Alaska Experiences

Chena River State Campground is near the center of Fairbanks. We have water and electricity, and there’s a sanitary dump available. We even have access to WIFI. Here’s our home away from home; a lovely park.

This pizza place was in a strip mall near the campground. Good Pizza!

 

We did some caching, but also had to take care of the car … the battery kept losing its charge. We had it checked in Montana, and all checked out, but alas, it wasn’t going to make it the entire trip!, got new battery  

We traveled to the Denali RV Park about 5 miles from the entrance to Denali National Park and Preserve. We were advised to go to the Wilderness Access Center just inside the park to make reservations for a bus trip into the interior of the park. Private vehicles are allowed to drive only 15 miles into the park and the Eielson Visitor Center is 66 miles (and an 8 hour trip) into the park … we wanted to see as much as we could and not leave Paco for any longer than necessary. He was really happy to see us when we returned … and we got him on a walk as soon as possible!

Wilderness Access Center at Denali National Park and Preserve.

Lots of parking at the Wilderness Access Center … and this was primarily the RV parking lot. The car lot was just as big and very full!

We arrived as requested to board the bus that would take us to Eielson Visitor Center. 

 

View of the inside of the tour bus.

Our bus driver a lovely young woman; she works at the park during the summer and at a ski resort in Anchorage in the winter … busy and enterprising lady.

This is as close as we got to some of the wildlife.

 

A red fox … part of the wildlife we did see (and were able to get a decent picture!).

Display at the Eielson Visitor Center. The day was a bit overcast and the clouds low so we couldn’t clearly see Mt McKinley from the Center.

 

 

We bypassed Anchorage enroute to the Kenai Peninsula. Homer and Seward are located on the peninsula. Alaska has some wonderful recreation areas. We stayed here as a base so we could see Homer one day and Seward the next day.

 

We stopped at a turn out where you could see the Cook Inlet …

Here’s Jerry looking in the viewer … set up for handicapped viewing!

 

This picture is as we were standing to the left of the viewer.

 

 

This view is from the right of the viewer.

Here are Debbie and Paco at the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center in Homer.

 

Jerry at the visitor center trail; it was named because the Beluga whales have been sited there often.

 

 

The Trail …

This is at the Cook Inlet … where the Kenai Peninsula is on the left and the mainland Alaska enroute to Anchorage is on the right. This picture was taken from the Seward Highway.

While we were at the Izaak Walton Recreation Park, we took Paco for a walk. When we leave the rig, we always lock it. We returned, and the key wouldn’t open the door. We tried everything and nothing would work. We had to use the front doors to enter and exit the rig for a couple of days. When we arrived in Anchorage on a Friday, we only planned to stay one or two days; we stayed three.  

On Saturday, we phoned several repair places to find out if anyone could help with the door latch/lock. We were told our best option would be to wait until Monday. We did … and called as soon as possible. We found an RV shop that had the exact lock we needed. They said they would help us get the door open and we could replace the lock. 

Well, you know nothing is easy! It took two men (plus Jerry), multiple tools and power tools to get the door lock assembly off! It was a good thing we weren’t going too far that day!

We finally were enroute from Anchorage to Glennallen AK. This is the Matanuska Glacier.

 

Caching in Glennallen …

 

 We saw this log cabin while fueling the motorhome … roof could use a mowing!

 

Lot of rock graffiti … interesting!

 

 

Beautiful scenery … and handsome husband too!

 

 

Seasons change and in the higher elevations, the colors were already beginning to show their colors.

 

To be continued …

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Experiences

We traveled back to Tok Alaska began our trek toward home. We traveled the really bad Yukon part of the Alaska Highway again … ugh!

We decided to take the western route home (the eastern route is the one we took through Alberta CA). The highway we were on was called the Cassiar Highway. There were several Provencial Parks where we were able to camp for one or two nights. The picture below is at Boya Lake Provencial Park. What a view from our dinette window!

Same campground … looking down on our rig. The lake is behind the trees to the left.

Just a little sample of the wildlife at the campground.

The next Provencial Park we visited, Kinashan Lake Park, where we took a little trip in the car to visit Jade City. Great gift shop, lots of lovely Jade!

 

 

From Kinashan Lake Park we traveled to Stewart BC on the Glacier Highway. This is the only port that is ice-free in British Columbia. 

We stopped at a commercial park we knew of in Stewart, Bear River RV Park. I think it is the only commercial park there! We were really lucky to get their last spot that day. We wanted to stay at least two days longer but they were completely booked; we asked at the office and they told us about the Municipal Park in Stewart. Here’s the sign; we thought the name coincidental since the street we live on is the same! It’s a really nice park, electric with water available (but not at each site), nicely shaded with lots of space between sites, and there was WIFI! A real treat!
  

