A long day's drive to home

Day 36 – Friday, August 28th

Dick was up at 5am and started driving. He drove until 8 when Patti got up and drove while he got a few more hours of well-deserved sleep. The morning brought us back into California and we were reminded what a long state we live in. The first mile post read 796 miles. We knew that was to the Mexican border just a short distance from our home. As the sun rose we were able to see Mt. Shasta begin to emerge from the darkness. It is a beautiful volcanic mountain that stands by itself in northern California.

We drove and talked, using the time to begin reflecting on the trip. Some stats: we will have driven about 9,400 miles in 36 days, gone to 9 National Parks, 24 museums, 3 formal gardens, 8 park visitor’s centers, and 4 animal conservation centers. We saw cars from 37 states and 7 provinces and 2 territories.

We stopped for lunch, Patti took another nap, and we kept driving. We would drive over 850 miles in the day so we had to keep moving. As we drove we were struck at both how very, very dry and brown it is in CA, and how many cars there are. We had even a stronger view of the latter when we reached Los Angeles just in time for rush hour, being right by downtown LA at 5:50. There are a LOT of cars there. From LA, it is just 100 miles more to home. Some of that was very slow miles, though. It took us an hour to drive only 20 miles.

Once free of the Los Angeles county traffic we sailed along much more smoothly. The sun was setting and it was getting dark. We did have a glorious final day’s sunset to place another “beautiful” stamp on our trip. We could tell we had driven quite far south, it was getting dark by 8:00 rather than by 11:00.

At 8:30, we arrived at home. It was good to pull the car into the driveway of our home and find everything safe and sound there. Safe ourselves, tired, a little scruffy and ready for a night’s sleep (or more) in our very own comfortable bed, we unloaded the essentials for the night. We knew there was time in the morning to fully unload and clean up the car. One final step was to check the final milege total for our trip that we had been tracking on one of the car's trip odometers.

We did it! We drove to Alaska and back on the Alaskan Highway and lived to tell the tale. We still like each other, much to the surprise of many people we met who shuddered and said they would not attempt such a trip together. We are glad to be home. Hmmmm, where do we go next?

Starting the serious drive home

Day 35 - Thursday, August 27th

We had to make a slight adjustment in plans to visit some dear friends from back in California who have moved to Washington state. They had an emergency situation come up and so were not available to have us visit. We arranged a “rain check” time with them and, after playing with a couple of ideas, we both agreed it was time to really turn south and head home. It has been a wonderful trip, but home was waiting.

We got up early. There was a beautiful sunrise over Victoria Harbor. Dick went over and to try to get our flat tire patched, but it wasn’t possible before we had to go. So that must be the reason that he had been so insistent on getting a new, standard-size spare tire. That tire will get 1000 miles on it and the flat will be dealt with when we get home.

We then packed up and drove up the coast of Vancouver Island to the town of Sydney to take the ferry over to the state of Washington. Without a reservation, we wanted to make sure we made this ferry. There was a long line of cars and a 2 and 1/2 hour wait, but at last, the US customs team arrived, and we went through the custom’s process and boarded.

Dick totally enjoyed the ferry ride. We went through the San Juan Islands, beautiful islands on a gloriously clear day. For much of the trip we could see Mount Baker, a lovely huge mountain in Washington. There were many boats, both sail and motor. It was a great day to be out on the water. He also was highly entertained watching the jellyfish as our boat zoomed along through the water. There was a lot of camaraderie among those out on deck enjoying the day. Patti was too cold to be out in the wind, but enjoyed the view through the windows.

When we arrive in Anacortes, WA, we disembarked and, after just a few miles, we found ourselves on I-5 headed south. And that is the road we will take for the next 1300 miles until just a few miles from our house.

We came through Seattle at rush hour, riding in traffic for over 100 miles along the eastern side of the Puget Sound and decided that we saw more cars during that stretch than we had on our whole trip together so far. We did have many good views of Mt. Rainier which rises over 14,000 feet just a short distance to the east of the city.

