The Long Way Home (Part two)

It was the Labor Day weekend and we were back on American soil.  Our exodus from Canada was thru Hells Gate.  Many a traveler will drive 60 miles to avoid that route thru Canada, not sure why.  We had no problems and found it very enjoyable.  The dry desert like conditions were no issue for us at that time of year.

Entering U.S. soil was at Sumas, WA.  It was getting late in the day and I had hoped we'd make Seattle before days end.  We checked a couple of camp grounds and they were full, finally we decided to call it a day and spend the night at a TSA truck stop.  The following day we headed for Walla Walla, WA.  We had spend a sleepless night in Seattle and was eager to find a place to rest and relax for a few days.  Our return to Tennessee would take several weeks as we had a few stops we wanted to make along the way.

The drive from Seattle to Walla Walla was thru the mountains of southeast WA.  It was a dry and barren landscape, lots of apple farms and hills of grapes for wine.  It was funny to see the vast amount of dry lands and to see a strip of greenery, that was the apple farms or the wine groves that dotted the many hillsides.  I was looking at the beautiful hillside wineries and thinking of one of my favorite movies, "A walk in the Clouds".  I could see the characters come to life and it was romantic to imagine their lives as it was played out on the screen. This was wine country and apples as well.

 

 

We made our way to the RV Resort in Walla Walla.  It was a nice park and we would spend several days there, resting up and touring some of the local wineries.  I couldn't get over the statues at the Resort, they were of animals.  We had spent three months in Alaska, the animals we saw were real and very much alive and very aggressive.  To see them in stone was funny, for these would never pose a threat to anyone.  I walked around and snapped a few pictures, but it just wasn't the same as taking pictures of the real McCoys.

 

 

The next several days were spent resting up and taking life a little bit easy.  I had driven a lot of miles from Alaska and I was tired from it all, all I wanted to do was to catch up on a few hours of good rest.  Driving  is something I don't mind doing, I can do it for long hours, but there comes a time when I get the urge to just sit around and enjoy the long days of doing nothing and going nowhere.  That usually doesn't last long with me before I'm ready to see what's around the next corner :)  We did venture downtown Walla Walla, like most towns, not a lot going on there.

Kathie and I made several trips to the local grape growers.  We learned much about wine and how it is grown.  I think Kathie also sampled a lot of the juice of the stompers as they smashed and crushed the grape into the tasty wine.  We made several stops and she always left with more that the usual samples.  Me, I'm a beer drinker and I was only too pleased to let her sample for both of us.  She was having fun and I was happy as I "heard it thru the grapevine".  I would have been happy to just sit and eat my fill of those ripe grapes :)

 

 

 

Finally it was time for us to once again get on the road.  We were driving thru southeast WA and northeast OR.  The golden straw fields lay before us, acres and acres of yellow straw, large piles of the large bales stacked high waiting to be trucked away.  I was thinking of what a rich man  Rumpelstiltskin would have been if only the millers daughter could have spun the straw into gold.  But we know that to be impossible, still if it could have old Rumpel would have owned all of this.

We would make several stop overs before reaching our first destination at Bryce Canyon Nat. Park in UT.  On the way to Bryce we traveled thru the Red Rock Canyon.  We made a lot of stops to take photos and marvel at the beauty of such natural sites.  Our stop at Bryce Canyon revealed the Hoodoo's, large rock formations of lime and granite.  Over the thousands of years the lime has washed away and left the strange rock formations called Hoodoos.  We spend a couple of days among the Hoodoos and even ventured into the valley floor for a closer look.  It was a walk in the extreme heat, down and back up hundreds of feet in evaluation.  By days end we were ready to call it a day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next stop was Zion National Park in UT.  It was less that a 100 miles from Bryce and the trip was down thru Candy Rock Mountain.  We enjoyed the drive and couldn't help but to notice the rivers and streams looked much like thick chocolate milk.  A lot of rain and the release of the local dam had the waters filled with silt.  The locals complained of the COE releasing the waters and killing the fish.  I didn't see how anything could have lived in all the mud that was washing down stream.

