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August 08 picture posting problemI figured out the problem with the vertical pictures posting cut off. I'll be making corrections to those photo albums that have the messed up pictures. Dawson City to Whitehorse YTHello and welcome to yet still another update. My thanks to my brother for sharing some of his pictures of his pictures of Whitehorse YT. Our journey this time takes us from Dawson City YT to Whitehorse YT and on down to Skagway AK. Upon arriving in Dawson City were met by a new bus driver/tour guide. I don't remember his name but I believe it was Kevin but I think I'm wrong here. He was a good driver and informative as well but I still liked our other driver Kelly better. I liked Dawson City. It was small and easy to get around. We took the city tour which was interesting. It was a walking tour and the day was nice and clear and cool. It was quite interesting to say the least. Our tour guide took us into several buildings that are normally off limits to tourist, but because of an arraingment with Holland America we were able to go into some of these buildings that have been restored and see what they were like during the gold rush. We visited the old post office and a mortuary and the bank and an old paddle wheeler that had been turned into a museum. They also had someone dressed like a ghost that would come out and tell a story. It was humorous but enjoyable. Holland America did something simular at the Gold Dredge we visited outside of Fairbanks. Their they had a video tape that told the story of the dredge and it was informative and full of humor. I enjoyed myself.
Back to Dawson City though. After taking in the city tour we ate at a local resturant and it was very very good. All in all I have to say that up to this point, I was pleased with our treatment from Holland America. I don't know if I was the only one or not. They didn't lose my luggage and the rooms I slept in were very comfortable. Hell, even the bus rides weren't all that bad. Long, yes, but other than that, not bad.
After 2 days in Dawson City, we departed and headed south onto Whitehorse YT. One bus, we learned that several of our riders were initiated into the Sourtoe Club (see the previous blog entry for what that is about). Hey, good for them. I'm sure if I were there I would have done it too. Our ride to Whitehorse was normal. The usual beautiful scenery and commentary along the way. We visited a hunting lodge called Moose Creek. A pretty neat rest stop. Shortly after stopping at Moose Creek we made a short stop at FIVE FINGER RAPIDS. Five Finger Rapids was a very dangerous part of the miners drive to the north for the gold rush. They had to pass through these rapids on their way up to Dawson City and many did not make it and lost their lives. A sad and sorry tale. From there we proceeded onto Whitehorse. Before arriving into Whitehorse we stopped at a place called Braeburn Lodge. This place is famous for this monster cinnamon bun they make. It was huge and I do mean huge. I'm guessing it weighed around a pound or so and it was sooooooo good. This place from what I could tell looking at the pictures was run by a biker. There were pictures of bikers all over the place and outside I ran across a Harley Davidson ridged shovelhead. For those of you that do not know what a Ridged Shovelhead is, let me explain. A ridged motorcycle is one that does not have suspension on the rear end. The rear wheel is mounted to the frame directly. A shovelhead is the model engine that was on it. Now, for me, this told me that who ever rode that bike, on this highway we were traveling on, the yukon highway, was much a man, as this highway was a pretty rough piece of roadway. You wouldn't notice it on the bus, but it was. It had a big tractor seat with some heafty springs under the seat but i'm sure it didn't cushion the ride all that much on that road. My hats off to him. He must have "rhoids" of steel.
We left the Braeburn Lodge (cinnamon bun in hand) and road one more hour into Whitehorse.
Our hotel in Whitehorse was very nice. We enjoyed 2 days here as well. After getting settled into the room, and eating a relaxing dinner we took in a show called the Frantic Follies. It was great fun. The show takes place during the gold rush and had lots of singing and dancing and comedy. The following day, we took a city tour and headed on to see a restored paddle wheel steamer, the S.S. Kondike. You can read about it here http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/yt/ssklondike/natcul/index_E.asp
It was a very well done restoration too. We were told that when the city of Whitehorse bought the ship the wanted to move it to the spot where it is located now and they had to move it through the center of town down the middle of the street. There wasn't any way to put it onto a truck so they had to drag the ship down the street placing logs underneath it and the poured liquid soap all over the street to help move it along. I don't remember excatly how long it took them to acclomplish this task but I do know it was a month or so. It was Whitehorse also where we saw the worlds largest fish ladder. When the Hydroelectric dam was built in Whitehorse, the route the salmon would take upstream to spawn was blocked so they built a "fish ladder" for the salmon to make their way around the dam. It was pretty unique and quite interesting. To learn a little more about Whitehorse YT, read about it here http://www.tourwhitehorse.com/
I hope you are enjoying the pictures and the blog. If you have anything to add, please write.
