The AARoads Blog

And here is the rest of day 2 in Alberta and Northwest Territories… the sunset and the northern lights!

Sunset, over one of Canada’s innumerable boreal forests.

A pair of otters. If anyone wonders why I spend so much time between blog posts… it’s the sheer quantity of photos I have to process. I took about 200 just of these otters! (One came out.)

Full moon, perched on top of a cloud.

Aurora, and inverted big dipper. We have arrived!

As promised, a photo of the Alberta/Northwest Territories border. with all the northern staples: aurora, big dipper, yes it is time to head north and see what the world brings.

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A day spent in Northwest Territories … here’s just the first half, because I took 1560 photos that day, so I am breaking it in two. No northern lights in this batch; you can all go home now.

Painted skies at dawn.

A seagull at the Mackenzie River ferry. Yep, they do have them even thousands of miles from the nearest sea.

Some yellow and some evergreens.

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and here we start three days of photos from Alberta and Northwest Territories. I flew into Edmonton for the weekend (Friday-Sunday) of September 9th, as that is one of two annual peaks for the northern lights.

did I see the northern lights? In the interest of maintaining suspense, I’m not going to say quite yet.

Sunset. Usually shooting directly into the sun is a bad idea. Sometimes it isn’t.

The northern lights. Yep, they were out. This is about as bright as they get – when the red, purple, and green mix together to form a band of white.

Directly overhead, spanning the entire sky.

I used the fisheye lens for nearly all of the aurora photos seen here.

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the last Alaska Highway batch, which contains no actual Alaska Highway – and, in fact, very little Canada. We had about 24 hours before we needed to be at the airport, so we spent some time exploring eastern Washington, Idaho, and even a little bit of Montana.

What do we have here? An original I-90 trailblazer, complete with green sign back. We found a few of these in Spokane, and several modern copies with the old-style shield.

Someone made this gantry, with correct distances and accurate 1930s Washington style, for his own front yard.

Sunset in Idaho.

This may very well be the oldest sign in Washington. The 97 covers up an outline shield! It does not reflect very well after about 52 years of service.

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day 7 of the Alaska highway trip, where we finally cross the Rockies, and are promptly greeted with even more snow than before.

Dawn. The roads have been plowed. We head east on the Yellowhead Highway into Alberta.

This could be a problem. Since 93 through Jasper National Park in Alberta is a park route, it is closed to commercial traffic, and therefore not plowed particularly frequently. [Dan photo.]

Invisible trees at Shuswap Lake, about halfway through British Columbia on Trans-Canada 1.

Trans-Canada 1 in infrared, just west of Salmon Arm.

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The sixth day of the Alaska Highway trip, where we see the Alaska Highway for the last time, and head down the Cassiar Highway – route 37 in Yukon and British Columbia. We make a brief stop in Hyder, Alaska, just to say that we’ve been there, and then head east on the Yellowhead Highway and attempt to cross into Alberta. However, we’re nearly eaten alive by that snowstorm that’s been stalking us since Day 3 – this will be a recurring theme of our days six and seven!

A caribou, just south of the British Columbia border.

Winter scene on the Cassiar Highway. We will be seeing a lot of this!

The clouds clear up for a bit – but we’re still heading south, so infrared is the rule on the day.

The Stikine River. The Cassiar Highway crosses it, on one of its few, very brief dirt sections. Not only is this section dirt, but there are 13% grades on either side of the river!

Ominous yellow clouds in the distance. Yep, we’re going to get hit with snow. [Dan photo.]

The south end of the Cassiar Highway, which we reached just around dusk.

This is a blower. It makes an ominous noise and spits out a lot of flames. If anyone can tell us what it is, we’d be grateful!

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the fourth fifth day of our trip. The fourth day was spend snowed in in sunny East Anchorage, where 16 inches fell overnight. Remember that storm that we escaped in the mountains to get to Anchorage? Well, it found us. However, Anchorage has the best snowplow routine I’ve ever seen, and we could’ve gotten out of there by noon, had we not been zonked. We waited ’til about 6 the next morning. Good enough. We’re still ridiculously ahead of schedule, thanks to those brilliant 120mph speed limits.

Mt. McKinley! This is an early morning shot, which is usually the best time to see the mountain, before a mid-level fog tends to vanish it. In fact, several minutes after this photo, the mountain was no longer visible. This is fairly late in the morning, but at this latitude, 8-12 hours of red twilight per day are common. In this photo, the mountain is about 80 miles away.

On the road to Fairbanks. Here is where our trip was the coldest – minus 6 degrees Fahrenheit.

This 16″ state highway 3 marker with a 1962 date stamp survives. The bridge that this sign serves dates to 1968, so they must’ve moved the sign from somewhere in town to the bypass – and hung it on the first available pole.

Completely whitewashed overcast from just outside Fairbanks, all the way to Tok Junction.

The time I was here in 2007, these mountains were in direct sunset light. I tried to get a photo from the exact same spot, but I just couldn’t remember where it was. Close enough!

Yukon after sunset.

Almost at the end of dusk, we stopped at a bridge over a frozen river.

Northern lights! This is about a three-minute exposure, because the lights were quite faint. The road in the foreground is the access road to a garbage dump somewhere to the east of Whitehorse. Note the reflection of the northern lights turning the snow green.
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the third day of our trip, on which we actually cross into Alaska, and complete the Alaska Highway.

Dawn in Yukon. Just past Haines Junction, we hit the final stretch of Alaska Highway.

Close-up of distant purple mountains over Destruction Bay. Yes, that is what it is called! It was named by the troops who were building the road in 1942, and had the wind blow away their new structures.

Making good time to Alaska. It is our understanding that, while there are speed limits in Yukon, they are enforced extremely rarely.

We made it!

Alaska in infrared.

End of the line. 31 1/2 hours to clinch the Alaska highway. [Dan photo.]

Things start to get a little interesting on the road to Anchorage. Around here, we’re reminded that we’re in Alaska. In the middle of winter. Who’s responsible for this brilliant operation?

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Continuing northward … and, on this day, greatly westward, as that is the way to get from Dawson to Delta Junction, which is the official end of the Alaska Highway. This batch of photos includes plenty of British Columbia and even some Yukon. About 70 photos total!

Dawson Creek at dawn. This monument is at the intersection (BC-49 and BC-2, actually) where the Alaska Highway officially begins. 2 ends at 97 around one mile in.

Ominous wintry yellow skies, as we approach our first mountain pass since just after Prince George the previous night. Yep, it’s going to snow.

Large bovines of the Liard River Valley.

The Yukon boundary sign. This photo, of course, looks completely different than Dan’s take on the matter.

Sunset, somewhere around one of the many crossings between British Columbia and Yukon.

The bridge at Teslin.

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Photos from the Alaska highway! Okay, well, first photos from flying to Seattle, and then driving to Dawson Creek, where the Alaska Highway begins.

Some photos in this post brought to you by Daniel Brim. We have an equitable arrangement: he provides talent at taking photographs, I run us off the road only occasionally.

Somewhere over the Rockies. Between Denver and Seattle for sure.

And here’s the northern lights! Just north of Prince George, British Columbia, which is well south of where such a strong display tends to usually appear. About twelve hours after landing … mission accomplished. Now all we had to do was drive the Alaska Highway!

And one more northern lights photo, this time from Dan. Hmm, I wonder which one of us has a better camera!

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