Mandora's

Tour day in Fairbanks, Alaska

2009-09-10T16:46:00.000-07:00

Hi again,

Be sure to look at the other post on Bears and Eagles that I posted earlier today.

Hopefully I can get in our Fairbanks adventure today as well. We spent the better part of a week in Fairbanks, seeing the city, taking a couple of tours; one to the El Dorado Mine and one on the Riverboat Discovery, going to their Golden days parade and Farmers Market(we all love the various farmers markets), visiting the Museum of Art and History at the University of Alaska, the dog mushers museum, picking blueberries(lots of blueberries) and generally having a good time.

Chuck, Jane and Tucker(their miniature duchsund) are great to travel with, they enjoy seeing and doing new things as much as we do and are always ready to try something new. None of us are much for tours but we thought these two, the one to the mine and the discovery boat tour were worth taking and we really enjoyed them both, as you will see.

At the mine tour they took you on a simulated train trip through a typical mine operation during the gold rush, this is still an active mine so there is still gold being mined there.

We learned a lot about gold, it's hard to mine, it's heavier than rocks, sand and water, it's valuable, very shiny and fun to try panning.

We all did pan for gold and we were very timid indeed we all thought we would lose the gold in the water,(they only give you a small bag to pan) but after some help, we all got a little gold, any we panned was ours to keep. Morris got 7 grains of gold valued at $21.00 and I got 6 grains of gold valued at $18.00.

Of course, what can you do with the gold we got but put it in a locket for me to wear!

Yup, gold is nice!!

On the Discovery Riverboat trip we were on a working sternwheeler ship, we had a narrator that explained some of the history of Fairbanks, we saw a float plane land and take off on the river, we had a talk and demonstration at the Idiarod champion, Susan Bucher's dog mushing kennels and stopped at an example of a working Athabascan summer fish camp. We saw some beautiful and some interesting houses on the river, as the captian said, Alaskans are a very independent lot. All of it was really interesting, we topped it off by sampling smoked fish on the return trip back.

The Stern wheeler, Discovery, it's really quite a beautiful ship.

Susan Boucher the 3 time Ididarod champion we found out, passed away from cancer, but her partner still raises and races husky dogs, he gave us a demonstration and showed us some puppies and how they handle the dogs. They don't need to train them to race they just love to pull!

They handle the puppies often so they are used to people,one training exercise is to get them to crawl over the logs which was quite cute.

Getting ready to pull the 4 wheeler(sleds are for winter).

Off they go!

Hello to everyone 9/10/09

2009-09-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

We are in Haines, Alaska right now which is lush and green and it's raining, which is fitting to the rainforest which it is! There are hundreds of resident bald eagles in Haines and we have seen many. They are really beautiful to see. We see them flying around fishing in the local waters, in their huge nests, and just sitting in the trees looking majestic. There are many known viewing spots and we have tried to go and visit as many as we can. In October and November thousands of them migrate to here for the winter.

People also come to Haines to fish and see the bears fishing. We saw a Grizzly fishing in the Chilkoot river on our first day here which was pretty amazing.

I'm at the Library now and Morris has offered to do the laundry so I can work on the blog. I pulled the good duty today. The libraries have been wonderful through out our trip, they are warm and welcoming and most have free or relatively free internet. We don't get internet very often and we just wanted to make sure we said hello and thanks for all the comments we have had from our friends and family and we love hearing from all of you. In case I don't get much else posted today I just wanted everyone to know that we are enjoying every minute of our adventure and hearing from you.

We realized after we left Homer, that we are now pretty much on our return trip. Fall is already here and the "Termination Dust" (SNOW) is not much behind.

So just in case I don't get much else published today, here are some eagle and bear photos to tease you into what is coming next!!!

This one you will have to look close, on the right is one of the eagles, in the center is the huge nest and in the nest is another eagle eating.

Delta Junction to Eielson Airforce Base near Fairbanks.

2009-09-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Hi again,

Continuing on our Alaska Odessey we headed to Delta Junction which is at the end of the Alcan highway. It's hard for us to believe we have just travelled the entire Alaskan Highway. Just before Delta Junction we start to see the really big snow covered mountains and start to get excited about seeing the Denali National park, but first we will visit Fairbanks and it's surrounding area.

