why are you wearing a suit on holiday

A very easy road day. Short side trips to see totem poles and Twin Falls. We then found our accomodations for the night in Telkwa. A one room log cabin, with a covered porch right on the river. The place is run by a nice british woman who took very good care of us, although she was a little curious about wardrobe choices.



We then made a quick trip back into Smithers, hit Safeway, and picked up food to BBQ. A very nice evening, cooking and eating ourselves silly. An hour in sauna/hot tub, then just enjoying the river.

sidetracks

so we said goodbye to the yukon territory and the alaska highway, and took highway 37 south into british columbia. we also thought we'd said goodbye to alaska, but not quite - more on that later. was nice to be back in canada, we'd gotten quite used to kilometers, washrooms, and loonies :)



the coolest part about RVing it is the total flexibility of it. for example, when presented with a view too nice to take in in passing, we can stop, break out the camp chairs, and have a cup of tea. like here.



so i am not quite as on top of everything as i should be - i have this silly idea that if you spell labor day with a 'u', it should be in may. as canada actually observes it the same way we do, we missed out on some shopping opportunities in whitehorse (most notably the quilt shop and the yukon brewery.)

also, it turns out google maps has a really distorted idea of how long the cassier highway should take to drive. apparently it thinks you'll average about 30kph! the road is in fact not paved, but is mostly a seal-coated gravel that rides about as well. we passed the place google suggested would take us all day to get to, well before lunch. so we took a side trip. went glacier hunting, which took us (briefly) back to alaska.



if you ever come this way you MUST take the road to stewart. it is a short trip (on a good road) down a glacial valley, and the scenery is just spectacular. there is a huge glacier that calves into a lake at the halfway point (the actual set for the cabin in "Insomnia", if you ever saw it), and dozens of waterfalls that put yosemite to shame.



at the end of the valley you reach stewart, a canadian town of reasonable size. hyder is a tiny alaskan town that faces stewart across the canal. the road continues around the end and joins the two. you can tell you've crossed the border in two ways. one is the canadian customs station on the south side of the road. (none on the american side - apparently they just don't care.) the other is that canada actually spends money on road maintenence.



anyway, five miles into AK is a great spot for watching black bears fish for spawning salmon. we saw a lot of salmon, but no bears - ok tho, we saw plenty on the roadside the last two days. and if you have the stamina to follow this road for another 20 miles you can see another huge glacier, in my opinion well worth the bumpity bumpity :)

I'm Broken

It looks like we got one of the only sunny September days Haines typically has, and we put it to good use.



Went out last night, Haines threw its town mardi gras party (yes, in September.) We called it an early night after enjoying some of the local color, cause we were meeting our guide for our sea kayaking trip at 8am. A few quick words, a life vest, and we were out on the water. The guide, neither Jenny or I caught his name, was a really nice guy, a few hours out on the water, a snack, then back in for some smoked sammon.



The guide recomneded a great nearly 6 mile hike, which Jenny had a itch to take. Thus, a short drive to the trail head and 4 hours of hard hiking and I am beat. Wrenching my shoulder climbing into the kayak once, straining a muscle in my thigh sprinting down to shore to save the boats from being washed away, then the hike. Jenny broke me today. But the view from the top was incredible.



About to finish laundry then time for bed.