Home again

8-8-09

We arrived home about 2:00 PM yesterday. It has been a fun trip and I very much enjoyed seeing all the country we covered, it was everything from magnificent snow covered mountains to farmlands. We made friends with our traveling companions and expect to travel again with Bill and Carol.

We traveled 8088 miles spent $3618.00 for gas. The highest price we paid was in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory $1.29 per liter which equals $4.90 a gallon. The price ranged from that to a low of $2.49 a gallon in Oregon. We got 7.4 miles to the gallon average.

The only other major expense we had was campground fees. We didn't keep exact count on those but they ranged from $0 in roadside rests, where we stayed several nights, to as much as $35 a night. We spent a good deal of time at the Elk's clubs along the way. During the trip I learned that you can have a guest with another RV at many of the Elk's clubs. I'm not sure if that apply s to them all, but every place we asked it was allowed. Bill, being retired Air force was able to get us into some very nice military campgrounds as guests, which were very reasonable.

As we arrived home Margaret yelled “yippeee” she is very glad to be home and has been smiling like a kid with a new pup. I know that she also enjoyed the trip as I did, but it was a long ride home, we drove 300 and 400 miles a day after we left Hyder, AK. The trip up didn't seem as long because we stopped along the way and visited relatives and friends and were in no hurry.

So ends our Alaska trip for 2009

Home again

8-5-09

Tonight we are in Redding. CA a little over 200 miles from home. The last few days have been considerable different driving experiences. Going across Alaska and the Yukon and parts of BC one could drive for 10 or 15 minutes and not see another car. That has all changed now we are back to battling for a small piece of the road along with thousands of others. I will do one last post in a few days after I add some things up like gas cost, camping costs etc. Thanks to all of you who read this it has been fun and educational to me

Herb

Pictures

Hyder & south

8-01-09

Last night after watching the bears and salmon we decided to go out for dinner. During the day we had asked several people where the best place to get seafood. Everyone said The Bus. All agreed there were some other very nice restaurants in the area, but The Bus was the best. We found it but unfortunately due to a power outage it was closed. A picture posted.

We left Hyder this morning about 9:00 AM and were surprised to see fog over the water. This is really a special place. There are some very different houses throughout this small town. As we left we took of some of them and more pictures of the glaciers.

As we were leaving we saw a spot in the road that we had traveled yesterday that had washed away by the raging river. It's been unusually hot here and the snow is melting rapidly.

A hundred miles south of the junction of hwy 37a (to Hyder) and hwy 37 the landscape changed to farmland, there seemed to be hay everywhere, large rolls, not bales that I usually see. We also passed through some lumber towns. We also saw huge clouds of smoke in a couple of places, the result of wildfires.

We ended the day at Burns Lake, we drove 300 miles today and only have a little over 1500 miles to home