Our Alaska Caravan - Week Six

Our last post covered the fifth week of our 48 day Alaska caravan and finished with us in Tok, Alaska. This chapter will cover the seven days of Week Six.

Wednesday, August 19 - Day Thirty-six. Our stay in Tok, Alaska was brief - one night. Today we rose early for a long 225 mile drive to Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory, Canada. The section of official “Alaska Highway” from Tok, Alaska to Whitehorse, YT, was the section that we bypassed four weeks ago when we took the Top of the World Highway from Whitehorse to Tok. We were advised by our wagonmaster that most of the highway from Tok to Destruction Bay was built on permafrost and subject to major damage and frost heaves. He said that only the Top of the World Highway (which was only dirt) was worse than the road to Destruction Bay. We set out at 8:00 a.m. and quickly found that he was right, this was pretty much a 40 mph max road. After a little less than 100 miles we came to the Alaska/Canada border and the Canadian customs station. After the grief we got when we crossed into Canada the first time in June, we expected to have to answer a lot of the same questions again. The lady there didn’t even ask for our passports. She asked how many people we had in the vehicle, where were we from in the States, and were we on our way home. She then waved us right through. Not everyone in our party was quite so lucky. Vernon and Peggy got sidelined into a secondary inspection and they went though all his under storage and his Jeep. They didn’t look inside the coach though. They did take all the firewood he had stored underneath the coach. I guess they don’t like wood being moved from place to place because of the bark beetle problems and other insect pests. Vernon has no idea why they only picked on him.

Other than the road being very bumpy and rough, the trip was pretty uneventful. We didn’t see any wildlife and it was cloudy and occasionally rainy for the whole trip. We got into the RV park in Destruction Bay about 3:00 p.m. which wasn’t too bad considering the roads. The RV park was OK, water and 30 amp electric only. Destruction Bay is a very small (pop 130) community located on the shore of Kluane Lake. Kluane Lake is the largest lake in the Yukon Territory at over 150 square miles. The lake is very pretty and is nestled in a valley between two mountain ranges. We were going to be at the park for two nights. After everyone got in we had a brief get-together in the park’s dining room with the owner of the park, Loren. Loren told us the story of how he came to Kluane Lake in 1967 from the Vancouver area and fell in love with the area. He bought the Destruction Bay Lodge which was the first roadside lodge in the area after the Alaska Highway was built. He has been building it up and improving it ever since. He seemed to be a very nice guy. He explained that the Kluane Lake area was one of the coldest inhabited areas of the Yukon and that temperatures in the minus 40 range in the winter are very common. He said that they get very little snow because of the nearby mountain ranges, but that these same mountains also create strong winds which can blow 70 or 80 mph for days at a time. These winds were what gave the town the name Destruction Bay. He also said they had a lot of moose, bear and other wildlife in the area, although we never saw any.

After the meeting we all headed back to our rigs to relax. Although he was serving a hamburger special in the lodge that night, we elected to eat at home for the first time in a long time. Jackie fixed some of the halibut cheeks we had in the freezer. The cheeks are supposed to be the gourmet part of the fish and is the area right behind the gills. She just cooked them in garlic and butter and they were wonderful. If the rest of the halibut is as tasty as the cheeks, we are in for some good eating for a long time to come. After dinner is was time to relax and chill from the hard drive of the day.

Thursday, August 20 - Day Thirty-seven. Today was one of the rare sleep-in days of this caravan. We had no scheduled activities until later in the evening. Loren was serving breakfast in the restaurant, but we didn’t want to get cleaned up and out in that big a hurry. We had a relaxed morning, ate lunch, and then got in the car and

explored a little around Destruction Bay. We drove to the local museum and cultural center where we had free admission because we were staying in Loren’s RV park. This was a small but very nice museum. This whole area is a “First Nation’ community, which is the US would be an Indian reservation. In Canada they don’t have designated reservations for their native peoples, which they call First Nations People, they just have communities. The museum had a lot of wildlife displays, photos and a lot of cultural information on the local First Nations. After the museum tour we drove around for a while and checked some of the side roads along the lake. The government has provided some very nice housing for the First Nation in this area. We had hoped to find a cache or two in the area, but there was only one cache anywhere near Destruction Bay and it was 30 miles South.

We went back to the coach and caught up on some chores for the rest of the afternoon. One of the local artisans was putting on a wood carving class for interested members of our group. They were making willow walking sticks. We already had walking sticks so we didn’t have any interest in carving another one. This same artisan had some of his burl wood carvings and other work on display in the store. He is very talented and created some very pretty, although expensive, items. At 6:00 p.m. we had dinner served in the restaurant and cooked by Loren. This dinner was provided as part of our tour. Loren had cooked a large roast and then had three different side salads as well as rolls and butter. The food was excellent and there was plenty of it. After dinner we had our travel brief for the next day’s travels and then Loren and his friend Tim entertained the group. It seems that they are part of a local band and also write and record some of their own music. Surprisingly, they were quite good. They did about a two hour show with mostly songs, although Loren did read some poetry that he wrote as well. We ended buying one of their CDs after the show. After the show it was back to the coach to rest up for the next day’s trip to Skagway, Alaska.

Friday, August 21 - Day Thirty- Eight. Today’s drive was to be one of the longer one’s of the trip - 272 miles. However, our wagonmaster assured us that the worst of the roads was behind us now and we would only run into occasional rough roads or frost heaves. We headed out at 7:30 a.m. headed South on the Alaska Highway. Shortly after leaving Destruction Bay we hit one area of construction where they were building a new bridge and we had about a half mile of VERY bad road, but after that we were able to do 55 mph most of the time. About halfway through the trip we reached Whitehorse, YT, which was where we had veered off to the top of the world. We have now officially driven every mile of the Alaska Highway! We have now earned the “I Survived the Alaska Highway” bumper sticker. After Whitehorse we headed off the Alaska Highway onto the Klondike Highway which leads down to Skagway, Alaska, our destination. Although the road remained pretty good, the weather started getting pretty bad. The last 60 miles into Skagway we started climbing the Alaska coastal mountain range and the rain and fog got really bad. We crossed over the US border at the summit of White Pass, about 3500 feet and the fog was so thick you couldn’t see more than 20 feet in any direction. Fortunately, there was not a lot of traffic on the road and what traffic was on the road was driving very carefully as well. The border is actually at the top of the summit, but the border stations are located on either side, the Canadian station about 10 miles North of the summit, and the US station about 10 miles South of the summit. We arrived at the US customs inspection station and again got through with little hassle. He checked our passports, asked us if we bought anything in Canada, and then passed us through. The only worrisome part was getting though the new vehicle scanning station they had installed. They have these huge metal gateways you have to drive your vehicle through so it can be electronically checked. The gates were only a couple of inches wider than the coach and I had to really creep through to ensure we didn’t scrape the sides of the coach.

After customs it was a 25 mile drive down the hill to the seaside town of Skagway, Alaska. Our RV park is right on the waterfront, only a half mile from the cruise ship docks. We were able to look out our windshield and see the front of the cruise ship tied up at the dock. Skagway is a major cruise ship port and the wagonmaster told us to expect to see ships in there every day. We are going to be here for four nights. The town has a lot of history, particularly with regard to the Yukon gold rush. Nearly all of the prospectors headed for the Yukon in the late 1800's got there by coming to Skagway by boat and then walking up the Chillicot trail into Whitehorse. From there they could take a boat down the Yukon River to Dawson City where the gold strike was. The town is located at the end of a long narrow fiord so it is surrounded by tall mountain peaks. Unfortunately, the fog, mist and rain hid most of the surrounding beauty from us.

After everyone arrived and got settled in, a group of us from the caravan went over to one of the local waterfront restaurants for cocktails and dinner. I had a nice big bloody T-bone steak! I haven’t had the chance to have a nice piece of beef for a while and it tasted great. After dinner we went back to the coach for relaxation and bed because we had to get up early the next day for our next activity.

Saturday, August 22 - Day Thirty-nine. We had to be up and out of the coach at 7:30 this morning so we could catch our excursion boat. We only had to walk a few hundred yards from the RV park to the docks. We were taking the Fiord Express boat from Skagway down to Juneau, Alaska, 100 miles to the South. Juneau is the capital of Alaska and is located in Southeast Alaska in an area only accessible by boat or air. They have 90 miles of road in and around the town, but the roads don’t lead anywhere. We had visited Juneau two years ago when we took our Alaskan cruise. The boat we were on was a small, but nice catamaran with a very pleasant skipper. The weather was still very bad - it was raining and there was a lot of fog around. The boat shoved off at 8:00 and headed South towards Juneau. We saw Haines, Alaska as we went by, but we didn’t stop. Haines is only 30 miles from Skagway by boat, but is over 350 miles by road - plus you have to go through Canada to get there by road. The ride from Skagway to Juneau took about 3 hours but he made several stops for wildlife, eagles, sea lions, porpoise and even a humpback whale. We only saw the whale from a distance. On the way the captain talked a lot about the area and the history. It was a very pleasant trip.

We docked in a bay about 30 miles North of downtown Juneau, very near the North end of the road. There was a Gray Line bus waiting for us there to take us into Juneau. The bus driver, Tim, was very friendly and VERY talkative, a little too much so. It was still rainy and foggy and some us thought he should pay more attention to driving and less to entertaining the passengers. He dropped us off in downtown Juneau just after noon and told us we had three hours on our own and that he would pick us back up at 3:00. Several of us went to the Red Dog Saloon for lunch. We had visited the Red Dog on our cruise and thought it was kind of neat. I wanted to go again to get another tee shirt. The lunch was OK, nothing special, but I did get my tee shirt. After that Jackie and I went out in the pouring rain to find the one geocache that was located within walking distance of downtown. It took us a few minutes to find it and we got pretty wet, but we did find it and have a Juneau cache on our log. Yea! After that we went through a bunch of the shops, bought a few shirts and trinkets and just did the site-seeing thing. There were two cruise ships in Juneau at the time, so there were a lot of people milling around.

