Our motorhome/Alaska-Yukon trip: May 22, 2000 to mid-July, 2000.

South thru' the U.S. as far as Mesa Verde, then to Vancouver, fly to Anchorage, take a motorcoach + train + riverboat tour through Alaska and the Yukon, end with a cruise on the ms Westerdam, back to Vancouver, then motorhome thru' Canada.

Here ... some highlights:

Paying homage to the Grand Teton, Wyoming
Pella, Iowa: a touch of Dutch
Boutiques selling wooden shoes, specialty shops with imported Dutch cheeses and chocolates; the home of Pella windows. A restaurant serving Dutch fare? None, but we find one serving peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Ah well, the Westerdam is Dutch.
 Denver, Colorado: Mile High City 5280 feet above sea level with the rockies as backdrop. A spectacular drive through Rocky Mountain National Park, to 12,000 ft. Hard to breath - for PJP, at least!
We phone Kevin. He says we're losing money in the market, since we left home.
Mesa Verde, Colorado:
Discovered in 1888 by two cowboys looking for stray cattle, these pueblos, built into the side of sandstone cliffs (from 600 to about 1300 A.D.) were the dwellings of the Anasazi Indians. (Anasazi: a Navajo word meaning "ancient people". Modern descendants are the Pueblos and Hopi of New Mexico and Arizona.)

The Anasazi numbered about 4,000 and built the more elaborate structures around 1200 A.D. They range from single storey, one-room houses to villages such as Cliff Palace with multi-storey buildings and more than 200 dwellings. Awesome.


Cliff Palace
the Arches National Park, Utah:
Sandstone spires, cliffs and arches, arches, arches cover the countryside of Southern Utah. With over 1000 arches, the Canyonlands of Utah have the largest concentration in the world. You can't just drive by; you gotta stop and stare, mouth agape! The more dramatic arches, (the sandstone freezes, big chunks of stone fall out, leaving an arch) have names. The Delicate Arch is featured on the Utah licence plates.

After a night in Moab, we spend a few more nights in Utah: Salt Lake City (Mormon headquarters) and Bear Lake.

We phone Kevin. He says we're now making money!

the Delicate Arch
the Tetons, Wyoming:
On to Teton Village, Wyoming, near the town of Jackson which sits in a valley called Jackson Hole, created some 10 million years ago by slipping of the unstable Teton Fault. The Teton mountains to the West were raised ... and the "Hole" dropped. It could happen again, any time now, and Jackson Lake (held at bay by a dam) would empty into the town of Jackson!

We drive alongside fields and see pronghorn antelope, moose, elk, wolf ...

Next, we camp at Colter Bay beside that very same Jackson Lake! We sit quietly and watch the loons, and sigh and stare up at the snow-capped Tetons. If there's any geological activity, we hope it ain't our fault.


Jackson Lake and Mount Moran
Yellowstone, Wyoming:
The world's first National Park (3,472 sq. miles) was set ablaze in 1988 by lightning (etc.!); it's sad to drive through miles of naked lodgepole pine and blackened stumps. Volcanic eruptions (the most recent: 600,000 years ago) caused the central portion of the park to collapse creating a 28 x 47-mile caldera with the world's greatest concentration of thermal features (1000 of them): hot springs and (about 300) geysers.

Bison and elk wander by the roadside, but we see no Bears (which is a good thing, cuz we're into our third week and Kevin says it's a Bull market and we're still in the black). Old Faithful (which, when we first visited it some forty years ago, erupted every hour) performs every eighty minutes.

Then, on to the coast, and Vancouver. We fly to Anchorage for our Alaska-Yukon Tour.
(We enjoyed Washington state; the fields of vegetables had signs to identify the crop, eliminating our bent for guessing.)


Bison traffic, Yellowstone
Banff & Jasper, Alberta:
In Jasper, elk (wapiti) wander thru' the campground. The town has growed up since last we visited (some forty years ago) ... more hamburger stands, motels and homo sapiens. (It's the July 1-4 holiday weekend and the park is packed.) Heidi takes a bus(!?) on the Athabasca Glacier and, later, we take the spectacular drive South to Lake Louise alongside the silver rapids of the Athabasca River, mountains on either side as far as the eye can see, their snow-capped peaks rising above the clouds. Mountain goats lick minerals from the roadside gravel, elk are everywhere, we stop to let a moose cross the highway, people leave thirty cars and RVs stopped (in the middle of the road!) and run to the roadside to watch a black bear lope thru' the woods.
Signs abound, saying: "Bears are dangerous. Stay in your vehicle!"
Most read it as: "Bears are friendly. Chase them on foot!"

Heidi phones Debbie from the Lake Louise campground. A huge male elk stands by the phone booth, peering thru' the glass ... waiting his turn?

Buses run every half-hour between the campground and the Lake ... and (are you ready for this?) they're FREE!


from Jasper to Lake Louise
back to Hogsville, Ontari-ari-ari-O:
We get to Calgary - a few days before the Stampede :(
then cross the prairies, past vast fields of brilliant yellow canola
then across the top of Lake Superior, past a jillion granite-lined lakes.

We stop for lunch at a rest area where a police car waits for speeders. Heidi invites him into the motorhome for lunch. He declines, but accepts a Dr. Pepper and tells us that thirteen moose have been killed by trains in the past few months.

Crossing from Manitoulin Island to Tobermory via ferry, we make reservations two days in advance, camp two minutes away from the Chi-cheemaun ferry, yet miss the boat by an hour!

(Our clocks are still on Manitoba time !%$*#* AaRgh!


waiting for the Chi-cheemaun
  • We travelled some 7500 miles by motorhome ... at 11.3 miles/gallon :(
    and gas prices ran (in the U.S.) from $1.33 (near Denver) to $1.79 (Yellowstone) and (in Canada) from 66.9 (Banff) to 84.9 (White River, ON).
  • In the mountains, we learned to tell the difference between rivers from melting glaciers and those from rain & melting snow - the former are silver-grey ... from the tons of glacial silt. You step out onto a silt river bed, you vanish. There are stories told of tourists stuck in the silt, being pulled on a rope by a helicopter ... and breaking in half. (Believe it ... or not!)
  • It rained mebbe three days in eight weeks. Fantastic! (Even Alaska was balmy.)
  • By the time we get home, the TSE has caught the DOW
    ... and the market has been very good to us
    ... and there are 143 e-mails a-waitin' ...