Lets see, now where was I?

While we made fun of her, and mocked her relentlessly, our drive without her would have come at the cost of many more arguments about where to turn....  So, to our unsung hero, I tip my drink to my gps "wife".    While TH knew which highways to travel, he didnt know the cities and towns along the way, and thats where the "wife" was invaluable, she led us unerringly to unfamiliar hotels, and restaurants.

When TH travels he just sticks to whatever is available alongside the highways, which led to our one and only fight when he refused to take the off ramp to a town that was 4 miles off the road, so I could use a washroom. His refusal to deviate from the highway for a measly 8 miles caused a sudden chill in otherwise happy trails.  I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took things to thaw out afterwards.

For Bob who mentioned the fire at Yellowstone years ago, the park is recovering nicely.  The saplings are thick as grass in some places, and lend the area the prettiest green imaginable.  In places, at least on a dark and rainy day, those young trees in the distance had the look of thick pile carpeting the surrounding hills.

Montana....a land of contrasts.  Rugged rocky hills.

And fabulous open, endless rolling prairie grasslands and grain fields.

 
Of all the places we drove thru on our 3,560 mile trek, give or take a few miles, it was Montana that captured my imagination.  I wasnt prepared to fall in love with this state, but sure did.  The only drawback to Montana, was the size of the cites and towns, very small and didnt seem to offer much.  A cute hotel guy told us in Helena, and if its not true, its not far from the truth, "there are more cows in Montana than people."  I want to go back and explore this state at leisure.

Under a glowering sky, we crossed the border into Canada!  w00t!  For what ever reason, to my mind, we were now half way home.  Yeah, yeah I know we really werent, but to me it felt like it.

Right outside of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory is fabulous Miles Canyon.  And yeah, I didnt muck about with the color on this picture thats the true and actual color of the water.  Rock that is ground to flour fineness makes the Yukon River in this area that unbelievable jade color.

 Now, this wee pretty bridge doenst look like it would be much of a challenge to cross, yeah?  Well, for a height phobic person, this was.  It sways, it bobs about, gulp.  I stepped across carefully so as not to make it move about, until TH thought it would be funny to bounce up and down on one end of the bridge, causing me to freeze about halfway across.  When he saw the terror in my face, he froze and allowed the bridge to come to a rest so I could creep my fearful way to the other side.  I'm glad I got my fear under control so as to see more of the canyon.

Climbing out of the canyon and up to the roadway into Whitehorse, we noticed that the water around the area wasnt completely ice free.  The closer we got to Alaska the more snow and ice there was still lying around, we had good and truly out drove spring!  We slept at Beaver Creek, Yukon, and when we woke up, we were greeted with this....

Between the Canadian crossing and the American one, [which strangely enough is 30 km apart!] we drove into the snow that had left a dusting of snow on our steps that morning. Driving a few miles past the check point, the snow flurries increased into a fully fledged snow storm, dumping up to 6 inches of snow on the road, and my wee orange car was wearing summer tires!

It was slow going for about 20 miles.  A few times it was a bit of a white knuckler, when the car wasnt listening to the commands from the steering wheel.

We out drove the snowstorm, whew!, and are getting antsy to get home, home, HOME!!!!!!  A few miles outside of Delta we crossed the Johnson River, who obviously hadn't gotten the memo about spring. 

Then finally, after 8 long days, we pulled into our driveway, and we were at long long last home!