An Alaskan road trip

(I did not include this picture earlier, this is the edge of a Glacier, I was surprised how dirty it is.)

(No Border pictures they don’t appreciate Border pics for some reason)

Leaving Alaska we stopped at the border for our mail. The Border guard said we would have to wait an hour for the PO to open. It was open only 2 hours a day. It was in the living room of the Postmaster. She was very nice and our mail was there. Then we were on our way back into the Yukon. Alaska was beautiful, but behind us.

(The Canadian Provincial parks we stopped were free and very nice)

There are two basic paths to  Alaska by road. One goes thru British Columbia on the West side of the Canadian Rockies, out of Washington State.  That way you join the ALCAN at Watson Lake.

(Sister Kat shot this of our dirty coach slowing for Caribou)

The other is the one we took on the East side of the Canadian Rockies. WE went thru Regina, Saskatchewan,  Medicine Hat, Alberta and on to Edmonton and Dawson Creek. 

If in another life we go again we will take the Western route.

    

We could have taken a road NORTH just before Dawson and went into the Arctic Circle at FT. McPherson, next time we will. There are many alternatives on such a trip. I would guess the beauty is worth it any way you take. The Canadian lakes are incredibly beautiful and DEEP.

Two Moose, note, this is the ALCAN, a good road.

WE passed Lake Labarge (Pics from the net), where the poem ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ was inspired. Though fiction, it was inspired by a true story.  That was another poem Mrs. Grill forced us to memorize in the 7th grade. I know Sherry and the rest got tired of what I could remember of the poem.

 

Susan Butcher the ‘Musher’ I mentioned yesterday, who won the Iditarod, was born in Boston, Mass. She fell in love with Alaska and worked there two years to earn her first dog team. Her first race in 1985 was cut short when a crazed Moose killed two of her sled dogs.  She retired in ‘95 for health reasons.

She passed in Seattle in 2006 a victim of Leukemia. She was 51. Loved and admired in Alaska, then Gov. Palin, declared the 1st Sat. in May as Susan Butcher Day.

 

I hope you enjoyed the trip into Alaska, it is the trip of a lifetime.

Nite Shipslog

PS:

WE have made a Big O around the USA a couple times. When we reached Fairbanks it completed the big X. From Key West to Fairbanks Alaska and from San Diego to Nova Scotia.

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Two things stand out about Alaska, Susan Butcher and her short life.

And the Gold dredges, the giants of the field and their short life.

One a joy, one a search for wealth but both examples of ADVENTURE in a new frontier.