Travels with Gunther and Kara

We’ve had a pretty restful few days here in Indy…

Thursday Connie worked pretty much all day…she has all the spots she needs now for assigning her fall students that start rotation next month…so she needs to look at each one’s requests, her available spots, and the priority order for assigning the students and fill in the boxes. She spent the day getting organized on that front. In the late afternoon we went off and got some groceries then came home for dinner.

Friday we headed out right after lunch to take a look downtown…our destination was the state capital building and then a visit over to the Soldiers and Sailors memorial nearby. After that we had a shower and put on some nice clothes before heading over to Gallagher’s II for some brews and pizza that the menu said was award winning…it was pretty good and we had leftovers for lunch on Saturday.

Looking up at the 100 foot high stained glass ceiling in the rotunda.

The governor’s office…probably 5 or 6 times bigger than our entire house. We especially liked the table on the left side which is all inlaid wood in the shape of the state with a different wood for each county. Pretty neat.

Chandelier in the House chamber.

Chandelier and stained glass windows in the Supreme Court chamber…this is one of the 18 state capital buildings that has all 3 branches of government housed in the same structure.

We got some new photos of Alex as well…he’s learned to sit up and is starting to crawl as well.

Saturday Connie had some more work to catch up on…she won’t be able to work Monday through Wednesday this week due to travel and the bike race in Richmond so Saturday was pretty much her last day she’ll be able to work this period…although she may get a few more hours here and there during the week.

Cyas.

We got here yesterday after about 300 miles…Connie was ready to be here as the roads were pretty bumpy most of the way…Iowa has terrible freeways, at least I-80.

Once again…she hit it out of the park on picking a place to camp…although as soon as she saw COE (Corps of Engineers) in the name she was pretty much home free as we’ve never stayed in a bad COE park.

The park is right next to the Mississippi River here in Montpelier…we’re about 100 feet from the water and have a gorgeous view. It’s an electrical only site but has 50 amps and we stopped on the way in and put 60 gallons of water in our tank which will be plenty for 2 days. We’ll dump on the way out…which means no black/gray issues either since it’s only 2 days. The pad is concrete, nice back in site, great satellite visibility…and best of all it is only 20 bucks a night…not to mention there are maybe 8 or 10 rigs here tops out of 40 or so maximum.

A couple shots of site 6…first one was taken standing on the bank of the river.

Looking east along the river…it flows west to east here so this is downstream. The two guys in the canoe at the dock pulled up in the late afternoon and occupied a campsite a couple doors down from us for the evening. They’re paddling with double ended kayak paddles and had a small 1 man tent and another tent/hammock sort of thing that they slept in. They didn’t have any cooking equipment that we saw so either had self heating camping meals or were eating cold ravioli out of a can or something similar.

Some shots looking upstream (westward) at sunset. All were taken within a few minutes of each other and have had different post processing combinations applied in Lightroom…I was trying to reproduce what it looked like to the eye and the 3rd and 4th one most closely resemble what I remember…although the 1st and 2nd ones are fine too…which one you like depends on your mood today I reckon. 

Connie worked on Tuesday while we were here and Neil caught up on some tasks on his to-do list.

Cyas.

I wanted to put up a post but essentially we’ve done nothing since leaving Devil’s Tower.

We left on Friday Sep 11 and stopped or the night 300odd miles later in Oacama SD at Al’s Oasis RV. Got up the next morning and drove to Council Bluffs IA another 345 miles. Our original plan was to stay at the Honey Creek Park…we talked to Chad in the middle of the afternoon and they had one opening so we drove over there. Took a look at the site and decided we would have a hard time getting into it with the house and BAT so we skipped it and went to the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs IA instead. It was a parking lot but had hookups and was close to the freeway.

As I write this it’s Sunday afternoon and we’re headed out again in the morning 294 miles to the Clarks Ferry COE campground on the Mississippi River right near Davenport IA…we’ll stay there 2 nights so Connie has a day to work.

From Davenport we’ll head another 323 miles to Indianapolis IN on Wednesday and stay there until Monday Sep 21. Monday we’ll leave for a 414 mile day over to Dawson WV then another 243 on Tuesday to Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield right near where Bryan, Jen and Alex live.

I probably won’t post again until we get to the human kids house…unless we end up finding something photo or blog worthy in either Davenport or Indianapolis…ya never know.

Connie’s starting to get psyched about seeing Alex and the kids again…and also getting her car back. 

Here’s a couple of photos…just so ya will know that despite being mythical creatures they do actually exist. These were taken by our friends Bill and Linda. The day we flew up to the Gates of the Arctic National Park at Anaktuvuk Pass they headed east from Fairbanks 50 or 60 miles to explore and happened across this guy on their hike.

We only had one full day at Devil’s Tower WY but we made the most of it. First and foremost…we slept in as we had nowhere we had to particularly be at any particular time. Once we finally rolled out around 0700 we had coffee…and breakfast consisted of blueberry muffins that Connie snuck into the basket at Walmart yesterday when we wuz grocery shopping. After that we had some paperwork chores to complete…got our stops and campsites picked out for the transit eastward from here to Indianapolis, paid some bills and Connie answered a couple of important work emails.

For lunch we had a leftover pork chop sammy…Neil grilled a couple of them last evening along with 2 ears of corn and that was dinner with enough pork left over for lunch today. We thawed out a couple pieces of halibut that he’s grilling for dinner.

Once lunch was over and the weather had turned from mostly cloudy to mostly sunny we headed over to Devil’s Tower to take some photos, walk the 1.3 mile trail around the base and generally get out in the world to do something.

So…what’s Devil’s Tower you might ask? It’s most famous as being the place where the aliens landed in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Essentially it’s the remnant of some crystalized magma (molten rock) that was harder than the land/rock around it so that when the softer stuff eroded away the tower remained. The base is at about 4,200 feet and the top a bit over 5,100 feet and it’s pretty much a 900 foot tall vertical rock. It’s formed of hexagonal columns very similar in concept to those at Giant’s Causeway in Ireland except these are larger columns. Instead of the 1.5 feet or so across each column these are 20-40 feet across…but otherwise they’re very similar.