A highlight for today was each of us were in Oregon for the first time. Part of the excitement of this trip for Dick was that he got to add his final two states that he had not yet visited: Alaska and Oregon. He has now been in all of them. We certainly didn’t get to have a full experience of it, mostly driving after dark. We did stop for a pleasant dinner at an Applebees. We plan to come back sometime and fully explore the beauty and history there. We drove completely across the state for 11 hours, but saw only what you can see from the freeway at night.

Patti crashed and fell asleep at about 10 while Dick hung in there until midnight. We then spent the next 5 hours sleeping comfortably in our van at a roadside rest area.

Victoria!!

Day 34 – Wednesday, August 26th

Up early for a planned 7:00 am departure time. We had to get down to the ferry headed to Victoria early enough to check in or we would lose our reservation. We had a great conversation with the gentleman who was handling the breakfast at the hotel. He told us a bit more of the history of the hotel’s ownership and the owner’s values. The ways the employees are treated certainly creates strong loyalty and commitment to good customer service. Because of the conversation we were a bit late leaving. When he found out the ferry we were scheduled, he shooed us out the door. The drive went relatively smoothly, except for dealing with a traffic jam caused by traffic merging from two directions into one lane. We were a bit nervous but made it to the ferry terminal in our expected window. At least this meant we had less of a wait until loading.

We watched our boat, Spirit of Vancouver Island, come in and disgorge hundreds of cars, trucks, and buses. Then we drove right through the bow of the ship to be loaded on the second vehicle deck. We watched our departure from one of the top decks and then it got a little cold for Patti. Dick spent most of the next 90 minutes at the bow of the boat watching everything he could see. This included the tasks of crew, tree covered islands slipping by, fishing boats returning to their ports, lighthouses, and, at the half-way point, the passage of a sister ship mirroring our ship’s voyage. He kept looking for Orcas or other marine mammals but had to be satisfied with many sea gulls. Patti stayed inside in a comfy chair where it was warm and read. We were both quite happy.

Once we were at Vancouver Island (where Victoria is located) we joined the throngs pouring from the ship. Instant crush of traffic on the four-lane highway. We followed a series of signs, like bread crumbs to the Butchart Gardens, one of Dick’s all time favorite garden places in the world. It deserves its world famous reputation. It was so lovely. Again, we need some new superlative words….A woman had the vision to create a gardens in an abandoned quarry, so it is really a unique setting. She and her husband made a great deal of money in the cement industry over 100 years ago, but they are most famous for creating this really ahead of its time gardens. Roses, Japanese gardens, English gardens, and Italian garden. Everywhere you looked, color and beauty flowed along! www.butchartgardens.com/. We spent several delightful hours there.

Arriving in Victoria, we checked in to our Worldmark timeshare, backing up on the inner harbor. Just one night was available, but that gives us a little more space in a really nice place to stay right downtown. It is a lovely building, with balconies overlooking the water. Yah!

It wasn’t quite ready, so that gave us time to go over to another wonderful museum: The Royal British Columbia Museum. There they were featuring an exhibit of Treasures from the British Museum drawn from countries and cultures around the world. There surely were some very exquisite and amazing pieces that they had on display. Both of us, however, felt quite uneasy about the arrogance that allowed the Brits to come in and confiscate people’s treasures and then put them on display for others to see. Of course, we DO love to see many of these wonderful things, but it is quite an ethical dilemma about whose things are they and who gets to keep them and gets to look at them.

This was brought even more to the forefront when, in the same museum, there was quite a great display of First Nation’s culture. However, some of the cases had notes saying that objects from that display had been removed and given back to the government of the Indian people through a treaty. This treaty was highly comprehensive, having passed in 2000. It did a lot of other Native’s rights things, but, in part, allowed the Indian people to have many things back that belonged to their ancestors.

