http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Rovers2/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Rovers2 en-us Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:50:10 BST Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:50:10 BST Glacier National Park is located in northwestern Montana along the Canadian border and consists of some 1600 square miles of mountains forests rivers lakes and of course glaciers over 50 of them. It became our 10th National Park in 1910. In 1891 the Great Northern Railway had crossed the continental divide at nearby Marias Pass opening the region to settlers miners and inevitably to http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Montana/Glacier-National-Park/blog-174994.html We left Oregon on May 31 after a great month at the beautiful Nehalem Bay State Park and after an overnight stay in a neat little Oceanside campground on the Washington coast headed for southeastern Washington to spend a few days with some friends Glen and Lori from Vancouver and Terry and Linda from Bonners Ferry Idaho all of whom had worked with us as volunteers in Oregon last year. We http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Montana/Missoula/blog-171942.html From Durango we headed west into Utah Stopping for lunch in Monticello where we were greeted by a blizzard by this Floridianrsquos standards anyway. From Monticello we turned north toward Moab and were soon in the spectacular canyon country of southeast Utah. We had made arrangements to meet our friends Glen and Judy Denner in Moab. We met the Denners and spent some time with them last Se http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Utah/Moab/blog-153499.html We stopped in Durango to visit our friends Jim and Becky Rodefer whom we met and traveled with last year in Alaska. Located on the edge of the mountains in picturesque southwestern Colorado Durango is a real outdoorsmanrsquos paradise with great hunting fishing skiing and whitewater rafting readily available in the area. It is also home to the Durango and Silverton narrowgauge railroad http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Colorado/Fort-Collins/blog-153472.html Crossing the Sacramento Mountains on US 82 we came to the little ski village of Cloudcroft with a splendid view of the valley ahead and some 5000 feet below. Here we got our first glimpse of the huge White Sands Missile Range. At 3200 square miles it is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Here at a site called Trinity the atomic age began at 530 AM on July 16 1945 with the the http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/New-Mexico/Alamogordo/blog-150993.html In 1898 in the Guadalupe Mountains of Southeastern New Mexico a cowboy named Jim White saw what he thought was smoke rising in the distance. When he went closer he found that the ldquosmokerdquo was literally millions of bats coming from a large hole in the ground. White and other locals knew of the hole but no one had explored it. Concluding from the number of bats he saw that this must b http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/New-Mexico/Carlsbad/blog-150859.html The first leg of our westward journey took us from Fernandina Beach FL to Ft. Gaines GA on the Alabama border. We stayed in a nice campground on the banks of Lake Walter F. George and played the golf course in the George Bagby State Park. The next stop was Montgomery AL where we spent a pleasant evening listening to the tornado warning sirens. Fortunately no tornadoes came our way but thun http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Texas/Fredericksburg/blog-149814.html The Little Bighorn is a small tributary of the Bighorn River flowing through the prairie grasslands of southwestern Montana. On June 25 1876 on a ridge over this little river was fought one American history's most legendary battles. Boy Wonder General George Armstrong Custer at 25 he is the youngest man ever to attain the rank of Major General and about 245 soldiers from his 7th Cavalry http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Montana/Big-Sky/blog-88498.html In 1872 President U. S. Grant signed a bill designating Yellowstone the worldrsquos first national park. At over 2.2 million acres it is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Although the park has some beautiful mountains rivers lakes and waterfalls over 100 of them it is most notable for its thermal features. About 600000 years ago an enormous volcanic eruption created a 1 http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Wyoming/Yellowstone-National-Park/blog-87363.html Our first stop back in the US was just across the border in Idaho at the lakeside home of our friends Terry Litfin and Linda Monks where we were joined by Glen and Lori Nyberg. The six of us had served together in May as volunteer campground hosts at Nehalem Bay State Park in Oregon. The house sits on 65 wooded acres surrounding a scenic lake and has been in Linda's family for a hundred years http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Montana/Bozeman/blog-86421.html Leaving the Cassiar we headed east on the Yellowhead Highway bound for Alberta. Along the way we overnighted in Smithers Prince George where we had stayed on the way up and a really neat little campground on the Fraser River in Tete Juane BC. It was a short drive from there to Jasper Alberta an upscale little resort town on the northern edge of Jasper National Park. From here we took the http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/Canada/Alberta/Banff/blog-85427.html The Cassiar Highway is a wilderness road that runs from Watson Lake in the Yukon Territory south through the western part of British Columbia and terminates at the Yellowhead Highway a major eastwest highway running from the seaport of Prince Rupert to Winnipeg Manitoba. The Cassiar takes you through 450 miles of rugged mountains lakes rivers and streams passing through some of the most be http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/blog-82907.html At the northern end of the inside passage taken by cruise ships and the Alaska Marine Highway System ferries is a narrow fiord. On the west side of the fiord sits the town of Haines and on the east side lays Skagway. These towns originated in the late 19th century as jumpingoff places for those adventurous souls seeking their fortune in the numerous gold stampedes. From Skagway they made t http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Haines/blog-82022.html Fairbanks is the northernmost population center in Alaska with about 30000 residents and after 8500 miles it is where we will make the turn and begin our trip back home. It is a real frontier town with a colorful history of boom and bust cycles. It was founded in 1901 by Captain E. T. Burnette as a trading post. The site was selected because it was here that the water became too shallow fo http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Fairbanks/blog-80016.html At 6 million plus acres Denali National Park is huge bigger than the state of Massachusetts and the terrain is magnificent with enormous mountains big rivers and many lakes. There is only one road which extends about 75 miles into the park. Except for a few miles near the park entrance the road is gravel and personal vehicles are only allowed on the first 14 or 15 miles. The public can http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Denali/blog-79825.html Homer is another of those beautiful coastal towns surrounded by glaciers and rugged mountains cliffs dropping into the sea. It lies on the southwest corner of the Kenai Peninsula at the mouth of Kachemak Bay. Its most prominent geographical feature is the Homer Spit a stretch of sand barely mile wide that extends 5 miles out into the water separating Kachemak Bay from Cook Inlet. ldquoT http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Homer/blog-78254.html Seward is a fishing village located in the northwest corner of Resurrection Bay an arm of the Pacific Ocean. It was established in 1793 by the Russians as a shipbuilding site but came into its own as a port after Alaska was purchased by the US government Remember Seward's Folly from high school. When gold was found in northern Alaska since shipping access to the mining areas on the Berin http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Seward/blog-75166.html After leaving Turnagain Arm we stayed two nights in the Williwaw Campground in the Chugach National Forest. It is a beautiful campground at the foot of a glacier and has nice level paved sites but no water or electrical hookups. We had just set up when we heard someone nearby banging pans and blowing a car horn. Turns out there was a black bear in a campsite about 100 yards from us. He crea http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Anchorage/blog-74896.html About 30 miles before we reached Anchorage things began to change rapidly. Instead of country roads and trading posts we began to see expressways shopping centers and subdivisions. Anchorage is a modern city of about 300000 people and looks less like the last frontier and more like a city in the lower 48. We heard the joke here is that Anchorage is a great place to live you are in a modern http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Anchorage/blog-74396.html Valdez sits in a narrow valley surrounded by rugged coastal mountains at the end of an arm of Prince William Sound. It was founded in the 1890rsquos and prospered as a landing spot and outfitter for gold prospectors heading to Fairbanks and the Klondike gold fields. Today it is a thriving port commercial and sports fishing center and the southern terminus of the Alaska Pipeline. It is a bea http://www.travelblog.org//North-America/United-States/Alaska/Valdez/blog-74127.html