Toad River (07:58) to Big Creek Yukon Government campground (14:30)

This morning we left Toad River pretty early and continue the drive. The weather is very good and there is hardly any car on the road. Last night we were thinking perhaps we have been driving “too much” per day and didn’t get enough time in camp to enjoy the day. We made plans for a few days ahead and think we should aim for stopping around 4-5pm if we are camping, and 6-7pm if we will be staying in a hotel. We also decided to skip the Campbell Highway loop (via Ross River) to free up some extra days in case we needed more days later in the trip.

We spotted so many animals today we almost ran out of room recording them on the whiteboard!

For some reason David was being annoying all morning, but I cant remember what he did or why anymore. I’m only writing this down because this is on the log book and was in David’s handwriting. At Allen’s Lookout (“Historical Mile 570″) we stopped for some (morning) snacks and enjoy the scenic view of Liard River.

At “Historic Milepost 627″ we crossed the “official BC-YT” border. I think this is the only spot where there’s actually a sign saying this is a border. The Alaska Highway then goes between BC and YT several  times before finally staying within YT border.

We get to Watson Lake, YT around noon and checked out the visitor center for some tourist information. The folks at the information center asked us which direction we are heading and quickly gathered a pile of info books: one for each city we will be passing through until the Canada-US border, campground maps and lists, and advise us to stop by the Northwest Territory visitor center at Dawson City if we are planning to take the Dempster highway to Inuvik. They also handed us a booklet for some sort of contest  where we need to write down the number posted on each of the spot listed and turn in the booklet for some prizes drawing. OK. We weren’t really sure what the prizes are and the odds of winning is probably close to zero, but when you are a tourist you do what the tourists do!

After walking out of the visitor center with piles of books/maps with us we checked out the “signpost forest”. I guess this got started during the time folks were building the Alaska Highway, some soldier got homesick and posted the sign for his hometown then everyone started doing that. Over the year the signpost forest has grown significantly and I am not really sure if all those signs are legally obtained…  I mean, some of those city signs look like they were “removed” from the city limit sign you see on roadside. According to the data posted at the visitor center the sign post count at 1988 is 6281, and by 2007 it’s 64371. We did not try to find out what it takes to put up a sign here (or if there’s any) since we come unprepared.

We walked around the “forest” looking for interesting signs. There are the usual city/town signs and lots of license plates. There is a pretty high number of foreign plates of any kind too, mostly European.

We did not see a sign for Milpitas, but we did see one for Fremont, even though there is a lot of city named Fremont in the US we are pretty sure this sign came from our neighboring city since it has the Fremont, CA logo.

After the signpost forest we went for a little grocery shopping at the local general store. Earlier at the visitor center we learned that Whitehorse is really only about 6 hours away but thinking that we will have an “easy day” we decided to stop at the Yukon Government campground at Big Creek which is about 2 hours away from Watson Lake.

We arrived at Big Creek campground around 2:30pm and picked a campsite to setup camp. This is the first Yukon Government campground we stayed in. The campground fee is CAN $12 and they supplied the firewood. We noticed most of the sites are really designed for RV and have gravel pads. It doesn’t really bother us to sleep on gravel since the REI sleeping pads we have are really comfortable. We picked out a campsite which turned out to be really two campsites, but the campground is pretty empty so we are pretty sure we wont have neighbor tonight.

In the Yukon when the sun doesn’t really set until 2am or something like that, 2:30pm is really in the middle of the day. We can definitely feel the heat too. Mistake number one for pulling into camp too early! Its way too warm to do anything, so we end up staying inside our pop-up shade most of the time. Mistake number two is we under estimated the mosquito population in Yukon. Not only do we have to deal with the heat we have to deal with mosquitoes! We both got a thick later of mosquito repellent on but it does not seem to help when we need to be outside the pop-up shade. I also found out I really hate the smell of one of the repellent (the spray on dry kind) and have to settle for the other “less effective” repellent.

Around dinner time we grilled some steak for dinner and David split some wood to build a campfire. We were thinking maybe the smoke from the fire will keep the mosquitoes away from us a bit, this sort of worked but not optimally.

