DAYS 12 & 13  CHUGIAK, ALASKA

We've spent the last two days basically relaxing.  Yesterday we drove down to Anchorage to see where Nicki will be working.  I should have taken a picture of her standing in front of the building.  After that we drove down the Seward Highway to the Wildlife sanctuary where we saw moose, caribou, wood bison, black bears and grizzly bears, musk ox and wolves.  There were more but you get the idea.  Most of these animals came to the sanctuary after being found orphaned or injured in the wild.  The bears alone have 18 acres to roam and live so its not like a zoo.   It was a drizzly/rainy day but not so much that we couldn't get out of the car and walk around.  It was cold though to us mid-westerners.  You know how it always feels colder on a rainy day.

We had stopped for slices of pizza on the way to the sanctuary so on the way home we stopped at Beluga Point (is that right Brian).  Brian said the tide was out so the water was too shallow for whales but the big siting was up on the mountainside where we saw at least a dozen Dall Sheep.  They were tiny specks up there but Brian had a really good pair of binoculars so, with them, we could see them really well. 

We came on home and there were some friends came over for dinner.  Brian and Mark made "tri-tips" which I'd never heard of before but, man, were they good.  Everybody else brought stuff and Mark made his mom's Boston baked beans which were really good. 

Today we went into Anchorage again to hit some of the tourist shops and to have lunch.  Then we went to a sporting goods store and Nicki got hiking boots and a better rain jacket.  Don and I needed a nap after that.  LOL. 

Supper was leftovers of lasagna, tri-tip, salad, potato salad, corn on the cob, ribs and 3 different kinds of cake.  We got a lot cleaned up.

Don and I leave here tomorrow.  It will be hard to leave Nicki behind but we know that with Brian as her partner that she will do just fine.  She starts her new job May 31st and that will help her get into a routine.  Brian has a few ideas of where he wants to work and has applied to some of them.  They will do great.

In Anchorage

Lunchtime

We've had a fantastic adventure and wouldn't change anything about it.  Well, maybe would change the truck tire/bearing breakdowns so Brian wouldn't have had to mess with that but all in all it been a great trip.  I want to thank Nicki and Brian for letting us come along on their journey for awhile.  We never thought we'd ever come back to Alaska after our first trip in 2015 but now it looks like it will be a yearly trip. 

Thanks for following along on this journey.  Maybe there will be another adventure soon. 

DAY 11    LAST DAY ON THE ROAD:  TOK TO CHUGIAK  297 miles

We left Tok around 8:11 a.m. and started toward Anchorage/Chugiak.  I think we got here about 3:30 or 4:00 but I didn't look at the time so not sure.  I'm not a very good correspondent.   

This is Mark's house.  He is a long time friend of Brian's and has graciously asked them to stay with him until they buy something of their own or decide to rent for awhile.  Its a beautiful neighborhood with lots of trees and lots of retired military. 

Don and I got the "private suite" in Mark's motor home.  Its nice, we're comfortable and it is quiet out here.  With 3 dogs in the house it gets a little loud.  Mark has a shaggy dog called Whopper and he and Sioux are trying to figure out how to get along.  Tali pretty much sticks right at Nicki's side the whole time.  She's a good girl.

After we got a little settled we went to the local American Legion for what they call "steak night".  For $20 you pick out your own steak and cook it yourself.  They provided baked potatoes, green beans, salad and other fixins.  The steaks were huge and delicious.  Brian was given an application to join the Legion and they asked Nicki if she wanted to apply to be on the Women's Auxiliary.  She said "will I have to work".  I told her about all the time our mom spent helping out at the Sparta VFW in the kitchen. 

I got to meet some of the people they will be hanging out with.  All of them are our age or a little younger but they are all super nice.  I asked the ladies to please look out for my girl and they promised that they would.  They have already given her a recommendation for a bank so that's good.  She can ask some of the younger girls at work about hairdressers, a gynecologist and other doctors probably.

Oh, on our ride over yesterday we saw some more wildlife but I didn't take any pictures.  We saw 1 black bear, 3 moose, 1 wolf and 3 eagles.  The road at a certain point was super curvy and I was wishing for a Dramamine big time but survived. 

Brian had really wanted to take Don out on a fishing charter for halibut but the weather up in Valdez is calling for snow and rough seas so that has been cancelled.  Nicki and I were going to go along and hang out in town while they were gone.  To tell you the truth, Brian is probably the only one disappointed.  Its 6 hours to Valdez and we would have gotten a hotel room and then the guys would have been on the charter for 12 hours.  I'm not sure what the plan was for when they got back but probably driving all the way back.  I think it was an additional 6 hour drive we were not disappointed to miss. 

So, not real sure what we'll be doing the next 3 few days but I imagine it will involve some sightseeing.  I want to go into Anchorage with Nicki to see where she's going to work and I'd just like to look around the area so I can get a picture in my mind where she'll be.

