Rick & Carol's Journey (DL)

Redwoods and Starting the Trip Home

2008-09-01T21:33:00.003-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Wednesday (August 27) through Monday (September 1).

Wednesday was a sunny driving day down the coast highway to Crescent City, California. Before leaving the RV park this morning we walked about 100 yards up a hill to an observation deck where we could see the north end of the Oregon dunes. On the drive today we stopped at several viewpoints – at one we had lunch and I took a short nap.

The RV park for the next three nights is a quiet one and our site is nestled nicely among the trees. This evening we drove downtown for dinner, then returned to the RV to watch Senator Biden’s speech accepting the Democratic vice presidential nomination.

Thursday was another nice day. We spent most of the day driving through redwood forests, or along the coast. First, we drove a loop through a state park, then after lunch and a short drive down Highway 101, we drove a coastal road which first passed beaches, then cliffs, then went through another redwood forest, before passing through elk meadows, sans elk.

This evening we watched Obama’s speech accepting the presidential nomination.

Friday we did errands and relaxed in Crescent City. In the afternoon we went to the local cinema and saw Traitor, which opened today.

Saturday was a driving day from Crescent City to Red Bluff, California. This morning was cool on the coast, with some light fog on Highway 101. We then turned west and headed over the mountains into California’s central valley. By the time we got to Red Bluff, the temperature was in the mid-90s, the hottest we have been since leaving the U.S. in early June. (This actually was better than it could have been – yesterday Red Bluff logged in at 105). The RV park this evening is new – they have sunk a lot of money into nice concrete pads and landscaping, and had nowhere near enough business to break cover their operating expenses.

Sunday was a short driving day to Bordertown, Nevada, just outside Reno on the California/Nevada border. The drive went up and down through the mountains on the east side of California’s central valley. We had lunch in the café attached to the small casino (slot machines and video poker only) that owns the RV park, drove toward Reno for a little grocery shopping, had dinner in the same café, then lost $20playing video poker for about 45 minutes.

Monday was a long driving day from one border of Nevada to the other. Most of the day was spent on US 50, the “loneliest highway in America.” This was a very well maintained highway and, true to the advertising, passed through few towns and had little traffic. We climbed from about 4000 feet in Bordertown through several passes at 7000 to 7500 feet, but the climbs were all gradual and there were only a few spots of curvy road. The scenery was a mix of high plains, desert, and mountains. We had planned to stop in Ely this evening, but decided to drive the extra 66 miles to the border to shorten tomorrow’s long driving day. Even here in the middle of nowhere, we have off-the-air TV and WiFi access, so I will update the blog this evening.

Washington and the Northern Oregon Coast

2008-08-26T22:21:00.006-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Friday (August 22) through Tuesday (August 26).

Friday was a sunny travel day. We started by taking the 1-1/2 hour ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, Washington. Leaving Victoria, we saw some pretty fancy houseboats tied up at docks in the harbor.

After running errands in Port Angeles, we drove down the Washington coast to the southern-most of the region’s three rainforests – the Quinault Rain Forest. We stayed in a surprisingly nice RV park located about 200 feet from the largest Sitka Spruce tree in the world.

Saturday was another sunny day. With a late check-out time, and a short driving day, we began by walking two nature trails around Lake Quinault and another path to the largest Western Red Cedar in the world. The inside of the cedar is hollow, so it is only expected to survive for another couple of hundred years.

Although we searched for the resident elk, we never could find any. After lunch in the RV, we drove to Cape Disappointment State Park in extreme southwest Washington. It is so named because early explorers wanted to sail into the mouth of the Columbia River, hoping to find good fishing and Indian traders, but due to weeks of bad weather, they never were able to make it past the sand bars that guard the entrance. We are staying for three nights in a state park. Our site is just behind low dunes and this evening we walked for a while on the driftwood filled beach.

Sunday was a rainy sightseeing day. We drove across the long bridge from Washington into Astoria, Oregon to visit Fort Clatsop, the site where Lewis and Clark spent the winter after completing their cross-country journey. The fort is the second reconstruction, the first having burned to the ground in 2005. The second reconstruction was completed the following year. It is supposed to be more authentic than the first, because all the logs used in the construction were stripped and cut by hand. Of coures, the original construction was quicker -- the party arrived at the site on December 7th and the outside walls and roofs were in place by Christmas.

Because of the rain, we decided to close down our sightseeing for the day. We did a little shipping and then called our kids.

Monday was a sunny to overcast day. We did some more sightseeing, starting at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center located just south of the RV park. According to the ranger at Fort Clatsop, it is the second best Lewis and Clark Museum, after the one in Great Falls, Montana. After seeing the museum, we walked up and downhill to the Cape Disappointment Light House.

We then went back to the RV for lunch, before driving up to the north end of the peninsula. En route we saw the claimed longest beach in the world (25 miles up the west side of the peninsula), stopped at an antique store, and walked to the shore at the National Wildlife Refuge located at the extreme north end of the peninsula. On the way back to the RV, we made a quick stop to walk to the North Head Lighthouse. We got a voice mail from Auntie Jude (who is watching our house) which said that we got a lot of rain, but no damage to the house as Tropical Storm Fay moved across Tallahassee last weekend.

Back at the RV, I listened to a couple of hours of the Democratic National Convention on XM Radio.

Tuesday was a driving day down curvy Highway 101 from Cape Disappointment to Florence, Oregon, located at the north end of the Oregon dunes, about halfway down the Oregon coast. It was sunny but cool. Our first stop was at the Tillamook Cheese Factory where we saw cheese being cut and packaged down the assembly line. After buying some of their wares, we had lunch in the attached café.

The Oregon coast has both rocky coast and sandy beaches, and we saw some of both.

Late in the day we stopped at the Sea Lion Caves, where we were able to get photos of California Sea Lions.

The RV park tonight has both cable TV and WiFi access, so in addition to watching Hillary’s convention speech, I will try to update the blog.

More Time in Victoria

2008-08-21T21:20:00.006-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Wednesday (August 20) and Thursday (August 21).

Wednesday started out sunny, but changed to a light drizzle by late afternoon. We again caught a bus downtown for another day of sightseeing. We started at Craigdarroch Castle, the house built by a Victoria coal baron. He died before the house was completed, and his widow and daughters lived in the home for many years. It later served as a hospital, school, and administration building before it was restored as a historic site.

Looking Up 4 Flights of Stairs

We spent the afternoon visiting the Royal BC Museum. The museum had exhibits on war brides, the people of British Columbia, the native peoples, natural history, and BC history.

Thursday was a mostly sunny day. This morning we drove to Betschart Gardens, a large complex of gardens started by the wife of a limestone mine owner. The present gardens include a sunken garden in the old limestone pit, a rose garden, a Japanese garden, and a Mediterranean garden.

We then drove across town to visit Fort Rodd Hill, the site of a series of coastal defense batteries. Although they were manned from the late 1800s to the mid-1950s, they never saw action.

There is also a working lighthouse located adjacent to the fort.

Today is our last day in Canada – tomorrow we catch the ferry to Port Angeles, Washington. After eating lunch, we bought gas for the car with the last of our Canadian dollars.

Vancouver Island and Day 1 in Victoria

2008-08-19T20:20:00.005-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Sunday (August 17) through Tuesday (August 19).

Sunday was a driving day from Port Hardy to Qualicum Beach.

On Monday, we drove about 100 miles to Victoria. The last half of the trip was on increasingly crowded roads. We have a nice, pull-through site at a large campground. In the early afternoon we went out for lunch and minor shopping. Later we napped, surfed the Internet, and watched TV – more Olympics.

Tuesday started out overcast with a light drizzle, but turned sunny for most of the day. Carol and I caught a bus to go downtown for a full day of sightseeing. We started at the Miniature World Museum and saw a host of miniature scenes, ranging from war, to historic views of British Columbia, fairy tales, doll houses, and a circus that took over 7000 man hours to construct.

Next we went into the Empress Hotel, a Victoria landmark for over 100 years. At the nearby Royal BC Museum (which we plan to visit tomorrow) we saw our first solar powered trash can.

We checked out the ferry terminal, to see how we will get the RV there when we return to the U.S. on Friday morning. We then had a nice lunch at a small restaurant near the waterfront.

After lunch we visited the wax museum. In addition to the typical wax figures, including many British royalty (e.g. Henry VII and his many wives), the museum had replicas of British crowns and scepters.

We then took a short guided tour of the 111-year-old Parliament Building. In addition to the rotunda and parliament chambers, we saw the commemorative stain glass windows for Queen Victoria’s 60th Jubilee and Queen Elizabeth’s 50th.

Finally we toured the British Columbia Maritime Museum before catching a bus back to the RV park.

The museum is housed in what was the original justice building in Victoria. The upper floor is a reconstructed courtroom and the building contains the oldest cage elevator still in operation in British Columbia.

Keith and Kathy's Blog

2008-08-17T00:32:00.002-05:00

I have just added a link to "Travels With Keith and Kathy," a blog by two of the members of our Alaska Caravan who were part of the group that continued with the post-caravan trip across the Top of the World Highway and down the Cassiar Highway. Their blog has some good photos and some very informative text. We first met Keith and Kathy on our Nova Scotia/Newfoundland Caravan and were happy to have the opportunity to travel with them again.

Vancouver and Northern Vancouver Island

2008-08-16T23:52:00.007-05:00

[Note: This is the second post today. Be sure to read the prior post.]

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Tuesday (August 12) through Saturday (August 16).

Tuesday was a warm, overcast sightseeing day. We started by driving to the Gastown area of downtown. There we saw the statue of the original Gassy Jack (after whom the town was named) and a famous steam powered clock.

We also walked through some souvenir shops, one of which had a nice collection of native arts and crafts. Because of the high density of homeless people, we turned back without walking to Chinatown.

We next took an exterior elevator to the observation deck on the top of the Heritage Center. After taking some photos of the town, we walked down to the cruise ship dock / convention center.

We then drove to Chinatown and went on a tour of Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen gardens and house. The guide to the house was very informative, and we learned a lot about how the upper class lived during the Ming Dynasty. When you know what to look for, examples of Yin and Yang pervade the house. Leaving the house and gardens, we walked a couple of blocks for photos of the gate that marks the entry to Chinatown.

We had lunch on the waterfront at a nice restaurant, where we took advantage of a buy-one, get-one entrée deal that came with our tickets to the observation deck.

After lunch we drove to Stanley Park where we visited the Vancouver Aquarium. In addition to fish, jellyfish, sea lions and seals, the aquarium has several Beluga whales, including a mom and young whale.

Wednesday we went sightseeing in the car up the Sunshine Coast. This trip involves taking two ferry trips northbound to Powell River, then returning on the same route with two ferry trips southbound. The scenery along the way was pretty, but it ultimately did not seem worth the long driving day.

We visited a small, local museum in Powell River, then drove up to Lund, which marks the end of Highway 101 – coast highway from Canada, through the US and Mexico, to South America. Between Lund and Powell River we saw a small informational road sign which said “Nuclear Weapons Free Zone,” but we didn’t get a photo.

Powell River was build around a paper mill, and the harbor for the mill is surrounded by WWI vintage concrete ship hulls. Due to a steel shortage during the war, some ships were constructed of concrete. They were abandoned after the war, because the weight of the concrete adversely impacted their cargo carrying capacity.

We had a nice lunch at Rene’s Italian restaurant in Powell River, and supper in the RV. Tonight was more Olympics on TV. In general, the Canadian coverage on CBC is better than the U.S. coverage on NBC.

Thursday was another sunny sightseeing day in Vancouver. In the late morning, we went to the Burnaby Village Museum, which represents the village restored to the way it would have looked during 1925. In the afternoon we visited the Telus Science Museum in downtown Vancouver. This was a hands-on science museum, and although it was geared toward children, we enjoyed the visit.

This evening we walked a few blocks from the RV park to a nearby shopping center, where we had gyros for supper. Tonight was more Olympics on TV.

On Friday we moved (by ferry) from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. Once on the island, we headed north to Campbell River, where we dry camped at the Elk Falls Provincial Park. We arrived shortly after 1:00 p.m. After lunch, we headed west in the car to visit a couple of waterfalls. Supper was in the RV, and with no electricity for TV, we turned in early.

Saturday was a drive north through mostly forest land and nearby coast to Port Hardy, on the northern end of Vancouver Island. After checking into the Sunny Sanctuary Campground around noon, we went sightseeing in the car again this afternoon. We visited Port McNeill, where the town was celebrating Orca Fest. Besides a few craft tents, the main attractions were a display of old cars, including some that had been modified for drag racing, and free canoe paddling.

We then took a scenic drive to Port Alice, and finished by visiting Fort Rupert, a native village which featured a couple of totem poles.

We had supper in the RV and (again) watched some of the Olympics. We finally have Internet access again, so I also took the opportunity to update our travel blog.

Stewart to Vancouver

2008-08-16T23:43:00.004-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Thursday (August 6) through Monday (August 11).

Thursday was a sunny driving day from Stewart to Smithers. It is the first day since we left the U.S. that the temperature topped 80 degrees. We stopped on the road outside of Stewart to get a couple of pictures of Bear Glacier.

En route we made a short side trip to Kitwancool, a village where there are a number of standing totem poles.

On the return to the highway, a bear sow and cub galloped down the road in front of us, but we had no opportunity to get a photo.

After a light lunch in New Hazelton, we visited the nearby K’San museum and village. In addition to visiting the museum, we took a guided tour of three structures – a lodge house, a feast house, and a storage house. No photos were allowed in the buildings, but we did get pictures of the outside of some of the more modern buildings, plus some other totem poles.

Our RV park in Smithers was adjacent to a par 3 golf course. Carol and I had dinner in the RV while some other couples from our group played 9 holes of golf.

Friday was another 80-degree plus, sunny driving day from Smithers to Prince George. Our group went out tonight for dinner tonight, after which I watched some of the Olympics.

Saturday was an overcast sightseeing and shopping day in Prince George. Carol and I started at the Prince George Railway and Forestry Museum which has a large outdoor collection of old railcars and forestry equipment. The one pictured below is a snow plow.

After shopping we returned to the RV park where Carol cooked green beans for tonight’s pot luck, going-away dinner. Everyone brought their own meat dish (we had steak) and a side dish to share.

On Sunday morning Joe Lapinski fixed a going-away breakfast of pancakes for all. After saying good-byes, Carol and I headed south to Lac La Hache. The only notable sight today was a transmission line corridor which held three 500 KV-class lines and one 230 KV-class line. After settling in at the campground, we drove our car a few miles down the road to the 108 Mile House Heritage Site, a collection of reconstructed buildings at the site that had been 108 miles north of one of the gold rush trails in Lillooet.

After some light rain last night, Tuesday was a sunny driving day from Lac La Hache to Vancouver. After traveling south on the main route for about an hour and a half, we took Route 99 into West Vancouver. This road goes through the mountains and the southern part is known as the Sea to Sky Highway – we did it backwards, sky to sea. The first part of the road was windy and steep – as much as 15% grade in some places. With our exhaust brake we can navigate these steep downhills, but we passed one motorhome which had pulled off about half way down with smoking rear brakes.

The downhill stretch ends near Whistler, which will be the site of some of the skiing events at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. From there to Vancouver there was a lot of road construction, as they are widening the road in advance of the tourist influx. This is also the stretch of road that was closed for several days last week due to a rock slide. We saw several convertibles today – the Canadians are taking advantage of the good weather.

We are at a crowded RV park in West Vancouver for four nights. Late this evening we drove across the Lions Gate Bridge into Stanley Park. We drove the loop road through the park, stopping at Prospect Point for a view of the bridge and outer harbor, and at the totem pole site for a host of photos. The last photo is called Moon Over Vancouver.

Dawson City to Stewart via Cassiar Highway

2008-08-06T22:28:00.008-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Thursday (July 31) through Wednesday (August 6).

On Thursday we drove from Dawson City to Carmacks. Except for a stretch of construction shortly after we left Dawson City, the road was in pretty good shape. We had lunch in the RV alongside the road. En route, we passed the Alaska #2 Caravan, which was headed from Whitehorse to Minto. We were the last of our group to arrive at the RV park in Carmacks. Six of us had dinner together in the town’s one restaurant.

After leveling the RV this evening, I heard a hiss of leaking air from the front driver side. We will get up early in the morning to get it to the Freightliner dealer in Whitehorse to see if they can diagnose the problem.

Carol and I left Carmacks at 6:00 a.m. on Friday so that we could get to the Freightliner dealer in Whitehorse as close as possible to his 8:00 a.m. opening time. With a stop for diesel fuel on the outskirts of town, we made it to the dealership at about 8:30.

We left the coach for repair, washed the car, ate breakfast, did laundry, shopped, ate lunch, and got my haircut. While I was in the barber chair at 2:15, the dealer called to say that the problem was fixed. There was an air connection that apparently had not been fully inserted into the leveling valve when the latter was replaced in Billings. The repair simply involved pushing the connection in about 1/16”.

Since we ran all of our errands yesterday, Carol and I went sightseeing in Whitehorse on Saturday. We drove the CRV up Grant Mountain road to an advertised viewpoint on the top of one of the nearby peaks. The first 4 miles of road was maintained gravel, the last 3.2 miles was an increasingly narrow, unmaintained gravel road with big potholes, some rocks, some switchbacks, some steep stretches, big drop-offs and no guardrails. We got a good view of the surrounding area from a helicopter pad on the top of the peak. The trip down was a little more spine-chilling, because we were looking down at the drop-offs. I’m glad we made the trip, but it’s not one that we are ever likely to repeat.

After lunch, Carol and I walked the suspension bridge across the Yukon River, then up and down hill to the site of Canyon City, the riverside town built at the height of the gold rush as a staging point for gold rushers preparing to travel through the large rapids just outside present-day Whitehorse. There is nothing to see there except a sign showing the location of former buildings, and a couple of tin can middens (garbage piles).

The round trip took us about an hour and 20 minutes – the longest walk we have taken in many days. This evening our 11-member group went to dinner downtown at the Klondike Korner.

Sunday was a sunny driving day from Whitehorse to Watson Lake, backtracking over some of our trip up the Alaska Highway. The driving day was uneventful, and we spent the night at the Baby Nugget RV Park where we had stopped on the way north. Kathy Brown made spaghetti with sausages and meatballs for the group this evening, and with the pleasant weather we had a nice social hour and dinner in the park.

Monday was another sunny day, this time from Watson Lake, down the Cassiar Highway, to Iskut. As we travelled south, we saw both barren rock and snow capped mountains in the distance. We also passed a number of pretty lakes. Except for some gravel patches, more so on the first part of the trip, the highway was in good condition. En route we stopped at Jade City and purchased a few souvenirs.

For the second day, we had lunch in the RV and saw no wildlife, despite signs yesterday warning of elk crossings and today warning of moose.

Tuesday was a nice driving day from Iskut to Stewart BC / Hyder Alaska. The road was well maintained, and the drive into Stewart was scenic, with Bear Glacier to the north of the road. We did not stop for photos, but plan to do so on the way out.

This afternoon, Carol and I drove to Fish Creek, where grizzlies and black bears fish for salmon during the runs that usually take place from mid-July to mid-September. Unfortunately, the salmon are late here as well, so the bears are few and far between. After spending an unsuccessful hour watching for bears, we drove an additional 20 miles to view Salmon Glacier. This is the only glacier we have seen on this trip where you can drive to a viewpoint above the bulk of the glacier.

On our way back down, we stopped again at Fish Creek and over the space of a couple of hours saw 3 black bear and one distant cub.

Carol and I got up at 5:15 this morning, so that we could be at Fish Creek shortly after its opening at 6:00 a.m. We stayed until about 10:00 a.m. and saw a couple of salmon in the river, but only one black bear. On our way back through Hyder, we bought a couple of souvenir T-shirts.

We napped upon our return to the RV. Later in the afternoon we drove downtown to have a late lunch / early dinner and pick up a few groceries.

Tok, Chicken, Top of the World, and Dawson City

2008-07-31T01:19:00.004-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Sunday (July 27) through Wednesday (July 30).

Sunday was a short driving day from Tok to Chicken. We left Tok about 11:00 a.m. and arrived in Chicken just before 2:00 p.m. It was cloudy this morning, but the sun came out and it warmed to the low 70s by mid-afternoon. We joined the four other couples with whom we are traveling for lunch in New Old Chicken. We then visited the three gift shops in town before taking a long afternoon nap and eating supper in the RV.

Monday was a drizzly, foggy, muddy driving day over the Top of the World Highway from Chicken to Dawson City. The 100 mile trip took just over 4 hours. We left in a group at 6:00 a.m. so that we would arrive at Canadian Customs close to its 8:00 a.m. opening time. This ensured that we had no oncoming traffic for the trip to the Canadian border, since U.S. customs opens at the same time.

After taking the ferry across the Yukon River into Dawson City, we checked in to the Gold Rush Campground. Carol and I then took our car to the local do-it-yourself car wash and ate lunch downtown at Sourdough Joe’s.

This evening we went to the Palace Grand Theater to see a performance of Fiddle Rush Too. This was a musical play set in a Dawson City graveyard, where people who died during the gold rush of 1898 came to life 100 years later to tell their stories. It featured piano playing, guitar, singing, clogging, and five fiddlers, including one 5-year old boy. Carol and I sat in the balcony and it turned out to be a very entertaining show. No photos were allowed during the show.

Tuesday was a nice, sunny, warm sightseeing day. Carol and I started the morning with a walking tour of 1st and 2nd Avenues. We visited the small Firefighters Museum and saw a line of Airstream trailers waiting to cross the ferry to the Top of the World Highway. Since the ferry takes two or three trailers at a time, and the day started with a total group of over 30, some of them had a long wait.

We stopped at the Visitor Center and window shopped at souvenir, grocery, and drug stores. The troupe from last night’s show was entertaining on a downtown street corner, so we were able to get some photos today.

After lunch we drove out of town for a tour of Gold Dredge #4. This dredge was in operation on and off from the early 1900s to 1959. Basically the dredge sits in a man-made pond and moves by dredging ore in front of itself and depositing tailings behind.

We also visited the site of the Discovery Claim, the first gold mining claim on the Yukon River.

On our way back to town we drove up Dome Road to a high peak overlooking the town and the Yukon River.

