We travelled on the Alaska Highway from Fairbanks to the turnoff the the Casier Highway. The Alaska Highway basically takes you south-west from 64 N to 60 N and apart from driving in the eastern portions of Alaska you also drive through some of the southern portions of the Yukon Province of Canada.. The road travels through some of the most wonderful boreal forest and breathtaking scenery that I have ever seen.

The area also has an abundance of beautiful ponds and lakes enhancing the scenery even more. It is around one of the many ponds that you find in this area (smaller than the one below) that we saw the Northern Hawk-owl pictured above. We saw 2 other Hawk-owls on the trip - the other second one was sitting on a telephone pole and the other on the top of a spruce tree.

The areas abundance of beautiful ponds and lakes enhances the scenery substantially. The Alaska Mountain Range and then Kluane Mountain range also provided wonderful backdrops to the south as we drove westward. In the bigger lakes the water was still very cold and patches of ice could still be seen floating near the shore.

In the Yukon we drove past Kluane National Park on its northern boundary. Just over the mountains is the huge (and no doubt spectacular) Steward Glacier.

The spring thaw had come late to this part of Alaska and Canada and many of the larger rivers still had large quantities of ice in them. Some rivers had only just strarted to flow. The ice in the pictures below was up to 5 feet thich in places (the pictures were taken from a high bridge overlooking the river).

On the way back (12 days later) from the Queen Charlotte Islands flowers (false fireweed) had started to bloom along side the road.
The views along this road were absolutely magnificent.