To say that today was exciting is an understatement. First off, we were up very early because we lost another hour yesterday ( now in Pacific time for sure ) and haven’t adapted yet. I didn’t get to sleep till almost 11:30 last night and it was still dusk like outside. We had to wait until 8:00 AM to get gas and that was the first surprise. It was $1.84 per liter or $7.12 per gallon. That hurt the old wallet but what are you gonna do? You’re out in the middle of no where and you need fuel because you believe the next sure gas is 200 miles away. There may or may not be some closer but are you going to chance it? We filled up, paid the piper and hit the road. We were rolling along at a pretty good clip when we spot this dark brown spot up the road a ways. When we pulled up beside the bear, it was a Black bear in a brown phase. Yes, I’m positive. Round ears, straight nose and no hump. They had a “white” black bear, on display, in the common room ( stuffed ), at the lodge with an article telling about the high probability of white black bears being born on one of the BC islands. They estimated a 1 in 10 chance of a white black bear, not an albino. To further back up my brown Black bear, we found my very first wild grizzly sow with two older cubs in tow a ways down the road. We sat there and watched as Mom kept an eye on her wandering cubs and also held our breath as we noticed a very large Bison bull coming towards the family on the very same path. They were about 200 feet apart when Mom’s nose came up in the air, she huffed for her cubs to come close and after each of them standing high to scope out the situation, Mom chose the better part of valor and took the cubs about 50 feet into the wood line and then continued on her way. The bull got to the very spot when mom and cubs had been standing and got down in the dirt and wallowed like crazy. Then, he got up and scent rubbed a couple of trees. Clearly, he was sending a message to the sow the path was his. I would have paid really good money to have seen a face to face between that big boy and mom. Another few kilometers along the road found us looking at a young Black bear eating berries. This one was definitely black. We hadn’t gone very far when Carl spotted a small herd of horses grazing on the side of the road. I got out, crossed the street and started taking pictures. Horses, I know so I was sure it was safe to approach right up to the point where the herd stallion spotted me. But, his ears stayed forward and after a moment where we looked each other in the eye, he went back to grazing. It was then, I heard the bell ringing. It was hanging around the neck of one of the mares and knew these were not wild horses. On my way back to the truck, I spotted one of the other mares wearing a red halter and that clinched it for me. They were someone’s free ranging horses. I was a bit disappointed to say the least. All of our animal sightings were before lunch today which in itself was kind of weird. Yesterday, all the animal sightings were in the afternoon. We arrived in Watson Lake, YT and was finally able to get our laundry done. We wandered around the World Famous Signpost Forest, asked the very helpful ladies at the visitor center a few questions and ate our lunch. I didn’t take a photo of our lunch spot today because, quite honestly, I didn’t think anyone would care about a dusty old parking lot at a gas station/grocery store/deli/ Laundromat. Our crossing of the Continental Divide was anticlimactic. The pass was fairly flat so we didn’t even notice it until the sign pointed it out to us. To break the day up, we stopped at Rancherio Falls, walked in 10 minutes to witness a very small waterfall. It was way less impressive than Niagara, that’s for sure. Our stop for tonight is at the Squanga Airstrip, a gravel landing strip out in the middle of no where. There is no tower, no navigational aids and no one using it. We are parked just off the runway near a wooden tower with an osprey nest on it. I look out the window every once in a while to see if anyone is home. So far, the only birds in the area are us. I sure hope there are no small aircraft emergencies tonight. We have traveled 6,143 miles to date.
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