At 3:00 we were back on the bus and headed North out of downtown to the Mendenhall Glacier. We had also visited the glacier when were here on our cruise. It was still cold and rainy, so we only went into the visitor’s center, walked around, watched the movie and took a couple of pictures of the glacier from the comfort of the center. We had plenty of photos from two years ago and it hasn’t changed too much. We were at the glacier for an hour, then Tim picked us up and drove us back up to our boat for the trip back to Skagway. Tim the bus driver really started to annoy people with silly jokes, songs and poems. Most of wished he be quiet and drive. Once on the boat Jackie and I sat with three other couples from our group in the back corner of the boat and shared snacks and cocktails we had smuggled on board. We had a really nice three our trip back up to Skagway. Along the way we tracked a pod of humpback whales and got some really close looks at some of them as they breached the water. Very impressive animals. I wasn’t able to get any real good pictures because of the poor weather, but they were still pretty neat to see. We finally got back into Skagway just before 9:00 p.m. and were beat. The trip was enjoyable, but 13 hours of travel made for a long day. Back to the coach for rest and relaxation and looking forward to the next day.

Sunday, August 23 - Day Forty. Again we were up early for one of our organized activities. We left the coach at 7:45 a.m. to walk over to the White Pass and Yukon Railroad terminal for a train excursion up to the summit of White Pass, the same summit we drove over two days before. The railroad was built in the early 1900's to carry passengers and goods from Skagway, on the ocean, to Whitehorse, YT, on the Yukon River. From Whitehorse people and stuff could be carried all over the Yukon on riverboats. The railroad went out of business in the late 60's but came back as a tourist excursion operation in the 80's, although it now only goes about 30 miles from Skagway up to the summit and a few miles into Canada to Carcross, YT. Nonetheless, the 22 miles we would travel from Skagway (sea level) up to White Pass Summit (2,800 ft) was the most difficult part of the line to build, and also the most scenic. The railroad is narrow gauge and all the rolling stock is authentic. They have two early 1900's steam locomotives which are used occasionally, as well as a bunch of 1950's vintage diesel electric locomotives. Our group was fortunate enough to get an entire passenger car to ourselves, so we had plenty of room to move around and our own platforms on each end of the car for photos. However, the weather was still not being cooperative - it was raining, cold and foggy still. The ride up the hill was still fun - I love riding old trains, and there was still a lot of great scenery, even with the rain and fog. The fog was patchy enough that we got glimpses of the valleys and mountains, and the forest we were traveling through was very pretty. We saw a lot of waterfalls and creeks on the trip. On the way up to the summit we were in the first car behind the engines. After we reached the top of the hill, they unhooked the engines and moved them to the other end of the train for the trip down. That left us as the last car in the train, so we had great views from the back platform. The train actually went two miles into Canada to make the switch, so no one was allowed to leave the train while we were stopped at the top of the hill.

After the switch we went back down the same track, but you get a different view of the scenery when you see it from a different angle. The fog had cleared a little for the trip back so we got to see a little more. Although it only took about three hours, it was a fun train ride and we enjoyed it very much. After getting off the train we went to lunch in a little café in downtown Skagway with Vernon and Peggy, and then spent a couple of hours walking around Skagway, shopping and site-seeing. We stopped at the Red Onion Saloon, a fairly famous saloon and brothel during the gold rush years, for a drink and, of course, I had to buy a tee shirt. After a couple hours of shopping we went back to the campground for a few hours relaxation before our evening activities began.

After dinner we all carpooled into town to the Eagles Hall for a “casino night” and Soapy Smith Vaudeville Show. When you walked into the “casino” they gave you $100 play money bill to gamble with. The mock casino was one each blackjack table, roulette table, and craps table. These all had dealers. There was also a poker table with some chips but no dealer. Jackie and I sat down with Doug from our group and started our own game of Texas Hold’em. After a few minutes another man we didn’t know sat down and played with us. The casino went on for about an hour and then they ushered us into the theater for the show. It was a cute musical melodrama about Jefferson “Soapy” Smith, a famous con man who lived in Skagway in the late 1800's during the gold rush. He was finally killed in a gunfight with one of the other townsfolk. The whole story was acted out and it was pretty enjoyable. After the show we headed back to the coach.

Monday, August 24 - Day Forty-one. A free day! We got to sleep in and relax with our morning coffee without being pressured to get out and do something. We finally did get out and do our laundry, we had two weeks worth of dirty clothes because we just didn’t have the time to do laundry. After laundry we went back into town for lunch and then did some shopping. We had a nice relaxing day, but nothing special for a change. We did get together in the evening for a trip briefing for our next day’s travel to Teslin, BC and another pot luck fish fry. Larry fried up more halibut from the Seward and Homer fishing days and everyone brought a side dish. Betty made a wonderful halibut chowder. After a great dinner we rested for the next day's travels.

Tuesday, August 25 - Day Forty-two. Today was a travel day. We had a 160 miles to drive and got started about 9:30 a.m. For the first 70 miles or so we were back-tracking on the same road we took to get into Skagway. Fortunately, this time the sky was pretty clear and the fog had lifted so we were able to actually see the White Pass summit where the border between Canada and Alaska was. This was the part of the trip that was totally fogged in on our way into Skagway. We had to go through Canadian customs again and we got in without any problems - only the usual questions about guns and booze. The Canadians are really hung up on weapons and alcohol. As we passed through we noted that our wagonmaster, Larry, was off to the side with his coach being searched by the border agents. He said later that they even insisted that he put the slides on his motorhome out. I guess they thought that would revel some kind of little hiddy-hole.

After some very pretty scenery near the summit, we got back into the town of Carcross. When we had driven through on the way to Skagway we had seen the main street and it looked cute. We decided to stop on the way out, so we pulled off the
highway and parked. The town was originally called Caribou Crossing but at some point they shortened it to Carcross. The town is very small but was made famous as the point where the gold rushers who climbed over the White Pass finally got to a point where they could build boats and row down the lake and river system to Whitehorse and then Dawson City, where the gold strike was. The town also had a railway station for the train from Skagway, the same one we road on the day before. Carcross was the furthest that any of the excursion trains now run. The railbed and most of the rails still run all the way to Whitehorse, but Carcross is the end of the line now.

One interesting sight in Carcross was the old sternwheeler, the Tutshi, they had on display. The park service had put the boat up on shore and restored her in much the same way they had the sternwheelers in Whitehorse and Dawson City. However, a couple of years ago the boat caught fire and burned, leaving only a couple feet of the bow and all of the metal machinery on the ground.

After walking around Carcross for a while we got back on the road headed for Teslin. The remainder of the drive to Teslin was pretty uneventful. The scenery was mostly trees and hills and we didn’t see any wildlife at all. We arrived in Teslin and settled into the same park that we had been in on the way up the Alaska Highway. We had been in the park on day five. The park was OK, power and water, but no sewer at the sites. We were only going to be there one day, so it was no big deal. We had a travel meeting in the late afternoon and then settled in and rested for our next day’s journey from Teslin to Watson Lake, BC.

This brings us to the end of week six of our Alaskan adventure. Our next episode will cover the seventh and final week of our journey. Until the next time, live life to the fullest - remember that this is not a dress rehearsal.

Our Alaska Caravan - Week Five

Our last post covered the fourth week of our 48 day Alaska caravan and finished with us in Homer, Alaska. This chapter will cover the seven days of Week Five.

Wednesday, August 12 - Day Twenty-nine. Today was our halibut fishing day. We got up a 5:00 a.m. and we headed down to the dock at 6:10 a.m. At least it was a clear day, although it was still a little cool that early in the morning. The boat we were going out on was the Foxfire, a 50 footer. There were eleven from our group, two other adults and two young boys. The only crew was the captain and one deckhand. At least the boat looked clean and in good condition. We headed out of Homer harbor and were westbound out into the Cook Inlet. After about two hours the captain stopped the boat, set the anchor and shut down the engines. He said we were in about 130 feet of water and were about 36 miles West of Homer. On the way out the deckhand and captain had been setting up the rods with weights and hooks. The weights were three pound chunks of lead and the hooks were about two inches across. The rods were pretty short, only about four feet long, but very stiff.

Once the anchor was set everyone grabbed a pole, put bait fish on, and dropped the line over the side. We were bottom fishing, so you just let your line out of the reel until it stopped, then set the drag and waited. We didn’t have to wait long - within seconds of finding bottom, people started hooking fish. Jackie hooked onto something that she thought was big and struggled with the rod for about 10 minutes, but she couldn’t make any headway getting the fish up. She gave me the rod and I worked another 10 minutes to get the fish up. It turned out to be a whopper of a halibut. We later learned that it was a 90 pounder and measured 57 inches. It turned out to be the biggest fish of the day. People started pulling fish in left and right. Most were halibut, most in the 25 pound range. A lot of the smaller halibut got thrown back because the Alaska limit for halibut is two fish per person per day, so you only wanted to keep the larger fish. The only other thing that anyone brought in were a bunch of small sharks, called Spiney Dogfish. These were all cut loose.

I only had one small halibut that I had to throw back and no sharks. The other two halibut I hooked also turned out to be pretty good sized fish, both in the 60 pound range. Jackie also hooked another big halibut that probably went about 50 pounds. It turned out that we not only had the largest fish of the day, we had the most poundage of fish kept. After about three hours the weather started turning and the wind came up. We started getting five and six foot swells and the boat really started rocking. We were starting to have trouble just keeping our feet. Fortunately, just after the weather really started getting rough everyone limited out. The captain pulled the anchor and we headed back into Homer. Once the boat was underway it was a little smoother, although still pretty rough. Two of our group, Dave and Lindsey, really got seasick while we were out. Neither Jackie nor I felt sick and we even ate the lunch we had brought with us. The only problem I had was hand cramping. Because I had brought in all four of our large fish, my hands were locking up for about two hours. It really takes a long time to bring a 60 pound fish up over 100 feet.

While we were heading in the deckhand, Levi, was filleting the fish on the back deck. It was amazing how fast he could cut the fillets off of those halibut. The fillets were then bagged up and marked with colored ties. Everyone got the meat off of their own fish. Most people got one or two bags, some got three. We ended up with five large plastic bags of fillets. Once we got back into the dock the bags were taken up to the fish processing plant which was right near the dock. We dropped our fish off to be cut into portions (we asked for 1.5 pound portions), vacuum bagged, and flash frozen. We got in about 1:30 p.m and our fish would be processed and ready for us by 8:00 a.m. the next day. As it turns out, we had 118.9 pounds of halibut to be processed! The next closest amount was 57 pounds for one of the other couples. We were the big winners! Problem was, we had no where to put 120 pounds of frozen fish! This would be a problem for another day. After dropping off our fish we went back to the coach and crashed for the rest of the day.

