The Alaska Highway

Like they say, all good things come to an end. This is going to be our last post and soon it is life back to normal. The experience has been very rewarding and as such we started brainstorming about our next roadtrip, "Circling Mexico" :-)

The alaska highway is a stretch of 1500+ miles through alaskan and canadian wilderness. The highway was build in ww2 to provide road access to alaska. It was build in a period of 8 months. Many of the original stretches of the highway are still preserved. Today the highway is paved, at least for the parts that do not have construction (which totals easily 50-100 miles). We drove the whole stretch north to south. The alaska highway takes you through beautifull wilderness areas and gives you a unique sense of remoteness. Services are few and far between. The road is generally in a good condition. On our way up, we had driven a part of the alaska highway already. This appeared to be by far the worst part.

It took us two weeks to complete the 1500 miles. This allowed us to have some fun rather than driving every day , mainly to keep the kids under control :-)
We camped along the highway, at lakes, rivers with no-one around, really no-one around but the local wildlife. We managed to keep away from surprise encounters with the local habitat. We heard the wildlife though, especially at night, the coyotes and wolfes did their thing...

After the alaska highway, we visited Jasper NP in canada. It is so crowded there that it felt like Yellowstone or Yosemite on the 4th of July. The wildlife is so used to people that they invade your private space. We had a big elk at our campsite eating the grass from under our feets. This is not a joke. The crowds set aside, Jasper is a beautifull park.

To view some pictures of the alaska highway, take a look at these.

Take care...

Glaciers and Wildlife

We are in Alaska now for almost a month and we are now in Fairbanks, almost at the most northern point we will get. It has been quite an experience so far. Life is certainly different here from what we are used to. I cannot explain it, but we like it ... a lot. The alaskans are no-nonsense people. They will tell you what they think ... really and they will help you if you need help. They will invite you in their homes. To give you an example, we met a family on the ferry. They were originally from Chicago but moved to Juneau 20+ years ago. They were on their way to their cottage in Haines. After talking to them about life in general and what is important they asked us if we would be interested in staying with them in their cottage...

The scenery...

Is awesome if you can see it ! What the tourbooks and its pictures don't tell you is that it rains quite a lot in alaska. And if it doesn't rain, it tends to be often cloudy, masking most of the beauty. We have met many people that flew in from the lower 48 and stayed in Alaska for a week or so but didnt see much of the awesome scenery. We have the luck that we can stay longer at a place if needed and get to see what we came out to see :-) The tourbooks also speak of "sensory overload". First we didnt get it, now we do (how can you get an overload of natural beauty), but i have to admit once you have seen 10 spectacular glaciers on a highway, the 11th is "whatever".

The wildlife

Is everywhere. We have spotted most of the wildlife while on the campground or in the car, not while hiking. The news even reported that bears made a presence in downtown Anchorage.

The roads....

Are sometimes a challenge. We drove part of the alaska highway (we will drive all of it on our way back), but this was an experience i never forget. Several of the roads are suffering from what is called permafrost (look it up ). These roads force you to slow down to a very slow speed. Note that this can go on for 100 miles. We have seen people on the road who's hitches broke off the car after the travel-trailer jumped in the air. Let's cross our fingers for the way back.

All that daylight ...

There is a lot of light here. It gets dark at around midnight and the light is back at around 5am. This is great as you have long evenings, on the downside, the kids tend to wake up quite early, if you know what i mean. We decided to darken their bedroom windows and that works !

The 110 Volt powerplugs on the cars:

All the cars here have 110 Volt powerplugs sticking out of the hood. Also, many parking lots have 110 Volt power outlets on each parking space. At first we didnt know why, but one of the alaskans explained it to us. The winters get so cold here (-50 degree) that the engine needs to stay sufficiently warm when you shut it off. In other words, if you go for groceries in winter time at -50 outside, your car-engine needs to stay warm when you are inside. If you forget to hookup the car to the electricity it will not take you home. I wonder what happens if a power-outage occurs..

The outlets also work in the summer as i hooked up my trailer to one of them to make some coffee :-)

The pictures ...

We lost quite a number of pictures as my SD card appears to have become unreadable/corrupt. This happened of course at one of the most scenic places. Still, we have quite a number of nice pictures. Take a look at these wildlife and glacier pictures ...

Take care.

Alaska, here we are

We Arrived in Alaska through British Columbia, Canada, and hopped on the Alaska ferry from there. This is a 26-hour ferry trip. We started in Canada at Whistler. This is an impressive ski area in winter, where in summer the slopes are converted to mountain biking tracks. The ski-lifts are open to transport mountain bikes and bike riders to the various trails. We camped near downtown. Whistler is a great place to relax or do any activity you like. There is something for everyone. There are numerous bike trails, so we rode our bicycles most of the time to get around.

