The Northernmost Town in the US

On Wednesday, Bob, Debbie & Tom got up early, were picked up and driven to the Fairbanks Airport where they caught an eight-passenger twin engine airplane for a flight to the town of Barrow, the northernmost town in the U.S.

Our first stop was for fuel and sack lunches in Coldfoot, a truck stop on the Alaska Pipeline Haul Road. On the way to Coldfoot, we followed the pipeline, and passed over several small villages and the Yukon River, which, at this point, is much larger than when we saw it in Dawson, YT. It’s over ½ mile wide and undulates like a snake through a large valley.

After a 45 minute stop in Coldfoot, we took off and soon were crossing the Brooks Range, rugged, barren mountains around 8,000 to 10,000 feet high. We followed a pass that took us through the “Gates of the Arctic” with high mountains on either side. Once over the Brooks Range, there was still over 200 miles of tundra, dotted with tiny lakes, most still frozen over, before arriving at Barrow.

We were met by a large Eskimo tour guide, Eli, who told us he’d just been hired the day before. That was OK, though, since he’s spent his whole life in Barrow, a town of just under 5,000 people. Barrow hasn’t seen a sunset since mid-May, and won’t until August. Of course, in the winter, they go just as long without seeing the sun at all! Eli, like most of the Eskimo population in the area, is a ‘subsistence hunter’. That means that while his family buy some groceries, they hunt for virtually all the meat they consume. He said they eat whale, seal, walrus, caribou and various ducks, geese and other game birds.

Eli took us to see a memorial to Will Rogers and Wiley Post, his friend and pilot, who were killed in a plane crash just 16 miles from Barrow in August, 1935. From there, we saw three well built and attractive schools, a senior center, a number of commercial enterprises, and the fire and police headquarters.

We saw an Air Force Station that operates a radar site on the DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line which wraps around Alaska and Canada. The DEW line was built around 1960 as a joint US/Canada effort to detect missile launches from the Soviet Union. The radar system is still in operation today,

He took us to the Cultural Center and we got to hear some native songs, see some dances, and also demonstrations of a number of native skills. The Cultural Center was just across the street from a large grocery store, so we popped in there to check it out. It had most of the stuff that we’re used to, but wow, what prices! Eggs were $6.39 for 18, ½ gallon of milk was $7.00 and Ribeye steaks were $14.70 per pound. In addition to the usual grocery store stuff, they also had stoves, refrigerators, washers & dryers, furniture, and even Honda ATV’s.

Our last stop in Barrow was a short ride away, at the Arctic Ocean, where we had the opportunity to dip body parts into the ocean, which was still mostly frozen over. Debbie, of course, dipped her foot, while Bob & Tom took the more conservative approach and dipped a finger. It was cold!!

We headed back to Fairbanks on our little airplane at about 3:30 PM, passing over the Brooks Range once again before arriving in Fairbanks about 6:30 PM.
Once back to the RV Park, LaVan told us that the local Elks Lodge had “steak night” that evening, and we jumped at the chance for a good, reasonably priced dinner out.

On Thursday morning, we packed up our belongings and headed for Denali National Park, the home of the tallest mountain in North America, Mt. McKinley. More on that, later.

Fairbanks, Alaska

After getting our rigs and ourselves settled into our campsites along the Chena River, we took a ride over to the University of Alaska – Fairbanks and spent several hours enjoying their Museum of the North. The museum, which sits on a hill overlooking Fairbanks, has exhibits on the geography, geology and the history of the people of Alaska. It is very well done, and also includes lots of art. Following the visit to the museum, several of us drove to the University’s Large Animal Research Station (LARS) and saw some of the musk oxen they are studying. They do research on sheep, musk ox, caribou, bears, and other large animals of the region. By the way, do you know the difference between caribou and reindeer? A reindeer is a domesticated caribou – that’s it!

The next day, Sunday, we did some shopping and sightseeing around town, then took a 3½ hour riverboat cruise on the Chena River. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far.
The boat’s narrator is an old radio guy, so he spoke well, and obviously, could talk forever. A float plane took off, then landed again, right beside the boat (it was a planned event).

