Alaska Vacation Part 3

After we had that lovely coffee/tea time with Eclectic, Ichabod and I took a bit of a stroll around the city. We were waiting for Sears to open so we could have something checked on the van.





Then we headed north to Canada. The weather was beautiful and we saw some beautiful scenery.







We stayed in William's Lake that night. The next day, Wednesday, we got onto the Alaska Highway. We think we saw a wolf cross the road up ahead of us toward evening. We also were bombarded by dragonflies. It was terrible hitting that many big bugs. They're so neat, too. Some of the carcasses were hanging from the windshield wipers for quite a while. We saw some deer that day, too, along with some osprey. I didn't get pictures, but there were some rainbows. That night we stayed in Ft Nelson, BC. That hotel was sweet enough to have a little hot tub. My muscles really appreciated it.

The next morning, after our complementary breakfast, Ichabod took some bags out to the car. I was waiting for him so I could help him carry the rest of the bags out. He took forever and I started to worry. Just as I was getting ready to go down and check on him he came back in the room. The van had a flat and the spare tire was kind of low. He had to run that to a close by station for air. Then we loaded up the van and went to the nearest tire place.

After a bit of a wait they got the tire plugged and back on for us. When Ichabod took out his wallet the man gave him the paperwork saying that they did the job for us for free! As we were walking out the door I turned around and said, "I love Canada!"

This was Thursday, 8/2, and we planned to make it to White Horse in the Yukon Territory that night. The day was filled with wildlife. Ichabod took this shot of the baby elk for me. He's blurred because he was moving right along. Thanks to tshsmom. I thought this was a moose, but she set me straight. :-)



We stopped for lunch at a lovely lodge. You could see a storm in one direction while it was sunny in the other direction.


The lodge had some gorgeous nasturtiums.


We saw these Stone Sheep.


The clouds were beautiful.


Then there were the Wood Bison.


You can bet we waited for these guys.


We made it to White Horse around 8 or 9 that night. We went to a couple of stores, then went to look for a room. The whole town was booked. The next town, Haines Jct, was 98 miles away. It was quite dark and I was getting pretty tired. It's a good thing we weren't going too fast because that's when we came across some caribou.


I was trying to prepare myself to have to sleep in the back of the van along the side of road. Trying to be stoic about it and all. Then, around, midnight, we made it to Haines Jct. I'd been in the car so long that day I could hardly walk straight. There was a sign for a hotel but at that time of night you had to go to the bar to book a room.

The bar wasn't very big. The crowd looked to be a bunch of locals. One of them was really drunk and trying to tell them a story. I don't know if he ever got through it. There was plenty of swearing, though. :-)

Thank goodness there was an open room. It was small but there were two queen sized beds so we did get a good night's sleep. It was luxury compared to the idea of sleeping in the van. The next day, Friday, 8/3, was spent finishing the trip to Anchorage. The Yukon Territory has some gorgeous scenery.















We made it to Anchorage that night and found a hotel downtown. It wasn't the greatest hotel I've ever stayed in, but being downtown there were plenty of places we could walk. I'll take up Anchorage in the next post.

Here's the link to see all the pictures from this set.

Alaska Vacation Part 2

The next day, Monday, we drove from Montana through Idaho and into Washington. I was anxious about getting to the right place at the right time to meet Eclectic. I was pleasantly surprised that we did! She saw us and helped us find a good parking place. Then we had lunch at a wonderful public house. After that we took some pictures outside.



Then it was off to meet the little Eclectics. We all went to a gorgeous park. Of course she would take me where there were flowers. :-)

You know I had to take pictures.







Everyone, except Mr E.




We did, finally, meet up with Mr E for dinner. I forgot to get pictures of the whole group. My bad.

The next morning Eclectic met us for coffee.




And, after checking with Sears about an issue in the front end of the van, we took off for Canada. We got as far as William's Lake that night. The next day, Wednesday, has loads of pictures, so I think I'll save that for the next post. Here is the set for this post.

I have to say that I'm sooooo glad we stopped to meet Eclectic. She's not only sweet, but she's very smart and witty. Everybody should go meet her.

Alaska Vacation Part 1

Ichabod and I had been tossing around the idea of using a larger vehicle for the trip. I was planning to fly home, so he thought he might like to camp along the way. He also was planning a trip up to the Arctic Ocean after I left and we didn't want either of our cars going up the long gravel road.

So on the Thursday before we left he found a 96 Pontiac Trans Sport van. The price was below $2000 and it looked pretty good. It started well. But then the owner said it had no air conditioning. Ichabod thought that was fine. I shot him a look that said I thought he didn't know what he was talking about, but we got it anyway. While I, obviously, didn't die of heat stroke, there were some very uncomfortable days until we got well through Canada. :-)

Friday night and Saturday morning we loaded up.


A spider thought it might hitch a ride. I'll bet he didn't make it very far. You might have to click on the picture and check out the large size to really see him.


We finally got away by 9:00. I'd been hoping to leave by 7:00, but we were feeling too lazy for that. This had us going through Chicago a bit later than we'd hoped, which slowed us down some. Fargo, ND, is all the further we ended up making it the first day. Here are some shots from that day.



On Sunday we really tried to make some time as we wanted to meet Eclectic for lunch in the middle of Washington by noon Monday. We saw some great white egrets and lovely sunflower fields. But we were moving right along, so no pictures of those. But we decided to stop to get pictures of the forest fires in Montana. I'm sorry they happened, but might as well grab the photo op.



The fires made for a gorgeous sunset, too. Of course, we didn't stop for this so these are through a dirty windshield.




That night we made it as far as St Regis, MT. It's not fun driving on curvy mountain roads after dark, so we figured that was as good a stopping point as any. The next post will be more about getting there.

If you'd like to see this set of pictures here's the link. There are five sets altogether.

Pictures are up at Flickr

Well, I took even more pictures after the last dump from my card. It was over 190. I warned you.
:-)

Anyway, I finally got them all on Flickr. Eventually I'm going to put them into several sets. Too tired for that right now. But I thought I'd give you a shot that I got the night before we left.

Help me, I have a camera and can't stop taking pictures!

Everybody has been asking for pictures. Well, I'm overwhelmed with the number of pictures I've already taken. I'm working on sharpening the colors on the ones I've taken so far. Thank goodness some of the first batch were bad for one reason or another and had to be deleted as I had 181 of them. Since then we've been to a botanical garden. And tomorrow we go on a one-day cruise. There will be more.

I suppose I will post a few here at the Nest. Then I'll make a number of different slideshows on Flickr. It's fun, but I'm overwhelmed. Maybe after dinner I'll have one of those little 187 ml bottles of wine and get back to working on pictures.

Catch up with you all later!