Thursday, August 13 - Day Thirty. This was a travel day, but we were only going 92 miles North to Sterling, Alaska, so we didn’t have an early start. The first order of business for the day was to get out at 8:00 and head to the fish processor to get our halibut. When we dropped the fish off I had asked them to pack the fish into Styrofoam boxes to help keep them frozen while we solved the problem of what to do with it. What I found when I got there was two large boxes, about 18 inches tall and wide, and three feet long! Each one had almost 60 pounds of fillets. With our fish safely in the back seat of the Jeep, we packed up the coach and left Homer about 10:00 a.m. We didn’t make see any wildlife on the way and didn’t see too much scenery either because it was a cloudy, drizzily day. We were simply backtracking on roads we had driven to get to Homer three days earlier, so there was nothing new to see anyway. On the way Jackie and I discussed the fish issue at great length and finally decided that we needed to find and buy one of the five cubic foot freezer models we had seen during our earlier unsuccessful search for a smaller freezer. As it turns out, we were fortunate not to have found a 1.7 cubic foot model, because we would not have been able to get half our fish into it.

On the way to Sterling we stopped at the Fred Meyers store in Soldotna, about 12 miles South of Sterling. On our previous search we had seen 5 cubic foot freezers at Fred. Unfortunately, the Soldotna store was sold out. We continued onto Sterling and got settled into the park. Since it was only a one night stay, we didn’t set anything up so we were able to get out searching for a freezer by 1:00. Sterling was a very small town and didn’t have any stores that might have freezers, but Kenai was only 20 miles away and had a Lowes, a Home Depot and a Sears, all of which we knew carried the 5 cubic foot freezer model we wanted. Kenai was the largest town in the area, and also had an Elks Lodge. Lowes and Home Depot were sold out, however, the local Sears store had several! YEA! We gave the man $178 and drove off with a new chest freezer in the back of the Jeep. Once we had that major project finished, we headed to the Kenai Elks Lodge for a visit. The lodge was in the middle of town and was pretty nice and the folks were friendly. We chatted for a while with a couple who lived in Kenai in the summer and wintered near Laughlin, Nevada, at the Avi Resort. After a couple drinks at the Kenai lodge we headed back towards Sterling and stopped at the Soldotna Elks Lodge. We only had one drink and talked a little bit to the bartender. This lodge was not quite as friendly as the Kenai lodge. We were able to get lodge pins from both lodges.

We got back to the campground at 6:00 p.m., just in time for dinner. The owners of the park were boiling King Crab for our dinner and some of the group (the odd numbers) were bringing side dishes. Since we were odd (so some say) Jackie made here Wasabi cole slaw. They only had 20 pounds of crab for about 30 people (including the owner’s family) so we didn’t get a lot, certainly not an “all you can eat” situation, but I did get two good sized claws. With all the side dishes there was plenty to eat. The dinner was served inside in a little dining room, which was good because it had started raining pretty hard. After dinner Larry set up a game of card bingo for those that wanted to play. Jackie stayed to play while I went back to the coach to unpack our freezer and get it into the coach. We had decided to put it in the back of the coach in the “den” area. Doug, our tailgunner, helped me carry the freezer in. Fortunately, it wasn’t too heavy, although I did have to take the lid off to get it in the front door of the coach. I got it put back together and plugged in. We were going to let it run all night to cool down before we put the fish in. We had moved the fish boxes into the coach and they sure did take up a lot of space in the living room! We then relaxed the rest of the night, comfortable that we had solved the fish problem.

Friday, August 14 - Day Thirty-one. This was another travel day and we departed about 8:30 a.m. for Palmer, Alaska, about 180 miles Northeast. Palmer is actually only a few miles from Wasilla, which is North of Anchorage. This means that we will have already traveled all but about 30 miles of the road on this day’s trip. Prior to leaving Sterling we unloaded all of the halibut from the boxes into our new freezer. It filled it about three-quarters of the way, but we do still have some room for other stuff. Sure glad we got the bigger freezer.

Our travels today took us back North to Anchorage, through Anchorage and then East on the Glenn Highway, Alaska Route 1. As I mentioned, there was little new to see on this trip since we had driven most of it going the other way. We arrived in Palmer, Alaska about 2:30 p.m. This evening was the chilli cook-off for our group and I was cooking, so I had to get my chilli started. Once it was on and simmering we headed out for a visit to the Palmer Elks Lodge. We were only in Palmer for one night and we didn’t want to miss the Palmer lodge. We had heard a lot of stories about the lodge from other folks we know who have been to Alaska. The Palmer lodge was located about halfway between Wasilla and Palmer, and actually had a Wasilla mailing address. We found a very pretty lodge building located right on the shores of a large lake. The back of the building was all windows that looked out over the lake. There was also a very nice, large wooden deck on the back of the building. Unfortunately, although the physical lodge was very nice, the people that were in the bar, including the bartender, were not particularly friendly. We had one drink, got our lodge pin, and headed back to the campground for the chilli.

At 6:30 we gathered the group in the ramada and had chili. Four people, including me, had cooked chili. Three of our group had been selected as judges and they were kept sequestered as the food was set up so they wouldn’t know who brought what. The judges sampled each of the chili’s, and the unanimous judges choice for first place was.....ME! My prize was a gizmo that holds sunglasses on the visor of the car. All four chili’s were different. Betty’s was similar to mine, except she didn’t use tomatoes. Her’s was also fire house hot. Larry’s was also similar to mine without tomatoes, but he added corn. Linda’s was made with shredded beef and also included corn. I had made a double batch of my chili and when the party was over, all of my chili, and most of everyone else’s was gone. After the party we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Saturday, August 15 - Day Thirty-two. This was an early start day because we were driving 258 miles from Palmer to Valdez, Alaska. This was also the first time in almost a week that we would be driving on roads we had not already traveled. We got up and out about 8:00 a.m. on a very grey day. There wasn’t any real rain, but there was a mist that kept everything damp. We also drove through patches of rain, although nothing too heavy. The first 160 miles or so of the trip were nothing spectacular as far as scenery goes - pretty much more trees, rivers and mountains. Very beautiful to be sure, but nothing we hadn’t seen before. The last 100 miles were spectacular. The closer we got to Valdez, the deeper the canyon we were driving in got. The canyon we were in was not a wide glacial valley with sloping sides like most of the others we have been in the last few weeks. This was a narrow river canyon with rock sides that went straight up just yards from the road edge. All along the tops of the mountains on either side of us were small glaciers and the melt water, along with the water from the rain, was coming off the mountains in dozens of waterfalls. The clouds were also hanging very low on a lot of the mountains. It was a very beautiful drive.

About 25 miles from Valdez we came around a bend and were looking at the Worthington Glacier. This is a very large glacier that is relatively flat and low in the mountains. It also comes to within a couple miles of the road, so you can get a really good look at it. By the time we got to within 20 miles of Valdez the weather had moved in and the rain started. The final mountain pass into Valdez was almost fogged in and the sky over Valdez was very low. Fortunately, the parking spaces in Valdez, at the Eagles Rest RV Park, were easy access pull-though’s, so it didn’t take too long to park and get set up. We were going to be here for three days, so we put everything out. After getting set up we went to the Valdez Elks Lodge. The lodge was only a few blocks from the campground. Although we were in Valdez for three days, we knew we were going to be busy most of the time and we didn’t want to miss getting to the lodge. The lodge was very nice and the people there were very friendly. We had a nice chat with several folks, including a couple of commercial fishermen. We were able to get a lodge pin for our banner. After visiting the lodge we went back to the coach and had dinner on our own for the first time in many days. Jackie spent some time getting ready for her fishing trip the next day.

Sunday, August 16 - Day Thirty-three. We got up at 5:00 a.m. so Jackie could head out to go salmon fishing at 6:00. Several weeks ago we had told Larry we didn’t think we wanted to fish in Valdez since we were going in Homer. After we had gotten the freezer Jackie had mentioned that she would like to go since she wanted some salmon. The boats in Valdez were much smaller than the one in Homer so each boat could only take six people. Both boats were full and Linda wanted to go fishing, and I was ambivalent about fishing again, so I gave my spot to her. Jackie was looking forward to the trip because she had not been able to really fish in Homer because the fish were so big and so hard to get in the boat. Larry had told her that the salmon would be easier and more fun to reel in. We got Jackie out the door at 6:00 a.m. and I went back to bed for a couple hours. It had rained all night and was still raining quite hard. I took care of a bunch of chores around the coach and at 1:30 p.m. I drove down to the docks to meet the boats as they came back in.

Larry’s wife Evelyn told me when I got there that the first boat had already come back and that they had not caught their limit. She wasn’t sure how many fish the first group actually got, but they were a little disappointed because their captain didn’t want to take the boat very far out into the Prince William Sound. She also told me that the boat that Larry and Jackie and four others were on was finally on its way back and that their boat had caught their limit. Their captain had taken them about 30 miles out and fished until they limited out. When the boat finally came in the fishermen (and women) looked very happy - very wet, but very happy. It was still raining and had rained all day long. We took some pictures of them with their 18 very nice Silver Salmon. The salmon would be cleaned, cut packaged and frozen for us, just like the halibut was, and ready the next day. Jackie was very happy with her catch - she got to bring these fish in - and glad that she went on the trip. She was also happy to get back to the coach and into a nice warm shower. Within an hour she was crashed out on the couch and slept the rest of the night. I did attend the travel meeting for our travels to Tok on Tuesday. They had the meeting this night because we are scheduled to go on an all day boat tour of Prince William Sound tomorrow and they didn’t want to wait until late in the evening to have the meeting.