We then continued on to Rika's Roadhouse, here we were able to get our first glimpse of the oil pipeline. Roadhouses were spaced about a day’s travel apart for travelers in the 1800’s and 1900’s. Rika’s is now a museum and interesting place to visit still. It had a beautiful garden planted which was planted as it was in it’s hey day.

Fairbanks, has it’s own charm. Another reason I was excited to visit the Fairbanks area, was that my brother Pat, was stationed at Eielson Air Force base during the Korean conflict in 1950-52. their job was guarding the planes that the AirForce moved from base to base to protect them from sabotage during the conflict. We took a tour of the base so I could take some photos and send them to Pat. It is still an active base so the photos were limited to a beautiful memorial park and a few other areas.

Enjoy the photos!

Arriving at Delta Junction the end of the Alaskan Highway or Alcan, quite a journey already, we started the Alcon in Dawson Creek, British Columbia:

Riks's Roadhouse museum, gardens and restored homestead.

This was our first glimpse of the Alaskan pipeline and it was across the Tanana river which we were kind of anxious about, hope it never springs a leak here!

We took a tour of Eielson AirForce base, the base my brother Pat was stationed during the Korean conflict, I wanted to take photos for him to see it's been over 50 years since he has seen it. I did ask and the they said the only original structure from that time was the chapel, but since it's a working base I was not able to get a photo of it. There was a guy who was there about the same time 1955 touring with his 2 sons and 1 grandson, and it was pretty cool seeing it through his eyes too!

The third photo is the orginal gate which Pat might recognize, I'll also show you the current gate which is totally in a different direction.

The Old Gate which is now near the Heritage Park:

The new gate.

Hertiage park where many ceremonies are held, soldiers coming in and going home, medal ceremonies, holidays etc.

I told Pat I would take a photo of the ball fields if I found them. This is what is here now. Pat said that theirs were makeshift ballfields. They played lots of teams here including a midnight tournament with the Fairbanks teams on the summer soltice. They played without lights. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Pat was an excellent ball player in high school, college and then in the army, actually all my brothers were champion ball players. I took an imaginery turn at bat, which you will see! :)

Chicken Alaska to Tok

2009-08-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

Continuing in our journey in Alaska, you must pass through Tok, twice, once coming in and once leaving. Tok is essentially a highway town, most businesses, campgrounds, and housing is located within about 3 blocks of the Alcan Highway. We diverted from the Alcan Highway when we decided to go to the Dempster Highway at Whitehorse, Yukon, we will complete that short part of the Alcan on our way back.

It’s pretty much downhill from Chicken to Tok.

We were a little afraid when we saw this sign, we had heard horror stories about the mosquitos in Alaska, only time will tell...

We still were climbing when we left Chicken and the views were beautiful.

Alaska names their Highways, there are not that many and now we are on the Taylor Highway.

This is part of the site of one of the largest fires in Alaska about 1.2 mile acres. After the fire, the first flora to respond is fireweed, then follows alder bushes and then cottonwoods and then spruce; we have seen this time and time again. There are a lot of forest fires in Alaska the terrain is so forested and so immense that fires often start by a lightening strike.

As the Tok sign says we are at milepost 1314 on the Alcan highway.

This is Willards, which was important to us because, when we were in Chicken we discovered when we arrived, with an inside rear flat tire. It was lucky we didn't blow the other rear tire on the top of the world highway. As I said in the previous blog, there isn't any electric, water or phone service in Chicken, the only way to communicate with the outside world of Tok(about 80 mountainous highway miles away)was by Skype at the Campground computer system and it was iffy if they got the information. We thought we might have to ride in the next day to Tok by car and have someone come out to fix it, but about 3 hours later in the evening, here comes the guy from Willards, somehow they got our GPS location and sent out the truck!

Tok is kind of fun, it's all on the highway and there are some interesting sites.

These next photos are for our friend Skip to identy and get back to us! :)

Ferry to the Top of the World highway and Chicken

2009-08-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

We have internet tonight. We are in Seward, Alaska on the southeast coast. But I'm taking you back to our leaving Dawson City, Yukon on the free Ferry the George Black Ferry to go over the Top of the World Highway to our first touch of Alaska and to Chicken.

We can not believe we finally are in Alaska and it's we've really had such a nice time so far, it's hard to believe that each place we go is so beautiful. Everywhere we go it's just such a wonderful experience. We love the people, land and are enjoying every minute.

