Sunday, May 23, 2010

May 22, 2010

Busy Day

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Up early again.  Easier to do when it starts to get light outside around 3:30 in the morning.  Waited ‘till 5:45 to get up and then took our time getting ready to go.  We weren’t in a rush to leave a view like this

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We had a wakeup call from this fellow.

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There is a speckled woodpecker in the center of the picture.

On the road by 8:00.  Better weather today.  Mild and partly cloudy.  A little way up the road we the first black bear of the day.  We saw five on our journey today.  Further on Sue finally got her first moose sighting.  It was munching by the side of the road and was not disturbed as we slowly pulled up and stopped.  Many pictures later we moved on.  

22-15 moose

About 70 miles from where we started today we came to Liard Hot Springs. (pronounced Lee-aird)  Two hot springs in the middle of the forest.  There is a nice campground (full) and a boardwalk to the springs.  Lower springs is shallow, no more than three or four feet.  Most people choose this one and just soak.  The upper springs is almost ten feet deep.  Nice to swim in.  There are changing rooma at both sites.  We took a dip in both pools.

DSC03766 Lower spring

DSC03769 Upper spring

After spending 90 minutes at the springs we continued on.  A few miles on we came across two Stone Sheep licking moisture from a crack in the road. 

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Watched them for a few minutes and off we went.  Next we saw our first buffalo of this trip.  In this part of the country they are Wood Bison and they are endangered.  We saw four more at different times the rest of the day. 

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Another black bear

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And then another first and pretty exciting.

22-118 grizzly 22-119 Grizzly leaving

That is a grizzly bear.  Grizzlies are more skittish than black bears it seems.  The second picture is of his back side as he scampers into the trees. 

We are now in Yukon Territory (Sergeant Preston, etc.)

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About 3:00 we reached Watson Lake.  This is the home of the Sign Post Forest.  While building the Alaska Highway, a lonely soldier placed a sign post indicating the distance to his home town.  Others followed.  Then things sort of got out of hand.  The number of posts grew and grew.  Now there are signs from all over the world.

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Here is one Christina and Roland might recognize.

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There are well over 68,000 signs in the forest currently.

Today the forest population grew a bit more.

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Just to the right of the two birch trees, a little up from the bottom, the white spot.



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