The decision’s made. We’re going to Alaska. Well… we’re going to try again at getting to Alaska. We’re in Yuma on the US/Mexican border and our GPS tells us it’s exactly 6,640 km to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. By anyone’s measure, that’s a loong way. Here’s our Operation Reach Alaska, a gentle trot through California, Oregon and Washington, then a frantic gallop through BC and the Yukon…
The dedicated Cuthbert follower last found us arriving back at the St Lawrence in Quebec province having completed the long, remote and fabulously featureless Trans-Labrador Highway. It was the end of September, the US border showed no sign of opening anytime soon and we’d have bet our last bottle of Pinot Noir that we’d be spending another winter in Canada. But for the autumn, we still had lots to see in Quebec and Ontario…
You don’t drive the Trans-Labrador Highway for anything particular to see on the way. You drive it because it’s there. Because you can. Because there is still a teeny sense of adventure to doing it. Not so much to see what’s there, but rather what’s not there. From disembarking the Newfoundland ferry it’s over 1,700km of remote and desolate road all the way across Labrador into Quebec and back to civilisation at the St Lawrence Seaway coast. But that’s not to say there isn’t anything to see at all. There is some fabulous scenery and a few spots worthy of distraction along the way.
What can we say about Newfoundland? It has a gob-smacking view around every corner. The people are very friendly. And it’s windy. Very windy. If you overland Newfoundland in the right season, you’ll (allegedly) see lots of icebergs, puffins and whales. But even without those, it’s extraordinarily scenic. For us, overland Newfoundland involved reaching a milestone at a lighthouse, finding an old aircraft wreck, getting very stuck in some mud, running from a hurricane, visiting the port of Dildo (well you’ve just got to haven’t you?) and taking at least a million photos of the Island. And did we mention it’s windy?
‘New Scotland’. Spend a bit of time overlanding Nova Scotia and it’s not hard to see why the early settlers gave it the name. The cracking coastal scenery bears more than a passing resemblance to its Scottish namesake. But we didn’t find just great scenery in Nova Scotia… we found a bit of education too. Things we never learned at school (or maybe we did but have long forgotten). Anyone on a ‘world-schooling’ trip with kids wanting a lot of great scenery and a bit of beach camping on the side, then overlanding Nova Scotia is your thing!
Driving over 5,000 km across Canada we’ve been looking forward to the famed coastlines of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland/Labrador (a.k.a. ‘the Maritimes’)*. Well, we made it! Overlanding the Maritimes in NB and PEI we predictably find many lighthouses and a lot of lobster. But there are potatoes too, shed-loads of potatoes. And just a bit of a tidal bore.
We’re on a mission right now. We don’t often travel with a purpose, but now we’re on a mission across Ontario and overlanding Quebec with reasonable haste to reach east coast Canada. Sure, Ontario and Quebec have cool things to see, but we’re not giving in to distractions right now. Here’s a tale of absolute focus and commitment to a achieve a pre-determined mission overlanding Canada 😉
It’s a long drive across Canada, but long drives are what we do. Over the pandemic we’ve been moseying around western Canada. But things are opening up and now we can mosey eastwards: over the Rockies and out overlanding the prairies on the other side. “But there’s nothing there!” they warned us in BC. So we go to see what ‘nothing’ looks like on the prairies. And on the way, Cuthbert finds a bit of tv stardom!
British Columbia is big. Just the one province of Canada is four time the size of UK, or bigger than France and Germany combined. It’s full of amazing scenery and we’ve done many, many miles exploring the never-ending network of dirt-trails leading to spectacular view-points and remote camp-spots. In the Kootenays we’ve had a phenomenal heat-wave, thunderous lightning storms and freaky forest fires popping up at random spots all over the province. Oh… and posh mushrooms, we had a load of those too!
