Day 8... Our Alaskian Hwy Safari

Today, June 25th felt like a safari ride through the Northern Rockies. We saw soooo much wildlife it was amazing. Our Day started with a Black bear sighting along the highway. We then crossed upon a Caribou crossing the highway. A couple of deer crossed our path (literally!) Then we spotted a moose swimming in a small pond. I think that picture was posted on Day 7. Upon reaching the highest levels of the Northern Rocky Mtns we saw several mountain goats (pics posted on day 7 as well). They were amazing as they were literally standing on the sheer edge of a cliff. After lunch we started all the Bison Buffalo sightenings. In total we probally saw about 50 all afternoon. We were driving down the highway and there were 2 buffalo just laying on the edge of the pavement on the road chillin watching the cars go by, it was surreal! Then we ended our safari with the sighting of a freshly run-over very LARGE Black bear! Talk about a packed day of wildlife sightings! And what was so sad is Joshua barely saw any of it because his attention was strongly on his new favorite Bob the Builder movie! Aw the life of a 4 yr old! (To his credit though he is an amazing traveler.... especially for being 4yrs old) So tonight we are resting at our first alaskan small town hotel. It is called The Air Force Lodge. It has about 14 rooms with shared bathrooms/showers at the end of the hall. They have a huge dining room table w/ common area in the entry. They require you to take off your shoes when you enter the house. The owner has a very strong German accent so I think they are from Europe and this lodge defiantly reminds me of a traditional european B&B. Josh & I are truly enjoying it but I think Grandpa was a little shocked when we told him how things went. You have to take your shoes off, share the shower/toilet room, and so forth. We will see in the morning how he liked it/ or didn't like it. :) Well finish checking out the pictures and we will try to post again tomorrow. Love to all 3J's & Grandpa:) P.S. We are in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada only 897 miles to go!!!! YEA:)

Day 7: Our first Alaska Highway Experience

Day 7: We traveled from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson. Enroute we had our first moose sighting! It was a very large mother moose with her baby, they were climbing around a curve on a hill. It was very exciting! We stayed the night at a nice hotel called the Woodlands Inn. For lunch we pulled into a public camping park and enjoyed our brown bag special of Peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwiches, with chips, and canned fruit! Josh and his Dad could not get over the large amount of Mosquitos, with the signs everywhere that read large grizzly bears frequent the area! Once again the pictures are from today (wed. June 25th) I hope to re-post yesterdays pictures when I can retrieve them once in Fairbanks. Love to all... 3J's & Grandpa:)

Day 6: We rested....

Okay these next 2 posts are a couple of days late because............... OUR COMPUTER CRASHED! I went to post , plugging into a DSL line and Josh's laptop now has a huge virus on it. We are hoping with some technology to retrieve all of our pictures once we get to Fairbanks this weekend. SO I am going to add photo's to both these days from Day 8 (today Wed. June 25th) I was not going to plug in my computer after his crashed, the last 2 nights we have only had DSL hook-up. Tonight we are back to wireless internet! YEA! So, Day 6, We traveled about 80 miles to Dawson Creek and played and relaxed. We had lunch in this cute local spot, then found a park and played for about 2 hrs. Joshua LOVED it. They had the old fashion teeter-tooters , Josh & I played on this forever... such memories of elementary school!:) We ended the day with an early bedtime... if I remember right this is the night we all slept about 13 hrs. Enjoy the photos. Much Love - 3J's & Grandpa:)

Day 5: Glad to be done.

Day 5 is complete and I am so thankful for that. I have to be honest it was not one of my finest hours yesterday. Let's just say the word FRUSTRATION and that would describe it best. Josh and I have been doing all the driving. Joshua is doing GREAT and mommy totally lost it yesterday. We completed not quite 400 miles and that was part of the reason. We are only 80 miles south of Dawson Creek the start of the Alaskan Hwy and yesterdays driving was a taste of what it will be like. Lots of bumps, 2 lane roadway, and crazy drivers trying to pass in unsafe conditions. Needless to say we made it to Grande Praire, were we planned to stay. Today we are going to drive to Dawson Creek and spend the day there, sightseeing and getting lots of pictures of the start of the Alaskan Hwy. I am thankful for that. From this point on we plan on only driving between 200-250 miles per day. We are 1800 miles into our trip so just 1500 more to go. Hopefully that will put us into Fairbanks sometime on Sun/Mon as originally planned. Thank you to all that have been praying for us, we truly are feeling your prayers and THANK YOU. We also had our first mechanical breakdown yesterday. In pouring rain my windshield wiper on my side decided to flip totally upside down and stop working. Check out Josh's repair job. My father-in-law is so funny, If you have seen the movie "My big fat Greek Wedding" you will relate to how the father in the movie thinks Windex in the cure-all for everything. Well grandpa thinks duct-tape is the cure-all. I once saw him wrap a paper towel around a cut and tape it with duct-tape. Talk about the die-hard duct-tape man. Well when the windshield wiper broke.... what fixed it.... good - old duct tape. Thanks Grandpa it worked like a charm. Much Love 3 J's & Grandpa:)

Day 4: AWESOME CROSSING!

