Alaska Diary - Part 1

As we all know blogging friends and acquaintances come and go. Since I've been doing this unusual hobby for eight years now  there are  a few I fondly remember that have even  passed on...

Still, new people have come on board and so this morning  I'm going back to a visual diary I posted as a brand new blogger in 2008.  Come on aboard!  Though be warned it's a long trip and it took 12 parts to tell the tale....:)
It's bright and sunny today in Bluff Country. Yesterday we seemed to be unable to agree on a fall vacation trip. A second trip to Alaska is on the agenda but our thought has always been, we would go back and the second time do the inside passage cruise thing..... but that's for "old people" and we are not quite there yet. Mrs. T wants to go to Ireland. I favor a couple of weeks beachcombing on Vancouver Island, barefoot in the sand looking for whales. Well, time will tell. In the meantime, I've been looking through some of our old travel albums. We had gone to Alaska almost a few years  ago now, with our good friends Gary and Rosie. We drove up and back, camping all the way. The trip took over a month but we weren't in hurry. It was summer vacation. Rosie kept a diary. This morning I can't find my copy. Maybe I'll just reminisce and wing it!

REMEMBERING ALASKA:

I had a white Blazer in those days. And after many decades of tenting we decided to get a Palimino pop-up camper for our "no more laying on the ground Golden Years." It was heaven. We made it the first day all the way to the Black Hills. After supper, the campground host came around and said their was a free shuttle bus to Deadwood - the Sodom and Gommorah of the West. I won $25 dollars in nickels that night. The trip was off to a good start.

The next day we headed northwest to the Canadian border. I love Montana, particularly the troutfishing mountain region of the southwest. The eastern and central portions of the state are flat or rolling hills and grasslands. In early June, it was green everywhere. We camped along a creek near the Canadian border. It is along drainages where you find just about the only trees in this country. Lewis and Clark cut down giant cottonwoods for their canoes along the Missouri. Checking the creek for fish, I ran into an ostrich which had the run of the campground. Strange!

We spent the third night in a campground a little north of Edmonton, Alberta. We had a late supper and then hiked the area, checking out all the big rigs. They made our pop-up look rather dinky. It was after 11 when we decided to turn in and it was still light out.

Our goal for the next day was Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Dawson Creek is the point of origin of the Historic Alaska Highway, which stretches north to Fairbanks in Alaska. As a defensive mesure against Japanese invasion, starting in March 1942, and working swiftly from both ends, American Engineer Troops (10,000) and construction gangs under civilian contractors (6,000) completed the Alaska Highway in November 1942. Overnight, Dawson Creek mushroomed into a boomtown. I remember the old saw about it not being arriving at your goal but the journey to reach it that is the best part. This was certainly true in our case.

We were also given the usual dire warnings about bad roads, running out of gas, bringing extra tires etc. No way! I've seen much longer spaces between gas stations in North Dakota. The Alaska highway was good. Yes, there are stretches of road construction but where in the U.S. aren't there some? Now, if you need a new transmission, of course, its is a long way between major cities.
Next: Part II The Alaska Highway