Because we pulled into camp too early and end up being sort of miserable due to weather and mosquitoes, we spend a good amount of time re-plan some of the trip plan we made the previous night. We also decided when we get to Whitehorse tomorrow we are going to get some serious mosquito repellent gears!

Before going to bed it was still pretty bright outside so we walked around the campground checking things out a bit. There are like 4 groups (two RV, us and a couple in a smaller car) of camper staying at the campground for the night.

Distance today: 241.7 miles.

No FJ spotted

Wildlife spotted: gray wolf x1, deer/elk x1, moose x2, caribou x3, dall sheep x5, bear x2, bison x3

All the pictures (opens new window)

Kiskatinaw Provincial Park, BC (08:39) to Toad River, BC (18:30)

1800 miles away from home. The weather starts out great in the morning, high 50s and sunny. It rained a bit in the afternoon, high for the day is in the 70s.

Yesterday we took a little detour to get to a short section of the “old Alaska Highway” and this morning we get to drive on the wooden Kiskatinaw bridge.

After the bridge we followed a small section of the old highway which passes mostly residential area and is not in a very good condition (potholes) to get back on the “current” Alaska Highway. On the Milepost there’s some mention of the “world’s largest glass beehive” somewhere nearby but we did not check it out. We are flipping through “The Milepost” as we go but sometimes things are pretty confusing. For example, in Canada they used metric system so they have “kilopost” vs “milepost”. Also the actual Alaska Highway has been rebuilt several time in history that some of the section is no longer following the original route, and therefore the difference between actual miles and historic miles.

The next big town is Fort St John, we stopped to use the ATM machine in the grocery store but it was not working so we went to the nearby mall to find one. The mall looked deserted, probably because it just opened… At Shephred’s Inn (“Historil Mile 72″) we stopped to pick up a cinnamon roll. This thing is huge! There are plenty of road side pullouts along the Alaska Highway but almost all of them contains only a trashcan. The Milepost is full of information like “turnout with litter barrels” but not much information on where a restroom would be. I guess you are supposed to stop at every roadside cafe/tourist attraction/gas station to use the service but we end up driving past most of them without stopping. We finally pulled into a rest stop (“Historic Mile 80″) that has picnic tables and restroom! Woohoo! The rest area looked pretty nice if not for the mosquitoes flying around. Instead of eating our cinnamon roll by the picnic table we have to settle for eating it inside the truck. There is something about cinnamon buns and road trips.

Around lunch time we looked up on the Milepost and found a park with picnic table – Buckinghorse River Wayside Provincial Park. They have nice shaded picnic tables by the Buckinghorse river. The mosquitoes weren’t too bad here and we were able to enjoy our lunch (tortilla wraps) sitting at the picture table. The local birds on the other hand are the nasty bunchs, we have to guard our food closely because they are very curious about human food. A couple next to us had their cookies stolen by the birds!

We arrived Ft. Nelson late afternoon, went to A&W for root beer float, then fill up the truck and moved on. Looking at the Milepost we decided we will probably be staying at Toad River tonight.

As we drive further west we begin to feel that we are moving away from civilization. On this section of the Alaska Highway we see fewer and fewer car on the road and towns/villages, gas stations are further apart. The road is in pretty good condition mostly, some paved, some being worked on, and some good gravel.

We pulled into Toad River Lodge around 6pm. The gas station is having a “traffic jam” as there are a few vehicles waiting to fill up, some of them probably will take forever to fill up too! There is really not a whole lot of “things” in this “outpost” – houses and airstrip on on side of the highway; restaurant, RV park, lodge, gas station, general store and greyhound station with Canada Post on the other side. While David is waiting in line to get us a room at the motel I walked around the general store looking at their large collection of hats, mostly baseball caps. According to the whiteboard they have 7480 hats here and I guess people just keep bringing them in!

The room has TV and a fridge and is right next to the lake. It is decent but has a funny smell that made me feel sick. We were told it’s sulfur because all the water smell like that around here, and sure enough even the ones coming out of the faucet smells. We opened all the window to vent the stale air out and it got better. Luckily the bug problem isn’t too bad here (sulfur helped maybe?) and we decided to make a quick dinner of dehydrated backpacking food. It’s easy to prepare and tastes pretty good. After dinner we do our usual walk around the area, the ladies who work at the lodge/store earlier were just getting off work, we watch them get into their car, drive across the Alaska Highway and stopped at one of the house across the road. Short commute!