Monday, August 17 - Day Thirty-four. This was the day for our boat tour of Prince William Sound. We were up and out to catch the bus to the boat at 8:45 a.m., which is not too bad for this caravan. Almost like sleeping in. We boarded the Valdez Spirit at 9:00 and settled in for pretty much an all day trip. The boat was very nice, 76 feet long and fairly new, built in 2005. The weather at departure was drizzly and foggy. As we motored out of Valdez harbor the captain gave us a running commentary on Valdez. Valdez is the Southern terminus of the Alaska pipeline and was chosen because it is the largest all weather, ice-free harbor in Southern Alaska. The captain pointed out the oil terminal, which is located across the harbor from the town, and noted that before 9/11 you could do a tour, but now the terminal is locked down and they have a one mile security zone around it. He said if he strayed into the zone he could be subject to a $35,000 fine!

After cruising for about 2 hours we came to the Columbia Bay and started seeing a lot of floating ice. About 10 miles up Columbia Bay is the Columbia Glacier and all of the ice we were seeing was calved off of that glacier. We were only able to get within about 5 miles of the glacier before the ice pack got so tight that the boat could go no further. The color of many of the icebergs was the coolest blue possible. The whole ice pack was just spectacular. The captain explained that the reason the ice got stuck in the bay was that when the glacier retreated 50 years ago it left a shallow shelf at the mouth of the bay called the terminal moraine. Although most of the bay was four or five hundred feet deep, the moraine was as shallow as 60 feet. The larger ice bergs got stuck on the moraine and then blocked the rest of the ice trying to get out. You could just barely see the actual glacier in the distance, but the real sight was the pack of icebergs calved off of the glacier. One of the crew members fished a piece of ice out of the bay and passed it around the so the passengers could hold it and get their picture taken with it. It is amazing to consider that the ice you were holding could be 10,000 years old! Makes one feel sort of insignificant in the scheme of things.

After about a half hour in the ice pack we headed back out into Prince William Sound, working our way to the Meares Glacier. By this time the fog had started to burn off and we were able to take in the spectacular scenery around us. The whole sound is dotted with islands of all sizes, and many of them are really mountains that stick up out of the water. While we were cruising to the next glacier the crew served lunch. Lunch was very similar to the meals that airlines used to serve back in the 70's and 80's. It was a piece of chicken with an Alfredo sauce over rice with vegetables. Although served on a paper plate and clearly a “fast food” type of meal, it was pretty tasty. About the time we were done with lunch we arrived at the Meares Glacier. Unlike the previous glacier, the ice calving off of this one was able to get out into the Sound without getting hung up on the bottom of the bay because this glacier had not extended out into the bay so their was no shallow moraine for the ice to get stuck on. He pulled the boat up to within a quarter mile of the face of the glacier, shut off the engines and just let us float. We were able to watch the glacier calve a couple of times. Like the glaciers we saw two years ago on our cruise, the sound made when the glacier cracks and drops a piece in the water is like thunder. We really enjoyed our time watching the Meares Glacier. We were also able to see a bunch of harbor seals sitting on the various pieces of ice floating around in the bay.

After watching the glacier for about an hour we headed back out into the sound. The captain took the boat to the East shore and gave us a tour of the shoreline. We went by an area where the Stellar Sea Lions pull themselves out of the water onto the rocks. The sea lions were much bigger than the harbor seals we had seen earlier. They were very unconcerned about the boat and let us get in very close for some nice pictures. After watching the sea lions the captain took the boat a little further out into the Sound where a pod of Orcas (killer whales) had been spotted. We got to the spot and were able to watch a fairly good sized female and her calf playing around in the water. The captain then said that he had spotted a larger male a mile or so away and we headed out there. The male was swimming around, and like the sea lions, was pretty much uncaring about the boat being so close. We got some really good looks, and pictures, of the big Orca as he broke the surface. He was playing around in a pod of Dall’s Porpoise, which look a lot like Orcas - black and white - just a lot smaller.

After spending close to an hour with the Orcas we headed to the shoreline and the captain gave a nice tour of the shoreline. We saw several bald eagles and some spectacular scenery. On the way in we passed Bligh Reef which is the reef where the Exxon Valdez went aground back in 1989 and spilled 53 million gallons of oil into the Sound. He gave a great history of the accident and the resulting efforts to clean it up. We found the crew very nice. The captain looked to be in his 20's and was very funny to talk to. The passengers were allowed to go up into the wheelhouse with him anytime and we spent a lot of time up there. He also had a couple of crew that were pretty funny to talk to. Several of the ladies of our group - including Jackie - had fun engaging in verbal sparring matches with the crew. Ours is pretty much a wild and crazy bunch.

On the way back into Valdez harbor the crew came around and served a snack of clam chowder that was very good. All in all the tour lasted 10 hours and I would have to say was the best all around tour that the caravan has provided for us thus far on the trip. We had a great time. After the boat trip we got back on the bus and headed back to the campground. Jackie and I just crashed for the rest of the night.

Tuesday, August 18 - Day Thirty-five. We were packed up and ready to go at 8:00 a.m., ready to leave Valdez and head North to Tok, Alaska. The weather was very grey and foggy, but we headed out anyway. After a quick fuel stop we headed for Tok. Most of this part of the trip was the reverse of the route we took to get to Valdez. Fortunately, once we got through Thompson Pass about 40 miles North of Valdez, the weather cleared up. We had 270 miles to travel and the roads were pretty bad. A lot of frost heaves and damage, although not much gravel which is the worst. We arrived in Tok by mid afternoon. This was the first repeat stop for us, we had stayed in the same RV park on the way into Alaska, after our Top of the World trip. After getting settled in, we had a travel meeting for our next day’s journey back into the Yukon Territory of Canada. Tok was a one night stand for us. After the meeting nine of us went to a local restaurant, Fast Eddies, for dinner. We had a really good time, joking and telling stories. After dinner we went back to the coach and vegged for the rest of the night. This was a one night rest stop. Tomorrow we head back into Canada.

Well folks, that concludes this week’s adventures. Until next week we wish you great lives and much happiness. See you in a week!

Our Alaska Caravan - Week Four

Our last post covered the third week of our 48 day Alaska caravan and finished with us in Anchorage, Alaska. This chapter will cover the seven days of Week Four.

Wednesday, August 5 - Day Twenty-two. Although we didn’t have to get up too early, we did have an 8:45 a.m. gathering so we could car pool from the campground over to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. When we got there we found a very nice building on a large plot of ground. The center celebrates the life and cultures of the far Northwest native peoples. The building had an auditorium for lectures, a movie theater where they had several movies on the native cultures playing throughout the day, an exhibit hall, and a gift shop. Outside they had a large lagoon, and around the lagoon they had areas where there were demonstration “villages” for each of the five major native groups in Alaska. It sort of resembled a small, native version of Epcot.

Unfortunately, it was still raining pretty hard (it had rained all night), so we didn’t get to explore the outside exhibits. We did listen to a lecture describing the various native groups and their traditional lands and watched a demonstration of Alaskan native games put on by some young kids. The games were unlike anything I had ever seen and required great strength and skill. Two of the types of games required kicking at a small ball suspended up in the air. The kids had to jump up and kick the ball, which was about eight feet off the ground. We were quite impressed. We also watched a demonstration of native dancing which was pretty informative. After the demonstrations we toured the indoor museum exhibits.

After the museum Jackie and I went out for some lunch and then did some light shopping at Walmart and Fred Meyers. We didn’t really need any food - we haven’t been doing much eating in on this trip - but we did need some household items. We also checked a couple of places for small freezers, but were still not able to find any. After shopping we went back to the coach for a while. About 4:30 we drove to the Elks Lodge in Eagle River, a suburb of Anchorage. There is no lodge in Anchorage. We took Vern and Peggy, one of the other couples on our caravan, with us to the lodge. The lodge was in a large building, but the people there were not friendly at all. The bartender was borderline surly and acted like we were interfering with her day by being there. None of the other half dozen or so people in the bar said a word to us. We did get a lodge pin for our banner though. After a couple drinks at the lodge, the four of us went out to dinner. We first went to a Mexican café that we had seen while were shopping, but when we got close we saw it was more of a fast food type place. There were a couple of people in the parking lot and we asked them where a nice sit down type Mexican restaurant was. They recommended Don Jose’s, about a mile from our RV park. We went to this one and the food was Excellent. Most of the staff were Hispanic - in fact our waitress was originally from San Bernardino. The food tasted just like you would get in a nice Mexican place in California. I would highly recommend Don Jose’s on Northern Lights Boulevard in Anchorage for good Mexican food. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed for the rest of the night. The park had music in the rotunda again, but it was still raining and too cold to go out.

Thursday, August 6 - Day Twenty-three. Finally, a day when we didn’t have to get up for anything. We had a leisurely morning and then headed out to do some quick caching in Anchorage. It was still threatening rain, so we kept our searches to the easy, urban caches. We managed to find eight in about an hour and a half. After caching we went back to the coach for a while. We had a travel meeting at 4:00 and then a bus was going to pick us up for dinner and another show. The travel meeting was for the next day’s travel from Anchorage down to Seward. After the meeting we got on another ragged old bus and headed to South Anchorage for the Wild Berry Park. We went into the dining hall for another family style dinner, this one with ribs, halibut and chicken. They also had fried potatoes and cole slaw. The food at this place was not so hot. The ribs were tough, the chicken greasy and the halibut way over-cooked. I wouldn’t recommend the dinner here. After the dinner we went across the street to the gift shop, and then to a movie theater where we saw about a 30 minute documentary on Alaska. This was a very nice film, one of the better we have seen. After the film we went to yet another location at the park to see a one man show put on by Dusty Sourdough. I guess he was supposed to be a well known character and part time entertainer for Disney - Jackie and I had never heard of him. He sang a couple of songs and told a couple of stories about the gold rush. One neat thing is that he gave away prizes. If you got to the show early, you got a drawing ticket. We didn’t get a ticket, but he also had a question and answer session with the answers coming from one of the stories he told. I answered correctly and won a nice pocket knife with a polar bear inlay. All tolled, three of our group won prizes. After the show we bussed back to the campground and settled in for the rest of the night. When we got back to the campground we noticed that a very unique tour bus had parked very near our rig. We had first seen the bus in Fairbanks, but we didn’t get a photo. The company that runs these buses caters to European tourists and provides motorcoach tours all over North America. The buses are large 45 footers with only the front half dedicated to seating. The rear half is set up with a series of small sleeping booths. The photo shows windows on the side of the coach towards the back. Each of these is a sleeping compartment. On the other side of the bus they set up a staircase for access to the sleeping compartments. Everything else they do is outside. They always stop at campgrounds that have showers so that the tourists can clean up. This group was German. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Friday, August 7 - Day Twenty-four. This day marked the halfway point for the caravan. Doesn’t seem to have been that long. We left the park in Anchorage about 8:30 a.m. and headed South on the Seward Highway towards the seacoast town of Seward, Alaska. Shortly after leaving the city limits of Anchorage the highway started running along the shoreline of Turnagain Arm, a large inlet from the Gulf of Alaska. The scenery was magnificent as we drove along with mountains on one side and the bay on the other. Turnagain Arm has the reputation of having one of the largest, most aggressive bore tides in the world. A bore tide occurs when the tide starts to rise in a constricted area. It can create waves up to 10 feet high which move up into the bay from the Gulf of Alaska. The tide was already in while we were driving along the bay, so we didn’t get to see anything other than the beautiful water.

