Alaska Wrap-up

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Except for bears, bears will kill you. I saw that on so many different t-shirts and thought that that was appropriate for this area. I mean with all of the bears roaming around wild and everything.

There are black bears, brown bears and grizzly bears. All of the literature everywhere would tell you what to do for each type of bear when you encounter them. Travel in groups. Make noises. If you encounter a bear yell and make yourself larger. Back away, don't run. If there is going to be an attack get your bear spray ready. If the spray doesn't work for brown and grizzlies bears lay down, curl up into a ball. Protect your head with your arms and play dead. For black bears fight back with whatever you have. Seek medical attention afterwards. I couldn't keep all of that straight so I had to come up with a rhyme to remember what to do. "Brown, lie down. Black, fight back. White, poop your pants and die."

As I said in my last post, we hung a right and headed south through British Columbia on Highway 37. they call it the Cassiar Highway. It started out very rough and the forest was pretty much right up to the road.

We saw a couple of black bear so we were going slow. They would just pop up out of the forest and run across the road and disappear on the other side. We made it to our campground for the night and the next day we went on to Stewart, BC. It was a coastal town wo we wanted to check it out. The drive was fabulous.

There were waterfalls and glaciers that we passed.

I believe that that was the Bear Glacier. We have seen so many glaciers on this trip it is hard to keep them straight. We got to our campground in Stewart. It was a city park and it was at the base of a mountain. 

Our view out our back window. If you look hard enough you can see the Sasquatches looking down on us. It was a very cool spot. The town of Stewart is small and there isn't much there. We planned for the next day to drive up to the Salmon Glacier, but when we awoke, the clouds were low. Maybe a hundred feet off of the ground so we decided to skip that because we wouldn't see it anyways.

On our way out we stopped at the Bear Glacier again for more photos. They say the morning light really brings out the blue color. 

We didn't quite get the colors we were hoping for because of the low level clouds. Oh well. Our next stop was going to be Prince Rupert, BC. Another coastal town. We got there and it was nothing special. We stayed overnight in a over priced private park and then started our journey home. It took us 8 days from Prince Rupert. It was a lot of long days of driving and once you get out of the mountains, there's  not much to see. Except for Mount Robson

So we are in Minnesota now at our super secret undisclosed location, Happy to be in one place for awhile. Also there have been some murders up in the Yukon and British Columbia in places where we had been through and that is a little unsettling. But we are safely back in the U.S. where were able to protect ourselves which makes me feel a whole lot better. I can finally sleep with both eyes shut.

Final thoughts. 

8830 miles with an average of 12.3 miles to the gallon. 48 days total. 88:33 hours of driving.

We are glad and grateful that we were able to do this trip. There is so much to see and do up there. So you can do as much or as little as you want. Just make the trip yours. Everyone you talk to who has gone up there will give you a ton of advice. Like fuel. You need extra large fuel tanks and carry extra gas cans. We didn't do any of that. There are gas stations in towns every 100 to 150 miles.

Tires. The roads are hell on tires. We had no problems of our own so maybe we lucked out and the Sasquatches were smiling down on us. The same goes with rock chips. Not one rock chip in our windshield.

Campgrounds. We made only two reservations and that was at Denali and Homer. Other than that we just winged it. Pulling off the road when we were tired. There are plenty of state parks on the route or in so many places, just pull outs to park in for the night. If you are in a big rig it might be a different story because of the size of your RV. Being in a small RV has its advantages for sure.

We really liked the smaller towns and being out in the wilderness versus being in Fairbanks or Anchorage. We were able to camp in some great places.

So that is our trip in a nutshell. Would we do it again? We are not sure right now since we just got back. If we did go back we would just stick to the coastal areas and not bother with Denali or Fairbanks.  We would not stay in Anchorage again either but just a little south of Anchorage would be our kind of place. Because we know now and we are the experts, Haha.

Glady's and Tango out.