By Rob Boulet
Friend, co-driver, navigator and photographer Bob Parkinson and I run through our checklist. Camera — check. Binoculars — check. Peppered beef jerky — check. Spare tire — check. The Big 3 CDs (Stompin Tom Connors, Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash) — check, check and check. And on it goes for another full minute until, silently, the eerily lit digital clock display in my Honda Civic rolls over to 3:30 a.m. With a whoop, a holler and an animated high-five I slip the car....
..into first gear and we slowly pull away from my home in Spruce Grove, Alberta and Surgical Strike 2009 is underway. Destination: Whitehorse, Yukon Territory and return. Five days, 4,400 kilometres.
By way of explanation, Bob and I have defined a Surgical Strike as nothing more than a road trip that provides maximum exposure to the history, geography and wildlife along the chosen route as well as the destination target itself, and all accomplished with a minimum investment in time, money and those all-important vacation days. Logistically, our adventures are a cross between the old college road trip and a spontaneous baby boomer whirlwind holiday. Unlike the college road trip, however, we don’t travel nor sleep in a rusted-out hulk of a car and, unlike the boomer holiday, we don’t jet first class to our destination nor stay in 5-star hotels. Rather, we travel in a well-maintained car, overnight in budget motels and eat in economy restaurants or, when opportunities present themselves, sponge off family and friends for room and board.
While the time/distance factors of a Surgical Strike are admittedly ambitious and certainly only give us a small taste of what various regions or destination targets have to offer, we both thoroughly enjoy the great variety of sights and experiences that we do manage to cram into our busy days. Additionally, we think that these trips provide us with excellent opportunities to identify places and activities that may warrant consideration for future, more leisurely family vacation plans. Indeed, as the old military saying goes, "Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted."
As we begin traveling west in the pre-dawn hours along the Yellowhead Highway towards Jasper on this third annual joint road trip, Bob and I begin to reminisce about our adventures the previous year (and I about one solo road trip I conducted in 2007).
Last year was Surgical Strike 2008 (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, 3,000 kilometres, five-and-a-half days). To celebrate my 50th birthday on June 20 I thought it would be fun to participate in the Yellowknife Golf Club Midnight Classic which is held annually on the weekend closest to the summer solstice. I also knew my youngest daughter Sandra would be in Yellowknife at this time completing her last job placement assignment for her Masters of Science (Occupational Therapy) degree from Queen’s University.
A highlight of the voyage to and from Yellowknife included the short (and free) 15-minute ferry ride across the broad Mackenzie River. Another highlight was the sighting of a Canada lynx just north of the NWT/Alberta border. A first for both Bob and me.
We also visited Fort Providence, NWT which is a small hamlet just a few minutes from the northern terminus of the Mackenzie River ferry. A one-time outpost of the Hudson Bay Company, Fort Providence now has a tourist-based economy and boasts a population of about 1,000. As we drove along the gravel streets I regaled to Bob the strange sights I had observed on a previous visit to this community. Specifically, I recalled my amazement at the almost surreal vision of a young lad pedaling his bike down one side of the street while a huge wood bison ambled down the other, each blissfully unconcerned with the presence of the other. Equally amazing to me was the sight of large numbers of these bison bedded down like dogs on the front lawns of many homes in the town. As I took in this bizarre sight I couldn’t help but think of all those years when I used to hate cleaning up the mini dog poops from my little sheltie Willow!
As for the golfing itself, Bob and I were joined in our foursome by my brother Charlie who flew in from Texada Island, B.C. and the Vice-President of the Yellowknife Golf Club, Carl Bird, who I just happened to have served with in Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship Restigouche in 1986. We teed off at 11:59 p.m. and finished our nine holes exhausted but happy at 4:30 a.m. the next morning. While our scoring was less than stellar, we conveniently blamed a combination of the extensive wine tasting event prior to tee-off, the fickleness of the rental clubs, the unfamiliarity of playing on sand fairways and artificial turf greens and finally the squadrons of helicopter-sized mosquitoes.
As mentioned above I have also completed a solo road trip. For reference I call it Surgical Strike 2007A (Hyder, Alaska, 3,000 kms, three-and-a-half days).
While I was always aware that the Alaska panhandle ran for a great distance along the northwestern border of B.C., it never dawned on me that reaching Alaska on a long weekend from Spruce Grove was an achievable excursion. It was not until I was alerted to the possibility by my sister Kathy and husband Monty who made the trip to Hyder a few months prior in July 2007 while visiting their son in Smithers, B.C. that I seriously began to consider it as a superb Surgical Strike candidate. Not that I needed much convincing, but once I learned that the prime time of year for watching grizzly bears feasting on spawning salmon at Hyder was late August/early September I began planning the Surgical Strike for the September Labour Day weekend.
