Small House, Big Yard

Tolkien

Chapter One

San Diego, California to San Diego, California

Family and friends...

Well, after many years of planning, dreaming, and anticipating, we finally did the deed. It was with great pleasure that we sold the house, gave our kids any stuff they wanted, gave the rest to charity, and moved into the RV.

Hallelujah! We are now officially on the road.

Our RV home on wheels has everything we need in it. It is the same size as a small one bedroom house, complete with living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. We even have a patio.

We are always in touch because we have satellite radio, satellite TV (DirecTV), satellite internet, and a cell phone. We expect that having satellite internet access in the RV will be a big help to having a normal life as we move around. It was a little pricy but well worth it. We thought about only using Wi-Fi but that’s way too unreliable, and hard to find.

Other than clothes, we took almost nothing out of the house. I scanned all our pictures and transferred our music CDs to the computer. A few boxes of mementos and Family heirlooms were given to my son for storage in his attic and the rest was either sold or given away. All our worldly possessions, which we so carefully accumulated over the years, turned out to have almost no resale value. Who cares! We don't miss a thing.

Cindi and I continually marvel at how busy we have been since we retired. Every day is go, go, go. We did the complete round of doctors and dentists in preparation for being on the road. I had the lenses replaced in both of my eyes to solve a growing cataract problem. Cindi converted all our time-sensitive economic stuff to on-line payments and we got our new mailing address established.

We took last week off from our busy retired schedule and went to the annual Escapees RV Club national rally. This year it was in Lancaster, California, just to the north of L.A., so it was too close to pass up. They had four tracks of speakers on every RV subject you can imagine. It lasted for a week and we learned a LOT of stuff about RVs and RVing. One of the things we were most concerned about was the amount of weight we are carrying in the RV. An overloaded RV can make driving difficult at best and downright dangerous at worst. A while back I read that a third of all RVs on the road are overloaded, and full-timers are the worst offenders, so we were delighted to find out that we could get our RV weighed at the rally. Our RV is rated to gross out at 22,000 pounds while pulling a 6,000 pound toad. I was dreading the weigh-in but it turned out that we are at 21,850 pounds with a 3,400 pound toad. Happy days, I can start eating again!

By the way, did you know in the RV world, that a tow vehicle pulls things, like trailers and boats, and a toad vehicle is something being towed, like the car that is towed behind our RV. Yeah, I know you can get by just fine not knowing that, but it's interesting to us.

In addition to all the seminars, they also had a circus tent full of people selling everything that an RVer might need. We managed to find $500.00 worth of stuff that we couldn't live without.

While we were here we were hoping to see the famous Lancaster California poppy fields in bloom but they were two weeks late this year and we couldn't hang around. But never the less, a good time was had by all.

We leave Southern California with a happy heart. Cindi and I made a lot of friends that we will miss, but through the magic of the internet will be able to stay in contact with. The thing I will miss the most is being around the fine people that I had the pleasure of working with for almost 25 years. I can honestly say that I looked forward to going to work every single day because of the quality of the people that I worked with and their shared vision of public service.

Our immediate plan is to meander up the coast visiting Family and friends as we go. We will meet some RVing friends in Washington on June 1st and head for Alaska for a few months. We will be part of a four RV caravan. Not sure where we're going, but since we are not the lead RV it doesn't much matter. Where we go, we go.

I plan to do an occasional newsletter of our adventures. Probably about once a month.

Family and friends...

Well here we are, staged just below the Canadian border. The trip up the west coast was glorious. We left Vista, California on May 1st and arrived in Seattle, Washington last week. Most of the trip we were on U.S. 101 and I-5. But we were on other highways enough to see some of small-town America. It's a great place and we plan to spend a lot more time seeing it. We have averaged a whopping 45 miles a day on our trip so far. We stopped many times and spent many days visiting with friends and relatives that we have not seen in a long time. It was a fantastic month getting reconnected with Family and friends that we really like, but seldom see. We stayed in RV Parks, State Parks, and an occasional driveway. But the most interesting place we stayed was in the gravel pit of a working concrete and asphalt plant on the Trinity River near Weaverville, California that a friend of ours owns. We were there 3 days, parked next to the scale that all the trucks got weighed on when they were coming and going. The scenery in that part of California is spectacular, and we saw much of it up close and personal. Many of the roads our friend Dale took us on in the surrounding hills were the width of a bulldozer blade. And forget about being paved. I still don’t know how he knew where the roads were, or where we were going for that matter.

I've played golf three times this month. Had a career day in Oregon when I shot a 77 on a par 72 course. My best round ever. Never hit a bad shot all day. My playing partner was an Oregon rancher who spends three months in Alaska every summer and three months every winter in Arizona. Spring and fall he works the ranch. I meet all kinds of interesting people playing golf.

The weather cooperated right up until we crossed the Washington State line. Since then it has been raining steadily for 6 days. It's the first time we have been in rain and we were really surprised at how noisy a heavy rain can be when it is banging on the top of an RV. Sounds like a bunch of midgets up there with little hammers.