Thanks
Earl August 01 Tok to Eagle AK on to Dawson City Yukon TerritoriesHello all and welcome back. First off let me take this opportunity to thank my brother Frank and my brother-in-law Phil for the pictures I received this past week. Their photos are added in here with mine for tonights update. I really thought I took more pictures of this area than I did. I evidently was wrong. Well I guess that early morning wake up call did me in. Bags out at 4:30 am. What were they thinking? Oh well. Besides the early wake up and boarding the bus for our trip onto Chicken Alaska and to Eagle Alaska, I guess we did ok. The ride was really pretty cool. The highway to Eagle was unique to say the least. We traveled a short distance then turned onto the Taylor Highway. The Taylor Highway is made up of packed gravel and is a somewhat slow going drive. There was a lot of burned out forest along the highway. It was explained to us how they treat forest fires up there and if they are started by nature, i.e. lightning strikes, they let them burn. It part of the cycle of life thing. Old growth dies out making way for new growth. Because of the permafrost up there the trees do not get big around or very tall. The root system is shallow and it grows out wide instead of deep. Some of the trees look like they just fell over. There were what appered to be berms of loose rocks or gravely ash or something like that on the side of the road. A lot of them had peoples names written with rocks in them, there were a few sayings and even Holland America had their name in one of them. We arrived into Chicken Alaska and I tell ya, it was ummmm different. Chicken is a very very small town with a population of around 17 to 37 depending on who you ask. It will climb to 100 when miners come to town. It was a fun place to visit. Quite Interesting. As usual the scenery up there was just fantastic. They had a gift shop (I think ever town in Alaska has a gift shop) and a bar (gotta have a bar) and a little place that served coffee and cinnamon rolls. I looked around and explored a little and guess what. I forgot to take some freaking pictures. My hats off to Frank and Phil for having the presence of mind to take pictures or you wouldn't have anything to look at. It was in Chicken where we picked up and excort. There was another tour bus there and this excort rode in front of both the tour buses with a big sign saying "BUSES FOLLOWING" and flags and flashing lights. It seems that the Taylor Highway is a narrow highway and we required this excort to drive about a half mile or so in front of us and make sure that traffic coming toward us were aware of us so they (or us) could pull over and let the other pass. This is where Kelly earned her pay. She did an excellent drive here. Kelly! What can I say. I felt she was an excellent employee of Holland America. She had a great attitude and was very friendly. She kept us entertained (or at the very least she kept me entertained) with stories about the places along the way. Her driving on the Taylor Highway (and her not hitting the moose that jumped onto the road in front of the bus not far from where we turned onto the alaska highway) impressed me. It was not all that far out of Eagle Alaska that we got a close up view of a Bald Eagle sitting in a tree next to the highway. What a magnificent animal. When you see one live in the wild it is easy to see why it is the symbol of the United States.
