Heading to our summer home

We are now on the road to Valdez, another gorgeous drive.  Arriving in Valdez we found a campsite, again inbetween mountains  and a finger of the pacific ocean.  We settled in and then out to dinner for Cynthia and Jiggs anniversary. (51 yrs)  Stayed in Valdez for a couple of days, checked out the town and the oil tank storage area for the pipeline.  Rest of the time was spent cleaning our vehicles in and out from the awful road dirt.  When I turned the vents on in my car it blew lots of grime at me. It was awful. We will be traveling through Anchorage on our way to our home for the summer in Soldotna.

We made it, some 5,000 plus miles, to our home campground for the summer on June 7th.  It is situated on the Kenai river where the salmon will be running come July.  June 9th Carl and Jiggs launched their rubber boat on the river to see if it would take the 25 to 30 mile hour moving river.  A great cheer for the boat, it held it's own.  We haven't caught a salmon yet but we are told our freezer will be full before we leave here.  We have several moose that visit us in our backyard including a calf. 

On Monday's no one is allowed on the water with a motor so we have decided that will be our adventure day.  Today we went to Seward, ate on the waterfront and enjoyed the little shops.  We all hiked to Exit glacier a part of the Harding icefields.  Jiggs and Cynthia were amazed how much the icefield had shrunk in 6 years.

Carl and I went for a hike today, up to a waterfall and then you could travel a little farther to the Russian river and watch the fishermen.  I can't believe the fishermen and women have to hike this trail if they want to fish in that area.  The waterfall wasn't much but the hike was great and we are told when the salmon start running we will be able to see the bears catching  the fish.  We will be going back to see the bears.  This was a round trip hike of 8 miles.  We were exhausted.

Above is a  pic of the local people fishing the rivers.  When the salmon really start coming in they will be elbow to elbow.  Another pic of the local sustenance fisherman netting their fish at cook inlet. 

On Monday we will be setting out for another adventure, going to Homer to look into a fishing trip. 

AMAZING COUNTRY

From Watson Lake we traveled to Whitehorse to stock up on supplies and to check out Miles Canyon on the Yukon River. From there we headed to Skagway by way of the Klondike Highway.  This was, by far, the most magnificent drive we have done.  Every twist and turn was more beautiful then the one before.  I think I took 100 pictures on the drive. I was finally able to make my snow angel.  Wow the snow was wet and really cold.  As we drove into Skagway the small town, with one street of shops, was filled with people from four cruise ships.  The next morning we drove our vehicles onto the ferry and headed to Haines.  We were surrounded by mountains as we took the short trip across the water.  While in Haines Carl and I took a hike on Mt. Riley.  It was a rough one, 6.3 miles round trip.  After we saw a bear track we were going to turn around but kept going and OMG was it worth it.  We sat at the top on a rock, ate our lunch in the sun, and just gazed out over the snow covered mountains and the superb views of Lynn Canal, Taiya inlet and the Chilkat River.  The view was so awesome I wanted to take pics for everyone to see but my camera was dead.  The view will have to live in our minds. 

Today we are leaving Haines for the Alaskan Highway ending up in Tok.  We will pass through Alaska, BC, Canada and the Yukon all in a matter of 2 hours.  We have to go through customs again.  Canadian customs pulled us over, made us get out, and searched our R.V.  We were just waiting for them to find our freezer full of venison in our car but they never checked the car so we were safe once again.  On our way to Tok we spotted a grizzly bear, slammed on our brakes, got the cameras, and proceeded to photograph him while he ignored us and kept looking for something to eat.  The wildlife has been outstanding.  So far we have seen 28 Bears and 2 cubs (Black bear, brown bear, grizzly) several moose and some herds of mountain goats and a couple mice caught in our R.V.

On our way to Tok we experienced the worst road of our trip.  I drove 100 miles of frost heaves, yee haws (that's what Carl calls them) at times going 20 mph.  The only thing that helped was the outstanding scenery of wildlife, mountains and rivers.  We are now making our final approach to Alaska and in front of us is customs again.  We had heard the U.S. customs was really difficult at this post so we were worried.  It was a breeze, the guard ask us why we were coming to Alaska and we said to fish and he waved us on through.  WE ARE FINALLY IN ALASKA TO STAY FOR THE SUMMER.   We made it through 6 border crossings and we will now be feasting on venison and salmon.  The trip has been amazing, great scenery,  great fun, great wild life, and great friends and family through the states of Wyoming, Utah, Oregon, Washington and the province of British Columbia, Yukon and of course Alaska.   We have been as high as 8,200 ft in the mountains.  Every campground has been nestled in the mountains with a lake or river running through it.  We are on our way to Valdez tomorrow. 

On our way to meet Jiggs and Cynthia

We are now at the border crossing and have taken the wrong Lane.  We are in the truckers Lane.  The inspector laughed and told us to go on through, turn around and go through American Customs and then come back through the Canadian customs.   So we had to go through the drill twice.  Our Freezer of meat is still with us.  We are now on our way to Cache Creek to meet up with Jiggs and Cynthia.

 It was so exciting to pull into the campground at Cache creek and see Cynthia and Jiggs because now we know we are really doing this trip to Alaska.  Cynthia had dinner ready for us and we discussed the next couple days travel.  We headed out the next morning and stopped at Williams Lake the first day and traveled to Prince George the following day on the Caribou highway. The scenery is so beautiful we stop for pictures of the view quite often.   We are now headed up the yellowhead highway to camp at Meziadin.  We arrived at the provincial park early and drove in one vehicle to Stewart and Hyder.  Talk about scenery, mountains, waterfalls, glaciers, and lots of wild life.  It was a beautiful clear day and we saw 17 bears, a Moose and a few mountain goats along the route.   I think we stopped and took a picture of every bear.  Hyder boomed with the discovery of silver in 1917-18.  It now has a population of 79 in the winter and 200 in the summer.  Not much to see in Hyder or Stewart but the drive their was worth it.  On our way back from Hyder we had to go through customs again and made it with no problem. 

                               Love this Bear picture.

We are now traveling up the Cassiar highway to Watson Lake, Home of the Sign Post Forest. On our way we saw a black bear with her new born cubs along the highway.  It was such an awesome sight.  Something I will probably never see again.  We are now at Watson Lake and the sign post forest is HUGE. I can't believe how many signs and posts are in this forest.  Some people hang there shoes, toasters and anything to mark that they had been their.  I am so excited to be hanging our sign with all the others.  Ours will be number 74,079.  The sign post forest was started in 1942 by a homesick U.S. Army G.I.  from Danville, Il while working on the Alaska Highway.  He erected a sign here pointing the way home and stating the mileage to his hometown.