We video chatted with Heather and Reese this morning.  That baby!!!  I miss her so much. 

Our private suite.  :)

Mark's living room

 Looking toward the stairs to his loft. 

I think that is all I know for now.   May update tomorrow if we do something today. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind just sitting around all day reading and lounging but I know Don would have a hard time doing that. 

Day 10  Johnson Crossing, Ca to Tok, Alaska  464 miles, left at 7:27 a.m.

Johnson Crossing was one of those little places you see along a highway with an area for campers and motor homes, a restaurant and a small motel.  You'd think that you were not going to stop there because it looked a little iffy.  We actually made a reservation there, though, because there was no where else to stay for a reasonable price along that leg of the trip.  The rooms were clean, bed mostly comfortable and bath tiny but all in all in was a good experience.  I bet the room was only as big as our basement bathroom.  Adequate.  The restaurant was like someone's grandma's kitchen/dining room with oak tables and chairs.  Nobody else was in there when we were.  Don wasn't impressed with the cinnamon roll.  Brian said his breakfast wrap was "ok".  I didn't eat of course. 

This was our last day on the Canada section of the Alaska Highway.  When we crossed the border back into the USA the sign said we'd traveled 1221.8 on the Alaska Highway. Brian said that technically the Alcan goes all the way to Fairbanks but we're not.   We were on Highway 2 (I think) from there on into Tok.  We had planned on driving all the way to Chugiac tonight but Brian talked to his friend and he said it was 6 more hours and we just didn't have 6 more in us after yesterday.  It's only 6:55 but I could go to sleep for the night. 

The drive today was, again, beautiful.  There was nothing boring about this drive because there is always something beautiful or different to look at.  It took longer than I thought it would to get to the border.  I don't know why but I think I thought we'd just head straight for the mountain and travel over it.  Nope!  We went around the mountain mostly or at least it seemed that way.  The road varied from really good to really bad.  We hit road construction in one place but got lucky and were only held up for a few minutes.  It looked like the people in front of us had been waiting for a long time as they were outside of their RV's standing around talking.  When we finally got going there were 5 RV's in front of plus a couple of trucks pulling trailer like us.  It took us a good 20 minutes or more to clear the construction but after that there weren't anymore sites like that.  The road was bumpy in a lot of places from the frost heaves and the pavement was torn up in places from the same.  I took a picture of the pavement but not sure you'll be able to tell.

We got into Tok early and had dinner at Fast Eddy's.  Nothing like the one at home.  Its a restaurant and has a hotel behind it.  The food was really good and we got rooms in the hotel.  We'll leave around 8 tomorrow for the final leg of our road trip. 

My laptop says its 10:02 back there but its only 7:02 here in Alaska. 

Tali waiting for Nicki

Crossing the border back into USA

Road conditions today

DAY 9 FT. NELSON TO JOHNSON CROSSING, CANADA  512 miles ++

We left Ft. Nelson at 8:19 a.m. and arrived at Johnson Crossing at 10:49 p.m.  Way longer than we every expected. 

It was again a beautiful drive and a day full of animal sightings.  I kept a tally

3 cinnamon bears

4 caribou

9 stone sheep

6 rams

16 Wood (or Forest)  Bison  + 3 babies

2 porcupine

1  moose

2 black bears

What a great day of animals.  I did not get pictures of all of them; some we saw as we were passing by. 

In other news as we were traveling along Don noticed smoke coming from the back end of the trailer.  We used our walkie talkie to contact Brian and he pulled over pretty quickly.  By then, it was really smoking.  He got the wheel off and the bearing was shot.  We were basically stranded or I should say Brian was stranded.  After he got it all taken apart Don and I took off for the nearest town to get replacement parts.  This was at 2:00 in the afternoon.  It was a little over 100 miles to get there, get the parts and go back.  Thankfully when we got about 3/4 of the way back, Nicki got on the walkie talkie saying they had been rescued by a good Samaritan and were on their way to meet us.  Right then, we met up with them.  A man in a motor home stopped and he happened to have a whole bag of bearings and had just what Brian needed.  We didn't get back together and on the road until around 5 and still had 3 1/2 hours to go.  We pulled into Johnson Crossing at 10:49 p.m.  It is still light at that time of night now and for another good hour.  I can't confirm that as I was asleep pretty quickly. 

A forest bison 

What a day.  It was exciting to see all the animals in the wild.  Those Forest Bison are bigger than the ones we see in the lower 48; they were monsters.  The bears were fairly medium to small size.  I'll show you in the pictures and, by the way, the wild animals weren't anywhere close to where Brian was laying on the ground. 

Sign Posts Forest

I am so tired I can't remember some of the places we saw but all were beautiful. 