Geologists are still arguing over the exact formation process…one theory is that the magma forming the columns crystalized and solidified before it got up to the surface, another theory is that it was the stem of a large mushroom shaped chunk of solidified magma and the cap of the mushroom fell off, and yet another theory is that it solidified in the vent of a volcano before it erupted. No matter…essentially the hot magma got up near the surface and solidified. The crystallization process caused stress points in the rock which resulted in cracks and when the cracks collided they formed columns of 4, 5, 6, 0r 7 sides…the number is based on the type of crystalline lattice the rock forms but I won’t bore ya with all the details.

We stopped by the prairie dog village on the way into the tower and got some nice close up photos of the cute li’l critters before getting up to the tower and getting some nice photos of that as well. Then we walked the paved walking trail around the perimeter of the tower for more views and photos. 

After that we wuz tired so we came home and had a cold brew (Redd’s Apple Ale to be precise) then Neil cooked dinner. We’ll head off in the morning about 300 miles east for an overnight stop near Chamberlain SD.

A couple of shots Neil went out and took last night…he thought some long night time exposures of the tower would be nice. Notice how the stars got turned into light lines by the 4 and 6 minute exposure times he used for these two shots. It was so dark that you could not see the tower with the naked eye when he took these about 2130.

A view of the tower from the campground…standing right next to BAT when we took this one.

Prairie dogs…they’re just rats essentially but they sure are cute li’l varmints.

This is probably the single most famous view/photo of the tower…based on it we thought that the tower was out in the middle of the plain sticking up but it’s actually in a pretty hilly, almost mountainous area with lots of valleys and ridges surrounding the tower.

Lookee see…I spy something up on the tower, just below and right of center…I wonder what it could be?

It’s a couple of Climbing Rangers coming down from the top. 

900 feet, straight up.

Extreme wide angle shot from an unusual perspective…notice the boulder field surrounding the tower…all of those boulders used to be part of the tower. However, no significant pieces have collapsed since the monument was established in 1906 so it will take 500 bazillion years for it all to erode away I reckon.

Pretty impressive chunk of rock…and the hike was quite challenging despite being (a) paved and (b) only 1.3 miles long. The problem was that it was at an elevation of over 4,200 feet and there ain’t as much oxygen as down at sea level.

Off eastward in the morning…25 or 30 miles back down the 2 lane road to the freeway…then we’re going to stop in Box Elder and pick up any mail that’s in our box since we’re literally going right past it.

Cyas.

Well, another day…another shaking up of the Jello in our travel plans but more on that later.

Tuesday and Wednesday (Sep 8-9) were devoted to transiting from Great Falls MT over to Devil’s Tower WY. Our original plan was to stop overnight at the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area…but as is common in the west our plans were faulty. The recreation area has two entrances…south and north…but they’re about 200 miles driving apart despite being only 30 or so miles apart as the crow flies. Naturally…our planned route was near the northern entrance…and just as naturally all the really cool stuff was down at the southern entrance. So…after looking at the miles and days we decided to skip this area for this trip and looked for other alternatives. Turns out that the Little Big Horn National Monument (of George Armstrong Custer last stand fame) was almost half way between Great Falls and Devil’s Tower so that seemed to be a good stopping point. We had previously stopped over at Hardin MT just a few miles north of the battlefield…but Connie wasn’t up to a trip to the monument that evening so despite being in the area we had not seen the park. Sounded like a decision to us…after a bit of research we decided that a couple of hours at the battlefield was enough of a stop so we set off early Tuesday morning with plans to stop by the battlefield, watch the movie, tour what we could, and then head on another 10 miles to a planned stopping point at the Seventh Ranch RV Park in Garryowen MT.

We had to backtrack about 5 miles west from Malmstrom AFB fam camp to get fuel, DEF, and propane…then head 5 miles back east past Malmstrom before heading east and south to the Little Big Horn Area.

We arrived at the monument, got parked, and headed into the visitor center. Turned out that the 25 minute movie was starting in 8 minutes and the last Ranger Talk of the day was after that so we lucked into a perfect setup as far as hearing the history of the battle. After a pretty decent movie and a truly outstanding talk by Brett our park ranger on the how/why/what/where of the battle we set out to get a few pictures of the monument.

Ok…a short digression into what happened in the battle. After a treaty with the Indians in 1868 a large area between the Black Hills in SD and the Rockies was legally “unceded Indian Territory”…which meant it belonged to the Indians. Large numbers of Lakota Sioux and allied tribes moved into this area rather than onto the reservation to continue their Indian way of life…they established a village on the Little Big Horn River which ended up having in excess of 8,000 Indians living in it…far in excess of most villages that the US was familiar with. In 1876, gold was discovered in the Black Hills of SD so the US ended up issuing an edict that said the Indians had to move onto the reservation by the end of January 1877 or else be considered hostile…which meant that the US Army would enforce moving them onto the reservation. Naturally…the Indians at the village in the Unceded Indian Territory ignored this edict…which meant that the Army set up a campaign to force them to comply…this campaign consisted of a three pronged attack on the village (which was at an unknown location to the Army at the time) from the west, south, and east.

Colonel George Custer and his 5 companies of the 7th Cavalry were part of the eastern arm of the campaign and all went well for awhile. The three prongs of the campaign all had Indian scouts to help them locate the enemy. 

Unfortunately the first column to find the enemy was the one coming up from the south…which encountered heavy resistance including Indian armies which decided to stand and fight. There were several issue with this. First…this was the first time that the Indians engaged in an actual battle with US forces…previously they had only conducted guerrilla attacks then run away to fight another day. The Indians that encountered the southern column forced them to turn back so they had no further action in the campaign. Unfortunately the commander of the southern column (a) failed to tell the other two columns that he was turning back and (b) failed to tell the other two columns that the Indians in this case were standing to fight instead of scattering.