We arrived in Seattle a few days earlier than the rest of our group so we would have time to dump our California residency. We took a day trip to Dallas to establish Texas residency and get our Texas driver's licenses. We flew from Seattle to Dallas, then took a cab to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles and traded in our California drivers licenses for Texas drivers licenses. Then it was back to the airport for the return flight to Seattle. When we got back to the RV we took the California license plates off the car and RV then put on the Texas plates. We tore up the old registrations and put the new registrations in the vehicles. After that we called the insurance company with the happy news, and said goodbye to California forever. We are now proud Texans. We expect the change in state residency to save us at least $8,000.00 a year in taxes and fees.

Like all full-time RVers, we had to choose a state to be a resident of. Since Texas and South Dakota are clearly the best choices for people like us, businesses in both states exist that provide logistic support to full-time RVers. We had originally intended to be South Dakota residents because we thought it would be cool, but it turns out that the economics of the decision narrowly favored Texas in our particular case. We chose a company called Escapees.

http://www.escapees.com/

They helped us register to vote, register the vehicles, and get license plates, as well as providing us with a legal address, mail forwarding service, and email address. We did all that a month or two ago by mail and it was simple. The federal, state, and local governments in this county 100 miles north of Houston are very used to dealing with nomads like us and don’t blink an eye at dealing with absentee residents. We live on Rainbow Drive in Livingston, Texas, along with 25,000 other people on the same street.

As we go along we are getting used to the RV Park lifestyle. We are learning that there are basically three types of RV Parks,... RV Campgrounds, RV Resorts, and RV Parks that are neither campgrounds nor resorts. I call these plain old RV Parks for lack of a better term. At RV Campgrounds you park on dirt, under trees, with the smell of campfires in the air, surrounded by families with kids and/or grandkids. These are destination parks. At RV Resorts you park on a hard surface, typically concrete, next to retired people, trees are around for decoration and shade but do not cover where you park. RV Resorts all have grass lawns at every site, Jacuzzis, swimming pools, club houses, tennis courts, almost no kids, and occasionally a golf course. These are also destination parks. Plain old RV Parks are typically not destination parks. They are in the we’re-just-passing-through-and-need-a-place-to-stay-for-a-night-or-two category. They also have a significant number of resident RV’s who stay there for months or years. Destination parks tend to be really nice places to stay. Plain old RV Parks are more difficult to qualify, some are really nice and some are rundown. All three types of RV Parks are safe, friendly places that have a community atmosphere.

We have stayed at all three types so far. Some have been first rate and some have been pretty plain, but the rhythm of the parks is pretty much the same. There is an easygoing neighborhood friendliness about them. People are always walking the park for exercise and with the slightest bit of encouragement, and sometimes with none, they will stop and chat about where they have been, where they are headed, and share their RV experiences. We learn something new every day from talking to people. One thing we learned early on is that we hate parking under trees. They drop vegetation on the roof, which eventually rots, and then causes steaks down the sides of the RV when it rains. YUK! As you might imagine, we avoid campgrounds with trees as much as possible.

I mentioned last month that we are going to Alaska as part of a four RV caravan. That’s because we have a friend who is long-time RVer, who has been to Alaska many times. He invited us, along with a couple of other friends, to follow him around Alaska, caravan style. He also has a friend who owns a gold mine in the Yukon and he has agreed to give us a tour when we get there. That’s pretty much unheard of because miners don’t like people poking around their business.

Yesterday two of the three families that we are going with arrived in Seattle. Tomorrow we head for the beginning of the ALCON highway at Dawson's Creek, British Columbia, to meet up with the fourth Family of our group. From there it is on to Whitehorse in the Yukon, then cut over to Skagway, Alaska, board a ferry to Haines Junction, Alaska, then on to Anchorage and points north before turning back into the Yukon. It amazes me that less than two months ago I was still working and still living in Vista.

The internet system on the roof quit working because we are so far north that the antenna can’t see the satellite, which is above the equator, south of Texas. So I am switching to EarthLink dial-up until we get back in the U.S.

I think of our troops overseas everyday and wish them well. It’s going to be a long, hard, slog.

Family and friends…

This month has been an absolute adventure. Alaska really still is America’s frontier. I'll remember this month for the vastness of the land, the scenery, the lack of a night time, the history, the gold fields, the neat little towns, the forest fires, the mosquitoes, and the really friendly people that we met everywhere. I'll have to divide this month into more than one newsletter because we covered so much territory and saw so many things.

On June 1st we crossed into British Columbia... just to the east of Seattle at a place called Sumas. We then connected up with Canadian Highway 97 and followed the Fraser River north, through a number of small towns. The Fraser River is a large river that runs south, down the middle of British Columbia, to Vancouver. The views along the river were spectacular.

