Hazelton to Vernon ~ The Awesome.......

 

This blog is being written in a place called Bell II (Heliskiing  LTD) Vernon, BC. A resort that caterers to skiers who helicopter up to the top of mountains and ski back down. Nice campground with whirlpool and sauna. WiFi is available but it will cost you $20.00 (Satellite coverage) no thank you! I’ll post the blog later.

I did get a picture this morning of the suspension bridge, even did a little video, I’ll see if I can upload later. 

Glacier on the road to Stewart

Suspension Bridge in Hazelton

Here’s the deal on today. Out the door early and headed for the Cassiar Highway. First impression was the road sign that said road open; second sign; check your fuel! OK on both. Roadsides paved with wild flowers growing abundantly, white daisy’s, yellow buttercups, devils whips and with silver-green aspen leaves blow in the breeze. Next observation, no traffic, well it’s early, an hour or so later one truck south bound. Hmm, I like solitude. Helen says bear… I stop the truck backup, remember no traffic, grab the point and shoot camera for a picture. First bear so, so capture on the picture. Continue down the road for another couple of hours, now we begin to see these piles of scat periodically along the road, but always on the edge and never crossing the gutter white line. Very considerate moose or was it bear? It was bear.

We are now looking for our turn off to Stewart and see this sign for a Provincial Campground called Meziadin Lake; I turned down into the entrance road and checked it out. The lake was like a mirror, the campsite right on the water, restrooms even WiFi, all for $12. Not really, we are seniors so it’s only six dollars. The day was too early for a camp site, the glaciers, mountains and whatever was waiting for us just over the next mountain pass.

Left on highway 37A. This is it a forty-four mile trip (one way) to adventure. Two miles in on this road another black bear. This time I have my D7000 Nikon and got a pretty good shot of him.

Going into this high mountain pass, the weather was not the best, low clouds, misty sometimes drizzling but as we got further in, the snow fields got closer to us. The creeks (brooks where we come from) were getting bigger, water falls everywhere. You could see brown snow from the landsides. The mountain tops getting higher and higher. We are surrounded by mountains and glaciers on both sides. Franconia Notch gone on steroids!  I can’t believe how little traffic there is on this road to Stewart.

Actually backed the truck
out of Alaska for this picture.

Further down the road, a concrete bridge has been washed away by the recent spring flood. A bailey bridge was erected next to it. We approached, take pictures move on to the town. Stewart is a small town maybe a dozen paved streets, plenty of closed stores, one visitor center, in perfect shape and well stocked with literature and this lovely lady who answered our questions. What’s to visit and do in this town I ask? Been to Salmon Glacier? Nope. She said it’s the only glacier in the world that you drive right up to in your car. How far? 22 miles that way. Another traveler in the center says sure but it will take you all day, pot holes you know. What else can we visit? The bear view area up at Fish Creek. “How far”? 4 miles, ok, were headed. Which way? Go left to Hyder, Alaska. Any border officials, not in the way in but you need passport to get back into Canada. OK we are all set on that.

Helen in Canada & me
in Alaska!! I miss her!

Two miles down the road we crossed into Hyder, AK, so far the road has been paved but not anymore. The main street is terrible, two miles any hour. You can only access Hyder from Canada. Pickup two geocaches, one in Hyder and the other at visitor center Stewart. Move on up the road to fish creek to view the bears. Two 20 minute waits for a flagger (road construction). No fish runs No bears!

Back track 44 miles to Cassair Hwy head north for another 99 miles to Bell II. One more bear crossing the road.

A surveyor at the campground/resort tells us about the area, the mining for copper, nickel and gold. He mentions that he fly’s in a helicopter to different areas and his job and they always see Grizzly Bears in all locations. Interesting!

Good night but it’s nearly 11 pm and still daylight.

That is what we did and saw

Prince George to Watson Lake ~ The Promise Land

Isn't it nice to see snow again!

All along the way up here at different campgrounds campers have been speaking of this must do road in Northern British Columbia. I could never get the pronunciation, it started with a “C” . When we arrived in Prince George I would have to make a critical decision, go right up to Dawson Creek and the beginning of the Alaska highway or go left towards Prince Rupert and then the infamous “C” road. Everybody reading this who knows me knows that I went left. The highway with a C is the Cassiar Highway. This road with a short 80 miles side trip to Stewart, where I’m told you can literary get out of your car and touch the glaciers. That sounds exciting, especially when they tell you to top off your gas tank at every filling station. That’s for tomorrow adventure.