Our rig at the Rainey Creek Municipal campsite ... just like home!

We took a drive to see Fish Creek to see the bears fishing for salmon. We discovered that the bears usually only fish between 6 and 10 am and 6 and 10 pm … we missed them!

Bear crossing the street in Hyder AK.

 

Here we are at Fish Creek. You can see the clouds in the background … they were quite heavy and it was difficult to see the tops of the mountains.  

Crazy people in the rain with their cameras, etc., just waiting for that perfect picture of a bear snagging a salmon! We didn’t want to wait!

 Here is a picture of the bridge and people with creek in the foreground.

 

Bear display at Fish Creek … just look at those claws!

 

While we were in Stewart, we celebrated my birthday … significant because now I can receive my social security benefits! There are only two restaurants in town, and the one we elected to try was called Silverado Café and Pizza. From the name, you can already guess that the cuisine was not of the best quality, but it was tasty. Jerry had Salisbury steak and the veggies looked OK … at least not mushy. He said his meal was good. I had a burger … it was good. I don’t like it too rare, and this was definitely not rare (even a bit crunchy on the edges). Paco did like the leftovers, though.

Hyder Alaska is next to Stewart and to get to Fish Creek we had to enter Alaska, and then back into Canada. This border checkpoint had only 2 lanes and both were busy! Rush Hour!

This is the wall of falls … the glaciers are melting and the water cascades down to the creeks. It’s really beautiful and very soothing to listen to.

 

This is the Bear Glacier.

Single lane bridge … yield to oncoming traffic!

This is next to the single lane bridge … looks like it needs fixing!

From Stewart we traveled to Smithers BC but couldn’t stay at the campground we chose … there was a caravan. We stayed in the city and left for Prince George BC.  

Our park of choice was Sintich RV Park. Fortunately, we were ahead of the caravans, so we were able to stay three days. We did some caching and enjoyed the city. The park is about one-half to two-thirds mobile homes, and the rest RV spaces. We were fortunate to get the site at the end of the line farthest from the entrance. Much quieter with lots of space for Paco to wander! 

We camped at another Provencial Park, Lac La Hache, where we stayed two days and did some geocaching.  We then traveled through Hope BC, and are finally back in the US!

We plan to see family in Portland, and perhaps some friends in Nevada City, then it's the last leg of our trip home. 

 



We've arrived in Alaska!

The RV park we contacted near Edmonton was the Kinsmen RV Park in St Albert Canada.  We stayed four nights and planned to spend some time at the West Edmonton Mall (also called West Ed Mall).  We arrived Thursday 07.26.12 after quite a rain and thunder storm, so the ground was a bit wet and muddy.  We had some rain in Calgary as well as enroute to Edmonton.  It seemed that the rain followed us!

On Friday, we made our way to West Ed for a look around.  The West Ed is the largest mall that we’ve seen, the largest on North America.  The mall in Minnesota is very large as well, and about to be expanded, but still smaller than the West Ed.  We were there about 3-1/2 hours … which was more than enough for Jerry!  I looked forward to going back on Saturday!



 Follows are a couple of pictures of the inside of the mall. 

 

An amusement park ride with lots of loops on this rollercoaster. 

Near the 2^nd floor entrance 23 is a platform above a garden below.  Quite unexpected!

It was interesting to see that a time capsule was done … can you imagine the differences between 1983 and 2033? 

On Saturday, Jerry took me to the mall and he did some errands.  He dropped me off at 11 am (at entrance 23 since we knew how to get there easily) and picked me up at 3:30 pm.  I had a wonderful time browsing all of the stores, so many different from the stores in the US, as well as many of the different “legs” of the mall.  I swear you could get lost very easily in this mall!  I didn’t buy much, but it was very fun to look at all the stores and watch all of the people!

On Sunday, we took Paco with us to do some geocaching.  We’ve worked out a system where I drive, Jerry navigates, and Paco gets on whatever lap he can until we get to the cache.  Once we arrive, I take Paco on his leash and we follow Jerry.  I use my iTouch for the geocache details to help us locate the cache.  We were able to get several caches, but the mosquitoes were out in force.  We were swatting like crazy (we forgot to get the spray on) and finally could take no more.

While we were caching, we passed this sign on the St Albert River.  We don’t see signs like this in the Southwest, that’s for sure!

On our last day, we happened to see this balloon near the campground.   

Our next stop was at Sherk’s RV Park in Valleyview Alberta.  I thought the name was a take on Shrek, but found that it was the last name of the owner … oops!  It was a lovely park, not many amenities (not that we would be taking advantage of them for one night), but quiet.

  We arrived in Dawson Creek and found our park.  We took a drive through town and found the Mile 0 marker.