We both realized after about an hour and a half that we were finally on information overload. Even the highly committed cultural explorers finally run out of gas in terms of taking in new information. We skimmed through a number of other great exhibits, but had confirmed that it is truly time to be heading back home. We are full!!!

Dinner was excellent seafood, with a focus on salmon, eaten at an outdoor restaurant right on the quay along the harbor. The boats were a mere feet from our table. We enjoyed the fresh air, quite warm temperatures, good food, and outdoor music provided by street musicians on the harbor walkway. Then we strolled for a bit, including walking by the Provicial Parliment Building, before returning to the timeshare, a bit of unpacking, a load of laundry, a soak in the hot tub….Dick also went to deal with a flat tire from a nasty nail puncture. We have had SUCH great luck with our car this whole trip. Hang in there! Just another 24 hours of driving to go to get back home.

We had only one full day in Victoria, but it was a great one.

Wonderful Museums

Day 33 – Tuesday, August 25th

Although the weather report called for mainly cloudy and possible showers, it was still a pretty nice day today. Patti was much more rested and ready to get back in to doing some blog writing. After breakfast, we headed to downtown. As expected, parking was a problem but we were in luck finding a place to put our car. First stop was the Olympic clock. Actually there are two, one for the full Winter Olympics to start in late winter and also one for the Para-Olympics, to start shortly after the conclusion of the first.

Then we went into the Vancouver Art Gallery, the city’s premier art museum. We were excited to see that they were featuring an exhibit of Vermeer and Rembrandt (and many others) from the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. It is entitled: Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum at the Vancouver Art Gallery. “Vancouver Art Gallery presents the largest exhibition of Dutch Masterpieces ever shown in Canada. They are renovating the museum in Amsterdam and have sent many of their finest paintings on a world tour. The exhibition of 128 works of art features paintings by celebrated masters such as Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as a remarkable selection of drawings and decorative arts.” What a fine exhibit it was! We were especially struck though, about how crowded this museum was on a Tuesday morning at the en of August. We literally had to wait in line to see many of the pieces. There were also an amazing amount of parents with quite small children helping their kids to actively engage with the art pieces….music to Patti’s ears from her stories for art work she has done in museums. Dick has been to the Rijksmuseum several times and really enjoyed being transported back to there.

There was also another exhibit that especially captivated us: an artist created 6 apartments one on top of another, each decorated in a style typical (or stereotypical) to specific eras from the 1950’s to today. Fun to see what he chose: everything from light fixtures, kitchens and bathroom furnishings, but then things like bowling trophies and Trivia Pursuit games. What fun! http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/

After lunch at a very busy down town food court, we were off to yet another high quality museum: The University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. This museum especially features some astounding old and new Coastal Native carvings. We have been learning a lot about these carvings, the processes to create them, and what it takes to be a master carver. This was a treat to see some great work, including a more contemporary great carver and teacher named Bill Reid. He did a huge carved piece form a story called Raven and the Creation of the First Men. Wow! Highly moving. http://www.moa.ubc.ca/

They also had a really interesting photo exhibit focusing on Samoan Tattoo artistry especially for those living in New Zealand. GREAT photos presented very thoughtfully.

This was our last night in Vancouver, but we felt like we were able to really enjoy ourselves and catch our breath a bit before we really start down south to get back to our regularly scheduled lives. Dinner out and walking about the lovely downtown area topped off our great final day here.

Exploring Vancouver

Day 32 - Monday, August 24th

Dick up and off this morning for exploring while Patti chose a sleep-in morning with a murder mystery. Perfect for each of us. Dick covered a lot of distance going all over downtown. There was a large cruise ship, Coral Princess, docked at the Canada Place cruise terminal. It must hold over 2000 guests and was nearly 1000 feet long. Dick was especially fascinated with the process of reprovisioning the ship for the next week out of port. They were loading everything from fuel to food (including one whole pallet of red beets) to more pallets of Coke products. They even loaded more deck chairs. These were plastic so Dick assumed they were going to be for one of the pool areas since the regular deck chairs were nice wood. While on the Canada Place pier, Dick also had the chance to watch several float planes land while others took off from the main harbor area. One of his favorite finds was a public art project with artists painting eagles in a variety of very interesting ways. They will auction off the sculptures in the Spring to benefit charity. He found and photographed many of these. He was also able to go back down to the areas where he had stayed on pervious trips here. This is a city that he loves.