Totem Pole, Paddle Wheel and Us!

Today, we did the non-adventure and traveled mostly in the rain all day. We again saw  swollen brown rivers going down from flood stages. We went through towns with the names of Vanderhoof, Decker Lake, Houston, Smithers and Hazelton. Every town has a visitor center, very helpful staffs and plenty of maps and advice. We are in Hazelton, BC in a campground named Ksan (main reason for coming here WiFi) There is nearly always a nice surprise on these side road campgrounds. This one was a suspension bridge not like the Golden Gate, but only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Of course, it is a couple of hundred feet over the Skeena River. Too nervous to take a picture on the way over I’ll have to stop on the way back. Hmm... if I could only talk Helen into driving the camper over the bridge I could really get a good picture!!

The old Hazelton village has a lot of history back in the fur trading days, paddle boats made this town busy in the 1866 era. For a rainy day, we did see the sun after supper for our walk in the park.

That is what we did and saw

Cache Creek to Prince George ~ The Drive!



Impressive!!

Got off fairly early today, expecting to cover ground going north and we did. We left Cache Creek just before 8am, even the restaurant wasn’t open. The coffee would have to wait for a stop down the road. Oh, by the way two coffees’ at a local restaurant in Clinton $4.50 and that’s not even a 12 oz. cup! The only other thing we claimed beside the check was a geocache at the museum. BC is a beautiful Province. It is especially clean and they recycle heavily. That said the prices for everything are high. (Shipping you know!) The gas prices are $1.31 per liter times 3.785 to a gal equals to $4.95 per gal. Right on budget!

The drive was long today but we stopped several times to explore. In Quesnel, there was this log cabin visitor center that was amazing. A ten foot diameter (at the base) cedar tree in the center held up the two and half story building. Engineering at its best. The town was going to have a rodeo this coming weekend and a lot of activity was evolving because of this. Lunch break here, another geocache at the visitor center, a short nap and on to the next town.

Information Center in Quesnel, BC

The terrain so far was reminiscent of some parts of the Southwest with sparse trees on hilly mountains, an occasionally eroded hillside would reveal bedrock of yellows and deep reds, this with the fir and cedar (greens) was enough to want and stop for a picture.

This landscape soon left us and heavy forest of soft wood soon became the norm. Logging, paper mills, saw mill, biomass plants, double trailer log trucks and log cabin assembly plants and anything to do with the forest is here.

We may be compact in our Truck Camper
but not as compact as this!!

That is what we did and saw

Hope to Cache Creek ~ The Othello Tunnels



The Frazer River

Leaving next morning for a long journey north we wanted a coffee and headed for town. Surprise number one, this town was full of wood carvings from artist from all over the world. The details were unbelievable! The local coffee shop was number two. What’s to see and do in this town I ask? The Othello Tunnels is what we were told from the owner of Sharon's Deli & Lunch Bar. What are the tunnels? The tunnels were railroad tunnels carved into a gorge, now abandoned. Quite spectacular said Sharon. Also, where Rambo:First Blood was filmed. We walked the town and took many pictures of all the carvings and then headed to the tunnels. Well worth the hike along the railroad bed, amazing how they could have made the tunnels back in the day. Took many pictures, had a great time and finally left town after 1 PM.

The Othello Tunnels

The last wonderful surprise of the day was the Frazer River which was at flood stage, our route north follows this river and again the scenery was mind boggling. The water was brown and boiling, you could see the current going in different ways, powerful and beautiful. We drove places like Hells Gate, Spuzzum, Boston Bar, Keefers, Lytton, Spences Bridge, Ashcroft and finally Cache Creek. Our campground tonight is Brookside Campsite. Temperature is 76 degrees, pool is open, what a great day to drive to Alaska!

That is what we saw and did

Swollen Frazer River

Port Angeles to Hope, British Columbia ~ The Tunnels

The day started out with threatening skies especially along the coast, you know they get over 100 inches of rain a year. Something has to water those big trees.  A quick ride down to Port Angeles to at least checkout the town, Helen spotted a Thrift Store and we stopped to compare this store to the East Mall (She volunteers there.) back in Berlin.

