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Alaska2000Travel along with the Elliotts to Alaska and the Northwest Canadian Provinces.
Flash Map~ Right click on the map to zoom in, move around with the left mouse button, and/or click on a map marker above or links on the left for pictures/stories.Contest! Guess the total number of miles we will drive this trip by the time we arrive home. Closest value won. Prizes awarded. Our thought on day 1: Will we travel more miles North, or West? See our proposed route here. Favorite and most memorable things: The most astounding thing to JoAnn was watching the sun do donuts in the sky, never setting, just coming around from the east, climbing overhead, then going down towards the west, but instead of setting, it slows down and then sort of scoots along the horizon from west to east and starts climbing up again in a neverending cycle. We especially enjoyed seeing the wildlife. Red foxes on the Haul Road (Dalton Highway). There was a mother fox and 5 little kits playing all over a rock pile, rambling to and fro that was really great. Also on the Dalton Highway coming south from Deadhorse, we spied a grizzly bear just sitting there like a stuffed animal, only huge, absolutely huge, getting his breakfast. Bill's best meal and one of his favorite little side trips was taking the newly created tunnel to Whittier. You come out of the tunnel and there are rocks, crushed rocks. The town is built on crushed rocks. We ate at a little restaurant there, dining on fish and shrimp and chips and let me to you, that shrimp was melt-in-your-mouth to die for. Our biggest adrenaline rush was when heading north from Valdez where a very large moose tried to off the path in front of us on the highway. I was certainly not quicken with the camera for that one but it will be emblazoned in our memories. Another very memorable side trip was our cruise on the Wildlife Quest from Seward down to the glaciers. The fascinating part of this journey was when the boat came alongside the glacier, stopped, and we all stood there and hear the crackling and snapping and thunder and lightening sounds created by the glacier as parts of it broke off. On the floating ice beneath the glacier were quite a few harbor seals. They were just basking away resting keeping a wary eye on us. You could call this the trip of the raven. The doggone giant sized black birds were everywhere. They were everywhere in the northwest. We first saw them, might have been in Washington state but they were definitely all over the place along the inside passage and they are absolutely monstrous. They were in Alaska. They were in Yukon Northwest Territories, British Columbia and Alberta. I think I even saw a few in Montana although I wouldn't swear to it because I think they were shrinking in size as we went south. Eagles. Going up along the inside passage we began to see eagles, eagles everywhere. I guess all be worry about eagles and losing the eagles and the prospect of never having eagles again in the US never related to Alaska. There were always overwhelming numbers of eagles in Alaska and there still are. In fact they even transplanted them to the lower 48 to re-establish Eagles colonies down there. Folks in Alaska never did worry about eagle populations. Altogether we saw Caribou, moose, muskoxen, buffalo, lots of wood buffalo, red foxes, Arctic Foxes, Arctic hares, ground squirrels, regular buffalos the brown/grizzly bears, black bears, all varieties of birds, sea lions, sea otters, whales (both Orca and humpback), harbor seals, puffins, sheep and goats, different varieties of each. Start: Crystal Beach Florida, North on Interstate 19 to Tallahassee. West on I-10 all the way to Phoenix, Arizona. North on 17 to Flagstaff. North on 89 to I-15 and continue through Salt Lake City and on to Brigham City. I-84 North through Idaho and Oregon to I-82 the Columbia River. Cross and continue North to I-90 and on to Seattle for a couple days with friends and relatives. I-5 North to Bellingham, Washington where we drive onto the Ferry for a ride through the inside passageway to Haines, Alaska! Alaska: Travel N.W. through British Columbia/Yukon Territory/Alaska to Fairbanks.
Yukon Territory: SE on 2 to Whitehorse, then to Skagway (Alaska),
SE on 97 into British Columbia, Ft. Nelson. N. on 77, 7 into Northwest Territories.
Alberta: On 35 to Grimshaw.
Montana!
Wyoming! Continue E. through the Black Hills (S. route on 16). South Dakota! E on I-90 through Minnesota, into Wisconsin. I-94 to I-39 to I-43 to Kenosha (friends and relatives). S. into IL and down on I-57 to Manteno (friends and relatives). S. on I-57 to Carbondale, to I-24 to Nashville. S. on I-65 to Montgomery, Alabama. Take 231 SE to I-10, to Tallahassee and back down 19 to home!
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