Golf on the Top of the World

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful here in the Klondike.  I took advantage of the weather to play the 9 hole golf course just outside of Dawson City.  The course is aptly named the Top of the World Golf course.  Here's a couple pics.

Sign on the Top of the World highway.

5th fairway

6th Teebox, Klondike River in the background

Self portrait on the 7th tee box

Hike up to the clubhouse.

The week ahead

We are leaving Whitehorse this morning as we head further north.  Today's trip is from here to Dawson City.  (Map)  We will be there two nights, hoping to play golf at the Top of the World Golf course and take in the Diamond Tooth Gertie show while we are there.

Then it's off to Inuvik. (Map)  From Inuvik the plan is to take a plan up to Tuktoyaktuk, it's so far off the grid that there are no roads to get up there.  Here's a Map of the planned flight.  Internet service will be sketchy to none existent for the next week or so.

Wildlife Photos

Lots of wildlife along the way.  Here's some pics.

The road to Whitehorse

We have arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon.  The trip was accomplished in three parts.  First, we drove from Hudson's Hope to Skianni Chief River (Map).  There is a little RV park right next to the Peace river which had electricity!  Always a good thing.  We spent one night there then drove to the Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park. (Map).  On the way to Liard we saw this guy kicking it next to the road.

We also started seeing Bears, six of them on this part of the trip.  Liard was fun as usual but - and this is a big but - the mosquitos were horrid this year!  We still spent 3 days in Liard soaking in the hot springs and riding our bikes.  Here's Kim at the Liard River bridge just south of the park.

Yesterday we drove from Liard to Whitehorse (Map) and we really started seeing wildlife.  We counted 13 bears, around 10 buffalo and 1 red fox. We will be here today, Kim and her mom are headed into town for some shopping and I am hoping to get some golf in, then we head further north to Dawson City and Inuvik.

Hudson's Hope, BC

We covered about 260 miles yesterday, spending the night next to the Peace river just North of Hudson's Hope. (Trip)  Today we are headed over to see the largest dam here in British Columbia.  The owner of the campground here told us that the dam is releasing water and that it shoots out about 1/4 mile.  There is also a tour that we hope to go on.

The biggest town that we went through yesterday was Chetwynd.  It has an interesting visitor center with several chainsaw carvings outside of it.  This was the one we found most interesting.

 The piece was entitled "Building Character".

We also saw our first Bear and Moose of the trip yesterday.  They appeared and disappeared so fast that we didn't get any pictures.

Happy 4th of July

We made it almost 400 miles up the Cariboo trail here in British Columbia.  We had hoped to get north of Prince George yesterday but it was just too much.  Here's the map.  We found a great little campground, the Crystal Creek Campground RV Park.  It has a nature trail that follows the path of the creek that the campground gets it's name fun.  Internt is to slow or I'd post up a couple pictures.

Our goal is to be at the Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park on Friday.  The provincial parks are great but no electricity and of course no internet.  We will be spending 3 nights there then it's off to the Annie's Lake golf course and Whitehorse.

Here's a map for that part of the trip.

Goodbye US of A - Hello Canada!

We have spent the last 2 nights in Portland, Or.  Our campsite is on an Island between Oregon and Washington.  The name of the place is the Jantzen Beach RV park.  The park isn't really on the beach and we couldn't find away to get down to the river while we were riding our bikes yesterday but it was still a nice place.

We spent yesterday wandering through the Washington Park Rose Garden.  Here's a picture of Kim enjoying the flowers.  I, of course, was bored out of my gourd.

After that we headed over to the semi-world famous VooDoo doughnuts shop.  We tried to go to the one downtown but the line was at least 100 people long!!  Fortunately they have a second location so we did manage to find a place to park the RV and pick up a dozen of the craziest doughnuts ever.  Here's Gerry about to work out on the Blood Filled Voodoo doll!

Today we head into Canada where we will be traveling around for the next 20 days or so.  The Map for our trip up I-5 to Portland is here and the one for today's journey to Hope, BC is here.

Remembering Mr. Mac

We spent our first night in Ashland, Oregon (Map).  Ashland is home to an annual and according to the sign on the highway world famous Shakespeare festival.  Seeing the sign got me to thinking about my Senior year English teacher Mr. Mac. Mr. Mac stands out in my memories of high school (in Arizona) for two reasons.  First, he made Shakespeare fun and interesting.  If memory serves we were reading MacBeth and Mr. Mac brought in one of those old school tape players and would play the dialog for us.  He would stop the tape after just about every sentence and take the time to explain what old Bill S was saying through his actors.
  

Second, Mr Mac actually let myself and a fellow student cut class to attend the Tucson open golf tournament.  My friend Stuart got free tickets from his dad for the tourney.  English was our last class of the day so we approached Mr. Mac and asked if we could ditch class and head over to Randolph North (where they played the tourney back in 1980).  Mr. Mac told us that today “we would be exploring the exciting world of the gerund phrase” but after the lecture we could head out.  We sat down and hung in for the lecture.  After he finished, roughly 15 minutes of a 75 minute class we got up and headed for the door.  Mr. Mac stopped us with “I can’t let you guys go to the golf tournament.”  We were stunned, started pleading our case to get out of class.  Mr. Mac just smiled and replied - "I can’t let you go to the tourney but I can let you go to the nurse - See you tomorrow." 

I heard that he broke both his legs in a skydiving accident the year after I graduated.  Not sure if that’s true or what happened to him since but sure hope he’s alive and well!

Canada and Alaska here we come!

We are headed back to the great white north starting tomorrow morning.  We plan to take 4 days or so getting up to Canada then we will be heading straight to Inuvik.  The trip will cover mostly the same locations, there just aren't that many roads or places to go when you get up into Northern Canada and Alaska but we hope to visit some new places while on the road.

Tomorrow we plan to make it to Ashland, Oregon.  We will then spend Saturday and Sunday in Portland.  Hopefully, on Monday we will be across the border and into Hope, BC.

Our Second Great Adventure begins

So Kim and I are off traveling again.  We left Flagstaff Tuesday morning and today we are in McGregor, Mn.  Most of the last four days has been spent blasting across country.  The first day, after taking care of a tire issue that occurred out buy the Petrified National Park on I-40, we ended up in Dalhart, Tx (Map).  Weds evening we made it up to the Pony Express Campground near Mayesville, Mo (Map) and then Thursday we made it to the condo my Mom was renting at Breezy Point, MN (Map).  Yesterday we went to the headwaters of the Mississippi river at Itasca State Park.  Today looks to be another long day as we are intending to drive through the upper peninsula of Michigan with the final goal of meeting up with my sister and her husband at Sleeping Bear Dunes in Northern Michigan.  Not sure if we can get another 600 plus miles in but we should be on the road in about 30 minutes.

We plan to be on the road for about 12 weeks this time, see you on the road!