Port Angeles

We were lucky again to be the last vehicle on the ferry back to Coupeville without waiting at all. This was the start of a better day for adventure. In a short while we were at the Canadian border, expecting the officials to confiscate our bananas and oranges, I waited for the typical questions. He asked where we were going, I said Alaska, where in Alaska?  I said I don’t know but would let him know when we came back; he said I wouldn’t be here. Any weapons in the vehicle? None. Off we went on our adventure.

First impression of BC, I wasn’t expecting Abbotsford to be so urbanized. We had to find a campground further away from the fast pace. We aimed for the first town on One North which was Hope, BC. It wasn’t raining but the clouds were ever so low that we didn’t realize how close and high the surrounding mountains were until the next morning. The campground was just on the outside of town. We had WiFi, and full hookups.

That is what we did and saw

Newhalem to Port Angeles ~ Deception Pass

Newhalem to Port Angeles ~ Deception Pass



Deception Pass Bridge

The campground in Newhalem was not overly populated. The tourist season is just on the verge of going into full bloom. Several Park Rangers have said the same thing… that is they are only busy for a month and a half; summer is short here in the higher elevations. When we pulled in to select a site, a fellow truck camper waved to us and we decided to pick a spot two trees down. Bill and Susan told us that this was a favorite campground of theirs. I forgot to ask if they were retired, but with their dog Daisy, they were having a good time walking the many trails in the park.

Morning routine goes something like this; up early, bathroom duties, blog writing, breakfast, dishwashing (hers) drying (mine). Unhook utilities (if available) and off we go on today’s adventure journey. Cool 50 degrees with partly cloudy skies.



On the Ferry to Port Townsend,WA

US 20 runs right into an island which is connected by Deception Pass Bridge. Spectacular, stunning, beautiful must stop for a photo. We drove by little towns like Whidbey, Oak Harbor, Coupeville all having their shops and tourist attractions. We knew that at the end of road we would have to take a ferry to Port Townsend to get to Port Angeles to get to Victoria, BC. It was an exciting time to drive our truck camper unto this big ship. We were first on board followed by several tractor trailer rigs. Maybe forty-five minutes across Admiralty Inlet.

We stayed at an RV campground with WiFi. One of our first disappointments on the trip was our planned trip to Victoria. The ferry from Port Angeles was pricy and on the other end of Vancouver Island we would have to take the ferry to Alaska to go north to Prince Rupert (not in our plans). We thought we might ride our bikes in Victoria, but rain was in the forecast. All in all it wasn’t meant to be so… as I always say, “we are in a canoe without paddles“ and the current is flowing in a different direction.

That is what we did and saw

Colville, WA to Newhalem, WA ~ The Passess!

Sunday morning was partly cloudy, the road was starting to wind up and down these gentle rolling hills. Grasslands with sparsely covered trees and a few cows grazing on the range were prevalent for the first hour. We descended down to a valley floor only to find the mighty Columbia River at Kettle Falls. In the old days, one would cross this river by Bonners’ Ferry. Today we drove across and pulled into the visitor center. A farmers’ market was in full swing; even had a live band playing these wooden instruments much like the South American natives do today. It was sort of neat.

Rainy Pass

Little Camper Big Trees!

Off we went, going up and up. It wasn’t hills anymore... it was mountains, we could see the cloud cover getting closer or I should say we were rising closer to the clouds and soon, rain and then we were above the clouds at Sherman Pass 5587ft. We were in the Okanogan National Forest. Every now and then we went through towns like Republic, Wauconda and Tonasket.  County road 20 West turns south for a little while and back to the west getting closer to the Cascade Range. Rainy Pass and Harts Pass were the best mountain views yet. I’d even go as far as to say they are the best I’ve seen. You watch the road wind up and up until your actually in the snow fields, snow banks still 10 feet high on June 24. The temperature now at 47 degrees, I got out and took many pictures, I can only post a few because I have to resize in order to upload. 

Diablo Lookout is another super spot; the Ross Dam down in the gorge produces one million horsepower of electricity for Seattle. The aqua colored reservoir, rock cliffs, giant trees all blend in to make the detour from US 2 to County 20 worth the extra miles.

We stayed in Newhalem at the Northern Cascade National Park Campground. The trees are so big and tall that you get a stiff neck looking straight up over 200 feet. The park staff had recently cut a large cedar that I gave up counting the rings after 250.   