Meanwhile…the east column which was comprised of the Custer’s 7th Cavalry units continued west and eventually came upon the village at the Little Big Horn…their scouts informed Custer that the village was large (about 80,000 Indians with 20,000 ponies) and that Custer’s 600 or so troops were outnumbered and outgunned. 

Unfortunately this point was not gotten across to Custer’s command council…and he ended up splitting his forces twice…once to have about 1/2 of them cross the Little Big Horn south of the village to block the Indians as they tried to scatter as usual. Second…he dispatched about half of the remaining forces to cross the river and attack the village to be supported by Custer and the remaining 150 or so troops.

During the attack…things went terribly wrong…the 1/2 that crossed the river to block the scatter were driven back by heavy opposition and eventually got on the bluffs about 3 miles south of Custer’s Last Stand position…this force of about 350 troopers were able to establish a defensive perimeter and hold on until the relief column (which turned out to be the column approaching from the west) got there 2 days later.

Col Custer and his 150 remaining troopers were opposed by about 1,800 Indian warriors and retreated to what became known later as Last Stand Hill…most of the troopers were cut off and overrun individually while Custer and 41 troops made it to the top of the hill. They formed a semicircular line of defense facing westward toward the river…but were unaware that another 1,000 or so braves were in their rear immediately over the ridge. When those braves attacked from the rear the outcome was no longer in doubt and Custer’s small group was wiped out.

So…what happened? Essentially the Indian failed to act as they had in the past, Custer pressed the attack in the face of forces that outnumbered him, those forces outnumbered him more than he thought they did.

Anyway…the movie and Brett’s talk were really good and bought the entire why/how of the battle to a clarity that none of us really had beforehand. Much like the docent rangers at the Civil War battlefields back in the east that we’ve seen…being on the ground, looking at the terrain, and understanding what happened and why made it a lot clearer to us than reading about it in a dull history text.

Ok, on to the pictures…the entire battle took place over an area about 5 miles by 2 miles so it wasn’t as much a single pitched battle as a series of small skirmishes and the Indians were lucky enough to mass overwhelming numbers at each point of the day long engagement.

Looking north fro the visitor center toward Last Stand Hill…this is where Custer and his 41 troopers bodies were found.

Looking 90 degrees to the right from the above shot…the tree line is where the Little Big Horn River is located…the large village was across the river and to the right of this shot.

The memorial at the top of Last Stand Hill…the remains of the dead troopers are all buried underneath this memorial and there are headstones around the whole battlefield where each was actually found.

Looking west from the top of Last Stand Hill toward the river…treelike in the background. The visitor center where the first two photos were taken from is just out of sight to the right of the frame. The black headstone just left of center is where Custer’s body was found. Strangely enough…although almost all the other bodies were mutilated beyond recognition Custer’s was left alone out of respect for his bravery. Galt, the Indian who led the attack on this position later described Custer and his troops on top as the bravest warriors he had ever fought and that he respected them deeply for their courage in fighting to the last man.

Looking toward the ridge where the 350 survivors were entrenched…just left of center frame.

Sculpture at the Indian Memorial that was added many years after the establishment of the monument to honor the 60 Indian dead during the battle. As for the cavalry troops…headstones are scattered throughout the battlefield where each fell.

With our day at the monument done…we headed off to the campground. This was a really great campground…nicely terraced, great views, and friendly folks. We could easily have stayed here a couple of days and just chilled out.

Our site A-26.

Looking the other way towards the Little Big Horn which essentially parallels the freeway here.

Wednesday morning we got up and headed out the remaining 230 miles to Devil’s Tower. This is a look over the valley and the Big Horn Mountains to the west once we crossed into Wyoming from Montana.

And here’s where the Jello got shaken up. On our arrival at Devil’s Tower we headed into the no hookups boon docking campground on the National Monument…and quickly found out that while there was 1 campsite we would fit in we would not have been able to unhitch…so we gave up on the idea of spending 3 full days chilling out and headed over about 2 miles away to the Devil’s Tower KOA campground…which as you can see from this photo has even better views of the tower than from the campground on the monument.

We stayed here 1 extra night so that we could go over and see the monument…details to follow in the next post…then we’ll head east 2 days to Omaha NE on Friday morning and spend the weekend there before pressing on to Indianapolis for a Wednesday arrival.

Cyas.

The past couple of days in Jasper we’ve done a bit of hiking in between the rain showers…then wandered down to Jasper Brewing in the afternoon for beer and Internet. Mostly the weather has cooperated…it hasn’t rained hard except during the overnight hours and just occasional showers and mostly cloudy during the day.

Our big hike so far was up to Old Fort Pointe…which overlooks Jasper from the east side…we got very nice views of the Athabasca River, Jasper, and the mountain peaks further to the north and east. We also spotted a mule deer up in the woods over by Beauvert Lake. Fort Pointe is about 550 feet above Jasper…we looked at the topographical map and decided to do the loop trail in the clockwise direction…that spread the climb out over 3.5 kilometers whereas the opposite direction has all the elevation in just over one. The good news is that made the ascent easier…the bad news is that the descent was on a steep rocky trail near the edge of the drop off that was slick by that time with some light drizzle…so we just kept to the inside of the trail and made it down pretty easily although Connie didn’t like it much. She did say that she would have liked going up that grade even less so it was the lesser of two evils for her. While at the top we did get some nice pictures though.

First up…some shots of another bull elk and harem right near the dump station in Whistler Campground where we are staying.

Shots from on top of Old Fort Pointe.

Float trip rafters on the Athabasca.

Downtown Jasper.

Mountains northeast of town.

Mule deer near Beauvert Lake.

Another bull elk and harem…right inside the campground loop next to us.

Thursday we lazed around as it was raining in the morning…then headed over to Beauvert Lake for some shots over the water…too bad it wasn’t calm as the reflection shots would have been nice. It was beautifully calm the day before but heavily overcast and raining so you couldn’t even see the mountains…would have been no reflections then either.

