Saturday, May 29th

Yes, we have fresh fish for supper tonight! I caught an 18.5 pound King salmon which may have been the only mature salmon caught on the river today. Our guide, Dave Wilson, was in phone contact with other guides throughout the morning, and nobody was having any luck. BUT ME, that is. Honest, I have never been very successful at fishing but today was incredible! A word about our guide, Dave, who is 6’7” tall, and rowed our boat the entire trip, navigating around huge rocks and keeping us away from the many boats on the river. We were on the Kasilof River (Ka’-si-lof) which is very shallow when the tide is out (inches in places) and has a tide of at least 20 feet. What a day. We saw moose, river otters and eagles, young and mature. There were also seagulls and sandhill cranes.

The boats on the river are like nothing we use. See a picture of one that was fishing in front of us. There’s a good reason for the design: when we ran aground, Dave jumped over the side into ankle-deep water and pulled us into deeper water – calf deep.

I took only a couple of mountain pictures today. For one, the windshield was too buggy and two, you can only take so many mountain pictures before they begin to blur before your eyes. I am including one though that is what I’m looking at out of the side window of the RV as I sit here writing this. Just another pretty “face”. Ha, ha. Had to climb onto a picnic table to block out the civilization that was in my way.

Since this is Memorial Day weekend, there is not a camping space available in Seward where we visited after the fishing trip. We wanted to go to the end of the road and we did. (We have been as far south as you can go in Texas, Hawaii, and now, Alaska.) At least half of the Alaskan population must be in Seward in RVs, popup tents, popup trailers, and all have their small children and their big, yellow dogs with them. Seward is right there on the great big Pacific Ocean. It’s kinda like Cedar Key with mountains. : )

We did indeed get up at 3:30 and now we are ready to eat and go to bed. Cliff is “resting his eyes” as he calls it right now. I call it take a nap.

Tomorrow we are taking a five-hour cruise to see the fiords, seals, otters, whales (I better see a whale), and the glaciers. We sail at noon on a catamaran with at least 100 people (they best not get in my way when I’m taking a picture or they may go overboard) and will be back in port at 5:00. And, because we find ourselves with a little extra time, after the cruise we are going to Whittier, which is on the Prince William Sound. We may make our way back to Anchorage tomorrow night and stay there through Tuesday night. There are some interesting museums I read about, and I want to “look” around. Translation: Shop!

Well, supper is over and I don’t have words to describe how good the salmon was. I seared it in a skillet with one of our favorite seasonings until it was rare. We had mashed potatoes and halved grape tomatoes drizzled with soy sauce and olive oil. We’ll be having salmon for breakfast too since I cooked extra. This was a memorable day for sure.

Friday, continuation

This is the way Denali looked today.  We were so very lucky to get to see the top yesterday.

We made it through Anchorage on our way south toward our fishing guide’s location. There was more traffic there than we have seen since we were going to the Orlando airport.

We’re meeting the fishing guide at 4:30 a.m. Yes, that’s right….I have set my phone to wake us at 3:45. Oh, my goodness.  Hope it works. It’s all about tides. I BETTER catch something BIG, that’s all I can say.

We had hamburgers for the second night in a row – we bought the meat someplace in our path and Cliff made and cooked all of the meat last night and froze the leftovers which were just as good tonight as last night. Hope we’ll have fresh fish tomorrow night.

Friday morning, May 28th

We spent yesterday in Denali National Park on a six-hour bus trip to the Toklat River and back. There were some great moments on the trip, the biggest of which was that we got to see the top of Mt. McKinley which at 20,320 feet high is the highest point in North America. I bought a t-shirt that declares that I’m in the 30 percent club of people lucky to have seen the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain is usually covered by clouds.

We had an up-close sighting of a mother grizzly and her yearling. They came down from some rocks and walked down the road in front of the bus as they crossed to the other side of the road.

