Alaska Ho: Canada

Hello from the land of the Canucks! This is the first stop I've had time to wait the five minutes it takes for each picture to load and haven't been completely wiped out from sight-seeing! We spent a great couple of days just south of Seattle visiting army friends. I got a nice amount of snuggle time with my friends' sweet little girl who was born in January and is still tiny at only 13 pounds. Leaving with a bag of chocolate chip cookies (yum!), we headed up into Canada. Here we sat at the border waiting to cross:

When we got up to Vancouver, we spent a frustrating two hours in the car trying to find my friends' house. Seriously, they had some great roads running east/west, but trying to go north/south was NOT easy! Eventually we made it there and had a great time meeting her two boys and laughing over dinner once her hubby got home. It was so cool to see her as we went to high school and college together before she married a fellow volleyball player and moved to Canada. There's something so comforting about hanging with someone who has known you for such a long time. 

The next day we headed north through some beautiful mountains that disappeared into the clouds to a little town called Quesnel. Then we headed off to Smithers and the following day to Stewart. Stewart is only two miles from the southern tip of Alaska where a tiny little town named Hyder stands. 

What you see above is basically the entire town! However, from here you can drive about fourteen miles up through some beautiful country to the Salmon Glacier which is part of the Tongass National Forest. 

So there we are driving through this beautiful area and the temperature keeps dropping slowly as we go up -- a full ten degrees! My hubby had on shorts and, I was sporting my flip-flops and sweatshirt when we made it up to the glacier. 

It was amazing seeing all of the striations in the ice that have been created over time. The other sweet part was that we saw probably fifty small to medium waterfalls on our drive up! I love the sound of running water even when I'm pregnant! Sweetpea also got into the action climbing over a little stream into the icy snow. The cold snow always puts her into the frisky play mode which I makes me laugh.

The one thing I haven't appreciated about these small Canadian towns is how expensive all of the food is! We easily spend as much as we do at PF Changs on a little diner meal of sandwich and fries. I think I'm in for a rude awakening with food prices when we get to Alaska! The cost didn't really bother me until yesterday when the diner completely nickeled and dimed us. So this morning when we got up we decided we would wait until the next city to eat because we were still so annoyed. Big mistake! We didn't hit anything with real food until we reached our destination around noon. Thank god for my stash of granola bars! However this just started out my annoyance when I realized this leg only took us five hours instead of the expected seven and a half. Boo Mapquest. Then we found ourself in small town hell with an anal hotel proprietor who refused to clean our room out of order despite the fact that no one else was around and the grumpy owner of the only restaurant in town who wouldn't let us order anything actually printed on her menu. The whole experience just gave me the heebeejeebees like I've entered into the Twilight Zone. I think after two weeks, I'm just ready to be in Alaska and get on with finding a house. :)

** I must add that despite this one experience all of the other Canadians we have encountered have been LOVELY. :)

Twenty week belly picks coming soon!

Stay away from the crazy folks people.

xoxo