We stopped the first night at Williams Lake, pop 10,000. The RV Park, such as it was, is built in the middle of the town rodeo grounds. It was here that we were introduced to the first of many RV Parks in Canada that only have hookups for water and a meager 15 amps of electrical service. No sewer connection and no cable TV. What we eventually discovered is that the electrical power in all remote RV Parks in Canada is suspect. We routinely ran into low voltage and low current. 100 volts with 15 amps of electricity is really crummy. That’s less than what you would get out of any wall outlet in your house. Our motor home is designed to operate on 120 volts with a robust 50 amps of electrical service. That way we can run the microwave, heater, water heater, both TVs, both air conditioners, and anything else we want at the same time. (Just in case I never mentioned it before, we bought the RV for many reasons, NOT INCLUDED in those reasons is because we want to rough it, camp, save money, or do without the creature comforts that we have grown to expect.) Yeah, I know... I'm spoiled.

The second night we stopped in Dawson Creek, pop 11,000. We chose an RV Park that advertised they have internet available. It turned out that on the outside wall of the office they have a pay phone with a modem plug on it. That was their idea of internet access. Of course that was totally worthless to me because I had no way to determine if EarthLink had a local number and I also had no money for the phone. As luck would have it there was a Super 8 motel near the RV Park that advertised free Wi-Fi in every room. I took my laptop in, explained my predicament to the girl behind the check-in counter, and she let me sit in the lobby and get on-line with no problem. This was the first of many people that I met this month who had a friendly, helpful, we're all out here in the wilderness together kind of attitude. Very friendly folks.

The next day we found an internet cafe in Dawson Creek that let you bring in your own PC and plug it into their DSL connection for $3.00 an hour. It worked great. Subsequently, internet cafes became the way for me to stay on line during the month. Practically every town we stopped at, which by the way were far and few between the further north we went, had DSL available in a hotel lobby or an internet cafe on a pay as you go basis. They also had PCs available for people who did not want to use their own. Dawson Creek also has a Wal-Mart, but since we stocked up in Seattle, we didn't go in. However, we did load up on fried chicken at the KFC so I would have lunch in the frig for the next couple of days. As many of you know, the refrigerator in the RV is way less than half the size of one in a normal house, so we have to go shopping on a pretty regular basis. Plus, we don't have the luxury of a big pantry for a lot of canned goods and the like.

But I digress. Dawson Creek is located on the eastern border of British Columbia ...at the edge of the wilderness. To the west and north is the Yukon and Alaska. To the east is the rest of Canada, and civilization. Dawson Creek is where the Alaska Highway, originally called the ALCAN, starts. The highway is just over 1,400 miles long and terminates at the town of Delta Junction, Alaska... 95 miles south of Fairbanks. The highway was built in 1942 by the U.S. Army to serve as a military highway during WWII. They started construction in March and, incredibly, finished in October. It was an amazing accomplishment considering the utter desolation and harshness of the territory. When construction equipment broke down they just left it where it broke. And when they finished the road, the army left all the remaining equipment where it sat because it was too expensive to haul it out. As a result there is still equipment lying around, and a number of small towns have stocked museums with the leftovers.

http://www.tourismdawsoncreek.com/

In 1948 the road was opened to the public. It has been continually straightened and improved by Canada from the original S shaped gravel road ever since. The last major improvement effort was completed in the late 1990's. We found it to be a first rate, paved, straight, two lane road with wide shoulders for most of its length. However, the road isn't so good that you can put your vehicle on cruise control and just sit there. You have to actually drive every mile. But it's easy to find your way on the road. There is a milepost marker, a small white pole, on the side of the road every mile. You can buy a book called the Milepost that describes what is located at each mile post marker. Every 30-40 miles along the road is a mini-town. The typical mini-town has a population of about 15-25 people and has a hotel, gas station, restaurant, and maybe a store. Every 150-200 miles there is an actual town of 200-400 people. We saw many RVs on the road but we also saw many tourists in cars. Lots of people use the Alaska Highway in a variety of vehicles to go see Alaska.

From Dawson Creek, mile 0, we headed northwest, stopping for the night every 250 miles or so. I say night, but it never got dark. The sun would go down around 11:30 p.m. but it never actually got dark. It was the strangest thing to be thinking that is must be about 4:00 in the afternoon only to find out that it is actually 9:00 at night. And every day just kept getting longer and longer. British Columbia and the Yukon are light years away from Southern California. The Yukon is about twice the size of California, but the population of the whole territory is only 31,000 people, and 22,000 of them live in Whitehorse. The wilderness just goes on forever and it never gets boring. Just the sky alone is an ever changing panorama.

