So we started in Chicago (a late start) as Lindsey let her Cat out in the back of her truck and it pissed everywhere. The smell was obviously foul so she spent most of morning trying to get the smell out. This should have been a red flag in how the trip would go ;)
We drove through Illinois and Wisconsin in a breeze, pretty flat and boring as the above pic shows. We stopped for some cheese curd which I ate so much of I don't think I need to eat curds again. Lots of dairy farms all over.
We drove through Minnesota at night so I can't tell you much about that state...
We got to North Dakota and stayed in a town called Valley City the first night and it was perhaps the worst night sleep I've ever had. The cat was meowing all night long, not just little meows but "I'm dying and sooo pissed Meeeooooowwwwwwws". It got to 530 in the morning and I couldn't handle it anymore, I had visions of me throwing the cat around the room with its tail so I decided to put him in his kennel and into the car he went. So we managed about 2 hours of decent sleep.
Lindsey called her vet the next day and we managed to get him some tranquiliser pills from a local vet to calm him down at night. (I advise anyone considering travelling with a cat to pop it a pill, put it on a plane and keep its misery down to a couple of hours)
We rallyed through North Dakota and that part of the I-94 is perhaps the flattest, straighest road on the planet. Hilarious. The only cool part of ND is the Roosevelt National Park on the border of Montana which is what I named Hump Park.
We drove through the East side of Montana and it was pretty flat which made for a nice easy drive:
We had dinner in a town called Billings, then made it to Helena, a town which had some snow already and camped out at another motel 8..
The next day we drove past Craig, which I wished was only a mile away.
We took a little detour through thr Glacier National Park, it was very pretty but we didn't see any glaciers! some of the roads were already closed with the winter creeping in down there.
We drove through a town called Whitefish which was the cutest little town in the world. Just how I imagined Montana would be.
We got to the Canadian border by early evening and getting through was no probs.
We picked a rather secluded road into Canada, it was abit sketchy wondering if we would find somewhere to stay that night. We made it to Radium hot Springs, just West of the Banff National Park and stayed in the cutest little motel. I guess we could have stayed at this one instead:
The craziest thing when we woke up was these Bighorn sheep just hanging out in the town by the coffee shop. I renamed them white- butt sheep.
We entered the National Park and had a rather chilled day stopping and taking pics along the way-
The area around Lake Louise was really pretty and the sun came out just for this stop.
We went through some crazy winter weather with all these tourists slidding off the road. I actually saw a guy jump out of a little car while it was still sliding.
We made our way out of it though and down into Jasper which is super cool, I'd like to go back there for a skiing holiday.
We stayed in a middle-of-no-where town called Valley view that night; it was a brand new Motel 8 which was freagin awesome, I had a bath and relaxed as there were still price stickers on the bath tub. I haven't mentioned too much about the poochies till now, as their stories involve alot about pooping and peeing in hotel rooms. Lindsey doesn't quite have the willpower to train her dogs so they are pretty wild!
Anyway, at this brand new motel the pup woke me up so I quickly put on some clothes to take him outside so we didn't have to deal with yet another morning urine wake-up call. Well, I couldn't find the dang stairs in this place so we had to wait for the elevator-the wait was too long so little Hennessy just went for it. So then I'm frantically running back and forth to the room trying to clean up this massive disaster without getting busted by the motel staff. fun times, fun times people.
The next day we were heading towards the rockies again which made for some interesting night driving.
We fuelled up whenever possible, there were certainly some interesting people at these stops and they always took a double-take at our Florida license plate.
It was really pretty through the mountains but once it was dark it was complete insanity with Bison, sheep, goats and moose everywhere! I've never seen so much wildlife on one stretch of road.
We stayed at this hotel in Watson Lake, it had some very fancy furniture in the rooms with mirrors on the bed headboards...hmmmm interesting.
This town is famous for its Sign Post forest, very random.
This was the Teslin Bridge.
We breezed through Whitehorse and Haines Junction, I could tell I was getting nearer Alaska with the familar mountains around Wrangell St Elias National Park.
The last pic I took on the road was just after the border crossing back into America-I actually got interrogated pretty bad with my temporary green card (When you get married you are basically on probation for the first 2 years). It felt strange to be treated like a villain when I was heading home!
A pretty sunset welcomed us into Alaska. We decided to just book it back to Seward that night, I'm pretty familar with the roads so it was a somewhat easy drive for me. We made it by 6am.
Craig was still awake as he had been working just as hard trying to get the upstairs house project all done. We chatted it up till 830 am then headed to bed! Wow it felt good to be home.
I'm very proud of my amazing husband by the way, he is such a hard worker and I love that he is basically building our home for us!
It was a crazy road trip, we were on a deadline to get to AK as Lindsey started work on Monday. I'm glad I was there to help her out, I think she would have gone slightly mad trying to deal with all the animals and driving. I don't think I'll be offering my road trip services for a while though :)
