Whats that Skip?

After leaving Camooweal 125 Km from Mt Isa two Kangaroos decided to commit suicide on my front end. I think I have driven close to 40,000km with a video camera but this is the first time I have hit or been hit by anything. The 2nd one is very small and I guess young. I do feel bad :(

I t was a bad end to a good day. I left Alice Spring and had some success with one of my main objectives. There wasn't anything really open in Camooweal so I stupidly pressed on the 190km to Mt Isa. This was the first time I had driven in the entire trip after dusk and it was also the first Kangaroos I had seen in the entire drive. As the guys from 'Panel Repairs' said "That's 1 from 1- Awesome!" but it may even be 2 from 1 after reviewing the video. The car is mechanically alright. No structural damage but both right hand side head lights are smashed and the front driver door wouldn't open at first. This was simply due to the front quarter panel being pushed back preventing it from opening. I went back but only saw one dead Kangaroo - the larger one, amid the ruins of the Falcons front end. Panel repairs got me driving again in 15 minutes free of charge which I really appreciate.

Before

Driving straight at the Sun

No penguins... I may have been a season and 12 hrs late as it is autumn and they go back to their burrows at night so off to Mt Gambier which is really nice. I've always wanted to at least pass through Mt Gambier but wish their coffee and Bacon & Egg shops opened up earlier.

The wind has been almost constantly off the ocean with a really light intermittent drizzle. Its been beautiful green dairy beef country turning into huge pine forests, dairy beef country up to about Robe SA. I am sure it can switch back to drought land very fast though.
What I thought would be a quite boring section turned out to be uniquely beautiful -  along the edge of the Coorong National Park.
I think I spent almost all day with the sun in the windscreen which was quite hot so I opted to find a motel in Port Wakefield and found a 2 bedroom house for $140 a night. I'm happy

Tomorrow is going to be another day driving north.

Time for a new drive!

Currently in Port MacDonnell SA after leaving Bootsies house in Geelong via Lorne, Colac and Portland. Beautiful coast. No WIFI and only low bars on the phone... cant have everything :)

And I just realised I have about 70km of fuel and the nearest non-dodgy service station is in Mt Gambier so will see if I can see some fairy penguins at Cape Northumberland then north to refuel.

Fun facts and figures

Whilst whiling away the scintillating hours spent in transit at the coming airports I thought I would compile some stats
For starters I am 4 hours early at Seattle Tacoma International but they have free WiFi.

Distance:

14305 Mi

23022 Km

Fuel:

659.86 Gallon(US)

2497 Liters

Avg Distance per day

I found a useful tool a while ago that gets around the flat Mercator projection distortion that makes Canada look ridiculously large and Greenland as big as Australia. Whilst the 2nd largest nation on earth, Canada is not as large as these maps suggest. I put in the basic outline of the drive which can be seen here: or in the comparison below.

Rough drive outline

Over laid on Australia

It would be good to invert the latitudes and normalise them to the southern hemisphere but then the map would only show a lot of blue and white - white being the generic colour used in Google maps for Antarctica. It still amazes me how far "north" Canada and the USA are in comparison to Australia and any large land masses in the southern hemisphere.

Last days in Oregon and Washington State

The drive across from Boise, Idaho to Washington was really scenic. The country side reminded me of the area around the Wurrumbungles, NSW. The whole west coast is experiencing a dry spell and it looks it with brown grass and tinder dry forest. I drove into the mountains west of Bend, Oregon and stayed the night in a rest area in Oakridge. Next day was a big drive through varied types of forest and National Park to the Columbia Gorge. On the way was spectacular volcanic mountains that form part of the Cascade Mountain range. It was raining slightly but I was told by locals that the rain was a good thing - this in a part of the North America which has the highest suicide rate in the country mainly put down to the inclement weather. Last time I came through here they had late falls of snow with a low cloud base so I didn't get to see much and a lot of the roads were closed. I was determined to see Mount Hood so parked in the car park at the Timberline Resort reading a book hoping the clouds would clear up.

Mt Hood from the south

2 hours later the clouds parted so I could see the summit. I was above the cloud layer so the view was quite good of the surrounds but not good enough to take pictures.