We spent our first night in the Yukon in Watson Lake. Watson Lake, population 1,800, is an interesting place because that's where the sign forest is. In 1942 a homesick soldier nailed a sign up on a pole pointing to his hometown. Other soldiers saw this and soon did the same thing. Since then countless 1,000s of others have followed suit. People come from all over the world to leave signs from their hometown. The good folks of Watson Lake keep putting more and more telephone poles into the ground so people have something to nail their signs to. I saved my old California license plates specifically for the sign forest.

http://www.yukoninfo.com/watson/signpostforest.htm

We crossed the continental divide at the northern end of the Rocky Mountains between Watson Lake and Whitehorse. We were very glad to see Whitehorse because it got us back to a city with all the good things cities have to offer the weary traveler. They have a Wal-Mart, Kentucky Fried Chicken, internet cafe, golf course, and things to see and do for tourists. Whitehorse is a historically important town on the Yukon River that connected the interior of the Yukon with the gold fields of Dawson City and Alaska. Riverboats used to move people and goods on the Yukon River in the same manner that riverboats plied the Mississippi River. We spent 3 glorious days in Whitehorse, stocked up the old frig, and had a great time seeing the sights. We visited the fish ladder on the Yukon River and took a tour of the last surviving old time riverboat. The best old time dance hall type show we have ever seen was in Whitehorse. The performers were world class. I played a round of golf at the only golf course within many 100s of miles. It was a nice course, with grass greens instead of oil greens. But all I really remember about playing there is the mosquitoes. There were millions of them on the course. The guys I played with told me that they were having an early warm spring and while the mosquitoes are always really bad, they were exceptional just now. We had been warned that the mosquito is the national bird of the Yukon and Alaska but I was not prepared for how many there were. Sometimes they flew right into your mouth. On a lighter note, we got a real chuckle when we drove past the airport. A DC-3 crashed at the airport in the 1950s and it was damaged so badly that it couldn't be repaired. So the locals put it on a pole and have been using it as a weathervane ever since. It always rotates to point into the wind.

http://travelyukon.com/about_yukon/yukon_communities/whitehorse

From Whitehouse we left the Alaska Highway and drove 125 miles due south to the American coastal town of Skagway, AK pop 860. Skagway is a very neat little town that owes its existence to the Klondike gold rush in 1897-98.

When gold was first discovered in the Yukon, it was found in the rivers and streams in the vicinity of a small mining camp called Dawson City. This caused a massive stampede of gold hunters from all over the world to rush there to strike it rich. A LOT of people made the trip. Some stopped at Skagway, others at mining towns along the way, but most made it all the way to Dawson City and the surrounding gold fields. It’s an incredible story of human perseverance. The only way for potential miners to get to Dawson City in those days was to take a boat from Seattle to Skagway, buy supplies, walk into Canada, then hike 33 miles up the Chilkoot Pass in knee deep snow to a lake at the headwaters of the Yukon River. Canada stationed Mounties at the border and would not allow anyone in who was not bringing enough supplies to last a year. So each miner had to bring about 2,000 pounds of supplies. They made the round trip up and down the Chilkoot Pass, in the snow, about 30 times to get all their stuff moved to the top. They would then build themselves a raft and float down the Yukon River with their supplies to Dawson City. The trip from Seattle to Dawson City took about 18 months, most of it through some of the most desolate territory on the planet. Simply amazing.

Skagway takes great pride in retaining the look and feel of the original gold rush town. It's a very neat place to spend some time. We were there 3 days which is just about right. There were four big cruise ships tied up at the pier each day we were there. When they left each day we had the place to ourselves.

Since Skagway was our first stop in Alaska, we had all our mail forwarded by the Escapees mail service to General Delivery at the post office. It was waiting for us when we arrived. The next time we got mail was at the Fairbanks, AK post office. The next time we will get mail after that will be at the RV Park we will be staying at in Calgary, Canada next month. Getting mail is not a problem, we just have to let our mail forwarding service know where and when to send it. Usually we pick General Delivery in some small town post office that we know we will be going through a week or so down the road. Here it's a little different because we are dealing with greater distances, rural locations, and the Canadian mail system.

From Skagway we took a ferry to Haines, AK, pop 2,800, continuing on our way north to Anchorage. There is an extensive system of ferries all along the Alaska coast that link the towns along the way. For example, it is 13 miles by ferry from Skagway to Haines, but 359 miles by road. And there are some towns that don't even have roads to them, Juneau for example. The ferry ride was pretty cool. It cost $26.00 a person and $2.80 per foot of vehicle. It's a big ferry with cabins, lounges, and a restaurant. We learned that some people stay on it for days. They tour Alaska by ferry and bring their car along. It carried a couple of dozen RVs plus many cars with no problem. Getting the larger RV's on and off the ferry was an adventure for the drivers but everything turned out OK. I drove the car on first and Cindi brought the RV on board while I took pictures. :)

http://www.akferry.com/

On the way to the RV Park in Haines we stopped at a fish market that was selling King salmon that had been caught that same morning. We barbequed it that night for dinner. Ummm good! Sharon, our Trail Boss, had a birthday in Haines so we decided to surprise her with a birthday cake. We went to the local bakery and discovered that the lady who bakes their cakes was off that day. When we told the owner our situation she sent us over to the ladies house who readily agreed to come back to work and bake us a cake. And not just any cake, she decided to surprise us with one that looked just like Sharon’s RV.