Tonight, we are going to show you our trip over the Yukon River. Jane and I went over with the cars and then we waited for Chuck and Morris to come over with the RV's. We were not sure if they would be able to come over together or one at a time, the ferry is really not all that big, but as we watched they actually put 4 Rv's on the same ferry!

After that is was quite a trip to go over the top of the world highway. We have heard all kinds of horror stories about RV's rolling off, and the road was very narrow and there is not any guard rails etc., but people said if you go slow you "should" be alright!! Well, we did make it, but don't believe anything you hear about the road being paved, that might have been about 50 years ago, but not now, every once and a while we saw a yellow stripe down the middle, but that was it.

We did make it to Chicken, Alaska, what a great place, there are 3 RV parks and 3 businesses in the "downtown chicken area". There is no electricity and they have to have their water brought in and the only phone service is by internet!

Enjoy the photos:

Jane relaxing on the cool log seat, waiting for the guys to ferry over:

Our first sight of the border between Canada and Alaska!!! Yoo Hoo.

To the Pokergirls, check out the cool name of the border crossing!

They have really interesting outhouses in Chicken.

Notice the Emperor Goose in the Attack Chicken pen :)

The Dempster Highway

2009-08-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

Seems like we have traveled 3000 miles just to get to the start of the Dempster Highway, and after lots of planning and shuffling and thinking, we were about to embark on our journey. The campground we stayed in at Dawson City, agreed to let us park our RV's for half the cost per day as we traveled the Dempster; and Chuck and Jane found a great place to board our 5th companion their dog Tucker. We packed our cars with our camping equipment, checked and rechecked that we had all we needed to head for The Dempster highway, Artic circle and Inuivik. We planned all the meals had extra water and topped off our gas tanks at the last gas station just before the Dempster and then we were off. It was a sunny beautiful start to our day and we were just awestruck at the beauty, remoteness, wildness, flora, fawna and so looking forward to exciting trip:

OK guys, cut the knoodling and let's get the picture and be on our way!

It was just exciting actually standing on the highway. Oh, did I mention it is 500 miles of gravel and dirt and quite exciting to drive and to meet other vehicle on the road. We needed to watch out for flying rocks, so we always slowed down when vehicles passed us.

The beauty and remoteness was extraordinary:

We saw Moose and Dall Sheep, yes, and we did see the moose at Two Moose Lake:

Look close and you start to see the Dall sheep, right where our guide book said they might be, we couldn't believe it!

There are some provincial campgrounds on the Dempster and they have these cool screened in shelters with a potbelly stove and picnic tables for the campers and travelers to have their meals. They also provide bear proof food lockers and trash containers, but no water, so you have to bring that in with you.

More knoodling going on:

The wildflowers were spectacular.

The weather was deteriorating rapidly as we approached Eagle Plains, the halfway point on the Dempster to Inuvik. It was cold and rainy and we decided not to tent camp and see if they had a room at the Eagle Plain Hotel, our other option was to sleep in the cars; thankfully they had a room and we were just in time to get supper before they closed at 8:00 p.m.

The resident dogs were a nice touch.

The next morning we were up early to head for the Artic Circle and beyond. And what to our wondering eyes does appear, but snow! We couldn't think of a more perfect way to get to the Artic Circle.

WE MADE IT ABOVE THE ARTIC CIRCLE... We brought the bottle of wine I got for my retirement gift from Sheila, my partner in crime at the University of Minnesota, to toast the going over the Artic Circle. It was 0 degrees celsius and 32 degrees Farenheit when we got to the Circle monument. It has been a long way from home and this is just one of our goals for the trip, it was well worth the journey so far.

Because of the deteriorating weather we decided that morning to head back down the Dempster and tent camp at the one of the earlier campgrounds at the lower altitude we passed on our way here the, Tombstone provicial campground. We were hoping the weather would improve. We hated to miss out on Inuvik but it would have been a pretty rough trip with the weather, and later that day we heard they closed the free Ferry at Fort Mcpherson for 9 hours, so we would probably have had to sleep in our cars there.

We did enjoyed our trip back down the Dempster to the Tombstone Campground and were eager to test our our camping gear, Chuck and Jane's gear is pretty new and we haven't used ours for quite awhile, we had a great evening, nice dinner at the kitchen shelter, a great fire, and we were taking photos at midnight it was so light out.

