Ro Wells Travel

The summer absolutely flew by. I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for nearly two months and somehow time has just got away from me. I’m back on the road so brace yourselves for a flurry of blog posts in the coming weeks.

My parents came out to Canada to visit me at the start of July and we had the most epic road trip through Yukon, Canada and Alaska, USA. The slogan of Yukon is “It’s different up here” and they’re right. The scenery and nature in Yukon and Alaska is like nothing I’ve ever seen. And it was so wonderful to get to experience all of it with my parents. I’ve been out in Canada for almost two years now, and I hadn’t seen my parents in person for over a year. Video calls are all well and good but nothing beats a hug from your mum and dad. I landed in Whitehorse, YT and took the shuttle to the hotel. My parents were stood outside the lobby waiting for me. When I say those hugs were some of the best in my life, I’m not exaggerating. At least two out of three of us were a little teary eyed.

We spent our first day just finding our feet in Whitehorse. And by that I mean we immediately went to find a bar and some food. We found a great bar called Dirty Northern for a few pints and a planning meeting. We were renting a RV and spending 12 days travelling around so we needed to make final decisions on our route. Our original plan had been to head north to Dawson City, YT then take the Top of the World Highway west into Alaska. I’d been keeping an eye on wildfires in the area and looking at the reports that evening, we decided to go west into Alaska through Haines Junction, YT rather than north to Dawson City as there were a couple of travel advisories due to wildfires very close to the Top of the World Highway. You’ve got to listen to nature, when she says she needs space, you give it to her.

As it was, we still found a great route. We set off in the RV the next afternoon having stocked up on provisions and headed west towards Alaska. The first couple of days gave us a very bumpy ride – literally. The roads turned to gravel due to an abundance of construction going on. The first day we got incredibly lucky and saw a mother and cub black bear as we were driving along the highway. We also saw what I’m 90% sure was a grizzly bear. We were on the highway so didn’t get a great look at it but it was giving off grizzly vibes for sure. We drove 16 miles through potholes to get to the US border and crossed through into Alaska. The first 5 miles gave us hope that the roads might be slightly better in the US but we were wrong. It took us up until Tok, AK before the roads finally smoothed out and the potholes became fewer and further between. It’s a very noisy experience driving an RV over gravelled, bumpy roads. I don’t think I got the rattling out of my head until I got back to Sunwapta! After that, the roads were smooth and we could focus on enjoying the scenery around us. Alaska is truly breathtaking. The scenery and the nature are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Huge, luscious green mountains rising out of nothing, lake after lake, glaciers cascading down and we saw SO MANY MOOSE!!! I have two truly stand out views. The first was near the start of our trip. It’s a section of road between Anchorage and Cooper Landing. You start off following the coastline but once you get past Turnagain Arm you are suddenly in the most unreal mountains. Every time I’ve tried to describe it to someone, I just end up saying it’s like something out of Avatar. My second highlight was towards the end of our RV trip. It’s as you go up the Klondike Highway, paralleling the White Pass were the Gold Rush Stampeders made their way from Alaska to Yukon. It’s a stretch of road that really makes you feel like you’re in the wilderness. It’s rugged mountains and lakes in every direction as far as the eye can see. Steep, winding roads (great fun to drive, even in an RV!), and as we made our way through the fog was closing in giving it a really ethereal look. I loved it. You end up in Carcross, Yukon – home to the world’s smallest desert (or rather an ancient, dried lake bed).

We were incredibly blessed to see as much wildlife as we did. I’ve already mentioned the bears and the moose but that was just the start. Mum and Dad went Salmon fishing on the Kenai Peninsula and had a lot of luck. On our drive down to Homer at the bottom of the peninsula, we stopped to gaze awestruck at some snow-capped volcanoes on the opposite side of Cook Inlet. As we did so, we spied some seals sunning themselves on a rock just off the shoreline. Out of nowhere, we then have one, two, three, four, five (!) bald eagles fly right over our heads, on their way fishing just below us. Just amazing. After that, I was pretty content that I had fulfilled my hoped wildlife quota for Alaska but it had more in store for us. We had a six hour ferry crossing from Whittier to Valdez and again saw eagles, fish jumping out the sea, sea otters and ICE BERGS! Like actual ice bergs. I was NOT expecting to see that, though I’m not sure why I was surprised given that there were literally glaciers flowing down the surrounding mountains and ending in the ocean. Once we got to Valdez, we went in search of some bears salmon fishing in the river. Whilst we didn’t manage to find the bears, we did find sea otters, sea lions, seals, and bald eagles all fishing. Very grateful my parents own good binoculars – remind me to invest in some. (Oh wow, now I’m sounding old!) But on a serious note, I could have stood there for hours watching all the creatures go about their day. At one point, there must have been ten to fifteen sea otters just floating on their backs, having a nap. One was enjoying a breakfast fish she had held on her tummy. So cute. I was way too busy staring at the wildlife (or driving) to take photos. Hoping I can steal some of my parents’ shots when I’m back in the UK.

It has to be said, that the creature /wild life we saw most of was mosquitos. Mosquitos ended up being one of the defining features of the trip. They are PROLIFIC in Alaska. At one point, two or three had clearly had a feast of my hand and it swelled up to twice its usual size – no exaggeration. There is nothing as infuriating as an itchy mosquito bite. I would be driving the RV with my hand wrapped in ice to try and bring the swelling down. I think that the pinnacle of mosquito numbers was at the end of our white water rafting trip. Yes you read that correctly, my parents (whose ages I will not be writing here as apparently that’s rude) came white water rafting with me. In fact, it was my mum’s idea. She celebrated her 60 something’th birthday a couple of days before and we were also having some belated celebrations for my dad as I had missed his 70th (oops) birthday back in March. It was unbelievable fun, through some incredible scenery and Class 3-4 rapids. Very similar to the white water rafting I did at Sunwapta Falls (spoiler alert!). Anywho! The point I’m trying to make is once we finished rafting, we got out and were hit with a literal swarm of mosquitos. The air was almost black with them. If you opened your mouth to say something, you were in genuine danger of swallowing one. We all jumped into the van as fast as we could and slammed the doors shut. What followed I can only describe as a mosquito massacre. There were around 8 of us in that van and for the first five to ten minutes of the journey back all you could hear was someone slapping a window or seat back and yelling “Got one!”. This episode prompted to come out with one of his excellent dad jokes (and I mean that, I bloody love a dad joke). You’ll have to read to the end to hear the joke though.

We ended our time in the RV back in Whitehorse, YT and flew down to Calgary, AB to take in Calgary Stampede. What a show. My dad described it as “Glastonbury for Cowboys” and I think he nailed it. There is amazing music from some big artists in the country world, there are food trucks everywhere and then there’s the show itself. On our first day there we watched the chuckwagon racing which we all got very into and were soon screaming our support for one team or another with the rest of the crowd. Day two, we saw the rodeo. Now I have very mixed feelings about this. There is no doubt that the people participating have incredible skills, I just felt bad for the animals – particularly the steers – whose participation was less than voluntary. Having said that, you could see the care and love that everyone had for the horses, they were truly treated like part of the family and we got to see some of the best displays of horsemanship I’ve ever seen. On the whole, I really enjoyed it.

The whole three weeks were an incredibly special experience, made all the better for getting to share it with my parents. For them to get to come and Canada, a country I have truly fallen in love with.

Oh! And here’s my dad’s joke for you:

“What’s the last thing that goes through a bug’s mind before it hits the windshield?”

“Its arse!”