What a phenomenal trip we've had since our last post: Muncho Lake to Whitehorse to Skagway to Juneau, part on the Alaskan Highway (which is still a great highway), part by the White Pass Yukon Route (WPYR) narrow guage train and part on the Alaska Marine Ferry.
About 100 miles from Muncho Lake, British Columbia (BC), we entered the Yukon Territory (YK). I'm not sure what I was expecting but the Yukon is wonderful...high mountains, huge rivers, great campgrounds (large beautiful sites, $12 fees, free fire wood) and great people. We're currently at the Wolf Creek Campground just east of Whitehorse, YK; we arrived Saturday afternoon when most sites were occupied but found this great pull through site right on the Creek and across from the trail to the Yukon River (which we'll hike when we get back). The family in the neighboring site are long time Whitehorse residents who are avid campers...complete with a huge tarp that creates an outdoor living room with a homemade wood stove at the outboard end. Very nice people and he's agreed to watch over YOW while we take our side excursion to Juneau...as a "thank you", we gave him one of our Alaskan salmon steaks that we buy in Juneau and have shipped home.
Sunday morning we said good-by to YOW and drove south to Carcross (short for caribou crossing)and the WPYR train station. Carcross is a tiny town at the north end of Lake Bennett, a 30 +/- mile long lake whose shoreline the tracks follow until the midway point, the ghost town of Bennett. Views were spectacular and we spent most of the time on the rear platform. Inside, our guide, Ken, rivaled the scenery as he's a native of Carcross and his father, grandfather and great grandfather were the station masters; Ken's stories, as you can imagine, were fascinating and gave a real feeling of the gold rush history of the WPYR which was built to carry Klondike gold miners from Skagway to Whitehorse. At the Bennett station we were served a "miner's stew" and given another 90 minutes to explore the beautiful area which included the only other standing building, a wooden church that also served as the community center, and a portion of the Chilkoot Trail which we'd someday love to hike. From Bennett on, the tracks led above timberline, crossed high trestles then down through the rain forest to the coast and Skagway.
We spent the night in Skagway at St.Preston's Lodge before boarding the 7:00 AM Monday ferry for Juneau. After 6.5 hours of cruising through snow capped mountains and distant humpbacks, we arrived and were met by PeggyAnn (PA) McConnochie, a good friend I've gotten to know through my NAR activities. She took us on a great tour of Juneau, the capitol of Alaska that can only be reached by ferry or airplane. It's an old gold mining town that now has an economy based on government, salmon and cruise ships. After the tour, we went to their fabulous home which overlooks the city and its port...when John (who owns CycleAlaska, a bicycle tour business that caters to the cruise industry) arrived home, we had a truly gourmet dinner of halibut stuffed with crab, shrimp and brie.
Tuesday, after a great breakfast of individual omelettes, double smoked thick sliced bacon and juicy melon, we hiked a trail across from their home that leads about 2 miles through the rain forest. In the afternoon, we drove to the Mendenhall Glacier, just a few minutes from Juneau, and hiked the 3.5 mile East Glacier Loop. I have no idea how much elevation gain there was but it was a lot and all though the green, green, green rain forest of tall trees hung with ornaments of pale green moss and an understory of skunk cabbage and Devil's claw.
After our hike, we met PA and visited the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery, a non-profit company that produces enough salmon fry to stock Alaska's streams in an amount sufficient to allow Alaska to legislatively outlaw farmed fish...every salmon from Alaska is wild! It was really incredible to watch the large sockeye salmon struggle up the fish ladder crowding in to chutes where the eggs and sperm are harvested. The eggs are fertilized, incubated until the tiny fry can be nurtured to a size large enough to stock many of Alaska's streams. Coincidentally we had succulent barbecued sockeye salmon for dinner.
This morning, Wednesday, John took us down to the Norwegian Sun to meet two of his guides and a passenger from the ship. After driving up the to Juneau ski area, we boarded cycles for the 9-mile Ski to Sea tour. Somehow I thought this would be easy but it's been a very long time since I rode my 3-speed bicycle and this was a 27-speed cycle! With a very wobbly start, I finally got control and we were off for a good ride and lots of exercise. PA met us back at the Sun and we were off to visit the Glacier Gardens, a fabulous botanic garden that incorporates both the rain forest and a greenhouse filled with baskets of petunias, fucias and begonias. For dinner tonight, it was the Island Pub...great!
