About those trees...

In my last post, I hadn’t labeled the bizarre tree pics. As if black spruce trees growing in the tundra weren’t weird enough, these trees experienced the fires 3weeks ago when we detoured our trip due to the smoke. This week we camped at Beaver Creek where campers were evacuated 3weeks, the night we chose a saloon and hotel in Whitehorse.  On a good day on the permafrost, the trees girth growth is stunted due to the long winter and frozen earth. The branches end up scrawnier than a pole-vaulter and gangly like a Seuss-ian nature picture.

This morning on our trip from British Columbia to Alberta, we saw more moose and black bear than I’ve seen in 30 years in Maine. Plus reindeer ( or caribou—we have yet to fact check the difference) and Stone sheep which look more like mountain goats. The day before we were in a bison jam.

BC has such great roadside mottos:
“Super! Natural! British Columbia!”
Or
“British Columbia—Great Northern!”
“British Columbia welcomes you!”

We also found that what we were calling Alaskan graffiti might actually be Pacific Northwestern graffiti as we found it in Canada too.  On roadside sandy edges, people write their initials or wisdom in stones. No spray paint. No gang hieroglyphics.  Cool.