Home Again, or As Close As We Get

Sun’N’Fun RV Resort, we have arrived! This place has been more our home in the past two years than any other address. For 7 months out of the last 24, we have had Sarasota, Florida as our home base, and starting today, we will be here for the next 6 months (except for a few weeks to visit our sons for Thanksgiving and to take a Caribbean cruise in February). We are in a new site this year, although not that far from our old one; actually, right next to it. Friends, who had it the last two years, sold their RV and moved into a vacation home here, so we inherited it. The advantages are it has more room and several trees (Geoff will put up his hammock as soon as possible). We found out the disadvantage right away; the trees block our automatic satellite dish on the top of the RV, so we will have to set up the manual dish. For now, the cable and antenna connections to our TiVo will have to suffice.

Tomorrow is Monday and our resort experience will start, although many of the activities we are involved in do not start for a few weeks. We need to get set up here. We need to get our high-speed internet, patio chairs out of storage, put a few things into storage, and start exercising. Let the fun begin!

(Times like this remind me of things my Mother would always say; when we would get back home after a trip, usually to Lansing to visit Grandma and our Cousins, she would frequently recite this ditty…”To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jigitty jig.”)

32 States, 3 Canadian Provinces, 195 Days, 15,115 Miles Later…

We are back in our “home” state of Florida! We traveled south from Dothan, Alabama this afternoon and are on St. George Island near Apalachicola, FL. We’ll be here 4 nights enjoying the beaches and maybe even getting in some kayaking on St. George Sound.

Our Fall Synagogue Tour

Fall is a big holiday time for Jews and we have been trying our best to take it in, even with our traveling. We celebrated Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, in San Francisco, at Beth Israel Judea, where a camp friend of Ellyn’s is the Cantor. We got to Salt Lake City for Yom Kippur, and Ellyn was able to find Congregation Kol Ami, where they did not require a fee or even reciprocation from our own synagogue. We only did Kol Nidre as we were on the road the next day. We will have to atone for that next year.

We arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, where our good friends the Davidson’s live, and Joe was our Rabbi in Rochester, Miinesota. Now he is a part-time Rabbi there at Congregation B’nai Amoona and we were there for their celebration of Simcha Torah, when the reading of the Torah reaches its end and then restarts for the “Beginning”. Now, we are in Dothan, Alabama, where our own synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, with our good friend, Rabbi Lynn Goldsmith, was celebrating Shabbat, and a belated Simcha Torah. Ellyn got to light the Shabbat candles and Geoff got an Aliyah to the Torah.

From here, we finally get to Florida, although we have two more stops before we get to Sun’N’Fun.

Winter Approaching?

We’ve been parked for a few days in Des Moines, Iowa, while Ellyn is attending a quilting show and taking some classes (and buying some stuff). When we arrived here, the weather was quite warm, with highs reaching into the mid-80s. Nice shorts weather for Geoff. After two days of that, a cold front moved in from the North and the daily highs had dipped into the 50s. This morning we saw on the news that northern Minnesota had gotten its earliest snow on record. Getting too close for comfort. Time to head South.

On Saturday we head for Hannibal, Missouri, then on to St. Louis. Hopefully the cold weather will stay behind us.

The Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska

This is a wonderful place to spend an exhausting day. This zoo has hundreds of animals to see in a very nice facility, and the price was very reasonable for a full day of touring the grounds and a terrific IMAX video on butterflies. We went on a Monday and avoided the weekend crowds, even though there were lots of school groups there and Mothers with their little ones in tow. A couple of the large aviaries were closed on a week day but we still got to see a lot. They have a huge desert environment dome with lots of free flying birds and three separate desert environments inside. Then below the dome they have a whole nocturnal environment with animals which would not be active in the light of day.

Even while we ate lunch, we were able to observe animals in the jungle exhibit next door and a female White Handed Gibbon with twin babies. We wandered through a huge reptile exhibit and a wonderful aquarium before going to the IMAX show. After the show we went through the butterfly exhibit and Geoff ended up with one landing on this hat. We saw some animals we had already seen in Alaska in the wild but it was still a nice trip to the zoo.

