ALASKA - Part 1
We are back from Alaska :) it’s been 4 weeks, sorry we could not blog on the trip but internet was hard to come by and power outlets even harder. We will break this post up into sections to make it not as long.
The 13th September was a day that was not too much fun; it was the day before trek began. The day we had to hand back the RV, get to the airport and catch the flight to Seattle to start our Trek the next day. I was not well. The flu had come back and hit me quite hard, so I was pretty useless all day. We packed as much as we could the night before, but needed more bags as the 4 we had were not enough. So we cleaned the RV and put all our stuff into one area, drove to Wal-Mart and got two more bags which I then packed while Kade got gas for the last time. We hit some traffic getting into the RV depot, and we went to the wrong spot first which made us slightly later than we wanted. When we got the RV depot, they were busy so we had around an hour wait which was good as we forgot to empty one section of the RV of our stuff so Kade got the fun job of trying to fit it all in as I tried not to lie down on the floor. We managed to get the RV all packed up and returned, no issues, and caught a taxi to the airport. As we had 6 bags, we asked for a big taxi but got a small one. We managed to fit, even though it was a bit of a squash, and got to the airport. At the airport we had to wait for ages because there was a group of people in front of us with a truck load of stuff to check in as we had lots of bags and I didn’t want to do self-check-in. Mistake. The line we were in did not move for around 30 minutes, I was feeling more and more sick and just wanted to go home. I didn’t care anymore and basically said to Kade just get me to the hotel. We finally got checked in and had to go through security, where we had an issue with Kades passport being washed out due to Disney World, and then with my carry-on bag as I had 2 zip lock bags of coins in it and the scanner showed them as being something bad. We made it to the gate and walked straight onto the plane, basically just buckling up as they shut the doors.
We got to Seattle; got 2 carts and walked to the pickup area where we called the hotel we were staying at for the courtesy shuttle. The shuttle was on its way and we got it 5 minutes later. On the shuttle we met two people for the UK doing Trek, Raf who was on our trek and Kate who was on another one. We all checked in and made plans to meet for dinner at the hotel restaurant. When we got to our room, our next job was to sort through the bags and get the stuff we needed for trek into the backpacks. We were doing that before dinner, and then went to eat and we also met our tour leader Brian in the lobby. We had a bunch of food left over from the RV that we bought for the trek group, things like muesli bars and lollies, so we went out to the van and gave them to Brian to put in the food containers. Brian told us at that point that we were down on the forms as not eating any processed or fried foods, so we were all a bit confused, him as we were handing him bags full of processed foods and us because we obviously do eat process and fried foods. We got that sorted out and went back into our room to finish packing, which did not happen as I fell asleep as I was feeling really bad.
I woke at 5am coughing, had a long hot shower, and finished packing. We made it to the lobby by 7.30 which is when we were to meet the group, and we were the last ones to arrive. We had arranged for 4 of our bags to go into storage so Kade got that sorted as I filled in our paperwork. There were 8 on the group and Brian as the leader. Sandy is from Australia, Raf the UK, Sarah Northern Ireland, Chris and Denise from Germany and Danni from Denmark. We had a nice van and a big trailer, bigger than normal due to the stuff we needed for the trek. We started the day playing a game of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and I tried to keep up but ended up sitting on the ground. I was trying to put on a brave face for the new people but really didn’t feel good at all. We hopped in the van and made our way to Wal-Mart for the first shop as a group. Kade and I were a cooking group and we were on cooking duty that night. We decided on spaghetti for dinner and had an hour and 15 minutes to get the ingredients together. We got them in 5, and spent the rest of the time trying to keep me from crashing. I was OK as long as I kept going. The next step was to do a border crossing, into Canada, as we were staying in Vancouver that night. The border crossing was relatively painless, we all had to hop out of the van and go in the building, they questioned why our passports were in the state they were in (wet and then dried etc) and asked why there was no stamp for when we went into Canada in May. We didn’t know the answer to that, they seemed OK with the fact we didn’t know why. We made it to our campground, set up the tents and then had some free time for a bit. Kade and I cooked dinner, Kade did all the cutting etc and I stirred the mince and sauce, trying not to put my sick germs on everything. Everyone liked dinner, and then we went for a drive into the park for the briefing of what to expect from the trip. By the end of the briefing it was 9.30 and I was ready for bed. The rest of the group were going out to the pub, but Sarah, Kade and myself decided to stay at camp. Sarah wasn’t feeling 100% and Kade wanted to make sure I was OK. The next day we were up and packed up by 8.30, and on the road heading to Whistler. Two people wanted to bungee jump, so we went to the bungee jumping place and as we waited for them to be ready for the jumpers we went for a walk to a waterfall. After the bungee jumping we had lunch and continued to our campgrounds, set up our tents, and went into the town. In the winter Whistler is a huge ski town, in the summer it is all about mountain biking. There were bikes everywhere, stalls selling bike parts, people riding down the slopes. Some of the group decided to go up the gondolas, Kade, Danni and myself decided to walk around town check out a place called lost lake and then back to the campground. It was a nice walk, took around 2 hours through trails, and at one point we thought we could be a bit lost but made our way to the campgrounds with no issues really. That night Kade and I had off from dinner/dish duty. We had tacos for dinner and I had another early night.
