Arlington, WA to Home 8/27 - 29/14

Day 117 - 119 of Our Summer Trip
Final leg of the four month adventure.

We had breakfast with my cousin, then we had to say good-bye and head for home.  We are planning to make these next few days travel days so we can get home by the weekend.  As we left Arlington, which is north of Seattle, the traffic became very heavy going through the Seattle area, even though we took the freeway that went around the main part of town.  Things cleared up the farther we got south of the Seattle metropolitan area, then we went into Portland, OR.  It had just as much traffic as Seattle with stop and go for miles.  It was only Wed., but we think there were some folks trying to get a jump on the Labor Day Holiday weekend, as well as the usual work day traffic.  We spent Wed. night in Albany, OR at the Blue Ox RV Park.  It was a very nice camp with concrete pads and a cute little seating area with the blue ox mascot and a nice shady area to sit and enjoy the surroundings.

On Thursday morning, we continued traveling south toward California. Driving on I-5, we heard a strange sound.  We looked around and, just next to us, a tent trailer blew a tire as he was passing us on the left.  We slowed down so he could get to the right side of the highway shoulder, then we stopped to check if anything had hit us and to help, if they needed it.  It turned out that this was a younger couple with three girls age about 6 - 11.  They were heading to Crater Lake, OR, from their home in Seattle, for the Labor Day Holiday.  We assisted some while the dad of the family changed the tire.  We had had blow outs on other trailers, so we knew what they were going through and they were glad to have our company on the busy highway.

Once we got on the road again, we followed this RV from Oregon and were trying to figure out what they were carrying on the back of their CRV.  When we enlarged the photo, we could see that there was a name on the items.  It turns out that these are some very expensive recumbent tricycles that are hanging on the bike rack bottom to bottom.  They are by a company called Catrike, if you care to look it up online.

Everything was going very smoothly until just after we got into CA.  You may know that California is in the third year of a drought and the forests are primed to burn because they are so dry.  Well, there are several very large fires burning in Northern CA and southern Oregon right now.  Here is what the sun looked like. 

I did not crop or enhance or color the above photos on purpose.  This is the color that the sun looked through the smoke.  You didn't need sunglasses to look at it because the smoke from the many wild fires in the northern part of the state was so thick.  A couple times it completely blocked the sun.  While I was sorting through my many photos, I noticed that I could see what looked like sunspots, which really surprised me, since I do not have a real fancy camera.  It is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-2525.  Basically I use it as a point and shoot camera and adjust the automatic scene setting once in awhile.  Anyway, I did some enhancing of the following photo and if you enlarge it, but not too much, and look closely near the center of the sun, there are two sunspots that can be seen as darker dots to the left and right just below the center.  Moving the screen on the laptop back and forth to change the angle that you see the picture may help you see the dots more easily, also.

Now that you know where to look, they can also be seen in the first sun picture, above, but you have to look closely.  Below, you can see how thick the smoke was that the sun was trying to shine through.  That is smoke, not clouds.

It was so dark from the smoke in the sky, that traffic had to turn on their headlights and the street lights came on, too.

Eventually, we got past the plumes of smoke, but we could not see Mt. Shasta or Mt. Lassen, the two higher mountains that are usually snow capped.  Mt. Shasta is reasonably close to I-5 and is easily seen on clear days.  Mt. Lassen is farther away and not as high, but is also easily seen on a clear day.  I told you that we are in a drought in California and Lake Shasta, a huge reservoir, is the lowest that we have ever seen it.  They do have to let water out to fill the Sacramento River to provide the fish with water to swim and spawn in, but soon they will not even be able to do that.

We spent Thursday night at the Redding RV Park in Redding, CA.  This campsite is located on a terraced hillside.  They claim to have views of Mt. Shasta and Mt. Lassen, but there was no viewing in the distance, while we were there.  The atmosphere had way too much smoke.  I took this photo just before we closed up to leave on Fri. morning.  My guess is that, if we could see one or both mountains, it would show up in the distance at the right of the picture.

The rest of the drive home was uneventful, except for heavy traffic near Sacramento and in the Bay area.  It is, after all, getaway day for the Labor Day weekend. 

We have been home for a few weeks now and I am trying to catch up with my blog.  If you have been following us, there is more to come as I try to add new photos and info by back dating the posts to when they actually happened.  Stay tuned for updates.

Beaver Creek, YT to Haines Junction, YT 8/10/14

Day 100 of our summer trip.  The Alaska Highway.

Lately, we have been noticing a lot of these white flowers, that seem to sparkle in the sunlight, along the roadside, and wondered what they were.  When we looked at them, it turned out that they were the white fluffy seeds of dandelions.  When we thought about it, there were a LOT of yellow dandelions along the side of the roads earlier in our travels, so it only makes sense that they all would go to seed at the same time.  The photo on the right is of some fireweed that has bloomed all the way to the top.  Now the pink pods will mature and open up revealing seeds with whitish, feathery tails that will look like puffs of smoke.  Then the leaves will turn red to make it look like “fire”.  We have learned that fireweed is one of the first wildflowers to sprout following a forest fire.  For that reason and its appearance, it got the name of fireweed.
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The Kluane National Park was off to our right as we continued southeast along the Alaska Highway.  The mountains and glaciers began to appear more often, too.  The glaciers are a part of the icefield range that is the largest non-polar icefield in North America.


Here are a couple views of the Kluane River.  The first is hard to see, but it is a light line at the base of the mountains that is easier to see if you enlarge the picture.  It winds around and into the area that is shown in the second photo.



We went through a town that had the world’s largest gold pan, Burwash Landing,YT.


The Kluane River flows into the Kluane Lake, the largest lake in the Yukon.  Here are views from two different locations.  The second area is called the Horseshoe Bay.


