Later that day, we crossed into the Yukon and the adventure began!
Our first stop for the night in Canada was in Whitehorse, YT. Something that surprised me was how many Bison there were....just roaming around, doing their Bison thing! Like, when most people look at the side of the road and they see a deer or for us in Alaska, see a moose (even though I never got used to that) it was a completely normal thing! But for us, I would yell, "WHAT ARE THOOOOSE?!" and we'd careen off the road to stop and take pictures. They are so massive and they do not care at all that you're there. We saw at least 60 Bison!
I had really started to feel crappy during the drive so Tim drove the entire 7 1/2 hours. That night, we pull into Whitehorse and stayed at the Yukon Inn. The hotel wasn't anything special, but it had exactly everything we needed: A bathroom and a bed. As a pregnant woman traveling, these two things were all I really cared about day to day.
In the morning, I knew I had come down with a pretty nasty cold. Nothing crazy, but it was enough to keep me miserable and incapable of keeping my eyes open long enough to be of any use to Tim for navigating. By the time we got to Watson Lake, I was in full sickness mode. All I cared about was laying down and taking a nap. Tim went out and found me some pregnancy safe cold medicine and that made all the difference!
The next two days were just about getting to Jasper National Park, so there were a few days that we spent many hours in the car. The pups were such troopers and napped most of time.
Finally, we got to Jasper! Well, almost. We stayed in Hinton which is about an hour outside of Jasper. We decided to stay for two days so we could take a day and go on some hikes in the area.
Getting settled at the hotel
Mountains and lake in Jasper
I can never get enough pictures of Moose!
After two days in Jasper, we drove to down towards Banff, to visit Lake Louise. It was GORGEOUS! By this time, I'm mostly over my cold and I had some of my sense of smell back and the first thing I smelled as we got out of the car at Lake Louise was that of "Christmas". The crisp air combined with the smell of the fir trees was amazing and I'll never forget that moment.
Ava, loving the attention she was getting from all the tourists 💜🐾
Our time in Canada was so much fun and we were a little sad to leave. I also may have loved that everything was written in English and French ❤️ And every time we met someone in the service industry, they would say, "Hello, Bonjour!" when greeting us. 😍😂
We went to Tim Horton's - the first time for both of us - and it was amazing! Tim got a coffee, I got a fruit smoothie, and we shared a box of TimBits (donut holes). Sorry Krispy Kreme, Tim Horton's wins! 🍩☕️
We also had to take advantage of the fact that, because we weren't in the U.S. anymore, there were probably Kinder Surprise Eggs to be found...We were right! For those who aren't aware of what a Kinder Egg is, see picture below, but it's a German candy basically like a Wonderball (which I haven't seen in years either), but instead of candy inside, there's a yellow capsule that contains a toy or game! They're illegal in the U.S. because apparently we're too dumb to be able to handle the responsibility of not accidentally ingesting the capsule...