There was a similar situation with a Dall sheep which was grazing on the side of the road and decided to walk down the middle of the road in front of the bus for quite a distance until going out into the brush to continue his grazing. Also saw moose, snowshoe rabbits, ground squirrels that look like small prairie dogs, a Willow Ptarmigan which is the state bird, and lots of Dall sheep. All in all, it was a great day.


Today we are heading to Soltodna on the Kenai Peninsula. Cliff arranged for a fishing trip tomorrow on the Kasliof River. Hope we will catch some King Salmon. Yum. Sunday morning we plan to go to Seward and take a cruise to see whales, seals, sea otters and glaciers. Cliff saw whales when he and Bill took the cruise. I REALLY want to see a whale.

Time to get the clothes out of the dryer and get on the road.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

We left camp at 7:00 after eating breakfast and, at some point in the day, we passed our 3900 allotted miles. Now we have to pay 17 cents per mile. I have told Cliff that I have no interest in making this particular trip again. The Alcan cured me today. 


Today should be entitled Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. The good condition of the Alcan came to a screeching halt today. The road was terrible! I couldn’t wait to be through with it. But we survived and made it back into the US of A intact if somewhat weary. Three other Great Alaskan RVs were in line ahead of us at customs.

The terrain today was different only in that the amazing Rockies were higher and bigger. Some were over 15,000 feet high. We had lunch at an incredible site at the end of Kluane Lake near Burwash Landing. I have beautiful pictures and I hope that I can get one on the blog. I also have a picture of the Alcan at its worst. Thanks, Roxanna, I finally found the image icon. All I need now is WiFi that is fast enough to upload them.

Wildlife was scarce today, but we did see a swan on an enormous nest in a pond near the road. Her husband was nearby watching out for intruders. We spied several more at a distance along the route.

In the morning we will be heading to Fairbanks, where we will restock our supplies, and then on to Denali for a couple of days

This is the notation from Cliff’s daily journal for the day: “Up at 5:45; packed up BBQ grill. Dumped tanks and filled H2O. Breakfast was SOS on one piece of toast with oj and milk. Drove until 5:30 AST (Alaska Standard Time). We ate lunch at a beautiful lake [Luane Lake]. I drove until stopping at Tundra RV Park ($32.00) in Tok, AK. Had to go sit in the RV park office to get online. I came back to RV at 8 p.m. and Wallie stayed to work on FaceBook, etc. I watched “Hunt for the Red October” on DVD. Fell asleep before the movie was over. Got up and went to bed at 11 p.m. It was still light outside! When does it get dark here?”

More tomorrow.

Monday, May 24th

We travelled 365 miles today which puts us a day ahead of schedule. I’m increasingly glad that we didn’t go to Portland and surrounds. Not only would I have felt shortchanged but we’d also be behind at least a day. It was a good decision not to go there.
Today we saw bears, buffalo and moose. No skuirell (Bull Winkle fans alert). The bears were several black bears and one grizzly which was huge, and the moose were all cows, no bull yet. 

Tonight we had delicious ribeye steaks which Cliff grilled on a tiny grill that we bought in a town a few miles back. It was a delicious dinner.

I think we will be in Alaska late tomorrow afternoon where things not doubt will be expensive but not like Canada. That will be a relief. Everything along our route has been outrageously expensive. I wonder how folks can afford to live here. I also wonder how they know when to go to bed and when to get up since it’s daylight allllll the time.

We checked out a bunch of audio books from the library before we left and we’ve been enjoying them until today with the player quit. I diagnosed the problem as the player getting overheated because the heater was on. When it cooled, it played fine.

Cliff has such a way with French when he reads the labels on Canadian products which are bilingual here. It’s a little like the Adams Family with a Southern accent.

Laugh time: The people parked next to us have the most attractive, small RV. I Googled it and found out it gets 22.5 mpg, has a pull out section, two beds, etc. Here’s the laugh part: It’s made by Mercedez-Benz!

Good news – my camera is working again. It’s new name is Lazarus. Now I can stop taking pictures with my camera.

