June 20 to June 24

Drove to Homer June 20.....what a place!!! It is Alaska's version of Florida's Key West and I love both places. Relaxed and kick back. First thing we drove to 'the spit' and shopped around for a charter boat to go halibut fishing. We made a reservation for 12:30 the next day. Darlene said "fishing? are you out of your mind?" Needless to say she did not participate. The weather was picture perfect, it took about an hour to get out far enough to fish. We all caught our limit and it was just so much fun (and work) 

Where we booked the charter

Our boat named Jackpot

Roy and Joe on the way out

Max's bed, this dog was so cute and
mannerly.

The Captain and his dog Max

Total catch

My catch, they are so heavy.

Joe's catch

Judy and Larry on the way out

Our view from our motorhomes


Joe went to the local True Value Hardware store and bought a vacuum sealer with extra bags so when we got back we all got busy preparing our fish for freezing.  The next night we had grilled halibut!!!  Sooo good!  You can see why I loved this so much, isn't it beautiful?  We stayed an extra day just to soak up more of it (partially from the laundromat) but was nice anyway.

From Homer we went to Kenai, Larry and Judy have friends from their car club who live here and they had said we could use their address to forward our mail, very nice people.  Here is a picture of their home they are in the process of completing (I stole the picture from Judy's blog)



 

Larry, Judy, Sylvia & Steve

June 15 to June 19

We are at Denali RV Park and Motel for 3 nights.  After setting up we went to the tours center and booked for the next morning an eight hour bus ride into the park.  You can only drive your private vehicle about 15 miles into the park.  It was a grueling bus ride and we weren't able to see Mt. McKinley, too many clouds, but we did see a lot of wildlife.  Moose, one mamma with a calf, Caribou, Grizzly Bears, and Dall Sheep so it was worthwhile

Caribou cooling in the snow

Top of Mt. McKinley

Sunday morning we made breakfast for the guys for Father's Day and later that night went to a dinner/theater.

Happy Father's Day!!!

 Waiting in line for the dinner show to open and begin.

Since it was family style the rule was..we all had to wave our napkins in the air and yell JOE, JOE and they would bring what ever you were short on.  I have some of it on video and have tried to upload it but wifi is just not strong enough.

Random shot

On Monday we traveled to Anchorage, and stayed at the Ship Creek RV Park for 2 nights.  Once again we had Costco, Walmart, etc. to do some shopping and then try to figure out where to put it because you don't know where you might have the opportunity again.  We did so much museum stuff in Fairbanks we passed on them in Anchorage.  Joe and I went to the visitor's center downtown.  There was a woman giving a one hour presentation called Mushing 101, we listened to that and it was very interesting.  She and her husband have 36 dogs and they feed them fish, costs them about $2,000 per month.  They start training in early September, using an ATV in neutral for them to pull until the snow and cold cover the ground for winter.

NEXT INSTALLMENT...............HOMER, ALASKA............LOVED IT

June 12 to June 14

We have been in Fairbanks near North Pole, Alaska for the past 5 nights, June 10-14.  It seemed when we got there it would be a long time but went by like a flash.  The first full day Joe and I drove around and found a Fred Myer to do some shopping then went downtown and found a funky little place to have lunch, soup and salad.  When we came out there was a parking ticket on the car.  Joe wanted to mail it in but I said well we're close so let's go pay it.  He went in to do it and they asked for his driver's license and told him 'no charge'.  It was a $40. ticket so we were happy we didn't mail it in.  Is that a great place or what?  Fairbanks is a very military city.  They have Eielson Air Force Base and Fort Wainwright Army Base.  What a lucky place.  To have two bases of our finest and bravest.

Eilison AFB

Eilison AFB

Judy's Greek meal, yum!

Downtown, building Joe went to pay
ticket

The second day Larry, Judy, Joe and Roy went to view the pipeline and do some gold panning.  It was cold and rainy so Darlene & I wimped out and didn't go.  I now wish I had.  I didn't realize you didn't need to get in the creek bed and slosh around in the rain.  I stole this pictures from Judy.  When they came back we all went on a river boat cruise.  Interesting and a lot of fun.









These are pictures I took from the river boat, they had a man flying an airplane, taking off and landing, demonstrating how they get around up here, especially in the winter.  He was equipped with a microphone and talked to us from the plane.  The homes along the river were just breathtaking.

1951 Piper Super Cub

I don't know what I did to the pictures above but I do know I'm not going to do them over.  We also got a demonstration of Iditarod dogs owned by the Butcher family. The rest of these are of the Indian Village (replica) but characteristic of how people up here in the remote areas still live by subsistance.  Living off the land primarily.

         

We learned what makes a reindeer, it is just a domesticated caribou

The next day the Cottom's left really early to take a airplane up to the Artic Circle, one of the things on Larry's bucket list, Judy built up her courage and went along :-).  Batty's and Bybee's went to the North Pole and visited Santa's House and the wooden bowl making place.

The guys weren't interested, they stayed in the car and caught up on Fox News....bahhhh humbug!!

After that we went to a farmer's market, too early for fruit or vegetables but they did have homemade chocolate, fudge and honey.  While we were there Judy and Larry showed up (totally unplanned) and we heard about their adventure while eating pizza at a place they had found.  Then we all went to the Alaska University Museum.  The next day we did some shopping and went to Pioneer Park.  Restored old buildings, airplane museum and more shops.

I'm going to jump ahead a few days and show a picture I took last night, Monday June 17th.

I took this after we returned from a dinner theater, more about that later.  The time is 11:30 PM.  I really don't mind the summer daylight...it's the winter darkness that would send me screaming into the night.

June 9 to June 12, 2012

We drove our cars to Chicken June 9th, with our picnic lunch.  They were having a music festival called 'Chickenstock' there were tents and RV's everywhere with lots of music.  Virginia Duysen had loaned me a book this past year.  She had bought it when they made their Alaska trip.  The name of it is Tisha, the pronunciation by the indians for Teacher.  It's about a young girl going to Chicken, Alaska to teach school in the late 1920's.  The school house and village remains are still there and I was interested to see it.  It is privately owned and they give tours so we took it.  We had a very good tour guide named Emily, she made it very interesting and had done some research on her own about the later life of Tisha. 

Chicken post office

The school and living quarters. The
windows were added much later
by a mining company who owned
the property.

Emily, Darlene and Roy inside the
school room

Giant metal chicken statue

Tilting outhouse

The stage for Chickenstock

Our picnic lunch

I took a lot of pictures of the abandoned village but won't post them all.  The tilting outhouse is an example of what has happened to most of the buildings.  The sinking and tilting is caused from melting of the permafrost.  If any building had heat it had caused them to sink.  There was a building which had been used for storage of goods without heat and it was standing tall and unsunken. 

We kept seeing through the Yukon especially, thin skinny, scrawny trees and wondered why.  Finally after reading in our 'mile post' I learned that was also due to the permafrost.  They are stunted black spruce, also called bog spruce or swamp spruce.  They look young but are probably 100-150 years old.

This picture is out of focus (moving down the road)
but you can see how skinny and short they are.

June 10, we left Tok around 9am, destination Fairbanks.  We finally saw a moose in time to get a picture, they really are elegantly, clumsy looking animals.  We stopped in Delta Junction, the end of the Alaska Highway (Milepost 1422)  We had lunch and took pictures and visited the Visitor's Information Building.

Judy and Larry

Roy and Darlene and their doggies

Mosquitos aren't quite this big

Pipeline came through here

Joe and me

 We are now in Fairbanks/North Pole, Alaska and will report on the next leg of our adventure later.