Good Night:

Sleep Tight:

It's Midnight:

THE END!!!!

Dawson City

2009-08-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hello again,

It's been awhile since I was able to use the internet, our weeks stay in Dawson City was split between Dawson City and the Dempster Highway. Dawson City is charming, most of the buildings have been preserved from the turn of the century, they have wooden boardwalks and the streets are not paved and are dirt, it's like going back in time. The people are extremely friendly and we really enjoyed the city, I just happened to be in the right place to take a bead embroidery class at the Dho'jan, zho Native Cultural Center which was a highlight for me, and the dance hall, Diamond Gert's was the highlight for Morris!(you'll see in the photos) Dawson City also has an annual music festival that we were able to attend after our trip to the Dempster highway that kind of capped off the week.

The Dempster highway was spectacular and hope you see it in the photos by itself it was a major highlight, 285 miles one way of gravel and dirt and yet so much beauty to take in, we ofter were left speechless.

Hope you enjoy the journey.

Dawson City pre Dempster

Diamond Gerte's can-can show:

Morris was chosen to join the Can Can Ladies and dance with them and as you see he had a great time and for his reward they gave him one of the garters that they wore:

These photos were taken post Dempster Highway, which I want to show you on a separate blog, they are of the music festival and the bead embroidery at the Native Cultural Center.

During the concerts two hangliders joined the party:

There was some fun people watching as well:

Here are some photos of the exhibits at the Cultural museum and of me taking the bead embroidery class which I just fell into and it was a wonderful experience:

The last photo is of the smoke we were starting to experience from one of the many forest fires in both the Yukon and in Alaska, it's part of living in such a large area with so much forest surrounding all the cities and communities. We will experience more of this as we travel towards Fairbanks in the coming weeks.

Whitehorse to Dawson City, Yukon

2009-07-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

After Whitehorse we decided to go to Dawson City via the Alaska Highway and the Klondike Highway, which would mean that when we left Dawson City we would go over the Top of the World Highway to get to Tok, Alaska and then back on the Alaskan Highway. A lot depended on whether the weather would cooperate because the Top of the World highway is narrow, climbs up and down dramatically and it's mostly gravel with bad shoulders in many places. When it gets wet it can be dangerous, especially for bigger rigs. We'd heard that it's been a dry year and that the road, if we went slow, was passable, so on we went to Dawson City via the Klondike. What we didn't know was that the Klondike was deepily into construction and about half gravel itself!

Here is the journey, we did see some beautiful lakes, towns, campgrounds, forest and mountains:

This is the pretty part of the Journey

This was the Five Fingers Recreation Site, which the earlier traders and settlers had to navigate to go up the Yukon to the northern territories.

We Camped at Pelly's Crossing. A helicopter landed and and then took off across the river. We didn't know why, but it was kind of cool. After supper we decided to take a look at Gravel Lake, to see if we could see some waterfowl, it was quite pretty, then around midnight Jane and I went down to the River to see the sun going down, something that is hard to do in the summer, since it goes down so late at this latitude.

I don't think we have introduced the 5th member
of our group, Tucker, who is a great traveling companion for all of us. He is so enthusiatic about anything that we do; he is so nice to come home too!

This is the ugly part of the trip, the road was rough, lots of construction and extreme dust and some flying gravel.

There is a highway sign out here that is labeled "Caution Extreme Dust" and this is what they mean!

Finally the last turn in the road before Dawson City

Whitehorse the Yukon's Capitol city

2009-07-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

We spent 3 wonderful days in Whitehorse, it's a small cosmopolitan town that hasn't lost is wilderness character. There are log houses next to very modern city buildings. Whitehorse has about 20,000 plus residents and there only 30,000 in the whole province. There is a strong art community with a really nice Yukon Art Center and Sculpture garden, a Native Carving school called Sundog. They have 2 breweries, we toured the Yukon Brewery and came away with 3 different beers. We went to their Farmers Market, hiked to a suspension bridge over what they call the "Grand Canyon of the Yukon" and toured the Beringia Museum, which is about the land bridge area that existed between Asia and North America and people, woolly mammoths, huge tigers and beavers came across and thrived for many years.