This zoo has had a lot of births in the past two years. It seemed nearly every exhibit we visited had a sign indicating there had been a birth in 2012 or 2011.

We have actually been camped in Council Bluffs, Iowa while we were here and will be heading next to Des Moines, Iowa for a few days before heading toward St’ Louis, Missouri.

The Snowy Range of Wyoming

From Rawlins, Wyoming, we took a drive into the mountains, along the “Snowy Range Loop”. This is a 400+ mile loop which goes through Saratoga, Laramie and Medicine Bow. We only did about 1/3 of it, going only as far as an overlook of the Snowy Range and the Libby Flats. This took us up to 10,800 ft., a height we did not reach while in Alaska. Our highest heights in AK were below the 4000 ft. mark. We could definitely feel it when we exerted ourselves even a little bit to walk from the car to the overlooks. The Snowy Range itself was quite spectacular once the sun decided to come out. Part of our trip was accompanied by rain but, we did have some moments of sun, which we were able to take advantage of and get some nice photos. The Aspen trees in the mountains were quite a bright shade of yellow. We even ran into real cowboys doing a real cattle drive. They were moving the cows from their Summer to Winter pastures and they were moving right along the road.

It was a nice break from the driving to take a day and do a little sight seeing again.

California, Nevada, Utah

Heading out of San Francisco on I-80 East, we had our first stop already planned; the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield. We had been there last year and did the factory tour already, but we also knew they had a good café in their visitor’s center and plenty of RV parking, so we stopped there. Needless to say, we also purchased too much candy.

Soon, we were in Nevada. After crossing some of the steeper mountain passes, we were in the desert plains. Pretty flat and boring here, compared to where we have been this summer, but the weather here is much warmer than most of the weather we had in Alaska. Soon it was necessary to start the A/C. Our first overnight was in Sparks, NV near Reno. We didn’t have to unhook the car, but we wanted to go out to dinner and do a little shopping. We got a coupon at the RV park for the local Fuddruckers and then went to Target and the world’s largest sporting goods store, Scheels. Although we did not need to buy any sporting goods, we did find some pet supplies.

More hot, boring driving the second day. We stopped off in Lovelock, NV for lunch at a nice little Mexican & American restaurant. Then on to Wells, NV. The next morning, Geoff discovered we had stayed at a different RV park at this same exit from I-80 in 2009 when we were traveling westbound.

Day three, got a late start because we were only going to Salt Lake City. Ellyn is going to stock up on some sewing supplies for a quilting class she is taking in Des Moines, IA. We stopped off in West Wendover, NV, just before hitting Utah, for some inexpensive buffet at one of the casinos. Of course we blew it by stopping at the one-armed bandits on the way out. Ellyn lost $20 in short order but Geoff won $5 at video poker, so we only paid $15 extra for our lunch. D’oh!

Next, a long, nearly straight, drive across the Bonneville Salt Flats, at nowhere near a land speed record, around the end of the Great Salt Lake, and into Salt Lake City. We’ll be setting up here for 3 nights before heading into Wyoming, the first of three states we have not yet visited since starting RVing 3 1/2 years ago.

A Week of Rest

We just finished a week at the San Francisco RV Resort in Pacifica, CA, just a couple of blocks from Ellyn’s sister’s house. This was a great time to relax a bit and stop driving nearly every day for a change. Geoff got to play some guitar with Ellyn’s Brother-in-law, Jay, and complete the update on our video system. We took a long walk along the beach in Pacifica with Jordy and dipped his toes in the Pacific Ocean. We also took in a San Francisco Giants baseball game (Giants won!). We had a couple of meals with Ellyn’s Father and his wife, and a brunch with a childhood friend of Ellyn’s that she had not seen in 40 years.

Our plans now are to follow I-80 East all the way to Iowa before turning south toward Florida. Today we drove the first 240 miles of that into Nevada and are staying at an RV Resort in Reno. We probably will not hit any casinos but we might go out for dinner and a little shopping at the outlet stores nearby.