From Haines it was a straight shot 150 miles north to Haines Junction, back in the Yukon. We got back on the Alaska Highway there. We have been on paved roads for most of the trip so we have had little problem driving. However, most of the roads in and around Alaska have permafrost damage so you need to be paying attention as you cruise down the road. The section of highway from about 20 miles south of the Alaska border to about 150 miles into Alaska was the worst. It has big permafrost heaves in it. What that means is that the winter daytime heat from the highway has caused the underlying permafrost to thaw and re-freeze which causes the highway to buckle up. There are so many places like this that they can't keep up with fixing them. So, as a warning to drivers, the highway department just hammers three stakes in the ground to form a tripod and hangs a red flag on it next to the road at the worst spots. If you hit one of these heaves going faster than 30 mph your RV feels like it is on a roller coaster. That first day in Alaska was a long one.

Family and friends...

I just couldn't wait a month to send this. We saw the most unusual thing last night in downtown Anchorage. We were wandering around after dinner seeing the sights and came across the local fishing hole. The river that runs through town, called Ship Creek, has salmon in it today. They started running last week and will continue for the next four months or so. The locals were out in force to catch their limit of one fish per day. Nobody seemed to think it strange that they were fishing right in the middle of a major city. At 10:00 p.m. in broad daylight.

We parked the car and went down to the bank and watched them for more than an hour. They call it combat fishing because the fishermen stand in the knee deep water facing each other about ten yards apart and cast their hooks half way across the distance between them. They are only allowed to keep the fish that bite on the hook. If they snag a fish they have to release them. It was fascinating to watch them go at it. When someone caught one, they would clean it right there on the bank, walk to their car, and drive home.

http://www.alaskanoutfitting.com/fishing/shipcreek/shipcreek.shtml

Friends & Family...

We left off the last newsletter at mid-month, back on the Alaska Highway, crossing the border from the Yukon Territory to Alaska. The population of Alaska, at just over 600,000 people, has fewer people than any decent sized city in the lower 48. As a result, they don’t have much political clout in Congress. The people in Alaska say that every time a politician in Washington D.C. wants to score points, and show how environmental they are, they designate another chunk of Alaska as a national park. They're half afraid that they will end up being the smallest state located within the largest national park.

When we crossed the border, rather than continuing on to the end of the Alaska Highway at Delta Junction, we turned southwest at Tok and headed for Anchorage. By the way, Tok is a typical little Alaska town, but with an interesting history. It was originally called Tokyo. They changed their name on December 8th, 1941. The other thing we learned when we spent the night there is that they have no town government or services of any kind. They have never needed either. I never thought to ask who provides their water and electricity.

Anchorage was established in 1914 as a railroad construction port for the Alaska Railroad, which was built between 1915 and 1923. Today the city has a population of 360,000. The city is on a strip of coastal lowland and extends up the lower alpine slopes of the Chugach Mountains. To the south is Turnagain Arm, a fiord that has some of the world's highest tides. Knik Arm, another fiord, lies to the west and north. All this water and topography makes for a beautiful setting for the city. Anchorage and the surrounding area have a lot for tourists to see and do. Most of it has to do with glaciers, water, and boats. The Alaska Railroad is still an important part of the Alaska infrastructure. The first time we were here, on a guided land tour from a cruise ship, we rode the train between Fairbanks and Anchorage. We were happy to get to Anchorage for all the things that a city has to offer, like an RV repair place. Our brand new RV has been holding together extremely well, but the ABS brake light on the dash had been coming on so we wanted to have that looked at by a factory certified dealer. It turned out to be a faulty indicator.

After a few days of resting up and seeing the city, it was on to Denali National Park, located about halfway to Fairbanks. We were looking forward to stopping at the park because last time we were there, on the train, it was so hot that none of the critters the park is famous for were out and about. And we didn't get to see Mount McKinley last time because the weather was so bad on the mountain that it was blocked from view. Denali turned out to be a bust this time around too for the same reason, way too hot. And the mountain was shrouded in weather again. Didn't see squat. So after spending the night boon docking in one of the hotel parking lots, it was on to Fairbanks.

Fairbanks is a hardscrabble city of 82,000 hardy souls in the interior of the state. Everything about the city speaks to being an island in the middle of a vast wilderness. The winters are so harsh that the city never fully recovers before the next winter comes around.

We couldn’t help but notice that every vehicle has an electric extension cord sticking out of the grill so they can keep their engines from freezing overnight. Winters are very long, lasting from mid-October to mid-April. They are bitterly cold and dry, with temperatures sometimes dipping down to -65 °F. The average January low is -19 °F and the average January high is -2 °F. (Remember, water freezes at +32 °F.) Winter snowfall averages around 65 inches per year. And as you might not expect, it gets hot there in the summer. It was in the 90s when we came here off that cruise a few years ago and in the 90s again when we came back in the RV. The locals told us that temps that high were not common, but not rare either.

We learned a lot about the Alaska pipeline, gold mining, and dog sled racing in Fairbanks. Susan Butcher, winner of four Iditarod dogsled races lives just outside of town. We took a riverboat cruise/tour that went past her house and training camp. She happened to be out in her yard so the riverboat stopped and she came out to speak with everyone.