Sunday, May 23rd

The owners of the great park we stayed in last night tried to get the TV operational for us, but they didn’t have any better luck than we have had. It’s not very important to us or we’d call the folks in Alaska. At least the furnace continues to function well. That’s a good thing since it’s cold as the dickens.


I’m composing this in Word as we travel. Looking outside, I see an occasional mule deer, lots of snow on the ground (probably a day or two old) and many, many dead pines. The trees are being harvested in some areas. Hope we are not selling all of them to Japan to be turned into flake board and sell back to us.

Back to solid ground and not typing as we travel. We are in the camp ground for the night: the Toad River RV Park. No kidding. The river is beautiful behind us and we have seen several kinds of ducks, a whistling swan, looooons, muskrats and a beaver. Across the river, there is a beautiful pasture with horses in it with two foals (maybe three to four days old) and a mare that will drop her foal at any minute. Thanks to our binoculars we can spy on them. They all look very happy. PETA would like this scene.

We have finally found some of the other 151 units in our march to Anchorage. There are four units in the park tonight. We just spent some time talking to a couple from SC. Sweet people.

It’s 9:00 p.m. and the sun is not even down yet. Guess what time it comes up……. Okay, about 4:00 a.m. This can’t be good country for night people! If I lived here, I’d have to wear a sleep mask. : )

Cliff figured out the rate of exchange on liters vs. gallons of gas tonight, and we are paying about $4.60 a gallon for petrol. This RV park has a restaurant and they are very proud of their hamburgers which ranged from $8.00 to $15.00. We ate in. Actually, we haven’t had a single meal outside the RV.

The Alcan was great – not much traffic, but a few rough in spots. The maps refer to it as the Alaska Highway. I drove some and found out it is, indeed, a chore to keep it going straight. Especially when a big truck passes in the opposite direction.

Saw bears today, and caribou, mule deer and a hoary marmot (per Cliff), and some very interesting birds, some of which we could not identify. We have decided that on the next trip we need to have our Birds of North American and Trees of North America books. May also have to have a wildflower book.

It looked like snow early in the day, and it was all around us, but we escaped. Some of our other travelling friends had lots of snow to the northeast of our path.

Sadly, I destroyed my wonderful new camera yesterday by removing it from the mother ship before disconnecting it the way to should be done. I know better but when I looked up and saw a mule deer right in front of the RV, I grabbed the camera and unplugged it while it still on. Very dumb. Hope it can be fixed in Alaska.

Saturday, Mary 22, 2010

As we were getting ready to leave the park this morning, Cliff spotted a Mountain Bluebird in front of us. What a beautiful sight. This was my first sighting of this species. We left the park at 8:00 o’clock after having showers at the park facilities and then breakfast in the RV.


We have gone through areas that were covered with new snow to having it hitting the windshield and wondering how long it would be before we had the genuine product hitting us. It got better the farther north we went.

We discovered that the Canadian health system is partially paid for by a sin tax on liquor. Gas for your car is cheaper but who’d want to drink it?

After my meltdown yesterday, Cliff has prepared a critical path method for us for the next five or six days with RV parks with WiFi. I love him for taking care of that.

We saw two bears at different places along the roadway. They both looked at us like we were tourists and waited for the flash of the blubs.

I looked up from the computer a few minutes ago and saw a mule deer walking down the path in front of the RV in the park. I would have engaged her in conversation but she seemed shy. More so than the cat last night.

We are in a very nice park In Hudson’s Hope. and the owner/operators are so helpful. You have to love Canadians even if they are on the extremely mysterious metric system.

While we were at the gas station a few miles back, there was a guy who got out of his car in front of me who had on an FSU sweatshirt. I resisted the urge to yell out of the window, “Go, Noles.” Okay, not really.

We still haven’t figured out how to convert liters of gas to gallons per mile. I don’t know how you can live under these trying mathematical circumstances. It’s just too much for me to think about….