While We Were Away…

Our satellite TV system died. Well, one standard definition receiver died and, when we tried to get the remaining one to work when we got back to the Lower 48, the satellite dome antenna on the roof of the RV would not seek properly and started resetting itself. We already had plans to upgrade the whole AV system to HD when we got to Florida, so this forced our hand a bit. We stopped at a Camping World store in Washington and bought a Winegard Slimline automatic satellite antenna and Geoff installed it in a couple of days. Now, it is hooked up to the remaining, working standard def receiver and we are able to get our satellite channels again.

Next, we called DirecTV and ordered a HD DVR. They gave it to us for free for being such good customers, and 3 months free service on it. We also plan on getting a new TiVo HD DVR which will be able to record from cable and over-the-air signals. We did not get the DirecTV DVR with TiVo, because the free one was a big plus and Geoff found out there is really no advantage to the TiVo software, since it will not interact with other TiVos on the same network, like the old Series 2 devices would. This should give us a pretty nice system when it is all installed and working. When we get to Pacifica, California, DirecTV will come to us and install the new DVR and give us a manual HD dish as a back-up for the Winegard dish.

Alaska Wildlife

Click an image for a full size view.

The Last Days of the Great Alaskan Caravan

From Chicken, AK, we crossed the bumpy, winding, graveled, muddy, dusty “Top of the World” highway to Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. This little town was a key player in the Gold Rush of 1898. Actually, it got started when gold was discovered near there in 1897, and by the time people got there the next year, most of the good claims were already taken. The ones who did not leave either worked for the ones who had good paying claims, or sold their services in other ways, as blacksmiths, dentist, doctors, or whatever their skills were. Dawson City was built as a jumping-off point on the Yukon River for gold prospector “wanna-be”s.

From Dawson, we continued to Whitehorse, Yukon, where we filled up on fuel, grabbed some groceries, and hoped to do some internet updates. Sadly, the park we stayed at had changed their set up and we could only use a meager amount of bandwidth. Enough to check email, but not enough to do some blogging and photo uploads (this blog entry will probably not get to the web until we get to the U.S. again).

We then back-tracked a bit on the Alaska highway to near Watson Lake, and were able to cross the wash-out that we barely missed coming north back in June. This wash-out is still only a one lane track across the rocky area left behind, and may not be fully repaired until in 2013. We then turned off the highway for the last time and took route 37 into British Columbia toward Prince George. This stretch is known as the Cassiar Highway. It was a bit more narrow than the Alaska highway and somewhat more bumpy, although mostly paved, and we were only able to do about 45-50 mph in the rigs. We drove for five days on this road, and made a stop about half way down to take a short side trip to Hyder, Alaska. This town keeps Canada time, uses Canada currency, but is just over the border from Stewart, BC. Here we took in the Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site, our last National Park System location in Alaska, where we hoped to view bears fishing for the salmon which were running. We only saw one small Black Bear, which was more interested in the salmon berries than in the salmon in the stream.

One more stop on the way to Prince George is Smithers, BC, one of the largest towns we have been in in a while. They have two supermarkets within spitting distance of each other, and we are staying at the municipal park at the river’s edge and the wi-fi is free and fast! We are SO looking forward to the amenities of traveling in the “lower 48” again including 4G service on our phones almost everywhere we go, and satellite TV connectivity again. We have been able to get cable TV in many places but the TiVo has had limited use without a regular, reliable connection to the internet and without our regular satellite lineup. We feel like we are returning from a trip to the wilderness and are dying for a taste of Coca-Cola.

We will miss traveling with Ken and Martha. It has been a lot of good times, good laughs, and fun adventures. It will be nice to be on our own schedule again but it was a wonderful trip and we would not have missed it for the world. And we will always be able to continue enjoying their adventures by tuning into their monthly (and sometimes bi-monthly) podcasts at RVNavigator.com.

Ellyn and I parted company with Ken and Martha in Price George, BC. They continued on their way back to their home in Romeoville, IL, and whatever adventures await them in the future, and we start a trip which will take us to Gig Harbor, WA to see her Brother and Sister-in-law’s new home, then on to San Francisco, to visit with her Sister and Father before heading to Florida for a well deserved, long Winter’s nap. Every one we meet in the next year can expect to be subjected to our photo albums and slide shows. They will not be disappointed.