We drove on and suddenly the terrain changed to this interesting landscape.  It is at the southern end of the Kluane National Park.


This area is where the Tachal Dhal Visitor  Center is located.  We stopped by and saw these Dall Sheep way up high on the mountain near where the green areas, in the middle of the photo, disappear.  They could be seen with the naked eye as white dots that really stood out against the green and the brown dirt of the mountain.  However, I had to zoom in all of the way to get these tiny images that look like some sort of a four legged animal standing and eating or lying down resting.  We got out our spotting scope and could magnify them a little more to see better, but that didn’t help with the photography.  It was very cool to see the Dall Sheep in the wild.


We arrived in Haines Junction and stayed at the Kluane RV Park.  This certainly is Kluane country!  We had another nice setting for our camp.


After we got settled, we took a drive through town and took some pictures of some of the unique points of interest in the town.  The Village Monument is “the Muffin” or "the Animal Cupcake”.  It depicts the relationship that the community has with the mountains and the wildlife.


There are two unique, historic churches in town.  This is Our Lady of the Way Catholic Mission.  It was built in 1954 by a catholic priest.  Though resources were scarce, he was able to convert an old Quonset hut that the military had used during the building of the Alaska Highway.  It has the distinction of being the most photographed church in the Yukon.


The other historic church is St. Christopher’s Anglican Church   The original church was built right after the Alaska Highway was built.  The current church was built in 1990 by volunteers and is unique because it is an eight-sided log cabin structure.  It is a little difficult to detect that it has eight sides, through the foliage.


It was an interesting day. 

Delta Junction, AK to Beaver Creek, YT 8/9/14

Day 99 of our summer trip

We are continuing to head in the direction of home.  Today we crossed into Canada and back into the Pacific time zone.  Just a few miles down the Alaska Highway from Delta Junction, we crossed over a bridge that is dedicated to the Black Veterans of the Army Corps of Engineers who helped build the Alaska Highway in the early 1940s.  It is the Gerstel River Bridge.  It is one of four bridges, of the thirteen that were built along the Alaska Highway, that used the "steel through truss-style" of construction.





 

We saw some beautiful scenery in Alaska, along the way.



 

Then we entered Canada, the Yukon Territories. 

 

We  drove to Beaver Creek and found a very nice campground, the Discovery Yukon Lodging Campground.

They are building a new boardwalk over a cattail filled pond just across from our site.

This is a view of the mountains that are the other direction from the previous picture.  you can also glimpse them in the photo of our campsite.

 

The next leg of our trip is to Haines Junction, tomorrow. 

Fairbanks, AK to Delta Junction, AK 8/8/14

Day 98 of our summer trip.  Richardson Highway

Today, we officially began to head toward home.  We left Fairbanks, heading southeast on the Richardson Highway.  We stopped at an interesting store about 30 miles south of Fairbanks.  They sell all sorts of Alaskan items and gifts.  It is called the Knotty Shop and I think you will see why. 


They sell things made from burls.  Burls are quite common on the trees here, in Alaska, and are used as decorative construction as you see here.  They are also made into bowls and other items.  They also sell things made from antlers, ivory, fur, gourmet foods, and other Alaskan crafts and souvenirs.  Here are some of the things that have been made with the burls and are on display in front of the store.  First there are the signs that warn you to behave.


There are several “animals” made from burls of all sizes that you can see in the grassy area.  Also, I took a close up of some of them. That is “Alasquito”, a replica of the infamous huge mosquitos that Alaska is known for.  We have been lucky in that we have not been attacked by hoards of mosquitos.  Either we have been in areas that are less populated by mosquitos or they have been sprayed or maybe we didn’t taste good to them.  Yes, we have been annoyed by mosquitos, but the insect repellant has done the trick to keep them at bay.
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Bumble really liked getting to play with the animals, even though the sign had said “don’t climb on the animals".  She is a bee, so she just flew up and landed on the elk and on “Burl von Bruin”


Shortly before we got to Delta Junction, we saw a 1200 ft. section of the Alaska pipeline that is exposed as it passes over the Tanana River between two towers and continues above ground for awhile.  This is second longest span of 13 bridges along the 800 mile long pipeline.
 

We found a nice campground in Delta Junction.  It is the Alaska RV Ranch and it is a work in progress.  There were only two other RVs there at the time we stayed.  The couple who own the campground have been working on it and have gotten many things done, but the utilities are not up and running at the sites, so we had an inexpensive but nice dry camp at this place.  What they have done, so far, is very cute.  Here are a couple of buildings – the office with a patio in front and the gardening shed.
 


There is an outhouse like no other that you have seen.  It is heated and has music playing.  It also had posted rules for use.


I never found out if it was a working model or just for show to go along with the rest of the theme, but it sure was cute.

We took a drive through town after we got settled in camp and had dinner.  Delta Junction, AK is where the Alaska Highway ends.  There is a visitor center and a monument to the end, at 1422 miles.  It was a very windy night, so the Alaskan flag was almost straight out.


Also, at the visitor Center, were replicas of the Alaskan Mosquito.  They were almost as big as the one at the Knotty Shop, so it must be true that they are huge!!!  There was a thermometer painted on the visitor center that showed the 10 coldest temperatures in Delta Junction.  On January 6, 1972, it was –72 degrees!







I saw this sign at the Visitor Center (you can sort of see it behind me in the photo above).  I think it means “watch out for bison because they can cause very bad things to happen to your vehicle.


Back at camp, this is our campsite and some sunset photos.



The first picture, below, is taken away from the sun.  The sun is shining on the tops of the trees as the clouds above are beginning to get their sunset colors.


Tomorrow we will continue our drive on the Alaska Highway, heading east instead of west, like when we came.