 

 

 

 

Our entry into Zion was by way of route 9, straight thru the park.  The Park road is a state highway, restricted by height and length. Several tunnels are along the route and the Park Service controls them.  The max height is 13' 1" and the max length is 50'.  There is an additional cost for an escort thru the tunnel.  The tunnel is small and an RV must drive thru in the center of the road.  The traffic is controlled and one direction at a time lead by the Park Service.

 

 

 

 

 

While at Zion we couldn't get a spot in the Park CG so we opted to stay a few miles south along the Virgin River, at a nice RV Resort with plenty of everything needed for an enjoyable stay.  I actually extended a day because they provided cable and I could see the first episode of SOA, the final season.  While there we encountered a flash flood due to a seasonal storm that was coming out of Mexico.  It was the first hurricane of the season, washing out I-15 and stranding travelers.  The Virgin River rose 25' and we were endanger of it coming over the burm at the CG.  Route 9 washed out and was covered with rock and mud slides inside Zion.  At it turned out the extra day was needed to await clean up so that we could get out by way of route 9.  Once able to leave we headed for the Grand Canyon.

The entrance into the south rim of the Grand Canyon was by the eastern gate.  I had not entered from this direction before.  We made several stops to take pictures before the darkness fell across the canyons.  The views of the terrain is always changing, clouds, sunshine and the time of day.  The sun was low in the west and a lot of our pictures were dark even with the light still good.  Our stay in the Canyon was only to be overnight.  There were many stops on our route and we still had hundreds of miles yet ahead of us.  We settled into a campground in the town of Tusayan.  It wasn't much for the cost but typical of what you find close to a large attraction such as the Grand Canyon.  We set up our camper and returned to the park, staying as long as we could.  We were surprised when darkness fell and we were unable to see anymore.  That was at 7 PM and we figured it wouldn't get dark until 9 or 10, were we shocked when at 7 PM it was total darkness in the mountains of the canyon.  We should have known that we weren't in Alaska anymore with those long hours of light.

 

We were up early and making ready to get back on the road.  Our stop today would be at the Petrified Forest and the Painted Dessert.  I was in hopes we'd be there around noon and have plenty of time and then on to Albuquerque for the night.  Our arrivals were always met with a time change along our return route.  During our trip up we gained four hours in all.  Now on the way back we had lost two of those hours.  Leaving Alaska we lost an hour and then in Utah we lost another one.  To our benefit Arizona doesn't switch to daylight savings time or any other change.  They are always on the same time zone.  Our arrival into the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert turned out to be an all day event.  Once we got there and started taking pictures we slowed to a crawl.  There was just to much to see to be in a hurry.  We also discovered we were driving part of the famous Route 66.  I expected to see Buz Murdock and Tod Stiles in their light blue 1960 Corvette.  The years and colors of the Corvette changed with the series and the years.  About the only color that wasn't used for the car was red!  We stayed behind the camera lens and before we knew it the day was over.  We made our way as far as Grants NM. before calling it a night.  It was 9-11 and the bridges and overpasses had first responders with their, police cars, fire trucks and EMS units along with large American Flags.  We blew our horn and waved, they were on every overpass over I-40 as we made our way east.  We were 70 miles west of Albuquerque and as far as I could go.  It was already after dark and I was tired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the morning came I was ready to get started again.  It seemed that we still had over 1300 miles to go.  I had planned to be in Mobile, AL. by the 15th of September.  We had to adopt some sort of  schedule if we were to make it.  I didn't have anymore stop offs that I wanted to make.  There was plenty along our route we could have stopped and spent time to see but we had a lot of miles to get to Mobile.  Plans were to spend a week in Mobile visiting with my side of the family, before that would happen we had to first get there.