Arriving in Smithers from Spruce Grove on a Saturday I stayed with my nephew Ryan and his beautiful fiancée (now wife) Alana. Departing early Sunday morning they both joined me in traveling through some spectacular country over the next four-and-a-half hours to Stewart, B.C. which shares the border with Hyder, Alaska. After a quick breakfast we crossed the border into Hyder and on to the Fish Creek bear viewing area where we were fortunate enough to see four grizzly bears gorging on salmon. It was truly an exhiliarating experience. A professionally-framed photograph of one of these grizzly bears now hangs proudly in my living room. We returned to Smithers that same day and I traveled home on the holiday Monday.
Having completed our journey down memory lane, Bob and I were pleasantly nudged back to the reality of Surgical Strike 2009 by the sight of a lone white-tailed deer feeding at the forest edge alongside the highway just east of Edson, Alberta. We took this early sighting as a good omen that we would see plenty of wildlife over the next few days. Indeed, both Bob and I consider the viewing of animals as one of the great pleasures of our trips. On this adventure we in particular hoped to "bag" both caribou and wolves, neither of which we had seen outside of captivity.
After a few more hours of travel we entered one of the crown jewels of Canada’s National Park system. Covering nearly 11,000 square kms, Jasper National Park is a stunning array of breathtaking scenery and abundant wildlife. Indeed, as regards to the latter, Bob had the unbelievably good fortune to sight a wolf not far into the park. Being the driver and primarily concentrating as I should on the road ahead, I did not see the animal. Check one for Bob but the wolf was still on my outstanding list.
Beyond Jasper the next point of interest was Mount Robson which, at 3,954 metres, is the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. Regrettably, on this day the cloud cover was so low that we were not able to see its magnificent peak. Continuing on we soon came to the major junction at Tete Jaune (Yellowhead) Cache, where the Yellowhead highway splits south to Vancouver or north to Prince Rupert (and ultimately Masset, on the Queen Charlotte Islands). Given our destination we turned north and continued on to Prince George.
Turning west from Prince George we traveled another four hours to our first-day destination of Smithers, where I had arranged to stay once again with my nephew Ryan and his wife Alana. Before arriving at their place, however, I took Bob for a drive through the town’s picturesque main street which always reminds me of a little village in the Swiss Alps. Bob and I also discussed Smithers' latest claim to fame of being the first runner-up to Salmon River, Nova Scotia in CBC’s 2006 contest to be named Canada’s Hockeyville.
After a late afternoon marathon walking of our host’s three dogs along a hiking trail in the country, a surprisingly tasty BBQ steak dinner prepared by Ryan, an evening of good cheer with his wife and in-laws and a rather lop-sided win by me over Ryan and Alana in a sling-shot competition, Bob and I retired for the night.
Up early the next day we were on the road at 4 a.m. and reached the main intersection at Kitwanga where we headed north on the 700 km stretch of Highway 37 to its intersection with the Alaska Highway, just 22 kms west of Watson Lake, Yukon. This is a beautiful stretch of highway that is almost completely paved and in very good condition with just a few short stretches of gravel and sealcoat. It also did not take us long to realize that it was very lightly traveled. During the nine hours it took us to travel its length we passed only about 40 oncoming vehicles. While animal sightings were not nearly as plentiful as I had hoped, we did see four black bears.
It was with great excitement that we reached the large sign-post marking the Yukon/BC border. For me it was the fulfillment of a long standing goal. Once across the border into the Yukon I could now lay claim to have visited all 10 provinces and three territories. I refer to this as the 10/3 club. Bob was now a member of the 9/2 club, still needing to check off Newfoundland and Labrador and Nunavut.
As it turned out our second major accomplishment of the day occurred just an hour later as we sighted four caribou grazing along the north side of the Alaska Highway, thus we were able to check them off our animal must-see list. The remaining three-and-a-half hours into Whitehorse went by all too quickly as we reveled in the spectacular scenery and the excitement of traveling the famed Alaska Highway. Constructed during the Second World War to facilitate the defence of North America from potential attack by Japanese forces, the highway stretches 2,380 kms between Dawson Creek, B.C. and Fairbanks, Alaska.
Arriving in Whitehorse after a 15-hour day of travel we immediately checked into our hotel, freshened up and headed to the adjacent Gold Pan Saloon for a quick meal and an ale. It was then lights out for a good nights sleep in preparation for a full day of sightseeing.
