We’ve lost our visual cues. Normally, if we wake up in the morning and its light outside, we know it’s time to get up. Here, we get up in the morning after it has been light for hours. We go to bed when it’s still light outside. There is no way to know when to eat dinner, except by the clock.
We’ve also lost one of our television satellites. It takes three to get all the channels. As we go north, the satellites appear to be lower in the sky. One of them is below the horizon our dish can see.
The roads are noticeably rougher today, but it’s still pretty good divided four-lane. Mostly we maintain about 100kph (65). We’ve made it to the Boreal Forest, that vast swath of mostly coniferous forest way up north.
This far inland and we’re still seeing gulls. There are many Franklin’s gulls swarming over the rivers feeding. On dryer ground, there are ring-billed gulls and California gulls. These two gulls can be hard to tell apart, but the Ring billed have light irises.
California have dark irises.
That red spot on the bill is not always easily visible.
Done for the day at Valley View, still in Alberta.
The RV Park is new enough that it still shows as farmland on Google Maps.
At Valley View, we’ve just matched the farthest north we’ve ever been, which was the 2017 summer trip, the great figure 8.
The Great 2019 Alaska Trip map
I would describe the 2019 trip map as “single-minded” compared to 2017.
Settled down with an evening fire.
We’re in the land of free firewood. They stock the woodshed;
… use as much as you want.
We got our first lifer of the trip tonight. A pair of Boreal owls were calling from the forest edge. We’re not going to run into those birds in South Texas!
Sunset tonight 10:28. Last light 11:24. 1,616 miles to Fairbanks.