Wildlife Safari!

We had another early early morning this morning.  We left the hotel in Fort Nelson before 5 a.m. and while we were driving towards the Rockies I saw my first hint of Northern Lights! It was thrilling for me even if they weren't super impressive to a seasoned Alaskan like Andy.  As the sun came up we drove into the Canadian Rockies and saw some amazing scenery.

Today was definitely the best scenery we've seen on the whole trip.  I almost didn't notice that I drove over 300 miles in my part of the driving today.  Almost.

We also saw some roadside friends!

We saw a couple herds of elk along the way...

We pretty much only saw lady elk.  Apparently they are called "cows" but I prefer "ladies"

Some of our friends were very courteous and stuck to their designated areas:

I wonder what's coming??

We saw a ton of buffalo (bison, if you so prefer) today, and they did not seem to be bothered by the cars whatsoever.

The final friend of the day - Caribou!

Our big milestone for the day (other than making new animal friends) was making it out of British Columbia.  We're in the Yukon now!

 The ALCAN crosses back and forth across the YT/BC border a bunch of times around here.  We passed several "Welcome to BC" and "Welcome to Yukon" signs in a short period of time.

We ended up in Whitehorse today, which is the capital of the Yukon Territory.  The whole day we only drove through one other place I would actually call a "town," which was called Watson Lake.  The coolest thing about Watson Lake is its signpost forest:

According to the Milepost, the signpost forest was started in 1942 by a U.S. Army soldier who was working on the ALCAN.  People from all over the world add signs to the collection.  We saw a lot of German signs for some reason.  These pictures only show a really small portion of the forest - there are apparently more than 72,000 signs here!

Well that's about it for today.  Tomorrow we have a short(er) drive to Tok, Alaska, which means we'll be out of Canada! From there it's just over 300 miles to Anchorage.  The cats are especially excited to only have 2 more days in the car.