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.

June 4 to June 9, 2012

Today, June 4th is our 35th anniversary, it's been a great 35 years and more to come....
We left Watson Lake and will stop in Whitehorse, Yukon for 3 nights.  We had planned on only 2 nights but the Frantic Follies Vaudville Revue was not open on Monday, we decided we wanted to see it so we stayed.  We ate out on our anniversary at The Klondike BBQ and Salmon Restaurant.  Joe had reindeer stew over garlic mashed potatoes.  I had salmon, of course.  Everyone else had fish and chips except Larry had BBQ ribs.  It was very good and the employees made it lot of fun.

The next night we all went to the Frantic Follies

On Wednesday we drove in our cars to Skagway, Alaska.  We would not be going in our motorhomes but wanted to go there.  The town of Skagway is a National Historic Monument.  There were four cruise ships docked and the town was full of people.  We had brought our lunch and between shopping in the stores had our lunch in our cars, then did more shopping and looking around.  I took a lot of pictures on the road going and coming back but not any in town.  Joe did some video but it would take too long to upload here.

Thursday, June 7th we left Whitehorse and drove to Destruction Bay overnight.  It was rainy all day and night.  The RV Park was not even really open, his water pump was broken and the ground was too frozen to even have water to the sites but he did have electricity.  He gave us a break on the price and he had some really pretty hand made wooden folding tables for sale.  He said if we all bought two he would give us $10.00 off them too so we did.  The next morning we heard on the news that the road had washed out in two places during the night.  If we had not left we would have been in the Yukon even now or gone around through Dawson City through Chicken to Tok.  The road is still closed today (June 10th).  It was a dirty, wet, nasty drive to Destruction Bay and I only took pictures or our rigs.  The pics don't do justice to how really dirty they were.



RV park office

We arrived in Tok June 8th, the RV Park we chose had a RV and car wash so we lined up and did some major cleaning during a brief rain storm before going to our spaces, not perfect but so much better. The next day we drove our cars to Chicken, Alaska, I will report on that in the next installment.









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May 27-June 4, 2012

We drove to Prince George on the 27th, planned to stay 2 nights but stayed 3 because they had a Walmart and Costco, we also needed to do laundry and house cleaning and have a day off (kinda).
I didn't take many pictures while we were there.  On the 29th we all came back to our rigs around three o'clock and there was a beautiful Winnebago Journey parked next to the Batty's, Larry said when they came in they were looking at our rigs so I went over and it was the W.I.T. Western Regional Rep's, Jeannie and Andy Bienvenue.  Hope I spelled her name correctly.  We had planned to cook out that night so we invited them and being from Louisiana they brought smoked Louisiana sausages and dirty rice to add to our grilled pork tenderloin, baked yams and salad with angel food/strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. YUM!!!!

May 30 we left, going to Dawson Creek, B.C.  We had planned to stay one night but decided to stay two.  We were late getting there (around 4 PM) and didn't get to do all we wanted.  Next day we went in all different directions, found the mile marker 0 downtown.  We had agreed to meet at 2:30 for a group picture at mile marker 0 (A very busy intersection downtown).  We met a man there on the corner (dressed VERY casually in a Homeland Security T-Shirt) he was a city councilman.  He told us to just go out and DO it, every one in town was used to it, then proceeded to go into some kind of museum and brought out an employee to do the photographs.....people are friendly without fail!

There is Darlene...all by herself having
her picture made...getting braver by the day
Go Darlene!




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The gang

For dinner we had left over pork tenderloin, baked yams, cesaer salad and strawberry shortcake.  Larry and Judy went to see a car show in town.  Enjoyed the extra night stay and feel more rested.

We left at 8AM (6/1/12) heading for Ft. Nelson, B.C., gased up (painful) and empty holding tanks.
First stop was 17 miles down the road.  Kiskatinaw River Bridge.  The only timber bridge on the Alaka Highway still in use today.  I chose to walk across it.  :-)

We stayed at Triple G Hideaway Campground in Ft. Nelson.  There was a museum next door with various exhibits of old cars, trucks, machinery, wildlife, pioneer homes and much more.  We watched an old movie from the mid 1940's about the Alaska Highway construction.  I also met my first 'character'.  His name is Marl Brown.  He was the engine behind the formation of the museum.  He had such a collection of 'stuff' it gave him a place to store it, made his wife happy.  There was a news article we read showing a picture of him bearded and less the beard.  The community had a fund raiser for the museum and Marl put his beard up for auction.  He has always hated to shave so this
was a big deal.  They raised over $10,000. and he had to shave it off 

The man on the right is my character.
He offered me a chew, I declined but
was happy I did when I learned later
he recycles, including his chewing
tobacco.

Marl, using his wood splitter he made

On June 2 we left Ft. Nelson, stopped at Tetsa River Campground to buy cinnamon rolls, advertised on the highway.  They were soooo good and worth the stop.  We stayed at Liard Hot Springs Provencial Campground and Judy and I took a dip in the hot springs.  It was a cold, rainy, dreary day but we hiked about a quarter mile to the springs and it was WONDERFUL.  The closer to mouth of the springs, the hotter it got.  Very relaxing.  The campground was really pretty, no hook ups but I think it was worth it.

June 3 we arrived at Watson Lake around noon.  We had lunch and started working on our signs to leave in the Sign Forest.  With Judy and Larry's help we completed them, took a ladder over and hung them on a post.  At 7 we walked across the road and watch the Northern Lights show which lasted about 1 hour.  It was very good.



Larry hanging our signs



Northern Lights Auditorium

small part of sign forest

More shots from the road

May 25-27, 2012

A lot of miles have gone by since my last post, we left Banff and drove to Jasper, stayed in Whistler's Campground in the Jasper National Park for 2 nights (May 25 and 26).  Judy baked me a mini bundt cake with 7 candles for my birthday and we grilled fish and ate outside, toasted champagne and really enjoyed the evening.  It was a great birthday.  Judy is amazing, Martha Stewart could learn things from her about creativity and being a much nicer person.

7 x 10 = 70

Standing on the glacier

While we were here we drove our cars to the Columbia Ice Fields
and toured the glacier up close and personal.  We saw 4-6 guys who had hiked up on the Glacier the night before, spent the night and skied down the day we were there.  They were hiking back to their cars in ski boots, it was quite a climb getting out of there.  Then there were the 20 somethings, stripping down to their bikini underwear and boxers to get in the melting ice.

Tough walking on rocks in ski boots

Our tour bus

20 somethings, stripped down for their
photo op.

We stopped on our way to the ice fields to view Athabasca Falls and have a picnic lunch, this time we ate it outside.  The water was moving so fast.  Wish we had some of that water in Bakersfield...but not the cold to go with it.

More random shots from the road.

Interesting, huh?  If that smart car is so
smart, how did it end up here?

We will leave and travel to Prince George from here.....more to come later.  I will try to get current, it takes FOREVER to upload pictures with weak wifi.