In the evening we had dinner with several other couples at Klondike Kate’s Restaurant, then visited Diamond Tooth Gertie’s casino for some gambling and a show. I played Blackjack at $2 and $3 tables for a little over and hour, and finished down $20.

It rained Wednesday morning, so Carol and I stayed in the RV. Carol sewed and I planned out our trip home from Prince George to Tallahassee. Since we have good WiFi service, I made a lot of ferry and campground reservations. We had lunch out at Sourdough Joe’s again – the Greek restaurant we wanted to try was closed today.

It cleared up this afternoon, but we continued our activities in the RV. Our group – which has expanded to include two additional couples – had a pot luck supper in the campground featuring fish tacos with halibut from the fishing trips in Homer.

I returned to the casino this evening, where I played blackjack for an hour and 45 minutes and broke even. My goal was to win back last night’s $20 loss – and although I was slightly ahead much of the evening, I never got that far up.

Fairbanks and the End of the Caravan

2008-07-27T01:01:00.005-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Tuesday (July 22) through Saturday (July 26). Note that this is the second post today, so be sure to read the blog entry below this one as well.

Tuesday was a short, sunny driving day from Denali to Fairbanks. En route we stopped at Nenana where we had lunch, visited the small railroad museum, and visited the small native museum. Nenana is the home of the annual lottery to pick the exact date and time that ice will break up in the Nenana River. A tower is erected on the river with a cable from its top attached to a clock on shore. When the ice breaks and the tower moves, the clock stops. The breakup is usually in April or May, and there may be 20 or more people who have selected the exact minute of the breakup and share the cash pool.

This evening our group went to a salmon bake at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks. The dinner included all-you-can-eat salad, prime rib, salmon, halibut and cod. After dinner we toured the park, including the aircraft museum. We then saw a show on Fairbanks history at the Palace Saloon in the park.

On Wednesday morning we took a short bus tour of the city, then went to the El Dorado Gold Mile for a train ride, a presentation on the history of mining, a demonstration of panning for gold, and an opportunity to pan ourselves in a stream of warm water with a guarantee of at least eight flakes of gold. I got about 9 flakes, with a total market value (at $920 an ounce) of $3.

We skipped the afternoon bus trip to the Museum of the North, and spent afternoon running errands.

Thursday was a free day. After having a leaky valve stem replaced on one of our tires, Carol and I went shopping. At the Alaska Bowl Store, we saw workers mass producing bowls from Alaskan Birch.

We then visited the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska. The museum has displays on the five different geographic areas in Alaska as well as an art gallery featuring both traditional and contemporary art.

Later in the afternoon we went to see the new movie, Get Smart.

Friday was a sunny day. In the morning we went on the Riverboat Discovery tour in a sternwheeler up the Chena River. This is a very choreographed tour which has changed little since 2002, but it was still very entertaining. We watched a float plane take off and land by the side of the boat, saw a brief sled dog presentation, saw a number of nice riverfront homes, saw a fish smoking demonstration, and spent an hour on-shore where we saw a talk by a musher and brief presentations on three aspects of Athabascan culture.

We also saw a campaign barge sailed up and down Alaska's river many years ago by a candidate for Governor.

After the boat trip, Carol and I headed to North Pole, Alaska – about 15 miles south – for a little Christmas shopping. This evening we had a social hour and a farewell dinner at a restaurant adjacent to the RV park. After breakfast tomorrow, the caravan will be over and we will all head our separate ways.

The caravan ended Saturday morning with a full breakfast at a restaurant adjacent to the RV park. Many of the caravaners are returning via the Top of the World Highway and some of those (including us) will continue on the Cassiair Highway. We are traveling for the first part of the trip with four other couples who are planning short driving days and longer campground stays.

It was a pretty driving day – mostly sunny with a high in the low 70s for the second day in a row. We saw a couple of moose en route, and stopped for photos in Delta Junction, the official “end” of the Alaska Highway.

We also got photos of the Alaska Pipeline where it has its own bridge across a river.

We stopped for the night in Tok, staying at the same campground as we did on the way up. We had a social hour this evening with our traveling companions, and another caravan couple who drove a shorter day than they had planned. After dinner we went to an hour long singing show in the campground recreation hall. We enjoyed the singer, and bought his set of 3 CDs.

Palmer and Denali

2008-07-26T19:15:00.004-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Friday (July 18) through Monday (July 21).

Friday was a free day; unfortunately, it rained all day which caused us to cancel plans to visit the Independence Gold Mine State Park. Instead we drove to Wascilla for shopping, lunch at a Mexican restaurant, a visit to the Friday open air (and rainy) market in Palmer, and a theater to see the new movie, Hancock.

Saturday was a driving day from Palmer to Denali. The sun was out for most of the trip – it was the prettiest day in over a week. Carol and I signed off the caravan today so that we could make a side trip into Talkeetna. On arrival, we signed up for a 75 minute flightseeing tour of Denali in an 10-passenger Cessna aircraft. The top of Denali was above the clouds, and we made a couple of circles around and between the North and South peaks. On the return flight, we flew over the top of the Ruth Glacier, following it from its source in the mountain ice fields until it melted and formed a small, braided river outside Talkeetna.

After the flight we had lunch at an Oriental restaurant in Talkeetna, then walked around the town and visited its small museum.

Our RV site in Denali overlooks the river and we periodically see rafters from the front of our coach.

Sunday was our bus tour of Denali National Park. Our bus left the campground at 6:40 this morning. We rode about 62 miles into the park and then returned. It was a chilly, overcast day, and we saw only a smattering of wildlife – two distant grizzly bears (or one bear twice), a couple of golden eagles, four Dall sheep, a family of ptarmigan, and one distant moose cow. All were too far from the bus for us to get decent photos. Our bus overheated about 15 miles from the park entrance on the return trip and we waited about half an hour for a rescue bus to come pick us up.

Monday morning we visited the Husky Homestead, home and dog raising site of Jeff King, four-time Iditarod champion. We started with a puppy holding session. This is designed to socialize the dogs and accustom them to noise crowds; it also appears designed to help sell souvenir photos. We heard two interesting presentations on raising, breeding and training sled dogs, and on running the Iditarod. The latter was given by Jeff’s 16-year old daughter, who finished 32nd in last year’s race with a team of young dogs who were being familiarized with the race. This was a very good tour, and is one that Carol and I would likely never have seen if we were travelling alone, rather than on a caravan.

This evening was a family-style dinner and after-dinner show. A kiss from Kitty went for $1.00, and several members of our group (including me) left with lipstick on their cheeks or heads. The show featured some singing, some storytelling, and the acting out of Robert Service’s The Ballad of Dan McGrew with some audience participation.

Homer, Kenai and Palmer

2008-07-17T21:57:00.007-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Sunday (July 13) through Thursday (July 17).

Sunday was an overcast driving day from Seward to Homer. En route we stopped at a woodcarving shop and got photos of some large scale carvings.

Others on our caravan also stopped, but it looked like everyone was taking photos and no-one was doing much buying. While stopped, we had a good barbeque lunch from a small lunch stand.

Our campsite in Homer is located on the Homer spit and has a waterfront view.

This evening our caravan carpooled to the end of the spit where we had a social hour and a halibut dinner at the Lands End Restaurant.

Monday was a free day. This morning was overcast and we got poor photos of town when we drove up Hill Drive to the ridgeline overlooking the area. We did see a moose cow with two calves and Carol was able to get a couple of good photos.

Back in town, we visited the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. In addition to the exhibits, we saw a short movie on the activities in the reserve. Carol and I had a quick lunch, then drove up Hill Drive again and, with a little afternoon sun, got a couple of better overview photos of the town and the spit.

Nine members of our caravan went halibut fishing today. This evening we had pot luck dinner at the campground with their successful catch as the main course.

Tuesday was a driving day, backtracking up the Kenai Peninsula to the Beluga Overlook RV Park in Kenai. Our campground had a good view of the beach below, where the season just opened for Alaska residents to dip net for red salmon.

Carol and I walked down to the beach, which was littered with fish heads and flush with sea gulls.

After a group dinner, Carol and I drove to see a nest with two young eagles near the city boat docks. We also drove to viewing areas in hopes of seeing caribou and moose, but the animals were not cooperating.

Wednesday was another overcast driving day from Kenai to Palmer, about 40 miles west of Anchorage. Carol and I signed off the caravan this morning, because we had to visit the Winnebago dealer to get our new windshield wiper switch and sewer door latch installed. En route, we stopped at the Alaska Big Game Wildlife Center, where large animals are rehabilitated. We got our first view of bull moose and grizzly bears, and got some good photos of each.

Thursday was another a rainy day. Thanks to the Anchorage Winnebago dealer the leak around our windshield is finally fixed – we did not collect any water overnight in the pot we have been using to capture rainwater. This morning our group took a short bus tour of the Mat-Su valley area. Palmer was one of the new communities created by FDR during the depression; it was populated in 1935 by families relocated from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The tour included one of the original ‘colony houses’ and a local museum with some exhibits from that early farming era.

We had lunch at the local inn, then toured the musk ox farm. The musk ox (which are neither musky nor oxen) are raised here exclusively for their underhair, or quivuit, which is many times lighter and warmer than wool, and proportionately more expensive. A knitted scarf goes for about $225. We got photos of both full grown musk ox and of a couple of calves.

This evening our caravan had an early chili / clam chowder dinner in the campground’s recreation hall.

Anchorage and Seward

2008-07-13T18:41:00.007-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Sunday (July 6) through Saturday (July 12).

It rained all day Sunday on our free day in Valdez. We skipped outdoor sightseeing, and instead went grocery, liquor and souvenir shopping. The souvenir store showed a free film on the building of the Alaska pipeline.

Monday was a driving day from Valdez to Mendeltna. On the first part of the highway out of Valdez, Carol and I stopped for photos of Horseshoe Falls and Bridal Veil Falls.

We also stopped at Worthington Glacier where we walked across the mud flats and about 3/4 of the way up a rock gully toward the face of the glacier.

We stopped for lunch at the Copper Creek Lodge in Copper Creek – a nice place that we ate at twice on our last Alaska trip. We also toured the small, free historical museum adjacent to the lodge.

After we left Copper Creek the rain began and continued all day and all night. Dinner was a group pizza and salad dinner in the small lodge building at the campground.

Tuesday was a short driving day from Mendeltna to Anchorage. We began with a group continental breakfast at the campground. The rain continued almost all the way to Anchorage, and we had some heavy fog for about 15 miles in the morning. Our windshield wipers started to act up again, so we disconnected the power to them and relied on a new treatment of Rainex to get us through the day.

Because of the poor weather, we did not get to see much of the landscape – what little bit we did see looked beautiful. We did have a moose cross the road in front of us, but too quick for any pictures.

In Anchorage we ran some errands and stopped at the local Winnebago dealer to finagle an appointment tomorrow morning to fix the windshield wipers, a broken compartment door latch, and a new roof leak that developed last night around the skylight in the bathroom.

Carol and I got up early Wednesday morning to take the Winnebago to the local dealer for some minor repairs. We then joined our caravan on a bus tour of Anchorage. The highlight of the tour was the Alaska State Museum.

We had a huge lunch at the Sourdough Restaurant and concluded with souvenir shopping at Alaska Wildberry. The latter store features a two story chocolate fountain.

We picked up the Winnebago with 1-1/2 of the three problems fixed; the dealer is ordering parts and we will stop in on our return trip through Anchorage next week to get a new wiper switch and compartment door latch installed.

Thursday was a free day during which we visited the Alaska Heritage Museum. In addition to a traditional museum, the facility contains replicas of the types of houses used by the five major native groups in Alaska. There is a native interpreter in each house to talk about the culture of their people.

There are also a number of dance and other performances throughout the day. On the way out of the museum parking lot we saw a moose cow near the side of the road.

Friday was an overcast driving day from Anchorage to Seward. The first part of the drive is along Turnagain Arm. Tide was low this morning, so there were extensive exposed mud flats. When the tide comes in, there can be up to a six foot tidal bore. We stopped en route at a jade shop, where we bought a couple of Christmas presents, and then had breakfast for lunch at the nearby Bake Shop.

The trip continued along the side of the water until the highway split – left going to Seward and right going to Homer. The road then narrowed and twisted through some foothills until we reached Seward. Our RV campground is a waterfront city park.

Saturday was a sunny, clear free day. We got some photos from both the RV park and downtown of what the mountains look like when the sky is blue instead of grey

Carol and I visited Exit Glacier where we took a loop trail to a viewpoint close to the face of the glacier.

We did not try to walk to the lower face – the mud flats had too many wide streams that would have been difficult to navigate across. After lunch, we toured the Alaska Sea Life Center. This facility has aquariums, sea birds, sea lions, harbor seals, and other displays. In the bird area, we got several good pictures of puffins.

After the Sea Life Center, we made a photo stop at the site where the original 1910 Iditerod race began.

Fourth of July and Boat Tour

2008-07-06T01:31:00.011-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Friday (July 4) and Saturday (July 5).

Friday the 4th of July started with a bus tour of Valdez and its surrounds. The tour took us outside the fence of the Alyeska Marine Terminal. The terminal facilities store up to 9.8 million barrels of crude oil arriving via the 48” diameter Alaska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay, and transfer it to oil tankers. At its height in the 1980s, the pipeline delivered over 2 million barrels a day; now it is handling less than 1 million. Valdez was chosen for the terminal for the same reason as it was a jumping off point for the gold fields 100 years earlier – it is the northernmost ice free harbor in the United States.

Marine Terminal From Across the River

From the bus we also saw a fish hatchery and fish ladder. It’s a little too soon in the season for salmon to be making it upstream, although purse seine fishing has started in the harbor. We then visited the site of Old Valdez, which was abandoned two years after a massive earthquake in 1964 destroyed the docks and damaged most of the town. Finally we drove around downtown Valdez, and saw the staging area for the small 4th of July parade.

After the bus tour, Carol and I went walking around the small downtown area.

We visited the Old Valdez portion of the Valdez Museum, where we watched an interesting film on Valdez from its founding in the gold rush days until its demise after the 1964 earthquake. After lunch at Ernesto’s Mexican Restaurant, we walked through the small downtown block party. This was followed by visits to the Whitney Museum, which contains a large collection of native Alaskan art and artifacts, and to the main portion of the Valdez Museum, which has more on the history of the area and the Alaska pipeline.

We finished our tour with a stop at Ruth Lake, where a canoe jousting contest was being staged.

This evening we went to an ice cream social with our caravan and stayed up late for the 11:00 p.m. fireworks show launched from a hill just behind our RV park.

Saturday was a 9-hour boat tour of Prince William Sound, including wildlife viewing, the icebergs broken off from Columbia Glacier, the face of Mears Glacier, and purse seine fishing boats.

Our Tailender Taking A Well-Deserved Nap

The wildlife included sea otters, sea lions, and humpback whales. We got more good whale pictures today than on any previous whale-watching trip.

Columbia Glacier is receding and icebergs that have separated from the glacier have formed a small wall of ice about 10 miles from the face of the glacier.

Mears Glacier, on the other hand, is advancing and we were able to get within a quarter mile of the glacier’s face.

Commerical purse seine fishing is underway for pink (sockeye) salmon. A purse seine is a 1200 foot net that is set out in a semicircle, then drawn closed to catch salmon in the “purse”. In addition to seeing boats setting and recovering their nets, we watched a full boat off-loading its catch to a processor’s buying boat.

On our return to the Valdez small boat harbor, we got a photo of our RV sitting on the shore.

Skagway to Valdez

2008-07-03T23:39:00.003-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Monday (June 30) through Thursday (July 3).

Monday was a sunny driving day. We got an early start from Skagway; went through Canadian customs; reset our clocks; stopped for breakfast (ice cream) in Carcross; and bought fuel in Whitehorse. Carcross is a small, picturesque community whose name is short for Caribou Crossing.

En route today we saw one moose, one fox, and one lynx. Mid-afternoon, our windshield wipers suddenly started by themselves and would not turn off. We pulled off, could not find the right fuse, and instead disconnected the wiring connector to the wiper motor. Also, when I checked the tire pressure this evening, one of the tire valves would not close. The valve cap is preventing any leaking, but I will need to see a tire place when we get to Tok.

The scenery today was pretty, with the snow-topped Kluane Mountains to our south a good part of the day. Destruction Bay is actually on Kluane Lake. There was about 7 miles of road construction just before we arrived at the campground. I remember from our 2002 trip that the road between here and Tok, Alaska was the worst of the trip. I hope it has improved some since then.

This evening was a bring-your-own-plate BBQ dinner in the campground. The campground owner told us a little about the area. The name Destruction Bay dates to 1942, when 18 hours of 100 mile per hour wind destroyed the Army road construction camp at this location. After dinner a local guitar player/singer put on a good, short show.

I called Freightliner and Winnebago on Tuesday morning to try to diagnose the windshield wiper problem. Winnebago said that the most likely problem is a wet electrical connection. They suggested drying the connection carefully, then treating it with dielectric grease (apparently somehow related to dilithium crystals). If that doesn’t cure the problem, we will have to see a Winnebago dealer when we get to Anchorage.

Tuesday was a drizzly driving day. There were several short stretches of gravel road, and a lot of frost heaves. Our tailender treated our windshield with Rainex last night and it worked as advertised – we were able to drive safely all day without the windshield wipers. Because of the rain and mud, we did not see much in the way of scenery. It also is the first day in a while that we saw no wildlife.

Wednesday was a bright and sunny free day that we used to do errands. This morning we did laundry, fixed our windshield wiper problem as suggested by Winnebago, got the leaky tire valve core replaced at the local tire shop, and washed the RV and car at the campground’s wash facilities.

Our group had a social hour this afternoon – we gave up after about an hour and a quarter of sitting in the sun. The sun may be short lived – Internet weather says that we will have showers for three of the next four days in Valdez.

Thursday was a driving day from Tok to Valdez. It was sunny, and the road was in good condition except for a couple of stretches of continuous frost heaves. This is a pretty drive, with views of heavily snow covered mountains. We saw 4 moose; however, all were at a distance and we could not get any photos. We had lunch at the Trail Lodge with another couple from our group.

After a social hour in the RV park’s recreation hall, Carol and I went out for pizza at a local restaurant.

Skagway and Juneau

2008-06-30T01:14:00.007-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Friday (June 27) through Sunday (June 29).

On Friday morning our group took the White Horse & Yukon sightseeing train to the summit of White Pass. This was the second route to the Yukon gold fields, the first being the Chilcoot Pass just to the west. Over 35,000 different men worked on the 2-year, 2-month construction of the railroad. From the train we had good views of snow covered mountains and the Skagway river. Unfortunately, with overcast and low clouds, we did not get any real good photos.

After returning to the campground, I spent much of the afternoon updating my journal and blog.

This evening, Carol and I went to the Red Onion Saloon for dinner then had ice cream at a local parlor. We then with a large group to the Days of 98 show. The evening began with 45 minutes of mock gambling with the actors. The show itself started with the recitation of some Robert Service poetry, followed by a play that told the story of Soapy Smith, the local con man who was shot dead in 1899.

It rained hard on Friday night, and Saturday was windy – the weather forecast says winds of 30 to 40 mph with higher gusts. Today was a free day. Carol and I started late this morning with a little shopping for T-shirts and sweatshirts. We walked the main streets it town and ate lunch at the Red Onion.

After lunch, we went to the National Park Visitor Center where we saw a movie about the stampede of 1898-1900 and watched a short ranger presentation on the two trails to Dawson City – the Chilcoot Pass and the White Pass (also known as Dead Horse Trail because of the large number of horses who perished during the winter of 1898.)

We then returned to the Red Onion for a tour of the upstairs brothel which was in operation for about 2 years during the height of the stampede.

We visited the local cemetery where Soapy Smith and his killer, Frank Reid, are buried. The latter’s headstone says “He gave his life for the honor of Skagway.” One of the women of the evening had a headstone, now gone, which said “She gave her honor for the life of Skagway.”

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We also drove about 10 miles around the fjords to the location of Dyea, the town that served as the jumping off point for the Chilcoot Trail.

On Sunday, our caravan members took the Fjord Express – an enclosed catamaran – on a 3-1/2 hour (each way) trip to Juneau. Along the way we saw a number of eagles (enlarge the first photo to see two eagles side by side in the tree), a colony of sea lions, dolphins (including a pod that swam between the two hulls of the boat), and several distant humpback whales.

The last part of the trip was a 30 minute bus ride from the boat landing to downtown Juneau where we had about 3 hours to explore. Carol and I had lunch on the waterfront and watched float planes landing and docking next to the restaurant. After lunch, we visited the Alaska State Museum. The museum had a nice exhibit containing ravens; a section of Alaska history; and an exhibit on Russians in Alaska.

The bus then took us on a brief city tour followed by a visit to Mendenhall Glacier. Juneau’s main industry is government, followed in order by tourism, commercial fishing, mining, and timber. We got some good photos of the glacier and a large nearby waterfall. Several in our group also saw a black bear near the visitor center at the glacier.

Today was the first day of a two day salmon season in the Lynn Canal between Juneau and Skagway. We saw a fishing boat pulling in its 1200-foot gill net and retrieving salmon. Other sights on the return trip were the lighthouse on Eldred Rock, passing cruise ships leaving Skagway, and more distant humpback whales.

Through Whitehorse to Skagway

2008-06-27T17:20:00.008-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Tuesday (June 24) through Thursday (June 26).

Tuesday was a group sightseeing day in Whitehorse. We boarded a bus late this morning. After stopping at an overlook of Miles Canyon, we took a two-hour boat trip on the Yukon River. From the boat we saw a couple of brown bears and a golden eagle. The whitewater that Whitehorse was named after was eliminated when the river was dammed to run a hydroelectric plant. During the gold rush of 1898, some 7500 boats traversed the rapids in this area. The first week, about 150 boats were lost. The author Jack London worked for a time as a guide through the rapids, earning the princely sum of $25 per trip.

After the boat tour, we saw a short film about river traffic on the Yukon River and went on a guided tour of a restored riverboat, the Klondike II. The riverboat carried all types of cargo to Dawson City, including the famout Borden's Reindeer Milk. We learned that the fireman, who worked 4 hours on / 8 hours off feeding one log to the boiler every 30 seconds, earned $85 a month, or about 3-1/2 times the average wage in the Yukon. Because the male to female ratio in Whitehorse was 10-1, women said “The odds are pretty good, but the goods are pretty odd.”