Pano shot of Beauvert Lake.

Restaurant on east side of the lake.

Friday we went into town to watch the stage of the Tour of Alberta bike race…this one started at Grand Cache northeast of Jasper and ended up with a climb to the top of the ridge at Miette Hot Springs. We watched it on the Jumbotron down at the visitor center and in between had Internet, brews, and street food snacks along with a little souvenir shopping.

Saturday we headed down to watch the start of stage 4 of the Tour of Alberta bike race…it started in town then looped around a part of Icefields Parkway for 3 loops then headed uphill 13 kilometers to the Marmot Basin ski area. We passed on taking the bus up to the top of the mountain and just watched the race on the jumbo TV down in downtown.

Connie and one of her favorite racers Christian Meier before the start of the race

At the start line.

And they’re off…one lap of parade through downtown Jasper before the race started.

Coming back through…the race is on now.

We did some souvenir shopping until the race came on TV then watched it there at the festival until it was over…then headed home for dinner and getting ready to depart.

Sunday morning we were up bright and early for the 275 mile transit from Jasper down the Icefields Parkway to Banff then over to Calgary and south to our overnight destination at Okotoks AB. We pulled to the Lions Club Campground in Okotoks in a slight drizzle, did minimal setup, had a quick nap then went over to the In Cahoots Bar and Grill for dinner then home for bed. Along the way down the Icefields Parkway…we only got a couple of photos up at the top of the pass at 6,000something feet…yes, the S word descended on us for awhile. It was just some very wet snow falling but it had clearly snowed pretty decently overnight.

We got up early again Monday morning for our planned 175 mile trip to St Mary MT where we would try (again, for the 3rd time) to visit the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park. Connie checked the park site one last time…and it turned out that Logan Pass on the road got 12 inches of snow overnight so the road was closed. It was only supposed to be open another 2 or 3 weeks anyway…so we figure it probably would not get plowed at all and most definitely would not be open for our scheduled visit on Tuesday. With that in mind…we shook up the Jello again and after heading south from Okotoks instead of continuing south and a bit west to St. Mary we headed east and went through Lethbridge AB instead, then down to the US border near Shelby MT and then south on I-15 to Great Falls. Our destination some 275 miles later was the Fam Camp at Malmstrom AFB…they don’t take reservations but have 2 campgrounds with about 60 sites total but we had a backup at a local commercial campground. We got to Great Falls and pulled in quickly into site 2…there weren’t any sign in forms in the fee box and the camp host site was empty so we just wrote a check for the $24 camping fee, put the site number and date on it and stuck it in the box. We’ll be out of here in the AM anyway.

We looked at alternatives since we aren’t supposed to get to Devil’s Tower WY until Thursday afternoon. After some discussion…we’re headed out of Great Falls 279 miles in the morning to Garryowen MT which is right at the Little Bighorn National Monument. We’ll stop by the monument on the way to our campground (so we don’t have to unhitch) and visit it then go on over to our campground for the evening…then head on over on Wednesday morning to Devil’s Tower…we’ll either spend an extra day there or someplace on the way east to Indianapolis when we leave.

Cyas.

Ah…it’s wonderful to be on your own schedule again…no more really early departures and forced marches to the next campground. Nonetheless…having looked at the scheduled weather in Jasper we did decide to get on the road by about 0830 Monday morning for our 230 mile trip over…that way we could be parked and setup before the predicted afternoon thundershowers.

Did ya see that those Kilcher fake survivalists got arrested? Turns out that the not so smart Atz Lee and his even not so smarter wife Jane decided to go on a bear hunt and used the Discovery Channel’s helicopter to take them right in to where the bear they shot was located…and using a helo to bear hunt in Alaska is against the law. So…they’re charged with illegal wildlife hunting…have to pay a fine probably and get their hunting licenses suspended for awhile.

Anyhoo…the drive over from Prince George to Jasper was pretty nice…good road except for the last 20 miles or so once we got into Alberta which has worse roads than British Columbia does. Stopped on the way in and got an annual pass for the Canadian National Park system as we’ll be in plenty of those both this week and next summer when we’re up in the Maritimes on those adventures.

We got set up in Whistler Campground site 58N…same one we were in two years back so it was easy into the campground and then an easy setup. We had a short nap then headed into town for dinner at the Jasper Brewing Company…nice brews and dinner was Beef Dip for Neil and Duck Sliders for Connie. We did get a few photos on the trip over for ya’.

Fraser River in BC looking upstream.

Mount Robson Provincial Park.

Lake at the summit of Yellow Head Pass.

First look at the mountains surrounding the Jasper Valley.

Tuesday AM we had breakfast then headed over to the visitor center to check out hikes…which mostly meant making sure that none of the trails we wanted to go on were closed. Once that was done we had a short hike on the Wapiti Campground trail…but it started raining so we went home early for lunch…then back to Jasper Brewing for beer, Internet, blog posting, and work for Connie.

Cow elk about 50 yards from our campsite.

Bull elk and his harem. 

Notice that the rearmost tine on his right antler has already broken off…either in a fight or while thrashing trees for practice.

Checking out Neil to make sure he wasn’t a rival for his ladies affection. 

Polishing his antlers on a tree.

Bugling a challenge to potential challengers.

Hopefully we’ll get some more nice photos the rest of the week…weather permitting of course as it’s supposed to rain on and off through Friday and Saturday we’ve got the bike race to watch.

Cyas.

Well…we pretty much did nuttin this weekend. Friday our friend Wayne from the caravan came over and he and Neil finished up the brake repair on our center right axle…put on the new rotor, caliper, and pads; added brake fluid; and bled the lines. No leaks that we could observe so they buttoned everything up. We’ll check everything once we hit the road. Dinner was at a local pub named Westwood Pub…pretty decent brews and food.

