Home Sweet Home

We made it home today after a long three month trip. It was a great trip and we did see a lot of scenery and wildlife in Alaska and Canada. It has been fun doing the blog even though it did take some working at it. We hope that you enjoyed it and maybe be inspired to do an Alaskan trip yourself.

Crawfordsville, IL

This is a picture of the campground office that we are staying in for our last night before arriving home tomorrow. It is a KOA and is pretty nice. We would have probably used a Walmart or Cracker Barrel parking lot except that we needed electricity for the AC. It is still pretty hot but it is August of course.

Wisconsin

We are in Wisconsin and this part of the state is the Water Park Capital of the World along with sunflowers. I think we are about 850 miles from home and that looks like a two day drive. The pictures show it is beautiful weather but it is still hot.

North Dakota

The North Dakota landscape is not like some we have seen in Alaska but it is nevertheless beautiful. We are about 1300 miles from home and there is nothing but interstate highways ahead. It is very hot here in North Dakota which means it is probably hot at home.

Ice Fields and Banff

We are most of the way through Montana but here are some pictures from the Canadian Rockies. Linda is standing beside the large Ice Shuttle where we were standing on the Athabasca glacier. The wheels on that buggy were five feet tall and three feet wide. Below is a picture in Banff of a rock formation called the HooDoos. These were formed by nature but no one seems to know how or why.

Jasper and Banff

We have made it back to the lower 48 today arriving with a thunderstorm but all is well. Before we left Jasper and Banff I got some pictures of mountain goats and big horn sheep which caught our attention. There are some other pictures of the Canadian Rockies that you may enjoy and I will send them later when there is nothing else to send and we have internet.

Jasper, AB

We arrived yesterday to Jasper, Alberta and these mountains are sure beautiful. This fantastic weather doesn't hurt either. We will leave Banff on Sunday which means we do not have enough time to see it all. This calls for a return trip next year. Blogs may not be every day on the return trip since we will be doing a lot of traveling.

Road to Stewart-Hyder

We traveled from Whitehorse to Stewart-Hyder by the Cassiar and Glacier Highways and there were mountains, lakes, more mountains and bears. We were saturated again with really good scenery. Tomorrow we will be heading on to Jasper and Banff but it will take a couple of days. At Hyder we watched the salmon spawning and a large bear come down to have his dinner.

Train to Skagway

We had a bus/train excursion from Whitehorse, YT to Skagway, AK and return and the views from the train were spectacular. The total time was about nine hours but we stayed two hours in Skagway. The train went over, around and through some mountains and pictures just don't do justice to the sights. Anyway, it was a fun day.

Whitehorse, YT

Whitehorse, YT is a pretty neat town to visit with lots of things to do. We did a boat tour today which went through a narrow canyon called Miles Canyon. The last picture shows the weather vane at the airport which is a DC-3 and is in the Guinness Book of Records.

More on Denali

We have left Alaska and are now in Whitehorse, YT but I thought some final pictures of Denali would be on interest. There were many big animals like the moose, grizzly bears or caribou, but there were little ones also like the ground squirrel above. We stayed at Denali so long that Linda grew some antlers (they really were caribou antlers).

Denali Wildlife

We saw lots of wildlife at Denali and here are a couple of examples, caribou and grizzly bear. These were seen from a bus so they were some distance away. I will send some other pictures of Denali wildlife and scenery later. Grizzly bears and caribou were the most common wildlife seen in the park.

Denali National Park

I like this view of Mt. McKinley since it shows how it rises above all the other mountains. In driving around we ran across a cow moose and her calf although the calf is kind of hidden behind the bushes. We will be camping 29 miles into the park for the next 4 days at Teklanika so there will be no internet. After that we will be starting our trip to the lower 48.

Denali Park Road and Ptarmigan

The top picture is a typical view from the bus on the road into the park and we think it is a beautiful park. The next picture is the ptarmigan (state bird) which we found near a trail. It can be hard to find since its colors match the surroundings very good. In the winter its feathers turn white as snow so it can again be hidden from larger animals.

Park Road and Dall Sheep

The road into Denali National Park goes 90 miles and only the first 15 miles are paved. The remainder of the road is rather narrow and there are no guard rails. The buses seem to handle it okay however. The second picture is Dall sheep which are only very high on the mountains this time of year. You have to look closely to see them and they usually appear as only white dots.

Denali

We have seen many animals here at Denali including grizzly bears, moose, caribou, dall sheep, coyote, ptarmigan, golden eagle, and many other small animals. Most of these have been seen from the shuttle bus so we were not so close to them.

Denali

We had another beautiful day at Denali and rode a shuttle 66 miles into the park to Eielson Visitor Center. There were great views of Mt. McKinley and we hiked up to a peak which was a climb of 1000 ft. over one mile to an elevation of 4700 ft. This was a ranger led hike and it was not for the faint hearted. That is Mt. McKinley behind us when we were at the top.

Denali National Park

This scene is near the entrance to Denali National Park and it appears to be a beautiful park. Mt. McKinley is only one portion of the park and there is much more to see. It is a really big park and we hope to see as much as possible.