We discovered that this was the 70^th anniversary of the building of the Alaska Highway.   There was a historic military convoy planned through Canada and Alaska for 4100 miles and 27 days, leaving Saturday, 08.04.12.  We wanted to be sure and be on the road before they got started!  Jerry talked with someone who would be participating; they said they came of the East Coast in their vehicle at 35 mph!  I can’t imagine driving 35 mph for thousands of miles!

We were locating a geocache in Dawson Creek and were surprised to find it inside the Alaska House Museum.  When I asked if we could look inside, the lady at the desk said sure.  I went out to get Jerry, and when we got inside and went toward the cache, there was another geocacher just finishing up.  It was nice to see other geocachers in this area!  They had a great display and history of the building of the Alaska Highway.  

Fuel in Canada is decidely more expensive than in the US.  The conversion is confusing to me, although Jerry can do it in his head.  We saw one station, that was advertising $1.859 per liter … that converts to $7.05 per gallon!  The most we have paid is $5.50 per gallon in Fort Nelson, British Columbia.

From Dawson Creek we traveled to Pink Mountain British Columbia for one night at the Buckinghorse River Wayside Provencial Park (like a state park).  When we arrived, there was one car parked and a camper that was leaving.  I think there were about 30 campsites.  We saw someone painting the picnic tables and asked who we paid for the night.  He indicated he didn’t think it would be a problem if we didn’t pay, so we tossed the pay envelope in the trash.  Then, after dinner, a ranger came by; he took US dollars and we were OK for the night.  Here’s our campsite at Buckinghorse Wayside Provencial Park.  It was really quiet; we could hear the river just behind us bubbling along. 

  

We find that it’s fun to camp in State or Provencial parks occasionally; you get to see some really beautiful country and it’s usually away from towns and a lot of traffic.  In one park, at Muncho Lake, the campground was very difficult to find.  We stopped at the Museum and asked for directions.  The lady there said she could give us directions, but didn’t think anyone was there or taking care of the park.  Well, we found the park, the gates were open, and so we went in.  She was right; it was in a state of such disrepair, that we had a difficult time finding a space that would work, i.e. a pull-through. 

On our way to the next stop, we were warned that there might be bison on or near the road … they were certainly right!  This one was just meandering across the road!

We were able to get a picture of a calf.  His coat is a light brown color, but looks like he will be as big as the rest very soon!

 

We noticed that the trees showed signs of disease … here you can see the brown among the green.  We also signs of reforestation and some of the trees were the same height which made me think the area had been harvested and replanted.

A little further along the road we saw this strand of unblemished trees.  Yes, they really do exist!

I enjoyed looking at the cloud formations and took a lot of pictures from the rig as we were traveling.  There are too many to include here, but I wanted to share one or two.

Here we are at a rest stop alongside a big rig … we are just a little rig with the car towed behind! 

Our next stop was Northern Rockies Motel and RV Park at Muncho Lake, BC.  We’d been having cloudy weather for several days, but the clouds were really low here.  We had rain starting and stopping several times during the evening.

I wondered who was responsible for the upkeep of the Alaska Highway … this sign provides some of the answer!

We have decided it is a VERY LONG road to Dawson Creek from the US border.  It seemed to take forever to get somewhere as the road was usually 2-lane undivided.  In some instances the roads were in the process of being repaired.  I do understand that the only time the repairs can be done is in the summer, but it can make traveling difficult.

The worst road was through the Yukon.  We learned that during the winter these roads can wash out so they have to be practically rebuilt every year.  This produces a patchy, uneven, gravelly surface that is difficult to travel.  And we have to look forward to this road on the return trip!  Ugh!

From Muncho Lake, we traveled to Teslin Lake Government Campground, then to Burwash Landing (Dalan Government Campground).

With all of the road construction, the motorhome and car were an absolute mess!  The car was so muddy when we arrived at Tok AK it looked brown instead of green; Jerry had to take it to a car wash!  We found that there is now a crack in the windshield and one of the headlights is out.  Just a bit of maintenance to look forward to! 

Tok was much smaller than I anticipated … the population is only about 1700.  There were several RV parks, gas stations, one larger food market, and one restaurant.  There were other businesses, but not many!  Even the independent laundry was closed so we had to use the facilities at the Tok Village RV park.  It worked out OK … the machines were really efficient.

We headed toward Fairbanks and stopped in Delta Junction.  We have officially completed the Alaska Highway! 

We opted to stay at the Chena River Campground near the center of Fairbanks.  We have water and electricity, and there’s a sanitary dump available.  We even have access to WIFI.  We’ve done some geocaching and driving around getting to know the area.  We’ll be here for several days, then it’s toward Denali National Monument and Anchorage.