Fairbanks has never been a shopping Mecca, it's about as far out in the boondocks as I ever expect to be. The people in Fairbanks were all excited about the Wal-Mart that just opened last month. Being so far north, the sun is up for 21 hours and 49 minutes on the 21st of June with 24 hours of usable daylight. Conversely, the sun is up for 3 hours and 42 minutes on the 21st of December with 6 hours and 33 minutes of usable daylight. We were there in mid-June. I went out to play golf at 8:00 p.m. and the course was fairly crowded. We finished at 11:30 p.m. and there was still plenty of daylight left. Oddly enough, I ended up playing with a guy up there on business, who lives in San Diego, and is the cousin of John Thom who worked used to work for me down there. Small world.

The first stop after leaving Fairbanks was Delta Junction. That's where the end of the Alaska Highway (Mile marker 1422) is. We stayed long enough to have lunch, take some pictures, and buy some tee shirts. Then it was back on the road to Tok for dinner and an overnight stay. This time instead of turning southwest to Anchorage, we turned northeast toward the Top of the World Highway and Dawson City.

While we were in Alaska, the Yukon Territory had 5,000 lightning strikes that started 380 fires. Twice the normal amount. The locals are calling this the year that the Yukon burned. And burn it did. Fire departments are far and few between and they only fight fires in towns ...never in the wilderness. When we arrived in Tok in preparation for crossing the border we drove into the smoke. We were in a lot of smoke for the next 10 days. The Alaska Highway, in the Yukon, was closed a number of times, at a number of places, for a number of days. Considering that the Alaska Highway is the only road for nearly 1,500 miles, a lot of people got stuck all over the place. When we eventually got back to Whitehorse after leaving Dawson City we heard all kinds of stories. We spent the night in the Whitehorse Wal-Mart parking lot along with dozens of other RVers because the two RV Parks in town were full. The parking lot looked like an RV Dealership.

But back to Tok... When we left Tok it was a short drive to the cutoff for the Top of the World Highway. When we got there, there was a saw horse across the road with a big sign on it saying Highway Closed Due To Fire. While we guys were standing there scratching our heads (and other body parts) and discussing what to do, an RV drove up from the opposite direction. The driver told us the fire wasn't so bad... so we moved the saw horse out of the way, told the girls it was clear ahead, and started off for Dawson City, 180 miles away. It didn't take long before we were driving through burnt forest. An hour later we were driving through the fire. Cindi, who was driving, was NOT a happy camper. I, on the other hand, got some great pictures. :) After a half hour of fire on both sides of the road we were past it and back into burnt forest again. Shortly after that the road turned from pavement to dirt. And it was worse than dirt; the road was like a washboard. We had to slow down to 15 MPH or the RV would have been shaken apart. We were the third RV in line and drove the whole way in a dust cloud. It was slow going for a long time before we arrived at the halfway point, Chicken, Alaska.

http://www.nebraskaweatherphotos.org/Top-of-the-World-Highway.html

Chicken, Alaska was settled by gold miners in the late 1800s. In 1902 the local post office was established so the community needed a name. Due to the prevalence of Ptarmigan in the area that name was suggested as the official name for the new community. However, the miners could not agree on how to spell the bird's name so they decided to call the town Chicken instead. We would have stayed to do some sightseeing in town but we were running out of daytime, not daylight, so we decided to push on. Not to mention the smoke was almost as thick as fog.

http://www.chickenalaska.com/

After lunch at Chicken, it was back on that washboard dirt road again. The scenery is supposed to be spectacular on the Top of the World Highway but there was so much smoke that we couldn't see much. And we ate so much dust on that road that it's going to take months to get it all cleaned out of the nooks and crannies of our brand new RV.

Hours later, having crossed into the Yukon, we arrived on a hill overlooking Dawson City located at the confluence of the Klondike River and Yukon River. At the bottom of the hill we didn't find a bridge across the mighty Yukon River. Instead, a tiny ferry boat was chugging toward our four RVs. It turns out that Canada provides free ferry boats to the cities that are located on rivers that cannot be bridged. Being the trooper that she is, Cindi drove right on to that little ferry with no problem. We didn't even unhook the car.

Dawson City got its start during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896. It was a thriving community of 40,000 people in its heyday. Today the population is 2,000. Dawson City and the surrounding gold fields were far and away the highlight of the month for us. Dawson City is a wonderful tourist town for seeing what the Yukon was like, and is still like. The locals have retained the spirit of the original mining camp. The challenges of living in such a harsh environment in the middle of nowhere are mind boggling. Because the whole town is built on permafrost, none of the roads in town are paved and the buildings are on shims. Even the runway, at the little airport, is gravel. The place is like going back in time a hundred years. And like everywhere we went in Alaska, the people in the Yukon were very friendly to tourists.

We stayed at the one and only RV Park, located downtown. Actually, everything was downtown. While we were in the RV Park we saw the oddest thing. It was a German tour bus. The people sat in the front during the day. When they parked for the night they all slept in coffin sized spaces in the back of the bus. They also towed a trailer that served as a kitchen. I went over and talked to them about it, very interesting. I use the term for the night loosely because we were having 23 hours of light while we were here.