Tonight, actually tomorrow, we leave on the 1:15 ferry (yes we have a cabin) for Skagway arriving at 8:15 AM, then the bus (departing at 8:45 AM) to Carcross then home to YOW. We'll probably stay Thursday and Friday nights at Wolf Creek then we're off to Dawson Creek, Eagle, across the Top of the World, into Chicken, Tok ad then Fairbanks. We've come about 3,000 miles in 16 days and have about 3,500 miles to go to Seattle and 66 days to do it in...that means lots of adventure and side trips...stay tuned!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
July 30, Juneau, Alaska
The trip gets better and better (except, of course, for the incredibly limited access
Map from Edmonton to Juneau and then to Dawson City, Yukon
View Larger Map
Above is an approximate map of our travels from Edmonton to Juneau...the only portion that's "off" is that we went north from Edmonton to Lesser Slave Lake (large body of water north of Edmonton) and then west to the British Columbia border which is Dawson Creek. From there the map is essentially correct.
View Larger Map
This second map is from Skagway which we reached from Juneau by taking the ferry and then on to Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Friday, July 25...Watson Lake, Yukon Territory
Amazing...we're now in the Yukon Territory...absolutely beautiful, huge rivers, forested (spruce and aspen) mountains but to get the Internet we need to stay in a not so beautiful RV park. Oh, well.
But since Dawson Creek, we've stayed in three perfect Provincial Parks...Buckinghorse River, Stone Mountain and Muncho Lake. Every single site was right on the water with gorgeous views everywhere. While at Stone Mountain we took our first "real" hike...about 7+ miles up to Flower Springs Lake above treeline, nestled at the bottom of three large mountains. The most incredible part is that we saw no one else!
The roads have really been good and the traffic almost nil...not at all what we expected. We make pretty good time, about 250 miles/day. We've seen a couple of grizzly cubs, a black bear, several moose, lots of stone sheep and several caribou. Pretty easy to spot along the road because they trim back the forest for several hundred feet on each side.
But since Dawson Creek, we've stayed in three perfect Provincial Parks...Buckinghorse River, Stone Mountain and Muncho Lake. Every single site was right on the water with gorgeous views everywhere. While at Stone Mountain we took our first "real" hike...about 7+ miles up to Flower Springs Lake above treeline, nestled at the bottom of three large mountains. The most incredible part is that we saw no one else!
The roads have really been good and the traffic almost nil...not at all what we expected. We make pretty good time, about 250 miles/day. We've seen a couple of grizzly cubs, a black bear, several moose, lots of stone sheep and several caribou. Pretty easy to spot along the road because they trim back the forest for several hundred feet on each side.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Monday, July 21, Dawson Creek, British Columbbia
We've made it to Mile 0 on the Alaskan Highway! and will be off in a few minutes.
But the trip getting here has been wonderful. After leaving Drumheller, we made a long drive up to the northwoods of Lesser Slave Lake and camped for two nights in one of Alberta's great provincial parks set in the boreal forest on the shore of an absolutely huge lake...about 74 miles long. Mostly families and fishermen in the other sites but lots of space in betwee. For the first time we really felt like we were on vacation complete with campfires morning and night. Of course, night doesn't really start until about 10 PM!
We've found Canadians to be very generous and so pleasant...two stories: 1) yesterday we were looking for diesel, one station was closed due to a power shortage so we drove into UFA which turns out to be commercial and members only! Two guys were there to fill up, noticed that we looked a bit "lost" and offered to put our gas on their card. It came to 63 liters at $1.15/liter (a deep discount for commercial members) so they said "make ist 50 l and we'll call it even!" 2) last night I was doing laundry at the Mile 0 RV park, talked with a woman who'd noticed our "Just Married" sign and as I was walking back to YOW, she stopped me to give me a bottle of wine for celebration!
Well, time to run down to the grocery store to load up on fresh veggies and hopefully some dry ice to keep our store of fish and meat frozen. We've discovered that dry ice is a very uncommon commodity!