Is there a more glorious place to be during a global pandemic than overlanding western Canada? Talk about social distancing… there’s more awesome open space to get away from people here than you can shake a shakey stick at. So here’s how our wilderness social distancing has allowed us to test the mobility of our Starlink system, and we also come clean with a couple of overlanding confessions…
Well this is a short and sweet update! Just in case you thought we’d frozen into the ice of a Canadian winter, you’ll no doubt be relieved to know that we’ve been enjoying the snow, skiing our socks off for a full season in Big White, British Columbia and we’ve recently acquired a cool new Starlink satellite internet gadget for Cuthbert…
2020… what a palaver that was! Who’d have thought, as we celebrated entering 2020 a year ago, that the world would look like this today. We’re lucky that we have been safe and suffered no more than a bit of disruption to our overlanding lifestyle, but it’s been a roller-coaster year. So we thought we’d end the year with a little round-up of our overlanding 2020 – Covid style!
A pandemic isn’t a great time to be overlanding, but if that’s where you find yourself, you could do worse than be overlanding a place like Canada. We spent a chunk of the autumn around Vancouver Island where it was (relatively) easy to stay safe from the dratted ‘rona virus…
An Alberta road-trip means touring the Rockies, right? But wait… if you limit yourself to the Rockies, you’re missing out on some seriously quirky and unique stuff!! How about some fancy-dressed gophers? A Star Trek town? The world’s largest whatever? Or a jumping buffalo site? Also, in the news… Cuthbert poses for his first ever professional photo-shoot (yup!!!). Here’s our latest from western Canada, still waiting-out the ‘rona virus palaver…
Rockies or Andes… Andes or Rockies? Hmmm… tough one. We like mountains. Glaciers and snow-capped peaks reflected in crystal-clear mirror lakes will get us out for a hike anytime. A couple of years ago back in South America, we zig-zagged the whole length of the Andes including Chile’s iconic Torres del Paine, Argentina’s legendary Ruta 40 and Bolivia’s spectacular altiplano Laguna Route. The Andes are full of awesomeness, but now we’re in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. Moraine Lake and Lake Louise are bucket-list spots and driving the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff is one of the world’s Top 10 ‘Must-do Drives’. So, Andes or Rockies? Discuss…
If you’re clued-up on the jargon, ‘BC’ stands for British Columbia: a huge province in south-west Canada. We passed through BC on our way north before the ‘rona virus palaver kicked-off. Now, after four months in the Yukon, we’re back exploring BC. We also inadvertently prove the First Law of Overlanding: ‘only the vehicle part for which you don’t carry a spare, will break’. So we haven’t seen quite as much of BC as we’d hoped. Yet.
In normal times, the Alaska Highway would take us (funnily enough) to Alaska, USA. But in these Covid-border-closed-times, we can go as far as Kluane National Park then we have to turn around. Sounds a bit ‘dead-end’, but the spectacular mountains, lakes, glaciers of the Kluane icefields make it worth the schlepp. And whilst we’re out there in the Kluane wilderness, the local ‘rona virus palaver turns a positive corner – a whole new world of Canadian possibilities starts to open-up for us again…
For many, the Klondike conjures up images of weather-beaten old prospectors in the Gold Rush days. If you came here to get-rich-quick on gold, you’d be kinda disappointed. But what you wouldn’t be disappointed with is the fabulous remote, desolate wilderness and wildlife – there’s plenty of that ‘round here. After 11 weeks of ‘rona virus lock-down in Whitehorse and our plans taking a few hits, we could finally cross the vast Yukon Territory to the Klondike and the Arctic Circle, do a bit of grizzly spotting, fail miserably at getting-rich-quick, see the midnight sun, enjoy a pretty ghost town, and reach the end of the road not once, but twice!
Like everyman and his dog, we’re gutted to put our life on hold for the ‘rona virus. For us, our pandemic stay-cation de-luxe was a car-park in the Yukon with a friendly welcome and a bit of media stardom! Here’s how it went for our overlanding in lock-down …
Way back on the Bolivian Altiplano at around 4,000m asl, we had an overnight low of -18°C on our thermometer. Oh, how naïve we were to think that was cold! Here in the Yukon for our corona virus stay-cation, we’ve had temperatures as low as -31°C (without the windchill!). Now that’s nippy. We’re sure there are many out there with far more experience of seriously cold weather overlanding than us. But this real cold has been a new thing for us. By lucky happenstance, we did give cold-weather stuff some consideration when we ordered Cuthbert, so we’re not totally unprepared.
