All vehicle traffic into Alaska must go through Tok (rhymes with broke), the first town you come to on the Alaska Highway. Here we turned south, and soon the road improved and we saw our second moose. We overnighted in Glenallen, a tiny crossroads town about 100 miles or so from Valdez. We were very surprised to find we had cell phone service and could access the internet on the Verizon Air Card. That's better than we sometimes get in Fernandina Beach. As we neared Valdez we came upon our first glacier, Worthington Glacier. There was an observation area and parking [View Full Entry]

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Shortly after leaving Watson Lake we crossed the continental divide, a milepost of sorts. From this point, water flows westward to the Yukon River and eventually into the Bering Sea, an arm of the Pacific Ocean. East of here water makes its way into the Mackenzie River and then into the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon and our next stop, is the transportation, cultural and economic center of the region. It has a population of 25,000, and sits on the banks of the beautiful deep blue Yukon River. While the Yukon is one of the [View Full Entry]

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First, a little history lesson. At the outbreak of World War II there was no overland access to Alaska from the lower 48 or Canada. Fearing a Japanese invasion of Alaska (which actually did occur in June, 1942), in March 1942 the US Army undertook a crash program to build a road to supply military bases in Alaska. The road stretches 1,422 miles from Dawson Creek, BC to Delta Junction, AK, where it connects to the Richardson Highway, which runs from Valdez to Fairbanks. The project was huge, crossing rugged mountains, heavily wooded forests and swampy tundra, all under some pretty [View Full Entry]

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After 2 days in Langley, BC visiting our friends Glen and Lori, we started our Alaska trip. The Fraser River, which we will follow for the first 500 miles, is one of Canada’s major rivers. It is BC’s longest, flowing some 900 miles from its source in the Canadian Rockies to empty into the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver. The first hundred miles takes us east though farm country to Hope, where we turn north and enter the Fraser Canyon, a narrow gorge through the Coast Mountains. This is a major transportation corridor where the Fraser is joined by railroads and Highway [View Full Entry]

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Depoe Bay, a very picturesque little town located on the Oregon coast about 10 miles north of Newport, is home to what is said to be the world's smallest year-round navigable harbor. Cut into the coastal basalt rock by millions of years of pounding surf, the tiny harbor is connected to the Pacific Ocean by a narrow passage through the rocks. Onlookers gather on the highway 101 bridge to watch as boats thread their way (locally called “shooting the hole”) through the 150-yard long and 50-foot wide passage with 2 doglegs and a 42-foot overhead clearance under the bridge. With a [View Full Entry]

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On March 7, 1778 the great British navigator Captain James Cook, having sailed from the Hawaiian Islands (which he had just discovered), made his first sighting of the northwest coast of America. It was a promontory rising abruptly some 500 feet above the rocky shoreline, about 10 miles north of what is now Newport on the central Oregon coast. He named the point Cape Foulweather in reference to the intense storm raging at the time he arrived. The accounts of his voyage brought Oregon to the attention of adventurous explorers and fur traders, and marked the beginning of the American phase [View Full Entry]

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The Park is on the northern coast of Oregon, and occupies a peninsula with Nehalem Bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. On the upper third of the peninsula, which is about 3 miles long and 1/2 mile wide, are located a campground, a day-use area with beach access, and an airstrip. The Park has 265 campsites with water and electrical hookups, 6 campsites at the airstrip for fly-in campers, several tent sites for hikers and bicyclists and 18 “Yurts”. A Yurt is a circular tent (approximately 15’ in diameter) with a wooden frame and floor and [View Full Entry]

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Fort Stevens is strategically located at the mouth of the Columbia River on the Oregon side. The Fort was commissioned in 1863 to defend against the possible attack from Canada should England enter the Civil War on the Confederate side and was active until decommissioned in 1947. On June 6, 1941 a Japanese submarine fired several 5.5” rounds at the fort, causing no damage, but making Fort Stevens the only military installation on US soil to come under enemy attack since the War of 1812. Today it is a State Park, Oregon’s largest, and you can tour the vast network of [View Full Entry]

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Tillamook, which lies about 25 miles south of Nehalem Bay, is best known for its cheese factory and its air museum. We took the obligatory tour of the plant and sampled quite a few varieties of very good cheese. Just before we left we found the real attraction. They also make ice cream--some of the best we have ever had. We were eating ice cream cones at 10:00 AM. Not too good for the diet. The air museum is housed in an old blimp hangar which, in itself, is quite a wonder. It covers over seven acres, is about 200 feet [View Full Entry]

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The Cove is a large park located at the convergence of three rivers, the Crooked, Deschutes, and Metolius. Each river has formed its own 600 foot deep canyon with sheer rock walls. There are 2 large campgrounds in the park. The Crooked River Campground (our home) is on the eastern rim of the Crooked River canyon. The Deschutes Campground is in a lower area between the Crooked and Deschutes rivers. It's a 5 mile drive between the two that takes you down into the Crooked River Canyon, upriver about a mile, across a suspension bridge and back up out of the [View Full Entry]

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