After about 70 miles we started heading inland across the Kenai Peninsula and found ourselves driving through a deep, winding canyon. Again the vistas were wonderful with many of the mountains topped with small glaciers. There are dozens of glaciers on the Kenai Peninsula. After driving about 130 miles we arrived at our RV park, Stoney Creek. Although Seward is a seaside community, our park is about 8 miles North and not on the ocean. We were in a valley, surrounded by ice topped mountains. The park was pretty nice, although it had no grass. The sites had full hookups and we even got one with 50 amp! They also had good WiFi and cable TV. We got settled in after the drive and had lunch, but we didn’t get to stay too long. About 3:30 p.m. everyone gathered and we car-pooled down to Seward to visit the Sea Life Center. The Center is the only public aquarium in Alaska. Although it wasn’t very large, they did have a number of very interesting exhibits and tanks. Not surprising, the emphasis was on salmon and arctic mammals like whales, sea lions and otters. We spent about 90 minutes in the Center then went out and walked a little around the downtown area. The Sea Life Center was located at the end of the main street, on the waterfront.

Seward is an interesting town. It is located on the West shore of Resurrection Bay and, although the town dates back to the late 1800's, many of the buildings within a couple blocks of the shore appear fairly new. That is because much of the town was wiped out in 1964 when the Good Friday Earthquake struck. The earthquake, a M9.2, was the largest quake ever to strike North America. The epicenter was in Prince William Sound, about 100 miles to the East of Seward. While the shaking, which lasted nearly 5 minutes, was bad, it was the Tsunamis caused by the quakes that wiped out Seward and many of the other South coastal Alaskan towns. The entire industrial section of Seward along the waterfront, canneries, docks, fishing boats and a railroad line, was totally destroyed. The Sea Life Center is built on the former location of the coal loading docks.

We had a chance to visit a couple of stores and then most of the group went to Christo’s Pizza, located right next door to the Sea Life Center, for dinner. Larry, our wagonmaster, had told us that they had the best pizza in Alaska. I have to admit it was pretty good. We took about half of it home for lunch the next day. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the night.

Saturday, August 8 - Day Twenty-five. Our itinerary once again had us up and out of the coach at 8:30 a.m. and loading a bus. The first part of the tour was a brief driving tour of downtown. Our driver, Whitey, has lived in the area since the mid-60's and was very knowledgeable about the history of the Seward area. After driving around town for a while we headed into the Kenai Fiords National Park to visit Exit Glacier. Kenai Fiords is a fairly new park, established in 1980, and covers a large portion of the lower Kenai Peninsula. The road to the Exit Glacier area only goes about 10 miles into the park, and is the only road in the park. Most of the park is accessible only from the sea. After we arrived at the visitor’s center we got off the bus and hiked about three-quarters of a mile to a point where we were only about 50 feet from the edge of the glacier. It was very dramatic and we got some really cool pictures.

After hiking back down we got on the bus and went to a small lodge where Whitey and his wife served us coffee and cookies and told us some stories of their Alaska life. In 1967 they were young and living in Oakland, California and decided that they could go to Alaska and make their fortune on the fishing boats. They didn’t have much money, so they hitchhiked all the way to British Columbia. There they met up with two other young hippie couples and together they bought a van and headed up the Alaska Highway. Whitey and his wife ended up living in an old trappers cabin high in the mountains above Seward. They told a couple of very interesting and entertaining stories about their pioneer life, including one that had them walking out in December, through the snow while his wife was in labor with their first child. Neither Jackie nor I could imagine living the way that they did, but they seemed to think it was the most wonderful time of their lives.

After the bus dropped us off at the coaches, we had lunch and then headed back into town to do some geocaching. Ernie and Linda, one of the other couples on our caravan, had expressed an interest in geocaching, so we invited them along. We found a total of six caches and they really seemed to enjoy the process. In fact, in two instances one of them spotted the cache before either Jackie or I. After caching we went back to the coach and got ready for the afternoon’s pot luck. Jackie fixed her enchilada casserole and it, along with all the other food, was great. We had a good time chatting and eating with the entire group. We also had our travel meeting for the next leg of our trip. We weren’t leaving until Monday, but many of the group were going to be gone all day Sunday on an optional fishing trip so they didn’t want to wait until Sunday for the travel brief. We elected to wait until we got to Homer, Alaska for our fishing trip. After the pot luck we rested the remainder of the night.

Sunday, August 9 - Day Twenty-six. Finally, we had a morning when we didn’t have to be anywhere! Today was one of our rare free days. We spent the morning relaxing and taking care of some chores. After lunch we headed into town to just walk around, shop, and do a little sightseeing. While downtown we stopped at Ray’s Restaurant for a drink and to check their menu. Ray’s had been recommended by several people as a great place to eat and we were planning to come down for dinner with some other couples. However, we found that they were already fully booked with reservations for the evening. The hostess said the bar was open seating, but didn’t know what would be a good time to come. When we later talked to some of the other folks about dinner we all decided to skip Ray’s.

About 4:30 we went down to the marina to wait for the fishing boat on which several of our party had gone fishing. They had left at 6:00 a.m. to go out and do some salmon and halibut fishing. Most of the rest of the caravan was waiting on the dock for the “fishing heros” to come in, and they finally did about 5:00 p.m. We were surprised at the number of fish they had caught. There were only six people fishing and they had caught about three dozen Silver Salmon (Coho’s) and maybe a dozen halibut, including a whopper that Gary reeled in. The boat’s captain estimated that Gary’s halibut was about 120 pounds. Needless to say, Gary was quite happy.

After greeting the returning fisherpersons everyone wandered off for their own dinner activities. Jackie and I went back to Christo’s where we had gotten the pizza a couple of days prior. The pizza had been so good we thought that the rest of the food would also be great. Not so much. After looking at the menu we both decided we wanted a seafood combo that included scallops - Jackie’s over rice, mine in pasta. The waiter told us they were out of scallops. The waiter told Jackie that the cook would “add extra shrimp and fish” to make up for the missing scallops, so she went ahead and ordered what she had been planning. I decided to go with a simple chimichanga. When Jackie’s dish came it had two shrimp and two little pieces of fish. Jackie said it was tasty, but was disappointed with the content. My food was also just OK, although I hadn’t really expected great Mexican food from a Greek/Italian restaurant. The waiter did take 15% off our check, but I still would only recommend Christo’s for the pizza. After dinner it was back to the coach to rest for our next day’s travel to Homer, Alaska.

Monday, August 10 - Day Twenty-seven. Our travel this day would take us from Seward, on the East side of the Kenai peninsula, to Homer on the West side of the peninsula. It was about 168 miles and we left about 9:00 a.m. so it wasn’t a real early start. Yea! The drive was very nice. The first 100 miles were through some forested river valleys with mountains all around. Very scenic. About 50 miles into the trip we spotted a small grizzly bear walking down the side of the road. All the traffic slowed and the bear seemed completely unconcerned with all the cars driving slowly by just a couple feet away. We got a good picture of this one. The last 35 miles or so were along the shore of the Cook Inlet, a large bay that goes all the way up from the Bering Sea to Anchorage. We stopped for lunch at a rest area that overlooked the inlet and the mountains on the other side. Across the inlet, about 50 miles or so, were several of the more active volcanos in South Alaska, including Mt. Redoubt which had a minor eruption only about six months ago. Unfortunately, the haze was too bad and we couldn’t see the mountains at all. We have to come back this way when we leave Homer, so I hope the air will be clearer then.

We arrived in Homer about 1:30 and settled into our new home, Heritage RV Park. This was, by far, the nicest campground we have been in since starting the caravan. The park is located on the Homer Spit, a sliver of land that extends about five miles out into Kachemak Bay. The spit is only about a quarter mile across and is pretty much all marinas, campgrounds and commercial properties. We didn’t see any houses on the spit. Our park is right in the middle of the spit and you pull into your slot so you are facing out on the bay. We have full 50 amp hookups, cable and Wifi and a killer view. This is a very nice place. After everyone got in and set up, many of us went to the charter agency to pay for our planned activities while here in Homer. About 10 of us, including Jackie and I, are going fishing on Wednesday. This is an all day boat that goes out quite a ways into Cook Inlet. It is primarily halibut grounds and it is not unusual to pull 200 to 300 pound halibut out of these waters. Homer bills itself as the halibut fishing capital of the world. On Tuesday a bunch of us are going to Seldovia, an old Russian fishing village across the bay which is only accessible by boat or air. We had to pay for these two trips as well as get our Alaska fishing licences for our Wednesday trip. With all the people crowding into the building it took about an hour to get everything done.

After taking care of our advance reservations, Jackie and I headed to the Homer Elks Lodge. This was a very nice lodge with a location overlooking the Cook Inlet. The bartender was pretty friendly and we also struck up a conversation with another couple at the bar who were from California, Karen and Dean Kiel. They are also touring Alaska in an RV, but they are on their own rather than with a caravan. Dean was an Elks Past District Deputy and Past California State Elks Vice President, He gave us one of his DD pins. They were a very nice couple. After a couple of drinks we headed back out on the spit to visit the Salty Dawg Saloon. This is a kind of Homer landmark which we knew we just had to visit. The outside of the building was old wood and there was a lighthouse tower on the roof. When we went inside we found a fairly small bar, very dark with low ceilings and lots of noise. Shades of Oatman, Arizona, the inside of the bar was covered floor to ceiling, and across the ceiling, with signed dollar bills! Of course, we had a drink and hung one of our cards and a signed dollar. I naturally bought one of their tee shirts as well.