Saturday we went out and got groceries then came home and lazed away the afternoon. After that Wayne and Debbie came by and we headed out for dinner with them at Nancy O’s Pub. Again…great beers and even better food along with great talk with one of the couples on the caravan that we’ll keep in touch with. They live just a bit south of here in Missoula MT and invited us to stop in whenever we’re in the area.

Sunday we went to Mass, did laundry, and then…you guessed it…lazed the afternoon away again. Neil’s making a pork and apple thing for dinner then we’ll start packing up and getting ready to head out tomorrow for our 233 mile trip over to Jasper AB.

We looked at the weather and fires and our planned route over the next week or 10 days and made some contingency plans. First off…it’s supposed to be low 30s, rain, and freezing rain all next week in Jasper…which might put the kibosh on hiking and watching the bike race. Nonetheless…we’re going to go over there Monday morning anyway since to get from here in Prince George back to the lower 48 you have to go east and south or just south…and the forest fires to the south have caused some road closures as well as warnings about smoke. Once we’re in Jasper we’ll check out the weather and either tough it out or leave early…it’s mostly Connie’s call on that one due to the bike race.

Our plan to visit St. Mary MT on the way south is also in jeopardy at this point…most of the fires were west of Glacier National Park with smoke blowing north and east…right into St. Mary and the Going to the Sun Road that we were planning on driving. So…we’ve got some contingency plans figured out that will get us east and south of the fires quickly if need be. No worries about us getting burned up as the fires are still mostly 100+ miles from where we’ll be but if the smoke is causing visibility issues then Going to the Sun Road won’t have any views anyway. 

We’ll play it by ear though…and shake up the jello if/when required.

Just a single photo today…Connie had a $14 bottle of beer last night…it came in a bottle packed inside a box…first time we’ve ever seen that. Innis & Gunn Highland Ale. She said it was pretty good…Neil had a sip and said it was adequate at best and definitely not worth the price.

Cyas.

Days 55 (Sat Aug 22) through 60 (Thursday August 27) were devoted to a 2 day transit to Hyder AK, 2 days in Hyder and a 2 day transit to Prince George BC for the end of the caravan.

Saturday we were up early for the 200 mile transit to an overnight stop in Iskut BC at Mountain View Campground. After hitching up and making a quick stop at the dump station at Baby Nugget RV in Watson Lake we headed down the AlCan a mile then turned onto YT-37…the Cassiar Highway which heads south. It was a dismal, dreary, rainy day and the road was…well, terrible. It was almost a match for the lousy road down to Valdez AK but not quite. Lots of frost heaves in the tundra/muskeg area, lots of gravel breaks and patched potholes…so we kept speeding up and slowing down. We had one brief stretch coming up from a river crossing…usually there’s a steep down grade down to the bridge then a steep upgrade on the other side…that included a turn marked at 30 kilometers an hour…that’s 20 miles an hour. Added to that…it was gravel that was already wet from the on and off drizzle…and then it started raining pretty hard on the way up and we were mostly on the outside edge of the road overlooking the drop off. Yuk. We also crossed over into British Columbia leaving Yukon behind for the remainder of our trip.

We pulled into Mountain View Campground in Iskut  after our 200 mile run…getting in required an almost 180 degree right turn up on the ridge onto a gravel/dirt road that goes pretty steeply downhill into the campground. Luckily there was a nice turnout opposite the entrance to make turing pretty easy and the road was steep but not crazy steep and in pretty good shape otherwise. We downshifted and crept down then quickly pulled into our assigned site 1. Yup…another site that seemed good on initial assignment but on further review was less than fully satisfactory. It was nice pull through but required a pretty sharp right hand turn to get out of the site onto the road and since the dump station was immediately opposite it we had to pull up the hill 30 yards or so to get the trailer straight on the road then back down the hill to get next to the dump station to empty our gray tank…this was needed even though we had dumped Saturday morning since we would be in Hyder with no sewer connection for 3 nights and we decided not to push our tank capacity. However, we did get some periods of decent weather the rest of the afternoon and evening in between rain showers…and Neil was able to hike down to the lake bordering the campground for some nice shots of the late afternoon landscape.

We did get to cross off an item we didn’t think would happen on Friday night before leaving Watson Lake…the forecast was pretty good for an appearance of the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis…that’s the multi-colored glowing sheets of light in the sky caused by interaction of solar particles with cold atmospheric molecules in the stratosphere. The best time was forecast for between midnight and 0200 Saturday morning and we had a few volunteers who decided to stay awake and bang on doors if it started. Sure enough…right about 0200 we got the knock and headed out for a viewing. We were able to see the phenomenon but in this particular case it was very faint and was only dim white light with some very slight greenish tinges in a few locations. In addition…instead of being the more typical glowing/moving vertical sheet shapes it was mostly just large blob cloud shaped glow that was brighter than the surrounding night sky but not vividly so. We did have 2 complete arches across the sky but again…dim white only and it really took awhile for your night vision to develop sufficiently to see them at all. We tried a couple of shots but without the tripod none of them came out…so sorry, no pictures of them…but hey, at least we can say we saw them.

So long Yukon Territory.

A few shots we got along the way…it was hard though as we needed (a) something to take a photo of, (b) a place we could pull over and (c) no rain at the moment…this combination of conditions was pretty rare through the day. We usually settled for (a) and (b) and as long as it was only drizzling we got out anyway.

Nice reflections and a dead tree floating in this little pond.

Neil hiked down to the lake…which instead of the quarter mile he thought it would be was more than a mile each way.

Looking back from the site of the photo above towards the campground sites…we’re on the far right in site 1 next to the building.

With another 200 miles to go on lousy roads…we were up again early Sunday morning to hitch, dump, and get on the road. Neil got a couple of shots of the threatening skies over the mountains to our east before we headed out.