But the trip getting here has been wonderful. After leaving Drumheller, we made a long drive up to the northwoods of Lesser Slave Lake and camped for two nights in one of Alberta's great provincial parks set in the boreal forest on the shore of an absolutely huge lake...about 74 miles long. Mostly families and fishermen in the other sites but lots of space in betwee. For the first time we really felt like we were on vacation complete with campfires morning and night. Of course, night doesn't really start until about 10 PM!
We've found Canadians to be very generous and so pleasant...two stories: 1) yesterday we were looking for diesel, one station was closed due to a power shortage so we drove into UFA which turns out to be commercial and members only! Two guys were there to fill up, noticed that we looked a bit "lost" and offered to put our gas on their card. It came to 63 liters at $1.15/liter (a deep discount for commercial members) so they said "make ist 50 l and we'll call it even!" 2) last night I was doing laundry at the Mile 0 RV park, talked with a woman who'd noticed our "Just Married" sign and as I was walking back to YOW, she stopped me to give me a bottle of wine for celebration!
Well, time to run down to the grocery store to load up on fresh veggies and hopefully some dry ice to keep our store of fish and meat frozen. We've discovered that dry ice is a very uncommon commodity!
Friday, July 18, 2008
July 18, 2008, 7:15 AM...Drumheller, Alberta (NE of Calgary)
We're 1,332.9 miles north and slightly west of Yatahai in the little town of Drumheller, known for its incredible dinosaurs...models of dinosaurs are everywhere including one that's 80'+ standing astride the Chamber of Commerce building. But we didn't come here for the dinosaurs, we came for the well-treed RV park built along the Red Deer river that has Internet access. We've discovered that Internet access is challenging, sporadic at best and therefore frustrating! That's a long way of saying our blogs will also be sporadic!!
Our second camp was along Canyon Ferry Lake, a huge (30+/- miles long) reservoir created by daming the Missouri River just east and a bit south of Helena, Montana. With our own private beach, a stack of driftwood and a roaring fire, it was perfect...exept for the voracious mosquitoes! Listerine was a wimp and only Cutters and our mosquito head nets would do...so I gave you bad advice last time.
Wednesday we made it across the Canadian border (1,015 miles from home) without incident, stopped at the Milk River (a town) visitor center and discovered there was a Provincial Park just a half hour east. Luckily, we got one of the last sites in Writing-On-Stone PP, really private, nestled on the banks of the Milk Rive and complete with a young buck. Writing-On-Stone has been a very spiritual place for the First Nations (most recently Blackfoot) for thousands of years. The stones are mainly soft sandstone that has been eroded over time into fanciful "hoodoos". Because the stone is soft, it was also used to create pictografs and petroglyphs...the largest collection in all of the northern plains.
Thursday our "route" (quotation marks because we definitely don't have a pre-planned route!) took us though southern Alberta. Incredible dryland farms of alternating fields of wheat (now a soft green) and yellow sweet clover spread to the horizon, occasionally dotted with farm houses and buildings surrounded by private forests of pines...almost no fences and definitely no trash along the roadside. Our guess is that being a legume, the clover fixes nitrogen into the soil making crop rotation very beneficial.
Today, we'll probably get west of Edmonton on our way to Dawson Creek, a town just across the border into British Columbia and mile 0 of the Al-Can Highway!
Our second camp was along Canyon Ferry Lake, a huge (30+/- miles long) reservoir created by daming the Missouri River just east and a bit south of Helena, Montana. With our own private beach, a stack of driftwood and a roaring fire, it was perfect...exept for the voracious mosquitoes! Listerine was a wimp and only Cutters and our mosquito head nets would do...so I gave you bad advice last time.
Wednesday we made it across the Canadian border (1,015 miles from home) without incident, stopped at the Milk River (a town) visitor center and discovered there was a Provincial Park just a half hour east. Luckily, we got one of the last sites in Writing-On-Stone PP, really private, nestled on the banks of the Milk Rive and complete with a young buck. Writing-On-Stone has been a very spiritual place for the First Nations (most recently Blackfoot) for thousands of years. The stones are mainly soft sandstone that has been eroded over time into fanciful "hoodoos". Because the stone is soft, it was also used to create pictografs and petroglyphs...the largest collection in all of the northern plains.