Our travels thru New Mexico was an adventure like everywhere else we have traveled.  Our stop in Ft Sumner, NM. was unplanned and unscheduled.  We couldn't help but notice the sign at the towns city limits.  The sign read, "A nice town with an ugly past".  As we pulled up to the traffic light at the crossroads we couldn't help but to notice it looked like a ghost town.  The main street consisted of wood framed buildings.  No sign of life, all run down and closed.  We were now on a two lane secondary road and no longer traveling the interstate.  I saw a gas station and convenience store, best stop and get some fuel as it looks like towns aren't that close together and don't offer a lot.  As  we pulled into the gas station I noticed we had a trailer tire that was going flat.  Out of all the miles we had driven to Alaska and the entire summer there and now the long road back  this was our first flat.  I asked Kathie to go into the store and inquire if they had a tire service in town.  I had a spare and a compressor and plug kit, if worse came to worse I could either change or repair it.  As luck would have it, we were in luck.  Two blocks up on the right, we had the tire repaired.  There didn't seem to be a lot in this town with an ugly past.  We discovered that the ugly past was when a sheriff named Pat Garrett shot and killed a kid by the name of William Bonney who's birth name was William Henry McCarty Jr.  That kid is buried in the towns cemetery under a head stone that reads "Billy the Kid".  Three of Billy's friends are also buried in the plot next to him.  Another dark stain on the towns white satin past is that it was the holding area for the Navajo's and Mescalero Apache's.  The Indians were held in internment camps from 1863 to 1868.

Our next stop would be in Clovis, NM.  We were tired and found a nice little campground just off the highway.  It wasn't crowded and we gladly paid the sum of $25.00 for full hook-ups.  The office was unattended and we placed our cash in an envelope and pushed it thru a slot in the office door.  It had been another hard day with hundreds of miles driven on back roads.  We  didn't notice the trains until they became nonstop.  The endless whistles started blowing half a mile before they got to us and stayed on that horn for a half mile after they passed us.  About the time we started to doze off the screeching and clanging of the iron would  scare the crap out of you.  We finally had to resort to cotton balls in our ears and that did little to dull the constant noise.  It was a very sleepless night, the morning never came fast enough.  During my half awake attempt to get our unit ready to roll I discovered thru half open eyes the massive switch yard full of trains that was less than 200 feet from the CG.  How in the world did we miss that?

It was a hard day made worse with the lack of sleep.  The two lane roads were straight and we made good time.  The day was uneventful until we got to Dallas, TX.  GOOD GRIEF what a mess that was.  Road construction everywhere.  It was bumper to bumper traffic and the construction didn't make it any easier.  Our GPS was of no help as it didn't know how to route us thru the detours or rerouting of the traffic flow.  Without warnings our turn came and went, we missed a left turnoff unable to get thru the traffic.  By the time we were thru Dallas I was ready to shoot JR myself.  No way I'd live in a town that crowded.  I was only too glad to get back on the four lane interstate and get the strays out of the stampede and back on the open range.  It was late but I wanted to get away from the confines of road construction and the masses of crazy kamikaze drivers.  We found a nice little CG in Terrell, TX.  We were back on the big road and from this point we'd make good time.  We were on schedule and within 600 miles of Mobile, with two days to get there.

It was the 14th and we would make Mobile by the 15th with ease.  By days end we would have just over 100 miles to Mobile.  We ended our day at Florence MS.  We pulled into a nice little CG ending our day early.  Tomorrow we'd sleep late and take our time getting back on the road, driving three hours to Mobile, AL.

We arrived in Theodore, AL just after lunch.  That was to be our location for a week while we visited and spent time with family.  We had driven about 4200 miles since leaving Alaska.  Our time with stops and stays along the way had taken us about three weeks.  We would rest here for a week and then on to Cleveland, GA.  In our next blog of the Long Way Home I will share our time in Mobile.

 

 

 

Until then.