We did see a total of 3 black bears on the way…Papa bear ran across the road about an hour out of Iskut and it was a good thing he didn’t run out 5 seconds later as he woulda been a dead bear if he did. Too quick for a photo though. Once we turned off of the Cassiar Highway onto the Stewart/Hyder Highway we spotted a sow and cub just eating berries on the side of the road. Neil got some pictures of the sow but the cub was a little farther behind the rig and another car pulled up behind us preventing us from backing up to get a shot of it. He was a little guy though…probably this year’s cub and only 30 pounds or so. Looked pretty much like any other black bear cub though.

We also stopped by Bear Glacier on the way down the Steward/Hyder road and got a couple nice shots of this glacier which is on a north draining valley about a third of a mile from the road; as well as a nice waterfall down the side of the valley.

We arrived in Hyder in pretty much steady rain (oh joy, again) and got set up in site 14 at Camp Run-A-Muck…which isn’t much to look at but then we didn’t come here to Hyder to sit in the campground. The campground sits right off the road and we have a lovely view of the road and the houses across it…luckily we’re almost at the end of the paved road and traffic is pretty minimal. Due to the rain and 3 night stop we did minimal setup…water and electric only with no sewer connection in the site and no other outside preps…the campground was pretty much a mud puddle when we arrived and it didn’t get much better when the rain stopped.

Undeterred though…we had dinner then Neil went off to the local tourist attraction…which is a boardwalk where you can watch the bears feed on spawning salmon. Well, we went down…and sure enough there were plenty of migrating salmon, plenty of seagulls eating on dead salmon and a complete absence of bears. Figures.

A couple of shots of the pond behind the boardwalk…actually the best scenery of the evening.

And a couple gull shots as they flew over the river.

With no luck on bears…he came home and we watched TV until bedtime.

Day 57 (Monday August 24) we slept in until 0700 as we had nowhere special to be. After coffee and breakfast…pro tip, if you ever come to Canada don’t buy Canadian grapefruit, they just ain’t worth bringing home from the store…we decided to try the bear boardwalk again then have lunch before our scheduled trip out to Salmon glacier in the afternoon.

On the way out we spotted some eagles sitting on stumps out in the river. Again though…no bears. However, the weather was a bit nicer and we did get some nice shots of the gulls and a couple of Great Blue Herons hanging out in the pond behind the boardwalk.

Two adult and one immature Bald Eagles.

Great Blue Herons.

Some sort of moss…very similar to Spanish Moss down south…glistening with the overnight rain.

The river…notice all the bears feeding on the salmon. Me neither.

These are female salmon who have already spawned and are guarding their nest from the gulls…at least until they die which won’t be too long now. Good thing that salmon lay 10s of thousands of eggs…the survival rate by the time the hatch, grow, migrate to the ocean, live out the saltwater portion of their lives and then return to their spawning ground is in the low single digits. Supposedly each female and male span with yards of there they were hatched…although how anybody figured that out is anybody’s guess.

Various gull shots in action…mostly they are feeding at this point on eggs that broke loose from the nests and are drifting downstream. Others were feeding on dead salmon on the banks leftover by the bears feeding earlier but that isn’t nearly as interesting a photo.

We gave that up after a half hour or so and headed back for the car…luckily catching a nice flight sequence of one of the Great Blue Herons taking off from the pond.

Another Howard Payne Memorial Dead Tree Photo.

We headed home and Neil made grilled ham and cheese sammies for lunch…the last of our lunchmeat along with some American and Havarti cheese slices…fried up quickly in butter to make them golden brown and delicious. Yum.

At 1300 we met for our pre-carpool meeting…the afternoon’s activity was a drive out to Salmon Glacier. It’s in Canada but you don’t go through customs to get there. Just continue on down the road outside Camp Run-A-Muck away from the Canadian border. After 3 miles or so it turns into gravel and winds through the gold mines and ridges 25 miles out to the glacier. Our friends Greg and Linda went with us in BAT as the road was clearly not car worthy…lots of potholes to contend with; not to mention the drop-offs on the edge most of the way. Going out we were on the inside lane away from the edge…and to tell you the truth coming back downhill we were mostly on the inside (wrong) lane as well except for when passing cars. Neil drove around the potholes as best he could and we just bumped along at 20 mph or so to make sure we stayed well away from the edge. In several places it had to be 1,000 feet or more down to the bottom and almost a vertical drop.

Salmon Glacier…one of the more photogenic ones we’ve seen on our trip. Looking up the main valley where it starts about 8 miles back in the mountains. The main valley dead ends into another valley which runs right and left in this photo. To the right is uphill and there’s just a slight portion of the glacier with the majority taking a 90 degree right turn and heading down the new valley towards the eventual terminal lake.

180 degree pano of the glacier…main valley in center, slight uphill portion to the right and main flow to the left down the intersecting valley

Looking down the valley after the glacier turns and heads towards the terminal lake.

Your intrepid Alaskan/Yukon explorers overlooking the glacier.

Terminal lake of the Salmon Glacier…this is about 6 or 8 miles down from the views above. You can just see the bottom of the glacier on the right…probably about 300-400 feet thick here at least.

Nice waterfall we spotted on the way down.

We returned to the campground about 3 hours after we left…had a nice steak for dinner with onion, mushroom, and wine gravy and some mashed taters along with a cold brew…then TV until bedtime.

Tomorrow we have no firm plans so far…Connie may work a bit if the Internet connectivity cooperates and we may run over to the other side of the border to Stewart to check it out.

Day 58 (Tuesday August 25) was mostly a rest day for us…we slept in and then had a nice breakfast…then Connie washed her hair and Neil pumped up the tires on the rig and BAT since the weather has cooled off a bit. Once it was dry we headed off to check out the remainder of Hyder as well as Stewart BC.

