The last few days we've been without access to WiFi and for good reason. We left our campsite in Quesnel, headed for Dawson Creek and the start of the Alaskan highway. Built through the wilderness of British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska in 1942, the 1400 mile highway was constructed by the US Army to provide an overland route to Alaska in case water routes were compromised by Japan. Overall, we were disappointed with our camping prospects... All of the provincial campgrounds were closed for the season. They don't open until "May Long Weekend" in mid-May. This left us with a handful of open RV campgrounds to choose from, most little more than gravel lots with RV hookups in the center of the town. We ended up spending our sixth night in the Blue Bell Inn in Fort Saint John, BC... a decent, but overpriced motel in a town which runs off of the oil companies. The whole town is overpriced, actually. We briefly evaluated the Super 8, before realizing that they had a bell boy and the cost was $150 per night. For a Super 8! Even our medium cheese pizza for dinner was over $20 (setting up the Coleman stove in the room of our motel didn't seem appropriate). We set out the following morning feeling a little uncertain. The landscape was not what we were expecting... little more than rolling hills of deadness. Spring had not come yet but the snow was mostly melted, so all we could see was what winter had killed. The towns along the way were equally boring. They are thoroughly work towns with little history and not much for tourists like ourselves, their growth having followed the oil markets. We decided to aim for Liard Hot Springs for the night. We booked along the highway from Fort Saint John to Fort Nelson, cruising North on the smooth road. From there, the highway cuts West, into the Rockies, through Summit Pass and across the Great Divide. This is where things started to look better. The mountains, we decided, were incredible. Snowy and rocky, just as one might expect. We took picture after picture of the mountains and the valleys, rolling past an overturned semi-truck and the frozen Muncho Lake. Uttely gorgeous. We pulled into Liard Hot Springs in the early evening... an "unofficially opened" Provincial Park, meaning that they leave the gates open for campers even though no one is there to host. Not only was the campsite amazing, with trees, a (mostly) dry place to put our tent, and temperatures in the upper 50s, but the highlight was a short walk up the road. After many nights of cold, we were able to dip into the natural Hot Springs. Talking with some locals, it is a popular destination in January, when the swim with warm hats on, under the frosted tree cover. One guy had the audacity to try and tell us that the heat in Arizona is nothing like the heat in the Yukon (quote: "my friend winters in Yuma and he said is not nearly as hot there as the summers in the Yukon. It can even get up to 85 degree fahrenheit!"). After our dip, we chatted briefly with a couple from Colorado who spend their summers working in Denali and a pair of guys from BC. We had the time (finally) to cook a full dinner and a full breakfast and headed out the next morning hoping for a campsite near Whitehorse. No luck. Once we were out of the mountains, our camping prospects were obviously dim, so we barreled for Haines Junction and grabbed a motel (the Cozy Corner) with beautiful views of the Kluane Mountains. The next morning, we set out for Anchorage skirting along the Kluane Mountains. Cara decided that we had been using "incredible" too much as an adjective for the mountains, so we made these mountains "brilliant" in honor of Harry Potter (we've nearly ODed on the Harry Potter audiobooks... we are nearing the end of book 3). The mountains were like hundreds of miles of the Grand Tetons... never ending, without a lodge or a tourist town or anything in sight. Brilliant. Once in Alaska, we aimed for Anchorage, seeing more beautiful mountains and glaciers for most of the drive, including the Matanuska Glacier, 27 miles long, 4 miles wide and 1000 feet thick. Brilliant.