Monday we left Kenai for anchorage for a scheduled train ride and two nights at Denali national park. Got to another cramped campground but this one had an additional attraction. The train track ran about 20′ from our campsite. The rv actually shook when a train went by. And the engineer was kind enough to give a hello blast of his horn as he went by. Fortunately the train only went by a few times a day. We left the…
Sunday we went on an 11 hour long fishing charter. Today was a mix of good and bad. We had to be out of the house (rv) by 5am for a 6:30am charter in Homer. Bad for me lol. The water out in the ocean was very rough and cold and everyone had trouble fishing and standing. The boat was smaller than advertised when I booked and we had 2 more people join us so it was pretty cramped. But…
Today we drove to Seward for a glacier cruise. It was me, Jamie, her parents and our Canadian friends Dave and Connie. This was a great cruise. Got very up close and personal with some large glaciers that had large clumps of snow and ice falling that sounds like thunder when it hit the water. The captain had to navigate around all kinds of large ice chunks to get close to the glaciers. The crew scooped one of the chunks…
Thursday we drove to Whittier, another small port and fishing village. They actually have cruise ships and large ferry boats that go all the way to Seattle. Not much to Whittier except some cool glaciers, a nice visitors center and a tunnel (one of the longest in America) that is one way and shared by train tracks so you have to go through on a schedule. We had a great lunch of fish and chips at a water front restaurant….
Wednesday Jamie’s parents, Jim and Cheryl came to join us in Alaska for ten days. They had never been there and Jamie was very excited to do some fishing with her dad which she hadn’t done in many years. We walked over to an old orthodox church that was built by the Russians that inhabited Kenai in the 1800’s. Then had another dinner party for the gang. Ricks cousins, Tom and Tamara, brought over some halibut and salmon that were…
Rick has a cousin that owns a fishing business so on the 4th we all went out in their boat and went to a little island town called Seldovia. They had a typical small town 4th of July celebration complete with the mayor and all the locals dressing up for the parade with their mini floats. Did a little shopping, did the beer garden and had a great time. After that we went out and did some halibut fishing. Caught…
Monday we drove to our next stop, Kenai, Ak where we were meeting up with Rick and Gale. In fact, we got the spot right next to them. Another cramped campground but being next to them helped. As we pulled in we ran into the other couple that we took the train ride with. Small world up there in Alaska. So that evening we sat around the campfire and had dinner and cocktails.
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…