With a limited amount of time available to us we were forced to be selective in what we chose to visit. Our first order of the day was therefore to make our way to the tourist information bureau to get the most up-to-date information on the city and its attractions. We learned the name Whitehorse was so coined because of some frothing rapids on the Yukon river near the townsite resembled the manes of white stallions. Today the city is the capital of the Yukon (having assumed this distinction from Dawson City in 1953) and has a population of about 25,000.
After careful consideration we started our day with a visit to the SS Klondike II, a sternwheeler built in 1937 to carry cargo along the Yukon river. It is now permanently tied up alongside as a tourist attraction, representing all those similar craft from the Klondike Gold Rush on that traversed the inland waterways of the Yukon Territory.
Our next visit was to the MacBride Museum of Yukon History which is home to an extensive collection of exhibits and artifacts concerning the history, geology and wildlife of the Yukon. While I enjoyed the entire museum I found the cabin of Sam McGee (which was moved in total to the museum site as an outside exhibit) to be particularly interesting as I was not aware that he did in fact exist and that Robert Service used him in his famous poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" simply because he liked the sound of his name. For his part Bob enjoyed the North-West Mounted Police artifacts and would not stop bugging me until I took his picture as Sgt. Bob of the Yukon in the cardboard cut-out. In total we spent a couple of hours in this fascinating facilty and came away with a much greater appreciation of the land itself and the hardy nature of the explorers, miners and pioneers who settled there.
From the MacBride Museum we elected to amble along the Millenium Trail, a delightful hiking trail alongside the Yukon River, enroute to our next destination. This was a sure-fire couldn’t-miss attraction — the Yukon Brewing Company — which featured a guided tour of their operation followed by a sampling of their products. Not to put too fine a point on it but it was an inspired choice. Our guide Rob was excellent and the beer even better. One particularly interesting fact was that the company makes a product called Discovery Ale which has as an ingredient the honey of the Fireweed, the official flower of the Yukon. To our amazement we not only determined that this official flower was not only pretty but it tastes good, too.
For dinner that night we ate at the Klondike Rib and Salmon BBQ restaurant. Possessing somewhat of a pedestrian palate I passed on the caribou stew, musk ox stroganoff and arctic char and had an excellent grade AAA Alberta prime rib steak. Bob chose the Pacific salmon. As a last excursion before retiring we took the car for a tour of the outlying reaches of the city and up to the Whitehorse airport where Bob enlightened me that the aircraft on the pedestal at the entrance was a DC-3 cargo aircraft which functioned as the world’s largest wind direction indicator. After a final night cap at the Gold Pan Saloon we again retired early in preparation for our 4 a.m. departure the next day: a day we were not looking forward to as weather reports had us heading into some nasty winter conditions.
Expecting the worst we were pleasantly surprised to awake to clear skies. We made good time on the road and arrived at Watson Lake four hours later. We continued on our way after a brief stop for fuel, breakfast and a short visit to the world famous Sign Post Forest, an interesting display of destination sign posts from all over the globe.
Alas, the weather gods finally caught up to us about an hour east of Watson Lake. While we were fortunate to have missed the considerable snowfall of the blizzard itself we had to deal with the treacherous snow and ice conditions of the highway it had left in its aftermath. From this point on the driving was an exercise in complete concentration, with little opportunity to drink in the exquisite wintry landscape we were passing through. Needless to say, we were both quite relieved when we reached our motel that night in Fort Nelson, accident free.
The next day was our homeward leg and the abysmal driving conditions for the first leg of the trip to Fort St John were virtually a repeat of the latter half of the previous day. However, careful driving saw us through unscathed and we were able to get up to normal driving speed from that point on. Given that both of us had previously traveled this stretch of highway we had no desire to stop other than to grab a quick Tim Hortons coffee en route home. At this point we thought it would be a good idea to recap our animal sightings during the trip. Results were as follows: Moose — 2, Caribou — 14, Wood Bison — 7, Big-Horn Sheep — 4, White-Tail Deer — 51, Mule Deer — 13, Elk — 31, Black Bear — 8, Wolf — 1, Coyote — 3, Red Fox — 2, Bald Eagle — 1. Given the great distance traveled, and all through tremendous game country, the tally was not quite what I had hoped, particularly of my favourite animal, the moose. That said, the range of different animals was impressive and all in all a pretty good haul.
At exactly 4:43 p.m. on May 18, the end was in sight as we turned off the Yellowhead Highway onto Campsite Road and entered Spruce Grove. Minutes later we slowly rolled to a stop in front of my home. I turned to Bob and remarked that this had been a most excellent Surgical Strike. Without hesitation he looked at me and uttered a single word. Check.
