Alaska 2014 Week 4

Alaska 2014  Week 4

June 16, we headed North on Canada 16.   We saw a big grey fox on the side of the road.  Jim suggested going to the Flying J at Hinton.  Larry said he wasn’t going to comment one way or another on that idea after the last Flying J in Calgary haha.  But we found it right outside Hinton.  It sure is a far cry from our Flying J’s in the U.S.  It had a dirt parking lot and no Denny’s.  It’s actually affiliated with Shell gasoline.  After getting our fuel at Flying J, we continued on Canada 43 West.  We got our first windshield ding and we weren’t even on a gravel road yet. Bummer!

                       

June 17, Continuing Canada 43 West to Dawson Creek.  We will get on the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek. The beautiful mountains are gone but we are going through beautiful farmland in British Columbia.  We also ran into construction to widen the road for about 10 miles.  However, the construction was to the side of the road, and the highway was just fine. We spent the night at a Walmart in Ft. Saint John. Before we bedded down for the night we visited the Ft. Saint John Museum and watched a video about the highway and toured the museum itself.  They had some wonderful artifacts from people who lived in the town from back in the day.  It was very interesting.  I fixed dinner in the motorhome and after we ate, Jim decided he wanted to get ice cream so we found the dairy cream and treated ourselves and the dogs to ice cream. 

June 18, we continued on the Alaska Highway and had a good day for spotting wildlife.  We saw mule deer, a female moose and 4 black bears. That evening we stayed in a roadside pulloff.  We had a waterfall on the right, and mountains on the left!  It was a very peaceful evening.  Except when we pulled into the pulloff it was pretty bumpy and one of our cabinet doors flew open and our dishes and bowls came tumbling out on the floor and 4 of our 8 bowls broke all over the floor.  Thankfully my Aunt had given me these heavy duty plastic bowls years ago and they survived the big turn-out.  Thank you Aunt Sheila!

June 19, Continuing on the Alaska Highway proved to be another great day for spotting wildlife.  We saw our first bear about 1 minute into our trip.  Then about 5 minutes later we saw another one trying to get into the garbage can on the side of the road at one of  the roadside pulloffs.  Then Mem saw two bears laying down in the grass on the right of us in a ditch.  I missed those darn it.  Then we came upon  a herd of mountain sheep.  We kept seeing the mountain sheep for several miles and it was pretty amazing to watch them skim along the side of the mountain.  That evening we stayed at the Liard River Hot Springs Campround.  As we were setting up our RV a black bear ran through the park I couldn’t believe it.  Anyway Liard River is where they have these wonderful hot springs.  So once we got settled, we drove across the street where the hot springs were and enjoyed a nice relaxing afternoon in the hot springs.  When we got back to the campground we were told that there was wifi in the lodge, so we took or laptops and ipads over to the lodge and got on-line for awhile.  For some reason I could not get on-line with my laptop so I couldn’t do much with my blog.  As we were walking back to our RV, we saw the biggest buffalo I’ve ever seen walking thru the park.  Jim decided to get up close and personal to get a picture.  He got within 20 feet of it.  I couldn’t believe it.  The buffalo looked pretty mean but he didn’t seem to bother Jim.  Thank God.