Next we toured the fish ladder that enables salmon to swim upriver past the hydroelectric dam.

The bus driver then gave us a tour of a nice residential area across the river, then returned for a tour of downtown. We learned that the Yukon has about 35,000 residents, half of whom live in Whitehorse. The territory’s main industries are government, mining and tourism. Humans are significantly outnumbered by about 175,000 caribou. It gets cold in Whitehorse, but not much snow. Last winter there was about 2 feet of snow, and about two weeks when the temperature got below -50 degrees Centigrade.

We arrived back at the RV park about 5:00 p.m. Carol and I then drove downtown where we ran errands and had a nice dinner at Earl’s restaurant.

Wednesday was a free day for individual sightseeing in Whitehorse. Carol and I started the morning with a visit to the Yukon Transportation Museum (pretty self-explanatory) and the Beringia Interpretive Center. Beringia was the flat, treeless steppe that joined Russia and Alaska during the last ice age, about 40,000 to 15,000 years ago. As a result of the water consumed in forming glaciers, the seas were down over 300 feet, exposing the continental shelf. Because of the position of the mountains, this area did not get much rain, did not glaciate, and was home to many species of large mammals.

Adjacent to the transportation museum we saw the world’s largest weather vane, an old DC-3 that has been mounted on top of a large pole.

After the museums, we had lunch at Tim Horton’s, the ubiquitous Canadian pastry and sandwich chain. We then visited the MacBride Museum, which had a display of Yukon wildlife, exhibits on Yukon history, and the cabin in which Sam McGee (immortalized in Robert Service’s poetry) lived.

Finally we drove to the rim of Miles Canyon and walked across the suspension bridge that we had seen yesterday from our boat trip.

This evening our caravan had a very good steak dinner in the RV Park recreation hall. We departed later to see the Whitehorse Follies, a two-hour Vaudeville-type show.

Thursday was a sunny driving day from Whitehorse to Skagway, where we are staying at an RV Park located downtown near the cruise ship docks. We stopped en route at the small town of Carcross to visit their visitor center and eat some delicious ice cream. After crossing the border into the U.S., we descended a 3000 foot grade into Skagway – the Gatlinburg of Alaska. The main (only?) industry here is tourism. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the big cruise ship days. Today there were four ships in the harbor. The streets are lined with stores selling everything from jewelry to souvenirs, and nothing much in between.

We get one TV channel here from Anchorage. The prime time programming was all NBC, but they switched to CBS at 10:30, so we saw Letterman instead of Leno.

We do have Internet access, so tomorrow I hope to update the blog.

The Alaska Highway Trip Begins

2008-06-27T15:00:00.007-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Saturday (June 21) through Monday (June 23).

Saturday was a nice, sunny driving day from Fort Nelson to Muncho Lake. We saw quite a bit of wildlife en route: three small groups of caribou on or beside the road; several small groups of stone sheep on or beside the road; a moose cow entering the woods; and a black bear. We got photos of caribou, stone sheep and the moose; the bear was too fast for us. We also saw two smashed car carcasses; apparently the losing end of previous car vs. wildlife encounters.

We made a stop at a restaurant whose ceiling is covered by thousands of caps that people have donated. We left an I-State Freightliner cap (the dealer gave us two after we spent 4-1/2 days having our coach serviced) and got a card identifying it as hat number 7494. The high point (literally) of today’s trip, indeed of the whole Alaska Highway, was a 4,500 foot pass through the Rocky Mountains.

Our campground tonight overlooked the blue-green Muncho Lake. We had a social hour outside the Lapinski’s coach, and drank some of Joe’s homemade Merlot. Dinner was a buffet in the adjacent lodge. After supper we watched as a couple of float planes took off on flightseeing tours.

Last night was a rainy night and today (Sunday) was a rainy driving day from Muncho Lake to Watson Lake. We started the morning thinking that our water pump had failed, and wondering where we would be able to get it repaired – it turned out that I had just left the water tank fill valve in the wrong position.

One of the first recommended stops was Laird Hot Springs; however, we are not hot spring type people, so we skipped this one. It turns out that over half of the caravan decided not to make the stop. Part of the morning drive followed a river which was really raging as a result of last night’s rain. The wildlife today consisted of two groups of buffalo and a lone fox; we got photos of the former. At one point we traversed a bridge that was built out of steel salvaged from the “galloping Gertie” bridge collapse in New York. Today we also crossed from British Columbia into the Yukon.

We had planned to have pizza at a place in Watson Lake that we remember fondly from our 2002 Alaska trip – unfortunately it was closed for remodeling. We did see the Sign Forest, which now claims over 60,000 signs, including one that our caravan host hung this morning.

This evening our group had a spaghetti dinner at the restaurant operated by the RV park / lodge / gift store owners. After dinner we had guitar and fiddle entertainment by a couple of local musicians. The female half of the park owners also told us a little about life in the Yukon – cold winters (as low as 60 below Centigrade); astronomical electricity prices for diesel generated power; ordering expensive foodstuffs for the restaurant a week in advance and hoping the shipment contains most of what was ordered; moose hunting in the winter; etc.

On Monday, we drove from Watson Lake to Whitehorse, where we will spend three nights. It was in the 40s and rained until about 2:00 p.m., when it turned overcast. Surprisingly we saw only one fox today.

We (and many others) had lunch at a restaurant famed for its rhubarb pie, which indeed was delicious. We then spent a couple of hours sightseeing in Teslin, where we visited the Wildlife Museum and the Tsinglet Heritage Center. The latter was a little disappointing. It has five totem poles outside a fabulous, modern building. Unfortunately, the display area inside is very small.

We are tightly packed in the campground this evening; with the past couple of days of rain, there is a lot of mud and standing water. Actually, it is very reminiscent of our stay at the same park in 2002. The group dinner this evening was another buffet in the RV park’s recreation hall.

We have good cable TV here – the first time we have seen U.S. channels since leaving Montana – so I am watching The Bachelorette this evening. The park supposedly has WIFI, but so far I haven’t been able to connect, so I don’t know when this part of the blog will get posted.

Escaping Billings, Visiting Edmonton, and Starting Our Caravan

2008-06-20T23:18:00.003-05:00

[Updated on June 27th to include photos.]

[Remember to click on photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Thursday (June 12) through Friday (June 20).

We slept in again on Thursday morning. The turbocharger was supposed to arrive by 10:30 and there was a 3-hour estimate to get it installed. To kill time, we went downtown and visited the small Western Heritage Museum. Its main claim to fame is an exhibit about the great flood of 1937 and one of Calamity Jane’s original outfits.

We also visited the Billings Art Museum. We visited three galleries: one of art by high school students, one of modern art, and one of western art. Carol and I both thought the high school student exhibit was the best.

Knowing that Freightliner’s estimates are optimistic, we had a late lunch and arrived at Freightliner about 4:00, where we waited until the turbocharger was installed and tested about 6:00. We noticed that the air suspension in the front end of the coach had not held air overnight, and asked the night foreman to check the system again. He did, and they discovered a bad leveling valve that needs to be replaced. Of course, it is not in stock, will arrive by 10:30 tomorrow morning, and will involve a half-hour installation job. So its back for a third night in a motel.

On Friday morning we watched TV and read until check-out time, then proceeded to Freightliner to check on the status of the motorhome. The new leveling valve had arrived and was being installed. The installation took longer than expected (by them) and it was about 2:15 before we finally got on the road for Great Falls. The 240 mile drive was mostly through high plains, and it was very windy again, which kept our speed down

Saturday was a driving day from Great Falls to Calgary. It was a sunny day and was not as windy as forecast, so it was a pleasant drive. The Montana portion was ranchland and recently planted wheat fields; in Alberta, the farmland was greener. We could see snow-capped mountains to the west all day long. Because of the extended stop in Billings, we will not have time for sight-seeing in Calgary; instead we will drive to Edmonton tomorrow and have a day and a half for sight-seeing there before we head on to Dawson Creek.

On Sunday we drove from Calgary, through rolling farmland, to Edmonton, where we are staying at the same RV park we stayed at during our return from Alaska in 2002. We had some light rain this afternoon, so we went to the Edmonton Mall, the largest mall in North America. We toured the lower level, which includes an amusement park and a skating rink. From our mall experience, it looks like Edmonton has a large oriental population, with sizeable populations of East Indians and Middle Easterners.

On Monday, we went sightseeing in Edmonton. Our first stop was Fort Edmonton. This city park consists of the fort, an street restored to the 1885 time period, a 1905 street, and a 1920s street. There were a number of people in period costumes who answered questions about the time in which they were living. On 1885 street, I took a photo of Carol with the school marm.

On 1905 street, we saw the contrast between a maid beating a rug at the local doctor’s house and a lady cooking lunch outside the tent she lived in. She and her husband had moved from Victoria and had entered into a contract to build a home. However, due to Edmontons’ growth spurt, there was over a two-year waiting list. During the winter, they stacked hay bales next to the tent and let snow accumulate on the roof, creating an igloo-like structure that was warmed by a single stove.

Mid-afternoon we went to the Edmonton Science Museum. The main exhibit was Body Works 1, which just opened last Friday. This interesting exhibit displays human organs, human bodies, and slices of human bodies that have been plasticized. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed. The rest of the museum consisted of hands-on galleries.

After finishing at the museum, we toured the upper level of Edmonton West Mall, and had a nice dinner.

On Tuesday, we drove from Edmonton to Dawson Creek where we are staying at Northern Lights RV Park from which we will start our caravan. This morning I washed the RV at a do-it-yourself car wash. Unfortunately, it rained some this afternoon and the coach now looks as dirty as it did last night. On today’s drive we saw a lot of signs warning of moose crossings, but nary a moose in sight. This afternoon we joined the 24 other folks who are already here for the caravan for a social hour outside the host’s coach. We then went as a group to dinner at the White Spot restaurant. We had a chance to visit with some folks we know from our Nova Scotia trip, as well as the chance to begin making some new friends.

We started Wednesday by doing the laundry and washing the car in Dawson Creek. After lunch in the RV, we went downtown, toured the local art museum, saw the monument marking the official start of the Alaska highway, and walked the couple of main streets in town. After a late afternoon social hour at the host’s camp site, Carol and I returned downtown for dinner at Boston Pizza. Back at the coach, we watched the DVD Death at a Funeral.

On Thursday morning, Carol and I got haircuts. At 2:00 we had our caravan orientation meeting. After the meeting, I put a screen across the front of the CRV to try to minimize any damage from travel on gravel roads. At 4:30 our group boarded a school bus for downtown Dawson Creek, where we had a group picture taken at the big sign announcing the start of the Alaska highway. We had a nice dinner at the George Dawson Inn, followed by an interesting slide show presentation on Dawson Creek and the Alaska highway.

Friday our first travel day on the caravan. We left Dawson Creek shortly after 8:00 a.m. heading for the Westend RV Park in Fort Nelson. About 20 miles out of Dawson Creek, several of us took a short detour to cross the only original Alaska Highway bridge still in existence. Shortly after rejoining the “new” Alaska Highway, we passed the remnants of a car vs. moose accident.

We joined many of the other caravaners en route at Shepard’s Inn where we partook of their famous cinnamon buns. It was a nice sunny day, and this part of the Alaska highway is just like any well maintained 2 lane road. Most of the road has very wide cleared areas on both sides of the road so that you can see approaching wildlife. Today we saw one deer and one coyote, the latter just as we were entering Fort Nelson.

Like Montana, we saw some snow-capped mountains to the west on today’s drive; unlike Montana, there were fir tree forests rather than plains between us and the mountains.

After a late afternoon travel meeting to brief us on tomorrow’s drive, Carol and I explored the (small) downtown, but found nothing of particular interest. We then walked a couple of blocks to the Fort Nelson Heritage Museum, which has a collection of memorabilia from the area, a Hudson Bay Company trading cabin, the Hudson Bay Company manager’s residence, and a collection of old vehicles.

Unscheduled Maintenance, Scheduled Maintenance, and More Unscheduled Maintenance (Do You See a Theme Here?)

2008-06-11T19:44:00.004-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Friday (June 6) through Wednesday (June 11).

Friday was supposed to be a sightseeing day in Cheyenne, but that didn’t happen. Just after I had finished posting to the blog, the 120-volt electricity in the coach went out. The campground owner checked the pedestal, and there was power there. We also had 120-volt power when we turned on the generator. These symptoms mean that there is a problem with the transfer switch, the device that switches the coach between shore power and the generator.

After spending about an hour calling RV service facilities in Cheyenne; Longmont, Colorado; and Casper, Wyoming, we finally found a place in Casper that can look at the system tomorrow – most of the others either could not handle the problem or had no service openings for one to two weeks. To top things off, we had trouble starting the generator and it ran roughly. Apparently there was some dirt or water in the fuel, which we removed by draining about a quart of fluid out of the fuel/water separator.

We got a refund for tonight from the Cheyenne campground, and departed around noon for Casper. This is one of the windiest days we have had, and we had strong cross-winds across the plains for most of the 180 mile trip. En route, we stopped at a steakhouse in Chugwater where we had very good homemade cheeseburgers for lunch.

In Casper, we found an RV park about a mile from tomorrow’s service facility. In the evening we went to the local mall, where we each bought a western shirt, then saw Made to Honor at a second-run movie theater. We read some when we got back to the coach – I’m about halfway through the surprisingly humorous Mark Twain’s Autobiography and Carol is reading a series of science fiction novels.

Saturday was our second “unscheduled maintenance” day. At 9:00 a.m. we drove the coach to Rec-Vee RV Service and Supply. The talkative owner has been in the RV service business for 35 years. He is in the process of trying to sell his service building and land, after which he plans to continue his repair business on a smaller scale. In anticipation of the sale, he has let his service staff go, so he does all the repairs himself. His wife runs the parts and accessories store.

The problem indeed was the transfer switch – some of the wires had melted, apparently from a relay having gone bad. The owner was able to find a replacement switch in town at one of the other RV service centers which had not had time to see us. After about 4 hours (three of which he charged us, which was fair, because he had spent an hour talking) he had it installed and ready to go. While we waited, Carol brought out her craft supplies and did collage with the owners’ 12- or 13-year old granddaughter.

We moved the RV back to the campground then visited Fort Caspar and its associated museum. The fort was named after Lieutenant Caspar, whose only claim to fame was getting himself and a small band of soldiers killed by Indians. We never found out why the spelling changed from “ar” to “er” when the town was named.

Adjacent to the fort was the site of an early ferry crossing for the Platte River. As traffic increased, an entrepreneur built a 800+ foot bridge across the river. He charged what the traffic would bear: $1 a wagon when the river was low and there were other ways to cross, $6 a wagon when the river was high and he had a monopoly.

In the evening, we went downtown to a first-run movie, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan.
Tomorrow we will leave for Billings, Montana, where we have a Monday morning preventative maintenance appointment at the Freightliner dealer who serviced our coach when we passed through Montana last summer. This will be the last service stop of the trip: knock on wood.

Sunday we drove from Casper to Billings, Montana, where we overnighted in the parking lot at the Freightliner dealer. It was a windy driving day again, with a little light rain near the end of the trip. We saw a lot of pronghorn antelope (not a true antelope, because it has branching horns) alongside the road today, with snow-capped mountains in the distance to our west. We also saw a few scattered tumblin’ tumbleweeds.

On Monday morning, after entrusting the RV to the Freightliner dealer at 7:00 a.m. for its 72,000 mile preventative maintenance, we proceeded to downtown Billings to do a load of laundry and get the Honda serviced and washed. The combination lube/carwash/glass replacement center had free ice cream while you wait and did a nice hand wash for $17. Maybe I’ll open one in Tallahassee when I return and compete with SuperLube.

After taking care of these chores, we shopped at a downtown antique store where I bought about eight to ten late-1930s vintage newspapers (mostly from Boston) for a grand total of $6.

During the day the Freightliner dealer called to say that their inspection turned up two maintenance issues – there is a leak in the exhaust manifold which will require a new gasket, and the rear transmission seal is leaking and needs to be replaced. This extended the estimated completion time from late afternoon to late evening. To kill some time, Carol and I visited Riverside Park, where we walked about a 2.4 mile loop trail for our first real exercise of the trip. We then spent some time reading at a picnic table in the park.

After dinner we returned to the dealer’s customer lounge. About 9:00 p.m., the night foreman brought the news that the gasket replacement had not been started, and that it would be an all-day job tomorrow. We then moved the coach to the parking lot for a second night of dry camping.

Normally we would be upset about losing an extra day on a maintenance stop, but it turns out that there has been snow in Glacier National Park and the Going to the Sun Highway – which was about 2/3 plowed and open a couple of days ago – is now almost completely closed. Since there is really nothing else to see there, we will sidestep Glacier and proceed directly to Grand Falls, Calgary and Edmonton.

At 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday we again entrusted the RV to Freightliner and set out in the Honda for a day of sightseeing in Cody, Wyoming, which is about 90 miles to the southwest. We arrived in Cody shortly after 9:00 and spent several hours visiting the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. This complex, which we had visited last summer, includes a Plains Indian Museum, a gallery of western art, a natural history museum, the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum, and a firearms museum.

Since we are near Meeteetsee, Wyoming, I called Nina Cornell, an economist who testified on behalf of MCI a number of times in the 80s and 90s. I learned that she retired in 2000 and spends her time cooking and watching wildlife from her home in the Wyoming wilderness. They see bear, moose, antelope, deer, wolves, and coyotes. This spring, a moose gave birth to two calves who lived for four days under their deck. Nina says that since the wolf population had rebounded, the moose are moving closer to human populations to give birth. Nina declined our invitation to buy her lunch at the fanciest place in Cody and we declined her invitation to join Nina and her husband at their home, which would have involved driving over an hour each way to Meeteetsee, about half of the trip on dirt roads.

After finishing at the museum, we walked downtown for lunch and to window-shop in the local souvenir stores and specialty shops. We returned to Billings in the late afternoon, where they were still in the process of reassembling the engine and turbocharger. About 9:30 p.m., we learned at that in reattaching the turbocharger to the exhaust manifold, they discovered a broken part on the turbocharger. The only solution is to replace the entire turbocharger unit. Freightliner does not have one in stock in Billings, but they expect to be able to get one in the morning from the local Caterpillar dealer.

Since the coach is inside the shop, and the engine is still partly disassembled, we spent the night at a Hilton Garden Inn. We got their last room about 10:30. After appearing piteous, the night clerk gave us the drug company representative rate which saved us 30% on the room. From the late night news, we learned that it snowing in Great Falls and is expected to continue tomorrow morning. This means we would not have left Billings tomorrow (Wednesday) even if the repairs to the coach were complete.

We slept in on Wednesday morning then had a leisurely breakfast at IHOP. We checked with the Freightliner dealer about 10:30 a.m. and discovered that a new turbocharger is not available locally, but will arrive tomorrow morning by express from Denver. It supposedly will take about 3 hours to install, so we can be on our way by tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon. Given the dealer’s optimistic estimates of work times, and the bad weather in Great Falls, we have reserved a campsite in Billings for tomorrow night and now plan to depart for Great Falls on Friday. This will cut a day out of our planned stop in Calgary, but still gets us to the caravan rendezvous on time.

We found a room for tonight at Kelly Inn, which is somewhat less expensive than the Hilton Garden Inn’s drug representative rate. I am using the down time this afternoon to update our journal and blog. Late this afternoon, we went to see What Happens in Vegas, another cute romantic comedy.

RV Repair and the Omaha / Lincoln Area

2008-06-06T10:07:00.004-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Monday (June 2) through Thursday (June 5).

Monday was a travel and maintenance day. We left Hannibal and immediately crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. Our GPS then led us in a stair-step fashion on a series of state and county roads until we finally joined up with US 67, a major north-south highway. The speed limit for trucks, RV, and campers is 55 on the major highways and freeways in Illinois, the first state where we have faced a lower speed limit.

We arrived in Davenport, Iowa, back across the Mississippi River, about 11:30 and took the RV to Ace Marine & RV to have our air conditioner repaired. The owner and his helper worked on the A/C for about 6-1/2 hours. The A/C unit is hard to remove from the RV – it took about 2 hours to get it disconnected and out of the motorhome. They then replaced a burned wire, a bad relay, repaired a refrigerant leak, and recharged the unit. The reverse process to reinstall the A/C took about another 2 hours. If this work had been done behind the scenes in a shop, I would never believe that it actually took this long to repair. However, I watched the whole time and they did a professional and efficient job. The owner only charged 5 hours of labor (at $65 an hour) plus parts – so the cost was eminently reasonable.

After the A/C was finished, we drove another 50 miles to the HWH factory in Moscow, Iowa, where we spent the night with an electric hook-up adjacent to their service facility. We drove to nearby Muscatine, Iowa, and had dinner at Applebees. When Carol’s chicken was served, it was not completely cooked. They promptly fixed the problem, and then took her meal off the bill.

The word for the day is “evitable.” I ran across it in Discover magazine and deduced from the context that it was being used as the opposite of “inevitable” and was intended to mean “avoidable.” Despite my doubts about its validity, the dictionary confirmed that it truly is a word.

At 7:00 Tuesday morning, we pulled the RV into one of HWH’s service bays where the factory service personnel fixed a leak in one of the hydraulic cylinders that extends the bedroom slide, tuned-up a slow leveling jack, and adjusted our leveling sensor. This 4-plus hour job totaled only $75, another real bargain. (In Tallahassee we would have paid $105 an hour for labor, and they would have replaced parts rather than repair them.)

While the RV was in the shop, we had a good breakfast in nearby Tipton. During breakfast we chatted with a couple of local farmers and with another couple who were having their RV serviced at HWH. After breakfast we did a week’s worth of laundry in a local laundromat, then returned to HWH and visited with other RVers in their customer lounge until our unit was ready. It rained hard most of the morning, though the worst was over by the time we got on the road.

Today we drove about 300 miles on I-80 to Pine Grove RV Park located about halfway between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska. Southeastern Iowa is mostly rolling farmland, the southwestern part of the state was also rolling, but seemed to have fewer large farms. The interstate had frequent rest areas, all with free WIFI access. Other states would do well to follow Iowa’s example.

Near Des Moines, our RV hit a significant milestone – 66,666.66 miles on the odometer. We recorded the latitude and longitude of this event on our GPS in case anyone is interested.