It was at the top of the Taylor Highway here in these mountains we passed the Last stop for alcohol here. Eagle Alaska it seems is a "dry" city and it residents make the drive to this place to buy their liquor. I tell ya. After driving this chunk of roadway, all's I can say is, you must really want a drink real bad. Well after arriving in Eagle, I could pretty much understand why. Actually Eagle was a unique small town. And I do mean small. Eagle was established in 1897, by a group of disgruntled gold prospectors who were unable to locate lucrative gold claims in the Klondike. After a group of business people joined them, they decided to start their own city on the other side of the International border. Finding a desirable location twelve river miles beyond the Canadian border, they called it Eagle for the large birds nesting on the bluff. They were now ready to share their new community with anyone willing to purchase any of the 300-400 lots they had staked. For a $5 recorder fee, each owner was given 30 days to brush the adjoining streets and one year to erect a building. Of the 200 cabins built during its first year, most were crude one-room log cabins with pole and dirt roofs (taken from the Eagle Alaska website check it out here http://www.eagleak.org/city.htm). We were given a ride around Eagle and toured the museum. It is a pretty historic little town. We had a nice box lunch there before the tour. One thing Holland America does and I'm not sure if the other tour companies do this but I thought it was very nice of them. Any of the food from the box lunches that is not eaten is collected and given to the children of Eagle. A very nice gesture on their part. After checking out the museum we boarded our bus for a short ride to the dock to board our boat to take us up the Yukon River. It was here we bid our driver Kelly goodbye and start on another leg of our journey. The boat was a fairly new catamaran. A very nice boat, however there was a problem with the drive system. It seems as it lost a shaft on one of its engines and it only had 2 engines. This provided us with a different experiance as when ever the boat slowed down or came to a stop in the water we would have to all walk to the front of the boat and stand as close as we could and the capatian would give the engines full power for a short period of time then shut them off then when the wake from the boat would come from behind us he would throttle it up and with our weight in the front it would help him get it up on plane faster. I liked the boat ride. It was fun and relaxing. Our arrival into Dawson City YT was met by Canadian customs and that was a breeze going through. Our hotel in Dawson City was very nice I felt. It was in a nice location and the room was very comfortable.
Dawson City was the scene of the great Gold Rush of 1898. Dawson City quickly became the largest city west of Winnipeg and north of Seattle. Its population quickly swelled to 30,000 people. In 1899 the gold rush died off and and that summer 8000 people left for the next big gold rush town of Nome Alaska. In 1902 Dawson City was incorporated. The city is now a historical landmark and is really something else to see. There are no paved streets as Canada wants it to stay as it was. A good number of the buildings we saw had been there since those days of the gold rush. We took a walking tour of the city and it was quite enjoyable and very informative plus just plain ole' entertaining as well.
Dawson City is where some of the people on the bus, after being told of the ledgend of the "Sourtoe Cocktail", tried to get our tour guide, Lou, to partake of this little delight. Here is what I have found on the internet about the "Sourtoe Cocktail" n 1973 a character known as Captain Dick Stevenson (AKA Capt. River Rat) bought a cabin outside of Dawson that was known to have the pickled remains of the owner's amputated toe inside. Over a long night of drinks in Dawson, Capt. Dick decided to concoct a most unusual drink where the pickled toe is dropped into a glass, and the shot is downed to their newly penned mantra: Do it fast or do it slow, but your lips must touch the toe. Not surprisingly, the Sourtoe Cocktail caught on in Dawson City, the Eldorado Hotel bar becoming the home of the Toe. So there you have it. The Eldorado Hotel is now the Dowtown Hotel. You go in there and you pony up the bar and say you want to become a "Sourtoe'r" and they induct you by presenting you a drink of your choice, alcoholic or non-acoholic with a real pickled human toe in it and you drink it down and the toe has to touch your lips for you to become an official "Sourtoe Cocktail" member. Oh! If you do five toes, you become a member of the "Sourfoot". As Robert W. Service said, "Strange things are done 'neath the midnight sun."
So there you have it. Tok Alaska to Dawson City Yukon. A little later this week I will be posting some of Frank's and Phil's pictures from Anchorage to Fairbanks as I didn't have them when I started this thing. Look for them. If any of you out there that are reading this and was on this particular tour with us has any pictures and or stories you would like to share with everyone else, please send them to me and I will post them here and make sure that you get credit for the pictures and your story.