June 20.  Another great day for wildlife.  The next morning we dumped our tanks and got on the road about 7:15an,  As we were leaving the Campground, a herd of  buffalo including a few babies were walking down the road in front of the campground.  Then we kept seeing black beans, 2 grizzly bears, Larry saw a moose, 4 buffalo and (two were fighting).  In the last three days we have seen a total of 20 bears so far.  The last time we came to Alaska we saw a total  of 4 bear on the whole trip and three of those we had to use binoculars to see them.  This trip so far has been unbelieveable.  We stopped at Watson Lake today and hung a sign with our name and city and state and of course we had to document it with a picture.  We have been impressed with the fact that the Alaska Highway has been paved all the way so far.  But today we ran into some stretches of gravel.  The first stretch of gravel was 3 miles long.  So we were thinking this isn’t so bad.  Then we ran into another stretch of gravel and wouldn’t you know a pickup truck came barreling down past us and we got another ding in our windshield, this time it was on my side.  So it looks like we will be getting windshield work done in Whitehorse.  We hit one more stretch of gravel road today.  It was 7 miles long.  Thankfully no dings while traveling that stretch.  Ten years ago when we traveled this road, I’d say at least a fourth of the 1400 miles was gravel so we are pretty happy to only get this much; otherwise the road has been great.  We are spending the night in a roadside pullout again.  It is a wonderful spot overlooking a lake and a snowcapped mountain in the background.  We met a biker (as in bicycle) who stopped by for a short break.  He told Jim he is riding from Prudo Bay, Alaska to the Southern part of South America.  He said he is averaging 60 miles per day.  That is probably 25,000 miles.  Jim thinks he’s ridden about 1500 miles already.  So far today we have driven 4400 miles; only 600 miles to go to get to Alaska!

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June 21 We made it to Whitehorse, Canada today.  We are staying at the High Country RV Park.  We are going to stay two nights here.  Jim and Larry went and washed our tow vehicles.  They were filthy dirty.  We also got our windshield dings on our motorhome repaired too.  We ended up having three of them.   Lucky for us as we were setting up, Larry noticed a guy repairing a motorhome across from us and let Jim know so Jim went over and asked him if he could fit us in and he came over and repaired ours tonight too.  So we won’t lose any time tomorrow having to wait around getting that done.  The lady in the office told us this is the longest day today there will only be 3 hours of darkness today.  Jim says it won’t be a problem for him, he is really tired daylight or not, he will sleep good tonight.  After seeing all that wildlife the last three days, we didn’t see any today.  We did see two porcupines though.  They are really weird looking.  We are looking forward to staying put for a couple of days and doing some sightseeing.

Alaska 2014 Week 2

   

June 2, We left Presho, SD and had a pretty busy day.  We headed for the Badlands, SD.

On the way, we stopped to see a Prairie Homestead located at the entrance to the Badlands park.  We’ve gone by there many times and always wanted to stop and check it out so today was the day that we did.  It was pretty interesting.  It was an actual house lived in by an actual prairie family.  Even though it was extremely rustic it had a homey feeling to it.  From there we went on to the Badlands.  We have been here many times before but this time we discovered they have wooden walkways to the best spots to take pictures.  It was great not having to climb up the mounds to get the good shots.  From the Badlands we drove to Wall.  We stopped in the town for ice cream and soda and visited a few of the shops.  We mainly wanted to show Wall to Mem and Larry.  You can’t come thru Wall without stopping.  From Wall we went to Sturgis, SD.  We went to our regular campground, the No Name City Campground.  We have stayed here many times for Bike Week.  Unfortunately, the campground has been sold 2 times since we first started coming to the campground.  Jim and I were good friends with the original owners and really enjoyed our time at this campground.  We would stay a month at a time and became like family.  The second owners seemed very nice but they didn’t even last a year.  We have no idea what happened to them.   The new owners seem nice and his father use to own a campground close by and now own a diner outside of Sturgis and he is helping his son with No Name so I hope he makes a go of it.  We really like this Campground and would hate to see it close down.  We stayed a few days here and visited a few of the Black Hills must see places

June 3 we visited Mt. Rushmore.  We visited the Borglum museum first to get the history of why Borglum chose the site and the presidents he chose to carve.  Then we are lunch at Keystone at one of the saloons.  We then went over to the monument.  I love the side view of Washington.

June 4  We went to Deadwood and met up with friends that we met at No Name City during Bike Week about 3 years ago for lunch.  We had a wonderful time catching up with Ken and April and hope to meet up with them again in Las Vegas next winter.  I have to give Ken credit for teaching me how to be a better motorcycle rider on these black hills in SD.  He sketched out the hills on paper and showed me where I needed to position my bike when I took the corners on the hills and I tell you I became a much more confident rider after that year riding up here in the Black Hills.   After lunch, we took the trolley tour over to see Wild Bill Hitchcock’s grave and some other points of interest in Deadwood.  Then we took a ride through Spearfish Canyon and took pictures at the Bridal Veil Falls.

