Hawaii became states. Surrounding the round memorial were all the flags of the US. I thought it was really cool being at the center of the country.

Leaving one Dakota and entering another
Medora, North Dakota

We spent the night in a RV park across from the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It must be really cool to live next such a beautiful national park. The park was named for Roosevelt because he famously said he would not have been president if he had not spent time in North Dakota. He first arrived in 1883 to shoot some buffalo. He spent about one and a half years there total mostly in 1886.

The town of Medora was founded in April of 1883 by a 24 year old French nobleman, named the Marquis de Mores. There was a former military camp that was abandoned. He wanted to start a town and a meat packing plant. He had the financial backing of his father-in-law from New York. He named the town after his wife, Medora. His business failed. He returned to France with his wife. The town is small but beautiful. The Marquis summer home is still there and can be toured in the summertime.


Medora is also home to the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Today's Total Mileage -367
Today's Route

Mt Rushmore

It was designed by Gutzon Borglum and begun in 1927. It was finished in 1941 by his son Lincoln after his death in 1941. He went to the Black Hills and saw the perfect place to carve the heads of four of our Presidents. Originally Jefferson was going to be on Washington’s right but because of faulty rock problems he had to tear the old Jefferson head and rebuild it on the left. I think that Jefferson should be on the left because he should be next in the line after the first president. A Susan B Anthony forum wanted to put her on the mountain too but Borglum said no because she was never President.