Picking up Patti, we walked a few blocks to Chinatown where we found a restaurant for lunch at a comfortable little Chinese restaurant. The portions were huge so we called it dinner for the day. And, then spent much of the early afternoon at the Sun Yat-Sen Gardens. This was the first formal Chinese Scholar’s garden created outside of china. This type of garden is not know for its flowers, instead these represent the type of garden a wealthy person would have created in the middle of their home to encourage peace and reflection. Once relaxed, the master of the house would have spent time drawing, creating calligraphy, or written poetry. The buildings/rooms of the home would be built around the garden, closing it off from the outside. They are amazingly successful in creating the type of atmosphere desired. It was especially fun for Dick, because he had visited Suzhou, the city in China that was known for these gardens and it was out of that city that 52 Chinese artisans came here in 1985, with all the necessary materials, to install and create this garden. We had a tour lead by Beverly, a very enthusiastic volunteer who obviously loved sharing these lovely gardens with people. She works regularly and leads one tour after another. The gardens, which charged an admission, are next door to a public Chinese style park free to the public. The two facilities complement each other well. Lovely and very peaceful to visit.

We then went to Stanley Park, the Golden Gate Park of Vancouver. It was fun to see the city totally enjoying their park, with every area filled with people having a great time. We really enjoyed the Native totem poles, the Lion’s Gate Bridge, and watching the float planes take off over the harbor. We were struck by the deep forests of mature cedar trees. With the lush ferns on the ground and the towering trees overhead, it was hard to believe we were still in the middle of such a bustling metropolis. It was a great park on a perfect end of the summer day.

We grabbed a light super at a grocery store (a big city one for sure. You had to pay for parking in a parking garage to go to the grocery store!) Then back to the hotel where Dick spent chunk of the evening planning his fall class which will start in just a few days and Patti devoured a full murder mystery. Patti got quite a bit of her “day off” needs met. It was nice to just not have so much go, go, go scrunched into this day.

On to Vancouver

Day 31 – Sunday, August 23rd

Patti is officially sick of driving and really ready to get into Vancouver where we can settle in for several days of NOT driving!

Just a 300 mile drive today. (Compared with some days of 5 or 600 miles!) The highlight was driving through Frasier River Canyon, one of the most beautiful drives this whole trip. It was a canyon that went on for miles and miles on the way down from central British Columbia to near the U.S. border and it was stupendous. Patti thought this called for a John Denver sound track and we sang along with John as we drove through exquisite scenery. Wow! It really does your heart good to see such beauty!

About an hour and a half outside of Vancouver, we spotted an ad for a lovely large gardens, The Minter Gardens. We had the time, so we stopped and were so glad that we did. This lovely 32 acre gardens was filled with great blooming flowers (it isn’t fall HERE yet), lovely green places, lush shade, and lots and lots of people out enjoying the great weather. We each shot a couple hundred photos including Patti trying some artsy shots of a variety of interesting things. And another wedding was happening there. The end of August is a popular time to get married. We agreed since that was when we got married, too.

We drove on into Vancourer, even though we were originally not supposed to arrive until the next day. We crossed our fingers that we could check into our hotel early and were glad to find we could. We had mixed feelings about the hotel. Location-wise, it is great: two blocks from Chinatown, a few blocks from Gastown (the historic district with all of the shops and restaurants), and walking distance to the harbor area.The neighborhood is a little dicey, though, and we both have felt the need to be a bit more security conscious, especially at night. The hotel was billed as being geared for the budget traveler who doesn’t need a lot of frills, and it lives up to that! A good bed and a bathroom in the room makes up for a lot. The hotel is working out fine.
We walked over to Gastown where we had a lovely dinner at a longtime Indian restaurant, a nice white linen tablecloth place. A cut above the truck stop we ate at our anniversary meal in Watson Lake a couple nights ago.