We stopped on the river at the sled dog kennels of Susan Bucher, the four-time winner of the Iditarod race who lost her battle with leukemia about a year ago. Debbie & I had the pleasure of attending a talk she gave three years ago while we were on our Alaska cruise. Anyway, her husband and two daughters, ages 8 and 11, are carrying on her work of raising and training racing sled dogs. David, the husband, told us about the dogs, then harnessed and drove a dog team around a training course at about 20 – 25 miles an hour. He was riding an ATV with the engine off, just using the brakes to keep control.

From there, we continued downriver to the confluence of the Chena and Tanana Rivers, where the pilot who demonstrated the float plane, landed another plane, this one equipped with ‘tundra tires’, on a river sandbar. Tundra tires are very large, but only carry about five pounds of air pressure, so they can land on soft ground. Following that demonstration, we stopped at an Athabaskan demonstration village. The Athabaskan people settled the interior of Alaska, and are not considered “Eskimos”. The Eskimos settled the coast of Alaska, from the Arctic Ocean to the Panhandle. Our Athabaskan guides showed us how they catch salmon in ‘fish wheels’, then dry the salmon to use as food for their sled dogs in the winter. The dried salmon is high in nutrition but weighs very little, so a lot of food can be packed on the sleds. We also saw their shelters, learned more about sled dogs, saw how they make and decorate clothing, and viewed a reindeer exhibit. From there, it was back up the river to Fairbanks and our cozy camp.

The next day we trooped on down to the Post Office to retrieve the mail that was forwarded to us from home. Nothing real exciting in the mail, but it was good to get it, anyway. The guys took a kayak ride from downtown Fairbanks to our camp, about a five mile trip, getting home just in time for dinner. We saw many birds and a couple of beaver. After dinner, we drove Debbie & Diane upriver for a couple of miles so that they could kayak back to camp. They saw a number of beaver, and a hen mallard with her flock of tiny ducklings.

Tuesday we decided we wanted popcorn for lunch, and where’s the best place for popcorn? At the movies, of course! We saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and enjoyed it immensely.

On Wednesday, Bob, Debbie and Tom took a trip in a small plane to the Arctic Circle and Point Barrow. That’s a story for our next posting.

Whitehorse to Alaska

First of all, there are two additions we've made to the Blog. If you click on the "Trip Photo Album" on the right side of the blog page, you'll find all of the pictures we've taken so far, and you can view a slideshow of them if you'd like. Also, we've updated "Our Travel Map" which you can see if you click on the link, "View Larger Map".

When we left Whitehorse, we also left the Alaska Highway. We traveled north along the Yukon River for about 300 miles to the town of Dawson, Yukon Territory, in the heart of the Klondike Gold Rush area. In 1897, gold was discovered along two tributaries of the Klondike River, which flows into the Yukon at Dawson.
The resulting gold rush brought thousands of miners, most of them over the White Pass or the Chilcoot Trail from Skagway, Alaska through Whitehorse to Dawson. Many fortunes were made in the next few years, but many miners were disappointed to find that most of the gold bearing creeks had already been claimed. Dawson was the first capital of the Yukon Territory, but the territorial government moved to Whitehorse in 1953.

We stayed two nights in Dawson in a downtown campground, spending our time checking out the numerous attractions in the area. The guys visited the No. 4 gold dredge, the largest wooden dredge in North America, and tried their hands panning for gold on a claim specifically designated for tourists. No luck!
The gals visited most of the shops in town as well as the cabins of Jack London, and Robert Service, the poet who wrote, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and many other well-known tales. There is a legend in town about a newcomer who tried to pass himself off as a ‘sourdough’, so the local miners told him that to be considered a ‘sourdough’, he had to drink a shot of whiskey with the preserved, frostbitten big toe of an unfortunate miner. He passed the challenge, and thus, a tradition was born. Debbie just had to have a ‘sourtoe’, and she talked Diane into joining her. The ‘sourtoe’ is a one-ounce shot of Yukon Jack with an ugly preserved toe resting in the glass. The toe must touch the lips for the ceremony to be legitimate, but take care to not bite the toe, because there’s a $500 fine for eating it.