There isn’t much to see in either of the two towns…Hyder has a population of about 100 with 2 bars, 2 very small general stores and no police. Stewart is a little bigger…maybe 300 people tops but there isn’t much there either. We did fill up BAT with fuel over in Stewart…$1.12 Canadian per liter which works out to $3.41 US per gallon which is pretty decent pricing for up here in the far northland. We then stopped by the Boundary Gift Shop…hey, they had homemade fudge…which strangely enough is located about 50 yards from the border. A quick stop near the Hyder dump yielded several shots of a pretty large black bear then we came on back to the rig. For dinner we headed out to the Glacier Inn Bar and Restaurant…Connie had Halibut Oscar which was excellent and Neil had Halibut Fish and Chips which was ok but not great. We then wandered back down to the Hyder wildlife boardwalk again…hoping for the promised bears but none were to be found…so home we came but did spot an eagle on the way back and got a few shots. Neil went ahead and hitched up BAT to make our departure in the morning a little easier.

A couple of shots of the boat harbor area in Hyder…the port at Stewart (which is Canada’s northernmost ice free port) is in the background of the second shot.

Black bear near the town dump eating berries and fireweed.

Local restaurant…supposed to be the best place to eat in town…locally known as “The Bus”…but it was closed for the season…hence our eating at the Glacier Inn instead.

Bald Eagle spotted on the way back from the bear boardwalk…eating a salmon, looking through the water for something, staring at us, and then flying off. This was the closest one we saw this evening…must have seen two dozen eagles over on the river in total but most were too far away for any decent photos.

Day 59 (Wednesday August 26) was scheduled for a 211 mile transit to Smithers BC for an over night stop. Luckily the weather was nicer and we were able to enjoy the views a little more than on the way out to the Hyder/Stewart area.

After about a 210 mile trip we pulled into the Par 3 RV Park in Smithers BC and got setup in site 18. Our plans for a nice easy afternoon under the awning were dashed by the grinding noise coming from BAT’s front left wheel…so that meant we had to unhitch instead of staying hitched up since it was just overnight. Neil listened to it while Connie drove and figured out it was most likely just gravel from the 25 miles worth of construction stuck in between the rotor and the shield. A relatively easy fix although it did require pulling the wheel off and fishing the gravel out…nice way to kill 2 hours.

Day 60 (Thursday August 27) dawned cool and clear with a bit of fog down in the valleys. We got on the road about 0800 for the last 230 miles of the caravan to Southpark RV in Prince George BC. Once again…the weather cooperated pretty well but we were pretty well scraping the bottom of the barrel for views. The only things we saw were the world’s largest fishing rod

and this cairn that supposedly has a stone in it from a Norman castle in Wales at Tintagel…which is supposedly the birthplace of Arthur who was famous for the Knights of the Round Table and Camelot. Sounds like hokum to me though.

We pulled into the RV park about 1330 and got our back in site 26. We discovered that our power pedestal had an open ground which means that we have to turn off our power management and protection system for the night. So…Neil walked up to the office and asked if they could send the maintenance guy around to fix it…the witch that owns the park said “You’re dreaming” and that we just had to deal with it. He then asked her if he could install our new brake spare parts tomorrow and she said “Hell no. If you want to work on your rig get the hell out and go somewhere else.”

So…that’s what we decided to do. There’s another park…a much nicer looking park by the way…about a half mile away. We ran over there and Carol has an opening which we reserved for tomorrow and she is more than happy to have us fix the brakes while parked there. Our friend Wayne from the caravan is coming over there to give him a hand with the installation.

We headed over to CBS Trailer Parts where Greg had our brake repair spare parts…then on over to Canadian Tire for a couple hardware related things we needed then came back to the campground.

We had our farewell dinner for the caravan tonight…the food was amazingly enough pretty good as was the first night’s dinner 60 days ago. Too bad the intervening meals we had provided weren’t so hot…but that’s the way it goes I guess. We’ve met some folks on the caravan that we count as friends…and some that are just acquaintances I guess. I’ll have a more detailed report with thoughts on Alaska, RV caravans, and related topics later on for ya’.

The rest of the weekend we’re pretty much taking time off to rest from the last 60 days…we’re tired so once the brakes are fixed we’re gonna do laundry and not much else. Monday we head over to Jasper for a week of nothing, hiking, and the Tour of Alberta bike race.

Cyas.

Days 51 through 54 (Tuesday Aug 18 through Friday August 21)…we ended up rejiggering the schedule a bit from what was previously planned for the caravan.

On the way to Whitehorse we stopped by the Johnson River Crossing Lodge and Restaurant to buy a cinnamon bun…which was so huge that we ended up with both of us having breakfast off of it for 2 days. Here’s a close up of the monster followed by a shot of it with 2 paper plates for scale. It was mighty tasty…the best cinnamon bun we’ve had on the trip. Not too sweet, soft and gooey, lots of cinnamon, raisins, and just the right amount of icing.

We found this little gem at the Yukon Transportation Museum…it’s a DC-3 that flew back during WWII and then had a long and distinguished career with Canadian Pacific Airlines. Following it’s retirement from that role it sat around the Whitehorse airport being used for spare parts until it was bought by a local aviation buff and turned into the world’s largest weather vane…yup, this thing is mounted on a pedestal and rotates with the nose always pointing into the wind. It actually swung back and forth while we were parked under it taking the pictures.

Day 51 we went on our scheduled bus/train trip down to Skagway AK via the White Pass and Yukon Route narrow gauge railroad…this was originally built back in 1898 to support the gold mining industry and get supplies up from Skagway over the pass to Whitehorse for further transport down the Yukon River to the gold fields in the Dawson City area. Once the gold rush was over the railroad served as a minor supply and people mover before eventually being turned into the tourist attraction it is today. Only 27 miles of the original track remains in service from Fraser BC over the White Pass to Skagway and the original train cars have been refurbished and used to carry people…although the original steam locomotives have been replaced with modern diesel-electric models. The route rises a couple hundred feet from Fraser to the 3,298 foot summit of White Pass then down to sea level at Skagway…this is about as steep a railroad as you can practically build and being on the side of the valley had some great views. We had been warned ahead of time to get seats on the right side of the train for best views…but Neil spent almost the entire trip out on the between cars porch so as to keep reflections out of the photos and to enable him to jump back and forth between sides as necessary. Caravan friends Nick, Phillip, and Sandy spent the trip out there with him as well…along with a few others that popped out occasionally then back inside as it was a bit breezy and chilly out on the porch…Neil just ducked behind the car periodically to warm up. The trip consisted of a bus trip down to Fraser with a stop at Carcross designed to separate you from your money at the mostly cheesy gift shops…then the train ride down to Skagway while the bus took the road down. It picked us up at the depot and dropped us in town for a 2 hour visit where mostly we had lunch then walked around a bit on the way back to the bus…then a 2 hour bus ride back to Whitehorse.