Thanks for taking the time to visit. July 25 Denali and on to Fairbanks then TokOur time in Denali was great. The weather while somewhat overcast didn't spoil our enjoyment. The afternoon we arrived into Denali we took in a dinner show at our hotel. It was quite unique and quite enjoyable. It was in kind of a roadhouse setting I guess you could call it. There were large picnic tables that were shared so we had different people eating with us and it was pretty cool to meet everyone. The food was very good although I'm not a "rib eater" they weren't bad. The show was pretty cool as well. All of the staff dressed in period costumes of the late 1800's around the time of the gold rush and they told tall tales and sand and danced. I enjoyed it alot. I didn't take any pictures of it and on reflection I'm sorry I didn't. I kind of hate taking pictures at indoor events like that because I do not want to disturb anyone else much less distract from the actors. Never the less I had a great time. I slept very well that night despite leaving the window open for some fresh cool air. I haven't done that since I was maybe 11 or 12 years old. The next day was a full one. It was our first free day to do what ever we wanted. I took an early morning good old fashioned ChuckWagon ride for a good breakfast. The ride through the country side was amazing. I was stunned by how quiet it was. Our wagon driver was from I believe Bulgaria and our tour guide that morning was from Tennessee. The ride was slow but the morning was beautiful. It was not overcast and the scenery was wonderful. We arrived at a large wooden building in the middle of nowhere and breakfast was waiting. A nice hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, hashbrowns and fruits and juices. After eating I walked around outside and looked around. Next door to this diner in the middle of nowhere was a small log cabin. Our tour guide and her husband (our cook that morning) lived in this small cabin. If you looked at the photos for Anchorage and Denali you saw it. This place had NO running water or Electricity. I talked to her about living there and she said they were having a great adventure. They traveled around the country doing seasonial labor. She would tour guide or wait tables and he would either cook or drive buses or trucks. Our chuck wagon driver from Bulgaria was a photographer and was very interested in my new camera. I let him play around with it and we chatted briefly. He wanted to work in the U.S. and ended up there. He was enjoying himself as well. With our breakfast over and photos take we headed back to the hotel for our next adventure.
Around noon we head out to see some Husky puppies. We visited Jeff King's Husky Homestead. Jeff King is a 3 time Idatarod champion. If you are not familar with the Idatarod, look it up online and read about it. It is an amazing race run during the winter with sled dog teams. We got to play with some 2 week old husky puppies as well as some older ones. We got a lecture on how the dogs were raise and trained by Jeff's 2 daughters. It was very informative. It was amazing to watch how much the pulling instinct is born into these dogs. One of the ways they train them is they hook up a harness for around 8 or 12 dogs to a 4 wheeler and the dogs take off pulling the atv with its rider around the sled trails in the surrounding area. When they get back there is a large water puddle that the dogs run into and plop down for a cool break. We then had a talk from one of Jeff's assistants the gave us a breakdown on what a day in the life of an Idatarod competor is like. You have to respect these guys for taking on a race like that and the care they have for those dogs.
After our experiance at the Husky Homestead we headed back to the hotel for a break before heading out later that afternoon on a jet boat ride to a hunting cabin and a talk on the Alaska hunting and trapping trade. It was raining but the ride was really fun. That boat hauled ass up the winding river. The talk we received was by a guy that had been living and hunting and trapping in Alaska for 30 years. He reminded me of Grizzly Adams some what. He explained what hunting and trapping meant to the conservation of the wildlife in Alaska and the different types of hunting they had. He explained the life cycle of the winderness in Alaska and how fur trapping still goes on and how the fish and game agency up there keeps track of it all. After our discussion we then met another guy that told us about panning for gold and explained how it was done. We then got to "pan" for gold and it was pretty cool. I actually managed to get some gold flakes. All told they are probably worth maybe 12 bucks but what the hell, 12 bucks is 12 bucks. It not like I had to work for it or put a hundred and twenty bucks into a slot machine to get 12 bucks back.
After my day that day, I slept well that night. We had an early bags out so our bags could be loaded up on a truck for the trip up to Fairbanks so that was messed up but what are you gonna do, right? Our second day started at around 6:45 am with a 6 hour "Tundra Wilderness Tour" of Denali National Park. While our nature guide told us that they could not gurantee us getting to see any animals we were told what to look for and as luck would have it, we got to see some. The scenery was nothing short of amazing. It is hard to believe a place like this exist anywhere. We got to see Dall Sheep, Snowshoe Hare, Moose and yes even Grizzly Bears. Now while I managed to get lots of pictures here, I wasn't able to cover everything. That is where my brother comes into the picture. He took probably as many, maybe even more pictures than I did on this trip. As soon as I can get his memory card from him I will post his pics here as well as a compliment to the ones I took. I do believe he has pictures of the Grizzly Bears on his card.
