July 4: The fourth of July usually means a lot of fireworks in Allendale with neighbors sharing the fun of shooting off fireworks over our small lake. We really missed that fun this year. We were still in Whitehorse, YK, so there wasn't any fireworks there for the day. Instead, we enjoyed watching the concert and fireworks taking place in Washington D.C. We are just plain proud to hear the songs that celebrate our country's history and see our flag. We are still proud to be Americans!

July 5, 6 & 7: Traveling on the Alaska Highway has been accomplished by many travelers. There is so much history along the way of men who “punched” the road through in a matter of ten months in the early 1940s. We have read a book on just how that was accomplished by some pretty rugged individuals. It was built in order to help with getting supplies and equipment to Alaska during WWII by the United States and Canada because of the fear of the invasion of Japan. It is a very interesting piece of history to check into. The Alaskan Highway between Burwash Landing and Beaver Creek, YK, is still in constant repair with many frost heaves and potholes, which makes for a very rough and slow ride. We were very happy to see the U.S. Border! One of the most exciting things to look forward to is that we have to take that road back home in a few weeks!

We did stay at a couple of great campgrounds on the way up over the highway. One was located along the shores of Kluane Lake at the Cottonwood Campground. We have been running into a lot of rain over the past week with very low hanging clouds. This always makes for a neat surprise when the clouds clear a little and we get to see the beauty surrounding us with awesome mountains. 

On July 7, we got to stay at the Discovery Yukon Campground near Beaver Creek, YK. We had gotten a site with full hookup. Two hours after we arrived, our electric went off. We found out that the generator that provides electric for the whole campground had quit. The owner had a fella from Whitehorse fly by helicopter up to the campground to see what was the problem. It costs a lot of money for people in this area to run a campground. We had a fun stay here. After supper, some of the campers gathered around a campfire and a fella gave some of us (who braved it) a ride on a 1941 army vehicle. What a hoot!! Throughout the back area of the campground, there were a few old relics that had belonged to the Army just “laying around” getting older and rustier.

July 8: Tok, Alaska, here we come! We have officially arrived in Alaska! The rough road smoothed out some after getting into Alaska, but Rich was happy to take a break from watching for dips, potholes and the white dippy line on the side of the road indicating another rolly polly spot! As I've said before, we have ideas on how a town or area is going to look, but usually it doesn't come close to what we're thinking. The towns in most areas that we have been traveling are either small or are “have-been” towns. Tok is a nice place, just not very big. It has everything you need. We stayed in the Sourdough Campground, which was nice. We ended up having their chili served in a sourdough bread bowl and apple pie with ice cream. Oh so good!

July 9: It is time to go meet the CHICKEN! We have tossed the idea around so many times as to whether or not we wanted to take our truck and trailer over the “Top of the World” highway. After talking with many of those “in the know” as to how the road was this year, we decided to leave our trailer in Tok at the Sourdough Campground and just drive the truck from Tok to Chicken. Now, those of you who have braved the ride from Dawson City all the way to Tok will laugh at us, but that's ok – WE'RE CHICKEN – and very happy we didn't ☺!! The drive to Chicken was good. There had been a fire in 1990 that burned more than 100,000 acres, including the area just outside of Tok. They say a “miracle wind” diverted the fire away from town. I had a hard time seeing past this “ugly” scenery. I have such a love for green trees and flowers, so this devastation makes it difficult to look at. The truth of the matter is that these fires are a blessing for many reasons. When we got to Chicken, we had so much fun “poking” around the very little old gold mining town. They still are actively mining for gold in this area. 

 We had some terrific chicken soup at the cafe and enjoyed checking out the old Pedro Dredge #4, which operated on Chicken Creek from 1959 to 1967. Before being moved to the Chicken Creek location, it had been used outside of Fairbanks from 1938 until 1959. In 1998, it was moved to Chicken for a tourist attraction.

There is a chicken statue standing proudly on a hill in town that was built of recycled lockers from a high school in Homer! Most of the time we were visiting Chicken, it was raining. 

We decided to just go a few miles out of town on the “Top of the Road” just to see if it was as bad as we were told. Let's just say, our Dodge truck has never seen so much mud. It was washed as soon as we got back to Tok.

Our next adventure is to go to Valdez for a few days. I'll let you know about Valdez in my next post.