Then we walked around the area a bit, taking in the sights and strolling through very tempting galleries and stores. It is also the location of the famous steam powered clock. We also had a good look at the "sails" of Canada Place, the combination hotel, convention center, and cruise ship terminal. Patti, still out of gas, finally needed to go back to the hotel and crash so we did just that. It is striking what it feels like to be in such a bit city, with over 2 million people living in the metro area, after so much NOT being around many people these past weeks. A bit of culture shock!

Change of plans

Day 29 - Friday August 21st

Today we left the Alaska Highway and began out trip south in earnest. We planned travel for several days down through British Columbia, through wilderness and forests driving along the Cassier Highway. We got up and it was not raining, it was POURING! We got ready and headed off on the Cassier Highway. We only got about 10 or 15 miles down the road though and it got rougher and muddier and more rutted. Our top speed was only about 35 mph on the short paved stretches and about15 in the mud. It this rate, it was going to be a very long drive to complete our scheduled 300 miles. Finally, Dick turned and said, “I am having second thoughts about this route.” We drove a few more minutes, but the road was terrible. We were going to be going into an area without many cars or people. It started to just feel not only not very safe, but also stupid. So, regroup, or as the GPS voice would have said, “recaluculating.” So we turned the other way and headed much further back down the Alaska Highway to Dawson Creek, the way we came three weeks ago. We are heading for Vancouver, but there aren’t many roads through British Columbia.

“What are we seeing?” you ask. How about trees, tress, road, trees and some wildlife. You really become aware of how much of our regular day-to-day life is filled with other people. Here, it is mostly the two of us, often not even seeing people when you stop to fill up with gas.

Mostly, today it rained and rained. We DID have some nice wildlife sightings though, including 35 Wood Bison (which Dick has been dying to see this whole trip), some caribou, a moose, and five stone sheep. You just gotta love these opportunities to interact with animals. We saw a picture at one gas stop of a bison on the highway with the caption: Alaskan Highway speedbumps.

We put the sticker on our rear window highlighting our achievment of driving the Highway. We were planning on retracing our path for a couple hundred miles, but instead have now driven over 850 miles both ways. Oh well!

When we got back to mile zero of the Alaskan Highway, after a 650 mile day, we decided to stay at a hotel rather than a camp ground tonight. After a torrential rain (guess a last gasp of the wet weather, we drove into the sunlight. We even had a beautiful sunset as we entered Dawson Creek. Our plan is to relax a bit and get caught up on our blogging; Internet services is so hit or miss around here. A couple of times, even though we “had” internet service, we still couldn’t get things to upload. Frustrating! But that is the breaks in traveling. Just so you know, that is the reason we fall behind in our updates.

Driving along southern Yukon

Day 28 - Thursday August 20th

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary. Who would have thought 15 years ago that we would be celebrating this day in the Yukon!?

After getting a little later start, we visited the world’s largest fish ladder. This is in the connection with the only dam that is on the Yukon River. Salmon travel nearly 2000 miles from the Bering Sea to return to their spawning stream just south of Whitehorse. This is the longest salmon migration in the world. To help the salmon negotiate getting past the dam, 50 years ago they built a series of steps filled with water, that the salmon could either jump up or swim through little openings to get to the next level. About halfway up, there is a viewing area where they are observed and counted. They keep track of their genders and whether they are wild or raised in a hatchery. So far this season over 500 salmon have found their way up this ladder. While we were there we saw both a male and a female salmon. Some of the female salmon are taken out and their eggs harvested for the hatcheries. As part of the 50th celebration, the people of Whitehorse were invited to decorate wooden salmon which were presented in a wonderful display along the fish ladder. There were fifty of them, each different and all well done. There were two young interpreters there who did an excellent job of providing information and being very helpful. It was a very interesting place to visit. http://www.yukonenergy.ca/services/facilities/fishway/