That is what we did and saw

Libby, MT to Colville, Washington

Libby the city of Eagles

In between Libby and Colville lies the whole northern part of the State of Idaho. I’ll talk more about Idaho in a minute. The drive from Libby to Colville wasn’t very long seeing that we left so late in the day. A restaurant named Henrys was our choice for dinner. Two steaks, potato, cream of broccoli soup for $16.95 (Friday night special) it was excellent. We did do a little walking around town to work off our dinner and get a few geocaches in to claim another state souvenir. The night in the parking lot at Rousauers Supermarket wasn’t bad at all; the usual three to four long trains went by but no whistle blowing. We had a good night sleep. The above should have gone on yesterday’s blog post.

An early start and a few miles we crossed the border into Idaho. I’ve always heard that this state had rugged terrain and it does. Mountains, valleys, creeks, rivers switch back roads Idaho has everything, sort of reminds me of the moonshine back roads of southern states. They must be having their spring run off because the rivers were full and touching the green leaves of the abutting trees on both river banks. The green river water (glacial run off?) was picturesque. The run through the state at that northern point is less than fifty miles. I made sure we included a few stops along the route to get a couple of caches for another state souvenir. Our last leg for this day was a decent down from a mountain range into Colville, Washington. We came into town on the same street as “The Immaculate Conception Catholic Church”; it was 3:30pm, pulled into the parking lot, rested and waited for the 4:30 mass. Went to dinner at KFC, geocached in the evening, and decided that the church parking lot was in a quiet neighborhood, and there we parked for the night. Amen!

That is what we did and saw

West Glacier Village to Libby, Montana

Some of the Truck Camper Rally People @ campfire

The rally crew had a hike scheduled in the morning with a park ranger. The weather was pleasant but showers were forecast for the afternoon. We wanted to continue and elected to leave for our journey west and not go with the hiking rally crew. They left at 7:45am, we would blog, do laundry and leave. Not all rally campers were going on the hike. That is ware our scheduled sort of changed. One by one they wandered by and chatted, we asked questions, the routes we were about to take, what should we visit, which ferry to take in Seattle. These guys are experts, some travel year round in there campers. We would stay on route US 2 but take C20 over the Cascades for impressive scenic views. All of this talking and information gathering lead to a 1:15 departure. No schedule, no problem, we drove about 160 miles to Libby, MT (Noted to be Bald Eagle Capital of Montana.) We could have stayed in a campground but a well-placed grocery store parking lot with WiFi did the trick. We did groceries settled in for the night. The showers did come around midnight, the temperature did get up to 79 degrees in the afternoon after coming down from of the high elevations. Libby, MT is around 3250 feet above sea level, Berlin, NH is around 900 ft.

That is what we did and saw

West Glacier Village ~The Truck Camper Rally

One of the many picture perfect lakes

Our plans today were to leave St Mary Campground and drive around the tip of the park to West Glacier and meet up with our newly acquired New Hampshire friends. We had plenty of time to get there figuring they wouldn’t be arriving until mid-day. That gave us time to visit “Two Medicine” along Looking Glass Highway, the relatively short distance to the west side. The weather was perfect, in the high sixties. I took a scenic mountain top road, we saw wild horses, even had to wait for them to get out of the road. A coyote was next; now the hairpin turns with drop-offs brought spectacular views of mountains, lakes below and glaciers. The turnoff to Two Medicine gave me a chance to try a video for the first time. I turn on the camera and started to describe the stately mountains while driving.We were making a long sweeping corner when three mountain sheep were walking in the road going in the opposite direction. How lucky can one be I thought... then I noticed that I had not clicked on the record button. Damn-it! We continued to the lake and took some awesome pictures. We pulled into East Glacier Village for gas and Helen wanted to mail cards at the post office. Here comes the New Hampshire connection again. Bob and Jan coming from the other direction pulled into the gas station. We convoyed the rest of the way to the rally at Lake Five Resorts. We were met by the rally organizer who graciously got us a site with the rally discount.

The truck campers came in all afternoon and many came over and welcomed us and we chatted about everything. Apparently there are a lot of people going to Alaska, at least two convoys left yesterday.