It’s difficult to describe the surrounding environment because it’s like no place else we’ve ever been. The whole area has been mined continuously since 1898 and the land has been savaged by succeeding generations of people using ever more destructive equipment. And as the equipment either wore out or became obsolete it was abandoned where it sat. To keep this edition of the newsletter a reasonable size, I’ll describe the gold mining process later.

We were in Dawson City on June 21st, the longest day of the year. So we trundled up to the top of the Dome, a very large hill overlooking the town, along with everybody else in town to watch the sun dip down to just below the horizon and then reappear minutes later. It was a big party. When we left at 1:30 a.m. there were still people arriving with a case of beer under each arm. It is one of the two big social events of the year in Dawson City. The other big event is the day that the ice breaks up in the Yukon River. The locals have a pool every year where they bet on the day and hour the river will break up. (This year it was May 5th.)

We spent a week in Dawson City and were sorry to leave. Even with all the smoke in the air, it is a great place.

http://travelyukon.com/about-yukon/yukon-communities/dawson-city

But we can’t leave the Yukon just yet. We need to talk about gold mining.

In 1896 some miners were fishing in a creek a few miles from a native fishing village when they saw gold in the water. They started turning over rocks and found slabs of gold the size of cheese slices. They told their friends, who told their friends. Pretty soon gold was found on other nearby creeks and tributaries.

But the world didn’t know what was happening in the Yukon until 1897 when the steamship Excelsior landed in San Francisco. On board was more than half a million dollars worth of Klondike gold. News of the great discovery travelled over the wires like wildfire. When the steamer Portland landed in Seattle three days later, a crowd of 5,000 greeted the 68 miners on board. Over a million dollars worth of gold was carried down the gangplank in a battered assortment of suitcases and rope-tied bags. The Klondike Gold Rush was on. The small fishing village nearby the original discovery mushroomed into the second largest city in the Yukon. The miners renamed it Dawson City.

Gold is still being mined in the Yukon gold fields by 140 mining companies from May to September. April is spent getting the equipment ready, and October is spent preparing the equipment for winter. The claims are highly structured and regulated. You can’t just go out and start digging. We were surprised to learn that the territory is still today one of the world's leading producers of gold.

The same original creeks and tributaries are being mined by each generation of miners who continue to find gold because of improved technology from generation to generation. The gold in the Yukon is placer gold. That means that it is gold that is sitting in dirt and rocks rather than being part of another rock, like in a vein. The method of separating placer gold from the surrounding dirt is to shake it with running water in a sluice box. That has never changed.

A hundred years ago when gold was plentiful they used pans and hand-powered shaker boxes to sluice. Then came picks and shovels to dig for the gold below the surface. In the 1920’s huge dredges were built in places like Ohio and shipped to the Yukon. These floating house-sized machines tore the land apart by creating a pond for itself to float in and then moving forward as it chewed up more land, sluiced it, and spit the left over material out the back. As you drive around you can still see miles and miles of rocks piled up where the dredges had worked. You can even tour one of the dredges that has become a tourist attraction. Today they use heavy machinery to dig with, and trucks to bring the dirt to the sluicing machines. They sluice tons of material down to get about a footlocker size box of paydirt. They then take the sluiced paydirt, which contains the gold, and sluice it some more on a succession of smaller machines to ultimately completely separate the gold. It’s quite a process.

Charlie, one of the guys we're traveling with, has a friend who used to be a miner in Dawson City and still lives nearby. He took us to two mines of friends of his for a look see. Both were within easy driving distance of Dawson City. One was an 8 man operation. (The owner, 5 equipment operator/drivers and 2 mechanics to keep all the vehicles and machinery running.) Working a 12 hour day, the 5 equipment operators produce a footlocker sized box of sluiced material. At the end of the day the owner takes the footlocker to a separate location on the claim and locks it up for the night. The next morning he sluices the material by himself. It takes him about 5 hours a day and yields an average of 60 ounces a day.

We also saw a much smaller, although identical, one man operation. He does all the work himself and recovers about 8 ounces a day. We were very lucky to get tours of these mining operations because mine owners are VERY suspicious of strangers and don’t allow them on their claims.

Driving around, we saw lots of other mining operations but didn’t approach any.

We went 4,500 miles this month. That’s a TON of miles, WAY more than we were expecting to go, or should have gone. We thought it would be at least a two month trip but our guides decided they needed to get back to San Diego to attend a wedding. So we pretty much raced around. We spent $525 on RV parks. Spent $1,520 on gas at an average price, in Canada, of $2.70 a gallon. The price of gas in Alaska was in the $2.19 a gallon range. We found food to be way more expensive as we got further into the wilderness.

You certainly don't need an RV to travel the Alaska Highway, although lots of people do drive them. We even saw quite a number of rental RVs. But a car would work just fine. Every 30 miles or so along the highway you can find gas stations, motels, and restaurants. There are also lots of places to tent camp along the way. People short on time just fly up there and rent a car. Any way you get there, it's a great place to visit.