It's a beautiful drive into the city, you come over a hill and there is the Yukon river and Whitehorse sits right on the river.

The vistor center in Whitehorse is located right on the riverwalk and is a beautiful building in it's own right and had lots of information on the area, it was a treat to visit it and get the information we needed.

There is a beautiful Old Log Church museum we also went to photograph, right in the heart of the city.

Every noon there is entertainment and on our first day it was belly dancing! It was great!

I visited the Bear Paw quilt shop (Rose and Peggy you would have loved this place) it had lots of northern type batik fabrics, here are a couple of the quilt patterns that they exhibited.

After the entertainment, we wanted to visit an Art Gallery called the Underground gallery and the resident artist that week was Valerie Solez a collage artist, she was very kind and allowed me to take some photos of her working, I really liked her art.

Morris and I wanted to visit the Beringia Museum, it was on our way back to our campground which was a couple of miles out of Whitehorse, it was a cool museum, it had a mammoth skelton, films and diarama's of the how the ancient people lived and an Atalatil demonstration, which we both tried and we probably would have killed a mouse for supper, but not a woolly mammoth, that's for sure!

One night after a fabulous dinner at the Klondike Rib & Salmon:

We all decided to take a hike at the Suspension bridge that crosses over the Grand Canyon of the Yukon and saw 5 crazy kids jump off the cliffs:

We visited a First Nation Carving school, most of students were on a 30 wilderness experience to learn how to hand dig out a tradional canoe and then carve the exterior. It was called the Sundog school of carving they have a 14 week summer course and then a 3 year apprenticeship course available.

We went to the Yukon Art Center, which is located at the Yukon University and there is a lovely theatre there as well as an outdoor sculpture garden. They had an exhibit of Ted Harrison's paintings from his book;

And the outdoor sculpture garden was so interesting as well.

Last but not lease some oddities:

Good night for now.

Watson Lake to Whitehore, Yukon

2009-07-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

We finally have a nice Wifi site, everyone advertises free Wifi, but what they don't say is that it usually is so busy you can't get on or that it's down for one reason or another.

We left Watson lake on July 6th and headed out to Whitehorse, the Capitol of the Yukon. We stopped at some fantastic places, took a short hike to Rancheria Falls, and finally camped at Teslin a wonderful community with a lovely First Nation museum and we had to cross the longest bridge on the Yukon River at Teslin to get there.

We found another incredible provincial campground on Teslin Lake which is a 78 miles long Lake, it's narrow, you can see across it most of the time, but there are mountains and valleys and it's just beautiful. I even took a dip in the lake to see if it's as cold as Lake Superior,(see Jane's log for that photo) it wasn't nearly as cold, so I really enjoyed my stroll in the water..

Hope you enjoy the photos, we sure enjoyed taking them and experiencing the wonders of the Yukon.

This was a really nice trading post

This is one big black bear we saw on the way

We took a wonderful hike to a double waterfall at Rancheria Falls

This is the longest bridge that goes over the Yukon River.

The Town of Teslin is very interesting, they have a wild life museum, we talked to a couple that was taking there float plane up to another lake to fish and we saw the Teslin First Nation Museum.

The Teslin Museum had 5 totems that were carved by Native carvers and it represents one for each nation in Teslin, they are Beaver, Eagle, Wolf, Frog, Raven.

Some other images from the Museum.

At last we got to our campsite

And Finally the photo that was worth the whole trip so far to me

A juvenile bald eagle landed in the tree just above us in our campground!

Watson Lake, Yukon, Canada

2009-07-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hi again,

We are now in Dawson City, Yukon, getting prepared to go to Inuvik on Tuesday, July 14th. The road is said to be in pretty good shape most of the way, we are planning on taking 2 days car camping and arriving in Inuvik on the 3 day if all goes well. We plan on staying a day or two and then return to Dawson City again for a couple more days. The weather here is sunny now around 65-75 degrees during the day and 45-55 at night. We here the weather on the Dempster highway to Inuvik could be changing to wet and cold Tuesday or Wednesday, we are hoping that will change and not happen. We are kind of excited to now try out our tenting gear and we will see how well we planned.