The weather mostly cooperated…it was foggy right at the top of the pass but then we broke out into some sunshine and mixed clouds before we got to the better views. They were pretty stunning…several places you looked over the side of the railroad car porch and were literally hanging over the canyon…in places the rails were within a foot or so of the edge that had been built up with a concrete edge to keep them from falling over…many places there were literally bolts drilled into the rock on the left side of the track that extended under the track, through the concrete lip and had a nut holding the concrete to the side of the mountain…the tracks in these areas were literally bolted to the side of the cliff.

Shots from a lake we stopped by on the way to Carcross…would have been really nice if it had been sunnier.

The little town of Carcross YT. About 2 square blocks total.

The lake bordering Fraser BC where we boarded the train…very windy up here so the lake has whitecaps on it.

Potbellied stove that keeps the train cars warm.

Heading up into White Pass in the mist.

Spotted this rainbow off in the mist as we entered the summit area of the pass.

Entering the fog.

Crossing the US/Canada border.

Police station along the line…this was the Northwest Mounted Police which became the RCMP…Royal Canadian Mounted Police…in the early 1900s.

These next two shots are the iconic panorama shots from this tour…everybody that rides the train takes almost this same photo…so here’s ours. The train comes out of a 100 yard long tunnel and crosses this bridge as it turns…note the abandoned trestle coming alongside in the second shot.

The abandoned trestle itself.

A shot taken from inside the train by Connie…wider view than Neil’s shots but you can see the abandoned trestle and the deep gorge it crosses.

Looking backwards along the train from the same position as the above shot…note the vertical beams holding the track to the cliff and the bolts holding the beams to the cliff. The drop here was 500 or 700 feet I think…almost straight down.

Another shot by Connie from inside showing the edge of the gorge…it’s even got some reflections in it from other inside passengers.

Getting a little flatter and almost back into the tree line.

In the forest again heading into Skagway AK.

Skagway River.

Following our train ride we rode the bus into town then headed into the Red Onion Saloon for lunch…this was a bordello back in the day. 

Our waitress…nicely dressed up in what your best dressed soiled dove wore back in 1898…corset and everything. She was quite glad to pose for us with the girls.

Paintings from over the bar.

The owner/madam…she was taking this group upstairs for what she referred to as “afternoon delight”. Deciding to forego the charms of the ladies…we settled for a couple pints of Hard Cider…hey, it’s a nice lunch beer…and a couple of sandwiches.

Shots of downtown Skagway…not quite as frontier as Dawson City…but pretty close.

Train Depot downtown…the Red Onion was almost directly kate-corner across the street. 

Once we got back from the train ride we quickly…along with several other of our caravan members…finished supervising Bill finishing up another minor mechanical repair. After that it was dinner and then we sort of had a change of plans.

Originally Day 52 (Wednesday August 19) was a free day in Whitehorse followed by a 115 mile trip to Teslin Lake YT on Thursday and another 150 miles to Watson Lake YT on Friday. Instead…we packed up and left early Wednesday AM for a single trip to Watson Lake…essentially we wanted to escort Bill and Linda on the first day of their trip back east just in case they had additional problems on the road. Things went pretty well on the journey…no issues cropped up so we crawled underneath both rigs in the rain to do a look-see for any additional problems. His rig looked fine so they headed off early Thursday morning to continue south and east toward Elkhart IN for repairs at MORryde. However, on examination of our rig we found that the final original New Horizons installed brake pad had failed resulting in a scored rotor and damaged caliper…we should have had those pads replaced in May at MORryde ourselves but they seemed fine so we skipped it. Bad idea it turned out. After some discussion with Bill…we went ahead and pulled the bad caliper/pads off of that wheel and capped the brake line. All other brakes are fine so we’ll just live with 5 of them and be a little more cautious on hills until we can get them repaired. Neil’s got some email out to see if we can get parts in Prince George…if so then we’ll see if our friend Phillip from the caravan can assist…at worst he can do the install alone but having another guy to hold things and another pair of eyes would be good. If we can’t get parts then we’ll just…assuming that we have no issues with only having 5 brakes instead of 6…continue on with our planned trip and stop by Elkhart IN instead of Indianapolis on the way back east to have it replaced. As to having only 5 brakes…don’t worry about us being unsafe as we were on some pretty steep grades in West Virginia when we headed out from Marion NC in May for our previous stop at MORryde…and we did that trip with only 4 brakes so 5 will be easy-peasey. Now that  Neil has been fully trained on using engine braking for most of the stopping power he feels plenty safe with 5 until we can get the parts.

It rained all day so we didn’t get any pictures…which was OK since we had already seen that piece of road just going the other way as we approached Whitehorse from the south a month and some back.

Day 53 (Thursday August 20) dawned again rainy…so after we saw Bill and Linda off on their trip south then off to the Visitor Center for some internet after a great French Toast breakfast that Neil made. Goofed off all afternoon and had some pork for dinner.

Day 54 (Friday August 21) was a repeat of day 53…mostly we were just resting up as the caravan schedule has been pretty hard and we are plain ole tuckered out. The rest of the caravan caught up to us at Baby Nugget RV in Watson Lake YT.

Day 55 we’re off to Iskut BC then Day 56 on to Hyder AK where we’ll have two free days to rest, see the sights, and do touristy stuff…Neil hears there are more bears there so hopefully we’ll spot some.

Cyas.