Pine Grove has good TV reception and free WIFI access. We spent the evening in the coach watching TV.

Wednesday was a sightseeing day. After sleeping-in, we started the day at the Strategic Air Command (SAC) museum outside Omaha. The museum featured a variety of bombers and reconnaissance aircraft in two large indoor hanger areas. They also had an SR-71 supported on a couple of concrete pillars with landing gear retracted, so it looks as though it is in flight.

After the museum, we visited a nearby antique mall and had lunch at Cracker Barrel. We then drove to downtown Lincoln where we visited the Nebraska History Museum. The museum had exhibits that tracked Nebraska history from the Indian days, through pioneer days, World War II, and into modern times.

We learned that due to a problem in the mid-1800s with “jayhawking” or “land piracy,” the Nebraska territorial legislature enacted legislation that, among other things, made it lawful for “any person or persons to kill, slay, and destroy, by all and every means known for taking of life, any armed person or persons who shall at the time of the killing be engaged” in plundering, stealing, etc. Guess legislation allowing guns in workplace parking lots is not so extreme after all.

We also learned that during WWII it was patriotic to share a 32-ounce beer with your gal instead of drinking two 16-ouncers -- it saves the aluminum in the avoided bottlecap.

We decided not to visit the state capitol building, but did get a photo from a couple of blocks away.

We visited two more antique malls before having dinner at La Paz, a crowded Mexican restaurant. We made what was intended to be a quick stop at a grocery store, when they announced over the public address system that there was a tornado warning for areas north of Lincoln (we were south of town). When we returned to the car, we tuned into a station that was reporting constant weather updates and learned that the worst weather was within about 10 miles of our RV park. We stayed put in the grocery store parking lot for about an hour, until the weather had moved on, then set out for “home” to see if any damage had been done.

En route back to the RV, we were stopped by a local policeman for having a burned out headlight. After he took about 15 minutes back in his car – presumably to assure himself that we were not serial killers and had no outstanding warrants – he gave us a written warning and sent us on our way. Back at the RV park it was raining, but apparently we had not suffered any hail or damaging winds. The TV shows another line of weather that is moving through the area south of us, so we may not yet be in the clear. We’re currently watching Jay Leno – in the Central time zone, he’s on an hour earlier here – and the occasional interruptions for weather updates. We awoke in the night to some hard rain, but luckily the high winds and hail stayed south of our campground.

Thursday was a long driving day. We continued on I-80 through southern Nebraska and into western Wyoming where we are staying for two nights at the Rest Away RV Park. Iowa had rolling hills; Nebraska is flat. There were more thunderstorms in Nebraska today. We saw a lot of black sky and spent a large part of the day tuning into weather radio. Our CB receives the National Weather Service weather channels. Whenever there is power to the radio – turned on or not – and a new severe thunderstorm or tornado watch is issued, the radio emits a long, loud, high-pitched warning tone that alternatively attracts your attention and annoys you. Fortunately, the storms stayed either just north, just south or just east of us as we headed westward across the state. At the end of the day we had a little light rain, but missed all the severe thunderstorms and tornado watches.

We stopped to buy diesel for the RV at a station which had two operating pumps and two that were out of order. When we started pumping at the first good pump, the in-line fuel filter on the pump’s hose spewed about 3 gallons of fuel on the ground before I was able to get the pump shut down. While Carol went inside to tell the attendant about the problem, I moved the RV to the last remaining pump and used it to refuel. I then successfully resisted the attendant’s attempt to charge us for the $14 of diesel that their defective pump placed on the ground.

This evening in Cheyenne we bought a new headlight for the CRV, had dinner at Olive Garden, and stopped at Michael’s to let Carol shop for crafty supplies. It is very windy here and we have learned not to open two doors to the car at one time, else the wind rushes through and blows light objects hither and yon.

We have both cable TV and WIFI at this park, so I will use the opportunity to update the blog.

Mark Twain’s Hometown

2008-06-01T19:52:00.003-05:00

[Be sure to click on the photos for larger views.]

This installment covers Saturday (May 31) and Sunday (June 1).

On Saturday, we drove from Mountain View to the Mark Twain RV Park in Hannibal, Missouri. The first part of the drive continued in the Ozarks. Fortunately, the road out of Mountain View was neither as steep nor crooked as the one on which we arrived. We did have to take a 10-plus mile detour when we unexpectedly ran into a “road closed ahead” sign. After a brief stint on the interstate we decided to follow our new GPS which routed us on a variety of smaller state roads and got us safely to Hannibal.

Today was the meeting of the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee to consider what penalty to impose on Florida and Michigan for holding their primaries earlier than allowed by party rules. We spent most of the trip listening to these proceedings on satellite radio and, during a break in the political action, were able to hear the launch of the space shuttle.

In the evening we went to a music/comedy show at the Spratt Family Theater in downtown Hannibal.

On Sunday we toured Hannibal. We started the day with a stop at Lover’s Leap, where legend says that an Indian brave and his lover from another tribe jumped to their deaths to avoid being killed by the princess’ father.

Next we visited the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. This complex included an interpretive center, Clemens’ boyhood home, the home of the girl on whom he modeled the character Becky in Tom Sawyer, his father’s law office / justice of the peace courtroom, and a museum. In the museum we learned that the pen name Mark Twain draws on Clemens’ days as a riverboat captain. Dropping a plump line that measures a depth of two (twain) fathoms “marks twain.” The museum also included a number of Norman Rockwell’s original illustrations for print editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. During the visit I managed to get a picture of Carol with Tom and Becky.

In the afternoon, we took an hour-long riverboat cruise on the Mississippi. On the cruise we learned about barge commerce on the Mississippi and about the 1993 flood that covered the parking lot for the riverboat property in 12 feet of water. We also had a chance to see Lover’s Leap from the opposite perspective.

We are still suffering without house air conditioning in the RV. I think we have found (on-line) a place that we can get it serviced tomorrow with only a brief detour from our planned route to Moscow, Iowa. If not, our best bet will be in Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska, where there are a couple of authorized service centers.

Moscow, Iowa is itself a maintenance stop. It is the home of HWH hydraulics, the company that manufactures the slide-out mechanisms on the RV rooms and the leveling jacks. We have a pinhole leak in one of the slide-out room cylinders and have a factory appointment early Tuesday morning to get the bad part replaced and to have a slow retracting jack serviced or replaced.

We will be camping tomorrow (Monday) night at the HWH factory and will spend Tuesday having the rig serviced. Thus don’t expect another post to the blog until late next week, after we have had some more sightseeing days.

The Folk Music Capital of the World

2008-05-31T18:34:00.002-05:00

[Be sure to click on photos for larger versions.]

This installment covers Tuesday (May 27) through Friday (May 30).

We started our journey about 8:45 on Tuesday morning, playing Jim Horton’s “North to Alaska” as we pulled out of the driveway. I offered to put the CD player on repeat, and play this tune continuously until we arrived in Alaska, but Carol had other ideas.

The travel day, which ended at Lake Lurleen State Park just outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was hot, but otherwise unnotable. We have a new GPS which seems to work fairly well, although we occasionally ignore its directions when we know a better way to get there. For example, the GPS would have routed us on a “shorter/faster” route through Dothan, rather than taking advantage of the circle around the northeast side of town

When we made our first Alaska trip in 2002, I was intrigued by the name “Twinkle Andress,” who was running for state treasurer in Alabama (see my first travel journal on www.themelsons.com). Well, Twinkle has apparently married in the intervening years, and as Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh is now running for the state Public Service Commission. We also passed the Gospel End-Time Deliverance Church, which we also noted on our earlier trip. Fortunately the end time has still not arrived.

We has a nice riverside, pull-through site at the campground – for you non-RVers, the advantage of a pull-through site is that if you don’t need to use your car in the evening, you can leave it hooked-up to the RV. After settling in, we decided to take a short walk around the campground, but were interrupted by rain almost as soon as we exited the coach. We ate in the RV this evening, and Carol read while I watched Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter on DVD.

It turns out that our nice pull-through site did not serve its intended purpose. Due to some campground construction, we couldn’t get out of our camping area on Wednesday morning without turning around, which necessitated unhooking the car and making a 5 point turn in the RV.

Today was our second driving day. It rained most of the morning, then turned warmer in the afternoon. Last summer, when diesel topped out at $3.19 a gallon, we had our first $200+ fill-up. This afternoon, with fuel at $4.51 a gallon, we broke the $300 barrier.

Our campground this evening was a nice Corps of Engineers project known as Rising Star. The only problem (before we arrived) was that both our old printed directions (from Microsoft’s Streets and Trips program) and our new GPS seemed to think that the best was to get there involved a route which would have us drive for several miles on a clay road on the top of a levee. We were too smart to fall into that trap, so after a lengthy detour we finally made it to our campsite.

Carol and I did stroll around the campground this evening. There was a nice cool breeze off the man-made lake, and we saw a number of birds, including several red-wing blackbirds.

We had supper in the RV again, then Carol continued to read while I watched the first three episodes of Saturday Night Live from 1975. They don’t quite know what they’re doing with the show yet. The first episode, hosted by George Carlin, featured a lot of sketch comedy. The second, hosted by Paul Simon, was mostly singing, with Chevy Chase’s weekend news as the only performance by the Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

On Thursday, we finally arrived at our first “destination” – Mountain View, Arkansas, the self-proclaimed folk music capital of the world. Our first two days were spent on U.S. highways which were mostly four-lane roads. Today the first three-quarters of our drive was on interstates, and the last quarter was an interesting trip on two-lane mountain roads. The GPS performed well on the interstate, navigating us through a series of merging and unmerging routes in Little Rock and North Little Rock. On the mountain roads we were too busy driving to pay much attention to the GPS. The sign that said “Steep and curvy road next 21 miles” did not bother us. What it neglected to say was “narrow and frequented by logging trucks racing downhill past you.”

Our campground, Sylamore Creek, is a few miles north of town and offers both cable TV and WIFI access. After hooking-up, we discovered that our house air conditioner is apparently low on refrigerant. Over the space of an hour, the A/C managed to “cool” the interior from 83 to 87 while the outside temperature remained constant at 83. There is a mobile RV service company listed as one of the local businesses on our campground map. However we have poor cell phone service at the campground, so we don’t yet know if we will be able to get the A/C recharged before we leave here Saturday morning.

To escape the heat we hopped in the car and went to . . . . . Wal-Mart. After getting our car washed, we dined at the local Country Time restaurant which featured country-style cooking. We then went to an evening music show at the Ozark Folk Center. The show featured several groups who play only acoustic instruments, and only songs written before 1943. Except for the last group – Mulligan Stew – I didn’t think the groups were as good as the ones we saw here four years ago on our way home from Branson, Missouri. Mulligan Stew was a five piece band consisting of a hammered dulcimer, a bass, a banjo, a guitar, and a fiddle played by a 13-year-old boy who is the state Junior Fiddle Champion.

On Friday we returned to the Ozark Folk Center, primarily to visit the 22 workshops in their craft village. Before touring the workshops, we stopped at the outdoor music stage to listen to a short set by Mulligan Stew, the group that closed last night’s show.

All of the craft workshops demonstrate skills that were common in the Ozarks. The gentleman in the wood shop (actually carving) had been a long time Alaska resident and we chatted for a few moments about our upcoming trip. While we were there he spent a couple of minutes carving our likenesses on round toothpicks. The fellow in the cooper’s shop was carving several maple spoons from a tree he had recently cut. The woman in the furniture shop was in the process of re-caning a chair. She spent some time giving us and the other visitors examples of how much life in the rural communities has changed in the past 100 years. The guy operating the foot powered lathe has two professions – woodturning (primarily toy tops) and as an arborist. Since he started woodturning about six years ago he has sold over 5,000 tops. His home workshop – which he showed us pictures of – holds over 80 varieties of wood, most of it gathered as a result of his arborist business.

In the evening we enjoyed a music/comedy show at the Cash Theater that featured music from the 50s and 60s.

Santa Fe, Carlsbad, Ft. Davis, Big Bend, and the Sprint Home

2007-10-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

Be sure to click on photos for larger images.

This installment covers Saturday (October 6) through Tuesday (October 16)

On Saturday we toured downtown Santa Fe. We saw a museum in the Palace of the Governors (which was a little disappointing) and visited the Museum of Fine Arts. There are a lot of Native American vendors in front of the Palace of the Governors, but they are higher priced than the roadside ones in Utah and Colorado.

On Sunday we went to Museum Hill and visited the International Folk Art Museum and the Museum of Native American Art. The first features a large private collection of folk art that was collected all over the world. The highlight of the Native American museum is a series of exhibits about the early Indians in New Mexico. There are a lot of short films of modern Native Americans talking about the oral history of their tribes and their experiences growing up in the Indian culture. No photos were allowed in any of the Santa Fe museums.

Monday was a rest and recuperate day. In the morning, Carol took the car and went shopping and got her hair cut while I researched health insurance on the Internet. In the afternoon we went to the local shopping center where we had an early dinner at Applebee’s and I got an unexpectedly short haircut.

On Tuesday we drove to Carlsbad, New Mexico. Much of the day was flat or rolling desert landscape with a straight road. At various points I was able to see the road from 10-11 miles ahead. We arrived in Carlsbad about 3:30 and departed soon after in the car for the 5:00 p.m. ranger program at Carlsbad Caverns (25 miles south) on the evening flight of the New Mexican free-tail bats. The ranger (a native New Zealander) talked for about half an hour, then answered questions for another hour before the bats finally flew at about 6:40. The bats flew continuously up out of the cavern, then formed into large groups and flew off into the distance for their evening of eating moths. The bats ultimately migrate south for the winter, and by November the evening flights will stop until next May. No photos are allowed of the bat flights.

On Wednesday we drove back to the caverns, where we took the self-guided Natural Entrance Tour, a mile-plus walk down a series of deep switchbacks which terminates about 750 feet underground. We then connected with the mile-plus Big Room Tour, which goes around the perimeter of a 65,000 square foot room the size of 14 football fields. The caverns were not crowded, and the pace was more leisurely than on what I remember of previous ranger-guided tours.

On Thursday we made a short trip to Fort Davis, TX, where we visited the Fort Davis National Historic Site. Fort Davis was used both before and after the Civil War to provide protection to the wagon trails to California. The reason we stopped here – the middle of nowhere – is to take a tour tomorrow of McDonald Observatory.

On Friday morning we drove to McDonald Observatory (operated by the University of Texas) and saw a program on the sun, then toured the observatory’s two largest telescopes, one of which is the fourth largest in the world. After lunch in the observatory café, we drove the remainder of a 74-mile scenic loop through the Davis mountains. In the late afternoon we returned to the observatory for their evening program. The evening started with a presentation on the planets in our solar system. This was followed by a combination of an outside program on the constellations, and the opportunity to look through six telescopes at various celestial features. These included the Andromeda galaxy, Jupiter, a nebula where stars are being formed, a red star that is in the last stages of life, and a nebula with thousands of old stars. This program had been recommended to us by one of the other couples on our caravan, and was well worth the two-day detour to Fort Davis.

On Saturday we drove to Big Bend National Park in extreme southwest Texas. The temperature hit 103 in the afternoon, and we did nothing today but try (unsuccessfully) to stay cool.

On Sunday we drove the car throughout the Big Bend National Park. We visited the Chisos Basin, surrounded by the Chisos Mountains which are wholly contained in the park, ate lunch at the Chisos Basin Lodge, walked a couple of very short trails – including one to the Window, one to Mule Ears, one to an abandoned stone house, and one down to the Rio Grande River – and got a lot of pictures of the colorful mountains.

Monday and Tuesday were the first two days of our four-day sprint home. On Tuesday we drove interstate loops around both San Antonio and Houston. There was a lot of construction in the Houston area, with narrow lanes, and the drive was very harrowing. When we arrived at the campground, we discovered that our passenger side outside rear tire was flat. We never heard a blow-out, presumably it occurred on the trip through/around Houston. After calling a number of local tire dealers, the best we were able to find is a used tire which we are having installed first thing in the morning.

Wednesday and Thursday, which haven’t happened yet, will take us on I-10 from Beaumont Texas, home to Tallahassee. Hopefully today’s flat tire is the last of our “adventures.”

This is the last installment for this summer’s trip. At this time, we are planning an Alaska trip next summer, and will post again when that trip begins.

Last Days of the Caravan

2007-10-05T18:13:00.000-05:00

Be sure to click on the photos for larger views.

This installment covers Thursday (September 27) through Friday (October 5).

On Thursday we drove from Flagstaff to Monument Valley. There was no real sightseeing en route – other than some new views of rocks. After arrival at Gouldings Campground in Monument Valley, we caught a ride with Dwayne and Carolyn into the Monument Valley Visitor Center where we toured the exhibit on Navajo Code Talkers, the small museum, and visited the gift shop. On our return to the campground, we stopped at Navajo Village, a collection of small roadside shops. This evening the tail-enders treated us to a sloppy Joe dinner, followed by a short talent show.

On Friday our group boarded three large truck-mounted tour vehicles and did an all-day tour of Monument Valley. About a third of the tour was on roads open to single-family vehicles, the remainder was on 4-wheel drive roads open only to tour vehicles. In the morning we saw several small cliff dwellings, and drove beside a number of mesas. At lunchtime, our drivers cooked hamburgers in a remote valley. In the afternoon we stopped for a short visit to the visitor center, then drove into the park of the park that has a lot of tower-type monuments and a fair number of arches. We also stopped to tour a small Hogan where a 91-year old Navajo woman was carding wool, spinning thread, and weaving rugs. The trip was very dusty, and we all returned to the campground covered in fine red dirt.

Saturday was our final group travel day, from Monument Valley to Durango, with a stop at Four Corners, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet at a single point. It was very windy today – gusts were forecast to be 55 mph. Just before we arrived at Four Corners, our awning started to bounce in the wind. We limped into Four Corners, where we reset the awning. We then had our picture taken with Carol in two states and me in two others, kissing. This started a trend, and several couples who had already had their pictures taken came back and took one kissing. We did not shop at any of the Navajo shops, but did buy fry bread tacos for lunch. About 20 miles after leaving Four Corners, the awning began to bounce again. This time we pulled off the road and, with help from Joe Frey (who earlier had completely lost his awning to the wind), duct taped the arms and the ends to prevent further damage.

Sunday was an all-day tour of Mesa Verde. Our group took four 11-passenger vans to the park, which is about an hour and a half drive from the campground. In the morning we toured several sites of early dwellings – starting with pit houses and working up to an overview of the famous cliff dwellings. After a picnic lunch, we toured the park’s museum and took a steep, but paved, self-guided trail down to one set of cliff dwellings called Spruce Tree House. The tour of the park ended with a ranger-escorted tour of Cliff House, where we went down stone steps to the pueblo. Leaving the pueblo involved climbing up three flights of ladders. We had seen Mesa Verde with our kids in 1991, but this was our first climb down to Cliff House.

On Saturday group rode the Durango-Silverton railway, which travels about 55 miles through some outstanding mountain scenery. Because we have taken this trip twice before, however, we took very few photos. After a couple of hours for lunch and shopping in Silverton – an old mining town which now exists solely to sell things to folks who take the Durango-Silverton train – we returned to Durango by bus. In the evening we had our farewell dinner in downtown Durango at the historic Statler Hotel.

After coffee and donuts in the campground on Tuesday morning, we drove from Durango to Taos. The route took us over the mountains, and at 10,500 feet we hit the highest point (in the RV) of our trip. We are temporarily burned out from sightseeing, so we took advantage of a couple of slow days in Taos. On Wednesday morning we toured downtown Taos where we continued shopping for gifts and souvenirs. On Thursday morning we did errands, including laundry, shopping, and vacuuming and cleaning the inside of the coach. Both afternoons we relaxed in the RV and in the evenings we watched some television.

On Friday we drove from Taos to Santa Fe. En route we detoured to Los Alamos where we visited a science museum about the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The museum covers everything from the development of the atomic bomb to current day missions such as ensuring (without weapons testing) the reliability of our nuclear arsenal, developing strategies for carbon capture, and performing sophisticated computer modeling. Our campground in Santa Fe has good Internet access, so I will update the blog this evening. The next stops (after 4 nights here) will be Carlsbad Caverns and Big Bend National Park in remote SW Texas. The next update will likely be over a week away.

Grand Canyon and Flagstaff

2007-09-26T20:30:00.001-05:00

Be sure to click on the photos for larger views.

This installment covers Thursday (September 20) through Wednesday (September 26).

On Thursday morning our hosts served a pancake and sausage breakfast at their RV. About 11:30, we car-pooled downtown to join a 4-wheel drive tour of Antelope Canyon. After several miles through soft brown sand, we arrived at this slot canyon. Although we have seen photographs of this type of canyon before, this is the first one we have visited. The water has eroded the Navajo sandstone so that the canyon is open to the air, but undulates down to the canyon floor. (Due to low light, it was hard to get good photos – the ones below do not really do justice to the canyon.) The canyon is subject to flash floods, and no tours are held on days that there is rain in the area.

Friday was another fairly short driving day. En route, we stopped at a couple of roadside shops where we bought some Navajo souvenirs. We also stopped at Desert Tower at the east end of the Grand Canyon where we took a lot of photos of the decorations inside the tower. The tower was built by the railroad as a tourist attraction and was designed to blend as much as possible into the natural environment. We had lunch in the RV after arriving at the campground. In the evening our group boarded a bus for a sunset tour at the south rim.

On Saturday morning we took a bus tour along the east rim of the canyon. We stopped at a couple of overlooks and at an ancestral Puebloan archaeological site. We visited the Desert Tower again and had a group photo taken on the steps of the gift shop. It began raining on our return trip and continued off-and-on (with some pea-size hail in the evening) all afternoon and most of the night. In the late afternoon we saw a film about the Grand Canyon at an IMAX theater. We then had a nice Italian dinner at the Spaghetti Western restaurant. Much of their décor consisted of Italian movie posters for the Magnificent Seven and several of the Clint Eastwood westerns.