As we prepared to leave town, we had to purchase enough fuel to make it into Alaska. We paid the highest price so far, $6.13 per gallon!!!


The start of the trip up the ‘Top of the World Highway’ from Dawson, begins with a free ferry ride across the Yukon River. The tiny ferry could only carry two RV’s at a time, so Tom stayed back until the next ferry trip, about 10 minutes later. While we were fueling, the gals took our cars across on the ferry, so they were waiting for us to ‘hook up’ and get underway.

The very scenic ‘Top of the World Highway’, which winds above the timberline for many miles, is seal-coated, but with lots of gravel stretches. It was damp, though, so we didn’t raise too much dust.
The highway is 79 miles long, and ends in Alaska, near the town of Chicken. Once in the US, the highway deteriorates to little more than a one-lane dirt road with steep drop-offs and hairpin turns. Chicken consists of about 3 sets of buildings, consisting of cafes, fuel pumps, gift shops and RV parking. The summer population is about 30 people, and there is no electricity except generators, phone service or running water. The merchants, who take Visa and Mastercard, have to take their machines to Tok, Alaska, about 95 miles south, so that the bank can download their transactions.

After lunch and souvenir shopping, we took off again, this time, south on the Taylor Highway for 96 miles, back to the Alaska Highway and Tok, where we spent the night. The highway from Chicken to Tok was mostly paved, but with frost heaves in the road that seem to launch the motorhomes if traversed at more than 25 mph. The very nice, wooded RV Park has a high-pressure washer wand for cleaning RV’s and cars, so we took advantage of a reasonable price and cleaned most of the dust and mud from our rigs. Diane knew of a Gift Shop Outlet with good merchandise and equally good prices, so the gals scooted over there to shop.

The following day, Saturday, I think, we left Tok and made our way the 200 miles or so to Fairbanks. Stops were made along the way at the Gerstle River Bridge, a “steel through truss-style” (that’s for you engineers) built in 1942, and dedicated to the almost 3.700 black veterans who were part of the construction of the Alaska Highway.

At that turnout, LaVan discovered that one of the tires on his “toad” was worn down to the steel cord, and so we exchanged it for the spare.

We stopped in the town of Delta Junction to see the milepost marking the end of the Alaska Highway. Delta Junction is home to a large herd of American Bison, transplanted here in the 1920’s. The Alaska Pipeline also passes through town, and the Army’s Fort Greeley is also located near here.

We arrived in Fairbanks around 2 PM, and settled in to our RV Park on the banks of the Chena River which passes through town. There is an endless stream of kayaks, canoes and power boats running up and down the river during the day (which begins with the sunrise at about 3 AM and ends at sunset at about 12:30 AM the next day). Needless to say, if you need darkness to sleep, you’re out of luck around here during the summer!

We’ll be here for five nights, seeing the sights, getting & reading the mail that’s been forwarded to us from home, and getting caught up on everything else. We’ll cover our adventures in Fairbanks in a future posting.

Watson Lake to Whitehorse

On Sunday, June 1st, we traveled the 145 miles from Liard Hot Springs to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. We had some more watered gravel road construction along the way, no dust, but lots of bumps. If you look at the "Where we've traveled" map on the right, you'll see that we've now added the Yukon Territory to the map.

Watson Lake is the home of the Sign Post forest, some 65,000 street signs, personal signs, and every other type of sign you could think of. It was started by a soldier working on the Alaska Highway in 1942, and has been growing ever since. The town puts up new posts each year to accommodate new signs. We, of course, added signs to the collection.


We also visited the Northern Lights Centre in town, a planetarium featuring the myth and science of the Aurora Borealis. It was a fascinating show about a phenomenon we’d love to see, but probably won’t. Although the lights occur any time of year, it’s too light in the summer to see them.

The next day, after leaving Watson Lake, we crossed the Continental Divide again; this one divides two of the largest drainage systems in North America – the Yukon River which drains to the Bering Sea in western Alaska, and the Mackenzie River which drains to the Beaufort Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean. The Yukon River system flows for 2,300 miles, and the Mackenzie River system flows for 2650 miles before emptying into the sea.