DAY 8 - Edmonton, Alberta, CA - Ft. Nelson, British Columbia, CA  644 miles

We left Edmonton at 5:48 a.m. to avoid Edmonton's rush hour traffic.  We had a pretty uneventful first part of our drive except it rained off and on all morning and early afternoon.  We had Tim Horton's for breakfast which was good. 

We stopped in Dawson Creek to eat lunch, fuel up the cars and visit the point where the Alaska Highway starts.  There is a sign that says Mile 0. 

The second part of the day was more rain until around 5 or so.  Don and I got a low tire pressure warning in Nicki's car and had to stop for air.  Nicki and Brian went quite a ways before they pulled over to wait on us.  With no cell phones we were screwed as far as being able to tell them we were on our way.  Don put air in all four tires before the tire pressure warning went off. 

The road has been pretty good for the most part.  There are places where the pavement is rutted and broken up.  Some have signs to warn you and some don't.  Late afternoon Brian's trailer blew a rear tire.  It has dual tires so he was able to control it fine but had to pull to the shoulder as good as he could.  Fortunately the tire was on the pavement side so he had room to change it.  He had all the tools and an extra tire and it only took him about 20 minutes.  We could see way down the road to notice if traffic was coming.  We had 3 people stop to see if we were ok or if we needed help.  One guy offered Brian his spare tire.  Brian is going to buy a new tire in the morning. 

We've had dinner and I've got two loads of laundry in the hotel machines washed.  They're in the dryer now so hopefully they'll be done when I go down there again and I can go to bed. 

Oh we saw our first animal today besides birds:  a black bear was on the side of the road.  We saw it after we'd gotten down the road a fair piece after the blow out. 

DAY 7 - Great Falls, Montana to Edmonton, Canada.  7 hours and 45 min, 499 miles

We've been on the road a week now.  Boy does time fly.  This morning we left the hotel around 7:30 and stopped for diesel for Brian's truck and ice for the coolers.  We were on the way around 8 o'clock.  This is our shortest day on the road and there isn't much to tell since we were inside the car/truck all day.

Their dogs are doing great they say, sleeping most of the time while they drive.  Tali likes to look out the window but Sioux isn't interested.

We had good weather today and good roads.  We've turned our cell phones off to avoid roaming charges.  We're using walkie talkies to communicate and they work fine. 

We crossed the border around 10:20 a.m. and it was smooth sailing.  There were only 4 cars ahead of us and it didn't take too long.  They asked us where we were from and where we were going.  He also wanted to know if we'd been to Canada before and neither one of us had. 

The currency conversion confuses me so I just use the credit card.  Its charged in US money.  One Canadian dollar is worth .73 cents US.  Gas is .98 a liter which equals $3.78 and is also not too high for the area we are in. 

For the early part of the trip we had the Rocky Mountains to the west of us but as we traveled north it changed to farm fields as far as you could see.  Reminded me of Illinois.  We keep going north tomorrow with a slight shift to the west and will end up in Ft. Nelson tomorrow night.  It will be about a 11 hour day. 

Nicki and I booked rooms for the whole trip last night before we left Great Falls.  The further west we got, the less rooms there were to choose from,  We were using Booking.com.  We're in a Super 8 tonight and tomorrow night and some sort of "lodge" Wednesday night but it looks like a motel with the rooms butted up against each other with outside entrances and porches on the front.  It was cheap and the dogs can be there.  They didn't have to pay for the dogs last night at LaQuinta but tonight were charged $15 for each dog. 

That's all I know tonight.  WIFI has been good so far but I'm not sure how long that will last.  

I only took these 3 pictures today.  Not much else to see.  

Brian's truck and trailer on the road

Going through customs

 

I had to add this picture of Reese I got this morning.  It was our "good morning Papa and Grandma" from Heather.  Love this when is happens

DAYS 5 & 6 - DEADWOOD-CODY-HELENA, MT

Friday we said goodbye to Deadwood on a beautiful sunny warm day and headed back up to I-90 and turned west.  As soon as we crossed the border into Wyoming we stopped at a Visitor's Center and got a super nice woman who told us of some side trips we could take along our way.  Since we were still a full day ahead of Nicki and Brian we had the time.  That is the one plus of their delay:  we got to see parts of the country that we hadn't intended to but have enjoyed so much.  What a beautiful country we have. 

Our first stop was Devil's Tower which was a 45 minute drive north from the Visitor's Center.  We could see it clearly for miles and when we arrived and stopped at a little country store for a break it was right there in front of us.  We decided not to take the drive up to the base of it since we had a great view anyway. 