The next day was a big driving day. We didn’t do much, 8 hours of driving in the van. We stopped for lunch and to go grocery shopping. The campground was nice, near a river in Prince George, and we had hamburgers for dinner. Kade and I were on dishes duty.
Another big driving day today, we knew that we would have a few of them in a row, due to one of the highways being on fire and us having to take another route. Another road that we were to take in a few days had flooded, so our trip is kind of back to front with the places we are visiting. We stopped for a break at the chainsaw statue capital and saw lots of cool looking carvings. We also stopped near a Dawson’s Creek sign for a picture :) We found a campground after 10 hours of driving in the van (that’s actual driving hours not the total time we were in the van) and Kade and I were on dinner duty, sausages on bread rolls. American sausages are big and full of fat, we miss Australian Sausages. We had our first campfire that night, we had been on campfire ban until now so the group was introduced to the art of toasting marshmallows over the fire.
Another big driving day, we left at 7.50 and went to the hardware store to get some paints as we were going to be passing the signpost forest the next day and needed to make our signpost. The signpost forest started years ago by one man putting a sign up, and now there are more than 70 000 signs, dating back 30 odd years. Kade was nominated (by me) for drawing the sign, and we all helped with the painting of it. Our campsite that night was at a hot springs, these hot springs were amazing. A totally natural lake setting with water ranging from too hot to stand to a bit cooler than a bath, and it was clear as well. This was also our first introduction to drop toilets, the first of many we were to encounter on our trip. We hung out in the hot springs for a while, Kade and I loved them, and then as it started to rain headed back to an undercover area to play poker, read and have Kade draw the sign. After dinner we were painting the sign and doing dishes when we found out that a bear was in the bush land near us, but we unfortunately didn’t get a good look at the bear. We finished painting the sign and headed to bed, Kade and a few others went for one last swim in the hot springs.
The next day we drove to Whitehorse, our first stop being the signpost forest where we had to unhook the trailer and push it through the posts so Brian and Kade could climb up it and hammer our sign in. We thought it was the best sign there. Not that we were biased or anything :) We had a big driving day again and had stir fry for dinner. After dinner we went to go to the pub, Brian parked the van, and we followed him into the bar, and right out again through the back door. The bar was empty. We went back to the campground and sat by the fire then called it a night.
The next day we drove to Kluane, and camped near a lake. It was beautiful there, and it was our first two night stop. We set up the tents and went for a small hike nearby, over a stream and over rocks. My shoes fell apart (they were old) so Kade and I waited at a small bridge for the others to come back, we had a muesli bar and lied down and had a nap for an hour or so. We got back to camp, had dinner and went to bed.
The next day, which was Saturday the 21st, we had a pancake breakfast and then everyone except me when on a long hike up a huge mountain. I stayed behind, brought my sleeping pad and sleeping bag and lied near the lake in the sun and read for a good part of the day. It was so nice and peaceful. I also spent a bit of time on the internet, starting the job search for us for when we get home. The showers at this campground were free and HOT so I also had a nice long hot shower (showers are not something that is guaranteed on this trip we found out). Kade came back from the hike with the others, and was pretty tired. The hike was a long one. We had steak and fried potato slices for dinner, lets just say that it was a pretty big steak and everybody was full by the end of dinner.
We had a pretty early night as the next day was the border crossing into ALASKA! We took pictures of the sign as you have to do, and then hit the border crossing. Once again we got a talking to for having wet passports, but we made it through the border all good and were officially in Alaska. We went to the visitor center and the shops and topped up our food supply. The main draw for the campgrounds was they do a nightly pancake toss, everyone gets two pancakes and has the chance to toss them into a bucket, if you get one in the bucket you get a free breakfast the next day. Only one of our group got their pancake in. We hung around the campground for a while and then went into the local bar where we met some guys from Arkansas who were up in Alaska hunting caribou. A few drinks later we headed back to camp.