After crossing the divide, we passed Teslin Lake which is 86 miles long. The bridge across Nisutlin Bay, a portion of Teslin Lake, is the third longest on the Alaska Highway, almost 2,000 feet long. In mid-afternoon, we reached that day’s destination, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Whitehorse is the capital of the YT, and has about 24,000 residents, about 2/3 of the total population of the territory.

We spent two nights at a nice campground just out of town. We got our first look at the Yukon River here, the upstream end of riverboat travel which connected with the White Pass and Yukon Railway from Skagway, Alaska. Until the Alaska Highway was built in 1942-43, riverboat and rail were the only ways to get to Whitehorse. While here, we had a great meal at the Klondike Rib & Salmon BBQ, then crossed the street to attend the ‘Frantic Follies’, a vaudeville style performance in its 39th year of production. It was a great time for all.

While in town, we visited a good museum on the prehistoric history of the area which was once connected by a land bridge to Siberia. Many animals, including mammoth & mastodon, saber tooth tigers, camels, etc. came across during that period, as well as probably the first people on the North American continent. Debbie had the opportunity to participate in a dart throwing exhibition. This entailed throwing three to five foot darts or spears, using a hand-held launcher called an atlatl. The atlatl, which is actually an Aztec word, was used by natives all over North and South America to launch darts or spears. Her old softball skills came into play as she successfully threw the darts for distance and accuracy. We also spent some time in a modest but interesting Museum of Transportation, which had displays on all forms of transportation in the Yukon.

This stop also gave us the opportunity to catch up on our laundry and e-mail, although the internet service was too slow to post to this blog. From here, we’re off to Dawson City.

The Alaska Highway

While in Dawson Creek, we saw an excellent film on the building of the highway by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1942. The Japanese threat to Alaska was so severe that the U.S. decided to build a road from Dawson Creek, BC to Fairbanks, AK, some 1,500 miles away.
They started in November of 1942 and completed the project in only 8 months! (Too bad CalTrans can’t complete something this quickly!!) During the construction period, the Japanese attacked and occupied several islands in Alaska’s Aleutian Chain, but never ventured further toward Alaska’s mainland.

Tuesday morning, bright and early, we loaded our rigs and headed up the Alaska Highway toward Ft. Nelson, some 300 miles north. We’re far enough north that the days are about 17 hours long, and it’s dark for only about 5-6 hours a night. It makes for a short sleep for those who must have it dark to sleep. It’ll get worse as we move even further north, and the days get closer to the summer solstice on June 21st.

The highway crosses beautiful country; wide valleys of grain and hay production. As we move further north, the vegetation is mostly timber, heavily forested with spruce and birch. In early afternoon, we arrived at Fort Nelson, BC, where we set up camp at the Fort Nelson Truck Stop and RV Park. We fueled up, paying the highest price of the trip (so far), $5.63 per gallon, and we’re still averaging 9 miles per gallon. It’s an expensive trip, but I doubt if it’ll get any cheaper in the years to come.

The weather in Fort Nelson was great! We’d have put on our shorts, but there were mosquitoes about, and we didn’t want to become dinner for them. The town was originally established by the North West Fur Trading Co. in 1805. It was rebuilt several times after being destroyed by fire and flood. The present town is the fifth site. It was surprising to learn that as recently as the 1950’s, Fort Nelson was still without power, telephones, running water or doctors.

We left Fort Nelson on Wednesday morning and headed through the Canadian Rockies to Muncho Lake, about 160 miles north. At a couple of spots, we saw Stone Sheep on the road. They like to lick the road salt from the highway, and are not particularly cautious of cars. We also saw several black bear and a young caribou, but were unable to take pictures of them.

On this section of our journey, we began to see more challenging road conditions. We had a 30-mile stretch where road crews were spraying oil on the road and spreading sand on the oil. This made for very dusty conditions, and since traffic had been stopped by a flag person, we were all bunched up and breathing dust. We also began to see “frost heaves”, where moisture froze under the road and the resulting ice caused bumps to appear. They are well marked for the most part, but it’s important to slow down after seeing a sign or get braced for a big bump!

