Home

Well, we are home here in NC. As a neighbor says, we live 10 miles north of nowhere in particular. but we're here, and it feels good to be home.

I now understand how blogs that people set up can start with daily postings then they drop off to every few days, then weekly, then... well, it becomes last on the list of things to do.

But I have enjoyed having this way to share our trip with anyone who was interested. It was a fantastic road trip, almost 12,000 miles. And especially the comments that folks have posted; it was great to log on and see that someone was here. Frank (my dad) and Cindi especially! I plan to print all this out, comments and all, and save it all as a record of our trip. Anyone who wanted to leave a comment and did not quite to get to it, this is your big chance! Go on, do it, you know you can.

Back in Denver

Back in Denver.

Day trip from Idaho Falls to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

The lodge at Yellowstone. Log structure, 5 stories high. Build during the 1930's. The crews cut the logs during the summer, and assembled them into this fantastic building the following winter. One year total. Amazing.

Old Faithful. It blew right on schedule.

Thousands of people waiting patiently on the benches where the rangers want folks to be:

All except for Harriet here, who thought it'd be cool to have her picture taken with the geyser. All her friends were hollering for her to pose this way or that, so the whole section knew her name. I'm not sure what that squatty pose was all about though.

We have pictures of Old Faithful, for sure. I even have a picture of taking a picture of Old Faithful:

Other stuff at Yellowstone:

If you look at this first one bigger, it's better. Or maybe not... They're called mud pots. Maybe one of those things that are better in person than in a photo.

Grand Teton Park; absolutely beautiful:Although some sections of the road looked a lot like the Alaska Highway:

Visiting in Idaho Falls

I got a facebook message recently from someone I had not had contact with for 35 years- the woman who along with her husband introduced David and me in 1971. Ron and Susan were my parents' neighbors, and Ron was on the submarine with David. So a few emails later, we decided to go through Idaho Falls on our way back to Denver. And here we are, the 2009 versions. (The 1971 versions were thinner and had no wrinkles)

David and bear and bison

OK, we had a comment or two about how David needed to be feeding a bear. Mr S, you know who you are. So we took some pictures of David, a banana, and some animals, just for you:

I love this last one. The crow has this- What the heck are you doing?? look. Or he would if he were still alive...

Montana heading south

I took these pictures in Montana yesterday.
Lots of big rocks:
Green rolling hills too.
In this canyon by the river, were the interstate highway, the local road, the railroad tracks, and homes. I guess they have to use what flat ground they have.

Storm blowing in across the plains. Looked a lot more ominous in person than the picture shows. Oh well.

Along the Alaska Highway going south

Moose. When they walk they trot along, with the cutest little bounce, even when walking slowly.

Grizzly bear cub. There were 2 of them, but we could not spot the mom.
Caribou. There were 3, but this is the best picture.

Huge bison. Really really big. And as you can see, he was actually on the road, not just off in the woods somewhere. He paid us absolutely no attention. He had somewhere to go, clearly.

DARKNESS!!!

We were in Red Deer Alberta last night, and- IT GOT DARK!!!!

We are in Great Falls Montana now, and darn if it doesn't look like it's going to happen again tonight!!!!

Last night was the first time we've seen darkness in weeks. On June 23 there are a number of midnight events in Alaska- midnight baseball games, midnight golf tournaments, that sort of thing.

We have driven 8,380 miles so far, since we left home, and this afternoon we went through customs for the last time. Imagine, northern Montana feels like home!

It feels like home because gasoline is sold by the gallon- only $2.61- yes!! We saw it as high as 1.81/liter in British Columbia. 3.7 liter= 1 gallon. And the Canadian dollar and the US dollar are close enough to equal for that not to be much of a factor. So- 1.81 times 3.7 makes for some mighty expensive gasoline. Although the highest we actually bought was $1.65/liter. Anyway, it makes $2.61/gallon look really good!

It feels like home because distances and speed limits are in miles, not kilometers, although that was no big deal to adjust to.

Food in Canada was expensive- I bought a jar of store brand parmesan cheese for, I think, about $8.00. Used to be that would convert to cheaper in American dollars, but not any more, so 8 dollars really is 8 dollars. I'd better thaw that spaghetti sauce some night soon.

The northernmost Alaska Highway is very bumpy- between frost heaves and construction, it's quite a stretch. Hundreds of miles worth of it, too. Days, actually. Here is my closet after a typical day. All that stuff at the bottom started the day on hangers, on the rod.

But- not a single cabinet or drawer has opened and spilled its contents onto the floor, so we are doing just fine.

Glnn Highway

Glenn Highway construction:

I guess this is what they are trying to make the above section look like:

Me:

The Kenai Peninsula, where Anchorage residents go on vacation.

A few Alaska Highway pictures

Spending the night in rest areas is very common. Here we are in one.

