2018 RV Trip to Alaska
Our internet access in northern Canada and in Alaska has been mainly limited to the towns, primarily via cellular, occasionally connecting through public wifi. In the campgrounds, wifi network signals are typically either too weak or of limited bandwidth or both. My last post was uploaded at Juneau Airport while waiting for our connecting flight … Continue reading
The day following our long boat ride, we opted for something a little smaller and self-propelled: kayaks. We launched from the rocky beach just below our cabin and paddled through the handful of boats in the harbor to the opposite shore. It was a flood tide with only light wind and a nearly cloudless sky, … Continue reading
Our 3-night reservation at Glacier Bay Lodge included an all-day, 150-mile boat ride from the dock at Bartlett Cove, north to the far end of Glacier Bay. We walked down to the dock early Monday morning, arriving about 6:30 a.m., the sun had already been up for 2 hours. This time of year at such … Continue reading
Sunday was a travel day, flying out of Haines airport on an Alaskan Seaplanes Swiss-made, 9-passenger Pilatus PC-12, a plane I had never heard of before. Our ultimate destination was Glacier Bay N.P. with a layover in Juneau before landing in Gustavus for a shuttle ride to the Glacier Bay Lodge. It was a little … Continue reading
Only three settlements of the Southeast Alaska Panhandle are reachable by road and we have visited them all: Hyder, Skagway, and now Haines, although we didn’t get to Haines via its highway connection, the Haines Highway, which runs north through British Columbia and the Yukon to Haines Junction. We will be leaving by that route, … Continue reading
We left Skagway around noon on Thursday, taking the high-speed Alaska Marine Highway ferry M/V Fairweather to Haines, 15 miles down the Lynn Canal. I had been looking forward to the ferry ride, but not to boarding the ferry at Skagway. We have had our motorhome on ferries before, without incident, but never at a … Continue reading
I’ve mentioned that gold was found near Dawson City at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers in August 1896. But the world remained unaware of that discovery until a year later when groups of miners from the Klondike arrived in San Francisco and Seattle with over 2 tons of gold in the summer … Continue reading
We left Whitehorse late Monday morning and drove south for 10 miles on the Alcan to where the Klondike Highway (Yukon Hwy 2) veers off to Skagway, Alaska, 98 miles distant. The Klondike Highway’s northern terminus is Dawson City and its route and name are a result of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898, gold … Continue reading
Not long after we crossed into the Yukon, the Cassiar Highway ended at a T-junction with the Alaskan Highway, also known as the Alaska-Canada Highway or the “Alcan.” We took the Alcan from that junction all the way to Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon territory (Yukon is not yet sufficiently populated to become a … Continue reading
We filled up the fuel tanks on the RV and the Jeep before leaving Stewart Thursday morning, then headed up the Glacier Highway, BC37A, to the Meziadin Junction of the Cassiar Highway, BC37. About halfway, Dale spotted a black bear lazily crossing the road ahead of us. By the time we reached him, he had … Continue reading
The drive north from Hyder runs along the easternmost edge of the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass, established in 1907, is the largest National Forest in the United States with 16.7 million designated acres, most of it temperate rain forest. The Tongass encompasses most of the Southeast Alaska “Panhandle,” an archipelago that includes, in addition … Continue reading
The town of Stewart, British Columbia, is located at the head of the 90 mile long Portland Canal, named, like so much of the Pacific Northwest, by the English explorer, George Vancouver, this time for the Duke of Portland. The word “Canal” is a holdover from the earlier Spanish, meaning “channel.” In fact, the Portland … Continue reading
Another late start, we left Smithers around 10:00 a.m. after stopping to fuel up. Diesel in Canada costs about CAD$5.00/gal, but the favorable exchange rate between the US$ and the CAD$ (1.00:1.32) makes our cost US$4.00/gal, just a little more than what we were paying in Washington State when we left. Of course, fuel is … Continue reading
We departed Bellingham, Washington, yesterday morning on our way to Alaska! Getting an early start, we headed north through the farmlands of Whatcom County (below, top left) to the border crossing into Canada at Sumas (top right). Once in British Columbia at Abbotsford, we took Highway 1 up the Fraser River valley to Hope where … Continue reading
The Road Less Traveled 