Around 1:pm we said goodbye to Denali National Park and went back to the hotel to wait for our ride to the train station for our train trip to Fairbanks.
The train ride to Fairbanks was for the most part uneventful. It was slow and relaxing. For some reason I wasn't interested in taking pictures on the trip to Fairbanks. The scenery while nice just didn't strike me I guess. I took this time to think about Denali and what I had seen there and the people I met and talked to. I had to respect my chuckwagon driver from Bulgaria and the woman and husband from Tennessee that came all the way to Alaska to work there so the could experiance it for themselves. I have to respect someone like that that is that free in spirit and life. Someone that is not bound down by the regular day to day grind that the rest of us are and they have the fortitude to up and leave their home and go some place like that and live in a such a primative way. God Bless them. Me, I'm glad I got the chance to meet them. They would not be the first nor would the be the last. Meeting Jeff King and seeing what he goes through on such a race as the Idatarod and the hardships he endures and he wins it 3 times. It makes what I do day to day seem petty.
Enough of that, back to the trip to Fairbanks. There were some neat things to see and I imagine I was just caught up in the looking and not thinking about taking pictures. I'm sorry about that because I ended up with only a few pictures of our hotel in Fairbanks (which I thought was very nice). We were told on the train that when we got to Fairbanks don't judge the people too harshly because of the site of their yards. Well it seems that when you have 7, 8 or 9 months of freezing winter with nearly 24 hours of darkness most of the time, when summer comes around you really don't give a rats ass what your yard looks like, you are ready to do some summer stuff, like get out and have some fun.
Fairbanks was a nice place. I was told that during the winter it would normally get down to 49 degrees below zero. I don't know about you, but to me, thats damn cold. I heard someone say that wind chill it would reach 100 below zero. Man, when it gets to 32 here in Louisiana we freak out. Of course they don't hit 120 degrees in the summer with 99% humidity either. Fairbanks is where we would pick up our most excellent driver, Kelly. Over the next couple of days I would gain much respect for her. She was a great driver and tour guide and a lot of fun. The morning we left Fairbanks we got a ride around the city and told some of the history of Fairbanks. Baseball is big there and their baseball diamonds do not have any lights on them. When during the summer you have sun 24 hours a day, you really don't need it. We headed south out of Fairbanks, our destination, a small town called Tok. On the way we stopped at the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline. This was very interesting. I had a friend that worked on the project as a welders helper and he made a whole truck load of money. It was interesting to me to see perhaps a spot where he might have worked. A quick note here. If you have looked at the pictures and are reading this, you will notice some of the pictures appear to be cut in half and have a black box at the bottom. I'm not quite sure what happened here because the pictures on my hard drive look fine. For some reason, MySpaces will not read the picture correctly if it was taken verticle instead of horozinally. I blame that on Bill Gates. Everything is his fault anyway.
Now back to our story. After checking out the pipeline and taking a few pics there we were off to Tok. We did have one incident in which a Moose jumped on the roadway right in front of our bus. Our driver did and excellent job of stopping and blocking traffic so the Moose could decide what it wanted to do and it decided to get the hell off the road and run into the woods. I felt it was a good decision on the Moose's part. After that the ride to Tok was pretty boring LOL. It was full of the usual Alaska beauty. I just could not get enough of it. We arrived in Tok and checked into our rooms and then had a wonderful dinner. I then walked around a bit. Sitting in a bus for 6 hours or so makes my legs a little stiff. If you have looked at the pictures you saw 2 sod roof structures. We were told that in the early days of the settlers up there they would put sod on their roofs to grow their vegetables on. This would keep the animals out of them and they would have food to eat. I imagine it would also have an added benifit of insulation during the winter. Check out the pictures from Tok and look for the lawnmower on the roof.
On my next update, we leave Tok and head to Eagle Alaska.