We arrived at Mucho Lake about 1 PM. What a beautiful lake!!
It’s about seven miles long and one mile wide, and it has a bright blue-green color which is attributed to copper oxide leaching into the lake. We stayed at the Northern Rockies Lodge in great lake-front camp sites. Bob, Diane and LaVan unloaded their kayaks and took them out for a short ride. We had dinner in the lodge which is operated by a Swiss family. It was an excellent meal, if a bit expensive.

The next day, we moved about a mile up the lake to a Provincial Park, where we had just as nice lake-front camp sites, but at ¼ the price of the Lodge. Tom got a chance to try kayaking with Bob and LaVan, and made it without tipping over. Maybe this is a new sport to try? It was so beautiful, and the weather was so nice that we decided to stay yet another night. Of course, the next day was windy, rainy and cold, so we broke down and packed the kayaks away.

Early Saturday morning, we collected our stuff and headed for Liard Hotsprings Provincial Park, 35 miles up the road.
On this short trip, we saw several wood bison, a cousin of the prairie bison common to the American west. They look the same, but are maybe a little bit smaller. We were set up in camp at the hot springs by 9:30 AM and took a short walk to the springs. .
There are two large pools, both with changing rooms. The lower pool is about 108º and the upper one is supposedly 126º, a fact we chose not to verify. We soaked in the lower pool until we “pruned”, then walked back to camp for lunch and a short napWhile sitting in the motorhome, Debbie saw a small bird fly by the window, and run smack into our open door. When we investigated, we found the bird sitting on the doorstep, wondering where his headache came from. After a minute or so, he flew off, apparently none the worse for wear.

After a delicious Mexican dinner (RV cooked), we went to the hot springs again for a soak. Mosquitoes were much more active in the evening than they had been in the morning!!

Tomorrow we head for Watson Lake where we’ll have hookups and hopefully, wi-fi access.

Barkerville and the 58ers

Yes, that’s right, the 58ers! The British Columbia gold rush began 9 years after the start of the California gold rush. Then, in 1862, a miner named Billy Barker struck gold on Williams Creek in Central British Columbia. That triggered a stampede of thousands of miners to the area over the next eight years who converged on Barkerville and the gold fields.

We stayed for a day in the Quesnel area so that we could visit the farmers market on Saturday morning, then travel to Barkerville for the day.
It’s located about 50 miles east of Quesnel, and the town has been restored to its “glory days”. It is much more authentic than Columbia, and it has been restored to a much higher level than Bodie. There are over 125 heritage buildings, including churches, stores, restaurants, a theatre and a number of dwellings. The upper 1/3 of Barkerville was a Chinese settlement, with a laundry, butcher shop, restaurant and many other buildings.
Barkerville burned to the ground in 1868, but was rapidly rebuilt by the merchants and residents, but its glory days were beginning to fade. A second gold rush occurred in the 1930’s, and people still lived in town until 1958 when it became a heritage site. The Anglican Church in town is one of the oldest in British Columbia and continues to hold regular services.


After touring most of the town and attending a lecture on Simon Fraser, an early fur trader and explorer for whom a number of places in British Columbia are named, we decided on lunch at the Lung Duck Tong Chinese Restaurant, and had a delicious meal.

On our way back to the town’s entrance, we were surprised to see a gray fox, just wandering among the buildings. We were told that he is a regular visitor, particularly when the town is not overcrowded with tourists.

On Sunday, we continued our journey north, through Prince George to Dawson Creek. We stopped for lunch at Bijoux Falls Provincial Park, about 115 miles north of Prince George.
It is a beautiful roadside park, with a beautiful waterfall just off the highway, and a large flock of resident Stellar Blue Jays to entertain visitors.

We got to our campground just outside of Dawson Creek around 3 PM, and the ladies went grocery shopping in town. After a fine, RV cooked dinner of hamburgers and all the fixin’s, we settled in for the evening. We stayed the next day and night, and did some more shopping in town. Because Monday was a “camp day”, the girls made a beef stew and cooked it in a crock pot all day. It was delicious!!


Dawson Creek is “Mile 0” of the Alaska Highway. We have come 1728 miles from home, and have about the same distance to go to get to Alaska.

More later.