I'm going to take you back to the 3rd through 6th of July when we were at Watson Lake, Yukon, Morris and I stayed there on our own until Chuck and Janes RV was repaired in Fort St. John, it's tranny went out at that beautiful Muncho Lake and had to be towed 385 miles back the way we came to get fixed. They had both towing insurance and their RV was under warranty so thank God for that! Jane is also doing a blog and I've added a link on the front page of our blog, she has the full story of that episode. They reconnected up with us on July 6th in Watson Lake.

Watson Lake is a small but vital community in the Yukon, it is the home of the Sign Forest that started in 1942 with the building of the Alaskan Highway and continues to today. There are 60,000 plus signs to date and we added ours too!

Here are some photos of the sign forest to enjoy, they were truly amazing from everywhere and of every kind; street signs, city signs, homemade signs on pie plates, letter boxes, wood, metal, laminated photos, you name it we saw it:

For some reason there are some big equipment on the sign forest site for kids to play one and here is one.

We all decided that we wanted to have a sign posted and we found a laser cut wooden board at a museum in Beaverlodge and tried several different ways to add our names to it and we decided the best way was just to add it with a permanent magic marker. The following photos are of us putting the sign up, we have the Geocache coordinates if you ever get up this way and want to locate it!!! :)

On the 4th of July, Morris and I wore our American Flag t-shirts, and flew our American flag and decided to go for a hike, there was a nice hike around a little lake in Watson Lake proper so we did the circle, here are some of the photos of what we saw.
It was rather a funny feeling just celebrating our holiday alone, we did celebrate their independence day by flying their flag on our RV so we did try to be good neighbors.

The city was quite cute, here are a few photos from around the city.

I'll end with our next beautiful campsite at Watson Lake provicial park, the Yukon has the best deal going their parks are only $12.00 Canadian for a night.

Good night, sleep tight.

Muncho Lake, Yukon, Canada

2009-07-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

Once again we are behind the times, too much to do, too little time. Who said when we retire we will have all the time in the world! We have spent the last few days in Whitehorse, the capitol of the Yukon where some 20,000 plus people live; the entire province of the Yukon only has 30,000 plus people in an area larger than Texas.

I am going to take you back to our days at Muncho Lake Provincial Park on the 30th of June to July 1st, the lake is a clear aqua color, due to the pediment of copper oxide in the water and is surrounded by mountains, the days we were there were cloudy and rainy, but all the more beautiful.

Enjoy the photos, we enjoyed being there.

We stayed in a small provicial campground, beautiful lake side view.

The campsite was truly in a gorgeous setting.

Someone started this beautiful cairn and we added our rock to it, cairn are pretty prevelant in Canada.

Various views of the Lake and it's flora and fauna.

Last but not least, our selves posed in front of the beautiful Muncho Lake.

Circle Tour out of Dawson Creek, BC

2009-07-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

While we were in Dawson Creek, we wanted to explore some of the sites around the area. We started our day at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery, then drove to Chetwynd, B.C. which is a chainsaw carving center of Canada. You will see some fabulous carvings. Then we headed to a small community called Hudson Hope, which has a reconstructed Hudson Bay Trading post on top of this wonderful river valley, they couldn't have picked a prettier place, we ended the day travelling 10 miles on the Old Alaskan highway to a still used curved wooden bridge that was constructed by the Army in 1942 call the Kiskatinaw Bridge.

Here goes on the photos:

The Art Gallery is in the grain building in the background, along with a really nice museum on the heritage of the area.

The Dawson Creek Art Gallery, it was really nicely done in a small, tall place, with the photos going up a long ramp about 3 stories high. A little like the ramp at the downtown YWCA.

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The next stop was in Chetwynd, BC the chainsaw capital of Canada they have some 40 chainsaw carvings and they just finished their annual competion the weekend before.

There were some amazing images, I loved this one of the cranes.

Close up of the Chair piece we all sat in for the first photo.

This one of the Samuri Warrior won first place last year

We then drove to the reconstructed Hudson Bay Trading Post at Hudson Hope, BC.

This is still a working church.

The last part of our trip we were getting tired of driving and siteseeing and we almost missed the best part of the trip but Morris spotted the sign for the Old Alaskan Highway and Kiskatinaw wooden bridge and it was like a drive down memory lane, and it was so exciting to be on part of the original, original highway.

That is our little car traveling on the original part of the Alcan.

Who knew that a photo of pavement could mean so much to us!