June 5  We drove to Devils Tower.  It was disappointing.  It was a cloudy day and you could barely see the tower.  We went into the visitor’s center and picked up some brochures and tried to kill some time waiting for the clouds to clear up but it only cleared a little.  Mem, Larry and Jim walked up the walkway a little ways to see if they could see anything but it never did clear up enough to see it.

June 6  Jim has always wanted to see Custer’s last stand.  Needless to say that was our next stop.  The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument was very interesting.  We watched a very informative video and then went out onto a covered patio and listened to a Park Ranger interpretive program “Battle Talk”.  The Park Ranger has studied Little Bighorn Battle for over 20 years and was very informative.  He is a college professor during the winter months and a park ranger during the summer months so it was quite a treat to get his version of the battle.  The thing that I could hardly believe was that LTC Custer was known for always being lucky on the battlefield so when he got orders to go battle with the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Little Bighorn he was so sure of his victory he invited his family members to come along to see his victory.  And the end result was that he and all of his soldiers and family members met their death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.

We spent the next two days working out way through Montana to Glacier National Park.

Alaska 2014 Week 3

On 9 June we headed out for Glacier National Park following I89N.  As we were going to check in we found out that the Road to the Sun was closed down after about 2 miles in.  We were pretty bummed about that.  We were going to stay at St. Mary’s Campground but Larry didn’t like the looks of any of the campsites; he was worried about getting TV satellite reception and Mem and Larry wanted WiFi so we went to a Campground that had WiFi and full hooks across the street from the Glacier National Park called Johnson’s RV Campground.  It turned out to be a little pricey at $50/night but the people were very nice. It was up on a hill and had an awesome view of the Glacier Mountains and the lake below it so we all agreed the price was well worth it.

The next morning (10 Jun) we headed toward the Chief Mountain Border Crossing into Canada which connected to the Cowboy Trail (Canada 22).  Both Jim and Larry were a little nervous going through the border crossing because they were going to check their shotguns thru.  They completed all the appropriate paperwork before hand but at the campground there were some stories going around about people having difficulties getting through the border crossings.  So they were prepared to go to the next crossing if they had any problems.  Both Jim and Larry felt that it was a case of one of those stories “that get bigger with the telling” but they were still concerned.  Well we got to the border and it turned out just fine.  Their paperwork was in order, and the two border control officers couldn’t be any nicer.

We stayed on the Cowboy Trail and stayed the night in a town called Longview and stayed at the Tails and Trails Campground.  It was a very small town.  After we got set up, we walked into town, mailed some postcards and went to the saloon which also serves as the café, and laundry mat and had a piece of pie and coffee.  The campground was full of prairie dogs and our dogs were going crazy trying their best to catch them.  I think those prairie dogs were tormenting the dogs, they kept coming up out of their holes and screeching and as soon as the dogs would see them they would go down and pop out of another hole.  Baxter was fascinated by them and determined he was going to catch them.  It was so funny.

Jun 11 we headed to Banff.  Larry decided he wanted to get gas at a Flying J in Calgary.  It looked pretty easy to get to by looking at the map.  So we got off the Cowboy Trail and went through the city traffic.  I started teasing Larry; here we left this beautiful terrain to get in this city traffic to save how much money?  Anyway we finally got to Banff and got

setup in the Banff National Campground.  We drove downtown and got the lay of the land for touring tomorrow and then we went over to the Starbucks and we all got on the internet and had an enjoyable afternoon drinking coffee and updated our blogs and facebooks,

Jun 12, we took a day trip to beautiful Lake Louise.  This turquoise lake never ceases to amaze me.  It gets its beautiful color from the Victoria Glacier that reaches toward the shoreline.  We decided to have lunch at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.  It was a beautiful hotel.  The prices were very high so we opted to eat at the deli which was also high but we were there and we were hungry and after all it was the Fairmont Chateau.  We will probably never have the opportunity again. Haha!