Sunday was a free day until dinner time. With threatening showers in the morning, we stayed in the RV until just afternoon. Since it’s finally getting cooler, we also swapped out some summer clothes in the RV for winter clothing in our storage areas. Since most of the south rim is closed to private vehicles, in the afternoon Carol and I rode the park’s shuttle buses to tour much of the south rim, including stops at several overlooks and a short hike along the rim trail between a couple of the overlooks. There were a lot of different views of the canyon, with glimpses of the Colorado River. We also saw the superstructure for an old copper / uranium mine which is now a Superfund site. This evening we had a good steak buffet dinner with our group at the Thunderbird Lodge. Back at the RV, I watched TV and began reading “Death in the Canyon,” a book about the various people who have died in the Grand Canyon, mostly by being stupid (walking backwards off the edge while taking photos) or unprepared for the activity they undertake (hiking in 120 degree weather with little or no water).

Monday was a short driving day, about 100 miles, from Grand Canyon to Flagstaff, Arizona. In the afternoon we ran shopped and ran errands. In the evening we had another nice group dinner at Horseman’s Lodge. Since this is season premiere week on television, and since the campground has cable TV, we spent much of the evening watching new shows.

Tuesday was an all-day bus tour. This morning we visited Oak Creek Canyon to see a deep V-shaped canyon. Next we toured Sedona, where we took photos of the red hills, shopped for gifts, and ate lunch. Then we got back on the bus to visit two parts of Montezuma Castle National Monument – the main area with cliff dwellings and nearby Montezuma Well, a natural spring that was surrounded by a small pueblo settlement.

Wednesday was a free day. We took the CRV and visited Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, where there was a volcano between 1040 and 1100. After a picnic lunch, we toured the Wupatki National Monument, the site of another ancestral Puebloan site. In addition to the normal cliff dwellings, this site had a large community center and a Mexican-style ball court. This evening was dinner in the RV and more of season premiere week.

Photos for the Last Post

2007-09-24T22:14:00.001-05:00

We have a good Internet connection at last, so here are the photos that should have accompanied the last post. Plan to update with a new post on Wednesday night.

Golbin State Park

More Goblin State Park

Capitol Reef National Park

"Settlers Wall" in Capitol Reef NP

The "Tanks" in Capitol Reef NP

"Capitol Dome" in Capitol Reef NP

RVs Climbing to the Summit (click on photo to enlarge)

Bryce Canyon National Park

"Queen Victoria" (the formation on the left) in Bryce Canyon (click photo to enlarge)

Rick and Carol in Bryce Canyon

More Bryce Canyon

Cedar Breaks National Park

Hikers on Top of Ridge in Zion National Park (click photo to enlarge)

Rick and Carol in Zion National Park

"Checkerboard" in Zion National Park

Kolob Canyons Unit of Zion National Park

Pipe Springs "Fort" Today

Pipe Springs "Fort" in 1891

North Rim of Grand Canyon

"Angel's Window" (with Colorado River behind) at North Rim of Grand Canyon

Vermillion Cliffs

Glen Canyon Dam

Glen Canyon Bridge

Houseboat Marina on Lake Powell

"Navajo Tapestry" in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Cliffs in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area from Boat Tour (white area would be underwater when lake level is at its highest)

Glen Canyon Dam with Lake Powell Behind

Rocks and Canyons

2007-09-19T22:32:00.000-05:00

Due to a poor internet connection, there are no photos with this installment. Photos will be posted in a separate entry once we get better WiFi connectivity.

This installment covers Monday (September 10) through Wednesday (September 19).

Monday was a travel day from Moab to Torrey, Utah, near Capitol Reef National Park. En route we stopped in Green River at a museum that documents the first real exploration (in the late 1860s) of the Colorado River Valley. Next we stopped at Goblin State Park. The park has some unusual rock formations which in some ways are reminiscent of Bryce Canyon. After a group dinner in the campground this evening, we enjoyed a half-hour talk (by a former museum director) on one of the groups of Anasazi Indians who lived in this area for about 75 years between 1100 and 1200 A.D.

Tuesday was a free day, and we explored Capitol Reef National Park in our car. At the end of a scenic drive into the park, we hiked about 1.5 miles (3 miles round trip) through Capitol Gorge. In the canyon we saw Indian petroglyphs and a wall where early settlers had signed and dated the canyon walls in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At the far end of the hike we scrambled 0.2 miles up some rocks to visit the “tanks,” where water is trapped in an otherwise dry area. We had a late picnic lunch after the hike, then returned to the visitor center to watch a short movie on the park. We then stopped at another petroglyph site and picked a few apples in a U-pick Orchard in Fruita.

On Wednesday, we drove from Torrey to Bryce Canyon. One segment of the drive was on challenging Highway 12, part of which runs along a high ridge with big drop-offs on each side of the road. The highest elevation on this segment was 9600 feet. En route we stopped to see an Anasazi Museum and some roadside views. At the campground we socialized for about an hour and a half before walking to Ruby Inn for an excellent buffet dinner with our group.

On Thursday, Carol and I went sightseeing in Bryce Canyon. In the morning we walked the 1.6 mile roundtrip Queens Garden Trail, which goes about 320 feet down into the canyon. The trail ends at a viewpoint for the Queen Victoria formation. After struggling back uphill, we drove to the far end of the canyon and worked our way back through all the sightseeing stops along the way. We also stopped for a picnic lunch, and later at the Visitor Center where we saw a short film on the park. After a couple of hours back at the RV we drove back to Sunset Point to see the park at sundown. The sunset did not make as much difference in coloration of the canyon as I had expected.

Friday we drove from Bryce Canyon to St. George, Utah. Just past the 10,000 foot summit, we parked the RV and drove the toad a short distance into Cedar Breaks National Monument. This high canyon was very much like Bryce Canyon. It was windy and cool at the monument. We then drove down into St. George, a booming retirement community which (in the summer) is consistently one of the hottest places in Utah. In the evening we had a group buffet dinner at a performing arts center, followed by the musical Cinderella in an open-air amphitheater. The play, which included real horses pulling carriages, was very entertaining. In particular, the two women playing the wicked stepsisters were quite good. On the bus ride to dinner and the play we saw sand dunes where some western movies have been filmed, and a range of lava mountains formed when rock was pushed up through a crack in the earth’s crust.

On Saturday morning we took a bus to Zion National Park. The owner/operator of the RV park (and his 9-year-old son) served as our tour guide(s). In Zion, we had to debus and travel on one of the park shuttles. We rode to the end of the park where we walked a portion of the riverside trail. After stopping at one scenic viewpoint on the return trip, we stopped and walked to Weeping Rock, where rain that fell 1200+ years ago and seeped through the limestone has finally hit an impervious layer and moved sideways to drip out the side of the mountain. On our tour, we learned that the rock at the top layer of the Grand Canyon corresponds to the bottom layer of Zion, and that the top layer of Zion corresponds to the bottom layer of Bryce. After lunch at the Zion Lodge, we saw an IMAX movie on Zion and some of the other parks in Utah.

Sunday was a free day. In the morning, we drove the CRV north to the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park. This area features a number of box canyons. At the end of the scenic drive, we hiked a 1.0 mile trail to a high overlook. On our return to St. George, we had a late lunch, shopped a little, then saw a western – “3:10 to Yuma”.

Monday was a short driving day from St. George to Jacobs Lake, located about 40 miles from the north rim of the Grand Canyon. En route, we stopped at Pine Spring National Monument. This is an early home – purchased by the Mormons from a rancher in the late 1800s – which sits atop a natural spring. We had a ranger-guided tour of the fort – the main house that has 2 feet thick walls, a lookout tower, and gun ports on the top. It was operated for years as a “tithe ranch,” where livestock that were tithed to the church were raised.

After arriving at Jacobs Lake Group Campground, where we dry camped, we drove to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Carol and I tried to see all the overlooks. One of the overlooks on the road to Cape Royale was the Angel’s Window, a natural arch or bridge through which you can catch a glimpse of the Colorado River. We finished the day at the North Rim’s Grand Lodge and saw a sunset from a lookout on the Bright Angel trail. On our trip back to the campground after dark, we passed a large number of mule deer. We also stopped at a roadside pullout to spend a few minutes watching the stars – the roadside at that time of night was both dark and quiet.

Tuesday was our shortest driving day yet, from Jacobs Lake to a campground in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. After setting up camp, Carol and I explored downtown Page, had the car serviced while we shopped, stopped at an overlook of the Glen Canyon Dam, then stopped at the (closed) visitor center from which we snapped a few photos and walked out on the dam-side of the bridge across the Colorado River. Back at the campground for the evening, we had social hour with the other members of our caravan,

On Wednesday morning we had a 3-hour boat tour of a very small portion of Lake Powell, the man-made lake behind Glen Canyon Dam. We sailed up Navaho Canyon to see the Navaho tapestry – also known as desert varnish, or manganese oxide – which makes black designs as it washes down the rock cliffs. The water level in the lake is about 100 feet below its all-time high, and the cliffs generally run another 300-400 feet above that. We also sailed into Antelope Canyon, a much narrower canyon that we are scheduled to visit tomorrow by open-air 4-wheel drive vehicles. The lake is home to an amazing number and variety of houseboats – a boat slip at the marina costs $25,000 plus $1,200 per month, but from the size of the houseboats, it looks like their owners can afford it.

After the boat tour, Carol and I returned to the Glen Canyon Dam visitor center. While there, we took a 45-minute guided tour to the top and bottom of the dam. We learned that the concrete in the center of the bottom of the dam is only 98% cured, and that it continues to dry to this day. We also learned that as the water in the lake rises seasonally, the dam itself moves as much as two inches due to changes in the water pressure. The Glen Canyon Bridge, just downstream from the dam, was built before construction on the dam started; prior to construction of the bridge, it required a 100+ mile trip to a downstream crossing to get from one side of the canyon to the other. Following the tour, we walked out onto the bridge again, and got some more pictures of the dam and the Colorado River.

Wednesday evening, we had an excellent group dinner at the Wahweah Lodge, overlooking Lake Powell. This name is a Piute word meaning bad or bitter water, the Indian’s original name for the Colorado River in this area.

Moab -- Arches and Canyonlands National Parks

2007-09-09T17:10:00.000-05:00

Be sure to click on the photos for larger views.

This installment covers Tuesday (September 4) through Sunday (September 9).

Tuesday we drove from Santa Fe to Moab, Utah, where our WIT caravan will start on Thursday afternoon. In the late afternoon, we had a social hour with about 9 couples who have already arrived for the caravan. On Wednesday, we ran errands and relaxed with another evening social hour.

On Thursday morning we took the car to town for souvenir and gift shopping. Mid-afternoon we had our caravan kick-off meeting, preceded by some light snacks. In the evening we had our first group dinner, then took the “Canyonlands by Night” boat tour up the Colorado River – no photos allowed. On the first part of the tour, our guide pointed out a lot of features of the high river cliffs. On the second part, we saw a sound and light show that told the geologic and cultural history of the area. It was a moonless night, and when the light show lights were out, we had an unencumbered view of the heavens – including several satellites – through a clear desert sky.

On Friday, we had an all-day bus tour that took us through Arches National Park, the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park. These three parks encompass a variety of types of rock formations and offer a lot of scenic views. The views in Canyonlands were marred by smoke from forest fires in other western states. Our guide not only talked about geology, flora and fauna, but also pointed out sites where a large number of Hollywood movies have been made.

A view in Arches NP.

Carol and Rick at Double Arch

Newspaper Rock

Carol and Rick at Green River Overlook in Canyonlands

On Saturday morning we had a two-hour jet boat tour down the Colorado river. Along the way we saw colorful cliffs, 4-wheel drive vehicles climbing a road that’s rated 4 out of 5 for 4x4s, and the local potash plant. After returning to the dock, we got into air conditioned 4-wheel drive vehicles for a two-hour trip up an easy 4-wheel drive road to Gemini Bridges, located on Bureau of Land Management land adjacent to Dead Horse Point State Park. In the afternoon, Carol and I drove about 15 miles along the Colorado River then into Castle Creek where we viewed Castle Rock, a rock tower that has been the site of a number of automobile commercials. We returned to buy wine at the Castle Creek Winery and to tour their basement museum which recalls many of the movies that have been filmed at least in part in Grand County.

View of Colorado River Canyon from Jet Boat

Castle Rock

After a short stop in the RV, we departed about 6:00 p.m. for Arches National Park. We drove the to far end of the park and spent 1-1/4 hours hiking the 1.6 mile plus round-trip trail to Landscape Arch (the thinnest arch in the park – 6 feet thick at its narrowest point) with side trips to Tunnel Arch and Pine Tree Arch. With the sun setting, we got were able to capture some different colors in our photos. It began to cool off by the early evening, with a nice cool breeze in some of the low, damper spots on the trail. Tunnel Arch lies at the end of a narrow canyon – when we arrived some ravens were flying through the narrow part of the canyon and the sound of their wings was echoed off both sides, making a loud, eerie sound.

Landscape Arch

Carol at Pine Tree Arch

On Sunday morning we took the CRV into Canyonlands National Park. After a brief stop at the visitor center we stopped at the overlook for the 4-wheel drive road down into the canyon. (If you enlarge the first photo below, you can see a car on the road about half way down into the canyon.) We then visited Mesa Arch – when looking through the arch you can see both a distant mesa and the closer Washerwoman Arch. There is still smoke in the air, so we never got any good Canyonlands photos – but we do have some excellent ones from earlier visits in 1991 and 2002. This evening we will have a chuck wagon dinner and western show with our caravan group.

View of Car Climbing Road Out of Canyon

View Underneath Mesa Arch

Grand Tetons and Salt Lake City

2007-09-03T19:27:00.000-05:00

Be sure to click on photos for larger images.

This installment covers Friday (August 31) through Monday (September 3).

Friday was a short 70 mile drive from Yellowstone to Grand Teton National Park. After getting the RV hooked up, we drove south in the park to see the mountains – which rise abruptly from the surrounding landscape. It drizzled on and off this afternoon, and the sky was overcast, so the photos of the mountains are not the best. In Jackson Hole, just outside the south boundary of the park, we visited the National Wildlife Art Museum, which has a fine collection of painting and sculpture. On our return to camp, we saw a couple of mule deer at the roadside and some pronghorn antelope in the sagebrush prairie.

Saturday was bright and sunny, and we re-explored the southern end of the park in greater depth from 9:00 a.m. to about 8:00 p.m. We visited about every turn-out, and took several side roads down to the Snake River or across “antelope flats.” The sunnier day led to better pictures of the mountains in the Teton range. We saw more buffalo along the road, a couple of elk somewhat distant in the woods, a couple of moose distant in the willows, and a lot of pronghorn antelope.

We spent part of the afternoon in Jackson Hole, where we visited a number of souvenir shops and had our picture taken under one of the antler arches that decorate the four corners of the town square. We also stopped at a UPS store to pack and ship home a 55 pound box of book, souvenirs, and gifts that we have picked up so far.

In the afternoon we saw a coyote in a distant field and some stunning reflections of the mountains in water.

Sunday was a driving day, from Grand Teton to a campground just north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was cool this morning, but got into the mid-90s by this afternoon. Our only sightseeing today was a quick stop at a high elevation roadside park for a view of Bear Lake. We did snap a photo of the largest antler arch in the world, this crosses the main highway in Afton, Wyoming.

Monday we just relaxed in the RV, made a shopping trip to one of the other Santa Fe suburbs, and listened to the FSU football season opener on our satellite radio.

There were two posts today – be sure to read the next one if you haven’t seen it yet.

Custer to Yellowstone

2007-09-03T11:41:00.000-05:00

Be sure to click on photos for larger images.

This installment covers Sunday (August 26) through Thursday (August 30).

On Sunday, we drove from Custer, SD to Sheridan, WY. It was a hot day, with the temperature in the high 90s. En route we stopped at Devils Tower, the oldest national monument in the country (and spelled without an apostrophe because that’s the way it was spelled in the presidential proclamation establishing the monument). This 850+ high stone tower is made of lava that formed a cone about a mile and a half underground. Subsequent erosion removed the surrounding limestone, leaving the tower. There are a variety of Native American tales about the creation of the tower – most of them involve humans being chased by a giant bear when the tower rises under them and the bear unsuccessfully tries to climb the tower. The vertical fissures in the side of the tower are said to have been left by the bear’s claws.

When I checked the fluid levels in the RV on Monday morning, I discovered a crack in the RV’s coolant reservoir. This caused us to delay our drive to Yellowstone for a day and to detour to Billings, Montana, the site of the nearest Freightliner dealer. While they replaced the reservoir and performed our standard 11,000 mile service, we took the car and back-tracked about 60 miles to the Little Big Horn National Monument. The monument includes a veteran’s cemetery, much of the Little Big Horn battlefield (including last stand hill where there are grave markers for Custer {enlarge the second photo} and the 41 men who died at that site), scattered markers for killed U.S. soldiers and various Indian warriors, a monument to the soldiers, and a monument to the Indians. We over-nighted at the dealer’s parking lot and will leave in the morning for Yellowstone.

Tuesday’s drive to Yellowstone took us into the mountains, from 3300 feet at Billings to a high of about 8600 feet on a mountain pass into the park. En route, we stopped for about three hours at the Buffalo Bill Heritage Center in Cody, Wyoming. The center is actually a collection of five museums under one roof: the Buffalo Bill Museum; a Firearms museum that has a huge collection (1500 on the main floor and 1200 more in the basement) of all types of firearms, including rifles, pistols, blunderbusses, Gatling guns, shotguns, etc.; a Western Art Gallery; a Plains Indian Museum; and a Natural History Museum that explains the Western flora and fauna at various altitudes from mountain top to prairie. Our campground for the next three nights is the Fishing Bridge RV Park in Yellowstone National Park. This is one of the quietest RV parks we have been in – it’s away from both highway and railway noise.

Be sure to enlarge the photo of the pistol - it's apparantly a handgun that Dick Cheney never shot anyone with.

Although we never like to have mechanical problems, the coolant reservoir problem couldn’t have come at a better time – we were reasonably close to a competent dealer and the unexpected side trip allowed us to see both the Little Big Horn National Monument and the museum in Cody, neither of which we would have seen on our original schedule.

Wednesday was a long sightseeing day, from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 this evening. We drove the southern loop in the national park and stopped at just about every turn-out along the route. The first stop was the West Thumb Geyser Basin, where we saw steam vents both along the shoreline and in the lake itself. The next stop was Kepler Cascades, a waterfall located just a short walk from the road. We then crossed the Continental Divide twice within the space of 6 miles.

We arrived to see Old Faithful erupt about 15 minutes after we arrived – our timing is excellent, it erupts about every 90-95 minutes. We then walked a short path through adjacent geyser basin, ate lunch, and then got to see a second eruption which was even higher than the first. En route to the next stop, we saw two elk in the woods by the road,

We continued to the Midway Geyser Basin, a waterfall in Firehole Canyon, and the roadside Gibbon Falls. We stopped and toured the Artist’s Paintpots area, where thermal activity has left spots of colored ground; however, the colors here are not as vivid as the Indian Paintpots which we saw in Canada in 2002. This afternoon we saw a couple of distant bison herds, but took no buffalo photos. About dusk we saw the Upper Yellowstone Falls and visited the Sulfur Cauldron before returning to the RV for dinner.

It was cool again last night, down to the 40s. On Thursday, we drove the upper loop in the park, leaving about 8:30 and returning about 5:00. Our first sight was a small group of ducks riding over rapids in the Yellowstone River, then swimming back to the base of the rapids to dive for fish. We stopped at the “Mud Volcano,” a site with a lot of thermal pools and a couple of bubbling mud pots. We saw some close-up buffalo there – they sneaked up beside us and then walked part of the boardwalk path about 30 feet ahead of us.

On the next driving leg we pulled off the road to see a mama grizzly bear and four cubs in a distant field. They were far enough away that one had to use binoculars to see more than just five small brown blobs. We then visited the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which is a surprisingly deep canyon and two sets of waterfalls; needless to say, we took a lot of photos. On our way to Mammoth Hot Springs, we photographed a mama moose and calf eating in a roadside pond. Mammoth Hot Springs was disappointing, there is little or no water in the “springs” this year, so we saw some colorful rock, but that is about all.

Tomorrow we will leave for Grand Teton National Park and then on to Santa Fe and Moab, Utah, where our Winnebago Caravan kicks off next Thursday.

Black Hills of South Dakota

2007-08-25T19:20:00.001-05:00

Be sure to click on photos for larger images.

This installment covers Wednesday (August 22) through Saturday (August 25).

Before making our short drive from Rapid City to Custer, South Dakota on Wednesday, we started the day at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum. The museum had a few indoor exhibits, including a Minuteman Missile launch control training center, and a dozen or more outside aircraft, including B-1 and B-52 bombers, and a wide variety of fighters. We also took an escorted tour of Ellsworth AFB and were able to go down into a Minuteman missile silo that had been used for training purposes. The trip to Custer was uneventful, and we saved sightseeing in the Custer area for the next three days.

On Thursday we headed into Custer State Park then drove south to Wind Cave National Park. In Custer we saw a herd of distant buffalo, and a single buffalo walking alongside the road. We also saw a few deer grazing in the open grasslands, and one group of wild turkey. Wind Cave is now the 4th longest cave in the world (currently measured at 125 miles) and the 2nd longest in Custer County, SD (after Jewel Cave). Because of the lack of water, it does not have stalactites and stalagmites, but does have an interesting formation called boxwork. The boxwork was formed at the same time, and by the same action, as the cave – limestone dissolving in standing water and leaving harder calcite as thin formations. Unfortunately, our photos of the boxwork do not really do it justice.

After lunch in Hot Springs, our final stop of the day was the National Mammoth Site. This is an under-roof, working archeological dig (see photos). About 27,000 years ago, a sinkhole formed at the site and mammoths who went down to eat and drink were unable to climb back out. A core drilling indicated that there are bones down to at least 60 feet below the current surface; to date, only 22 feet or less has been excavated and so far 55 mammoths (110 tusks and assorted bones) have been unearthed.

We got into the car at 6:30 on Friday morning to drive Custer State Park’s wildlife loop. Between 7 and 8 a.m., we saw two species of deer, a lot of turkeys, a lot of buffalo along and in the road, and one big horn sheep. Next we drove up the Needles Highway toward Mt. Rushmore. Due to fog on the highway and rain at Mt. Rushmore, we did not get any good photos; we will try it again tomorrow.