Next we made a stop at Miles Canyon, a bit further up stream on the Yukon. The waters of the Yukon get forced through a canyon here that is less than a hundred yards wide with steep stonewalls. Gold stampeders had to navigate this rough water area in their boats that they had built themselves. Many didn’t make it. And this was right before the rapids, which was also a terrible spot where even more of them crashed The Mounties tried to regulate traffic so that only experienced boatmen controlled each boat passing through these difficult waters. The rapids are now covered by the lake backed up behind the dam. These guys had to really want to get to that gold! It was a beautiful area to look at.

Then we returned to the Alaska Highway headed southeast. An impromptu stop to eat our lunch gave us a chance to visit an amazing little museum: The George Johnston Museum. http://www.gjmuseum.yk.net/ This was dedicated to telling the story of a Tlgit Indian man, who was such an interesting combination of characteristics. He practiced and held very traditional beliefs and was an “early adopter” of such things as photography (teaching himself how to take and develop photos) and brought the first car to his town: a brand-new 1928 Chevy. Not so exceptional except that at that time there were no roads at all in this isolated town, it had to be brought in by steamboat. He and friends cleared 3 miles of forest to create a road and he set up his car as a taxicab, charging people $2.00 a person for a ride. In the winter, he drove the car on the 78 mile long frozen lake in their community.

He was able, as an insider, to document both everyday life and special occasions for his people during a time of great transition. There was a fine movie that we watched that told about his life. It also talked about the changes that happened when into this VERY isolated trapping community in the Yukon came The Alaskan Highway. It was really mixed as to the blessings and the curses of the road. The American soldiers brought with them many diseases that the Indian people had no immunity to, and many died. The soldiers and their wives also did not understand the Native ways at all, and there were a lot of misunderstandings and hurtful actions. One of the comments made in the film was that George Johnston took pictures to tell the stories of the past, but also that would be needed by those not yet born. It is such a blessing that there are so many people who have seen the need to preserve stories such as this great man. Even though he died many years ago, a beloved elder and successful businessman in the community, we felt as though we got to meet him today.

As we drove, MORE RAIN! We figure that we have had maybe 4 days this trip with no rain at all, and several days with non-stop rain. We haven’t had nearly as many hikes as we thought we might have. The wet, damp weather and mud haven’t seemed very inviting to get out and hike.

Being so late in the season surely accounts for the lack of traffic. But the fall colors are certainly coming in. It is interesting retracing our path from two weeks ago and seeing it looking much more fall-like.

The night stop would be back at Watson Lakes, home of the signpost forest. Our hotel for the night is another interesting place: a restored barracks for US Pilots during World War II. They were ferrying planes to the Soviet Union on “lend-lease”. http://www.airforcelodge.com/. One of the really interesting things we found out was that the barracks housed not just male pilots, but also a lot of women pilots. Due to the war (WWII), male pilots were busy off “in harm’s way”. This left a huge hole in domestic flying, with lots that needed to happen. Many women learned to fly during this time period, and many of them were part of the effort to get planes up through Canada and Alaska so they could be delivered to Russia. So, our hotel has two sets of shower rooms: one for men and one for women, just as it had originally. This barrack was originally some miles away on the Air Base, but was one of many moved into town and then sold for $1.00. A trapper bought it, and when he died, our current hosts bought it and rehabbed the place. It is now quite nice inside, but the same as it would have been in 1942 on the outside.