The 13th September was a day that was not too much fun; it was the day before trek began. The day we had to hand back the RV, get to the airport and catch the flight to Seattle to start our Trek the next day. I was not well. The flu had come back and hit me quite hard, so I was pretty useless all day. We packed as much as we could the night before, but needed more bags as the 4 we had were not enough. So we cleaned the RV and put all our stuff into one area, drove to Wal-Mart and got two more bags which I then packed while Kade got gas for the last time. We hit some traffic getting into the RV depot, and we went to the wrong spot first which made us slightly later than we wanted. When we got the RV depot, they were busy so we had around an hour wait which was good as we forgot to empty one section of the RV of our stuff so Kade got the fun job of trying to fit it all in as I tried not to lie down on the floor. We managed to get the RV all packed up and returned, no issues, and caught a taxi to the airport. As we had 6 bags, we asked for a big taxi but got a small one. We managed to fit, even though it was a bit of a squash, and got to the airport. At the airport we had to wait for ages because there was a group of people in front of us with a truck load of stuff to check in as we had lots of bags and I didn’t want to do self-check-in. Mistake. The line we were in did not move for around 30 minutes, I was feeling more and more sick and just wanted to go home. I didn’t care anymore and basically said to Kade just get me to the hotel. We finally got checked in and had to go through security, where we had an issue with Kades passport being washed out due to Disney World, and then with my carry-on bag as I had 2 zip lock bags of coins in it and the scanner showed them as being something bad. We made it to the gate and walked straight onto the plane, basically just buckling up as they shut the doors.
We got to Seattle; got 2 carts and walked to the pickup area where we called the hotel we were staying at for the courtesy shuttle. The shuttle was on its way and we got it 5 minutes later. On the shuttle we met two people for the UK doing Trek, Raf who was on our trek and Kate who was on another one. We all checked in and made plans to meet for dinner at the hotel restaurant. When we got to our room, our next job was to sort through the bags and get the stuff we needed for trek into the backpacks. We were doing that before dinner, and then went to eat and we also met our tour leader Brian in the lobby. We had a bunch of food left over from the RV that we bought for the trek group, things like muesli bars and lollies, so we went out to the van and gave them to Brian to put in the food containers. Brian told us at that point that we were down on the forms as not eating any processed or fried foods, so we were all a bit confused, him as we were handing him bags full of processed foods and us because we obviously do eat process and fried foods. We got that sorted out and went back into our room to finish packing, which did not happen as I fell asleep as I was feeling really bad.
I woke at 5am coughing, had a long hot shower, and finished packing. We made it to the lobby by 7.30 which is when we were to meet the group, and we were the last ones to arrive. We had arranged for 4 of our bags to go into storage so Kade got that sorted as I filled in our paperwork. There were 8 on the group and Brian as the leader. Sandy is from Australia, Raf the UK, Sarah Northern Ireland, Chris and Denise from Germany and Danni from Denmark. We had a nice van and a big trailer, bigger than normal due to the stuff we needed for the trek. We started the day playing a game of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and I tried to keep up but ended up sitting on the ground. I was trying to put on a brave face for the new people but really didn’t feel good at all. We hopped in the van and made our way to Wal-Mart for the first shop as a group. Kade and I were a cooking group and we were on cooking duty that night. We decided on spaghetti for dinner and had an hour and 15 minutes to get the ingredients together. We got them in 5, and spent the rest of the time trying to keep me from crashing. I was OK as long as I kept going. The next step was to do a border crossing, into Canada, as we were staying in Vancouver that night. The border crossing was relatively painless, we all had to hop out of the van and go in the building, they questioned why our passports were in the state they were in (wet and then dried etc) and asked why there was no stamp for when we went into Canada in May. We didn’t know the answer to that, they seemed OK with the fact we didn’t know why. We made it to our campground, set up the tents and then had some free time for a bit. Kade and I cooked dinner, Kade did all the cutting etc and I stirred the mince and sauce, trying not to put my sick germs on everything. Everyone liked dinner, and then we went for a drive into the park for the briefing of what to expect from the trip. By the end of the briefing it was 9.30 and I was ready for bed. The rest of the group were going out to the pub, but Sarah, Kade and myself decided to stay at camp. Sarah wasn’t feeling 100% and Kade wanted to make sure I was OK. The next day we were up and packed up by 8.30, and on the road heading to Whistler. Two people wanted to bungee jump, so we went to the bungee jumping place and as we waited for them to be ready for the jumpers we went for a walk to a waterfall. After the bungee jumping we had lunch and continued to our campgrounds, set up our tents, and went into the town. In the winter Whistler is a huge ski town, in the summer it is all about mountain biking. There were bikes everywhere, stalls selling bike parts, people riding down the slopes. Some of the group decided to go up the gondolas, Kade, Danni and myself decided to walk around town check out a place called lost lake and then back to the campground. It was a nice walk, took around 2 hours through trails, and at one point we thought we could be a bit lost but made our way to the campgrounds with no issues really. That night Kade and I had off from dinner/dish duty. We had tacos for dinner and I had another early night.