The bridge is made of wood and it is curved and canted.

Final photos of the day for your enjoyment!

Dawson Creek, Alberta, Canada, Mile 0 for the Alaskan Highway

2009-07-01T22:28:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

It's been awhile, once again Wifi is hard to get and slow when we get it. Currently we are in Watson Lake, Yukon, which is just on the border with British Columbia, we are at about at Milepost 605 on the Alaska(Alcan) Highway and it's been a beautiful trip over wonderous terrain, forests as far as the eye can see, no roads, houses, powerlines except what we are traveling on, the weather is very changeable. We have had sun, rain, snow in the mountains.

I'm going to take you back to our first day on the Alaskan Highway or mile 0 which begins in Dawson Creek, Alberta, Canada. It was a very exciting day, we have had to travel up to that day about 1500 miles just to get to Mile 0. I'm going to show you that day in photos, it was so fun to actually get to Dawson Creek.

Dawson City, Alberta, Mile 0, the start of the Alaska Highway

Morris & Sandy at the Mile 0 Flag marker in Dawson Creek, Alberta, Canada

Chuck & Jane at the Mile 0 Flag marker in Dawson Creek, Alberta, Canada

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Cool Alaska Café restaurant sign.

Dawson Creek has flower tubs that are decorated by the various business and community organizations, kind of like our Peanuts series of statues in St. Paul, a few years back.

More decorated flower tubs.

Alaska Highway Sign which signals the start of the Alcan Highway

We were so excited to be able to go to the Farmers Market in Dawson Creek, we had a lot of fun, buying produce, Rhubarb, Jam, carrot cake , and checking out the crafts.

From Davidson, SK to Alberta Beach, AB

2009-06-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

Hi again,

We are actually in Dawson Creek,British Columbia and at mile 0 for the Alcan Highway. We traveled through Davidson, SK, Lloydminster which is both in Saskatchewan and Alberta, to Alberta Beach which is about 25 miles outside of Edmonton, We spent three nights at the Alberta Beach RV golf park. We wanted to tour the area and spend a day visiting the West Edmonton Mall, our Mall of America's bigger sister.

Day 4,5 & 6 in Canada in Photos

Tire problems in Davidson, SK had us layover an extra day

We had lots of rain in Davidson, but we were prepared, Here is Morris in his Gortek raingear

and here am I in my rain gear, ready for anything!

Looking out our RV after we hooked up our car and are ready to travel.

Later that day we stopped at a cool overlook, it feels like we were in Scotland, we stopped for lunch

We made it to Alberta Beach RV golf resort, just in time to set up, have supper and go to the beach to get some exercise and see the sunset, we had a long wait.

And the last shot of the day

The next day we hit the West Edmonton Mall, our Mall of Americas big sister, here are a few photos of all the various sites we saw, it was a fun full day, a little like going to the state fair

A fun day was had by all and to top it off Morris bought more things than I did which surprised all of us! Don't be afraid to comment we would love to here from you.

First 3 days in Canada in photos

2009-06-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

It is not so easy finding WiFi on the road, so I'm going to try and update the blog in photos today for the first 3 days. Today, Wednesday, June 24th we are on a layover day just outside of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada at a beautiful resort town, Alberta Beach. We are camped at the Alberta Beach RV Golf resort, too bad none of us golf! :)

Yesterday we spent the entire day at the West Edmonton Mall, our Mall of America's big sister, we had a blast. That blog will probably take some time to set up. Just to let everyone know, Morris actually bought more than I did, he was surprised to find they had so many places to buy tools!

The weather is beautiful, we had had 5 days of pretty much straight rain,(which the provinces badly needed), they were in a drought and now we've had 3 days of sunny weather. Today besides updating our blogs we are doing laundry, cleaning the RV, hanging out at the library and tonight Morris get to use his new grill again and do the beer can chicken he has been waiting to do, it's the reason de'etre(pardon my french) for getting the super grill in the first place.

We are having fun traveling together with Chuck and Jane and we communicate by using radios, we each have our own monikers, theirs is, "Sundog" and ours is "Mandora".