Two Medicine Lake

We decided that we would only stay the night and leave the next day. With that in mind we left late afternoon to visit the west side of Glacier. Observations were as follows; a lot more tourist on this side, more gift shops and more picture perfect places to use the camera.  We drove as far as allowed with the camper (Avalanche Creek). We weren’t able to drive the 50 mile Go-to-the-sun-road, but between both sides we drove 29 miles. I can live with that.

No rally is complete without a night camp fire and stories from all the campers. There was camper visits, mostly the woman who went from one camper to the next. Helen will tell you some are pretty lavish. We turned in around 10:30. What a perfect full, exciting day!!

That is what we did and saw

St Mary, MT ~ Eastern side of Glacier National Park

Left Cut Bank around 9am for Glacier NP. Weather was partly cloudy and soon became sunny. Temperature was at first 49 degrees cool! I looked at my GPS for elevation and we were at 3850 feet. No wonder it was cool.

Arrived in St Mary’s with the sun shining and the temp went up to mid-50’s It was a day like April/May back home. Cool wind warm sun. The visitor center at the ranger station said that the “Road to the Sun” had just opened for the season yesterday. This is the famous Logan Pass (elevation 6646) that runs east to west across the mountains to West Glacier Village. It was a road that I wanted to run, but my truck camper wasn’t aloud to access because of outcroppings and a tunnel. Oh well, like I always say," We are like a canoe without a paddle. Let's see where the current takes us for another adventure."

View from our campground

The advice from a lot of people is to get a camp site early in the NP (Nationl Park) system. We did at St Mary NP campground. Our senior pass got us into the NP free and the pass got us a campsite for half price $11.50. Next on our agenda for today was to travel up the Road to the Sun for 12 miles of the 50 miles. That brought us to another campground, the end of the road for us, the views up there were great. The one disappointment was that we missed seeing a Grizzly Bear just ¾ of a mile up the road. We happened to be talking to a couple of female park rangers when they got the call of a bear jam in the road. That means cars are blocking the traffic not bears.

Swift Current River view

Our next adventure was to take us to road called Many Glaciers/Swift Current. Bingo, this road was super in every way. First a big black bear was feeding about a hundred fifty feet off the highway, I did get a few pictures but the bear jam was already starting to pile up. Our next sighting was moose who was stalking a couple of kayaks’ close to shore. Mountain goats were next. Did I mention the unbelievable  views of the river, lakes and glacial mountains. I am now sitting here writing this at 8:15 pm and the sun is still warming my back out on the picnic table. No bugs yet, a perfect day, I wish you all could experience this moment.

One of many fine hotels on the lakes!

It was a good photo day!

Harve to Cut Bank, Montana ~ The Rain!

Havre to Cut Bank, Montana ~ The Rain!

Helen & I decided to head west to Cut Bank, Bob and Jan wanted to turn South on US87 for some Lewis & Clark adventures. It wasn’t long before we got out of town and it started to drizzle and than rain moderately most of the day. Cut Bank, MT has a very well-staffed and  helpful information center. Cherry and Molly gave us plenty of things to see and places to eat. We were able to stay right in there parking lot with five bar WiFi. It stopped raining and we did a few geocaches, than we tried the local favorite restaurant, wow the food was excellent. I had country fried steak, hash browns, salad and a small hot homemade loaf of bread.

For a rainy day we were happy and now within an ear shot of Glacier National Park (60 miles.) The weather for tomorrow would be clearing and we would visit the eastern side of the park. I did not want to drive that way today because we would lose the spectaclular view coming to the mountain range. First impressions you know.

That is what we did and saw

Williston to Havre ~ The Home Connection

              

NH Truck Campers in Montana!