Winding Down

Now that we have reached the last week of August, we are starting to feel our Alaskan adventure winding down. We are back in Fairbanks, one of the places where it all started. We were her two months ago, at the beginning of the Summer, and so much has happened since then. We have been to the southern coast, we have seen salmon running and eagles and bears fishing, glaciers calving and whales fluting. We have enjoyed kayaking on Kodiak Island with puffins and fishing for halibut in Cook Inlet. We have been wowed by high mountains and bear cubs.

Things are not completely over yet in Alaska. We will go from Fairbanks to Tok and then take the Top-Of-The-World Highway out of Alaska to Dawson City, Yukon, one of the icon towns of the Gold Rush. Then really begins the long, long drive back through Canada to the lower 48. Our current plan at that point is to visit Ellyn’s siblings and Father on the West Coast, mainly because we may not be out this way for a long time. After two long trips these past two years, we will be restricting our travels mostly to the East Coast for the next year and a half at least. To get to our Winter home in Sarasota, Florida, we will have to drive nearly as far as we have already traveled in our journey since we left Boston in May, about 7,000 miles.

In Fairbanks, we did a few errands, got some supplies, and rested up for the long journey that remains. We got Jordy groomed, picked up some Alaskan beers for our “beer-snob” sons (their term), and replaced our 20 pound propane tank, which Geoff somehow left at our campground in Palmer. Geoff got to see a little auto racing at the “Northern Most Paved Race Track in North America”. Our friends, Ken and Martha returned from their adventure to the Arctic Ocean and we got to share our experience of seeing Mount Denali in all its glory. We drove around to the Creamer’s Field Waterfowl Refuge and saw Canada Geese and Sandhill Cranes gathering for their migration south. We will be joining them.

Chicken and Eagle

On our way out of Alaska, we visited some of the most remote parts you can get to by road…Chicken and Eagle. Chicken is a tiny gold mining town on the Taylor Highway, also known as the “Top of the World” Highway. This route eventually leads to Dawson City, Yukon, and is mostly graveled. Chicken is very small and quaint, consisting mainly of a gas station, a couple of eating establishments, an RV park, and a tourist attraction in the form of a gold dredge. The dredge was hauled here from a more remote area. The town was supposed to be called “Ptarmigan”, named for the small, Alaskan bird, but the residents could not spell it. The café near the dredge has a wonderful bakery, where they make very good pies, cookies, and pastries. We had dinner there our first night and followed it up with pie ala mode. Yum!

The second day in Chicken, we piled into Ken and Martha’s car and drove to Eagle, an even more remote town in Alaska, on the Yukon River, right on the border of Yukon Territory, Canada. Eagle was once a thriving town, key in river traffic from Dawson City along the Yukon River, and an Army Outpost. Now it is struggling. Tourist traffic does not come here much any more because of problems with the road going there not being able to handle heavy tour buses. We took in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve Visitor’s Center, and a walking tour through the town and the old Army Fort buildings.

The drive in and out was a grueling, 3 hour each way, ordeal. A lot of twists and turns and switch-backs. Although the terrain was interesting and possibly quite photogenic, the combination of poor weather (cloudy and spritzing rain off and on) and the devastation of fire several years ago, made most pictures drab, at best. Just the same, we were taken by the splash of Autumn colors over the hills. The ever-present fireweed, that we had seen in various stages of bloom over the entire state, were devoid of their flowers here, with their leaves turning bright red, and seed pod fuzz starting to show.

Next, we drive the rigs over most of this same terrain and gravel highway, out of Alaska, into Yukon, and on to Dawson City.

Mount Denali Arrives

Call it what you like. The federal government calls it Mount McKinley. Alaskans call it Mount Denali. Either way, it is one big “WOW” moment when you first see it on a clear day. For us, this moment came when we drove to the overlook south of Talkeetna for the third time late Tuesday afternoon. On Tuesday morning we woke up to our first sunshine since Thursday. We could tell that the horizon was not clear, and the mountain is 60 miles away, so it would have to do a lot more clearing for us to see anything.