Dutch & Kathie.

http://whygodutch.blogspot.com

The Long Way Home (Part One)

The summer was winding down for us.  We had enjoyed over three full months of Alaska and all it had to offer.  Leaving Tennessee on the first of May we had traveled many a mile of beautiful and different places as we made our way north.  This wasn't my first trip to Alaska, I had first been assigned there as a young private E-2 back in 1966, fresh out of advance training in the United States Army.  My time there was to be short, spending less than six months before being sent to Vietnam with the unit.  That was in 1967, I would return many years later for a second Army assignment.  For Kathie it was her first time and I often wondered what she must be thinking.  I would often see her staring out the truck window as if in a daze or trance, the silence broken by my question to her as to if she was alright.  Her answer always the same and then back to her private moments.

 

I have many memories of Alaska and my time there.  A lot of what I remembered was still true today but a lot had also changed.  It's funny how things change in time, yet remaining the same.  It's like the house you grew up in, so large to you as a child yet now that your older that same house is small in reality.  Alaska was like that for me.  A lot of what I remembered wasn't as large as I recall.  Still I was once again back and making new memories and enjoying it just as much.

Our last week spent in Alaska was at Palmer.  A place where I had many memories of the past years history. We were there to enjoy the State Fair.  I had been there many times before.  I looked forward to visiting the fair again.  It's something that most Alaskans look forward to, marking the end of summer.  It was to be our last event before heading home to the lower 48.  This year's dates for the Fair were August 19th thru Sept. the 1st. 

We departed Palmer on the morning of August the 26th.  It was a rainy Tuesday as we pulled out onto the Glenn Highway headed north to Glenallen.  We had been over that road when we had made our trip to Valdez and back.  We passed the Matanuska Glacier and continued north past Sheep Mountain and on to the crossroads where the Glenn Highway meets with the Richardson Highway.  Taking the Richardson north we headed towards the Black Rapids Training Site that I knew so well from my days of mountaineering and glacier training back in the mid 70's.  I wanted to stop and visit the training site and perhaps catch a few demostrations of today's Army Mountain Training Course.

 

(The Matanuska Glacier, 27 miles long and 4 miles wide.)

Once we arrive in the Black Rapids area the first thing I saw that was a reminder of those days so long ago was Rainbow Ridge.  I had remembered that mountain all these years and it was just as I had envisioned it then and still the same today.  If anything it had gotten more colorful thru the many years.  It was a land mark, something that stood out.  How many times had I driven past that mountain on my way back to the training site from a weekend at home in Anchorage.  Now I was back, not as a soldier on active duty but a retired one with no obligations except to myself.  I had changed over the many years but that old mountain was the same.  It was timeless and I was but a visitor to it who's time would not outlast it.  How many humans had come and gone thru this pass and still the mountain remained unchanged and they were gone from the earth forever.

 

 

Once at the Black Rapids Training Site we weren't able to gain access to the actual training area.  It was illegal to be there or to even take photos.  All I can tell you is I did not violate any laws taking any pictures.  I discovered these on my camera after I had left the area.  Their secrets are safe and no actual trainees were hurt in the process.  I can tell you that what you see isn't a lot of what there is to see, we just couldn't take the chance of being arrested or jailed for trespassing.  No longer on active duty I had no reason for being there, or so it seems.  Oh but back in the day, back when I was young and strong, I had many a great tale to tell.  But that's another story for another time.

After leaving the training site I did make a stop at the Black Rapids Road House.  A place where I spent many an hour in a comatose state of mind numbing inebriated slumber.  That old roadhouse had stood the test of time, now it was falling apart thru neglect and nonuse.  It was sad to see the state it was in.  A new lodge had taken it's place, still I felt sadness for that old roadhouse.  Some things had remained the same while others had changed.  Time had moved on in many ways.  I was older and I too was in need of repairs and not in the shape I once was.