Across the Border

We left Bothell, WA about 9 AM on Thursday and got to the US/Canada border at Abbotsford, BC about 10:30 AM. All three rigs went through the same Immigration/Customs lane, so it took a while for us to get across the border. We were "tailgunner", so we were last through. Of course, we got into a long discussion with the border agent about the amount of booze that we were allowed to take into Canada. They seem to believe that we'll sell it to Canadians, and circumvent their tax system. Anyway, we had to park and take our list of booze into the Customs building and got into a whole new discussion about the same stuff. Long story short, we've still got our stash of alcohol and it didn't cost us anything. We'll have to be more careful, though, when we exit Alaska back into Canada. We can't count on our "innocent" looks forever.

From the border, we picked up Canada Hwy 1 through the Fraser River canyon and stopped at the "Hells Gate Air Tram" for a tram ride down the canyon wall to a restaurant and, guess what, - a gift shop. >We had lunch at the bottom and walked out on a suspension bridge over the river. The Fraser River is forced between two canyon walls just over 100 feet wide and it is about 175 feet deep at that point. The rapids are massive, and with the snow melt, large trees go shooting down the rapids. Not a spot for rafters, at least not until the water drops a bit.

About 10 miles past Hell's Gate, we stopped at a campground in the village of Boston Bar for the night. It was a rustic but very nice spot with full hookups, cable TV and wi-fi. Real wilderness camping, huh? It rained for a little while, but by dinnertime the rain was gone and we ate at a picnic table and enjoyed a campfire.

The next morning we packed up and got on the road around 8:30 AM, on our way to Quesnel, BC, about 275 miles closer to Alaska. Quesnel is a city of about 10,500, and is a major forestry area, with 2 pulp mills, a plywood plant, and 5 sawmills, planer mills and an MDF plant. Because we have a smaller fuel tank than our traveling companions, we needed to stop for fuel when we reached Quesnel. Canadian and American money are just about the same value, so we don't get an exchange rate bonus. Diesel cost $5.10 per gallon, which is not much different than what we've paid in the US on this trip.


We stopped at 10-Mile Lake Provincial Park north of Quesnel, and found three nice camp sites right next to the lake. We'd planned for a campfire, but a nasty, cold wind came up, forcing us indoors for dinner. We plan to stay here for two nights, so that we can spend Saturday in Barkerville, a gold rush town about an hour from Quesnel.

Two Nights in Bothell, WA

We made it through the Portland & Seattle traffic and arrived in Bothell about 1:30 PM on Tuesday. It rained some on the way, but it wasn't bad. We're staying at Lake Pleasant RV Park, a large park built around a small but beautiful man-made lake. We have an unimpeded view of the lake from our motorhome, and we can watch the ducks paddling around. There are a few recently hatched ducklings following their mothers everywhere, but the moms won't let us get close enough to take a picture.



We fixed a potluck dinner on Tuesday, with shrimp & pasta, two salads, garlic bread, and cookies for dessert. Yum! Wednesday morning we had breakfast at the Maltby Cafe, about 6 miles from our campground. It's in the basement of an old service station and garage, and it's a breakfast & lunch place. They've got lots of "Best Of" plaques on the wall, and the food is just great! A place to come back to, for sure.


Debbie & Diane loaded up their laundry and headed out to a laundromat. They were back in time for a little relaxing before heading out to Everett, WA and the home of Diane's god-daughter, Nancy, and her family. We'll be cooking our potluck dinner at their house, since there'll be about 12 or so for dinner, it's threatening to rain some more, and none of our rigs can hold 12 for dinner!

Fabulous Iris Gardens in Oregon

Our first real day of the trip took us from Lodi, CA to Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville, OR, about half way between Grants Pass and Roseburg on I-5. We stopped for breakfast in Dunnigan, where we hooked up with the third couple going to Alaska, LaVan & Louise. The heat wave continued with 90 degree temperatures, so we had the generator and the roof air conditioners on for the whole day. Burned a few gallons more diesel, but at least we were comfortable; the other benefit was that once we stopped for the day, the coach didn't need to be cooled down. Other friends from our RV Club, Bob & Peggy, who actually live in Canyonville, came by for a visit, and also joined us for dinner at the casino.