Helen, Lucien, Bob, Jan at Evergreen Campground

Leaving Williston after a short stop at Mickey D’s for coffee, the oil fields soon were behind us and Montana “Big Sky Country” was all around our tiny camper in a sea of grass land. It is nearly impossible to describe how the sky with its puffy white clouds and blue sky make you feel… like you’re  in a  3-D theatre. We drove 230 miles on this day. The time went by fairly quickly because I had programed some geocaches along the route. A program named GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) made it possible to find caches. Every dozen miles or so, a cache showed up on the handheld Garmin GPS. Here is where the home connection comes in. On this one stop, in a rest area, there is another slide in truck camper, a rare site. There aren’t many around compared to other types of campers. I was watching this guy getting out of the back of his camper and having bicycles on a bike rack maneuvered around the bikes to the ground. I waved to him and continued looking for the geocache. The other camper drove around and headed towards us, Helen noticed the license plate was from New Hampshire! We talked for several minutes. He said he was headed for West Glacier National Park Village to a slide-in truck camper rally, wow that sounded interesting! We were both headed for Havre for the night. We stayed at the same campground that night and had dinner together. He is a retired police chief from Alstead, NH and she retired from the school system. We did a lot of talking and ironed out a GPS problem with his tablet and discussed the upcoming rally. We retired to our own campers for the night., I was exhausted, I couldn’t concentrate to write anything on the blog. I was on the pillow by 9pm.

That is what we did and saw.

Lewis & Clark State Park ~ Revisited

Yesterday blog ended with our stay at the campground. I must say a few words about this campground before moving on with today’s journey. The campground sites were full and the park ranger let us park at a beautiful overlook of the Missouri River by ourselves. We did take a short two mile ride over to the main campsite area to use the showers, it was the first time on the trip that we didn’t shower in the camper. A family was walking there dog and I started talking to the man, he was about my age, he worked in this area all his life and chatted a long time about the oil boom. He said the oil industry has been here since the 50’s but nothing like it is now. Workers coming from all parts of the world are showing up expecting to get rich. So many are here that they don’t have a place to stay, some are staying in cars, some bought shipping containers and converting them into so-called living quarters. The lucky ones do work and make between 60 and 90 thousand dollars a year. The oil business is a 24-7 operation, they work all kinds of shifts and as much as they want. He explained the difference between sweet and sour crude oil, I enjoyed the conversation.

The night was quite ~ no trains~ Sunday morning we had made arrangements to call our Dunkin Donuts “coffee crew” and give them an update but Helen noticed that she didn’t have a strong cell signal, we were in a basin, lower elevation at the river. We buttoned up the camper and headed for higher ground. Five minutes later the cell rang and it was Claire at DDs’.  We were about 16 miles from Williston, I need gas as the gauge said 30 miles to empty. OK don’t  worry we made it.

Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence

Two great rivers meet here and make the Missouri larger and broader. The Interpretive Center has a museum and a gentleman who portrays Capt. William Clark wagon train leader. He gave a short Sunday service like it would have been during the day. Many artifacts were on display. Two nearby Forts were our next stops. Fort Buford was partially restored I found it interesting and took a lot of pictures. Fort Union just a few miles away was having a reenactment and several tee pees were up and venders sold their wares. The weather was warm, breezy and sunny.

Thats what we saw and did

The Regiment RifleTeam~ Memories....



The good old days

Lewis & Clark Discovery Trail!

Today we got off to a late start. We spent most of the morning getting caught up on our blog and emails.We diverted from our push to the west and headed south on US 83 to catch the Lewis & Clark trail on the Missouri River. The 40 mile ride to the south was pretty uneventful except for the giant wind farm. Dozens of these 500 foot wind mills spinning slowly cranking out energy for our country.Incidentaly, the wind was very strong... gusting to 35 mph according to the weather channel.


Wind Farm heading south on US83

Drill Rig ~ One Of Many!

Once we arrived at the Missourri River we headed west again and followed the Lewis & Clark Trail west. There are several historic markers along the highway that divert you to Lewis & Clark's travel stops. We didn't stop at these because we wanted to get closer to a bigger city like Williston, ND. The land at first was very flat with different shades of green pastures. An occasional cowboy on horse back herding cattle towards the milking barn gave us a sense of the old west. All the country roads here are layed out in squares of two to seven miles, all going north, south east and west. Very easy to follow on the map or my laptop computer on my console. Soon the terrain started to change to hills up and down and than came the unexpected! Oil rigs on every hill and valley some times just a few hundred feet apart. The tractor trailer traffic swelled with things like tankers that pick up the crude oil and bring it to...who knows where. Further down the road bulldozers, excavators, road equipment are cutting new roads zigzaging up and down the hills. I am excited like a little kid watching all this activity. Oil wells are burning off the methane gas they can't use. Drilling rigs are drilling, pickup trucks are buzzing around all of these side roads. I've only seen this type of action in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Wow!!!


Cowboy roundup!

