A "Wildlife" Day!

 We were on the road by 6:30 this morning… Pacific Time I think. We thought we would see lots of wildlife early in the morning; but it wasn’t until the afternoon and hours down the road that they came out.  We saw…10 black bears, 1 brown bear &  1 deceased bear in the ditch & 1 deceased bird that flew a little too slow in front of our motor home,….6 caribou, 1 bobcat, 1 fox, 2 prairie dogs, 8 deer, 1 moose, 2 mountain sheep and dozens of bison.  All of them were on the sides of the highway.  The sides of the highway are all clear cut of trees and are so wide you could have another highway on both sides. Here’s a picture.  You feel a lot safer because you can see if animals are near the highway so you can slow down.

The landscape of British Columbia has a very diverse geography. It includes forests, lakes, mountains, inland deserts, grassy plains, rocky coastlines and sandy beaches.  We have seen all of them except for

 the last two on this trip.  

Each of them 

has their own special beauty. 

As we drove through British Columbia, we noticed evidence of many forest fires.  Last year a total of 2,092 wildfires burned 3,339,170 acres of land in British Columbia. That surpassed the 

historic wildfire season of 2017.  

It’s sad looking at all that destruction. 

In the mountains, it seems like mining, forestry, construction, pipeline and utility jobs are the opportunities of that area.  That’s probably why there are so many people staying at the campgrounds in the mountains. Their jobs may be mobile and far from local housing.  Here is a picture of what housing for a work camp looks like at one of those job sites we went past.  Looks a little lonely life to me.      

After driving 541 miles today, we made Watson Lake our destination.  We are now in the Yukon.  We had to stop here to check on a sign we put on a post 5 years ago when we were here last.  There is a part of town called “Sign Post Forest.” The story behind this is that it takes place during the Alaska Highway Project in 1942.  A young soldier, Carl Lindley was recovering from an injury and the commanding officer asked him to repair and erect the directional signposts.  While completing the job, he added a sign that indicated the direction and mileage to his hometown of Danville, Illinois. Others followed suit and the trend caught on. Today there are over 77,000 signs in the forest and growing each year. So if you ever stop at the “Sign Post Forest” in Watson Lake, YK Canada, stop and see our sign. It is in the first row from the building, at the end of the row. It even has our picture on it with the three years we visited the forest. We’ve seen no other forest like this one.  

There are signs from all over the world.