The Alaskan Adventure begins

After months of preparing, researching, stocking up, we are finally leaving on the Alaskan trip. At times I felt like Lewis and Clark, planning a big expedition. I'm not sure what we will find in the way of food and campgrounds. Have to put on our camping hat and staying in provincial parks with no hook ups. Should be fun and who knows when we will actually get to Alaska, no hurry, no worries.

Dash Mac

June 15, 2013,  This should be our last night in the Continental US for a while.  We are in Kalispell, Mt and will cross into Canada tomorrow on Hwy 93.  We fully plan to take advantage of the old adage that says "It's not the destination, It's the journey."  We'll not be in any hurry to get from one place to another and intend to see as much as possible between here and there.

The last day and a half we've been at a park on Flathead Lake.  Every time we've been here we think it's absolutely beautiful.  As self confessed "cold weather wimps" I will admit that we haven't been here in the winter.  I'm sure it's pretty in the wintertime too but probably cold and snowy.  As contradictory as it sounds, it's nice to be headed north to cooler temps. Found a great brewery in Lakeside, Tamarack brewery. Good food, good beer, great prices.

June 16, 2013,  Today, we crossed into Canada and it cost us an apple.  That was the only fruit that we had and fortunately it was in the truck with us.  The agent was very hospitable though, so I hope he enjoys the Pink Lady. :)   Once we got into Canada, Hwy 93 wasn't too bad, but from Whitefish, Mt  to the border it was really, really rough!  Probably to prepare us for the roughness of the Al-Can.  The entire route was pretty green and scenic and we had to slow a few times for deer to cross the road. We're spending our first night in the town of Cranbrook at a little private park.  Tomorrow we'll head to Radium Hot Springs for 2 nights.  We just made reservations at Redstreak Provincial Park, which is within walking distance of the hot springs.  We're getting excited about a couple of days of soaking in the hot springs.  Woo Hoo. From there, we will cross the Canadian rockies into Alberta and stop at Lake Louis for a couple of days. It's real iffy about the camping there, possibly a provincial park with no hookups. That's why we have a new generator!

Welcome committee

June 17, this stop is in Radium hot springs. Interestingly, we are driving in the Columbia river valley, the headwaters of the Columbia river just north of here. So there are river resort towns, golfing, hot springs. We are in one of the National parks at their campground with full hookups. Nice big sites, wooded and wildlife all over. We were greeted by a herd ? of mountain sheep. Had a bit of rain on the way and overnight. Tried out the hotsprings, a large commercial pool, with varying temperatures. Felt very good.

Next stop, over the rockies to Lake Louise and then to Jasper by next weekend. From there, it's north to meet the Alcan.

Rockies

Road trip

We recently needed to renew our driver's licenses. This meant we needed to get to South Dakota, but we weren't planning a trip that way so we decided to make a "quick" road trip to Rapid City. Gail needed to get there before the 22nd and for Bill, after the 3rd put him within 6 months of renewal.

Capitol Reef

Look Ma no shoulders!

So we rented a car from the Cedar City airport on a Friday, left the truck there, drove down to St. George to our son's to cat sit, then back to Escalante (this is a 2- 21/2 hr trip just to Cedar City). Then on Sat. after work we left, headed east for a couple of hours to get on the road. First stop Grand Junction, CO. The drive from Escalante to I-70 is pretty scenic, along a hog back road, over the mountains, through the Capitol Reef NP area and to some pretty desolate area but very unique landscapes. Out in the middle of nowhere is a bakery with homemade bread. We had to stop and stocked with 2 loaves of bread we had some road food.

Drive, sleep, drive to Colorado Springs, on I-70 over the Rockies and through the Eisenhower tunnel at 11,000+ feet. Still some snow, lots of ski resorts, skirt west of Denver and we're in the Springs for a night. We we're able to visit with our good friends,old neighbors the Durstons. Haven't seen them in about 2 years so it was a great visit.

Day 3, the last leg to Rapid City. Mostly freeway until north of Cheyenne then secondary roads. Pretty much an all day drive. Next morning, up and down to the DMV for appointments at 8:30. The appointments weren't necessary, took 10 minutes to fill out the application, have all our documents checked, eye test, photo and we were both done by 9:00! Good for another 5 years.

We picked up some breakfast and bagels, made a beer run for the folks back in UTAH and hit the road, this time returning by way of Wyoming and the interstate to Salt Lake and to St. George, UT. Nothing too exciting to report on about Wyoming and more specifically Rock Springs. Not a good place for an inexpensive, clean hotel but a good stop for Mexican food and a pitcher of margaritas!. Picked up a little more beer.


We ended up in St. George for the night, got to see the son again, stocked up on groceries, picked up the cat in the morning and returned the rental to Cedar City.

First thing driving into the parking lot next to the truck we notice that the generator, that sits on the back in GONE!!
Crap. Stolen sometime during the last 5 days. Reported it to the police but I doubt we will ever see it again. Just something else we need to get again before leaving for Alaska.

So to recap, 5 days driving, 930 miles round trip all for 10 minutes at the DMV. Not priceless.

Winter's done

Over the dune

Well, we survived the winter on the central California coast. Actually, it was probably one of the nicer winters we've had. The temperatures were consistently in the 60s, a little rain when we first got there, occasionally some fog and sunny days. Our friends in Arizona had snow and freezing temps! The scenery was nice and we heard the ocean every day and the park is surrounded by strawberry fields and some brussel sprouts. Over the mountain is Gilroy, the garlic capital of the country and there are fields of artichokes and berries in the area.

We enjoyed our new job as maintenance host. We were in the campground loop all by ourselves and enjoyed the quiet. Our work consisted of some clean up, but mostly repairs that the regular staff wasn't  able to keep up with. We repaired tables and food boxes, restained post of interpretive centers, benches, painted and laid flooring. We kept up our homeowner repair skills and learned to use some new tools and had a lot of fun. The Sunset beach park also has responsibility for 3 other parks, Manresa/Uplands a popular surfing and tent camping park, Nisene Marks, primarily hiking trails in the redwoods and a small dune beach park of Palm

Nisene Marks

On days off we explored the coast area. We visited Monterey again and drove the 17 mile drive around Pebble beach, beautiful. To the north we went as far as Half Moon Bay and the parks and small towns along the way. We found some breweries to try in Monterey, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara, good food too. And we've found more to check out when we go back in Dec for 4 months!

It's a little stressful picking up and going again after sitting in one place for 3 months. Will the slides come in ok, where does everything go, are the vents all closed? But we took off and headed towards Escalante, our "home" park in Utah. After a stop in Boron, CA, we stopped for 2 days in St. George to visit Kyle, our son. We arrived back in Escalante Tues 4/2 and the park is already full. It's interesting that exactly 1 year earlier, we had the same weather driving from St. George to Escalante this year, rain, snow over the mountains then good. No trailer problems this year though and we avoided stopping for any reason in Vegas. It always costs us a bundle in truck repairs if we do!

So now we are here for 2 months before we embark on our planned Alaska trip for the summer.