Okay.... we worried so much about crossing the border and it took the total time of 5 Minutes..... thanks to the wise sense of selling our shotgun prior to leaving! YEAAAA! What a relief! No unpacking had to be done. The guard was very nice and generous to us! Didn't get his name but a quick shout out to him....THANK YOU MR. BORDER CROSSING MAN! So we are in Red Deer, Alberta Canada. We stayed at a Western Budget Hotel last night and it was AMAZING! We were able to get a huge Jacuzzi room for only $99. (for those who don't know yes Grandpa gets his own room too!) Joshua was freaking out excited that there was this HUGE bathtub in the middle of our bedroom. He came into the room dropped his bag, got naked, and crawled in before I even had my bags set down. BUT the funniest part of this story is, he asked for bubbles, I had no idea that a Jacuzzi bathtub should NEVER have bubble bath put in it..... Lets just say I do now. There was 10 inches of bubbles on the top of that tub before I could do anything about it. OOPPPS! Yes maybe I had a blonde moment! This trip is about making memories and we sure did last night with the mega bubble bath! Yesterday we traveled through Calgary, beautiful city but CRAZY driving! I thought for a minute we might be in a Grand Prix. The trailer I am towing (Josh's homemade delight I have nick-named the loose caboose) Sways about 1 foot to each side when it is not completely lined up with the back of the truck. With this I always stay to the right and let it sway into the shoulder... no problem. Well through Calgary it was 4-5 lanes of solid traffic going about 80 MPH ( remember we can only go about 50-55mph) and the far right lane was constantly exiting, thus leaving us to drive right in the middle. We made it through but I think I left my hand prints indented on the steering wheel. AND to find out Josh was trying to take pictures driving through it! ( I didn't find that out until much later...) So this morning we are off and are trying to make it to Grande Praire. We will officially be on the Alaskan Highway sometime tomorrow. We are so excited and hope to stop and truly experience the highway as we drive up it. Check out yesterdays pics and we will post again tonight. Love to all--- 3J's & Grandpa!

Day 3 : An Apple was Born

Day 3...DONE! Joshua is doing great. We are so blessed to have such a good little traveler. Our day started with everyone getting to sleep in. Joshua awoke about 7:30am stating, "It's morning Mommy, time to get up!" So Day 3 started. We got on the road about 9am figuring we would likely run into traffic... well Montana does not have traffic, Josh stated we need to start loosing the thought of big city lifestyle... traffic, mega shopping, and lots of restaurants. We are going to be small town living now. Every time we come up on a city we think it is going to be huge and even the bigger printed named cities on the map only have 2-3 exits! Wow what a different perspective than what we have been use to for 13 years! So the story of the day has to be Josh giving birth to an apple over breakfast. I was eating an apple for breakfast.... Joshua decided he wanted to cut into the middle of it. The seeds were shown and I told him not to eat the seeds or he would grow an apple tree in his belly. Joshua stated no you won't, so Josh thought he would play a trick on Joshua by eating the seeds and then burping up a whole new apple. Then Josh looked at Joshua and stated oh no.... and appeared out from behind was a fresh new apple.... I thought Joshua's eye balls were going to pop out, he could not believe daddy grew and produced an apple from eating the seeds! What a family moment! We are now in Shelby Montana, we traveled roughly 300-310 miles today. We are 30 minutes below the Canada/US border. We planned it this way so we can get up earlier in the morning to cross the border first thing. We are all alittle anxious to cross as we are towing all of our household goods and are unsure if they will make us unpack everything we have. I called and talked with the border control agency last week and they stated it would be 50/50 on if we have to unpack everything. We will see.... hopefully it will go smoothly. The pics today are mostly of the beautiful scenery we drove through. Thanks to all who have said prayers for us. Everything thus far has gone smoother than we could have imagined. Blog more tomorrow. Much Love 3J's & Grandpa:)

Day 2.... No Hotel to be found.... who knew:)

Well Day 2 has finally come to an end. We drove about 440 miles, which took us about 11 1/2 hrs, about 110 more miles than we planned to drive in a day. The reason: NO HOTELS BEYOND IDAHO FALLS! Well let me re-state that, no hotels we wanted to stay at. Last night Josh had gotten online to see where hotels were located for the next 300 miles or so. He found that there was very little beyond Idaho Falls except for a small hotel in DuBois, Idaho called Crossroads Hotel. He called and they stated they had openings but recommended a reservation as a rodeo would be in town for the weekend and they would be filled Fri/Sat. SOOO Josh thought since the days driving was going so well we should get to DuBois and assumed we would stay there. Well we did and we DID NOT stay there! Check out the pics of the now famous (to the Hurt Family) over sized chicken coup motel! Even Grandpa was like Josh...... no way I would rather sleep under a tree! Too FUNNY:) Well beyond that our day started out about 4am, after one of the worst hotel experiences ever! The walls were paper thin and I think the all girls slumber party was on both sides of us! The Kackels, prank knocks on the door at 1am, and the screaming from Fluffy fingers (for all you Office Fans) was enough for us to ward off Motel 6's for life! Lets just say no one except Grandpa (who is completely deaf!) was well rested today! So as we entered onto the highway it was still dark outside except for the bright shining moon. Joshua proudly stated, "Look daddy, our own night light!" He is so creative:) We traveled through Salt Lake City and to much sadness we were unable to see our friends the Subkahna's. The timing just did not work out. Josh and I both stated that we think we drove through some of the most beautiful country.... oh I think I have forgotten to state where we are: Dillion, Montana. Well I hope you all enjoy the pictures. Josh almost crashed trying to get them as he was trying to take pics driving the trailer (which can only go about 55mph) down the highway! Have a great night all and we will update again tomorrow. Much Love 3J's & Grandpa:)