In Juneau, state-capitol of Alaska, where we are now, the famous Mendenhall Glacier drops huge amounts of icebergs into the river. This is quite impressive to watch and listen to.

For those who are interested in numbers, so far we drove about 4000 miles, of which 2500 with the travel-trailer connected to the car and we spend around 500 miles on sea.
In Canada, gasoline is about $4.50 per gallon, in Alaska (so far) about $3.25. In Canada, alcoholic beverages are twice the price we were used to and need to be purchased in liquor stores instead of supermarkets. The steepest climb we had to do with car and travel trailer was 18% on an extremely winding road; believe me, this was scary!

Off the beaten path, or …
We had expected the Canada part to be very desolate, as towns are far apart. The thing is that all the towns are highly developed. Wireless Internet is everywhere; credit cards are accepted everywhere and the roads are in very good condition. The distances are bigger, of course.

The Alaska ferry …
… is an experience by itself. The biggest rigs are loaded on these ferries. Cars are packed in the ferry back to back without any space on each side. When the time comes to unload your vehicle, they make you drive your rig backwards maneuvering around all the other vehicles still in the ferry. This is territory for accidents waiting to happen …

The weather …
… is very different from were we live.
The funny thing is that the kids are equally happy with sun and rain. The latter allows them to play in it and have fun. The nights are ok so far, not cold (yet) like we had expected them to be.

In short, we are living and loving it.

Some pictures are here for those interested.

Almost four weeks on the road…

... and we have not been eaten by a bear yet.

Wow how time flies by! We now covered other parts of Oregon State and some parts of Washington State. Oregon really blew us away, figuratively speaking that is. We had so much fun in Portland, what a great city! We biked along the waterfront, and even through the fountains there.
Next, we spent our time exploring the beautiful Columbia River Gorge, which leaves Portland city going Eastbound. There are many beautiful waterfalls, especially the famous Multnomah Falls (see pictures). There are several bike paths along the gorge, which offers great views of the Columbia River.
Continuing our way, we drove up as close as we could get from the north side of Mount Hood. Can you imagine there is an Inn built at 6000ft that offers great views of Mt. Hood. Along the way we encountered tiny lakes where you can privately dip your feet in the water or chase fishes. Noah even chased butterflies, keeping him occupied for a long time.
Because we had our minds set on the rainforest of Olympic National Park, we continued our way North to Washington State. Olympic NP has it all: snow-capped mountains, beautiful lakes and beaches and, of course the rainforest. We did a lot of hiking. Especially Luuk had a great time eating salmon berries, chasing bears and cougars (in his mind), touching snakes, snails and slugs. It is funny how kids are interested in every animal they come across, big or small. Even rocks and branches and leaves keep them occupied.

We included some family pictures for those of you who are interested. You can check them out here.

Almost two weeks on the road

We are almost two weeks on the road and this is a first sign of life from us. Yes, we are alive and kicking! Our first major highlight was Mount Shasta. This area really took our breath away. We camped nearby, where while being at a little beach, we looked up at this majestic snowcapped mountain. This was truly an enchanting experience, (also the fact that we have to acclimatize to being on the road away from the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley might add to the experience!?)

Then there is Oregon... Oregon has quite a lot of diversity to offer that it takes up so much time it looks like we are not coming any closer to Alaska... (Will we ever get there?) First there is Crater Lake. Unfortunately the weather was a bit crappy, but it is still a beautiful National Park.

Then there is the Oregon Coast. Route 101 provides great views of the rugged coastline, and the State parks offer great camping experiences. The sand dunes are a must see as well. Especially the kids loved the sand so much, while dad loved the quad-rides through the dunes.

And in between was a real safari park, which was a highlight for the kids. We drove in with our car and found ourselves amongst rino's, giraffes, monkeys, lions, tigers, bears, elephants etc...

The picture above shows the route we have taken so far (click to enlarge). Some of the pictures we took can be found here.

More to come soon ...

On the road again ...

It has been exactly 6 years that we started an adventure similar to this one. Six years seems like a long time, however we still remember it very clearly. In hindsight, this had been one of the most rewarding experience of our life. Here is a snapshot of some of the beauty we saw during this trip. You know what they say, after you have tasted the goods, you want more. In this case, this is surely true. So, six years later, we are at the start of new adventure. This time it is going to be much less adventurous, e.g. no backpacking in distant countries, but very civilized with our travel trailer and with 2 kids. The latter is likely going to be an adventure by itself. The picture shows an indication of the route we plan to follow (click on it to enlarge). Only part of the details are filled in and i am sure that it will change once we are on the way. Any suggestions on places to visit on this route are welcome. We plan to update this blog from time to time, so feel free to check back. Pictures will be posted on the flickr page (see link above).