After finishing at Mt. Rushmore, we drove back through Custer to Jewel Cave. There was a limited tour schedule today, so we took a short (20 min.) tour which consisted of a ride down an elevator to a huge underground room. Jewel Cave has only a few stalactites and stalagmites, due to the lack of water. It has now been mapped at just over 140 miles, making it the second largest cave in the world, after Mammoth Cave. Based on measurements of wind volume, experts estimate that only 2-10% of the cave has been mapped.

Next we toured the National Woodcarver’s Museum, which contains a few large pieces and a number of multi-character scenes. The detail in some of the carving is amazing. Our last stop was the Crazy Horse Monument site. The monument of Crazy Horse riding his horse is ultimately planned to be several times the size of Mt. Rushmore. To date, Crazy Horse’s face is complete, and a lot of preliminary work has been done to begin to rough-in the shape of his horse. Given the pace of work, it may not be completed even in our children’s lifetime. The site also includes a nice museum with a large number and variety of Indian artifacts.

After a short stop back at the RV, we drove the wildlife loop again at dusk, from about 7-8 p.m. We saw three variety of deer (more deer than in the morning), and again saw a large number of buffalo. We did not see any elk today, although there is supposed to be a large herd in the park.

On Saturday we retraced part of yesterday’s trips, in the sun instead of the rain. We got pictures of the “eye of the needle” on the Needles Highway (see photo) and of Mt. Rushmore, including a side view of Washington’s head and a long distance view of the monument. Compare today’s sunny photo of Mt. Rushmore with yesterday’s rainy photo, when the president’s appear to be weeping (see photos).

With the Badlands, the Minuteman Missile Site, Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and Mt. Rushmore, we have now visited 5 National Parks or Monuments in the past week. Tomorrow we leave for a two day drive to Yellowstone National Park, with a scheduled stop en route at Devil’s Tower National Monument.

South Dakota Part I

2007-08-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

Be sure to click on photos for larger images.

This installment covers Friday (August 17) through Tuesday (August 21).

On Friday we started by visiting the President’s Park Sculpture Garden. This attraction has a large bust of every president (see photo) accompanied by a display which highlights his life and presidency and contains a brief comment on his First Lady. We then visited a natural history museum in Hill, SD, containing a variety of rocks, fossils, and dinosaur skeletons. After window shopping on the short main street, we had lunch at Desperados, a restaurant housed in the oldest surviving commercial log structure in South Dakota. We finished the day’s sightseeing by driving to Sturgis, the home of an annual motorcycle gathering which ended about a week ago. While there, we visited the Motorcycle Museum. Back at the RV for the evening, where we had a very heavy rain and a little small hail. Deadwood missed the worst of the storm – there was baseball size hail about 12 miles due south of Sturgis, with flash-flooding in the same area.

On Saturday we drove a “scenic byway” from Deadwood to Spearfish. En route we walked a short paved trail to Roughlock Falls. It is so named because the surrounding hills are very steep and in the early days they were navigated downhill by tying (rough-locking) the wheels of a wagon, hitching the team to the back, and letting the horses slow the wagon’s slide downhill. In Spearfish we visited the High Plains Museum, which featured a lot of cattle related items, including a vast barbed wire collection. This is the first place I have ever seen a men’s room sign saying “Please exercise diligence when using the urinals.” After lunch we returned to explore downtown Deadwood.

In Deadwood we won a little money (about $11) at video poker in one of the many small casinos; souvenir-shopped; watched a mock gunfight (not nearly as elaborate as the one we saw last week at Ft. Lincoln); visited the Deadwood Museum (where we learned that Wild Bill Hickok’s killer was found not guilty at his first trial in Deadwood, but was convicted and hanged after a second trial a few weeks later in a nearby city – so much for double jeopardy); and drove up a steep hill to visit Mt. Moriah Cemetery, where we saw the gravesites of Hickok (see photo) and Calamity Jane.

On Sunday we drove from Deadwood to Pierre, SD, where we are staying for two nights in a nice campground (Lake Oahe Downstream) managed by the State of South Dakota on a Corps of Engineers lake. Our first stop was at the touted Wall Drug Store in Wall, SD (see photo) – it has more road signs announcing its approach than does Rock City.

Next we drove through Badlands National Park, stopping at a lot of overlooks for sightseeing and photos (see photo).

On Monday we drove to downtown over the Oahe Dam on the Missouri River – this is one of the largest rolled earth dams in the world. We then took a self-guided toured of South Dakota State Capitol, which is a highly decorated building (see photos) that looks much more like a typical capitol than did North Dakota’s. The floor in the rotunda is mosaic. Since the artisans who laid the mosaic could not sign their work, each was given one blue tile to place as a signature – apparently on 55 of the 67 artisans actually laid these tiles. When the floor was refurbished, each of the tile-layers was given a heart-shaped tile to place as a signature. Next we walked around Capitol Lake and saw the memorial to South Dakota servicemen and women (see photo).

After lunch, we toured the South Dakota Heritage Center. This was another nice museum whose claim to fame is that it is covered by earth, making it very energy efficient. From the upstairs, looking downtown, you can see that Pierre is located in a valley surrounded by hills on all sides.

We left the campground about 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning so that we could get to the half-day a week (Tuesday 9:30-12:00) open house at the National Park’s new Minuteman Missile sites located near the Badlands National Park.

There are two Minuteman sites – Delta 01 is the former Delta flight’s launch control center, Delta 09 is the silo for one of the flight’s 10 Minuteman II missiles. The preservation of these two sites as a museum was negotiated as part of the arms reduction talks. The other 44 Minuteman II launch control centers and 449 missile silos have been destroyed. (There are still about 500 active Minuteman III missile sites in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, and they are scheduled to stay in service until at least 2025.)

The story of Minuteman missiles: These were the first solid fuel missiles that were deployed; they replaced the liquid fueled Atlas and Titan missiles. The earlier missile silos had to be adjacent to the launch control centers because of the manual process involved in raising and fueling the missiles. Each ten Minuteman II silos, which were built by the Corps of Engineers between 1961 and 1963, were controlled by one launch control center. (A squadron consisted of 5 launch control centers, controlling a total of 50 missiles.) These silos were located remotely – typically 3 to 15 miles from the launch center – and were tied into the center by underground copper cable. They remained in service for thirty years, from 1963 to 1993.

The above-ground life support and security facilities at the launch center were manned by a USAF facility manager, 6 security policemen, and a cook, who worked 36 hours on, 36 hours off. Sometimes these personnel were joined by maintenance personnel. The launch control facility, located 30 to 90 feet underground depending on the soil conditions, was manned by two missilers who worked 24-hour shifts behind an 8-ton hydraulically-operated, steel and concrete blast door (see photos). This was a “no-lone zone,” which meant that there could never be one person left alone in the launch facility.

Our guide in the launch control center was a former missiler. He explained that a “war order message” would be announced by a warbling tone followed by two six digit codes. Once these codes were authenticated by both of the missilers, they would use separate keys to open a red lock box containing launch codes and launch keys. They would then determine, from the war order codes, which of the particular launch codes was to be used. Each missile had six preprogrammed targets. The particular launch code would determine which missiles would be launched at which targets, and which missiles would be held in reserve. The war order message also contained a launch time. The missilers would enter the launch codes and, at the appointed time, would turn their launch keys in slots located 12 feet apart. No missiles would be launched, however, unless keys were turned simultaneously in at least two of the squadron’s five launch control centers. Once launched, there was no way to destroy the missiles in flight.

At the Delta 09 site, we saw a missile in its silo (see photo). The missile was normally covered by a 7-ton concrete door. As part of the launch preparation sequence, explosive charges would be remotely detonated in order to blow the door away.

After finishing the tour of the two Delta sites, we drove on to Rapid City on a state highway that traveled primarily through a national grasslands preserve. After a late lunch we went to a theater to see “The Bourne Ultimatum.”

Western North Dakota

2007-08-16T19:41:00.000-05:00

NOTE: Click on any photo for a larger version.

This installment covers Monday (August 13) through Thursday (August 16).

On Monday, we drove west from Minot to the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, where we visited the Confluence Interpretive Center, Fort Buford, and Fort Union. Fort Buford was a military post which at its height housed 6 companies of men. Only one or two original buildings remain, including the restored base commander’s quarters which serves as a museum. This is the building (shown below) in which Sitting Bull surrendered. Nearby Fort Union was an American Fur Company trading post (shown below). American Fur Company was founded by John Jacob Astor and was later joined by McKenzie of the North West Company after the latter was absorbed by the Hudson Bay Company. The post was large and elaborate, and dealt with both independent white fur traders and with a number of Indian tribes.

We then turned south toward the North Dakota Badlands and the north unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. En route we stopped in Alexander, ND, at the “Lewis and Clark Trail Museum,” so-named because it is on the route of the expedition, not because it features Lewis and Clark. This turned out to be a nice local museum in a 3-story 1920s vintage school house with attached gymnasium. The museum included a lot of local artifacts organized in separate rooms by subject area. One room consisted of a number of display cases, purchased by local families for $100 each, containing family memorabilia (shown below).

We spent the night in the national park. In the early evening we drove the 14 mile road into the park. We got some good views of the badlands and the Little Missouri River, saw a couple of mule deer, and encountered a small herd of buffalo crossing the road.

Since check-out time is noon, on Tuesday morning we drove the park road again. We saw a lot of buffalo, starting with a herd that was making its way through the RV park just as we prepared to leave (shown below). We then encountered three more herds along the drive.

Our RV trip on Tuesday was a short drive south out of the badlands, through hilly ranching country, a little flat farming country, and back into more badlands just outside Medora. On Tuesday evening we went to the Medora Musical. The performance takes place in an open-air amphitheater that goes sharply down the side of one of the badlands hills. In addition to performance on the stage, some action takes place behind the stage on a facing hill. The song and dance was high energy, some country, some patriotic, and some N.D. championship yodeling. All-in-all a unique and entertaining show.

We were in Medora again on Wednesday. In the morning we toured the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. There are several prairie dog towns along the route, and the animals were out in force (shown below). We walked the ridge trail, which took us to a high spot with a 360 degree view of the badlands landscape – nice to look at but impossible to get a good photograph. We also walked the coal fire trail, which took us across land under which a 12’ thick coal vein burned between 1951 and 1977. Some of the artifacts are a depression where the overburden sank, and what the locals call “scoria,” a red brick like substance on the hilltops that was produced when the clay and earth on the surface was heated by the burning coal below (shown below). In this area we saw our only buffalo of the day, quietly grazing alongside the trail, and got Carol’s picture with the buffalo in the background (shown below).

In the afternoon we saw a 45 minute one-act play entitled “Bully.” This was a monologue by a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator who told stories that reflected Roosevelt’s philosophy and the highpoints of his adult life. It was an interesting way to get a mini-history lesson. Next we toured the Chateau De Mores, the summer house built by a French Marquis who came to Medora in what was ultimately an unsuccessful attempt to operate a slaughterhouse (shown below). Though the family returned to France after a few years, the family hired caretakers for the next 50 years, who maintained the property to some extent until it was gifted to the state in the 1930s and rehabilitated by the CCC.

Thursday was a repositioning day. We drove the 221 miles from Medora to Deadwood, gaining about 2500 feet of altitude in the process. Until we got near Deadwood, most of the drive was through high plains. At one point, US-85 ran due south in a straight line without a town for about 40 miles – and we could see distant hills on the road 10 miles away. After arriving in Deadwood we shopped, ran errands, and cleaned the RV.

Western Minnesota to Central North Dakota

2007-08-12T21:47:00.000-05:00

This installment covers Saturday (August 4) through Sunday (August 12).

On Saturday we drove to Bemidji, Minnesota, which is a larger town than it sounds like. Saturday afternoon we caught up on some shopping, picked up mail at general delivery, and ran other errands. On Sunday, we drove to Lake Itasca State Park. This is the site of the headwaters of the Mississippi River, the largest white pine tree in Minnesota, and what was (until its top broke off earlier this year) one of the two largest red pine trees in the United States. Carol waded in the headwaters, while I took pictures. We returned to downtown Bemidji to get photos of the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues.

On Monday we left for a four night stay in Fargo, ND, the largest city in the state. En route we drove through rich farmland in the Red River valley along the Minnesota/North Dakota border – there are miles of wheat, corn, sugar beets and some sunflowers. On Monday afternoon we acquainted ourselves with the city, and visited Scheel’s, the largest all-sports store under one roof.

On Tuesday morning we spent about 2-1/2 hours at Bonanzaville, a collection of historic buildings and newer warehouses containing a large variety of artifacts. It was a surprisingly interesting museum. Each topical area was adopted by a relevant organization (e.g. the vintage barber shop was sponsored by a local barber’s professional association) and each had a resident caretaker. The exhibits included telephone equipment, vintage general stores, vintage medical offices, farm machinery, vintage automobiles, vintage carriages, an old railroad station, and the first house built in Fargo, among others. The museum is named after the bonanza farms of the 1800s, large scale wheat farming operations of 1000+ or 3000+ acres depending on whose cut-off point you use. In the afternoon we drove north about 40 miles to see the KLVY TV tower which, at 2063 feet, is the tallest structure in the world. Because the ground is flat for miles, and the tower is thin, you don’t get any real sort of feel for its height.

On Wednesday we visited a couple of antique stores and the small (and somewhat disappointing) Plains Art Museum in Fargo. We then went across the river to the sister city of Moorhead, MN and visited the Hjemkomst Interpretive Center. The center includes the Viking boat that was build in the late 1970s/early 1980s by a high school guidance counselor. After his death, his family and a crew of others in 1982 fulfilled his dream of sailing the boat from the U.S. to Norway. (The name “Hjemkomst” means “homecoming” in Norwegian). The center also had a “Stave Church” built out of white pine to reproduce a church from Norway. A stave church is supported by interior columns, or staves – the walls are non-load-bearing. The museum included exhibits on the Vikings, the area Indians, and the buffalo in America. There was also an art gallery (with better art than the Plains Museum) and a small museum by the local historical society. All-in-all it was an interesting center.

On Thursday we climbed into the CRV for a long sightseeing day. Our first stop was Ft. Abercrombie, located on the North Dakota side of the Red River. There is very little left of this 10-acre fort, which was active in the from the late 1850s until about 1870. The fort, which at the time was manned by volunteers while regular army units fought in the Civil War, was subject to a six week siege during the Indian uprising of 1862. Five men were killed and five wounded during this time before reinforcements arrived from Ft. Snelling (which we visited earlier in Minnesota). The palisades around the fort were not in place in 1862, but were added after the Indian attack. The fort had a nice museum consisting of a collection of period artifacts from about 1850 to about 1920. They included items brought from Norway by local settlers, items used in the area, and items purchased at auction from the fort when it closed in 1870.

Next we made a long side-trip through farming country to Ft. Sisseton in South Dakota. As we neared the fort, the landscape changed from flat farmland to hilly ranch and hay growing land, dotted with a number of small to medium sized lakes. The fort itself, which is built of stone, occupies high ground surrounded on three sides by lakes. This fort was built after the Indian uprising, and never saw any real action. In its early days it too was manned by volunteers. When the first company learned it was to be assigned here – the middle of nowhere in those days (and in these days) – they men voted unanimously not to go. They held another vote and decided to go after several hours of lectures by their captain and a colonel.

On the way back to Fargo, we stopped at Nicollet Tower, a 75-foot hilltop tower built in honor of an early surveyor. From the top of the tower you can see three states, North and South Dakota and Minnesota.

On Friday we drove the RV from Fargo to Bismarck. We did some sightseeing in between, but none of it was notable. We had a severe thunderstorm and some small hail about 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning.

On Saturday we visited the North Dakota Heritage Center near the Capitol complex in downtown Bismarck. This interesting museum concentrated on the history of North Dakota, from the prehistoric Indians through the Great Depression. The was also a small exhibit on the French gratitude train – a series of 48 boxcars (one for each state) given by the French people to the Americans after the end of the first world war. We then took a guided tour of the State Capitol. Our tour guide was a feisty 70-ish year old woman who made for an interesting tour. (The other couple on our tour has been on the road in an RV since January, and is planning to visit the 48 lower state capitols before returning to their home in California.) The North Dakota capitol has no dome, since a dome would imply a ceiling on the aspirations of the people. We got a good view from the top of the capitol, much like Tallahassee’s; saw the Senate and House chambers (the state has 47 senators and 97 representatives for a population of less than 700,000); and visited the smallish Supreme Court chamber.

We left the capitol and drove about 10 miles south of Mandan (the town just across the Missouri River) to the Fort Abraham Lincoln state park. There we took a tour of the house occupied around 1875 by General (actually Lt. Col.) and Mrs. George Custer. The fort was built in 1872 and occupied until 1892. There are two parts of the fort, the cavalry area and the infantry area. The infantry area occupies the high ground, and offers great views of the Missouri river, the flat farming area, and the distant hills. The state park also includes the On-a-Slant Indian Village, a Mandan village that was occupied from about 1575 until the smallpox epidemic of 1781 killed a majority of the tribe members. When Lewis and Clark wintered in Mandan in 1805, the village had been totally abandoned. At its height, the village had about 180 earthen lodges (owned by the women of the tribe) each occupied by an extended family that averaged about 12 members.

On Sunday we drove to Minot, ND, stopping en route at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and Fort Mandan, a reconstruction of the small stockade that the expedition built as winter quarters in the winter of 1804-05. In Minot we visited the Scandinavian Heritage Center and saw our second stave church of the week.

North Shore and Iron Range

2007-08-04T18:19:00.000-05:00

The first two pictures of the North Shore are from Monday. As the pictures show, some rocky portions of the coast are reminiscent of the Oregon coast.

The rest of this installment covers from Tuesday (July 31) through Friday (August 3).

On Tuesday we drove our car north to Grand Portage National Memorial, located just a few miles south of the Canadian border. This is the site of one of the main North West Fur Company trading posts in the United States. The company was active from the 1780s to the 1810s and exported millions of dollars of furs, making its senior partner the richest man in Canada. Between 1811 and 1821, the company was taken over by the Hudson Bay Company, whose hostile take-over tactics included starting rumors about North West, stealing its accounting books, and other mafia-like activities. That evening we had dinner as a group at the Naniboujou Lodge: most of us ordered Walleye, a popular fish which is the house specialty. The Lodge has brightly painted walls and ceilings with Ojibwa colors and symbols.

On Wednesday, we drove the Gunflint Trail which extends about 60 miles northwest from Grand Marais into the Boundary Lakes area – the large system of lakes that roughly follows the U.S. / Canadian border. We saw the results of a forest fire which burned in the area in May of this year. Otherwise the scenery was typical northern woods: nice, but nothing to write home about. We had lunch at the Gunflint Lodge, where we could look across the lake to Canada. That evening we had a final get together (wine and appetizers) before the members of our group go our separate ways.

On Thursday, we drove to our campground in Mountain Iron, a town in the middle of Minnesota’s Iron Range. We ran into an unexpected detour and spent about 45 minutes driving the RV on gravel Forest Service roads, an experience everyone should have. En route, we stopped at Soudan Underground Mine State Park, where we took a tour of the 27th (and last) level of the deepest iron mine in the world. The Soudan mine was closed in 1962, when its operations were no longer financially viable. The 27th level is about 2350 feet below ground and stays at a constant temperature of 52 degrees. We reached the mine reached by about a 3-minute ride in a steel elevator car that descends at about 10 mph.

Friday was a sightseeing day. On our way out of the campground this morning, a wolf crossed the road about 20 yards in front of us. Our first stop was the Iron Man statute in Chisholm. This statue, which commemorates iron miners, is the third largest free standing statue in the world. Next we visited the Minnesota Mine Museum. This little museum features a variety of household and office items from the early 1900s, and a host of mining trucks and other equipment. The size of some of this old equipment is amazing as shown by the pictures in which Carol serves as a benchmark.

Next we drove to neighboring Hibbing, where we toured the Greyhound Bus Museum. Greyhound was the ultimate outgrowth of the first bus service in the country, which was established to carry miners from the town of Hibbing to the nearby iron mine. The museum has buses of all vintages, including one 1946 model which had been converted to an RV by a subsequent owner. We also visited an overlook for the Hull Rust Mahoning Mine, the largest open pit mine in the world. This operational iron mine has a pit that is as much as 3.5 miles long, 1.5 miles wide, and 600 feet deep. The overlook area has some mining equipment, including a mine truck that holds 170 tons of iron ore. The larger trucks currently in use at the mine hold 240 tons.

Tomorrow we plan to make an early start for Bemidji, where we will visit Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

Duluth and the North Shore

2007-07-30T17:32:00.000-05:00

This installment covers Thursday (July 26) through Monday (July 30).

Thursday was our “free day” in Hinkley. Carol and I drove to the North West Fur Trading Post, the southern-most of the fur trading posts in Minnesota. Our tour of the stockade-like post was with a group of 8-12 year olds. The tour itself was interesting, as was watching the reactions of the kids.

Tonight was steak night at the casino buffet – following the lead of Bill Morrison, one of our group members, I devoured two steaks, along with the usual side dishes and, of course, dessert.

I played a little more video poker, and won back what we lost last night – for two days at the casino I believe we finished dead even.

On Friday, we left for Spirit Mountain Campground, just south of Duluth, Minnesota and (across a short bridge) Superior, Wisconsin. In the afternoon, Carol and I drove along Skyline Drive for some good views of the city below.

Our group had dinner at Grandma’s, a restaurant housed in what was formerly a bordello operated by Grandma in the late 1800s. The dinner was excellent and generous – we left with enough food for a left-over’s dinner later in the week.

Saturday morning our group toured Glensheen Mansion, a 27,000 square foot, 15 bedroom, 10 bath house built between 1905-1908 by William Congdon, a local lawyer who made his money dealing in mining property.

The house was built at a cost of $850,000 (about $30 million in today’s dollars). When Congdon learned how much it would cost to furnish the house, he bought a furniture company and had all of the furnishings custom made. The bedposts in the guest rooms were topped with removable, carved wooden pineapples, a symbol of hospitality. If a guest returned in the evening to find the pineapples removed, it was a not-so-subtle hint that they had overstayed their welcome.