Time line is now around 4:45 Saturday night, we are approching Williston looking for a Catholic Church. I pulled off into a parking lot and google for a location, two blocks away but, I said no mass here we're too late for the 4 o'clock, Helen said lets find it for tomorrow's schedule. A short drive later the church parking lot was nearly full and people who were going in and not out. A 5 o,clock mass is unusual... at least back home. We walked in at 4:55 in time for mass.
Later, I googled for a campground and was told by a parishner  that all campgrounds were full because of the oil workers. He said the Lewis & Clark State Campground 20 miles back might be our only chance. Off we went with hope for a site. No luck... they were full. I asked the Park Ranger if I could just park with no hookups. He said sure. Just go to the point on this side of the bay. We had a perfect overlook of the river by ourselves.
That is what we saw and did

Minot, North Dakota ~ TexasTea

Remember Jed Clampit from the Beverly Hillbillies? Texas Tea was his words for "Oil Boom"! Every campground is filled with workers who are working directly or indirectly for the oil companies. Minot reminds me of the old gold rush days in the Yukon. Back then, peddlers would set up shop and sell there wares. Here in Minot, things are the same except they are selling Cat Excavators, Western Star Trucks and every kind of machinery you can think of. Million of dollars of inventory on the front lawn of businesses.
The workers here at Roughrider Campground were coming in from the work sites, covered in mud and dust. I assume they do it  for the high wages, most of them coming from all parts of the country. As I write this post I am watching this young buck sitting on his pickup truck tail gate talking on his cell phone most likely to his girl friend back home. Nothing has changed except the years.
I could write several posts on the railroads around these parts of the country. Freight trains run all night long and are at least a mile long. I don't think we haven't had one night sleep anywhere without hearing a train go by and blowing the whistle. The tracks parallel US 2 for many miles and one can see railroad workers doing mainteneance on the tracks. There are usually several crews separated by a few hundred feet apart with each crew having a different type of machine on the tracks doing something different, all in all they can strecth for a mile or so.

B-52 Bomber

Small Camper pulled by VW

Our trip up from Grand Forks was long but with a few stops such as the front gate at Grand Forks Air Force Base. Impressive static displays of B-52, Intercontinental Balistic Missle, Launchers and more old bombers were well placed on the grounds.
Our campground in Grand Forks was pleasant and our neighbors next to us had this cute little camper, now that's small compared to ours, but they were just coming home from a trip to Nova Scotia having also stayed in North Conway, NH They live in Winnipeg, Manitoba,Canada.

Center of North America

A milestone on this leg was arriving at Rugby, ND which is the geological center of North America. The sign said 1500 air miles to Lubec, ME. We were dead center north/south, east/west.

That's what we did and saw today!

Bemidji, MN ~ First City on the Mississippi River

Bemidji, MN (no typo) is the first city on the Mississippi River, I had no idea that the mighty river started up here.
Let me say that I wrote yesterday post around 9pm here in Bemidji and we decided to have our first stay in the Wal-Mart parking lot along with several other RV travelers. Here is what happened during the night. Around 11pm some sort of store alarm went off for a long time. Than we heard someone hollering, than thunder, lightning and at 4:30am the giant vac truck came in to sweep the parking lot. The parking lot was so well lit that we could read a book inside the camper without additional light. The price was right and as they say you get what you pay for.  
We left Bemidji around 8am and headed on our now familar US 2 route. The road is as straight as an arrow for as far as you can see. The land is now more open with just a row or two of trees to separate the fields from the farm houses. From Michigan which is very much like New Hampshire as far as the mountains, trees and weather to Wisconsin with its dairy farms, I had to buy some cheeze, to Minnesota with its ponds, lakes route US 2 is not an interstate and unitl now a two lane road with passing lanes every few miles.
We drove 227 miles and arrived at Grand Forks, ND around four pm. The information boot gave us a choice of two campgrounds. We picked the one with WiFi and a car show across the street that night.
I do have pictures but the WiFi here is very slow, will post them later.

The Board Meeting Day!

Iron Ore hauling engine in the town of  Proctor, MN
The town that helped the BWW Chairperson!

