Flying from Whitehorse to Calgary to get a new car

On Wednesday (May 8th), I made the 2 hour, 20 minute flight from Whitehorse to Calgary with Air North. The spur for the trip was to pick up a new car, but it was also a great chance to spend time with my kids and their families.

After some of the awful flight times I’ve chosen for various reasons, 09:00 is so … civilized 🙂 This is the model airplane club’s airport, and the long-abandoned stock car race track a few blocks from my house, at 09:07.

Five minutes later, I was looking down on the Alaska Highway, with Jake’s Corner at the junction with the Tagish and Atlin Roads. That’s White Mountain to the right.

Landforms like this fascinate me – what could have caused the mountain to be that steep and then that flat? This in northern British Columbia, at 09:23.

I took a few more photos of interesting landforms, but the next really cool thing we passed over was the W. A. C. Bennett Dam on
the Peace River, at 10:10. It’s 183 meters high, one of the worldís highest earth-fill dams. Construction began in 1961 and took 7 years to complete. Pretty impressive even from 35,000 feet.

I haven’t figured out yet where this is, but it’s place I’d like to see from the ground. When I have some time, my SPOT may help me figure it out – it’s 16 minutes south-southeast of the dam.

By noon local time (11:00 Yukon time), we were over the open Prairies. Spring is just getting started, and I saw a few tractors tearing up the earth for planting.

Some of the ranches are gorgeous – that appeared to be a big log home overlooking the lake.

Calgary continues to grow at an astonishing rate. I may not be a fan of cities in general, but there are a lot of things about Calgary that I do like. No, I’m not moving 🙂

Welcome to Calgary.

My sales guy from Jack Carter Chev, Jeff Stewart, met me at the airport, and very quickly we had all the paperwork done, he’d given me a good run-down of some of the car’s many, many special features, and I was on my way.

I’ll be spending another 4 days in Calgary, then I head home via the Icefields Parkway and Alaska Highway.