First Week: July 7th 2012 (Home) - to VALDEZ ALASKA

 July 7th to Valdez ALASKA July 16th

Calgary Alberta Canada is our first destination, so we can go to the famous 'Calgary Stampede'.  Calgary is about 1200 miles from home, so the first night was spent in Billings Montana, at Yellowstone River Campground, Electricity is necessary so we could run our A/C ....since the temps were hovering at 100 degrees at 6:30 p.m.,  it was about a 12 hr driving day.  Next night was in Great Falls Montana, where we had a tire checked that had a  gash in the sidewall, decided to go ahead and buy 2 new tires, since we had many more miles to travel and didn't need any 'tire' issues. Funny thing is 6 years ago, on our way home FROM Alaska, we had to buy 6 tires for the truck.  Seems like we just can't go thru Great Falls Montana without buying Tires!  Next morning we headed toward Shelby MT to fill up one last time before crossing the border into Canada, where diesel is much more expensive than in US.  We had promised our Shelby, that we would take pictures of 'her' town.  Very small town, we were really glad we didnt' choose to stay in Shelby which was our original plan, but stayed in Great Falls instead.... there is only 1 campground near Shelby which was called, Lewis and Clark Campground....(does that ring a bell Donna and Shauna?) There were no trees, and it looked pretty deserted.

Going thru the Canada/US border didn't take too long, about 20 minutes, mostly waiting in line.  We stopped at the first Visitor Center, had lunch at a picnic table in the shade, picked up maps and brochures, talked to a couple who noticed our Colorado license who were from Littleton Colorado. What a beautiful drive, fields and fields of bright yellow flowers, when harvested is used to make Canola oil, and it grows across Canada. The name canola originated from "Canadian oil, low acid" in 1978 and was once considered as a specialty crop throughout Canada but today is a major crop across  all of North America.


We saw lots of interesting and beautiful barns as well.

Next stop, Calgary!  Timing was not on our side in Calgary, arriving in rush hour traffic.  Got off the route somehow, but the GPS got us to our campground on the outskirts of Calgary, eventually. We had bought a package deal that included 2 days at the Stampede, dinner coupons to be used at the Stampede, Tuesday evening show just after the world famous, Chuckwagon Races ended.  Then the night ended with a spectacular fireworks show.  The Wednesday tickets were for the Rodeo.




 The evening show was amazing, on the same level of the closing ceremonies at the Olmypics....Don't know where they came up with the ideas..  Quite the production.  We caught the shuttle near the entrance to the Stampede for our ride back to the campground, got home at 1:30 am.!!!! Only to go back to the Stampede the next day for the Rodeo.  Great Entertainment, but it was uncomfortably hot and humid.  Was glad we'd be leaving the next morning, Thursday, towards cooler temps, OR so we thought.  We drove a couple of 500 plus miles for the next couple of days, but finally  the horrible roads did slow us down. 





Started the journey to Alaska on Thursday July 12th.

The start of the Alaska Highway begins at Dawson Creek. Here in the middle of the street in downtown Dawson Creek the sign shows Mile '0'.

The road from Ft Nelson to Whitehorse was the best stretch of the Alaska Highway for seeing wildlife...
We saw 4 caribou (one of those a baby), '16' Black Bears, a couple herds of buffalo, 1 Grizzly and her cub, and 1 mama moose with 2 baby moose. Awh, they were so adorable. Wasn't quick enough with the camera to get a good picture.

Mr Buffalo, taking his sweet time crossing the hwy

BIG buffalo

Black Bear

Caribou

We decided to take a little different route from Whitehorse to Tok, via Dawson City Yukon Territory, especially after hearing that the Alaska Hwy near Tok Alaska was in horrible condition, and we had wanted to drive the 'top of the world highway' into Tok anyway. Only thing is, we would have to cross the Yukon by way of a ferry boat.... what? our big rig?  Hmmm...Piece of cake. 
We arrived in Dawson City, Yukon Territory a bit shaken, and so was the trailer. A couple of shelves broke inside the frig so a mess to clean up, spilled milk, mashed cherry tomatoes, oh, ick. I cleaned up several messes a couple different times. The carafe of my coffee maker fell out of the top cupboard, onto the floor and broke, the toaster fell as well, still works though, will have to buy a new coffee pot. The vent of the stove, on the back of the trailer ....MISSING. Not sure where we lost that...but because of the dirt roads sooo much road dust ended up inside the camper, especially in and around my stove looked like mud when I started cleaning it with water and a rag. Gene fixed it temporarily ...he stuffed a small trash bag into the back of it, covered it with a small piece of cardboard and tape. Guess what? it worked, no more dust and dirt after that. 

In Dawson City, Yukon Territory, we went to the cabin of  'Jack London(Call of the Wild) cabin,

Jack London's Cabin

which was moved to this location from somewhere else in the vicinity, and also (Just a block away from that) was the cabin of 'Robert Service', (his real cabin), still in tact, and really, really cute, he was a poet, and author, also wrote several screen plays. A very wealthy man of his day. Gene had been reading some of his work...there was a special presentation done by the parks department, where a young man working for that department recited several of Robert Services' poems, and who was dressed in character

Robert Service Cabin

.  Gene really loved the whole thing. It was pretty neat to see some of his actual belongings thats documented in several pictures inside the cabin. I learned a lot about the man mystelf, even tho I haven't read any of his poems.  Later that night we went to 'Diamond Toothed Girtie's, saloon, casino, with can-can girls... pretty good show.  Coming out of the saloon at 9:30, it looked like it was 3 p.m. in the afternoon, the sun had a very long way to set yet. Still we needed to get to bed for our long day the next day and our drive to ALASKA. Good thing Gene put coverings over the bedroom windows, and we shut the sliding door, so we didn't feel we were going to bed in the middle of the day!!

"Girtie"

Next morning we drove the few blocks to the ferry, NO line waiting for the ferry at 8:00 am... Good.  Sometimes it takes up to 3 hrs waiting to cross, since the Ferry is pretty small, and if there are caravans of travelers, they have to wait for each other on the other side.   No caravans today, we actually did fit on the ferry, with a few feet left over too, and the other people on the ferry was 2 motorcycles and riders..... The ferry is operated by their government 24 hrs a day, and its free, they think its cheaper than spending lots of money on a 'bridge'.

This is the Ferry!

This is the ONLY thing we see at the Canadian/USA border besides the guard shack.  Only 2 people live there, and they work the border.   

We drove thru 2 Canadian Provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, and 1 Territory, the Yukon Territory before finally arriving in Alaska USA! (Arriving on Monday night-late (but still daylight) into Valdez.

                                                       OUR HOME..... FOR THE NEXT  6 WEEKS