Canada

Canada is a huge beautiful country and although we have not come close to seeing all of it,

We have been fortunate to see a whole lot of this great country.

I will begin when I returned home to Kincheloe Air Force Base (after my first year of college) near Sault Ste Marie, Michigan and went to see a girlfriend in Buffalo, New York

My friend, Eugene, and I drove up and through Canada and we saw blue, crystal clear ponds and wooded forest land

We drove from the Sault to Sudbury which was known as a great Junior Hockey town

Onward we drove down to Barrie, down to Toronto and then to Buffalo and it was a beautiful trip

Later in life I would drive from Detroit or Sarnia through London and to Niagara Falls many times

Niagara Falls, Canada is much different than the USA side and where all the action is

We have stayed on that side almost every time we visited

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Another time I drove from the Sault to Quebec through Ottawa (a very long drive) for a doll show

I did not see much of Quebec but what I do remember is polite people and a speeding ticket on the way home

Yet another time Linda, Jamie and I entered New Brunswick through Houlton, Maine and the Canadians almost would not let us in their country

They seemed to want to insure we were not illegally immigrating which of course we were not

We were out for a long drive and just wanted to see what was there

We drove highway 2 up to 20 and rode next to the great River or Bay there

Then through rolling hills we drove through and stopped and spoke with mostly French speaking people

We went to a local fair somewhere on a back road near a small town and ended up spending the night in Sherbrooke before heading home the next day

Linda was so disappointed as this was really her first venture deep into Canada and there were no mountains and all we really saw were snow sculptures

On a family vacation, we drove into Canada from Maine's highway 201 into Quebec

We had a wonderful meal and walked and shopped along a bank overlooking a great river

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The next day we moseyed into Montreal where we stayed at a very nice hotel

We stopped at an antique shop, toured the underground city and malls, and walked with our oldest grandson through the Adult section of Montreal

There was some sort of Festival going on and Linda got a massage and it rained "cats and dogs" and we really enjoyed the evening

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When we live in North Dakota, Winnipeg became one of our favorites cities to visit

The Fort, which we understand has burned to the ground, was our most favorite haunt

We loved the shops and food places and it was a must visit for us

We also went to a National Hockey League Game while there and enjoyed it very much

One of the nicest evenings we have ever spent was at a fabulous Bette Midler concert in Winnipeg

Once we went to a really neat "Stampede" in Morris

Another time we drove all the way to the end of the road where highway 6 ran into highway 39 and we turned west because we did not have the time to see what was east

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This drive was a lonely wooded flat drive with lakes and so many birds but not a single big animal did we see

We drove west to highway 10 and turned south to The Pas but just before we got there, in a sudden blinding snow squall,

We hit and killed a beautiful brown bear and had to be towed into town

The next morning before we could get the bear, it had already been taken by someone

On another trip up this way we actually went to Fin Flon the city built entirely on rock

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Until we drove the Alaskan Highway Fin Flon was as far north as we had ever been and it was an exciting drive just because we did it

This is a strange pretty town seemingly all hills and not a flat place to be seen

Yet another time we ventured all the way to Riding Mountain Provincial Park

We have visited there at least twice and maybe a third time

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The first was on the way back from The Pas and our accident and we took the most incredible pictures of Coyotes on the road

This is almost like a single mountain in the middle of the prairie

The Coyotes were almost posing for us

We took more superb pictures of a black bear feasting before the winter

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One of our visits there we drove up through the Town of Riding Mountain and into the park on a snow covered road where we needed help to turn around

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Another time we came down into the park from through Dauphin

This was mostly all country we had a once in a lifetime chance to see and so we did

On a vacation once we drove the queens Highway 1 all the way from Winnipeg to Calgary and then to Banff

We camped and stayed in Banff and explored and saw grizzly bears, moose and much more

This is a beautiful and very scenic area

Another vacation we drove from Vancouver to Kamloops and on to Jasper

We camped in a nice campground that we did not realize was next to a railroad and that night it sounded as though the train was going to run right over our tent

We drove through a town that claimed more UFO sightings than any other town but as hard as we looked, we did not see any

We drove up a wonder filled road with big horn sheep right on the road and we saw people rafting under a bridge near the top of this road

We saw a bear in a tree and our very first Wapiti

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Seeing these animals on the road next to us and the beautiful lake was an amazing experience

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We drove to Banff and stopped at the Columbia Ice Fields and were horrified by the obvious withdrawing of the glacier

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We rode in an "ice buggy" on the glacier

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This area is one of the most spectacular drives in the world and we would love to do it again

We were shopping in Vancouver once only to return to our car and find it had been broken into

Earlier, we had been taking pictures in China Town

Nothing but the cameras were taken and the Canadian Police surmised we must have taken pictures of someone who did not want his picture taken

The First week in January of 1997 we embarked on our trip to Alaska

Alaska itself was a huge disaster waiting for us that we had no way of knowing about

The trip was an adventure that will never be forgotten

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We drove into Calgary and on to Banff and up the snow packed road almost in a blizzard

As we drove past the Ice fields on our way to Jasper where we spent the night there were many times we could not see fifty feet in front of our car

Was it beautiful, I don't think we remember as it was so snowy and such a hard drive and so cold

We drove a back road into Grand Cache which is very pretty

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We saw the tail end of a wolf pack as we simply could not stop quickly enough and they would not sit and wait for us

We picked up the Alaskan Highway in Dawson Creek and the journey really began

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From there we journeyed on a very lonely and cold road to Watson Creek and on into the Yukon Territory

We drove past many wonderful lakes and this is one of them

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We spent the night and had a fine dinner in Whitehorse at minus 42 degrees

We left early and saw herds of elk first and then as we neared Alaska, a huge herd of reindeer

We stopped one to take our first picture which we still have of a great Big Horn Ram

We watched from the top of the road overlooking a frozen lake as a wolf chased a moose

I remember watching as my urine froze before it hit the ground

We saw the tundra trees and we experienced ice fog

On our way out of Alaska, we took a slightly different route

We took highway 37 again through mostly hilly and wooded areas filled with lakes and it was a very lonely drive

We went on a small that took us right in front of Bear Glacier and to Hyder, Alaska

We were standing right in front of the glacier when a big rock fell off the hill behind us and it was exciting

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We saw a huge black bear on the drive into Hyder

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We continued to Prince George where we stopped and went to an antique show and I bought two neat radios which I still own

Along the famous gorge, we stopped at Hell's Gate Airtram over Fraser Canyon and took the ride and of course it was spectacular

This whole drive both ways was an event we will never forget

On yet another vacation we drove into Waterton Lakes National Park

From Glacier NP in the US

We saw the incredible hotel but of course could not afford to stay there

We drove around and saw the famous golf course and we saw elk on the course

We took a boat across a small lake and struggled against the waves

This was also the trip we saw our first huge grizzly and she had two sub adult cubs with her

Well as you can see we have travelled a lot in Canada and the West Coast is easily our favorite part although we enjoyed Montreal and Quebec

On our way from Alaska to Vancouver, we drove into and stopped at a city where there were many tall totem poles and we can’t remember the name of the city but it was certainly one of the most unique things we have ever seen.

Growing up in Sault Ste Marie, I often went to the Canadian side which was a much larger city and went to dances and concerts and had fish and chips

Once while living in Utica, New York, we drove up to Watertown and into the 1000 Islands and took a boat tour of the islands

We spent the night in a neat little town that

I just can't remember the name but think it was Belleville

The fall colors were at their peak and the ride was perfect

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We love Canada and hope to return sometime