On Monday morning we traveled about 150 miles on I-5 to Salem, OR, where we visited Schreiner's Iris Gardens, which has been in business since 1925. They are the largest iris grower in the nation, with over 200 acres in flower production. The gardens are in full bloom from around Mothers' Day through June. Almost all of the 300 varieties in bloom are displayed in their show area, where they can be ordered for delivery in September and October when they have been dug up and divided. Of course, we ordered some, and expect them about the time we get back from this trip.



From the Iris Gardens, we traveled a few miles up I-5, then west about 7 miles to Champoeg (sounds like Shampooee) State Heritage Park, first settled by grain farmers about 1830. About 1861, the adjacent Willamette River flooded, destroying the entire town of Champoeg. The park has a campground with electric and water hookups, so we settled in for the afternoon and night. Tomorrow we head out for Bothell, WA, just north of Seattle and the Lake Pleasant RV Park where we'll spend a couple of nights, get caught up on our laundry, and prepare for the trip through British Columbia and the Yukon Territory before reaching Alaska.

Off to Alaska

Well, here we are again, this time, off to Alaska. We left home on Tuesday, May 13th, and traveled to Lodi, CA, for a Holiday Rambler Rally. We're in Lodi until Sunday, May 18th, when we turn our noses north on I 5, heading toward Seattle and the Canadian border. We're traveling with Bob & Diane, good friends from our RV Club. We should be in Seattle on Tuesday, May 20th, where we'll meet up with LaVan & Louise, more good friends from the club. From that point, the three couples in their motorhomes will travel together to and through Alaska. We've met Dave & Suvina, friends of Bob & Diane, who live in Seattle, and will be traveling with us until they get home.

Getting ready to leave home was a real frenzy! We took the motorhome in for service on April 14th. The plan was to do engine and generator oil and filter changes, check and replace engine belts and replace the air cleaner. Whoops! They found a radiator leak which required replacing the radiator, and of course, the new radiator had to be shipped from Indiana and would take two weeks. All that accomplished, we brought the motorhome back home about 10 days before we were leaving on the trip. That would have been adequate time to get everything else done, except a contractor started painting our house that very day! We had a day or so to work on the motorhome before we had to move it to a neighbor's house to avoid it turning out the same color as the house. We finally moved it back home, had new tires installed all-around, and started loading for the trip. Once the house painting was finished, we also had to put all of the outdoor lights, watering systems and plants, and other attached goodies back. We really needed one more day to get things done before leaving on the trip, but we squeezed it all in and headed for Lodi.

We are really fortunate that we learned of friends in Santa Rosa, Ron & Ali, who needed a place to live while their home is being remodeled. They moved in to our house the day we left, and will be there until at least the end of July. Good for them, and good for us. We're a lot more comfortable knowing that the house will be occupied.

Meanwhile, the HR Rally is great fun, although the weather has been HOT!!! We're camped at the Lodi Grape Festival Grounds, some 72 or 73 of us. Fortunately, we have electrical and water hookups, so we can run our air conditioners. Daytime temps have been around 100 degrees, and the nights cool down to the low 70's. Sunday, which is get-away day, is supposed to be a bit cooler, and by Sunday night, we plan to be in Oregon, probably at the Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville, between Grants Pass and Roseburg. Hopefully the triple digit temperatures will be behind us by then.

There are motorhomes and trailers (all Holiday Ramblers) from California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, South Dakota, Florida and Alaska. It's a great big event with games,food and entertainment, but the major activity is socializing. Debbie's in charge of craft classes and a "gently used items" silent auction. Tom helps lead a morning walk each day and he also moderated a round table discussion on motorhome problems and solutions. A similar session was held for "towables", that is, trailers and fifth-wheels, moderated by a fifth-wheel owner.

While in Lodi, we had the chance to have dinner with our good friends, Nancy & Joel, who used to live in Santa Rosa. Debbie and Nancy worked together for several years before they moved away.

It's time for "Social Hour" now, so we'll close this post. More as we move along. We'll start to add pictures of the trip and a travel map shortly, but for now, the pictures and map are from our trip last fall to the southwest. If you want to check out that trip, you can select those earlier postings.