Today was again a drive day, as most of the rest of our trip will be. I am very glad to be done with the frost heaves between Delta Junction and Whitehorse. Very, very glad. Tonight we stopped at Campground Services in Watson City, YK, the one with all the signs. We called to see if they had availability, and she told us to go to site 93 if we didn’t make it before their office closed. We didn’t, but there was already someone in 93, so we drove around trying to figure out where to park. A nice elderly guy [View Full Entry]

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We decided against driving to the Arctic Circle, which is a good thing considering we didn’t wake up until 9. Instead, we dallied and started the drive home. We stopped at a few waysides to take photos, getting nothing terribly spectacular. We also stopped at Rika’s Roadhouse near Delta Junction for a quick walk around and lunch. (Their tomato basil bisque was pretty good, as was their turtle cheesecake. Liam and I are suckers for cheesecake.) We also stopped in Delta Junction at the end of the highway sign. We hadn’t taken a good picture of the four of us in [View Full Entry]

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We left Denali this morning under a complete downpour, and were so glad we saw the park when we did. Fortunately, the rain didn’t last a long time, and the drive to Fairbanks wasn’t very long at all. Our first stop was Museum of the North on the campus of UAF. There were two main exhibits—a natural history portion and an art museum. Liam was very impressed that there were things in the first that he was allowed to touch—mammoth bones, small animal skulls, furs. There were many intricate native carvings. Upstairs, some of the art was traditional, but much of [View Full Entry]

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Our big adventure today was the shuttle bus in Denali. Again, our boys were the only children aboard, but seemed to do well. Two couples travelling from Arizona told me that they saw our kids and hoped they wouldn’t be on the same bus, but were entertained nonetheless. The mechanics are on strike here, and are picketing with signs that say “Is your bus safe?” Not 20 minutes into our trip, our driver started hitting things on the bus and opening panels. We eventually spent 30 minutes sitting around waiting for a replacement bus, because the fan clutch was going and [View Full Entry]

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Sorry it’s been a couple days. Our last campground offered wi-fi, but at a price. At this point in our trip, we’re pretty much not willing to pay for anything extra. I’ll be adding those blogs after I put this one in. Today was another driving day. We retraced our drive from two days ago and were fortunate to see Turnagain Arm at higher tide. It was again very hazy/smoky, so we still didn’t see much. We didn’t see any Dall sheep, either. At Anchorage, we transferred onto Parks Highway, which Milepost’s describes as running “through some of th [View Full Entry]

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Our only scheduled event for today was a cruise through Resurrection Bay and Kenai Fjords National Park. It didn’t leave until 11:45, so we had the laziest morning of our vacation. The boys slept in; we had French toast for breakfast. While Jeff was cooking, I was just hanging out on the beach watching the bay. There was a single bald eagle fairly close in front of me and a couple further down, so I was mostly paying attention to them, until a guy walking on the beach pointed out the whale. Cool! A whale from our campsite! I watched them [View Full Entry]

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We left Glennallen a little later than usual to drive to Seward. We drove past many mountain ranges, but saw little because of the haze. I love the effect that type of picture has, but more for the background of scrapbook pages. It made for a quicker drive, though, because we didn’t stop nearly as often as usual. We were very excited to get into Anchorage and discover civilization—an actual 4-6 lane level highway. Our excitement didn’t last long, though, because we discovered the ruts. I would love to have measured them, because they were deep enough to be noticeable to [View Full Entry]

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We left Tok early this morning and headed southwest on Tok Cutoff toward Glennallen. It was supposed to be a better maintained road than the Alaska Highway, but I’m not terribly convinced. We discovered when we got here (Northern Nights Campground) that the cap off our bumper was missing. Jeff didn’t think a whole lot of it until he discovered that our sewer connection, which is stored in the bumper, also fell out somewhere along the way. Oops! Despite the bumps, it was again a beautiful drive. We passed by rivers and many mountains. The skies were perfect, so we were [View Full Entry]

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We have been fortunate up to this point as far as highways go. Today, we hit something a little different. From Whitehorse on, but mostly for 100 miles on either side of the Alaska-Canada border, we hit frost heaves and occasional potholes with great regularity. We also drove for miles on dusty gravel, which we preferred until getting in to the camper this evening and noticing the fine dust over most things in the boys’ room and the main living area. There was also some construction requiring a long stop. Fortunately, that was at Kluane Lake which is beautiful. When not [View Full Entry]

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Today was an absolutely amazing day, by far the best of our vacation thus far. I'm so glad it was on Liam's birthday. It was a cruise to Juneau and back with Alaska Fjordlines (www.alaskafjordlines.com). Honestly, I can’t even imagine how I’m going to express the day in words, but I’ll try. I’m racing through pictures trying to get this posted so we can go to bed, so I may miss some really cool shots. Bear with me (said with a smirk). We took 1,344 pictures today. We started with a 3 hour cruise from Skagway to Juneau with a stop [View Full Entry]

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