Thursday our "route" (quotation marks because we definitely don't have a pre-planned route!) took us though southern Alberta. Incredible dryland farms of alternating fields of wheat (now a soft green) and yellow sweet clover spread to the horizon, occasionally dotted with farm houses and buildings surrounded by private forests of pines...almost no fences and definitely no trash along the roadside. Our guess is that being a legume, the clover fixes nitrogen into the soil making crop rotation very beneficial.
Today, we'll probably get west of Edmonton on our way to Dawson Creek, a town just across the border into British Columbia and mile 0 of the Al-Can Highway!
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
July 15....west of Billings, Montana
I've just learned that trying to find a hot spot can be frustrating, i.e. these blogs may be few and far between. Right now we're in a Wal-Mart parking lot and Harley's off to find a tuna Subway.
When I was climbing into YOW at 7:53 AM on the 14th, I was greeted with a large sign Harley had taped to the back: "Just Married...July 1973...headed for Alaska!" We've had lots of honks and waves along the way...great fun!
Yesterday was a beautiful drive through northern Colorado and on up to Buffalo, Wyoming just south of the Montana border. We camped (yes, even with a 31' fifth wheel) at the Bud Love Wildlife Habitat Management Area...7,800 acres tucked in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains. The setting was gently rolling hills coverred with grass upto my knees and dotted with white mariposa lilies, yellow sweet clover and occasional blue hare bells. It really looked like the Microsoft screen saver.
After a short hike into Bud Love, we set up YOW, rolled out the woven mat and the awning and enjoyed a cold tonic, some walnuts and the beautiful peaceful view. Then after a nap, we popped the champagne, dined and then went back out to celebrate with a sparkler. BTW, there were a few mosquitoes so we tried out a perimeter spray of Listerine and it worked perfectly!
When I was climbing into YOW at 7:53 AM on the 14th, I was greeted with a large sign Harley had taped to the back: "Just Married...July 1973...headed for Alaska!" We've had lots of honks and waves along the way...great fun!
Yesterday was a beautiful drive through northern Colorado and on up to Buffalo, Wyoming just south of the Montana border. We camped (yes, even with a 31' fifth wheel) at the Bud Love Wildlife Habitat Management Area...7,800 acres tucked in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains. The setting was gently rolling hills coverred with grass upto my knees and dotted with white mariposa lilies, yellow sweet clover and occasional blue hare bells. It really looked like the Microsoft screen saver.
After a short hike into Bud Love, we set up YOW, rolled out the woven mat and the awning and enjoyed a cold tonic, some walnuts and the beautiful peaceful view. Then after a nap, we popped the champagne, dined and then went back out to celebrate with a sparkler. BTW, there were a few mosquitoes so we tried out a perimeter spray of Listerine and it worked perfectly!
Friday, July 11, 2008
Greetings, Friends & Family!
We'll be taking off in YOW (Yatahai On Wheels, our 31' fifth-wheel RV which is towed by our 2003 Dodge 3/4 ton truck) early (6 AMish) on July 14, 2008 (believe it or not, our 35th wedding anniversary!). More or less daily, we'll be adding posts to let you know where we are, what we're seeing and what we're doing (well, at least most of what we're doing!). This will be a 10,000 +/- mile trip with no agenda other than to wander through Alberta, British Columbia (norther parts), the Yukon Territory and Alaska, plus some northern states necessary to get there and back.
With any luck/persistence, I'll even figure out how to transfer digital photos from my camera to this blog!
We do look forward to sharing our adventure with you.
P.S. Should you want to communicate directly, we'll have our cell phones (303-619-1455 Gail, 303-877-2786 Harley) and my laptop (Gail@Boulder-RealEstate.com) with us. However, I suspect that there will be may areas where we won't have reception.
With any luck/persistence, I'll even figure out how to transfer digital photos from my camera to this blog!
We do look forward to sharing our adventure with you.
P.S. Should you want to communicate directly, we'll have our cell phones (303-619-1455 Gail, 303-877-2786 Harley) and my laptop (Gail@Boulder-RealEstate.com) with us. However, I suspect that there will be may areas where we won't have reception.
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