On Sunday, we had another “free day”. Carol and I started the day with a tour of an iron ore lake freighter, the William A. Irvin. The 610’ ship is 32’ wide and 60’ deep. Until it was retired, it made week-long trips on Lake Superior, carrying 14,000 tons of iron ore. Its coal-fired steam turbine engine burned a little over a ton of coal and hour and propelled the vessel at about 11 knots, fully loaded. It was efficient but slow by Great Lakes standards. Below the pilot house there were 4 large guest rooms, each with a full bath. These luxurious quarters included a fine dining room with one of the first fan light combinations, and an elegant lounge. Both guests and crew were well fed – the cook had a budget of $10,000 per month for the 32 crew.

Duluth has nice lakefront walk. Carol and I walked part of it, then rented a two person bike surrey and rode for about 45 minutes up and down the waterfront. One of the waterfront features is a lift bridge with an unusual superstructure. In our later tour of the Maritime Museum, we learned that the bridge originally did not have the lift level, but instead a tram car was suspended from the superstructure by cables and carried passengers back and forth across the river.

Today (Monday) was a trip along the north shore of Lake Superior to Grand Marais, about 50 miles south of the US/Canada border. En route we stopped at two state parks. At the first, Gooseberry Falls, we walked mostly paved trails to see the Upper, Middle and Lower falls. The second stop was Tettegouche State Park. At this park we packed a picnic lunch and walked about ¾ mile (1-1/2 mile roundtrip) to Shovel Point. The trail offered great views of the Lake Superior shoreline, which at this point features some high cliffs that are very reminiscent of parts of the Oregon coast. There were even two groups of people scaling down the face of the cliffs. With a modest breeze from the lake, it was at least 10 degrees cooler along the trail than in the rest of the park. Although our entire group stopped at the park, I believe we were the only ones to walk the trail.

Tonight we will have a wine and appetizer get-together with the other members of our group – we had such get-togethers each of the three evenings in Duluth.

The Twin Cities

2007-07-25T21:56:00.000-05:00

This installment covers Friday afternoon (July 20) thru Wednesday (July 25).

After picking up our Winnebago from the factory service department on Friday afternoon, Carol and I drove to Minneapolis, parked the RV, and headed for the Mall of America (MOA). The MOA is the world’s largest mall and the largest indoor amusement park. The mall has three main levels (the fourth partial level is a multi-screen theater and Hooters), each with an inside perimeter of about 6/10 of a mile. We spent about 2-1/2 hours touring the mall before having dinner in the mall at Tony Roma’s. Except for one other reasonably priced restaurant, all of the eating places in the mall were either fast food or a little on the pricy side.

The amusement park features a Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, flume ride, a couple of roller coasters, several other adult rides, and a handful of kiddie rides. The most unusual (pictured below) is a roller coaster with cars that spin much like the teacups at Disneyworld.

Unusual roller coaster

Usual Ferris Wheel

Rick and Castle of Spam Cans

The new Harry Potter novel was to be released at midnight on Friday, and by 9:00 p.m. people were already beginning to gather for the festivities at Barnes and Noble. We learned the next day that over 6,000 presold books were delivered Friday night.

The mall is air conditioned in the summer, but has no heating system for the winter – it is warmed by body heat, lights, cash registers, and other electrical equipment.

We returned to MOA on Saturday morning and met up about noon with the rest of our Minnesota group, who had departed Forest City earlier that morning. We ate lunch as a group in a nice, reasonably priced café in IKEA, then spent a couple of hours touring that large store. It looks like a great place for young married couples to shop to furnish their homes and apartments.

Our campground for the next four nights is Bunker Hill RV Park, located in a nice county park in a north Minneapolis suburb. The county park also includes a golf course, equestrian center, and water park. We had dinner as a group Saturday evening in the golf club restaurant.

On Sunday our “host” from Minneapolis gave us a tour of the Mississippi River waterfront. We then took a backstage tour of the Guthrie Theater. This is a large, modern theater that anchors a theater community (over 100 theaters) that is second only to New York and Chicago. The building is an architectural showplace and features a “bridge to infinity,” an enclosed cantilevered walkway that offers good views of the Mississippi River. After lunch, we toured the Mill Ruins Museum, housed in an old mill building that in the mid-1850s was the largest flour mill in the world for three months, until a larger Pillsbury mill (which held the world record for about 50 years) was completed just across the river. The mill, which was owned by one of the four companies that later combined to become General Mills, burned twice, once in the 1920s and again in 1991 (after it had been vacant for some 25 years).

Part of our Group

View of Part of Mill Ruin

On Monday, we returned to the riverfront to eat at Kranarczak’s, an ethnic European restaurant, and to take a cruise on the Mississippi on a small riverboat. The cruise gave us a good view of the city skyline, and took us through the northernmost (and deepest) of the 29 locks on the upper Mississippi River – a 50 foot drop in a lock that discharges 8 million gallons of water in about 10 minutes. The lock is adjacent to St. Anthony Falls, the largest waterfall on the Mississippi. The falls formerly powered the riverside flour mills and today runs a hydroelectric power plant. Along this stretch of the river there are a couple of unusually shaped transmission towers (pictured below), which have been designed to provide a softer look than the normal towers.

Paddleboat

Tower Style 1

Tower Style 2

St. Anthony Falls

Monday evening was a pot luck dinner at the home of Joe Lapinski – the fellow who has organized our Minnesota trek. He invited a friend of his who is a history buff to give us a brief talk on the Minnesota Indian uprising of 1862.

On Tuesday, about half of our group toured the Science Museum in St. Paul. In addition to three levels of hands-on exhibits, we saw an Omnivision movie on ancient Greece and a special exhibit on Pompeii. It is amazing how well preserved the Pompeian artifacts are, including pottery, jewelry, carbonized food, and walls with fresco paintings. Later in the day, Carol and I visited Ft. Snelling, a fort which dates from the early 1800s and lies where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi. Dred Scott, of U.S. Supreme Court opinion fame, lived at the fort for a period of time.

Science Museum

Ft. Snelling

On Wednesday, we moved the RVs north about 60 miles to the Grand Casino RV Resort adjacent to the Grand Casino in Hinkley, Minnesota. En route we stopped at a small local winery and sampled red, white and fruit wines – and, of course, bought a couple of bottles. This was followed by a quick stop at an outlet mall before reaching our final destination. In the early evening we played the slots and enjoyed a buffet dinner in one of the casino’s eateries. Tomorrow is a “free day” in Hinkley, Carol and I will probably shop, sight-see and revisit the casino.

Assuming good internet access, the next update will be in 4-5 days, after we have visited Duluth.

Winnebago Grand National Rally

2007-07-25T15:10:00.001-05:00

(This entry is posted late due to recent lack of internet access -- it covers July 14 to July 20.)

On Saturday (July 14) we made a fairly short drive from Branson to Forest City, Iowa, the home of Winnebago Industries and the site of the Winnebago owners club’s annual Grand National Rally (GNR). Although the GNR does not officially start until Sunday, we were probably among the last tenth to arrive of the 1400 plus coaches attending the rally, since some people arrived as early as the 5th of July.

The official rally opening ceremony was not held until late Sunday afternoon, so we spent most of the afternoon Saturday and most of the day on Sunday reading and visiting with a couple of our neighbors and a couple of folks we met on last year’s Atlantic Canada caravan.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we participated in a number of rally activities. I attended several hour-long seminars held by Winnebago, Freightliner (the chassis manufacturer), Caterpillar (the engine manufacturer), Allison Transmission, and others. Carol and I went on a one-hour tour of the motorhome plant, where 40 motorhomes a day roll off the assembly line. Each one takes about a day and a half to build. We also visited a number of vendor booths, looked at the new model year motor homes on display by local dealers, visited the craft competition, and watched some entertainment. There is continuous entertainment every day from 10 to 4 in an entertainment tent, in addition to three major shows scheduled for evenings in an outdoor amphitheater.

Monday afternoon we attended a “first timers” social hour sponsored by the Florida Winnie-Gator club and Tuesday afternoon we attended a Florida state dinner followed by a kick-off meeting our group (10 couples from last year’s Canada caravan) that is going to travel together through Minnesota for two weeks after the rally.

Monday night’s scheduled entertainment was cancelled due to severe thunderstorms and Wednesday night’s entertainment was rescheduled to Thursday morning for the same reason.

On Thursday morning we had a 9:30 appointment for service at the Winnebago service center across from the rally grounds. We ended up an hour and half late due to mud at the rally grounds. We got stuck. We called Good Sam Emergency Road Service which dispatched a truck from Mason City, about an hour away. It then took about 20 minutes for our rescuer to winch the motorhome about 50 yards until we reached solid ground.

The Winnebago service center worked on our coach on both Thursday and Friday. We had two service technicians – one who has been on the job for about 2 months and one who, at 44 years with Winnebago, is the most senior employee in the company. They fixed three of the four service issues, and diagnosed the fourth problem, but did not have the part to fix it. Rather than return to Forest City for the fix, we will have the work completed at a Winnebago dealer somewhere en route.

Although we did not hear about it until later, on Thursday the service center totaled a 40 foot motorhome when it fell off of a lift and landed on its side. Rumor has it that the fall did about half the damage, the other half being done when they used a forklift to right the coach.

On Thursday night we saw the highlight show of the rally – the “Lost in the 50s” troupe from Branson, Missouri.

After our service work was finished on Friday, we headed for Minneapolis, where we are scheduled to rendezvous with the rest of our informal tour group at the Mall of America at about noon on Saturday.

Despite my earlier promise, there are no photos from the GNR. We will definitely have photos on the next post after the first week or so of our Minnesota trip.

The First Week

2007-07-12T18:39:00.000-05:00

We've just completed the first week of this summer's trek, having left Tallahassee on the morning of Thursday, July 5th.

The first couple of days were designed to get us to Branson, Missouri as quickly as possible via Alabama, Mississippi (we spent the first night in Hattiesburg), Arkansas (the second night in North Little Rock) and southern Missouri.

The only notable sight en route was a series of signs in Mobile which said "Emergency Traffic Information -- Tune to 1620 AM When Flashing." Only problem, the signs had no lights, flashing or otherwise -- hopefully they are still under construction.

We arrived in Branson -- the old folks show capitol of the world -- early Saturday afternoon. Over the next three and a half days we saw six shows.

* Shoji Tabuchi -- Japanese violinist trained in classical violin who came to America to play country music after seeing a Roy Acuff concert as a teenager in Japan

* Yakov Smirnoff -- native Russian who came to America as a child speaking no English and has become a wildly successful comedian

* Acrobats of China -- an amazing troupe of acrobats from ages 8 up who perform a variety of feats of strength and balance -- it's a show you have to see to believe

* Mickey Gilley -- country singer and entertainer who started in Texas many years ago -- his Texas club, Gilley's, was the location for the Travolta movie "Urban Cowboy"

* 12 Irish Tenors -- a group of Irish tenors (7 native / 5 by ancestry) who sing a variety of music

* Grand Jubilee -- a variety show with an execllent quartet, a couple of soloists, an awesome band, and some silly comedy -- it's a high energy show that was a good way to finish this year's Branson experience

Although we saw six shows in four days we did not get bored -- each one of them was so unique that they kept our interest.

In addition to shows, Branson features three outlet malls. We only went to two of them. We also spent a half day driving our car for sightseeing in the nearby Ozark foothills and around several of the Branson-area lakes.

On Wednesday we has a short day of driving to Harry S. Truman State Park near Warsaw, MO. En route we stopped for a couple of hours at a collection of antique malls. We also had an interesting lunch at Lambert's -- Home of Throwed Rolls. Whenever fresh rolls come out of the kitchen, a waiter stands at one end of the room and throws rolls to diners who raise their hands. That was fun and the food was good.

Today we drove a final leg to Des Moines, Iowa, where we are spending two nights at an RV park adjacent to the Adventureland theme park. Tomorrow we plan to spend the day in the park. Then it's on to Forest City, Iowa for Winnebago's week-long Grand National Rally. I will report on that segment of our trip in about another week.

We have no pictures from this first leg of the trip -- hopefully we will have some by the next time we post.

Getting Ready To Go

2007-07-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

The Fourth of July is Independence Day. The fifth of July is travel day!

Carol and I are in the final stages of loading the motorhome for our long-awaited summer trip. We begin with a couple of days in Branson, Missouri, then attend our first Winnebago Grand National Rally (GNR) at the Winnebago factory in Forest City Iowa. This will be a week-long event with about 1600 RVs in attendance. Activities will include meals, shows, factory tours, visiting vendors, etc.

After the GNR, we will travel up the Minnesota coast with about 10 other couples that we met on last summer's Atlantic Canada caravan. One of the couples is from Minnesota and has mapped out an ambitious agenda for a two-week trip.

Leaving Minnesota, we will have a month to get to Moab, Utah, where we will travel with the WIT club's Grand Circle Caravan visiting many national parks in Utah, Arizona and Colorado. On our way to Moab to join the caravan, we plan see as much as we can of North and South Dakota.

When the caravan ends, we will return home via Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns, Big Bend National Park, San Antonio, and the Gulf Coast.

Assuming we have good internet connections, I expect to update this blog about once a week. Keep watching for news (and a few pictures) of our 2007 journey.

Sightseeing and Shopping in Maine

2006-08-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday (August 16) we drove from the caravan end in Fredricton, New Brunswick to Trenton, Maine – about 20 miles from Bar Harbor. During the day on Thursday and Friday, we toured Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. We took a pretty strenuous, short hike up Bubble Top Mountain on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we took a longer (3.2 mile) but easier hike around Jordan Pond. Thursday evening we went to dinner with Doug Lackey and his wife JoAnne. Doug was a contemporary of mine who spent his career in-house at BellSouth and retired in March of this year. He and JoAnne have a nice waterfront summer house about 10 miles from Bar Harbor.

Saturday (after Friday’s cruise ship departed), Carol and I went sightseeing in downtown Bar Harbor. We bought an oil painting in one of the Bar Harbor galleries that we plan to hang over the fireplace when we get home.

On Sunday we drove to Freeport, Maine down U.S. 1. The traffic was horrible. Monday we shopped in Freeport, with our primary stop at the huge L.L. Bean store.

Today (Tuesday) we got up early and had our motorhome serviced at the Freightliner dealer in Westbrook. During the morning service, we went to a major mall in Portland for window-shopping. We picked the motorhome up about 1:00 p.m., then drove about 5 hours to Bennington, Vermont, where we have both cable TV and WiFi access.

Our current plan is to continue west through Vermont and New York until we hit I-77. We’ll then head south with the goal of arriving home in Tallahassee before the Labor Day weekend.

Newfoundland to PEI and Caravan End in New Brunswick

2006-08-22T17:50:00.000-05:00

NOTE: This entry was written on Tuesday, August 15. Lack of Internet access has delayed posting.

We left St. John’s Newfoundland on Wednesday, August 2nd, and headed to Grand Falls-Windsor for two nights. The highlight of Thursday’s bus tour was the Mussel Bound Tour, where we saw the process of cultivating and harvesting mussels at a farm in Fortune Harbor. They are growing about 30 tons of mussels, or for our Texas friends, about 75 million head.

Friday and Saturday were traveling days, including the 5-1/2 hour ferry to return from Newfoundland to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia, we had two free days on Sunday and Monday. On the first day, Carol and I drove around a pretty peninsula, and stopped to tour a reconstruction of the early Scottish settlements on the island. We had dinner that evening in a local fire hall, served by the Ladies’ Auxiliary from a local church. The second day we drove to nearby Baddeck to tour the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. In addition to inventing the telephone, Bell worked with the deaf, worked on early airplanes, and designed hydrofoil boats. Monday evening was a soup and cornbread dinner in the RV rec hall, followed by line dancing instruction and an ice cream social.

We departed Cape Breton early Tuesday morning for the ferry terminal to take a 1-1/2 hour ferry ride to Prince Edward Island. This is a smaller ferry, and it took 5 trips to get our entire group across – priority is given to truckers and automobiles. We spent six nights at our campground outside Charlottetown, the capital of PEI. On Tuesday, we took a bus tour of Charlottetown, which included Province House, the home of the PEI Legislature and the location of the 1864 meeting from representatives of different Canadian colonies which ultimately led to the formation of Canada as an independent nation in 1867. Since Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday were free days, Carol and I took our car on a day-and-a-half tour around the west end of the island, spending the night in a motel near North Cape. North Cape is the home of a windmill generation site with 36 windmills connected to the electric grid. On this driving trip we saw a couple of museums, including the Potato Museum (PEI has over 96,000 acres planted in potatoes). PEI is a great change from Newfoundland. Newfoundland is rocks. PEI is fertile farmland, lush greenery, and manicured lawns.

Friday was a bus tour of the center section of the island, including a stop at the College of Piping for a short demonstration of piping, drumming, and Scottish dancing. On Saturday, we left the campground on a double decker bus about 4:00 p.m. for an early lobster dinner followed by Anne the Musical, a show based on the Anne of Green Gables stories.

Sunday was another free day – we basically sat around the RV and caught up on reading and writing. That evening we had hearty hors d'oeuvres in the campground rec hall and honored our tour hosts and tail-enders.

Monday we drove across the 8 mile long Confederation Bridge that joins PEI and New Brunswick to our campground in Fredericton. The campground has WiFi access, which is a real treat. A hamburger BBQ dinner in the campground pavilion was followed by a round of miniature golf.

Today (Tuesday) was a visit to King’s Landing, a restoration of Loyalist buildings in New Brunswick with folks in period costume from 1783 to 1900. I thought the highlight of the village was a water-powered sawmill. This evening we are having a farewell dinner downtown and we’ll have a continental breakfast in the morning before going our separate ways.

Carol and I are headed for four days near Bar Harbor, Maine – our plans after that are indefinite. While there, we will have dinner with Doug Lackey, who retired from BellSouth in May, and who owns a summer home in the area.

I will try to upload some photos in a separate post.

More Photos

2006-08-05T05:01:00.000-05:00

We are sitting in line at the ferry dock waiting for our 5-1/2 hour return to Nova Scotia. Attached are some photos that I could not upload last time I logged on.

U.S. troops in the international lounge at Gander, Newfoundland, at a refueling stop on their way to Iraq.

Monument to the victims of an air crash in Gander that killed members of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division.

The "dungeon" rocks at Cape Bonavista.

Part of the light mechanism in the Cape Bonavista lighthouse.

The "Mare's Piss" waterfall in Western Brook Pond (the lake where a glacier previously retreated).

St. John's Newfoundland

2006-08-01T16:26:00.000-05:00

We arrived in St. John's early afternoon on Sunday. Out of a total Newfoundland population of 500,000, St. John's has 100,000 and a 150,000 more live within 100 miles of the city. Sunday afternoon, Carol and I explored downtown and are dinner at our first Tex-Mex restaurant since Kentucky.

Monday was a bright, sunny day. A bus tour included Signal Hill, a promontory overlooking the narrow entrance to the St. John's harbor. We subsequently learned (today at the Geo Center) that the rock at Signal Hill is 500 million years old -- 450 million years older than the Rocky Mountains. The tour also included Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America -- closer to Italy than California. A bird/whale watching tour in the afternoon produced thousands of puffins, kittiwakes, and herring gulls, and one Minke whale.

Today (Tuesday) was a free day. After and finding a real shopping mall, Carol and I visited the Geo Center and returned downtown for a late lunch at Jungle Jims, a Canadian version of Bennigans or Applebys. Found WiFi access in a parking lot at the university, and am taking this opportunity to update the blog.

The first photo is us at Cape Spear, the second is the tower atop Signal Hill.

Newfoundland / Labrador Photos

2006-08-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

The ferry that carried us from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland.

A humpback whale.

A shipwreck off Saddle Island.

A witness testifying at one of the trials at the conclusion of a Viking feast in St. Anthony.

Carol under a sculpture at the Viking historical site.

Newfoundland and Labrador

2006-07-30T07:28:00.000-05:00

Today is Saturday, July 29. We have our first Internet access – in the parking lot of the Clarenville, Newfoundland city library – since arriving at our campground in Doyles, Newfoundland at midnight on July 14, after a 5-1/2 hour ferry ride from Nova Scotia.

On Friday the 15th, we took a bus tour of the southwest coast of Newfoundland. This part of Newfoundland features the south end of the Long Range Mountains. The coast is rocky and is characterized by high winds, stunted fir trees, and rocks. One of the local berries in known as bake-apple, an apparent corruption of the French “baie qu’appelle” or “what is this berry named?” Tourists are known as CFA [come-from-away] people.

Sunday was a free day on which Carol and I did laundry at a laundromat located in the back of a pub and drove to the end of Cape St. George to the rocky, windy shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. That evening we attended a screech-in at the campground and became honorary Newfis after eating traditional Newfi food (bologna), talking Newfi talk (long may your big jib draw, etc.), dancing a Newfi dance, chugging a shot of Screech (Newfi rum), and kissing a codfish.

Monday we drove the motorhome up the west coast of Newfoundland from Doyles to Rocky Harbour, stopping en route to shop at Wal-Mart and buy diesel fuel. Tuesday we continued our drive to St. Anthony, on the northern coast of the island. The coast was a mixture of mountains and rocks, low land and rocks, and high land with glacial ponds. En route we saw two moose. Another feature of the western Newfoundland coast are gardens and wood stacks in the road right-of-way. Since the land is rocky, it’s hard to find garden sites. When the highway was completed in the 1980s (?) local families began to plant gardens in the road right of way and the practice continues to today – no one bothers any one else’s garden. Most of the land is owned by the province (Crown land) and for $23 a Newfi can get a permit to cut 8 cords of firewood each season. This too is stacked by the side of the road until winter, when it is hauled by snowmobile to the family’s home.

Tuesday evening we attended a Viking feast in St. Anthony, after which several of our group were accused by other member of heinous crimes (e.g. traveling under false names) and stood trial before a Viking court.

Wednesday was a bus tour of Norstead (a recreated Viking village) and a Viking heritage site where there are remains of an original Viking settlement. This part of Newfoundland was “discovered” by Lief Erikson in about 1000 AD and was called Vinland. Labrador, to the north, was known as Markland.