Another landmark for me was Moby Dick!  I have no idea as to the correct name of this mountain, just something I called it.  It too was unchanged thru these many years.  Standing as a white mountain among a group of gray made it surely stand out.  It was unmistakingly one of a kind.  The only one of it's kind and not even the test of time had changed it.

 

Something that has changed in this area is the pipe line, stretching all along the Richardson Highway. Starting on the Northern Slope and running to Valdez.  Running above ground in area's that are subject to perma frost and below ground in those area's that don't have perma frost.  It's runs beside the highway and dots the landscape above and below all along the roadway.  We took several pictures, only a small sample of the sure size and scope of such a massive manmade change to the envioroment in this part of Alaska.

We made it back to Tok just before dark and settled in for the evening.  We would be here for only the one night and heading for the Canadian border in the early morning light.  It was late summer and those long days of daylight had given way to plenty of darkness.  No longer did we have to cover our windows in order to keep out the light.  The temperature was also cooler.  Within a couple of days it would be below freezing at nights, time for us to say our goodbyes.

On August the 27th we departed Alaska and headed to Beaver Creek Canada, the border crossing from the USA into Canada.  We were delayed at the boarder for a security check.  Not sure of how they pick out who they want or if they have a system, we were delayed an hour for background checks and a search of our truck and camper.  It would have taken less time if the agent had just us to focus on but he was doing other things as well.  Finally we were once again on our way south thru Canada's Yukon Territory and British Columbia.

The trip back was dull compared to the trip up in May.  The beautiful snow covered mountains with wide icy glaciers and frozen lakes were now just mountains and lakes.  There was no beauty of contrast, no awakening of animals or the chill of the air.  What was different was the turning of the foliage, tree's and bushes leaves turning to the fall colors.  The landscape was dull, dry and dusty.  The roads were better for the most part with many of the frost heaves, ruts and sunken or missing pavement now repaired.  A lot of muddy and gravel road work that made a giant mud ball as it splashed and splattered all about the vehicle and trailer.  Maybe it was just that we had seen so much beauty that we were disappointed with the lack of it now.  Regardless it was a dull trip with little to catch your attention or make you want to stop for that special photo.  Even the beautiful Kluane Lake was a disappointment from our first visit there in May.  It didn't even look like the same place.  We continued our drive and drove to Haines Junction,  a distance of 450 miles and decided that we'd not take a side trip to Skagway, but continue south bound towards home.  Before leaving I would wash off the mud, the unit was plenty dirty and each time we got close to either the truck or the trailer we ended up with dirt and mud all over us and our clothing.  The campground had a wash rack and I had a pocket full of toonies, the Canadian one dollar coin.  It was a $1 for two minutes, I kept feeding that coin box until I had the mud removed.  The vehicles looked much better if only for a few miles.

Our trip today we'd drive only 220 miles to Teslin, where we had made a stop on the way up in May.  It was also one of those places we had enjoyed on a beautiful lake.  Do I need to tell you how we viewed it now on the return trip?  We did enjoy dinner at the lodge and visited the museum of  animal displays and native crafts and gifts.  Still it just wasn't the same, or was it?  I'm sure that it was us who had changed!

The morning of the 29th we left Teslin and made our way south to Watson Lake, taking a different route from this point on our return trip.  We were going down the Cassiars Highway, a small two lane road with little or no traffic.  Not a lot to see but it would cut our return trip by as much as 150 miles.  Since we weren't all that excited about the return trip it was good to cut a few miles.  We had abandoned any plan or scheduled stops and drove as many miles as we could.  It was days of anywhere from 450 miles to 550 miles depending on when we got started and when we called it a day.  We were still in the wilds of Canada's vast frontier and settlements weren't all that many.  That days trip would take us to Bell 2 Lodge.  Along the way there we passed over Eastman Creek, named for George Eastman of the Eastman Kodak Company.

