The Adventure of a Lifetime

Well, we have been home a few days and have settled back into our routine.

When it was all said and done, we drove 4,093 miles, visited Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska,.

We saw some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen.  Pictures just don't do it justice. 

Picture yourself with this view surrounding you as far as you can see.  Fresh air, quiet, birds singing, and a glass of wine.  

  You can almost hear the water running down the river.

The wind is blowing through the trees and all you hear is the soft russtle.

We saw black bear, grizzly bear, wolf, elk, moose, reindeer, musk oxen, owl, fox, porcupine, buffalo (bison), bald eagle, many other species of birds and beautiful plant life.

We tasted elk, buffalo and reindeer.  As they say, "when in Alaska, do what the Alaskans do".  We had to at least try it.

Towards the end of our trip, there was 22 hours of daylight, so while sleeping was difficult, we were able to spend much of the daylight hours enjoying our surroundings.  

Even the airport in Anchorage had an interesting lobby exhibit.

 
 I won't complain about California gas prices again.  We were paying upwards towards $6.00 per gallon in some places in Canada.  When we got into Alaska and saw $3.89, we were thrilled.

I thought I would try to figure out how many miles per gallon we got, but with Canadian gas in liters and mileage in kilometers, and some times the maximum gas purchase was capped at $150, in the long run I guess it really does not matter.   We would have purchased it no matter what and drove to the same places.

Thanks for reading my blog.  This post just took me about 10 minutes, and other blog posts took between 2-3 hours.   What a difference.

Until next time.......  Gaylene and Tom

June 4

I posted June 2, 3 and 4 as separate post because of all of the pictures.  Go down to June 2 for the blog that I did today.

June 4

A little late now for Tom to be checking the map for our walk yesterday.  We did end up walking along the highway at some point.   Don't ask.

We left our beautiful campground this morning.   To head back to Anchorage. 

 

Say this "food storage locker" at the campground with the sign next to it.  I guess it is a high frequency to chase off the bears and other animals.

 

Loved the wild flowers

 

 

We are back at the Creekwood Inn campground in Anchorage.  This was the mud pit we passed on earlier this week

Its basically a parking lot along a very busy street, next to a motel under the same management,   Luckily there is only one other RV here.   We are finishing up laundry and packing everything up today.   Total we went almost 4,100 miles.  I will recap the trip when I get home. 

Flights look good for us tomorrow,   There are still 30 seats available, so we should make the flight at 2:07 p.m. arriving home about 7:50 California time (Alaska is one hour behind).

I don't know if I will be able to blog from the airport, so this might be it until we get home.  Thanks for following our  adventures.  I will make the blog public when we get home, so others that could not access it can read it. 

Internet is so slow here I started updating this blog 2 hours ago.   But today, we have nothing but time.

See you  all soon.   Love Gaylene and Tom

June 3

June 3, 2014

We decided to continue on down the road, away from Anchorage.   We drove to Portage which has a Wildlife Conservation Center.  Again we were the only ones there for a while and took the free shuttle around the property with our own personal guide Scott.   We got out and he whistled for “JB” and a huge brown/grizzly bear came out of the trees to us,   He said Grizzly and Brown bears  are basically the same, but Grizzlies are near water and Brown Bears are inland.   They use these animals for commercials or they are being rehabilitated.  Some are too used to humans and would have to be put down so they are brought here to live out a comfortable life. 

 The buffalo are being bred so the heard can be reintroduced into the wild to repopulate.  Buffalo are one species that were once on the extinct list but are now plentiful.  

 After our bus tour, we were allowed to just walk around the park.  All the animals are behind fences.   We saw Wood Bison, bears, Elk, Sika Black-tailed deer, musk-0en, two Lynx, an Owl a bald eagle, moose, caribou reindeer and a porcupine.  It was a really cool place.  

 

 We headed towards Whittier where we had to wait in line to go through a tunnel through a mountain, the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel.   This is a one way tunnel, and runs every ½ hour.  It takes about 7- 8 minutes to drive through it.  Sometimes there is a train so both sides have to wait for the train to go through.  Whittier is a small town on a beautiful inlet.

  We had lunch at one of the two places open.  It is a fishing and site seeing town.  

 

 

 We are camping at the Williwaw United States Forestry Service campground at the base of the Middle Glacier.   The trail we took behind our camp site took us on the most fantastic view of the glacier. 

This was our trail and Tom is trying to convince me to go that way???

I had to remind him.....

and the fact no one knew where we were.

We bought fire wood and had a fire.  

Our views during dinner were sweet.

We were warned there was a stray Grizzly in the Park, so watch our food and don’t leave anything outside.   We did take our bear spray on our trail walk but it makes you think twice about walking alone on a trail.   The guy said he usually comes out in the evenings but since it never gets dark here, what the heck does that mean?

 

We are so glad we left Anchorage and were able to experience these wonders these last two days.   We will head back to Anchorage on Wednesday for our last night.  We turn the motor home in Thursday morning and head to the airport.   It has been a wonderful vacation.  I miss my family too.   There is no internet where we are camping Monday and Tuesday, so I will try to Publish this when we get back to Anchorage. 

 

June 2

June 2

We pulled into Anchorage and looked for our RV Park. When we drove past it, it look horrible.   It was raining all day,, but still, it looked like a muddy mess.  No grass, just dirt and mud.   We decided to do a Internet check and found another hopeful choice.  We drove there, but it was not a lot better.  At least it had full hook-ups and laundry.  We were due.   So we stayed there.  It was along a railroad track, and in an industrial area, but we were done driving for the day.  

The next morning I went to the office to buy some stuff and when I walked back to our RV, I opened the door and could not figure out why Tom had moved the rugs.  I stepped in and a man said “come on in”, and a lady said “hi there”.   I was in the wrong RV!!!!!  I jumped a mile and apologized profusely.   They laughed and said no problem.   Their motorhome was right beside ours, but the way they are parked, ours sat back behind theirs, and I could not see ours from the path.   Yikes.  That could have turned out bad.    (I was walking from the left and could not see our motorhome on the right)

We were going to go into Anchorage and maybe rent bikes or Segway’s or something, but as we drove through it, it just looked like another big City, so we decided to drive out of town to another campground, and boy,, were we sure glad we did.   We found the most beautiful road along the Seward Highway that had views of the mountains along the Cook Inlet.  

 

 We stopped at the Bird Creek State Park campground, and went for a 2 mile walk.  Saw the largest bald eagle, in front of a blue motel.   Those RVs on the side were their idea of an RV Park.  No thanks.  Looks like the Bates motel.

 We saw a row of mailboxes, but no houses in sight.  Must be for the motel?

We walked along a trail that went under the highway and came up near a river and a mountain they had cut into, to stop slide. 

This inlet forms from 3 distributaries to form Turnagain Arm and when the tide is low, the sand is like quicksand and many people die every year getting caught out on the dunes or when the tides come in, they are so strong that people drown. 

We were truly the only people on these trails, but we had our bear spray.  

On the way back, we had read that there were two brand new cabins for rent in the campground we stayed at, and we came across one.  We thought we would peak through the windows to see what it looked like,  but Tom tried the door and went in.  When I peaked through the window, he scared my life.  They just leave the doors open and you go pay at the pay station,, and a ranger comes through at night to make sure everyone has their ticket stub.  It’s mostly the honor system.

 

We boiled some eggs tonight.    I don’t know if it is the altitude or what, but they sure turned out funny.

 

Moving on down the road