Up the Yukon River to Whitehorse

Day 27 – Wednesday, August 19th

Dick woke up early and got ready and started driving while Patti was still sleeping. That is an advantage to our arrangement in the minivan. Dick disturbed Patti’s sleep with an exclamation, “Bear!” There on the road about two hundred yards ahead of the now stopped car was a black bear. It was ambling along the right side of the road when it suddenly stopped and turned around and looked at us. He seemed unsure what to do since we were not moving. He walked across the road, stopping a couple of times to examine us again. Then up the slope, stopping every few steps to look at us. With one final look, he disappeared over the top of the hill. We were able to get a couple good pictures of it before it was gone. With this bear, it meant that we had seen both Grizzly Bears and a Black Bear along the road during our trip. Just a little further down the road we stopped to buy ice and get Patti her morning coffee. We got just 20 miles down the road and stopped for ice and coffee, and she got up.

We drove all morning in the continued sense of wilderness. No traffic, no crossroads, no houses, just an occasional campground, RV park or village. This is really an isolated area. The road mostly followed the mighty Yukon River. We often thought about all of the gold rush stampeders heading through this area over a hundred years ago. How isolated and wild it must have seemed to them.

We planned to arrive in Whitehorse Yukon early enough to see some sights that we missed the first time through. We are now going back to connect up with the Alaska Highway for a relatively short time.

We went to two lovely museums in Whitehorse. The first was the Transportation Museum, which has the full-sized DC3 plane as a weathervane in the front of it. This museum did a nice job of representing both the construction of the Alaska Highway, as well as the transportation history of the gold rush. We saw info about people climbing over the Chilroot Pass where each was required to carry a year's worth of provisions, about 2000 pounds, in order to be allowed into Canada. Once over the pass, while waiting for the Spring thaw, these Stampeders set about building their own boats. They eventually went down the Yukon River to Dawson City, about 700 miles on water. All of this happened in 1898-1900. We learned more about the building of the railroad across from Skagway, which made it possible for later gold rushers to get through without having to carry that ton of provisions on their backs up and over a mountain pass. There was also a great exhibit about the steamboats, some of which went all the way on the Yukon River to the Bering Sea, 1200 miles away. Having just driven from Dawson City and seen the Riverboats earlier in Fairbanks, we had a sense of tying this all together. We learned that in 1898 it could take several months to get to Dawson City from Skagway, but know you can drive it in one long day.

We saw a video about life on the river one hundred years ago. One part talked about what a big event it was at the beginning of the river season. once the ice had left the river and boats could travel again. People so looked forward to the first riverboat to arrive from downstream, carrying mail and goods. The river was a dangerous place for these steamboats. Even experienced pilots sometimes crashed at rapids or narrow places. The less experienced pilots left piles of lumber that had been fine boats.

Then we went to the Beringia Museum. Beringia is the name for the subcontinent that ranged from Siberia to the Yukon that was never glaciated. This was maybe 30-40,000 years ago. Because so much of the world’s water was tied up in glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, the sea level dropped by several hundred feet exposing the continental shelf between North America and Asia. We were fascinated to find out why this area, so far north, had not been glaciated while areas to the east and much further south were covered with glaciers up to a mile thick. The answer was the high mountains to the south that wrung out most of the moisture, leaving little to form snow. This is still true today, causing much of this northern area to have cold desert conditions.

Scientists assume that people followed the animals across that grassy savannah. Some of the most interesting fossil and bone remains that have been found in the Yukon and Alaska include giant 400-pound beavers, woolly mammoths, giant sloths, short nosed bears, and giant lions. One of the really fascinating things studied through this center is the local Indian legends about giant creatures and monsters. Archeologists have been able to follow some of those legends to find bone remains of wooly mammoths and other creatures. There are also legends about how the large monster sized animals were made smaller like the ones we have today. Very cool as a storyteller. Patti was awestruck at the idea of stories being passed along from 30,000 years ago or more. This museum did a fine job of integrating science and story, working closely with the First Nations peoples.

At about 4:00, we drove around downtown exploring a bit, and then, we were ready to stop! It was great to find a nice downtown hotel and take the evening off with resting, reading, and cooking a meal in the microwave. Even nonstop drivers and cultural explorers need an evening off. Patti had a brief conversation with a wildlife photographer talking about some of adventures shooting photos in the wilderness.