While we were in the bar Doug and Linda, our caravan’s tail-gunners, came in. They told us that they had gone to the Elks, but missed us and figured we would be at the Salty Dawg. While we were sitting there was also another couple at the table who were from Colorado, which is where Doug and Linda are from. They were tent camping across Alaska! They said that on the spit they were sleeping in their SUV because the wind was too cold. Seems to me all of Alaska is too cold for tents, but to each their own! After finishing at the Salty Dawg the four of us went to the Fresh Catch Café, a restaurant on the spit which had been recommended to us by the bartender at the Elks. I finally got the scallops fettuccine that I wanted a couple days ago and it was wonderful. All of the food was great. If you’re ever in the area, I would highly recommend the Fresh Catch Café on Homer Spit. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the remainder of the evening.

Tuesday, August 11 - Day Twenty-eight. We were able to sleep in a little today because we didn’t have to catch our tour boat to Seldovia until just before 11:00 a.m. There were about a dozen of our group who were taking the tour, so we headed down to the dock and boarded a 70+ foot tour boat. Seldovia was a little over an hour across the bay. There are no roads going to the village, which we were told was originally a native village, then a Russian fishing village, and now a semi-native village. There is a tribal government in the town, but there is a mix of peoples. The weather was perfect, the seas were very slight and the tour boat took about two hours to get to the village because the Captain did a little side trip through some islands to do sightseeing and wildlife viewing. We went by Gull Island which is home to about 30,000 water birds. We also saw a number of otters, including a couple of large ones which let the boat idle right up close to them for photos. We also saw a couple of Bald Eagles.

After just about two hours we arrived at the boat harbor in Seldovia, population 282,. The first place we went was a restaurant called the Mad Fish, which was right off the dock. We were there with two other couples from our group, Dave and Connie and Laverne and Dorothy. Jackie and I only had hamburgers, but they were very large and very tasty. We found out later that Peggy and Vern had gone to one of the other restaurants in town and were not as happy, with either the food or the service. After lunch we walked around the town and were a little disappointed. Based on what we had been told about Seldovia, we expected to see some Russian shops and maybe some cultural or historic points of interest. There was nothing remotely Russian about the place and the only points of interest were a small visitor center (which did have some interesting exhibits) and an old abandoned Russian Orthodox Church up on a hill that was not open to visitors. The town was not even touristy, in that there were only a couple of very small gift/souvenir shops.

The most interesting place in town was a small section of the town’s original boardwalk. From the early 1900's much of the town had been built along the rocky shoreline on wooden piers. However, the 1964 earthquake destroyed much of the town, and what was left sunk about four feet which made it subject to flooding. To top it off, the winter following the earthquake brought unusually high tides and severe storms. Most of the town had to be rebuilt and they didn’t do it the old way on the piers. The one section that remained was on the shore of a small back-bay which protected it from the forces that wrecked the rest of the town. There were some very interesting houses on the boardwalk, including a bed and breakfast that looked on the outside like it was about to fall into the water. The pictures on the sign of the interior, however, made it appear very homey. The town did have a small airport and there were a lot of cars and trucks there, even though the roads are only local and don’t go anywhere “outside”. They do have periodic ferry service which is how all their vehicles, supplies and other goods are delivered. After walking around for a couple hours we got back on the boat for the ride back to Homer, which only took an hour and fifteen minutes because he went straight back.

The day was concluded with a pot luck fish fry at the RV park. Our leaders cooked up a bunch of the halibut and sea bass that they had caught in Seward, and some of the rest of the group brought side dishes. Each coach was assigned a number when the caravan started (we were 9) and the even numbered coaches brought stuff today. The odd numbers will bring side dishes to the crab cookout in Sterling, Alaska in a couple of days. The fish was outstanding, and the side dishes were all wonderful as well. One thing about this group, they know how to cook! We also had our travel briefing for our trip from Homer to Sterling. We were not going to be leaving until Thursday, but about half the group is going fishing on Wednesday (including Jackie and I) and no one was sure what time the fishers would be back. After the dinner we headed back to the coach to get things ready for the next day’s fishing trip. We have to pack food and warm clothes, and we also had to get an early bed time because we had to be at the fishing boat at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday. When the leader told us 6:30 Jackie’s response was “that’s A.M.?”

That friends brings the story of week four of our Alaska adventure to an end. We are a little over halfway through the trip and still have many more exciting adventures to come. Stay tuned and stay happy!

Our Alaska Caravan - Week Three

Our last chapter covered the second week of our 48 day Alaska caravan and finished with us in Fairbanks, Alaska. This chapter will cover the seven days of Week Three.

Wednesday, July 29 - Day Fifteen. Oh boy, another busy day with an early start. We were up and waiting for the bus to pick us up at 8:00 a.m. Our first stop was at the Discovery III sternwheeler. This was an authentic (although built in 1987) that provides tourist cruises on the Chena River through Fairbanks. It was a very large boat with diesel power that actually used the large stern wheel for propulsion. The company actually runs two boats, the Discovery II and the III, and both were in use when we cruised. We arrived at the dock and found a dozen other tour buses lined up discharging tourists. We have seen dozens of Princess and Holland America buses while in Fairbanks. Both cruise lines offer land/sea cruise options where the passengers cruise up to Anchorage from Seattle or Vancouver and then get off the ship for a week or two of bus cruising around Alaska.

The boat ride was very interesting and fun. We saw a lot of very nice river front homes as we cruised down the river. They also set up a “flight demonstration” with a small single engine airplane on floats taking off and landing on the river right next to the boat. They also had radio contact with the pilot so they were able to pipe the pilot’s commentary over the boat PA system. Later on we stop alongside a sled dog training and breeding center. Again, they had radio contact with the ladyon the shore who talked for a while about the Alaska Husky breed and showed a bunch of dogs in training. One of the demonstrations was hooking up a dog team to an ATV which had the engine removed. This was how they trained the dogs in the summer. It was fun to watch how excited the dogs were to work and pull the “sled” along the trail. The boat then cruised down to where the Chena River flowed into the Tanana River, a main tributary of the Yukon River.

The boat then turned around and went upstream again, stopping at a Native American cultural center that the company built for its passengers. We got to get off the boat here and spent about an hour walking around the cultural center. They had a number of Native American docents who were giving short lectures about native life and also had a lot of displays of native living shelters, houses, tents, fishing camps and fur camps. They also had a couple of reindeer on display and a pen with a bunch of sled dogs that people could pet. We also learned that reindeer are exactly the same animal as caribou, the only difference being that reindeer were domesticated. After visiting the cultural center we got back on the boat and headed back to the dock where they had, of course, a large gift shop! We did buy some canned smoked salmon on the boat after they gave away samples of salmon dip. It tasted so good we wanted to get some. We were able to resist the gift shop however.

After the boat ride we were back on the bus and headed to the other side of the river to the Pump House restaurant for lunch. They had a very nice buffet set up for us and, of course, we overate. The Pump House had an interesting history in that the building the restaurant is in originally housed a set of very large electric pumps which pumped water from the Chena river over the rim of the valley to the agricultural areas to the North. After a while the pumps were no longer used and the building was abandoned. After a great lunch we were back on the bus again and headed to the El Dorado Gold Mine. On the way the bus driver stopped at the Alaska Pipeline visitor’s center. It turns out that our bus driver, who works for the RV park we are staying in, worked on the pipeline when it was being constructed. He provided some interesting information, as did the displays at the visitor’s center. The pipeline is 48 inches in diameter and the walls of the steel pipe are a half inch thick. The entire pipeline is insulated and is buried about four feet in the ground for much of the way from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. It is buried where the soil is rock, but where there is permafrost they elevate it on supports. They had to do this to keep the heat from the movement of the oil through the pipe from melting the permafrost soil and causing the pipe to loose support and sink. Even the supports are insulated and, in some cases cooled, to avoid melting of the permafrost. The supports are also constructed to keep the pipeline from breaking during earthquakes. The pipeline, built in the mid-70's, runs 800 miles from the North Slope of Alaska’s Arctic Ocean shore to Valdez on the Southern coast. This stop was very informative and interesting.

After the pipeline visit we continued on to the El Dorado Gold Mine. This is an active gold mining operation, although in my opinion it is now primarily a tourist mining activity. I think they figured out that you can make more money mining it out of the pockets of visitors than you can digging it out of the ground. We got off the bus and were put on an imitation train for a short ride up the hill to the mining area. Along the way we went through a simulated underground gold mine and there was a guy in there explaining how underground mining was done. It was pretty interesting and they did have a lot of old authentic equipment lying around the grounds. The train let us off at a large open area where they had a big sluice operation set up. They had seats on either side of the sluice and when everyone was settled in they dumped a bunch of “ore” into the sluice and turned the water on to demonstrate how the sluice worked. They then had a couple of kids come out with gold pans and demonstrate how the miners panned for gold. The kid doing it in front of us actually came up with a pretty good size nugget.

After the sluice demonstration they put us all into a large area with benches and water troughs and gave us gold pans and little bags of “ore” to pan. Both Jackie and I found a dozen or so flakes of gold in our pan after working the ore. I must say it was a lot of fun to see the gold worked out of the dirt and rock. This was the first time I had ever actually panned and I found it was pretty hard work. It took me a long time to find a few flakes and my hand hurt from holding the pan. Jackie and I put our flakes together and took it to get weighed. We ended up with about 5 grains of gold weight, the lady told us that was worth about $39. Turns out that we ended up with more gold than anyone else in our group! Jackie had it put in a little vial on a necklace that they sold in the gift shop.

After the gift shop visit we got back on the little train and headed back down the hill to the bus. The bus then took us back to the campground where our leader Larry had set up a barbeque for us. He cooked up a bunch of beer brats and hamburgers and we just all got together and talked while we ate. It made for a good end to a long day because everyone in the group was pretty much whipped. After the cookout we went back to the coach and went to bed early because we still had one more day of early starts and activities.

