North to Alaska!

We are off! Singing “North To Alaska” our grand adventure has begun. We are now within sight of Glacier National Park, staying in a funky old inn. Over the past two days we have driven over 1400 miles and now are ready to launch the really desirable part of the trip. Tomorrow morning we will enter Glacier and find a camping site to be our base for exploring the park.

Our first big day of driving was delayed several hours while Dick completed his application for reappointment as a professor to National University. The due date for the application is August 24th but, of course, we will not be in San Diego at that time. That meant what turned out to be a 136 page document had to be prepared early and turned in prior to our departure. It is a strange quirk about National that it takes more documentation to gain a reappointment than it does for the initial appointment. Dick had worked on it for over a week but still had to burn the midnight oil to finish it Thursday night.

Friday morning, the car was packed and we each had a send-off chiropractic adjustment, Knowing we were going to be sitting many hours in the car over the next month, we wanted our backs to be properly aligned. Then, off to National where the application was submitted in the proper way. We had lunch at the National cafeteria, which often has gourmet quality food. We had salmon in anticipation of the many salmon dinners we would have on the trip. Finally, at 1:00 pm we began what will be the longest driving day of the trip.

Our destination for day one was Salt Lake City, over 750 miles away. The directions are easy, get on Interstate 15 and drive north. It runs from San Diego to the Canadian border, just east of Glacier. We drove north through the eastern LA metro area where we began to follow the route of the old Route 66 up through the mountains onto the high desert. Then we crossed the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas then on to St. Georges, Utah. By now it was after dark. We finally arrived in Salt Lake City 12 ½ hours after we began, 2:30 in the morning local time while experiencing the first rain of the trip. We were exhausted but satisfied that we had made our first schedule destination.

One of the questions we had before we started was how well Dick’s platform would work in the realities of a moving car. We were very pleased. In spite of our carrying gear and supplies for over a five week trip, all packed on top of the platform, there was a comfortable bed below it. Each of us took time stretching out on a real bed (okay ALMOST a real bed…at least a double sized foam rubber piece covered with a specially sewed fitted sheet)catching some needed sleep. Several times we had to brake hard and everything stayed in place. That was a relief to both of us. There is going to be a need for some tinkering with where items are placed but, overall, this looks good.

This morning we slept in a bit, six hours was all we could spare, and were on the road again. We appreciated that it was Saturday so we zipped through the rest of Salt Lake City and the many suburbs to the north. When we reached the Idaho border only a couple hours later we were glad again we had driven so far the previous day. We felt far from home already. Traffic was light and we were making good time. It only took several additional hours to cross Idaho. It was a sense of real progress when we saw the “Welcome to Montana” sign along the side of the road. Even though we crossed the Continental Divide at the border, we found ourselves deep in the mountains once we were on the Montana side. For a few hours we had been watching the storms building along the mountain crests, then the storms flowed into the valleys and passes and we drove in and out of thunderstorms. As we got closer to Glacier, we were traveling on rolling plains to the east of the mountain range where Glacier was located. The clouds, sunlight, and mountains seemed to be in a delicious dance. We had to stop numerous times to take photos. We had John Denver CDs playing and we were just thoroughly enjoying the moments. We found our lodging for the night and then a little restaurant for dinner. Sitting on a patio, we ate and watched a major storm approach. Thunder and lightning filled the air as we finished dinner and then went out to watch the show in the sky. Finally, when the first drops splashed on our faces, we jumped into our car for the short trip back to the inn. There we sat out on the porch and watched the deluge from the sky, glad that at that moment we were not in a tent.

As we pulled up chairs to watch the storm two women arrived back at their room next door. The older woman, who said she and her daughter had just been at an outdoor wedding, stayed outside to watch the storm with us. Our conversation about the weather was definitely not mundane as the sky lit up, thunder crashed, and sheets of water fell. She still lives on the farm (about 90 miles away from where we are staying) that she and her husband had operated for years. She raised her family on that farm. She talked about farm life in Montana and then began to talk about the travels she and her husband had been on after he had retired from running the farm. She was fascinated by the plans for our trip to Alaska and talked of her cruise to Alaska. She told us of her tradition to drive the Going-to-the-Sun Highway in Glacier each year, seeing something new each time she crossed over to the west side. Then she talked of trips to New Zealand and Australia, to China and Japan, Europe, and Africa (from Egypt to South Africa). She just missed out on a trip to Russia when her husband became ill. She lost him 11 years ago but holds onto these travel memories as some of the most precious to her. She probably is in her late 80s but is still so full of life. She is definitely the type of individuals that we are looking forward to continuing to meeting while on this trip. She gave us a kind of blessing saying that it was such a wonderful thing to share travels as a couple and that we were exactly the right ages to be doing such a trip.

Several times we today, as we drove, we commented to each other how different the land was from Southern California. The dry brown mountains gave way to dry tan desert mountains to green covered mountains to mountains with snow still near their summits. The valleys and flat areas went from sandy/gravel and desert plants to green grass and sage plants. We experienced our first rain in over three months, knowing San Diego would not see rain again until November. We know that we will experience a lot more rain over these next few weeks. It is part of our adventure to notice and appreciate changes such as these.

We have now said goodbye to freeways. We will only have brief encounters with them until we return via Interstate 5 starting in the State of Washington. We have two lane highways in our future, including several hundred miles on gravel roads. We took advantage of the speed when we had the chance, now we focus on the scenery.

We have received requests to post our intended schedule. I’ll put the first ten days of the trip on this post and will add more soon.
Day 1 Travel from San Diego to Salt Lake City
Day 2 Travel from Salt Lake City to Browning, MT
Day 3 Enter Glacier National Park, find camping and do some hiking
Day 4 Continue to explore Glacier NP
Day 5 Travel from Glacier NP to Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, adjoins Glacier
Day 6 Travel from Waterton Lakes NP to Canmore, Alberta
Day 7 Explore Banff National Park from our base in Canmore
Day 8 Continue to explore Banff
Day 9 Travel the Ice Fields Highway from Banff NP to Jasper National Park
Day 10 Travel to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Milepost 0 of the Alaskan Highway

We realize that we are now going into some “internet-free” zones, so we will keep writing our thoughts and add them in as we are able. Think of us, and send us some really nice weather for these next night that we are camping.