Take care and let me know what you think. July 18 Going to Alaska!My trip to Alaska started off July 2nd, 2005 at around 10:30 or 11:am. I was met at my house by my brother and sister and their spouses and we all drove to the airport together. Check in went easy and we had a little wait in Baton Rouge before leaving for Houston. We departed for Houston around 12:30 pm and the flight was uneventful. Upon arrival in Houston we checked into the Continental Presidents Club Lounge. It was nice. They had a place to store your carry on baggage and some really nice, soft chairs to relax. There was plenty of stuff to snack on and drink and even a tv lounge to keep us busy until our flight. It was a nice place to hang out for a bit since we had around 3 hours to kill. We had lunch in the airport at a place called Pappadeaux's. If you ever find yourself passing through Houston Intercontinental Airport and have a long layover, head on over to the Continental area and try this place out. It is kinda pricey but the food was worth it. After a nice and filling lunch we headed back to the Lounge.
We checked our watches and saw that it was time to head on down to our gate. Bags were stuffed with snacks for the long journey to Anchorage and off we went. I don't know if I was excited or not at this time. I was more concentrating on making my connection and getting seated. I flew first class to Anchorage because, Well, I just don't fit well in the coach seats because i'm a fat ass. I knew that I would not be able to withstand sitting in those small seats for 7 or 8 hours so I popped the extra bucks for first class. To me it was worth it.
The flight to Anchorage was good, it was long, but good. We had 2 movies which actually for once didn't suck. I actually enjoyed them. I then had a nice relaxing nap.
We landed in Anchorage Alaska around 10:30 pm. We picked up our baggage and proceeded to find our bus to take us to the hotel. Well this where the fun began. We couldn't find it. It was not outside the baggage claim area where the other busses were. My sister (who does corporate travel for a living) hiked down to the other area of the airport while we stayed with the luggage. While she was gone, we were talking to someone from the airport about our bus when what the hell should appear but a Holland America bus. We shouted and waved but the bus driver didn't see us or just figured we were a bunch of insane coonasses waving at various busses and she left us. My sister, bless her heart, did find us a Holland America bus and we got loaded onto it and off to the hotel we went.
First off let me tell you this about Achorage Alaska at this time of the year. At 11:00 pm at night it looks like 11:00 am. The sun was up. I haven't put the pictures up yet but there are some of us at the airport wating for the bus.
We stayed at the Hilton and it was comfortable. We of course ended up getting to bed late and had an early luggage out call so we didn't get a lot of sleep.
The next morning we got our name badges and our bus assignments and met our tour director, A really nice and patient woman named Lou. Lou, if you are reading this, I'm sorry but I forgot your last name. We took a very short bus ride from the hotel to the train depot where we boarded our train that would take us from Anchorage to Denali. It was very nice. The last time I had been on a train I was around 6 years old I guess. The train ride lasted about 8 hours and took us through some of the most stunning scenery I had ever seen. The air was very cool. I was enjoying it. Hell all my friends at work and back home had to deal with 95 to 98 degree weather. Here it was in the 50's. I was loving it.
Before we left for our trip, my brother and I both bought brand new identical camera's. Brand new Nikon D70 digital SLR cameras. We both took a few pictures with them before we left but this trip would be a learning expreriance for us with them. All in all judging by some of our pictures, I think we did ok. While on the train we would take a few pictures and read through the manual to find out how to do stuff. I think we finally figured it out.
The train pulled into Denali and the weather was overcast and I think I remember it to be misting. Not bad. Still very cool weather. We were taken to our Hotel/Motel/Cabin Lodge, whatever you want to call it. It was one of the newest structures there in Denali. The rooms were Cabin like buildings with numerous rooms. I didn't find the rooms all that bad. I found they had a somewhat rustic charm to them. Of course there was no airconditioning. You just didn't need it. I kept the window open at night. For me it was kinda strange to look at my watch and see that it was midnight and the sun was still up. Thank god the curtians made the room dark. The next two days were spent exploring Denali National Park.
I'll tell you about that on my next update. July 17 Welcome All!Hello and welcome all. This is for those fine folks that shared my trip to Alaska with me on Holland America Tour 6. As I sort through all the photos I have I will post some of them here. I will also like to say if any of you have some pictures you want to include here, please send them to me and I will post them and make sure you get credit. I had a great time and I hope all of you did as well. This forum will be for us to share our photos and memories of our trip.
Thanks for stopping by.
Earl
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