27.06.2013Alaska Highway Wildlife

It’s really amazing what and how many wild animals we have seen since driving the Alaska Highway north from Fort St. John.

Our first experience was with bears: Driving along the Highway in the evening nearly alone, suddenly a bear crossed the street in front of our car and was followed by two little baby-bears! What a surprise! Andy had to hit the breaks and I was looking at the bears, trying to get the camera, searching for my bear whistle and the bear spray all at the same time. But the bears disappeared into the woods so quickly, that we couldn’t shoot a picture of our first encounter with a bear-family.

That evening we also saw a rabbit, a little mouse, a lots of butterflys and some birds on the way to the campground. With knowing that now we are really in bear country, especially Tini was hearing suspicious “bear-sounds” that night. But it turned out that these were either sounds from passing by motorbikes or Andy’s snoring 🙂

The next morning we started really early, because it was raining most of the night and we used a short rain break around 6am to pack up our tent.
After some driving Andy spotted a bear in the grass next to the highway! This time we had the chance to watch the brown bear have his grass-breakfast and enough time to take pictures:

After some more kilometers and some moose-warning signs a moose suddenly crossed the street in front of our car. I only took a picture of his back with the camera. So, I can’t upload that one.
But the highlight that day was definitely when a herd of bisons was walking on the highway:

We were driving very slowly with them and had the feeling of becoming a part of the herd:-) The big bisons with their horns looked quite scary, but they all were walking very calmly and we could hear their puffing through the open windows. Those were some amazing minutes!
Later on, we were seeing some more bears and it has started to become kind of normal. We don’t have the urge to stop and take pictures of every bear that walks around.
One other species that is around in Canada at the moment: Mosquitos! We could really live without them…