We walked alongside the highway for a bit then head back to the room to get some rest. David checked out what is on TV but I guess he didn’t find anything interesting to watch. On the iBook I picked up a wireless signal that took me to a config screen on some Linksys access point (no password!), we think it’s probably just a random AP from some guest staying here.

FJ spotted: SF x1

Wildlife spotted: deer/elk x4, big horn sheep x4

All the pictures (opens new window)

Hinton, AB (09:11 MST) to Kiskatinaw Provincial Park (near Dawson Creek, BC)

We are 1500 miles away from home!

The proper title for this entry should have been “Alaska Highway, the beginning” or something like that, since this is the day we arrived Dawson Creek, BC (“Mile 0″).

We left KOA in the morning after turning in the survey in exchange for a deck of poker card. We waved at the driver of the yellow FJ who lives near the campground, looks like he’s on his way to work!

Our drive today will take us thru Highway 40 just outside Hinton – “the scenic route to Alaska” to Grand Prairie and then to Dawson Creek, BC, the beginning of the Alaska Highway.

The road is pretty empty and on both side it’s mostly planned forest.

At Grand Cache we stopped at the visitor center for and quick break and head to Sulphur Gates. It’s a pretty cool spot where the two rivers – Sulphur river and Smoky river meet. It’s a short walk (10-20 minutes maybe) to the top with a scenic platform overlooking the rivers. For some reason I had too much caffeine this morning and I was feeling a bit jumpy.

After the brief visit to Sulphur Gates we continue our drive towards Grand Prairie. The road is actually pretty good as it is mostly smooth. The posted speed limit is 90km and we were doing about that speed for the most part until we came to the part with the posted “loose chip” sign and slowed down a bit. Then at an uphill curve a semi on the opposite direction (downhill) coming down really fast and threw a rock at us. We heard a loud BANG and thought this would be a body damage. We examined the “damage” afterward and found a large crack on the windshield, maybe about 2″ in diameter. This marks the FIRST windshield crack we get on the FJ! It’s actually not bad as it looked since I keep reading about how easy the FJ windshield can chip and it never happened to us- not when offroading in Death Valley, not when driving to work, but day 5 of our trip to Alaska!

Of course they also said Alaska Highway eats windshield, but we are not even there yet!

We arrived Grand Prairie around noon and stopped at a Burger King to get some lunch while David called USAA to see what (if anything) they can do about the windshield. We thought we should do something about it as soon as possible since it’s a pretty large crack and we barely started the trip! The folks at USAA/Safelite wants to know if the crack can be covered by a one dollar bill and we were both very confused. How do you determine if a round crack can be covered by a rectangular shape? They decided they want to replace the windshield and wanted to know the zipcode of our location. Uh.. OK. They dont have zipcode in Canada, they have postal code, and guess what, it’s not 5 numbers either. We finally realized we are not going to get anything done as long as we are still in Canada (since Safelite has no Canadian location) so we took the claim number and told them we will call when we get back to the US (either in Alaska or back home in California). I called dad to tell him about the windshield as well. the city of Grand Prairie looks like a typical city with everything, shopping mall, auto dealer and lots of traffic! Oh yeah they have a Costco here too. From here we will head west towards Dawson Creek, BC.

We passed Beaverlodge which has a giant beaver displayed along the road. According to Milepost this is the home to Canada’s most northerly Agricultural Research Station and also the regional center for grain transportation, seed cleaning and production. We didnt care much about all this so we didnt stop to check out anything. This whole area is pretty flat and contains mostly farmlands. It reminded me of the vast lands in the midwest. At the Alberta and British Columbia border there’s a sign reminding people about time zone change. We are now back to Pacific time zone.

