I am writing this in Skayway, Alaska.  We left home in Florida on May 6 and finally crossed the border into Alaska yesterday, June 15.  For those of you who questioned whether I could stand Joan 24/7 (or was it vice versa?) be advised that after six weeks on the road we are still best friends.

I have not had an internet connection in almost two weeks until arriving here.  In Canada we shut off the data connections to our phones because it is too expensive.  And the campgrounds we stayed in in Canada either had no wifi or also wanted to charge us for a connection.  I really do like keeping you people informed of our progress, but when it comes to paying to do so I have my limits.  So this post will be a “catch up” and will really be a combination of posts I would have written along the way.  I am now doing all of the driving and therefore have plenty of time to think of topics for posts, so this one will be a little longer.  Titles for these posts could have been:  A Tale of Four Cities, Come Out of There You Little Booger, The Moose Is Not a Myth and That’s No Bull!, Grin and Bear It, and finally What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar???.

I think my last post came from East Glarcier Park, Montana.  That is a small town on the East side of Glacier National Park, thus the name.  The town is bisected by US Route 2.  Traveling west on Route 2 the park is on the right and all of the land on the left is part of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.  At the edge of the park are the typical little businesses you would expect such as restaurants, gift shops, a motel or two, a restored train station, etc.  Also there is the Glacier Park Lodge which was built 100 years ago and is absolutely beautiful.  Logs from the area were used as columns in the lobby.  These are not ordinary logs, but rather are about three and a half feet in diameter and about fifty feet long.  Joan read that they were about 400 years old when they were cut and there must be about fifty of them standing upright in the lobby.  The other side of the road where the Indian land is (I grew up playing cowboys and Indians with real cap pistols so I still call them Indians) is a sharp contrast to the park side.  Just about the only decently maintained building there is the Post Office.  The houses quite frankly were a disgrace.  I understand the residents being poor.  I do not understand a lifestyle where you open the front door and throw a garbage bag into the front yard.  And you keep doing this for years until there is only a small path through the accumulation to reach the door.  I do not understand putting every old junker car and truck you ever owned into the front yard.  I do not understand a town full of mangy stray dogs.  I could go on, but you get the picture.  When we left this town we drove north about fifteen miles through the Reservation and passed through Browning, Montana.  Browning is actually some type of capitol or headquarters for the Blackfeet nation.  Here there was no good side of town as in East Glacier.  The whole of Browning was like the south side of East Glacier.  From Browning we continued heading north for fifty miles or so still on Blackfeet land.  The few houses we passed were still very substandard.  This continued to be the case right up until we crossed the Canadian border into Alberta.  At that point it was like a switch had been flipped although I believe we were still on Indian lands.  Often times over the years when I have entered Canada I have been struck by what I would describe as the pristeen condition of the country side.  There seems to be less litter along the highways and no billboards.  (There are many things to love about Canada and a few to not like.)  The first town we came to in Alberta was Cardston.  We camped there and went into town for lunch.  Virtually all of the faces in town were obviously of Indian heritage.  But this town, unlike those south of the border, was spotless, and a refreshing change from what we had just left.

My Canadian friends who are reading this are now saying to themselves what’s not to like about Canada?.  Three things spring to my mind—hockey, cold winters, and not being able to transport my pistol through the country en route to Alaska.  And now I can add a fourth.  The city of Banff.  I detest little tourist trap towns.  Places like Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge in Tennessee or Jackson Hole in Wyoming.  Now I can add Banff to that list.  Terribly crowded, horrendous traffic, way too many shops selling home made candles and soap.  The one thing Banff has going is that it is in one of the most beautiful areas anywhere.  Which is of course why everyone was there.  

One of the things I have always liked about being “out west” is the dry air.  Joan keeps reminding me to drink plenty of fluids to stay hydrated.  Joan’s career was in healthcare.  She spent many years working as a microbiologist in a hospital lab.  That is a rather specialized field where she dealt with all of the disgusting things that come out of people, especially sick people.  When Mandy still lived at home with us, we three would sit down for the evening meal, and over dinner Joan would often start telling us about her day.  The conversation might turn toward how she smeared a stool sample on a piece of glass and looked at it under a microscope to see if it had worms.  Or perhaps how she examined a sputum sample. Finally Mandy and I had to make a rule that Mom could not talk about such stuff until after dinner!!  But for Joan old habits die hard.  A few days ago as I was eating my oatmeal with plumped up California golden raisins, Joan started describing how because of the low humidity she was getting these big old crusty boogers in her nose.  All of a sudden those raisins did not look so great to me.  Again, I digress.  Back to the journey.

From Banff we made a quick stop at Lake Louise.  This is perhaps the most beautiful spot I have ever been too.  Others must feel that way too because there is an old hotel on the lake where rooms go for $850 to $1,250 per night.  From Lake Louise we jumped on a road called the Icefields Parkway to the town of Jasper.   It is about 100 miles of the most beautiful scenery anywhere.  The only thing that detracted from it was that diesel fuel was about $8.00 a gallon and Wilda needed a big drink of it.  After Jasper the next stop was Dawson Creek, Alberta which is mile zero on the Alaskan Highway.  So after about a month on the road we were finally at the beginning of the road to Alaska.

On the four days that we drove the Alaska Highway the wildlife was in full view.  The first time we spotted a black bear we were braking and running for the camera.  Same thing the second time.  And the third.  Then for maybe the next 25 we began to just stop and look at them without taking a picture.  Then for the next 25 or so we began to just keep driving and say “there’s another bear”.  And after that we would just drive on and not even comment.  Kind of like driving along and seeing a crow picking at road kill.  

Many places along the highway there are moose crossing warnings.  We drove past these for three days without ever seeing a moose.  I was beginning to think that the Canadian government was playing a cruel hoax on us tourists.  But then we crested a hill and there was a moose cow and her new calf on the berm of the road.  We slowed and they trotted along ahead of us for maybe a half mile.  The calf only came up to mom’s belly and it would cut in under her between her front and rear legs as they moved along.  It reminded me of the scene at the beginning of Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase drives the family station wagon in under the trailer of a log truck while going down the highway.  So I have named this particular moose calf Chevy.  We only saw one other moose cow in the 1,000 or so miles of the highway that we have covered so far.  We have yet to see a bull moose on this trip.

From Whitehorse, Yukon Territory we decided to get off the Alaska Highway and head south to Skagway.  This put us on the Klondike Highway.  While not quite as beautiful as the Icefields Parkway this road is still pretty spectacular.  When we finally crossed into Alaska on the Klondike we were thinking we needed to find a bar and toast ourselves for finally getting here.  But no bars were to be seen and I started asking Joan “What would you do for a Klondike bar?”.  She just rolls her eyes and frowns at me when I say stuff like that.  Mandy and I used to call it Mom’s look or just “the look’.

We plan to stay in Skagway for three days and then we will travel that same Klondike Highway back up to Whitehorse where we will again get on the Alaska Highway and travel it the rest of the way into the main part of Alaska.

One final note–some readers of these blog posts have commented that pictures would be nice.  I agree with that and we have taken a ton of pictures along the way.  However I have not had any way to download them from the camera to the iPad.  I am about to remedy that by having a connection shipped to me at our next Alaska town.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words hopefully my next post can be shortened.

Edited with BlogPad Pro