These wonderful purple/pink flowers are very common along the highway. I think they might be lupines.

Below is our front bumper as we head south on the Alaska Highway. Alaska/Yukon mosquitos are incredibly large, and there are plenty of them, to say the least. Here in Whitehorse, the next camper over appears to be brand new, and northbound, because it's clean. The owner is cleaning his bumper with something in a bottle the size nail polish comes in, and with a tiny tiny brush that likewise looks like a nail polish brush. If he looks over and sees our bumper.... oh dear.

t shirt

We are in Seward, which is an absolutely beautiful town wedged between the water and the mountains. I will take and post pictures tomorrow. But- this afternoon we were walking around town and I went into one of these expensive 'outfitter' kinds of stores, and saw a Patagonia brand tee shirt. White tee shirt, no particular styling to it- could have been a fruit of the loom undershirt. The front had screen printed on it: Live simply. Price $42.00.

Oh my goodness.

:-)

Homer pictures

The above picture was taken at midnight!

Homer spit

I had posted a really nice aerial picture of the area we are in, a spit of land jutting out into Cook Inlet and Kachemak Sound at the end of the road here in Homer. Looked good to me when I reloaded the page, but apparently the link timed out or something (is that possible?), and it left nothing but a big empty white box at the top of my post yesterday. Sorry 'bout that. So I deleted the post entirely.

ANYway, we are at the end of the road. Literally and figuratively. Tomorrow we head back the other way. An overnight (or 2) in Seward, which is another waterfront town that sounds really nice, then back to Anchorage and we start working our way back towards Denver then home to North Carolina. We have seen huge amounts of Alaska that can be seen by driving, and some that has to be flown over. We had a great time deciding which roads to take and which to bypass, and when to spend an extra night somewhere.

And a big part of that kind of vacation is knowing when it's time to backtrack towards home, and after Seward we will do that.

I will post Homer pictures in another post after this goes up.

Kenai Peninsula

We are about 50 miles from arriving at the end of the road. THE end of THE road. No lie. We are almost to Homer, a small town at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage. The Seward Highway, the main road here from Anchorage is absolutely beautiful. To the right, across Cook Inlet, is Mount Redoubt the volcano that blew a couple of months ago. It's puffing now, but looks harmless enough.

We hope to camp out on the Homer Spit. Apparently it's quite the spot.

Not sure what our internet options will be out there, but I need to cut this short. Every time we hit a bump, and there are lots, something inside the laptop jumps and my cursor goes somewhere else entirely.

McKinley Flight Part 2 - Glacier Landing

After cruising the mountains and valleys for a while we landed on a fork of the Ruth Glacier known as Mountain Home. Here we are on final approach.

Despite all the snow it was pretty warm.

This place is known as Mountain Home for a house built by the late Don Sheldon, a bush pilot who pioneered glacier landings in support of climbers. The house can be rented from the park service for a reasonable $75 per night.

Skiers will rent it and take to the local slopes. The slopes aren't crowded and plenty of natural snow but the lifts are non-existent.

Mountain Home International Airport - While we were there two other planes landed. It is getting crowded. Time for departure.

For the first part of the trip back to Talkeetna we followed the Kahiltna Glacier. It is 1 to 2 miles wide, 35 miles long and about a mile thick. It travels about 1 foot per day so it takes about 100 years for an ice crystal in a snowflake that lands on the upper end to come out on the lower end. The heavy weight of the thousands of feet of ice compact the crystals to form dense blue ice. It looks blue because the crystals tend to absorb light from the red end of the spectrum. (Here I go sounding like a physics teacher)

At the upper end the top of the glacier is covered with new white snow that hardly melts during the summer because of the high altitude. As the glacier bends around corners, cravasses are formed that can be 200 feet deep. Sometimes snow bridges will form and the surface will look nice and smooth. (Remember I said that 37 climbers had been lost)

The glacier will pick up bits of sand and rock (called flour) that will be exposed at lower altitudes in warm weather.

In the summer pools and rivers will form on the top of the glacier exposing the blue ice below. For all these pictures we were at least a mile above the glacier so things may be much bigger than they appear.Here a terrane (or wall) is exposed due to excessive melt cause by global warming. The terrane is 200 ft high indicating Kahiltna is 200 ft thinner than at some time in the past.

This is still a glacier but there is so much sand and rock that you can't see the ice except in the bottom of the lake.There are still several years of glacier left before we get to the end, so plants have started growing. Forests too.

Alaska has the most land and the least population so there is a lot of open space for hardy souls to live out away from it all. They are described to be "off the road" and "off the grid". Some live in places that are accessable by float plane. The Alaska Railway runs a flagstop train every few days that will stop and pick you up or deliver supplies if you live near the track. Others need to hike to the nearest road.

And some appear to have no easy access to any form of transportation.