Thursday, July 30 - Day Sixteen. Once again our bus was waiting for us at 8:00 a.m. for another tour. I haven’t mentioned that the bus we have been using here in Fairbanks is provided by the RV park. The bus is about 40 years old and painted bright pink and blue. It seems to run pretty well, but the suspension is shot so it rolls and pitches like an old fishing boat in a storm. We have had the same driver for every trip and he seems pretty knowledgeable about Fairbanks and the history of the area.

Today was very smokey. There are several forest fires not too far South of Fairbanks and today the wind is blowing the smoke over the city. There is also a temperature inversion which is keeping the smoke low to the ground. You can smell the fire is visibility is very poor. The bus first took us to downtown Fairbanks to the Ice Museum. This museum was in an old movie theater and was dedicated to the art of ice sculpture. Apparently there is an renowned international ice sculpting competition held every year in Fairbanks so the city created this museum as a way of providing support. They first showed us a 20 minute film that showed how they got the ice out of the lakes in the dead of winter. They cut huge 4,000 pound blocks that are used for the competition. One competition is for sculptures that only use one large block, another one is for sculptures that use 10 of these huge blocks. The film showed some of the sculptures from past years and they were phenomenal. It is unbelievable how beautiful the sculptures are when completed. The sculptures are all lit with colored lights which really makes them stand out.

After the film they turned on the lights and we saw that on three sides of the theater were large coolers with some of last year’s sculptures stored in them. The coolers had windows so you didn’t have to go inside to see the work. They said they kept the coolers at 20 degrees below zero to keep the ice fresh. I went inside to check out the work close up, but I didn’t spend too much time in there because it was major COLD. One of the sculptors, who also works for the museum, then put on a brief demonstration of ice carving. He was a past winner in the competition and it was amazing how effortless it seemed for him to carve a picture of a rose in a block of ice.

After the Ice Museum we were back on the pink bus and headed for the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North. This is apparently a brand new museum and it was pretty interesting. The bottom floor had a large exhibit room with a large variety of interesting stuff regarding the cultures of Alaska, the animals, the plants, and the geology. Upstairs was a large art gallery with art from Alaska artists, including a lot of Native Americans. We spent a couple of hours at the museum and ended the visit with a film on the Northern Lights. It was an interesting explanation of how the lights are created and the pictures of the lights were very beautiful. Although Fairbanks is in the prime zone for viewing the lights, we won’t see any because it doesn’t get dark enough during this time of year to see them. Too bad. That would be something special.

After the museum we got back on the pink bus and headed back to the campground. We finally had an afternoon off. After a quick lunch Jackie and I took the car and headed into Fairbanks to visit the Elks Lodge. This was our first visit to an American Elks Lodge in a couple of months. The lodge is located right on the banks of the Chena River near downtown Fairbanks. The lodge was open and we went in and had a drink. We found the people very friendly. There were about a half dozen folks in the bar and after a little while we had a nice conversation with them. The lodge has about 850 members. We were able to get a lodge pin for our collection. We also stopped at a couple of stores looking for a small compact freezer. Several of the group, including us, were interested in finding a small freezer because we all anticipate catching a bunch of fish in the next weeks and want to be able to store them. Different people were visiting different stores checking to see what was available. Unfortunately, everyone struck out - no compact freezers to be had anywhere in Fairbanks it seems. We then headed back to the coach for a restful evening.

Friday, July 31 - Day Seventeen. Finally, a day off! We had no scheduled activities for today except for our travel briefing at 4:30. We both slept late, got up and just relaxed all morning taking care of emails and other administrative chores we had been putting off. It was again very smokey in the city. After lunch we went out to do some caching. Our first stop was the little town of North Pole, Alaska, which was just a couple miles South of our park. We stopped at the Santa Claus House which was a large Christmas shop. There was a Santa there (Jackie got to sit on his lap) and rooms full of Christmas ornaments and decorations. Outside they had a pen with a couple of reindeer in it and all kinds of Christmas stuff. There was also a 30 foot Santa Claus statue. The shop does a big business in postmarking letters from Santa with the North Pole postmark - that is the official name of the city. After visiting North Pole we did some caching in the local area and were able to find 10 caches in a couple of hours. It was good to get out and do some caching again. Tomorrow we head for Denali Park, about 125 miles. Another early start, about 8:30 a.m.

Saturday, August 1 - Day Eighteen. We started the day at what has become for us, a reasonable hour. We were out of the park about 8:30 a.m. For the first time in eighteen days we are headed South instead of North. Fairbanks was as far North as this trip is going to take us. We started down Alaska Route 3, the Parks Highway, which leads from Fairbanks to Anchorage. However, before going to Anchorage, we were going to make a three night stop at Denali National Park. Except for a few stretches with frost heaves and winter damage, the road is OK and there was not a lot of traffic. We did make one stop about 35 miles South of Fairbanks at a roadside business called Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn. The place was supposed to be a restaurant/bar/gift shop and had been noted on Roadside America, the website that lists all the weird and unusual sights along the highways of America.. We check this website frequently when traveling because it lists some pretty funny and entertaining attractions. In keeping with its unusual name, Roadside America noted that there were all kinds of humorous sexually themed paraphernalia around the place. Unfortunately we found that the place was closed. We were disappointed.

The only other stop we made was at a service station about a mile before we reached the RV park. I wanted to top off the diesel in the coach since we had well over 200 miles to Anchorage after we left Denali. After filling up the tank I went in to pay and the owner of the station asked me to see if I could help a German couple who were having a problem with electric power in their rented Class C motorhome. They didn’t speak a lot of English, but I finally figured out that they had 12 volt power in the coach (the fridge, lights, etc.) when the engine was running, but nothing when the engine was turned off. I was pretty sure it had something to do with the house batteries either being dry or having some other issue. I finally figured out where there coach’s house batteries were kept, in a compartment in the stair well. When I took the cover I found that the cable which led from the isolator to the batteries had corroded through and come off one of the batteries. They were no longer connected so they weren’t being charged and weren’t providing power. I explained to the guy that he just needed to disconnect the other end of the short cable, take it into the station and buy a new one the same size, and connect it between the isolator and the battery. I then went in and explained the problem to the owner of the station too, so she could understand what they wanted. She wasn’t sure she had a cable, but said there was an auto supply store just a block down the road and they would have the part if she didn’t. That was my good deed for the day. Jackie thought I was being held for ransom by the station owner, but when I explained what I had been doing she thought it was a good thing too.

We got back on the road and headed the last mile to our RV park where our wagonmaster was waiting to park us. We ended up parking at the edge of a river canyon, facing the river and the mountainside on the other bank of the river. Five feet in front of the coach is the cliff which drops a couple hundred feet down to the river. On the other side of the river are the tracks for the railroad that runs between Anchorage and Fairbanks. This part of the river is rapids and the hillside on the other bank is all trees and grass. It is a spectacular view - one of the nicest we have had in an RV park. The park has 30 amp electric and water to the site, but no on-site sewer. This should not be a problem for the three days we are here. Interestingly, the electric is provided by a large generator - the park is not connected to the electrical grid, despite the fact that just a mile or two in both directions from the park are commercial business areas. I checked the voltage coming into the coach and it was 116 volts, so I guess his generator works OK.

We got into the RV park about 12:00 noon and by 1:40 we were on our way to our next activity - white water rafting! Although this was an optional activity, one which was not included as a part of our prepaid caravan, all but a handful of our group signed up to do it. We were going to raft the very river, the Nenana River, which runs below our coaches. Conveniently, the rafting company’s office was located at the other end of the parking lot of our campground, so we just all walked over there. After signing a waiver which essentially told us all sorts of horrible things that COULD happen to us, we were issued dry suits and life vests to put on. The dry suits were basically waterproof coveralls that we put on over our street clothes. We only had to take off our shoes. The suit has rubber booties built in and elastic rubber seals at the wrist and neck. We also had to put on external rubber boots just to protect the suit’s built in booties from being cut or damaged. The life vest went on over the dry suit. The suits are way big so as to fit over clothing and they fill with air, so if you don’t open the neck seal and squat down to push the air out, you end up looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. We all had a great laugh putting them on and looking at each other. The staff of the rafting company has to help you put the suit on because it is so cumbersome, and the seals are so tight, that you can’t do it by yourself. One funny note was that the name of the company that we were rafting with was “Denali Outdoor Center” so all of the vests were marked on the back, in big letters, “DOC”. With our dry suits, which sort of resembled jump suits, and our big orange vests with DOC on the back, we all looked like a road gang from the local prison.

They told us the reason we had to use the suits is because the water in the river is cold, 36 degrees Fahrenheit! The river is fed at its source by glaciers less than 50 miles upstream. They then loaded us onto an old school bus and took us a couple of miles up stream. After a safety briefing, we loaded into the boats and started down river. We were in what they called an “oar boat”, which meant that we didn’t have paddles - we were just passengers and there was one crew member who manned a set of oars in the middle of the boat. We also watched them load up several of the other type, “paddle boats” in which each passenger had a paddle and the crew member only sat in the back and served as the rudder. All of our group were in oar boats. We had seven in our boat. I sat in the front and Jackie sat in the back. The crew guy said the people in front would get wetter - he was correct! We went about 12 miles down river, about a two hour trip, and only had about eight areas of pretty good rapids, class II and III difficulty (out of a max of VI) so it wasn’t a very risky ride. But, we did hit some pretty good wave sets and we did get very wet - and the water was VERY cold. The suits did their job though, I stayed dry except for my head and hands, which got pretty cold. The air temp was probably in the high 60's and it was windy. Nonetheless, we had a great ride, it was a lot of fun, and we did a lot of screaming. Although they had briefed us on what to do if we were thrown out of the boat, or the boat tipped, only a couple of the areas of the ride had any potential for dumping anyone who was paying the least bit of attention to the ride. After the ride, they loaded us back on the old school bus and took us back to camp. Most of the group then sat around a campfire for an hour or so, with some snacks, and just chatted. This was the first place we have camped where the weather was decent enough, with no mosquitoes, to be able to sit outside, even for a little while. After the campfire we headed back to the coach for dinner and an early bedtime. Our next day’s adventure was scheduled to start at 6:30 a.m. Yikes.