We took a different route back to I-90, headed west and when we got to Buffalo, Wyoming turned south for the scenic route through the Bighorn National Forest.  What an amazing place that was.  Mile after mile of scenery you only see in movies and then you realize it is in our own country.  There was hardly any traffic but I can imagine in the summer that the cars are bumper to bumper.  We crossed the Horn Mountain at some point during the trip.  There were a few buffalo along the way but not much else. 

We stopped for the night in Cody, Wyoming, had dinner and went to sleep.  On average we're arriving at our hotels around 7:00 p.m. every night and Don's usually been up since 4 or 5 a.m. and does all the driving so we're both tired. 

Today we left Cody early (for Pati) which means about 8:00 or so.  We headed out US 16 out of Cody and the sign said "Yellowstone 50 miles".  That road took us right into the East entrance to this beautiful National Park.  Yay for our Senior Park pass we bought a few years ago when we took that long trip out west.  It has saved us money twice now on entrance fees.  Our goal was Old Faithful and it took us another hour or so to get there.  Along the way we saw wild buffalo roaming free and many, many beautiful mountains and hills. There was still a lot of snow on the mountains and as we drove further into the park, there were snow banks right along the roads with some fields being covered with snow.  Yellowstone Lake was covered with snow and looked like it was still frozen.  It probably wasn't solid but it sure looked like it.  We got parked and went into the Visitor's Center mainly to use their restrooms but ended up buying t-shirts off course.  We moved the car a little closer to Old Faithful and walked out.  It was COLD, in the high 30's-40's.  I put my fleece jacket on plus my raincoat and was ok.  The wind was blowing too so that made it feel colder.  We walked up to Old Faithful and found out from the Park Ranger that it wasn't due to go off for another 40 minutes.  We went into the VC and sat in the auditorium mainly because it was the only place with good WIFI but stayed for the short movie about the park.  When it was over, it was time to walk back out and wait.  There were a lot more people there than you would think but still not as many as I imagine there will be in the summer.  Everybody was friendly except for the Japanese tourists.  I think they were never taught any manners.  Old Faithful went off around 12:12, right on schedule.  It started to snow lightly when we first walked out and kept getting thicker as we waited.  Then on our way to Helena, it probably snowed on us for at least the first 40 miles, maybe more.  After that, it was rain.  No sun for us today.

After that, we headed toward Helena, Montana.  That took us another 3 hours going out the North Entrance of Yellowstone.  We're stopped for the night in Helena.  Nicki and Brian are at Gillette tonight which is about 6 hours from here.  We've decided to move on to Great Falls, MT tomorrow and will meet them there, spend the night and cross the border Monday morning.  It'll be good to see them. 

Devil's Tower and snow on the mountains

         

Lots of snow on side of road.   Trees burned, Yellowstone lake in background

This is Don's picture.  His was better than mine. 

 

DAY 4 -  JUST GOOFING AROUND - Road trip-Downtown Deadwood

Some of you may or may not know that Don and I are trying to visit every state in the Union and with that in mind and being only 2 hours from North Dakota we decided to go up there for lunch.  Originally it was for breakfast but there was nothing out there but fields and hills and rocks and more of the same all the way.  It was a totally different landscape from the Deadwood area but beautiful none the less. 

We left here around 9:40 or so and it took 2 hours.  The road was State Highway 85 that went north off interstate 90.  It was only a 2 lane road but you could see for miles and miles and going up, there weren't very many cars and trucks on the road. 

We went to Bowman, North Dakota and ate at a local diner that I think was called Jabbers.  Very local and looked like one of those places people go to catch up on all the local gossip.  The food was good though so that's great. 

Oh, on the way up we started seeing these small antelopes everywhere.  They were laying in the fields and some were even right up near the fences.  Pretty animal.  We saw a herd of buffalo, a road runner and a badger/wolverine (not sure which it was) that crossed the road right in front of us.  On the return trip I saw it again by the side of the road.  No picture as I was driving at that point.  UPDATE:  We found out there aren't any road runners in North or South Dakota so Don concluded it was a pheasant. 

We got back to Deadwood after a stop in Spearfish to shop at Walmart for a couple of things around 4 o'clock.  We dumped our stuff in the room and drove down to the old town part of Deadwood.  We decided to use the parking garage and just walk around.  Its a very old area and full of historic buildings and, of course, shops.  We went into a few of the small hotels that had "casino's" and gambled a little.  No luck at all.  Later we had a good dinner at a cool place called the Buffalo Bodega and something else.  French dip sandwiches.  The best meal yet. 

Deadwood is basically dead this time of year and everywhere we went there were no crowds as I suppose there are in full summer.  If you ever come out here, this time of year should be good.  We had beautiful weather today after the rainy day yesterday. 

Nicki and Brian are still delayed.  We're moving on toward Helena, Montana tomorrow but taking our time wherever we go.  I hope and pray they can leave tomorrow.  Darn Air Force. 

What you see as you drive into Deadwood

View from our dinner table