We arrived at Dawson Creek late afternoon and went to Safeway to pick up some supplies. They do not have the “Mission Tortilla” we are used to getting so we have to settle for a random brand. We also picked up some ribeye steak to be used for grilling later. After figuring out which phone number to use at check out for the Safeway preferred card discount we went to fill up at the Safeway gas station.  Somewhere the program used to track people’s purchasing habit at Safeway will get very confused that my sister who lives in Milpitas shopped at Dawson Creek, BC. Next stop is “Mile 0″ of the Alaska Highway, which is just around the corner.

At Dawson Creek Rail museum they have some railroad equipments displayed, we didnt get many pictures for that however. It’s also a visitor center where one can pick up tour and trip information for places nearby and along the Alaska Highway. We signed the guest book and bought some postcards and head outside to get some “Mile 0″ photo.

Of course it was not until later in the trip we realized the “Mile 0″ sign by the museum is not the only Alaska Highway tourist attraction in Dawson Creek, there’s also another “Mile 0″ post that we somehow did not visit (it was a block away from the visitor center). Oh well, there’s always next time right?

Our stop for the day is Kiskatinaw Provincial Park, it’s a campground under the BC park system. There are some 24 sites to pick and some are right next to the river. We weren’t really sure about the mosquito situation so we end up picking a site that is further away from the water but closer to the outhouses.

This is the first time we used the pop-up shade in this trip. After we setup camp we marinaded the steak and start preparing for dinner. It was not long after I started to boil some water for tea David noticed the heat from the burner is destroying the net wall. OOPS! I patched it up with some (purple) duct tape so bugs cant come in through the hole.

We had salad, steak and potato (in dutch oven) for dinner. This is a good meal. Unfortunately we were both pretty hungry so there is no picture of what the cooked meal looks like.

We went for a short walk after dinner to check out the creek nearby. The bridge in the picture is the Kiskatinaw bridge which we will be driving on tomorrow morning. This is part of the old Alaska highway and the only wooden curved bridge that are still in use. After we got back to the camp the campground host came by to collect camping fee (CAN $15) and chatted with us a bit.

Distance today: 312.1 miles

FJ spotted: SF x1, BC x1, Ti x1

Wildlife spotted: deer/elk x2

All the pictures (opens new window)

Columbia Icefield campground, Jasper NP (09:34) to Hinton, AB (17:30)

Cold and sprinkly in the morning.

We did not have a good night of sleep last night. First the truck alarm went off a few hours after we went to sleep in the tent. We really have no idea why the alarm went off so after it happened the 2nd time we decided to keep the truck unlocked. Sometimes after that it started to rain as well, and it was pretty cold (probably because we are camping across the valley from the glacier, a giant ice field even!). I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and it was not very pleasant at all (not to mention it’s freezing!).

The weather in the morning did not look good either. We got up and had breakfast, went to the Icefield Center to get our tour ticket (10:30am bus) and walked around the Icefield center a bit waiting for our tour time. It was cold and rainy outside and visibility is not great. We got on the shuttle bus that took us across the road and closer to the icefield to board one of those Ice Explorer with big wheels.

When mom knew we will be going to Columbia Icefield she told me the first time she visited the icefield with the tour group they did not have to board the shuttle bus to get to the Ice Explorer, but on the second visit 4 years later they have to take the shuttle bus to get to one of those explorer buses.  She thinks the glaciers used to be much closer to the road but as we pass those marker for where the glacier is at time in the past we didnt really see an indication on how far the glacier retreated. The Ice Explore has large tires (almost as tall as me!) and runs in very low gear to take us up to the Athabasca glacier. It was very cold and windy (and sometimes rainy) out in the open so I did not spend the full 30 minutes outside and went back to the bus early. David tried some 200-year-old ice water but I was too cold to think about drinking cold water.

After we got back to the Icefield Center we decided we should find out what the weather will be like (since it has been miserable all morning) for the next couple of days. We checked with the Park Canada staff at the Icefield Center and the weather is forecasting showers overnight and thunderstorms for the next days (and probably days following that). Asking the staff whether or not the weather forecasting is usually accurate here, their answer: “Your guess is as good as mine.” We decided since the weather isn’t going to improve we should probably just move on, there will be other time to visit the Canadian Rockies later since there are other parks we have not been to yet.