Sunday, August 2 - Day Nineteen. We were up at 5:30 a.m. so we could catch a tour bus into Denali National Park at 6:30. Although we had the early morning drag, we were looking forward to the trip because we had heard from other Alaska travelers in the past about how wonderful the bus ride into Denali was - even if it did start so early. For some reason Jackie woke up with her left knee swollen and very painful to walk on. Not sure if she strained it or hit it on the boat ride the day before or what, but she was in pain. The tour bus, operated by the Park’s concessionaire, came right to our campground and picked us up. Two of our leaders stayed at the campground to take care of the group’s various dogs, because the trip would take anywhere from seven to nine hours. Our driver and guide was a very nice young lady named Cassandra. She drove to the park entrance where she stopped and filled the rest of the seats on the bus with other park visitors. We then headed into Denali National Park.

A few fast facts about Denali. Denali is the third largest National Park in the system with over 6.2 million acres. The first and second largest parks are also in Alaska. Until 1980 Denali was known as McKinley National Park, named for former President McKinley. There is only a single road in the park that goes about 100 miles West from the State Highway. The general public is only allowed to drive on the first 15 miles of that road. After that, only approved busses and vehicles operated by park employees or permitees are allowed on the road. Bicycles and hikers are OK if they have permits, but there are no trails in the park either, so hiking and biking are tough. The road is only open during the summer months, May through September. The park lies mainly in the Alaskan Mountain Range, a range which includes the highest mountain in North America, Mt. McKinley. Mt. McKinley is also known as Denali and both names are “officially” recognized. Denali is the a native word which means “great one”. The park is nearly 100 years old and has a variety of wildlife, some of which we hope to see on our trip.

After the 15 miles of public access road, the road into the park becomes gravel, so the bus only goes about 25 mph at most. The driver provided a briefing at which she told everyone on the bus that if anyone saw any wildlife they were to shout “stop” and she would stop the bus so everyone could maybe see whatever it was. She also stopped at a couple of preset rest areas which had toilets and areas where people could get out and stretch their legs. One of the sights she wasn’t sure we would see was Mt. McKinley itself. The mountain is deep within the park and the closest we could get to on the road was about 32 miles. In addition, at over 20,000 feet in elevation, the mountain was shrouded in clouds most of the time. She told us that portions of the mountain were only visible about 15 percent of the time, and the full mountain, including both peaks, less than 5 percent of the time. Nonetheless, we were hopeful because we were traveling on an unusually bright, blue sky day. As we drove West on the park road we would occasionally catch glimpses of the mountain in the distance and it appeared that only the very top of the mountain was covered in cloud. According to the guide we were going to be driving 62 miles into the park, to a point called Stoney Dome. At this lookout we would be within 32 miles of Mt. McKinley.

Along the way we made numerous stops for wildlife sightings. Among the animals we saw on our trip were a pair of lynx, the only member of the cat family within the park, moose, caribou, mountain sheep, a red fox, a wolf, a marmot, and various birds including ravens and golden eagles. One of the highlights was a fairly close (about a half mile) of a large grizzly bear and her two cubs. We sat and watched them for about 10 minutes. We saw them going in, and going out we saw them again on the other side of the road. We guessed it was the same family because they were in the same general area. One of the neat things on the bus was a video system. The driver had a good quality HD video camera with a great telephoto lens which she could train on the wildlife. The pictures were then broadcast inside the bus on overhead TV screens. We had a good pair of binoculars, so we could see the animals pretty well most of the time, but it gave the folks on the bus without binoculars a chance to see the animals close up in real time. A very neat idea. Of course later, towards the end of the trip, she tried to sell us a $35 DVD of the sightings. Oh well, capitalism at work.

When we reached the 62 mile point and turned the corner and had the full view of Mt. McKinley it was breathtaking. It seemed so close that you thought you could touch it. AND - we had a 5 percent day, the entire mountain was visible and there was almost no cloud on the top. That sight made the whole trip worthwhile. We had a nice group photo taken with the mountain in the background, along with everyone’s individual pictures. After viewing the mountain, we got back on the bus and headed back East along the same road. All in all, it was a very worthwhile trip, even if early and long. They provided sufficient stretch and pottie breaks, water on the bus and a snack box for each person so you wouldn’t starve. We had brought along some fruit also. Jackie’s leg was bothering her, so she didn’t get off the bus too often, but I know she enjoyed the trip anyway.

After dropping the other passengers off at the visitor’s center, the bus took our group back to the campground. Having started so early, we were not inclined to do a lot of socializing and just headed back to the coach. I ran out and got an Ace bandage and put it on Jackie’s knee, along with some ice, to help reduce the swelling. Hopefully, it won’t be anything serious and will clear up in a day or two. We had no organized activities for the next day until 5:30 when most of the group were going out to dinner and a show near the park entrance. We stayed at the coach and hit the bed early.

Monday, August 3 - Day Twenty. A Free Day! Yea! We got to sleep in, although 8:00 seems pretty late after all these early starts. We do have the luxury of leisurely drinking our morning coffee and waking up at our old modest pace. We have no TV or radio service here at all, so no morning news. We finally got up and out about 11:00 and headed into “town”, which is actually just the cluster of shops and resorts around the entrance to Denali National Park. The locals call this stretch of Highway 3 “Glitter Gulch” because of all the activity. Our first stop is the Denali Chalet Resort to get a partial refund on our tour tickets from the day before. Since the bus tour through the park was part of our tour, Larry, our wagonmaster, bought all the tickets. However, folks who hold Parks Service Golden Age Passports (like Jackie) can get into any National Park without paying the entrance fee. The $10 entrance fee is an included part of the bus tour ticket, so we found out if you go back to where the tickets were purchased you can get the entrance fee rebated back to you. When Jackie went to the desk they told her they don’t give cash rebates. She could get a check mailed to her in about 48 days or take a voucher for purchases in any of the park concessions. We took the two $10 rebates and went into the Chalet’s restaurant and had lunch. The voucher payed for about half the lunch.

After lunch we went into a couple of the clothing shops which all had “50% Off Sale” signs all over them. Our tour guide had told us the day before that the signs go up at the beginning of season and come down when they close in September. Permanent special sales. They had the usual selection of tee shirts, sweat shirts and jackets and such. I ended buying a fleece vest because I didn’t have any vests and thought I needed one. After wandering around the shops for a while we went geocaching. I had found a total of seven caches in the immediate area. We only cached about two hours, but we found four and had to take a DNF on one. We also got a couple of new Travel Bugs, which are items with unique serial numbers that can be moved from cache to cache and tracked.

We then headed back to the coach to relax for a while before our evening activity. We had a brief travel meeting with the group and then most of us drove back to Denali Chalet for a dinner and show called the “Denali Cabin Night”. This was not part of our tour package, we had to buy the tickets ourselves, but several people had recommended it as a good time. The event was held in a large, open log cabin with picnic tables set up inside. The staff were all dressed in 1920's garb and talked like I guess they thought Alaskan pioneers would, sort of a turn of the century hillbilly accent. The food was served family style and the wait staff played with the folks, halfway insulting, joking, that sort of thing. They served BBQ ribs, broiled salmon, corn, beans and salad. The food was quite good and there was no shortage. If one of the plates ran out, the server would bring more. After the dinner the wait staff turned into the entertainment staff. They sang some songs and told some stories about life in Alaska in the pioneer days. They also acted out a couple of Robert Service poems with some help from audience members. Every show we have gone to in both the Yukon and in Alaska have featured at least one Robert Service poem. He lived in the Yukon and Alaska at the turn of the century and wrote a lot of poetry. He is quite revered up here in the far Northwest. After the show we headed back to the coach to rest and get ready for our next travel day.

Tuesday, August 4 - Day Twenty-one. This was a long travel day so we wanted to get an early start. We were up and out of the park at 8:00 a.m. The day called for us to drive 240 miles South on Alaska Route 3 to Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, with almost 300,000 population. Jackie read that 42 percent of the population of Alaska lives in the Anchorage metro area.. The road was very good and for the first time in a while I was generally able to keep a 55 mph speed. One interesting sight was an old lodge, now closed, known only as "The Igloo". It was a large multi-story building shaped like an igloo. I guess it was the Alaska version of the old motels in Arizona that looked like teepees. We didn’t see a lot of wildlife, but about 70 miles into the drive we did see a small juvenile black bear run across the road. He was a little too fast getting into the trees for us to get a picture, but at least we saw a bear. The only other sighting we heard about was one of our party said they saw a moose. We had some really beautiful views of the Alaskan Mountain Range and Mt. McKinley on the drive. About 35 miles North of Anchorage we drove through the city of Wasilla, Alaska. This is a fairly small town made famous only as the home of Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska and recent Vice Presidential candidate. We looked for her on the way though, but did not get a Sarah sighting.

We pulled into the RV park about 1:30 and got settled in just before the rain started. The park is OK. The sites are not real large, but there are sewer hookups at each site. Unfortunately, there is no cable TV and the antenna only picks up a couple of the new digital stations off the air. Of course, we are still too far North for our satellite to work.. The first thing we did after getting the basic setup on the coach finished was take our clothes to the laundry. We had over two weeks worth of wash to catch up on. Fortunately, the park had a nice large laundry. I dropped Jackie and clothes off there and I headed to the airport to pick up our mail package at the UPS service center. It only took three days for it to get here from Pahrump, but that is because everything except very heavy freight is flown up here, even if you have it sent “ground”. This was not the infamous and well traveled mail package we tried to get while in Canada a month ago. That one is still out there somewhere, supposedly on its way back to Pahrump. After we finished the mail run and the laundry we had a caravan meeting just to sort out the activity schedules for the next couple of stops. The campground has a nice pavilion and they were going to have a band that night, but it was cold and raining and we didn’t feel like going outside. After the meeting we went back to the coach for dinner and just relaxed the rest of the night.

And that, dear readers, brings us to the end of the third week. We will be here in Anchorage for three days, then on to some of the Southern coastal towns of Alaska. I know we have a lot of great Alaskan adventures still ahead. Until our next post, remember to find the joy in life.