Rain clouds that kept our view at a minimum in Banff

June 16:     Banff National Park is a place I have always wanted to visit. The pictures I have seen are so impressive and the way the town of Banff sits down at the base of the surrounding mountains makes it a unique town. On our way from Calgary to Banff on Monday, we began to wonder if we would even be able to see those spectacular mountains. It was raining and the clouds hung extremely low, hiding the views we were so anxious to get a peek at. After getting settled at our spot in Tunnel Mountain Village II Campground, we decided to go check out Banff. There is a bus that comes right to the campground, so we hopped on it and took a ride to town with our full rain gear on. We had a great time checking out some of the stores and getting a warm cup of coffee. Banff has a lot of tourist shops and specialty stores that make it pretty typical for tourist towns, but the main street is so pretty with the store fronts and flowers sharing a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. You can even get a carriage ride around town with a handsome horse and driver.

Bow River Falls

June 17:     Tuesday was another day of rain with even more low-hung clouds. We knew there were fantastic mountains all around us, but we sure couldn't tell it with what seemed like fog covering our views. We checked out the temperature this morning and it was 40 degrees! We decided the rain wasn't going to stop us from enjoying where we were, so we got in the truck and headed out to investigate a few places indoors. We started out at Cave & Basin to see the sulfur pools. Not sure why we thought we wanted to smell sulfur! It was interesting to see the pools though. Next we road over to Bow River Falls and took a hike along the Bow River where the water rushes over falls and down into a fast flowing river. By this time it had stopped raining, which made the day seem a bit brighter.

Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel

There is a hotel near the falls called Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel that looks like a castle. Rich & I thought it would be quite the place to stay. We walked around the inside public areas and the grounds. We felt a little out of place, but I told Rich to just walk around like we had a room there! It was beautiful – oh, and expensive.  

We did get some good pictures of some elk with their babies. It's always exciting to see that kind of wild life. Tomorrow we will head up to Lake Louise and on to Jasper.

June 18:     The highway stretching from Banff to Jasper, which 

includes the Icefields Parkway, has to be one of the most awe-inspiring drives we have ever experienced. A camera cannot capture the beauty of these mountains. It just makes me realize what a miracle our eyes really are. The weather was perfect with the skies being the sunniest blue and the clouds the kind I like to paint. We kept our eyes open to spot any type of animal along the way. When you saw a couple of vehicles stopped it usually meant an animal sighting. Rich, at one point, decided to pull over to get a can of pop out of the trailer. We were there just a short time when about six other cars pulled into the turn out where we were stopped. They were all searching for the animal sighting they thought we had stopped for. We sat in the truck having a pretty good laugh. One lady asked what we had seen. Rich told her he had just stopped for a can of pop. She started laughing too and said that this was a good social experiment!

Our next stop on Wednesday was to Lake Louise. It is as beautiful as we were told it would be, with views of Victoria Glacier for its background. We really enjoyed the stop there. We tried to see Moraine Lake, but due to so many visitors and lack of parking for rigs like ours, we had to continue on without seeing it. Wednesday night we stayed at Mosquito Creek Campground. Who in their right mind would want to stay at a place called Mosquito Creek!!! It really was a great campground right next to a river that was a rapids rather than a quiet stream. 



June 19:     Thursday was an interesting day filled with more majestic views and the experience of walking out on the new Glacier Skywalk that just opened in May 2014. It follows a cliff-edge walkway with a glass-floored platform 918 ft. over glacier-formed valleys and rushing waterfalls. I wasn't sure about just glass under my feet, but it truly wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. 

We arrived in Jasper later in the afternoon to stay at  Whistlers Campground and were treated to a visit right in the campground by some elk, which included about 10 cows and 4 calves. Seeing the wildlife is frosting on the cake for this trip.

     Rich said this doe elk was giving him the eye.  

         In fact, Rich said, "I think she likes me!

Peyto Lake along 
the Columbian Icefields Parkway

Indian Paint Brush Flower

Lichen growing near water fall

Some of the beauty of nature.

Mountain goats licking the minerals along the highway

Maligne Canyon

June 20 & 21: We had a good stay in Jasper with an extra day of checking out the town and touring around to a couple of different places. One was Athabasca Falls, which was great, and the other was a drive to see Maligne Canyon. Both were so worth the time to take to see them.  



Today it was 65 degrees and very pleasant.  We are now in Prince George, British Columbia.  We are going to take a couple of days and stay here.  Tomorrow we are going to go to Prince George Chr. Ref. Church to give our greetings to them from Allendale Chr. Ref. Church.  It will be good to have a day to rest.

