We decided to take a road trip to a town Jim went through on the way from Fairbanks to Anchorage while Jamie was at work. I did some research and found cute looking cabin, made a reservation and off we went. Following my gps we get to the town and turns out it was the wrong town! I was so mad at myself because initially it looked like the town was an absolute nothing but we checked in and decided…
Well, so much for work. I was setting up camp and bent wrong to lift the tow bar and threw out my back. Spent the next week recuperating. Tomorrow is my son Eric’s birthday. Happy birthday, Eric! Jamie got back Wednesday. I was still hurting and trying to get insurance approval to go to a doctor there. Aetna has no doctors in network in Alaska. So Wednesday we took it easy while she recouped from work and me with my…
With Jamie at work I decided to drive to anchorage so we’d be set up there after she got back. Plus I had to go to work the next day and it was easier to commute from there. Was a beautiful drive and I was wishing she was with me. An interesting thing happened entering Canada. They are very strict on gun laws so I submitted paperwork online so we could carry our hand gun transiting Canada. I never got…
Thursday Jamie had to leave for work so I did what I typically do when she goes to work, played golf. This place was called the North star golf course and it was a dump lol. It was also the northern most golf course in the US. So now I’ve played the northern most golf course in the US and Canada. Click on the picture above to see the rest of the pictures.
Wednesday we took a paddle boat cruise down the river with Jamie’s cousins. That’s typically below my thrill level but I went along and it was really great. Had a seaplane do a fly by, stopped in front of a sled dog kennel where the owner had a wireless mic hooked up to the boat and gave us a lesson on sled dogging along with a demonstration using an atv with the engine removed. Those dogs are hyper, all they…
Today I got this crazy bug up my butt that I wanted to drive to the arctic circle. About a 5-6 hour drive each way along questionable roads just to stand in front of a sign that says arctic circle. Hey, once in a lifetime, right? We got there early afternoon, got our picture and even a certificate, spent a half hour there and left. One cool thing was they had these birds called grey jays, relative of the blue…
Monday we took a ride to the North Pole. Or at least Alaska’s version of it which is just outside Fairbanks. Supposedly this is where all the letters come when kids address them to Santa. The highlight of the town is Santa’s house complete with a stable of reindeer. Of course, there was a huge gift shop that we spent hours in. Seemed like it anyway. They also had a wall with a bunch of letters from kids from all…
Got to Fairbanks on Friday and set up camp and relaxed. Saturday was a low key day just driving around checking out the area. Sunday they had a winter solstice festival downtown so we decided to check it out. Was a fun festival with a bunch of live bands, a beer garden and tons of food. Click on the picture above to see the rest of the pictures.
The next morning we started off for Fairbanks with an rv and jeep that were covered in mud and dirt. We hit a road block right away with highway workers tearing up the road. We had to wait about 20 min for the road to clear of construction vehicles and in front of us was a truck that sprayed water over the road to moisten it and it was spraying one of the other vehicles. Turns out the driver was…
That was it for Dawson City so the next day we finally left Canada for Alaska. We had to take a ferry across the river with the rv which was a bit interesting. It wasn’t exactly a large ferry and we barely fit but we made it. The road from Dawson City to the border was about the same as Whitehorse to Dawson City so we were still feeling pretty good about our decision. We crossed the border uneventfully and…
Wednesday we toured an old gold dredge and learn about gold panning. The dredge is a large machine that digs up large shovels of dirt with a conveyor belt with shovels and spins it to separate the heavier gold from the water rocks and dirt. It was pretty interesting how they did that. Then we tried our hand at gold panning. A woman gave us a pan filled with dirt and showed us how to shake it and separate gold…
Tuesday we left for Dawson city in the Yukon. Very interesting story here. First of all, we had planned on driving the rv along the southern route on the Alaskan highway past Dawson city, parking and backtracking there with the jeep because we heard the roads on the top of the world highway were very bad. But sitting at a bar, where all our best decisions are made, we met a couple that had just come over the top of…
Next morning it was off to our next stop, Whitehorse, where we planned on spending a couple days. Of course, we ran into more couples that we met at previous stops and one convinced us to take a train ride with them to Skagway, Ak the next morning. That evening we went to a local brewery and then went out to dinner and just drove around town. Nothing real exciting about the town but definitely the largest we had come…
Saturday we crossed into the Yukon on the way to another nothing town called Teslin. On the way we saw another large bear at the side of the road. We also stopped in a town called Watson Lake that had a very unique park called sign park. One of the army engineers working on the Alaska highway was home sick and put up a sign to remind him of home. That was about 70 years ago and it has taken…
Friday we drove to the Liard hot springs state park where they had very nice hot springs bathing set up. Today was or first real wildlife viewing day. We saw a bear, some mountain goats, some very large bison right next to our campground, and a moose next to the hot springs. We also stopped along the way at Tetsa River Lodge, which advertised the best cinnamon buns in BC. They were pretty damn good. After dinner we walked to…
Thursday we left for Fort Nelson. Another few hours drive. Not much to that town but we found a campground with a cool little saloon in it. Stopped in for a beer and dinner and that was about it for Fort Nelson. We did have our first introduction to bad northern roads. There was a stretch of about 5 miles of torn up road that we had to go about 25 mph through. Not as bad as what was to…
Wednesday we drove about 5 hours to Dawson Creek and the beginning of the Alaska highway. It was a cool little nothing town that was established as the Canadian side of the first highway to Alaska. We walked around and checked out the visitor center and the girl at the center told us it might be interesting to drive out to the original bridge that was built for the highway. It was an old wooden bridge that was still in…
Tuesday we left for our next stop, a small town just past Jasper national park. We drove past some incredible scenery and some beautiful glaciers. They offered rides onto one of them on these huge snow trucks but the next one wasn’t for a few hours so we didn’t have time. If we had known about it in advance we probably would have done it. Stayed overnight at a koa. This was much better than our campground in Calgary but…
Jamie came in on Saturday and Sunday was mostly a down day. On Monday we drove out to the town of Banff and had a nice lunch and walked around the town. Then we took the gondola up to the peak overlooking the town. What a beautiful view. Up top there was a nice visitor’s center and an old weather station that was pretty interesting. We headed back and started getting ready for our departure heading north the next day….
The last week was spent working for both of us. I got home on the first and was gonna drive to Calgary then go back to work on the 4th then meet Jamie back in Calgary after her trip. As it turned out I got a bit of Delhi belly so called in sick for my next trip. I did have an odd thing happen crossing the Canadian border. I submitted my paperwork to be able to bring our hand…