The next day was a big driving day. We didn’t do much, 8 hours of driving in the van. We stopped for lunch and to go grocery shopping. The campground was nice, near a river in Prince George, and we had hamburgers for dinner. Kade and I were on dishes duty.
Another big driving day today, we knew that we would have a few of them in a row, due to one of the highways being on fire and us having to take another route. Another road that we were to take in a few days had flooded, so our trip is kind of back to front with the places we are visiting. We stopped for a break at the chainsaw statue capital and saw lots of cool looking carvings. We also stopped near a Dawson’s Creek sign for a picture :) We found a campground after 10 hours of driving in the van (that’s actual driving hours not the total time we were in the van) and Kade and I were on dinner duty, sausages on bread rolls. American sausages are big and full of fat, we miss Australian Sausages. We had our first campfire that night, we had been on campfire ban until now so the group was introduced to the art of toasting marshmallows over the fire.
Another big driving day, we left at 7.50 and went to the hardware store to get some paints as we were going to be passing the signpost forest the next day and needed to make our signpost. The signpost forest started years ago by one man putting a sign up, and now there are more than 70 000 signs, dating back 30 odd years. Kade was nominated (by me) for drawing the sign, and we all helped with the painting of it. Our campsite that night was at a hot springs, these hot springs were amazing. A totally natural lake setting with water ranging from too hot to stand to a bit cooler than a bath, and it was clear as well. This was also our first introduction to drop toilets, the first of many we were to encounter on our trip. We hung out in the hot springs for a while, Kade and I loved them, and then as it started to rain headed back to an undercover area to play poker, read and have Kade draw the sign. After dinner we were painting the sign and doing dishes when we found out that a bear was in the bush land near us, but we unfortunately didn’t get a good look at the bear. We finished painting the sign and headed to bed, Kade and a few others went for one last swim in the hot springs.
The next day we drove to Whitehorse, our first stop being the signpost forest where we had to unhook the trailer and push it through the posts so Brian and Kade could climb up it and hammer our sign in. We thought it was the best sign there. Not that we were biased or anything :) We had a big driving day again and had stir fry for dinner. After dinner we went to go to the pub, Brian parked the van, and we followed him into the bar, and right out again through the back door. The bar was empty. We went back to the campground and sat by the fire then called it a night.
The next day we drove to Kluane, and camped near a lake. It was beautiful there, and it was our first two night stop. We set up the tents and went for a small hike nearby, over a stream and over rocks. My shoes fell apart (they were old) so Kade and I waited at a small bridge for the others to come back, we had a muesli bar and lied down and had a nap for an hour or so. We got back to camp, had dinner and went to bed.
The next day, which was Saturday the 21st, we had a pancake breakfast and then everyone except me when on a long hike up a huge mountain. I stayed behind, brought my sleeping pad and sleeping bag and lied near the lake in the sun and read for a good part of the day. It was so nice and peaceful. I also spent a bit of time on the internet, starting the job search for us for when we get home. The showers at this campground were free and HOT so I also had a nice long hot shower (showers are not something that is guaranteed on this trip we found out). Kade came back from the hike with the others, and was pretty tired. The hike was a long one. We had steak and fried potato slices for dinner, lets just say that it was a pretty big steak and everybody was full by the end of dinner.
We had a pretty early night as the next day was the border crossing into ALASKA! We took pictures of the sign as you have to do, and then hit the border crossing. Once again we got a talking to for having wet passports, but we made it through the border all good and were officially in Alaska. We went to the visitor center and the shops and topped up our food supply. The main draw for the campgrounds was they do a nightly pancake toss, everyone gets two pancakes and has the chance to toss them into a bucket, if you get one in the bucket you get a free breakfast the next day. Only one of our group got their pancake in. We hung around the campground for a while and then went into the local bar where we met some guys from Arkansas who were up in Alaska hunting caribou. A few drinks later we headed back to camp.
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