North to Alaska – 9

June 28, 2007

The good, the bad and the ugly. We did get up early today and the weather 
was good! The 4 of us started out as two groups of two again, ugly. We had 
over 450 miles to go and we started out with a quick breakfast. Then it was 
a quick trip to the Canadian border. We slowed down real fast when we saw 
cows along side the road with no fence. We slowed down even more when we 
came face to face with a bull in the middle of OUR road. I guess they don’t 
believe in fences in Montana. We also had a deer cross in front of us. 
Needless to say it was bad that we had to share our road and good because 
there weren’t any problems.

We crossed the border into Canada and started north. The route today was 
primarily through Alberta Canada, Stampede country, on back roads. We saw 
many ranches and some beautiful scenery as we made our way north. There was 
very little traffic, good, and we had to share OUR road with Rocky Mountain 
Sheep, bad. We came upon several groups of these walking down the middle of 
the road like they owned it. We had to wait till they passed. We also saw 
elk, a coyote, many prairie dogs and one bear right along side of the road. 
Riding through Banff National Park was great. The scenery was exceptional 
and the roads were good. Have you ever been passed by a house? We actually 
found 3 houses also using OUR road. Two were coming towards us. They used 
both lanes and half of the shoulders. We had to stop on the shoulder to let 
them pass. Later we found one going in our direction on OUR road. The house 
didn’t stop but it did pull way over to one side so we could pass. All in a 
days travel on our way to Alaska.

We continued north to the Ice Fields Highway. This was also good except for 
the ugly black sky. This time we stopped to put on our rain gear and glad we 
did. We had less than an hour of rain but it was heavy at times and we were 
dry. We made our way into Jasper after 475 miles. It was another good day!