June 13, we are still in Banff.  We were going to ride the Gondola today to the top of the Sulphur Mountain.  Its one of the highest mountains in Banff.  But it rained all day and when it finally stopped the clouds were so low we wouldn’t have been able to see anything so we decided not to pay the $45 just to look at the clouds.  We went back to Starbu

cks and drank coffee and got on the internet again.  Then we went for dinner.  We went to this restaurant called Wild Bill’s Legendary Saloon.  Jim misread the menu and thought one of the items said Horse Pecker Burger, when it actually said Horse Packer Burger.  We all got a good laugh out of that one.  Anyway, Jim and I order the Horse Packer Burger and it was really good.  After dinner we strolled around the various stores and had a very nice evening.

June 14, we left Banff on Canada 93 North for Jasper National Park.  On our way, we stopped at the Columbia Icefield Glacier Experience which is about an hour and a half south of Jasper.  We got to explore the Athabasca Glacier.  We boarded a massive Ice Explorer bus with giant rubber wheels and rode right up onto the glacier.  It took about an hour and 20 minutes to do the trip.  The wheels of the bus are about 5 ft high and 4 ft wide they are huge.  The guy told us the part of the glacier that we rode on was as deep as the Eiffel tower is high.  It was an awesome experience.   

We also experienced the new Glacier Skywalk that just opened up 2 weeks ago.  It is a fully accessible cliff-edge walkway that leads to a glass floored observation platform 918ft. above the Sunwapta Valley floor.  It was an awesome feeling to walk out on this glass walkway and look down.

By the time we got to the Jasper National Park Campground (Whistlers Campground) they only had dry camp sites available.  It’s a busy weekend because of the Skywalk opening this week.  So we took it even though we were hoping to get full hook up.

Alaska 2014. Week 1

We left home May 27, 2014 and headed for Clarksburg, WVa.  We spent the night at the Clarksburg Walmart and visited Jim's sister, Sandra and her husband, Ronnie.  Of course we had to stop and get some WVa TLC hotdogs and some pepperoni rolls.  So needless to say, we had hotdogs and pepperoni rolls for lunch and dinner for a few days while on the road.

From Clarksburg we continued on to Indianapolis, Indiana to meet up with Mem and Larry Halstead who are going to Alaska with us.  They were visiting their daughter and her family before they left on
their big trip.  Their daughter invited Jim and I over for dinner and we had a nice evening visiting with their family.  We were all camped at the Indianapolis Fairgrounds which was very convenient to their daughter's house.

The next day we headed out to Elkheart, Indiana to visit the RV/Motorhome Hall of Fame Museum.  It was very interesting to see how the motor homes evolved over the years.  It also made me appreciate the Motorhome I have now versus having gone in 1816 haha!  We camped in the parking lot at the museum.

From Elkhart we went to Amana, Iowa.  This is a quaint German community and we stayed at the Amana RV Campground and went to the Amana village and had a delicious German dinner.  Jim surprised me and even he ate German food.

The next stop was Mitchel, SD.  There we visited the famous Corn Palace.  The Corn Palace gets a new design every year designed entirely of corn cobbs.  Unfortunately for Mem and Larry they were in the process of scraping all the corn off the building and getting the building reading for the new design.   We went inside and watched the movie to learn the story of how and why the Corn Palace was built.

We left Mitchel and were riding along when Larry calls Jim on the CB to tell us we lost the canoe we were carrying.  Jim looks in the RV camera and sure enough there was no canoe on the top of our truck.  We pull off the highway and here comes Mem and Larry dragging the canoe along the shoulder of the road.  The rack we were carrying it on was broke all to hell from the high winds.  We were thankful it did not hit the Halstead's RV or anyone else for that matter.  With the rack being broken we had no way of taking the canoe with us so Jim and Larry carried down the embankment and left it there.  It was dented up in the back and Larry saw a place on the front that could possibly be a small leake but it still would be a could canoe for someone going by with a pickup.  We continued on to a campground in a little town of Presho, SD.  Jim and Larry took our truck to get our tail lights welded that broke when the canoe rack broke and other than that we had a nice evening