Just the same, we got in the car and drove out of town south to see if there was any chance of a sighting. We got out to Alaska 3 with no luck, filled the car with gas, started back, and suddenly we spotted the top of it, above the clouds, right in front of us. Whoopie! It was not the view we wanted in the long run but it was a promise. We continued back into Talkeetna and stopped at the overlook near town. Nothing. So we waited. At lunch time we went into town and went to the Susitna River bank at the edge of town. Still too many clouds. We were hoping for clearing, but it had not happened enough yet.

Around 5:00 PM Geoff too Jordy for a walk and thought things were looking better near the horizon, as much of it as he could see. The area around Talkeetna is heavily wooded. So we got into the car again and headed up to the overlook. As we turned the car into the parking area, we got our first look. The WOW Moment!

Check off another bucket list item. Not perfectly clear, but it is definitely out. The rest of the day was pretty much finding places where we could see it, and also waiting for the other mountains around it to come out. The weather forecast called for the weather on Wednesday in Denali National Park to be “sunny”. Not partly anything, but just “sunny”.

At sunset, Geoff went back to the overlook to take sunset pictures, but the light angle was not so good. The sun is setting behind and way off to the side of the mountains to either light them well or to be a backdrop. However, they had cleared very nicely and there was hope of a clear morning with much better lighting. So, Geoff got up at 6:00 AM, with sunrise at 6:24 AM, and headed back up to the overlook. Nice! Even before sunrise. Nice!

After shooting there for a while, and with the sun beginning to hit the summit of the mountain, he moved to the Talkeetna Lodge, which has an even better view of the whole range. This was well worth the time and effort to get up early and come take pictures. The rest of the day would be driving toward Fairbanks, but we would be going past Denali National Park on the way and even be another 25 miles closer to the mountain before the day was over, so there may be more pictures to be taken.

Waiting…

After the Palmer/Wasilla area, we came to Talkeetna, Alaska, a little community on the edge of Denali National Park. Here is a train station for folks from the cruise ships to go from their inland buses to the Alaska Railroad and ride up to the park entrance, where they can board another bus, and be taken around the park. Denali National Park is the location of Mount McKinley (AKA Mount Denali), the tallest mountain in North America. This mountain is a “must see” for anyone who comes to Alaska, but, ironically, is most often shrouded in clouds, due to the weather patterns in this mountain range.

We arrived on Thursday for a scheduled two day stay, but with a weather forecast which did not look all that good for seeing the big mountain, but out traveling companions were interested in taking a flight over the park and hope to at least see something of it. The weather still did not look all that good, but there were peeks of sun coming out, and the flight service said they were able to go high enough to get above the clouds, and even above the summit of the mountain, so you would at least be able to see the part of it which was above the clouds. It still seemed there would be a risk of not being able to see much but they even said if the view was a bust, we could get our money back. Ellyn is a bit of a white-knuckled flier in small planes and it was a bit expensive, but Geoff decided to go as well.

As it turns out, the flight was great, the pictures were terrific, even though we could not see the base of the mountain and many of the other mountains around it were totally buried in the clouds. But the main peak and several of the surrounding peaks were really great to see up close. We had to wear oxygen masks above 13,000 feet and got as high as 21,000 feet before heading back down.

One of the objectives of coming to Alaska and of trying to have as much flexibility as possible so we could get to see Mount McKinley on a clear day. Well, we tried. Ken and Martha had scheduled a flight to the Arctic Ocean from Fairbanks on Tuesday, but the weather forecast made it look like there may be some clearing around Denali on Tuesday. So we decided to split up for a while. Ken and Martha left Talkeetna on schedule on Friday, but we stayed on for four additional days to try for some better weather.

Talkeetna itself is a cute little town. There are many original log cabins in the town and some other old buildings from the era of the gold rush. The campground is on the out-skirts of the town, but still within easy walking distance. There are several good little restaurants, one with Tai food, and a couple of little booths selling food, almost like a County Fair. It is very much a tourist town, with lots of different tour companies. The tour buses come into town to get the train to Denali and people come into town for food and shopping.