 

 

Bell 2 Lodge was a quaint place out in the middle of nowhere, it looked like something out of Grimm's Fairytales.  The lodge had a campground, lots of two story cabins, a small Alps looking village.  We enjoyed dinner in the lodge restaurant before retiring for the day.  We had driven 450 miles from Teslin and tomorrow was to be another long day.

It was now August the 30th, the month almost gone and the marking of the fourth month since we had started our summer adventure starting on the first day of May.  This days journey ended at Quesnel, a small town about 50 miles south of Saint George.  It was another long day of driving 440 miles with little or nothing to see along the way.  There was the occasional build up area with a small town and gas station.  Towards the end, the towns were getting larger, 6500 residents or more.  Quesnel was a town of some size, 8500 or more.  Our stay there was in a beautiful CG right on the lake shore.  It was another one of those long days ending with a rainbow.  We wanted to stay longer but it was time to get back on the road.

It was now August the 31st, last day of the month.  That day would end up being a 550 mile day.  We hadn't planned such a long days drive, it just turned out to be that way.  Driving thru Frasier Canyon it was hot and desert like.  The small farms had to irrigate their pastures, that was the only green we saw.  The canyon had high walls with a river flowing thru it, train tracks on both sides.  We stopped to watch a bunch of rafters coming down the swift and frigid moving waters.  At the rapids the rafts bucked and rose high before crashing down again.  Several of the oarsmen of the rafts would spill out into the water and quickly be recovered by the others onboard.  Having done this sort of thing myself I could hear the steersman in the back of the raft as he called out orders to those paddling on right and left side. Right drag, meaning oars in water held steady as if to brake while he yelled row to the left oarsmen.  He was the captain of this small vessel and it was his job to steer and move the raft in a desired direction.

The day was ending and we were within a few miles of the US Border.  We decided to cross then and not wait spending another night in Canada.  We crossed back onto the USA soil and headed for Seattle.  It was the Labor Day weekend and the CG's were full.  We decided to make our final stop after 550 miles of driving, it was late and I was tired.  We camped out at a Truck Stops of America, TSA as it is called and the large letters on the sign read.  We were back in the lower 48 and on our final 30 days toward home.  We were "Sleepless in Seattle" as the trucks roared in and out of the TSA all night.  Up at 5:30 am and headed to Walla Walla for a couple of earned days of rest.

The summer spent in Alaska was priceless.  The long trip of driving up and back was expensive.  Paying as much as $8.00 a liter for diesel fuel in Canada and as much as $4.76 a gallon in Alaska.  Still I am glad we made this trip and had the time to enjoy it as well.  For me Alaska was still the beautiful place of my youth and while many a thing had changed to include myself, there was many of my memories that remained as I recalled it from years past.  Time has a way of changing structures and landscapes by man,  machine and weather, yet there is still vast amounts of land untouched.  Some settlements of long ago decaying and abandoned while others are fast moving and much populated.  Towns that once supported a hand full of residents have all but fell down and a once popular stop at a crossroads no longer in business, makes you wonder what happened to the people that called this home, where did they go?  Some things we will never know but this much I do know, the Alaska of my long ago yesterday is still there, out in the less populated areas of vastness.  The modern day Alaska is growing in leaps and bounds soon to be a populated area with a large city's feel and a small town way of life lost forever.  You see it in the people, the native Alaskan that once spoke their own language is fast disappearing replaced with one who speaks perfect English with no hint or trace of an accent.  A mistake the young adults are now trying to correct.  Only the elders have the tongue of their ancestors, now the young are seeking to learn the ways and customs from the elders, so they can teach the next generation.  A lesson learned almost too late.  I may never gain visit Alaska as my plans are to see more of the lower 48, so many places to travel and see.  Yet I will forever hold Alaska in a special place within my heart, as that was a place of my youth.  I grew up there in such a short time so many years ago.  There is a saying in Alaska, "once an Alaskan always an Alaskan."  I think that to be true, just ask Kathie :)

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