 This day was partially dedicated to my commitment to the Berlin Water Works monthly board meeting. I am chairperson and very much wanted to take part in the meeting. I accomplished this with the help of Skype. When I left Berlin I was thinking that I could log on to Skype with my Android phone but soon discovered that it didn't have enough band width and reception to accomplish this. My backup would be with a phone call (audio only). I knew that I could get good WiFi at McDonald's but it wouldn't be private enough. I would have to be inside for five bars of reception. We were in Duluth, MN at the time and decided to drive to the outskirts to a place called Proctor, Helen noticed an Internet cafe with WiFi. We stopped and ask if it would be possible to run the meeting from there. The lady said sure, we'll even set you up in a room by yourself. Great!! This morning we came in and setup. Called BWW and the next thing you know I was running the meeting from approximately 1300 miles from the office. I felt proud of this accomplishment. Oh, on the 12th we stayed at a campground called "Spirit Mountain Campground" hardly anyone around but we did talk to one couple who had gone to Alaska a long time ago. The campground office was closed when we got there but we followed the instructions and did a self check-in.

That is what we did and saw today!

Duluth, MN & Superior, WI a Day to Enjoy



Duluth, MN a City with hills!

Two sister cities separated by a body of water and joined by several bridges. Duluth is bigger and very much like Berlin, NH with extremely steep hills. There must be a lot of fender benders in the winter. I would say the city is about the size of Portland, ME. The city is very commercial with large grain elevators (General Mills Cereals) and huge piles of coal and hundreds of railroad cars. The downtown is very modern with buildings and many pedestrian sky way walking bridges above the streets connecting buildings. It must be convenient in the winter. We drove around for a short time but the traffic was heavy and headed to the outskirts for peace of mind.
Superior, WI on the other hand is more spread out and touristy. We had a good time here geocaching and visiting the city attractions. One historic site was this long elevated concrete structure with railroad tracks on top and a multitude of shoots on the sides. After thinking of the song "The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald" I started to think of the words. The Edmond Fitzgerald with a load of iron ore, ah! This structure is how they loaded the iron ore from the railroad cars into the huge ships that carried this iron ore around the great lakes. The song also says "Lake Superior never gives up her dead", well in our short travels Lake Superior seems more ominous than the other Great Lakes.


Iron Ore loading dock

In Superior, WI across from Duluth we spent time geocaching, some caches were difficult and with no success. The best finds are the ones that bring you to unsual places. The bike path that goes under the highway was a very nice location.



A Long Day on the Road

Writing a blog should be easy but given the fact that we drove 338 miles in one day and arrived in a town with no G3 Data available and no nearby campgrounds makes writing a little difficult. We drove by this market (closed for the day) which said free WiFi. I pulled in next to the front door and clicked on my WiFi button and there it was perfect five bars. We checked email, entered our geocaching finds for the day, checked Face book for news and than I said lets stay here for the night. In about ten minutes the local police drove by doing his checks and I flagged him down to ask if we could park overnight. He said there shouldn't be a problem as long as we didn't run our engine all night. Our camper doesn't need external power for a short one night stay. The solar panel kept the on board marine battery up, the propane kept the refrigerator, hot water and furnace running if needed. We did have a problem, the wind was blowing with gusts of 25 mph. This I found out later cause the furnace pilot light to go out and prevent the furnace from starting with the thermostat. The propane tech gave me advice on how to minimize this problem. (The temp. in Mackinaw was in the 90's but here in Ironwood, MI in was 49' at night and mid 60's in the day)
I am writing this blog on Tuesday on the 12th at night around 9:30pm and using my Android phone to get on line, it works alright but trying to upload pictures is a long process. I try to post the date of the blog for the day the adventure happened.

That's what we did yesterday

Mackinaw~Is Pure Michigan

A half day of travel from Traverse City to Mackinaw was the site for todays’ adventures. Mill Creek Campground is a very large campground with over 750 sites, but they are unbelievably laid out with shade trees, and on the water front. We spent the afternoon in the pool and biking around the park. We walked around and talked to fellow campers, especially one who had Alaska license plate.

Leland also known as Fish Town

		Fishing Village VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

A short drive from Traverse City brought us to Leland, MI, a small town with a big attraction for tourist. Fish Town is actually old fishing shanties that have been converted to shops. On this particular weekend it was a wine and food festival. The line of people to get into this event was at least three hundred feet long. We elected to visit the shops and skip the wine & food festival. The temperature today was 90’, but Lake Michigan had a nice breeze. We stayed in the area all afternoon before heading back to Timber Ridge Resort.