We went back to the campground and start to put our gears away. Lesson learned on planning too much without considering weather. We paid for the 2nd day of the campsite already and will not be able to get our money back for the unused day. After we packed up our stuff the weather got better and the sun is out. We begin to wonder if we made the right decision to pull up camp earlier but we already did… We had lunch at the picnic table and walked around the camp and check out the waterfall behind the campground. The campsite has an outhouse that is directly facing the Athabasca glacier, talk about a million dollar view.

As we drive north we get occasional rain but nothing to bad to affect the road condition. Our next stop is Athabasca Falls.We walked around the trail a bit and check out the waterfall. This is a popular tourist stop so there are a lot of people here.

By the time we get to the town of Jasper it was raining pretty steady and it’s very windy. It took us a bit of searching to find Park Canada office to get our refunds on the 3rd day of the park pass. I gave dad another call (as usual he knows exactly where we are) to tell him about the weather and our change in plan. We flipped thru the Mileposts to find possible location to stay near Hinton and read the ad for Hinton KOA. We’ve never stayed at KOA before but figured we can give it a try.

At the Hinton KOA we got a “Kamping Kabin” which is basically a cabin with beds (a full size bed and a bunk bed), TV and refrigirator, just bring your own bed sheets! The cabin we got looks pretty new, the folks at the front desk are very helpful and gave us a map to show where everything is in the campground & in Hinton. The campground has everything, shower, kitchen area with electric stove, laundary room and even campfire area. We showered and did our laundary and repack a few things in the truck. We also took the opportunity to fill up our water container with water from the campground.

It took us awhile to decide what we want for dinner because I think it was too much work to cook anything so we end up driving to Hinton and pick up burgers at A&W (and of course, root beer float!). We also fill up the truck then bring our food back to eat at the picnic table by the cabin. The campground has WiFi access but it is kind of spotty. We got some pictures downloaded to the iBook and David did a trip update and that took forever.

Distance today: 125.8 miles

FJ spotted: VB x1, SF x1 (by Hinton KOA, has a black roof), Iceburg (2008 SE) x1

Wildlife spotted: bear x1

All the pictures (opens new window)

McLeod Medows campground, Kootenay NP (09:42 MST) to Columbia Icefield campground, Jasper NP

It took us a bit of work to get the stuff packed in the morning, something I am sure we will get better as we go (more practice!). The weather is still pretty good but we can see more clouds now. On the way to Banff National Park we passed the British Columbia and Alberta border, which also happens to be the park border between Banff NP and Kootenay NP, and also the “Continental Divide”. That’s a lot of borders!

We stopped at Lake Louise Village to purchase day passes for the park. The Park Canada system is different than the US National Park system where if you pay for a one time pass it’s good for 7 days. They charge you park fee by the day here, the pass we bought will be valid for 3 days (CAN $58.80 total!).

We drove to Moraine Lake first, which is not too far (about 30 minutes on slow curvy road) from Lake Louise Village. By the time we get there it’s around lunch time so we made some wraps for lunch (left over Korean BBQ from previous night on tortilla wrap and greens). There are a lot of people here, but not so much that it feels crowded. We walked around the lake and took a really short trail up to an outlook by the lake and took some pretty cool pictures.

After Moraine Lake we went to Lake Louise and boy is this a tourist spot! The lake isn’t as pretty as Moraine Lake (I think anyway) but there are tons of people here! This is one of the “must stops” for tour group I guess. Also the nearby Fairmont Hotel is building some new building so there are lots of machinery and noises. The weather was getting more and more cloudy and we got some sprinkles of rains here and there.  We did not stay too long. We went back to Lake Louise Village to get some salad and a 12-pack of coke since we ran out. We also picked up some “homemade” fudge. There’s always candy stores at tourist trap and we always feel like buying fudges. The weird thing is we normally don’t eat fudge at home, or even thinking about getting fudge. Since there is cell phone signal here I called dad and let him know we are doing okay. He knew where we are since he’s been following the SPOT tracking on hourly basis. We filled up the truck at the gas station and packed more ice and continue our journey.