Thursday and Friday about half of the group (including us) took an optional tour to Labrador. We bussed back down the coast for a 1-1/2 hour ferry ride to Quebec. From the ferry dock, it was less than 5 miles to the Quebec/Labrador provincial border. After checking into our hotel and having lunch, we were bussed eastward to the end of the paved road at Red Bay, where we learned about the Basque whalers who visited this area in the 1500s. On Friday, we visited a boat works, a small museum, a waterfall, and a fish processing plant. We also climbed 128 steps to the top of the Port L’Amour Lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse in Newfoundland and Labrador. Our local bus driver/tour guide also stopped at a small B&B where the proprietress showed us (and one of our tour members played) a piano that had been rescued from a 1920 shipwreck of a British naval vessel, the HMS Raleigh. The piano had been a gift to the proprietress’ grandmother, who boarded the captain and several other seamen in her house following the wreck. The day ended with a ferry and bus trip back to the campground in St. Anthony.

On Saturday, we drove RVs back down the coast from St. Anthony to Port au Choix. Carol and I walked a local trail and happened upon an Eskimo archaeological site where a university professor and 7 graduate students were re-excavating a home that had first been studied in the 1960s.

Sunday was a short drive down the coast to Rocky Harbour. In the afternoon, Carol and I explored the local area, including another lighthouse. That evening the group had dinner at the Senior Citizen Center where after dinner entertainment consisted of a local guitar player/singer and a half dozen skits by the local seniors – it actually was quite good, better than it sounds.

On Monday, five of our group (including Carol and me) took a boat tour of Western Brook Pond, a fresh water lake located where a glacier had retreated about 10,000 years ago. The pond is several hundred feet deep, 10 miles long, and is enclosed on two sides by cliffs that range up to 2100 feet tall. We got our exercise, since the boat dock is a 45 minute walk on a gravel and boardwalk path from the roadside parking lot.

After several days of overcast, Tuesday was finally a sunny day. We left the coast and took out motorhomes inland to Gander. That evening was a steak dinner in the campground pavilion and after-dinner entertainment by a three-piece local band.

Wednesday morning was a bus tour of Gander, including the airport which has a fantastic mural and to which 38 international flights had been diverted when U.S. airspace was closed on 9/11. We also saw a planeload of American troops on a charter flight headed for Iraq. The afternoon was free, so we once again caught up on laundry.

Thursday we took a bus tour up the peninsula to Twillingate (a corruption of the French Toulinquet) where we visited a museum, a lighthouse (what else) and a winery that produces berry wines. After sampling several varieties, we bought bottles of Black Crowberry, Partridgeberry/Apple, and Rhubarb wine. In the afternoon, we visited a museum featuring the native American Beothuck who had inhabited the region from the 1650s to the 1800s. This tribe is now extinct, the last member having died in the late 1800s.

Friday we moved on to Clarenville, where we are dry camping in a high school parking lot. Saturday was another bus tour up the Bonavista Peninsula. The day was overcast, and the tour included a beautiful rocky coast, another lighthouse, and a museum and replica sailing vessel (HMS Matthew) honoring John Cabot (a corruption of Giovani Cabota), the Portuguese captain who, sailing for the British, discovered this peninsula in 1497. After lunch we visited the Ryan Premises, a national historic site, dedicated to a merchant who was a major salt fish (cod) exporter. The afternoon also featured a four-member local music group which was joined for several songs by one of the two local guides who accompanied us in Gander and Clarenville. These two guides (both women) have been exceptional, and the last couple of bus tours have been the best of the caravan so far.

Back at the campground, we found the Internet access at the library and downloaded two weeks worth of e-mail and financial information. This evening (Saturday) I am composing this message in Word and will upload it to the blog tomorrow morning, before a short drive to St. John’s.

Overall we are having great time on the caravan, and on Friday I phoned Winnebago Tours to sign up for next years “Great Circle” caravan which tours national parks and other sites in the Southwest.

Since we are dry camping, the battery on my laptop is getting weak, so I will not try to post photos today. If we have Internet access in St. John’s, I’ll try to put up a few photos there.

Recent Photos

2006-07-14T09:09:00.000-05:00

As I noted in the previous post, I deleted a week of images when I was at the Nova Scotia International Tattoo. The two following photos are at the Fortress of Louisbourg, a restored mid-1700s French fortified city.

This tugboat graces Halifax harbor.

This is a section of the Cape Breton coast in northern Nova Scotia.

This boat is in the harbor at Peggy's Cove -- the day was so foggy that the photos of the lighthouse are not bloggable.

This photo was taken at the tattoo.

The following is a photo of a pipe and drum band playing at the Citadel in downtown Halifax.

WiFi at the Ferry Terminal

2006-07-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

After more than a week without Internet access, the campground on Cape Breton had intermittent WiFi access -- to a 56K modem. However, the connection kept dropping, so I could not post. Today is our ferry trip from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. Unfortunately, the ferry is two hours late, so we are parked in the holding area. Fortunately, the ferry terminal has high speed access, so I will be able to post this message after all.

We have been in Canada since Thursday, June 29th. The weather has been either rainy or sunny, and frequently changes from one to the other more than once a day. We joined the Winnebago caravan on Friday when our first activities were a get-acquainted meeting and a nice dinner in St. Andrew, New Brunswick. There are 19 paying RVs on the caravan (one couple cancelled at the last minute) plus the paid “hosts” and “tail-enders.” We have finally figured out that Carol and I are not the youngest couple – that distinction goes to a middle school special education teacher from Minnesota who retired five years ago at age 51.

The first full caravan day, July 1, was Canada Day. A bus tour of St. Andrew during the day included time to watch the local Canada Day parade, lunch at the huge Fairmont Algonquin Hotel, and harbor seal feeding at the local marine center and aquarium. It rained that evening during the fireworks display, which we were able to see part of from the RV park.

On Sunday, we drove to St. John, New Brunswick -- not to be confused with St. John's Newfoundland, which we will visit later on the trip. There were no organized activities that afternoon/evening, so Carol and I drove the CRV to tour part of the (Bay of) Fundy coast, including several stops in a nice coastal park known as the Fundy Trail. Monday was a group sightseeing day in St. John. Everything along the coast is influenced by the Bay of Fundy, where there are tide changes as great as 60 feet in some places. Today we saw the Reversing Falls (actually reversing rapids), where the water flows upriver creating big rapids, followed six hours later by an outflow creating rapids running in the other direction. In addition to visiting the downtown area and seeing the New Brunswick museum, we visited a fortified blockhouse where -- as was the custom in that time -- a fake cemetery was installed on the most vulnerable side in hopes that an enemy would not attack through a cemetery.

On Tuesday, we drove from St. John to Moncton. En route, we stopped at Hopewell Rocks and (since it was low tide) walked among towering rock formations on a wide muddy beach. (Tomorrow morning, Carol and I will return at high tide in the CRV to see the view when the water level has risen by over 50 feet and there is no beach left.) Today closed with a group steak dinner at the campground. Wednesday was a "free day," so we grocery shopped, got haircuts, and did a little sightseeing on our own.

Thursday was a short drive from Moncton to Debert, Nova Scotia. En route we stopped in the small town of Springhill where we visited a nice museum dedicated to local singer Anne Murray, then toured a former coal mine just outside the town. We had dinner with the WIT group at the RV park's recreation room, followed by a show for us by the local pipe and drum corps.

Friday morning we boarded a bus for a short trip to a riverside restaurant where we had a huge buffet breakfast, followed by an opportunity to view a "tidal bore" -- a wall of incoming tide (about 6" to 8" this morning) created when the tides shift in the nearby Bay of Fundy and water flows in as the river is still trying to empty from the last tidal change. The rest of the day was free, so Carol and I again got in the car and did some sightseeing in the surrounding area. The highlight of this sightseeing day was the full size mammoth statute near where a skeleton was discovered several years ago.

On Saturday we had a very short travel day to Hammond Hill, about half an hour outside Halifax, Nova Scotia. En route we purchased gas, then got the RV washed (for $30) by a high school group that was running a money-raising car wash. This afternoon we went as a group to the Nova Scotia International Tattoo -- a 3-1/2 hour show featuring military bands from Canada, Great Britain, and Estonia, singers, acrobats, and an obstacle course competition. So far, this is probably the highlight of the caravan and something we would not have seen if we were traveling on our own. We had a nice group dinner this evening after the tattoo before returning to the campground. Unfortunately, during the tattoo I chose the wrong menu option from the digital camera and deleted about 70 photos from the last week.

Sunday was rainy. We had an afternoon/evening sightseeing tour which included a trip to picturesque Peggy's Cove (which was very foggy) and its most-photographed lighthouse in the world. We then returned to downtown Halifax for a group dinner and an evening
boat tour through Halifax harbor -- the second largest natural harbor in the world which was used as a staging area for North Atlantic convoys during both WWI and WWII. It was also the site in 1917 of the largest manmade explosion before the atomic bomb when a collision in the harbor started a fire on a French ammunition ship -- over 2000 killed, 8000 wounded, a third of the town destroyed, and windows broken over 60 miles away in Truro.

Monday was sunny. Our tour today included a short visit to the cemetery where about 150 victims of the Titanic disaster (mostly crew members and third class passengers) are
buried; the downtown Citadel, an elaborate British fort; a fine buffet lunch; a trip to the Maritime Museum; and free time to shop in the historic district. The Maritime Museum included a Titanic exhibit. I was intrigued by the third class menu for April 12 -- following decent sounding breakfast, dinner, and tea (which was a full meal), supper consisted of gruel, cabin biscuits and cheese. First time I've ever seen gruel on a menu -- I think of it as something from Dickens.

Tuesday was a long (250 mile) driving day to Bras D'Or on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Unlike mainland Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island features some big hills and a lot of lakes. Yesterday, Wednesday, we rode a bus to Fortress Louisbourgh, a restored 1750s fortified city. The rain en route to the fortress gave way to sunshine shortly after we arrived, and other than a little mud in the city, it was a nice day to visit. We had dinner this evening served by a local group in a church recreation hall where we ate with members of the other WIT caravan that is staying tonight at the same RV Park. (Their caravan is shorter, and does not include Newfoundland).

It's hard to get good weather forecasts, the televised forecasts here are not very localized. Nevertheless, it sounds like we will have at least some rain today -- surprise, surprise. It's a free day before tomorrow's 5-1/2 hour ferry trip to Newfoundland.

Taking a chance on the rain, Carol and I will did a 250 mile driving tour around Cape Breton, the northern part of which has a rugged, rocky coastline. We saw a moose cow grazing by the side of the road and a half dozen people swimming in the choppy, cold waters of the North Atlantic. Dinner tonight with the WIT group in the campground’s rec hall.

It seems unlikely that I will have WiFi access any time in the near future. I will update again the next time I do. We are having a great time and hope all our family and friends are doing well.

Rain: But Not Like Mid-Atlantic

2006-06-28T17:37:00.000-05:00

Still having a great time -- we've been on the road just over three weeks and have already seen a lot of sights.

On Sunday we took a leisurely drive in Vermont on a two-lane state road that ran through some pretty farming valleys. We camped in a lakeside park in Williamstown, Vermont for two nights.

There was a steady, light rain all day Monday. We spent most of the day in the Honda checking out the surrounding area. Except for some showers a couple of weeks ago, this was the first rain of the trip.

Tuesday we headed out for two nights in Bangor Maine. About half way there, the "low water" light came on in the motorhome, indicating we were about a gallon low on coolant. There was a slow leak, so we detoured to Westbrook, Maine, the location of the nearest Freightliner dealer. Fortunately we had enough spare coolant on hand (2 gallons) to get there without an engine shutdown. We arrived about 3:00 p.m. but were told it would be several hours before they could get to the coach. (Nice thing about Freightliner service facilities -- most are open until midnight.)

The service manager gave us directions to the Portland Head Light -- claimed to be the most photographed lighthouse in the U.S. -- and to a nice country restaurant to which he was planning to take his visiting sister than evening. We did this sightseeing, ate a good dinner (and saw the service manager and his sister), and spent some time (and money) in Border's Bookstore before returning the to service facility at 9:00 p.m. The problem had simply been a loose hose clamp, so we were back in business. We dry-camped in the dealer's parking lot Tuesday night, then left this morning for a short drive to Bangor. Light rain again this afternoon. The evening news says there are floods throughout the mid-Atlantic, so we have been fortunate to be as far north as we are.

My knee has been slightly swollen for about a week, so I went to a local doc-in-a-box while we are still in the states. Nothing serious, just unhappy cartilage (probably from all the walking last week at Niagara Falls), so I have a prescription for anti-inflammatory pills to take for 10 days.

Tomorrow a.m. we head out for St. Andrews, New Brunswick. We are arriving a day early -- our seven-week caravan through Nova Scotia and Newfoundland has its organizational meeting in St. Andrews on Friday afternoon. I don't know what the availability of internet access will be in the maritime provinces -- I will update the blog whenever possible.

Better Late Than Never -- Part 3

2006-06-24T21:37:00.000-05:00

On Friday, we drove into the Adirondak mountains, and stopped for the day near Lake Placid, New York, home of the 1932 and 1980 winter Olympic games. We toured the Olympic ski jump area, taking a ski lift to the top of the hill, then an elevator and stairs to the top of the ski jump facility -- it's higher than it looks on TV, and you have a great view of the surrounding countryside. It was a pleasant, cool evening, so after leaving the Olympic park we strolled through the tourist strip in downtown Lake Placid.

Today we drove to Lake Bomoseen, Vermont. En route, we stopped to see Ft. Ticonderoga. Unfortunately, today was a reenactment day and the fort and its environs were incredibly crowded. We did visit a number of vendor tents with period items for sale, but decided against waiting in a lengthy line for tickets into the fort. Maybe we'll catch it on another trip.

As you can tell, we have WiFi this evening, so we have caught up on e-mail, on-line banking, blogging, etc. Tomorrow we leave for two days outside Montpelier, Vermont, then two nights in Bangor, Maine, before proceeding to St. Andrew, New Brunswick, where we will join our Winnebago caravan on Friday.

Better Late Than Never -- Part 2

2006-06-24T21:06:00.000-05:00

We arrived at our campground near Niagara Falls around noontime. In the afternoon, we toured the nearby city of Niagara-on-the-Lakes, which has a number of high end tourist shops along its main street. In the evening, we drove to downtown Niagara Falls, rode a huge Ferris wheel, then walked the entire distance of the waterfront from the viewpoint for the American Falls (which are located across the river) to the edge of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, and back again. (The first photo of the American Falls was taken from atop the Ferris wheel. The second photo shows the water pouring over the top of the Horseshoe Falls.)

On Tuesday, we played tourist and visited a host of attractions in the Niagara Falls area. These included the Butterfly Gardens; the White Water Walk, a boardwalk along the side of the Class 6 rapids downstream from the falls; a boat ride to the base of Horseshoe falls on the Maid of the Mist; and a walk through tunnels that took us to an observation platform near the edge of the base of Horseshore falls.

Our final attraction of the day was the Spanish Aerocar, a cable car over a whirlpool in the Niagara river several miles downstream from the falls.

On Wednesday, we started with a tour of Ft. George, a riverside fort that was occupied successively by the British, Americans, and the British again. After a quick trip through a couple of small antique shops, we toured one of the areas many wineries -- this one specializing in ice-wine, a dessert wine that is made from handpicked grapes harvested in January or February after they have frozen solid. In the early evening we drove to one of the locks on the Wellbun canal, part of the St. Lawrence seaway, and watched a coal hauling "laker" traversing the lock.

Thursday was a driving day, back into the U.S. to a campground near Mexico, New York.

Better Late Than Never -- Part 1

2006-06-24T20:00:00.000-05:00

After more than a week, we are finally at a campground that has WiFi access. I will be writing three posts this evening to catch things up, since it is hard to put more than three photos in a single entry. (Actually, I'm having trouble posting any pictures at all -- the next couple of entries may be text only until I figure out what the problem is.)

With the RV fixed on Wednesday morning (June 14), we spent two days driving to Ypsilanti, Michigan, located between Ann Arbor and Detroit. On Thursday afternoon, we walked through the University of Michigan Law School complex in Ann Arbor, and, after some searching, found the apartment where we had lived for two of my three years in law school. Except for the law school, either the town has changed a lot, my memory is less that perfect, or both.

Friday and Saturday were spent at "The Henry Ford," which consists of Greenfield Village, the Henry Ford Museum, and a tour of the Rouge truck assembly plant. The tour of Greenfield Village consumed the entire day on Friday. The village was started by Henry Ford in the mid-1920s and consists primarily of historical buildings which have been relocated to the site. These include Ford's childhood home, Thomas Edison's laboratory, Robert Frost's house, Noah Webster's house, and a number of others. One of the highlights of the day was a ride around the village in a 1914 Model T Ford.

On Saturday, we first toured the Rouge assembly plant, where 440 to 460 trucks are assembled in an 8-hour shift. The plant is part of a larger vertically integrated manufacturing facility which occupies 2,000 acres purchased by Ford for $1,100 (total, not per acre). In the afternoon, we toured the Henry Ford Museum. In addition to a collection of vintage cars, airplanes and railcars, the museum holds agricultural equipment, industrial equipment (primarily steam engines) and a host of historical household items. There are four presidential limousines -- FDRs, Eisenhower's, the one in which Kennedy was shot, and one from the Reagan/Ford era. There will be no future presidential limousines on display, newer vintage models undergo destructive testing by the Secret Service at the end of their useful life.

Sunday and Monday were spent driving, via London Ontario, to the Niagara Falls area. This will be the subject of Part 2.

Detour to Lexington

2006-06-13T17:21:00.000-05:00

As of tomorrow morning, we will have been on the road for seven days.

Our plan to drive from Chattanooga to Frankfort on Monday got sidetracked when, at lunchtime, we heard high pressure air escaping from under the front of the motorhome. We (correctly) diagnosed a probable leak in the air suspension system and diverted to Lexington, which has a Freightliner service facility.

We overnighted at the Kentucky Horse Farm Campground, then delivered the RV to the repair shop at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. After breakfast at Waffle House, we proceeded to the Kentucky Horse Farm, where we spent a pleasant day -- temperature no higher than the mid-70s -- seeing the sights.

These included a horsedrawn tour of the grounds, an introduction to different varieties of draft horses, a show of several famous horses, an introduction to several mares and foals, a show with costumed riders on eight of the many different breeds of horses, a tour of an extensive museum covering all things horsey from prehistoric times to the modern day, and a short film. Not being a horse person, I had never imagined there are so many varieties of horses.

The horse pictured below is Cigar, who won 16 straight races, and had lifetime winnings of just under $10,000,000.

The next two pictures feature a Gypsy Cob, ridden by a girl in gypsy garb, and a Paso Fino, ridden by a girl in garnet and gold ... hmmmm.

While we were touring the horse farm, Freightliner quickly diagnosed the problem -- a leaky valve -- then spent several hours trying to determine if is was a Freightliner manufactured part or a Winnebago manufactured part. After multiple phone calls to both manufacturers, they finally discovered it was a Freightliner part and a replacement will be delivered early tomorrow (Wednesday) a.m. for installation before lunchtime.

We returned to the Freightliner facility this afternoon to pack an overnight bag and are staying tonight at a La Quinta Inn. The accommodations are nice, but hardly worth the equivalent of four nights of campground fees.

We're still making plans for tomorrow and will update again in a few days -- Internet access permitting.

Sightseeing Chattanooga

2006-06-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

Carol and I spent a long day on Saturday seeing all of the sights in Chattanooga.

We started the day at the Incline Railroad, which takes passengers one mile up the side of Lookout Mountain. There was a haze over the city, so our snapshots from the top are nothing to brag about, or to publish.

After returning to the bottom of the mountain, and making a few wrong turns, we arrived at Rock City which features ..... rocks.

After walking above (on a swinging bridge), below, and between countless rocks we arrived at the Lovers Leap. (The photo is a side view.) No one leaped while we were there, which I guess is just as well.

The walk back takes you through the Enchanted Garden and Fantasyland which portray a variety of nursery rhymes for the younger set.

Our next stop of the day was Point Park, site of a Civil War battlefield. The Confederate Army was defending Lookout Mountain. When attacked from below, they ultimately retreated and the Union Army occupied the city, which was used as the base for Sherman's march on Atlanta. The sky was still hazy, but we did get a couple of pictures of the Tennessee River winding its way past Chattanooga.

The final stop of the day was Ruby Falls. These caverns were opened in the mid-1800s and feature a 160' underground waterfall -- which did not show up in any of our photos. We did get several good shots of the formations, including this one with Carol.
On Sunday, we spent the better part of the day visiting an antique mall just over the state line in Georgia, and another collection of malls in Chattanooga.

Tomorrow we head for Frankfort, Kentucky where we will spend a couple of nights and probably make a day trip into Lexington to see some horse racing related attractions.

Retired a Week

2006-06-09T15:48:00.000-05:00

It's Friday, so I've officially been retired for a week. Just arrived at the Raccoon Mountain Caverns and Campground in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We will be here for three nights, and plan to visit Lookout Mountain, Ruby Falls, the Incline Railroad, Rock City and other area attractions.

Drove just under 200 miles today from Pine Mountain, Georgia, where we spent our first two nights on the road. Although we're out of shape, Carol and I managed a 4.3 mile hike yesterday on the Dowdell Knob Loop in FDR State Park. The trail was not as scenic as we had hoped, but we got good exercise anyway. Was forced to think of work half way through the hike -- when a toad unexpectedly crossed our path.

We also toured the Little White House in Warm Springs. Carol, complete with dark glasses, posed for a picture as a mock Secret Service Agent at the guardhouse.

We saw a short film about FDR with clips from the 1930s and 40s. There was one clip of his "day of infamy" speech to the joint session of Congress -- while I've heard the audio before, this is the first time I've seen it with video.

We have WiFi access at this campground, so will plan to update again Sunday night with news of our activities in Chattanooga.

Gettin' Close

2006-06-05T18:09:00.000-05:00

Three parties later, Rick is finally retired. The motorhome's been washed and is almost completely loaded with everything needed for the long trip to Canada. Tomorrow is for last minute errands and a chance to relax. Departure is planned for Wednesday, with a destination of Pine Mountain, Georgia. Our route - as far as Niagara Falls by way of Chattanoga. Frankfort, Cincinnatti, Detroit, and Tornoto - has been mapped in Streets & Trips so that we can get computerized driving directions via GPS.

Gettin' Ready

2006-05-28T06:01:00.000-05:00

The countdown is almost finished. Retire on Friday then pack into the motorhome for a three-month trip, including a Winnebago Caravan through Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The Winnebago's last major adventure was in 2002 -- five months from Florida to Alaska and return. Once Atlantic Canada is finished, who knows where the travel bug will take us next.