Hello again everybody!<\/p>\n
As I’m sitting here thinking about what to write in this post, I can’t belive we are already done with our time in Alaska, driven back down the Alcan and the Cassiar highways, and have already been in Washington 2 weeks.\u00a0 How time flies!\u00a0 Today is the last day of September…how did that happen???<\/p>\n
We truly loved our time in Alaska and also the drive to and from there.\u00a0 It all was an experience we will always remember.\u00a0 Even though the weather was not great, especially the last few weeks, it was spectacularly beautiful and unlike anywhere else we have been.\u00a0 We try to capture it in our pictures, but I know they do not begin to convey the vastness and beauty we experienced.\u00a0 The hiking we did there was exhilarating…I imagine all our pictures (and there’s more in the links below!) of mountains, hiking trails, and glaciers must look a lot alike.\u00a0 “Oh, there’s another giant mountain with glaciers on it they are hiking again…”\u00a0 but it does not feel that way when we are hiking.\u00a0 Each hike and trail has it’s own unique beauty and our experiences on each hike were all different.\u00a0 We did 2 hikes twice – Portage Pass (Whittier) and Mt. Marathon (Seward), taking visitors back to favorite hikes.\u00a0 \u00a0I think the hiking, challenging ourselves and experiencing the vast outdoors was good for our souls.\u00a0 It makes us happy \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
We retraced some of the Alcan highway on our way out, then picked up the Cassiar highway, a 450 mile long stretch of road that goes further west than the Alcan.\u00a0 It took us down near the southeast Alaskan panhandle, where Jueanu, Ketchikan, Sitka and the inside passage are, where a lot of cruise ships go.\u00a0 There are no roads into those areas, only boats and planes can take you there, so we did not get to see that part of the state.\u00a0 We did stop in Stewart, BC, which shares the boarder with Hyder, Alaska and there’s one road that you can take into Hyder.\u00a0 They both are very small towns, surrounded by mountains, waterfalls and glaciers.\u00a0 Hyder Alaska is on the Prince William Sound, on the opposite side of\u00a0 the sound from Whittier.<\/p>\n
We met a nice couple, Vince and Vickie, who are from Louisiana, at one of the campgrounds along the Alcan.\u00a0 We traveled with them for a couple of days, and they joined us in Stewart\/Hyder.\u00a0 We had fun going to see Salmon Glacier together and also watching for bears at the river where they come to feed on salmon before hibernating for the winter.\u00a0 Salmon Glacier was at the end of a VERY rough, pot hole filled, gravel road, about 12 or 15 miles long.\u00a0 It took us over an hour (each way) to drive those 12 or 15 miles to get to the glacier.\u00a0 But wow!\u00a0 The biggest glacier we saw on the entire trip, other than the one we landed on in the helicopter.\u00a0 It was amazing.\u00a0 Lots of pictures in the attached link.\u00a0 \u00a0We saw LOTS of bears while in Stewart\/Hyder also.\u00a0 One in the RV camp, right by our RV, 2 or 3 in town on the streets in the evening, and 2 at the bear viewing area I mentioned above.\u00a0 They all were black bears.<\/p>\n
Choosing Alaska as our first destination on this journey was ideal for us.\u00a0 It pushed us to figure out the whole RV thing.\u00a0 We are still learning, but boy do we know so much more now than we did at the beginning of this trip!\u00a0 It also took us to a whole new environment to explore together and that is good.<\/p>\n
I’ve put together several albums of pictures from our last days in Alaska as well\u00a0 as driving along the Alcan and Cassiar highways.\u00a0 Hope you enjoy!<\/p>\n
On the road again:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/1drv.ms\/a\/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0pknoM4F3tXVoUjR8Y<\/a><\/p>\n Salmon Glacier:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/1drv.ms\/a\/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0pkxa7KFeg4ADNIX8_<\/a><\/p>\n Stewart BC\/Hyder Alaska:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/1drv.ms\/a\/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0pkzLGKFgC_-C6AIGF<\/a><\/p>\n Crow Pass hike:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/1drv.ms\/a\/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0pk1wWBGX2CjUlwIlK<\/a><\/p>\n Turnagain Arm Drive and Portage RV Park:\u00a0 we stayed at this RV park twice, for about 3 – 4 weeks total, it is near Girdwood.\u00a0 We were here for both Bill’s and Samantha’s visits.\u00a0 We loved this RV park, we had fantastic views right our our door, and it was close to Whittier, Girdwood and only a little over an hour to Anchorage.\u00a0 We drove the Turnagain Arm each time we went to Anchorage or Girdwood, which was dozens of times.\u00a0 The Turnagain Arm goes along the Cook Inlet.\u00a0 It was one of the most beautiful drives we have done on this trip and we stopped many times at the turnouts along the road to take pictures.\u00a0 Here’s a round up of pictures from that drive and RV park:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/1drv.ms\/a\/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0plFbuzrTXneTOLmm0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello again everybody! As I’m sitting here thinking about what to write in this post, I can’t belive we are already done with our time in Alaska, driven back down the Alcan and the Cassiar highways, and have already been in Washington 2 weeks.\u00a0 How time flies!\u00a0 Today is the last day of September…how did … Continue reading Goodbye Alaska!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeyreeb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}