Our next stop is Lake Herbert, it has a nice picnic area so we stopped to have some snacks and read up on the tour book about the park. The lake is sort of a sink as it has no visible outlet, we read that the water leaves via underground channels. After a brief rest we continue the drive and arrived at one of the road side scenic outlook – Crowfoot glacier. It says it was named crowfoot because it resembled the crow’s foot with 4 toes, but the lower toe retreated completely and the one above that is retreating as well, making it a really funny looking foot I guess. Maybe years later it’ll be named something else because it will not look like a crow foot anymore!

Peyto Lake is next, to get to the outlook it’s about 10-15 minutes from the passenger car parking lot. But if you are with a tour group on one of those big tour buses the parking lot is right next to the platform. David is not feeling well again and we suspect it’s from the Cheetos he ate earlier. No more Cheetos for him! He stayed at the parking lot (easy access to bathroom) while I hike to the overlook platform. The trail is pretty scenic and sections of it is a bit steep but managable. The lake is a turquoise color and is very pretty. The platform is packed with tourist and it’s almost too much work to stick around for long, as everyone is trying to get to the best viewing spot.

Our next stop takes us to Mistaya Canyon where the river cut thru a channel in the limestone surface and created a whole lot of gorges, potholes and arches on the canyon sides. It’s a 10 minutes easy walk. This would be a good place for lunch or picnic or just to enjoy the scenery. We spent about half an hour here just listening and watching the rushing water before hiking back up to the parking to continue the drive.

Not long after that we passed the checkpoint between Banff National Park and Jasper National Park. We arrived at Columbia Icefield Campground around 5pm and picked out a good campsite. Unlike the previous campground the self registration booth here does not take credit card and it seemed to expect campers to have exact change as the fees for some reason are not rounded up to the nearest dollar (probably due to GST). We decided that we are going to stay two nights here, since we plan to take the Icefield tour bus tomorrow and maybe hike Wilcox Peak the day after. Dinner is salad, Mexican steak and beans. We set up campfire after dinner and just sat around enjoying the view.

The campground is across the road from Columbia Icefield, we can easily see Athabasca Glacier from our campsite. There’s also a waterfall directly behind the campground.

Distance today: ???

No FJ spotted

Wildlife spotted: bear x5, elk x1

All the pictures (opens new window)

Pasco, WA (06:55am) to Kootenay National Park – McLeod Meadows campground (18:30 Mountain Time)

We got up pretty early this day and continue our drive north. The goal is to get to the border before any sort of rush hour (if there’s such a thing) since it will be Sunday afternoon when we cross the border. The weather is again great with cool temperature to start with and some pretty clouds. We drove thru Spokane, WA then into Idaho. This is the first time I’ve been to the state of Idaho, although David kept saying there’s not much here… We drove by a dealer who has a yellow FJ with the stock roof rack painted yellow, that was kind of weird.

After stopping at Bonners Ferry to switch driver and walk around (they have an indian casino too!) we arrived at the US-Canadian border. This would’ve been an easy/quick border crossing if David did not volunteer to the Canadian border agent that we have “bear spray”. That got us into the “holding tank” where we wait for someone to look at our bear spray.  After we show the friendly border agent lady our bear spray she waved us thru and we continue our way north into Canada. At least this was quick, there’s a truck we saw at the holding tank where the agents were doing strip searches… gotta wonder what they think they have…

We arrived at Cranbrook, BC shortly and see  the first of many A&W that we will be visiting for root beer float while in Canada. But first thing first, we have to stop by the bank to get some Canadian money. It seemed easier to find A&W than bank. We filled up the truck, $1.47 CAN per Liter! talk about expensive fuel before leaving the town. By now we didn’t think we will make it to our original destination for the day (Banff National park) so we planned to stay at one of the campground at Kootenay National Park. On the drive to the park we passed Columbia Lake which is the source of the Columbia river that we were following the day before yesterday.

By the time we arrived at Radium Hot Springs, which is one of those little “gateway town” into the Canadian Rockies, it was already past 5pm and the Park Canada office was closed. We decided to move on and about 30-45 minutes into the park we pulled into McLeod Meadow campground.