So we waited. Saturday, wet. Sunday, wetter. Monday, not looking good. Tuesday…to be continued.

Backtracking

So since Homer, we have been mostly backtracking out of the Kenai Peninsula. We headed back with a stop to have one last view of the volcanic mountains of Iliamna and Redoubt on Cook Inlet, and past our lovely stop in Ninilchik and the Scenic View RV Park, which is now closed. The owners headed down to the lower 48 for the birth of a Grandchild. On the way, we stopped in at Roscoe’s Pizza to have another one of their delicious pies. Next, we returned to Soldotna, where we watched the dip-net fishing. We had hoped to stay in a park on the beach there but the fishing is now over and the park is closed. Last time we stayed in the Fred Meyers parking lot, but opted for a full service RV Park this time.

After one night there, we head back up to the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet and stayed for one night again at the Williwaw Campground. There we were able to see salmon going up the creek, which they had not started doing when we were there a month before. We also recorded our third, and last, round table RV Navigator podcast with Ken and Martha. We did it outside at their campsite and followed it up with a campfire and smores. Coming out of Williwaw the next day, we saw the beginnings of a real forest fire. We could see flames under the trees, mostly burning just underbrush, which is something the forest service likes to have happen at times. We called it into the local fire department and they checked it out but let it go as part of the natural process.

Next we stopped off in Anchorage at the “Co”s…Costco and Petco, to replenish some supplies. We picked up some yummy Alaskan treats for Jordy and some yummy Alaskan Salmon for us. We did not otherwise stop there but continued on up to Palmer, where we stopped for two nights at a campground closer to Wasilla than the one we had used before. As luck would have it, we had walked into our third free salmon feed of our trip. The campground was supplying the salmon and we just had to bring a side dish. They also had deserts and it was a great time, and some great food. We saved our salmon from Costco for the second night there, and we cooked it up on the grill, with some of Ken and Martha’s halibut from Homer, and had our second evening meal in a row outdoors. We also visited the Iditarod Trail Headquarters, where we took a sled dog ride through the woods and saw some videos about the 2009 Iditarod Race.

From there, we started covering some new ground towards Denali National Park. Talkeetna is our next stop and we are hoping to be able to see the big mountain of Denali, also known as Mount McKinley. More about that in the next post.

Five Days on Water

So while in Homer, which will likely be our last time close to the ocean while in Alaska, we had five consecutive days which involved travel over water. The first two days were actually on one trip; the ferry ride from Kodiak Island back to Homer, which was an overnight trip. The rest of the day back from Kodiak Island was spent recovering. We had to catch up on a mostly sleepless night on the ferry and our traveling companions were recovering from their grueling bear-watching trip. If you would like to see some of their pictures from that close-encounter, you can see them here on Flickr.

On our second day back, we book a boat tour to see some wildlife in Kachemak Bay and then to the town of Seldovia, which can only be reached by boat. We spent about 2 1/2 hours in Seldovia, had lunch, and walked around this very quaint and photogenic community.

The next day, we booked another boat ride across the Kachemak Bay to the Island Peninsula (island during high tide and peninsula during low tide) and the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. There we took an island hike and studied a lot of the local flora and topology, and got a look into some of the tide pools on the edge of the bay. The hike was a little grueling, as it had some steep up and down hill climbs and many large roots and logs to avoid. Also, the amount of black bear scat, rife with blueberry husks, we had to step over was a problem.

The third day was our fishing adventure. Ellyn said she wanted to try a fishing trip and Homer describes itself as the Halibut Fishing Capital of the World. So we booked a fishing trip out of the Homer Spit. This was not so much a photo trip as the previous two. We had a two hour boat ride out to the mouth of Cook Inlet, where we set anchor and then started fishing. The hardest thing about it was the heavy sinkers they had on the lines. Also, we were in 200 feet of water, so, once you got a bite, there was a lot of line to reel in. We discovered later in the fishing, that you probably did not have to put the line all the way to the bottom, because a lot of the fish were hanging out right near the surface of the water. Between the four of us we came away with 43 pounds of fish meat.