The weather this month has been pretty close to perfect. No rain at all. That's good because rain is a pain in the ass for RVers. Had a few days of temps around 90 degrees, but it got back to the normal 70's after that. Did not see very much wild life along the Alaska Highway or up in Alaska. We saw an occasional bear or sheep once in a while, but not often. Maybe the fact that we drive in the heat of the day has something to do with that.

We never did get used to the amount of daylight. Our body clocks were always confused about when to eat and/or sleep.

Both Alaska and the Yukon are great tourist places. And there are thousands of college age kids, from all over the world, working up there during the tourist season. They tell me the work is fun and the pay is great. Every kid we talked to said they were having an adventure.

Every place we went in Alaska we met wonderful people. The hospitality of folks in this part of the world is amazing. Certainly noteworthy. For example, when I played golf with a threesome in Anchorage, one of the players gave me his business card and said to call him if I needed anything while I was in town. That was kind of typical of the people who live up here. Another noteworthy thing about this part of the world is the mosquitoes. Every place we have been in the world there is something that all the locals talk about, maybe it's traffic, or the weather, or the cost of living, or whatever. Here... it's mosquitoes. They are the number one topic of conversation. The numbers are astounding. They swarm like bees. And this year they out in force early because of the early heat.

An odd thing, at least to me, in both the Yukon and Alaska is the TV satellite dishes that people have attached to their houses. Instead of pointing up at the sky like they do in California, they all point directly at the horizon, or slightly below it.

We were pretty much out of touch this month. We saw no American TV, radio, or newspapers. Canada had their national elections yesterday so all the Canadian news this month has revolved around that. We sure learned a lot about Canadian politics this month. Today we are back in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Mile Zero on the Alaska Highway. Tomorrow we head for Calgary, Alberta to attend the Calgary Stampede which starts on July 9th.

Family & friends...

So here we are back in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, at the beginning of the Alaska Highway. It sure seems way longer than a mere 30 days since we left here. We literally raced around the Yukon and Alaska so our friends, who were acting as our guides, could get home to Temecula in time to attend a wedding. What should have been a leisurely 2-3 month trip was done in a month. We had a wonderful time, saw a lot, but it was also good to be back on our own again.

Since we were tired, dirty, and worn out from a month in the wilderness, we moved over to Grande Prairie, Alberta for three days just to catch our breath and clean up the RV. The difference in the look and feel between Dawson Creek, which is clearly located in the Canadian wilderness, and Grande Prairie, which is clearly not in the wilderness, was VERY obvious. And they are only 85 miles apart east to west. We were astounded at the difference.

A bit of magic happened to me in Grand Prairie. I was walking through Costco minding my own business when this really nice Callaway driver jumped right off the shelf and landed in my cart. So what’s a body to do? I gave it a good home.

After resting up in Grande Prairie, we spent the next few days slowly working our way south on Highway 93 from the northern end of the Rocky Mountains. This area of the Rockies is called Jasper National Park and the scenery along the way is spectacular. People come from all over Europe to enjoy this area. The weather was threatening to rain as we drove south along the Rockies so the sky was constantly highlighting the mountains with light and shadows as we went along. I spent the whole time taking pictures.

By the way, was I remiss in not mentioning that Cindi is the one who drives the RV? I haven’t driven it a single mile. My job is to sit in the passenger seat and take in all the scenery as it rises up to greet us. The big picture windows on the front of the RV really provide great visibility. When we started the trip, I assumed that I would get a lot of reading done, but it hasn't worked out that way at all. I'm so afraid that I might miss something that I never read while we are moving. In fact, I sit there with a camera on my lap and take pictures all day long. Except when I’m rummaging around in the refrigerator that is. (And Cindi might add… the bathroom.)

We spent a couple of days in a little town called Hinton where I had a chance to get in some mountain golf and see what the new driver would do. One of the guys I played golf with is a Mountie. He told me that after leaving Calgary we would be going right by the RCMP Academy in Regina and suggested that we stop and see it. Which we will do. We get a lot of excellent tips of places to see from casual conservations with locals.

We were a little ahead of schedule for the Calgary Stampede so we stopped for a couple of days near the bottom of Jasper National Park at a very cool little town called Banff, where Highway 93 meets the Trans-Canada highway. Banff looks exactly like a southern German or Swiss town. Set in the Rockies, with tons of shopping and sights to see, Banff was one of those delightful surprises that happen as we go down the road.

The second week this month was spent in Calgary, Alberta. Calgary became one of our favorite cities. (Seems like I say that a lot about the places we have been.) We arrived a couple of days before the Stampede started so we had some time to sightsee before attending the Stampede. One of the things we do in all cities is take a guided city tour. That way we get the most bang for our time with a minimum of wandering around aimlessly. On this tour we learned that Alberta Province is where the Canadian west begins. The Province is noted for oil, oilmen, cattle ranches and cowboys. It’s their version of Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Montana all rolled into one. Edmonton (pop 620,000) to the north is like Dallas, and Calgary