After this I drove to the town of Hood River on the Columbia Gorge doing the usual stupid deer dodge. They are more suicidal than kangaroos and at least as stupid. This place is awesome

Colombia River and Gorge

The weather was great with only small clouds in a blue sky

Mt Hood from Hood River town

Mt Adams

Mount St Helens

I was surprised that the forest around Mt St Helens had not recovered as much as what I thought it would. I don't think the trees here handle fire and complete devastation as well as Eucalypts - it has been 34 years and there are still a lot of bare areas. This was a great day driving through forest with excellent weather. I ended up at Mt Rainier although the peak was covered with cloud. I waited on the south side called Paradise Valley for the cloud to clear but it didn't and only gave quick views of the summit.

That's fine because the next day was cloudless. I stayed in a Rest Area on the South west side of the park. It was fenced in with barbed wire topped cyclone fencing and I imagine this was to keep the bears out. I did not want to get mauled on the last night in the car so felt safer here than in the National Park camp grounds

Sunrise, Mt Rainier

The drive up to the north side of Mt Rainier was spectacular. I was a little pissed at paying the park fee the day before when a lot of the south side roads were closed and the pit toilets absolutely reeked but this made up for it. The road ends at a place called Sunrise and it is truly awesome
I drove back out through Chinook pass then wasted about an hour and a half trying to get through a national forest to make a short cut. It looked good on the map! The road was one of those that steadily gets worse and worse going from a nice 2 lane tar surface and ending up in a rutted 4wd path at the top of a pass and a fireplace over looking the valley. I am sure I could have got through in the Defender to the next valley and National Forest but didn't want to risk any scratches or damage on the Jeep. At least it was scenic... After retreating back down the valley the GPS kept telling me to back track back past Mt Rainier to Seattle but I hate that and so went north East to meet up with the I90 which enters Seattle through the Snoqualmie pass which is enormous and worth the drive. This part of Washington now looks like Nevada - last time whilst not "Lush" it was at least green and semi arable.
That pretty much ended up driving the car inter city for me.

Idaho

In Boise, Idaho tonight.

It took me about 7hrs to drive 120Miles... Idaho is really rugged. Hopefully I will get some time to up load some GPS files in the morning. I lost an hour with the change to mountain time

Catch-up and Skagway

Coal Train at Torrington, Wyoming - 5 engines up front and 2 pushers! My guess is these would be from the Powder River Basin :)

I hung around the "Golden Triangle" for an extra day and then drove to Skagway, Alaska from Haines Junction, Yukon. Each time across the border is a time zone change so it is confusing. I am also a little sick and tired of customs staff asking "Where did you come from today" when it has to be the most obvious question they could possibly ask someone driving out of what is basically a  cul-de-sac. The drive was awesome and it was only a little cloudy. Skagway is about the same size as Haines, Alaska but is lot more tourist orientated. There were 4 large cruise ships and one small but expensive looking one in port so the strrets were full of window grazers. The airport was were I thought it would be and I drove straight there, went to the front counter and asked how to book a scenic flight. The staff were so helpful and called one of the operators who was landing from a scenic flight in 15-20 minutes and taking off in 25. Within 25 minutes of arriving I was on the runway taxing!
The flight goes South West out over Haines and to Glacier Bay were we circled around.

Very scenic! On the way back I was thinking it would maybe worth a hike around Haines but then we spotted about 10 bears and I decided it was not worth it.

Skagway

Even the drive out was awesome. I staid the night in a Rest Area on the Alskan Highway with about 3 trucks, 2 RV's and a caravan.

Next day was a big drive down to Stewart, BC which borders the last bit of the Alaskan pan handle. This drive was made up of huge valleys and really, really long beautiful lakes almost the whole way. The peaks were often snow covered, coming down to pine forests ending in crystal blue lakes. One of them is formed by the Yukon river and is the longest distance up river traveled by Salmon to spawn. An incredible journey.

I will need more time to make a new post as the Salmon Glacier was close by Stewart and this blew me away. Tonight I am staying in a relatively seedy hotel in Prince Rupert, BC after another awesome drive which is at the end of the Skeena river Valley.