Day 1 & 2 & 3 in Canada in Photos

Morris & Sandy, Fargo’s Buffalo

Hjelmkomst ship museum

Stave church exact replica at Hjelmkomst ship musuem

Hjemkomst ship mast

Stave church from the inside

Cool reststop in ND, replica of an old gas station

Morris walking his pet buffalo, Lewis & Clark Interperative Center

Lewis & Clark interpretive center memorial statues

Morris & Sandy entering Saskatchewan Canada through Portal ND,

Chuck & Jane Saskatchewan Canada wheat symbol.

butt stop at our first A&W on the trip

Weyburn, wheat sculpture, Saskatchewan symbol

Morris trying out his first BBQ on the Mother of all grills

Having fun, drinking wine from Carlos Creek winery in Alexandria, MN, toasting Morris new super grill

Janes attracts a new friend in Moose Jaw, SK

Moose Jaw, SK is known for their many Murals

This mural is in honor of all firemen

The firemen’s prayer

Sweet mural on a paint store

Sandy’s fore photo of Moose Jaw’s moose

and in Closing Morris's aft photo of Moose Jaw's giant moose! :)

1st stop is Alexandria, MN

2009-06-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

Our actual first day traveling we made some errand type stops, to weigh our RV ( we are under weight by 500#, more room now to buy fun things along the way); we bought a couple of items at an RV'ers favorite store, Camper World; and lastly we filled up our propane tanks, one of which goes to Morris's new Mother of all portable grills(which we still haven't tried out yet), maybe in a couple of days!

We travelled along I94, stopping for lunch at Middle Spunk Creek near Albany, MN.

Our Rig

Then on to my brother Joe's lake place at Mary's Lake in Alexandria, our traveling companions, Chuck and Jane(Morris's sister) Winkenwerder met us therethat afternoon. It's a really nice home owners resort called Surfside, with it's own beautiful docks and landscaping. We got a tour, ate a wonderful supper and then played chicken foot which is a domino game RV'ers really like.

The next day we all went to Alex for a great breakfast at one of my brothers favorite places, The Coffee Cup, and Joe and Deb treated us all.

We then all had to run some errands and met up at 1:00 to take a tour of the Carlos Creek Winery.

Much fun and chicanery was had at the winery. We had a tasting and got to keep the wine goblet, got a great tour of the wine factory and the wine cellar and bought some wine to take with us on our trip as well.

Next it was on to The Depot Express for .50 Tacos on Taco Tuesday! Ending the evening with finishing the chicken foot game we started yesterday. Being as modest as I am I won't tell you who won!

Final Preparations and to do lists

2009-06-14T20:27:00.001-07:00

Lots to do, lists, lists and more lists, this is the last day before we actually get on the road, we cleaned our house, washed all the laundry, packed the fresh and frozen food, weeded the garden, set out bird feed, said goodbye to the cats, Dominic and Shadow and to our neighbors then loaded the car with the last of the many items for the road trip.

We stopped by my great nephew, Tony's high school graduation party today and enjoyed spending time with the family.

Tony's Graduation Party

Tony on the right and his buddies

Grandmother Joan on the right and her sister Bev

Tony's aunts, Victoria, Teresa and Gina

Tony's 1st cousins

We finally left around 4:00 and arrived at the RV around 4:30, just had time to finished all the final touches that we could think of and our friend Skip stopped by for an impromtu picnic, salsa, chips and beer. Jennifer came home and enthralled us with her MS150 bike ride and all the adventures or misadventures, she and her brother Russ are getting in shape for the Iowa RAGBRI bike ride across the state

Skip tuning Morris's guitar, our first guest

Our niece Jennifer just after completing the MS 150 mile ride

Squares and Triangles

2009-06-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

We first need to explain how the Squares and Triangles got started so you will understand a little about how Morris and I interact with the world around us and between us. It should be a interesting retirement.

It all started when our North to Alaska traveling companions, Jane (Morris's sister) and her husband Chuck with our niece Jennifer (their daughter), decided to go out for pizza at a restaurant that serves gluten free pizza, a treat for both Jane and Jennifer who are allergic to wheat; we happened to be the only customers at the time in the little pizza restaurant, the proprietor was very excited and asked us how did we want our pizza cut, squares or triangle, simultaneously, I said "squares", Morris said "triangles" and Chuck said, "it's going to be a long trip" at which point we all burst into laughter. And so the adventure begins squares and triangles traveling together for what we hope to be a wonderful adventure, north to Alaska.