Scott's Big Adventures

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Arctic Adventure Day #18

We slept in a bit longer than we wanted… Rolled out of bed around 8:00 or so. Kim took a shower and then we hit the road.

Today we went down the Cassiar Highway. On my last trip up here, we saw tons of black bears on this stretch of road. Today we saw none. However, we saw a large car go across the road. At first we thought it was a small cougar. But as we passed it, it turned out to be a giant…

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Arctic Adventure Days #16 & 17

We are on our way home now. We’ve had our first of dirt roads and bears, so we won’t be stopping by the Stewart/Hyder area.

On these two days, we are backtracking on roads that we’ve already been on, and the weather is kind of crappy. That means not a lot of stops with new and exciting pictures.

We did stop for fuel at the intersection with the Dempster Highway and it seems we made it back just…

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Arctic Adventure Day #14

Today was supposed to be a boring day, heading almost 500 miles down a road we just drove up a couple of days ago… By the end of the day, it was probably the most exciting day of the entire trip.

We got an early start out of Inuvik – the weather was supposed to turn soon, so we wanted to get as far down the Dempster as we could while it was still dry.

The road was in great shape, we did get a…

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Arctic Adventure Day #15

Tonight we celebrated my graduation as a bear whisperer by drinking much beer, but not so much that we did the sour toe cocktail (Google it). So, not a lot of words in today’s post.

We camped in tombstone last night and woke up to rain. We tried waiting it out in the tent, by eventually gave up and drove the end (beginning?) of the Dempster while it was wet. It was a short drive to Dawson City…

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Arctic Adventure Day #12

Lots of milestones today. We made it to the Arctic Circle, Northwest Territories, and Inuvik. It is really hard to describe the landscape up here, particularly when we were in the mountains. You could see forever – the landscape seems larger than life.

The road was fairly mucky up to the Arctic circle, and slowly improved as we moved north. The last 100 miles, dist was more of an issue than the…

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Arctic Adventure Day #13

Today we embarked on the final northbound leg of our trip – the new road up to the Hamlet of Tuktoyktuk. The weather has been dry for several days, so the road was in very good shape. There were still a few long stretches of soft gravel and a construction zone for the last 20km or so before town. We could tell that the road would get pretty sloppy if it was wet.

As you come into town, you get to…

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Arctic Adventure Day #11

Our goal today was to make it to the Dempster Highway. We woke up early, so we could hit the road to ensure that there were campsites left at the Tombstone Campground when we arrived.

After the first hour, we stopped at the Braeburn Lodge for a giant cinnamon roll. We had part for breakfast, part for lunch, part for dinner, and still have some left over for tomorrow.

Or next stop was in Carmacks…

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Arctic Adventure Day #10

We spent the first part of the morning searching for the room key. Clearly we had it some point because we were in our room, but we couldn’t find it anywhere. After tearing apart or bags twice and digging through the garbage, we gave up. Fortunately there was no list key charge. If we find it along the way, we’ll drop it in a mailbox.

We altered our route today and went to Whitehorse. This gave…

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Arctic Adventure Day #9

After a long day of driving followed by dinner and itinerary replanning, I am beat. So, there won’t be a lot of words in this post, mostly pictures.

I do have a couple of quick things… Between this trip and my motorcycle trip in 2014, I have now been on the entire Alaska Highway. Also want to get in a quick critter count for the day: 2 deer, a golden eagle, 3 black bears, a bear with brown fur…

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Arctic Adventure Day #8

Well, we slept in again today. Did not get on the road until 10a. We stopped at the main road where we had cell service. One of the kids at home is out of contacts and we had to transfer some money so she could buy some more.

Started making some serious northward progress today mostly on highway 40 in Alberta. Apparently there is a big caribou here in the area. There were periodic signs asking to…

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Arctic Adventure Day #7

Or goal was to be out of bed by 7a this morning, but we forgot to set an alarm, so it was more like 7:30 or so. We took quick shower, and then we were off to the Icefields Parkway.

We saw lots of glaciers!

https://vr.me.sh/view/?view=360&url=https://scottsk.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/v0350051.jpg

And waterfalls too!

At the Columbia Icefields, we stopped at the chalet to see if we could book a…

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Arctic Adventure Day #6

We spent an extra day in Lake Louise today, the weather was kind of crappy and we needed to get some laundry done. The concierge sent us down to the Lake Louise Inn (which is where I stayed last year) – apparently they allow the public to access their laundry room.

After hanging around doing laundry for a couple of hours, we are lunch at the inn before heading over to the village.

Our first stop…

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Arctic Adventure Day #5

Most of the time I’m writing these at the end of the day, and I’m tired so I don’t do too much editing or reviewing of my posts. The pictures come straight off my cameras, and I’m working on mobile devices so I don’t get a great look at them, which is why they are sometimes blurry. When we arrived at the hotel today, I got a good look at one of my recent posts, and several of the photos were too…

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Arctic Adventure Day #4

Heading north! We left Lakeside today and finally started heading north – we have quite a bit of that to do still. It took us about 90 minutes to get to the border crossing where we had a fairly short wait with only a couple of cars in front of us.

After the border, we were on highway 93 heading north until we intersected with highway 3 and started heading east, which is going the wrong way! At…

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Arctic Adventure Day #3

Happy 4th of July! We got showers this morning! Ok, we only camped for one night before hitting a hotel, but having a shower in the morning is always nice.

We had kind of a lazy morning today. Ate leftover pizza for breakfast in our room and walked across the street to hang out with relatives before heading off to lunch.

Whenever we visit Montana, we always look forward to hitting The Staggering…

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Arctic Adventure Day #2

Not much to talk about today…I should have taken pictures of our bacon and egg breakfast. It was a little cool in the tent last night – our double sleeping bag had a summer side and a winter side and we were set up for summer. The outside air temperature was in the low 50s, see we will be using the winter side from now on!

It rained most of the time during the drive, so we didn’t stop much – once…

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Arctic Adventure Day #1

We are on the road! The trip started out with a bit of a hiccup – I fat fingered something on my GPS and it reset the driving profile. It took me a few minutes to fix it… Fortunately I didn’t lose any of my route data.

Day #1 was pretty unexciting for us. Most of the drive covered areas we’ve been through many times. The weather was kind of mixed… Sprinkles here and there and some gusty winds to…

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