The Journey to Alaska {Days 10-12}

Our tenth day of travel began in Banff, Alberta. 

{Starting the day with cartoons in bed while Derek & I ran around the Airbnb doing laundry while we still had the chance and packing up for the next leg of our journey}

We hit the road traveling through Jasper National Park and ending our day in Hinton, Alberta. The drive was absolutely breath-taking. The colors and scenery didn't even seem real. We saw glaciers & waterfalls, and the wildlife was plentiful! We saw elk on the side of the road, mountain goats crossing the road, and later a family of goats just hanging out in the middle of the road. All of the trees along the roadside looked like Christmas trees to us!

These next couple of pictures aren't the best quality as I think the lens on my camera was smudged, but they're still too good not to post.

{Every single evening Derek had to unload the cars and then reload them again every morning..whew, this trip was something!}

I think it was this night of our trip that Brady discovered the wonder that is a hotel gym! So while the girls took turns showering and I dried their hair, Derek had Brady running on the treadmill! He thought it was the best thing ever!

Day #11 was Hinton, Alberta to Ft. St. John, British Columbia. This was the first stretch of the drive in a loooong time that brought us radio reception! I have never before in my life seen a drive as remote as this. Invariably when you're on a road trip listening to the radio, you'll lose the signal to the station you're listening to..so you'll hit the scan button and find a new station. Well, when you're driving to Alaska, the scan just goes round and round and round endlessly because it can't pick up a single signal. So we listened to countless audio books on this trip. But on this day, we finally got some radio stations for a bit! 

There was a Welcome Center/gift shop in Grande Cache that we happened to pass around lunchtime, and it was a Godsend! Real bathrooms, picnic tables with gorgeous views, and a fun Welcome Center to explore--it was much needed & appreciated respite on our travel day!

Logging trucks were plentiful on this stretch of the road. And this day officially marked our entrance onto the AlCan! We were able to eat dinner at Dairy Queen on this evening, and spirits were still high.

Day #12 was Ft. St. John to Ft. Nelson in British Columbia. And this is when things started to take a bit of a turn & get a bit more...adventurous. ;) Up until this point in the trip, we had been able to stay at major hotel chains or Airbnbs near national parks. But this is where the accommodations really started to dwindle, and our options were limited to say the least. My attitude started to take a nose dive. I think after 12 days on the road + less than ideal accommodations {putting it mildly} + the reality that we didn't have a house waiting for us on the other side of this PCS {the first time in our family's military journey}, it was just all catching up to me. The drive to Ft. Nelson was rather short, and we ended up having a good bit of time to kill in a town that had virtually nothing to offer people passing through with the exception of a Welcome Center....so we spent about an hour there. ;) One upside to arriving in Ft. Nelson earlier than expected was cell phone reception! It just so happened to be BooBoo's {Derek's mom} birthday, so we were able to call to wish her a happy birthday. It was really hard to talk to family on this trip because we had no reception on the road whatsoever, and when we were in town/at our hotel we were usually scrambling to get unpacked or packed or showered or whatever the case may have been. The time difference also made things a little tricky, too. All of that to say, it was really nice to get the chance to talk to her!

Then we had our first dining experience at Tim Horton's for dinner. This Tim Horton's may not have been an accurate representation of what all Tim Horton's are like as this one was directly on the trucking route. {I think we were the only people in there who didn't get out of an 18wheeler to get their food.} But it was kind of like a gas station convenience store meets a Panera kind of a vibe. It was far from our best dining experience, but we were so happy to have food and a table!