North America
15 adventures documented
AlaskaTravels have ended for now. We've landed in Flagler Beach, Florida, where we're looking for a new home. A look back at the whole year, the miles, the bears and moose and orcas, the wine consumed (sixty bottles), the people we met, and the day on Tracy Arm to Sawyer Glacier that has to count as the single biggest thrill of the trip. We'll restart in the spring with new adventures.
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AlaskaLeaving Alaska by way of Delta Junction, Tok, the rough Taylor Highway up to the town of Chicken (named because no one could spell Ptarmigan), the all-gravel Top of the World Highway, a stop at the Boundary station, an easy border crossing into Canada, and the Yukon River ferry into Dawson City.
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AlaskaAfter Denali, a few days in Fairbanks: camping on the Chena River, eighteen holes with Pete and Bunny Warenski and Patrick and Anna Carney at the most northern USGA course in America, the story of Fairbanks' swindler founder E.T. Barnette, our 12th anniversary at the Pump House Restaurant, and the Aurora Ice Museum at Chena Hot Springs.
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AlaskaDenali National Park, the highlight the whole trip had been pointing at. The Fanny Quigley dinner theater show, Kitty the barmaid collecting dollar kisses, an international potluck with Hal's Hungarian goulash and Bunny's Polish perogies, three days camped at Teklanika at mile 29, and a 6:20 AM bus run out the Park Road where we joined the 30 percent club and saw the north face of Mt. McKinley clear as a bell.
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AlaskaEagle River nights and 18 holes at Eagleglen on Elmendorf Air Force Base, up to Hatcher Pass and the old Independence Mine, then on toward Denali by way of Talkeetna, where the three great peaks of the Alaska Range, Foraker, Hunter, and McKinley, were as clear as a bell. Plus Pete Warenski and John taking on a two-pound Seward's Folly burger at the West Rib Pub.
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AlaskaWhile in Soldotna we did get the opportunity to play golf, you probably forgot that was part of the trip since we haven't played since being in Dawson Creek at John Rigsby's Farmington 9 hole course. The first 9 hole ...
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AlaskaSix moose along the highway up the Kenai Peninsula, six days at the Diamond M Ranch in Soldotna with patriarch Carroll, salmon fishing on the Kenai River, a drive out to Captain Cook State Recreation Area, a razor clam dig that yielded over 200 clams for Friday night's soup, and a bald eagle's nest at the heart of the ranch with parents feeding their eaglets.
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AlaskaFerry from Valdez to Whittier across Prince William Sound, the single lane shared tunnel into the Kenai Peninsula, six glaciers in the Portage Valley, musk ox and Kodiak cubs at the wildlife center, the old gold rush town of Hope, an orca pod off Seward, sockeye fishermen at Cooper Landing, and a few rounds at the Salty Dawg with Navy sailors in Homer.
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AlaskaA week in Valdez on Prince William Sound: a fresh halibut picnic with the locals on Memorial Day, the 1964 earthquake history, a glacier cruise out to Columbia Glacier through ice flows and sea otters, and a salmon barbecue using a recipe John's father, Jack Wilson, perfected decades ago.
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AlaskaOff the Marine Highway at last, with the Roadtrek group reuniting in Haines and Tok. Wonderful drives through the Yukon to Kluane Lake, the Sourdough RV Park's pancake throw, fishing in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and a long beautiful road down to Valdez.
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AlaskaGlaciers in Juneau, Russian history in Sitka, totem poles and ferries through the Inside Passage, and a drive over White Pass to Carcross with three grizzly bears along the way. A week on the Alaska Marine Highway.
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AlaskaA day on the Adventure Bound from Juneau through Tracy Arm Fjord to the face of Sawyer Glacier. Mountains rising from the sea, bears and eagles and seals along the shore, icebergs floating thick, and the kind of day you remember the rest of your life.
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AlaskaWe left Dawson Creek for Prince Rupert and the Alaska Marine Highway ferry, back down Highway 97 through Pine Pass, then west on Highway 16 past Smithers, Hazelton, and Terrace to the coast.
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AlaskaIf you have never driven to Alaska, there is one book every veteran of the road will tell you to get. The MilePost rode in our glove compartment from the first mile to the last.
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AlaskaHow we went from a tent at Anvil Campground in Williamsburg to a 22-foot Roadtrek on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis, and how a thread on a Roadtrek forum about a 2011 caravan to Alaska turned into the trip we came to call Walkabout Canada-Alaska.
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