This is the first camping night we have since the start of the trip and it’s also the first time we’ve been in any of the Canadian campgrounds. They are a bit different than the California campground we are used to: for example, they sell a fire permit here which is the same as paying for firewood. There’s also a kitchen shelter with wood stove, neither of us know how to use it tho. The campground hosts came by and chatted with us a bit and give us some pointers on how to pay for the park fees since we missed the business hour.  We made some salad and have grilled Korean BBQ beef with rice for dinner. After dinner we went for a walk to check out the sights.

Distance today: 422 Miles.

FJ spotted: 2x BD, 2x Ti, 1x BC, 1x VB

We decided that FJ parked at the dealer does not count towards FJ spotted.

All the pictures (opens new window)

Redding, CA (07:20am) to Pasco, WA

The weather is great for the (real) first day of the trip. After trying to wipe off the bugs from driving thru I-5 last night (and failed) we head north towards Oregon. Mt. Shasta is clearly visible under the blue sky, something we don’t see very often driving thru this area in wintertime. We stopped at a few vista points to take pictures of the mountain and the bug covered truck. This is going to be hard to clean…

We took 97 north towards eastern Oregon, this is new to me as I dont think I’ve ever been to this part of Oregon before. We had lunch at one of the rest stop, picnic table, trees and birds, and lots of mosquitoes! Lunch is tuna salad in tortilla wrap, tasty and quick. We also stopped by DQ and got a blizzard in the afternoon.

We drive past Newberry National Volcanic Monument’s Lava Lands visitor center and decided to check it out. It’s just right next to the road and they take our park pass so we didnt have to feel bad about paying full park fees and stayed for only half an hour. There’s a road up to the top of the Lava Butte with very good views. I can see why they want to setup a fire lookout here!

Continuing north we saw Mt. Adams and probably Mt. Hood, we are not good at identifying landmarks anyway. At one of the rest stop we have some Cheetos and shortly after that some of them dont agree with David’s tummy. By the time we got to Columbia river it’s dinner time so we stopped at a McDonald to get me some dinner before following the river east.

When we got to Kennewick, WA we had our first supply trip to a local (giant) walmart: David got some apples and we picked up a bottle of Windex to replace the useless window wipes.

We stayed at Pasco, WA for the night.

Distance today: 529.4 miles.

FJ spotted: 1xTitanium (silver), 1xBlack Diamond (black), 1x Voodoo Blue (blue), 2x Sandstorm (tan), 1x Sun Fusion (yellow) and 1x 2007 SE (black with black roof).

All the pictures (opens new window)

Milpitas, CA to Redding, CA

After spending months in planning and weeks in packing it’s finally time to go! We have most of the things packed during the weekdays so we just need to load them all up before we go. Dad stopped by after work while we were still packing and informed us that northbound 680 looked pretty packed, typical for Friday evening I guess. We decided to leave a hour or two late so we don’t have to sit in traffic much. We are planning to make it to Redding for the night which is about 4 hours away. We packed up and bring MaoMao to my parents’ house where we had her cage setup the week before so she can stay in a cage she is familiar with. 35 days of “Bird Camp” for her, I hope she likes it!

We checked out my dad’s “trip command center” where he has maps on the wall with our proposed route and daily (planned) stops marked.  Looks like he is all set to follow us on our trip! At 8pm we said goodbye to my parents and MaoMao bird and started our Alaska trip.

Total miles driven: 241.6 mile.

We made it to north Redding, CA just before midnight at 23:50.

The blue cooler has maybe 1/3 or 1/4 bag of ice remaining. Considered the blue cooler is bigger and still has ice left it looks like the blue cooler is better insulated.

The plan is to stop the experiment and pull the temperature probes out when it’s been 7 days or when the large block of ice melt completely, whichever happens first.

For this experiment we got a Coleman 5 day Extreme cooler. We will call it the blue cooler since it’s blue, and the Igloo we have is red.

I put two HOBO temperature probe in small tupperwares and left them side by side for the weekend to ensure we have enough readings for baseline comparison. I then loaded each fridge with:

two big round tub of ice

two bags of ice from the freezer’s ice maker.

one small yogurt tub of water

one large yogurt tub of water

put the temperature probe container on top of the large yogurt tub.

Now we will see what kind of temperature reading we can get, and how long the ice will last.

I am thinking it should last at least 4 days….