Arctic Adventure 2012 Part 3

To the blog followers,

Many have told me they want to see pics, so here they are.

 

I am putting up these two links to our picture hosting site.  The first has 18 pics and the second has 58 pics.  Read the captions below the pics and use the enlarge button for better viewing.  Most of them are taken at high resolution.

The first 18 pics link.

The next 58 pics link

Since our last update we have covered a lot of ground.  We left the Salt Lake City area north bound on I-15 headed for Butte Montana. That would be our stopping place for the night.  Purchased a few item at the store and turn in early.  

June 29th 30th

Barbara and I wanted to check out northern Idaho because we had never been through there.   We looked around the Kellogg and the Coeur d'Alene area and settled in at Cabelas for the night.  They have a nice store very near the border of Idaho and Washington. The next day we traveled toward Spokane Washington and on up toward Osoyoos where we would enter Canada .

July 1st and 2nd

This route would allow us to visit the Grand Coulee Dam and spend a night at the Spring Canyon campground.  We spent 3 hours at the visitor center at Grand Coulee and then did a guided tour of the left generator station the next day.  We had done this in 1982 but it was still very interesting.  They do a laser show on the water over the dam so we stayed for that. We spent an extra day  at Spring Canyon Campground on Lake Roosevelt. 

July 3rd and 4th

Travel day into Canada and a nice drive up the Frazer Valley.  We spent the night in Kamloops on the 3 and Prince George on the 4th.  This is a very scenic drive with many oppuritunies to see the orchards for apples and the big Bing cherries.  This is a big supplier for cherries.

July 5th and 6

 More travel along highway 16 with New Hazelton being our stop for the night.  They have a nice visitor center that has WIFI when it is open.  We were too late for the WIFI, bu we stayed the night there. At Kitawango we turned north on highway 37, the Cassiar that would take up to the Alcan junction.  The Cassiar is a very scenic road that we have in the past used when we would travel south going to the states.  This year we did the reverse seeing it from a different direction going north.  The night of the 6th we stopped at the Dease Lake Rotary Tanzilla Campground.  We would do the Telegraph Creek adventure the next day.  That would take most of the day as it is 150 miles round trip.  Had fun with that road.  Use the 4X4 many time on the switch backs.   Got back in time to wash the Suburban next to the river and to make a few more miles toward the highway junction.

July 7th 

We chose the Beaver Dam rest area for the night.  That was a test of our will as the mosquito population inside the camper and outside was terrible. Never seen anything as bad. We killed them with the zapper swatter until that was not fun anymore.  Left early and hoped they would not follow us. 

July 8th and 9th

were spent in Whitehorse seeing the town and doing some catch up shopping.  Had some rain, but for the most part, the weather was good.  Whitehorse is the capitol of Yukon and has the Canadian Tire store and Walmart.

July 10th - july 16th

Travel to Haines Ak for our longterm stay at the Chilkoot State Park on Chilkoot lake.  This area has it all.  Neat town with a lot to offer.  Weather is good, a little rain, but a lot of sun.  The days have just melted away.  Sometimes we drive 3-4 miles along the Lynn Canal and watch the bear come down to feed on the fish along the edge.  The bear also come through the CG daily.

Check out some of the pictures that I have linked

 

That is all at the present... We will be traveling back to Whitehorse and then to Dawson City in the next few days.  Stay tuned...

Our Arctic Adventure 2012

Dear Blog followers,

This is a link to my pictures with descriptions

It has been some time since I put one of these update blogs up.  Maybe I will update the last of 2011 and the first of 2012 completely when I get an opportunity. We have been busy and some of those months will go into the time slots that I entered and are void of any info.

Just a little recap... We returned from out 2011 Alaskan trip  with Brad and Beverly Cottingham Oct the 1st and then in November joined with about 15 others at Davis Mountain State Park for the 3rd annual Javelina roundup. 

We are still pulling our 2006 Bigfoot 25RQ travel trailer.  It seem to fit our style well and is up to the task. This will be our 5th summer to travel with it. I would guess we have put about 50K miles on it.

We are still using the 2003 white Chevy Suburban as a daily driver and also a  tow vehicle.  I did make a change to the Suburban, in December I changed the complete drive train (engine, trans and rear end) to a 2007 GM 6.6L Duramax diesel. I also converted it from a two wheel drive to a four wheel.  All of these changes will allow us to continue to do our thing when we are on the road.  There had been numerous times when a 4X4 was needed and we just couldn't handle it with the 4X2.  The Duramax conversion give more power and much better fuel mileage.

Then to start 2012 we spent about 6 weeks on the road to the western United States with our friends Brad and Beverly Cottingham along with Tony and Jean Boekman.  We spent time in Quartzite AZ  and then to the Presidential Libraries of Ronald Regan, Richard Nixon, and many other places in the west.

26 June 2012

We are back on the road again. This time the adventure will just be the two of us, but as in the past I hope all of the blog readers will join in and ride along with us. We are headed back to the far north in Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and the Northwest Territory.  Of course, we will also travel a new route to us through the north part of Idaho into Canada.  

The adventure of the open road and places yet to be discovered is a strong pull for both Barbara and myself.  The few months we have traveled Alaska and the northwest in 2009, 2011 were just not enough, so here we go again.

We planned this early in the year and the leave date was to be the first week in June, but that got pushed to the 26th of June.  As is often the case, things work out for the best.  The northwest had an usually wet and rainy spring, so we missed some of that.

We drive to Brad and Bevs home in Eldorado near Santa Fe for the first night.  They took us down to the old square for a dinner at the historic hotel.  We have a lovely evening and the next day we are on the road again. We are heading west as quickly as we can because of the wild fires in Colorado.

Tonight we will stop in the far northwest town of  Farmington, New Mexico.

27 June 2012

We leave Farmington and head west toward Shiprock NM, then north into Utah toward Moab and the Arches National Park.  This is a spectacular area of southwest Utah. To the north of Moab near Helper CO we run through dense smoke from a lightening started wild fire not far off of the road .   We overnight on the forth of Salt Lake City.

I have included a few pictures that we took along the way.  One each blog I will try to embed a map and a link to the Piccsa site for additional pictures.  I am using a off line editor for gmail that is not very friendly.  We only have internet access via a few hotspots that we come across.  Some of these are really slow.

Stay tuned for more