Happy Father's Day! Hope you fathers had a special day. We have been in Calgary since Wednesday. This is quite an amazing city to be in. The hills and the valleys are unbelievable. You can see for a long way when you're up on the hills. The amount of houses on the hills is something to see. We are visiting our Nephew Tim and family. They have been wonderful hosts for this uncle and aunt. They took us downtown Calgary on Saturday to see it up close. It is a beautiful place. The city is so clean and some of the buildings are really unique. We loved going to Prince's Island Park and spending some time watching the ducks and geese with their babies. Such a nice place in the middle of the city. We also got to check out where Calgary Stampede is held. Last year, three weeks before the Stampede, the town was hit with a flood that covered much of the town and all over the area where the Stampede is held. Calgary did a super hero's job of cleaning up the damage of the flood and still had the Stampede activities. We had a great time seeing this area and actually driving into the middle of the arena where the chuckwagon race is held! Couldn't do that around July 7!   

Feeding the geese on Prince's Island

 We stayed in a very nice campground by Cochran, Alberta, called Bow Riversedge just outside of Calgary along the Bow River. The kids loved playing on the playground and we enjoyed a nice walk along the river. The Bow River flows through the middle of Calgary and it is this river that flooded the area last year.  

  We are on our way tomorrow to travel up to Banff. We are hoping that the weather is a bit better than today. It has been cold and rainy today with the forecast prediction for tomorrow and Tuesday being cloudy with showers and around 50 degrees F. Not the best for site seeing, but we'll enjoy it the best we can.

June 10:

Today was a very laid back day. Again, we had 60-ish weather, and now late afternoon it is on/off raining. We don't mind the rain since we have done most everything we can in the area and the rain is needed here. We did check out an old ranger station that was built in 1913. The history of it is interesting and the people who lived in it must have had lots of stories to tell living back there 100 years ago with a young growing family. I took some pictures of the wild flowers around the ranger station.  Now we are getting ready to head up to Calgary on Wednesday. We made sure we ate all the things that we can't take over the border. I am stuffed!! We'll be staying in Calgary for five days to visit our nephew and niece and kids and checking out the big town of Calgary. Should be a lot of fun. 

J\

                                            

We just discovered how to do a selfy!!

June 9:

It's our granddaughter Katie's 9^th birthday today. “Happy Birthday sweet Katie”. We love you. Today we decided to go to the west side of Glacier Park to take a drive on the Road to the Sun road. It is open for 16 miles, so we thought it would be fun to see that part of the park. It was a great ride over to West Glacier. We even stopped for coffee and a huckleberry bear claw (yummy) in East Glacier. The bears around here love the huckleberries, too. I'm glad they will share the berries! Lake McDonald is a large lake at the West Glacier entrance. It is a delightful spot to spend some time. There is a lodge there that was built back on June 14, 1914 that is still open today. It is an amazing place with massive cedar logs and a large stone fireplace. People traveled there 100 years ago a lot different than we travel today. I'd rather travel the way we do now, but it sounds interesting to take the railway and then by stage to get to the lodge. On our way back to the campground, we checked out Two Medicine area. We took a walking trail to Running Eagle Falls. I love falls, so it was very enjoyable to take a hike with such a sight at the end. Looking forward to many more places in the next few weeks to see other impressive waterfalls.

Running Eagle Falls by

 Two Medicine in Glacier N.P.

Lake McDonald by West Glacier in Glacier N.P.

June 8:

Today is Sunday and we are sitting here with God's stunning creation surrounding us. We are grateful for safe travels this week and for good health to enjoy each day. We went to visit the area called Many Glacier this afternoon. It is known as the heart of the park. It has so many places that are worth a snapshot or a video. It was hard not to keep clicking the camera. While going through the area, we saw a couple of bears, a group of mountain sheep and a moose and her two babies. We enjoyed beautiful sunny 65-70 degree weather during the day, but when we first woke up this morning, there was frost on the picnic table. So glad we are not camping in a tent. It was an inspiring day. 

Going in by Many Glacier 

Mother moose with two babies close by 

Mountain sheep posing for us

Rich taking a rest while taking
 a hike by Grinnell Glacier

June 7:

We arrived at Glacier National Park this afternoon. It was so beautiful as we were coming from the east to see the mountains appear and exciting to know we were going to be spending four days exploring some of the places that hold so many stories of the people who lived here and the history of how these mountains were carved out by the many glaciers that came from the ice age. We are camping at St. Mary's Campground right in Glacier N.P. We, at first, were sad to see so much of the mountain sides showing the devastation of past forest fires. The fire most noticeable to us as we drove in was from 2008. After awhile we could look past what the fire had left and see the beauty of the snow on the mountains and the lake and rivers flowing through them. As we were driving into our campsite, we were met by a lady who was trying to take a picture of a ground squirrel just opposite of our campsite. Her name is Karla, and we have become fast friends along with her husband Larry. Friends like them are so fun to get acquainted with and it makes these kind of trips unforgettable. Safe travels Larry & Karla! We are ready to get exploring tomorrow.

Rich & I with our first views of Glacier N.P.

Driving into Glacier National Par