all aska tour.....2010

first time we have had internet for a while.

we are heading home!

rounding out the tour with a final night in nebraska

first pic

yes the motor home can go up here...we went down it to a campsite...and it was the only way out!

second thing is a dredge i toured.. it is like a giant ditch witch which sorts gold dust out of tons of rock....quite a machine.

these three happy guys are modern day gold miners. they had a small dredgeing operation and

worked all day for about 1 half oz of gold dust and "pickers"

they were excited!

this is how the guy makes his living.

lynda snapped this pick on the side of the road.

wolves are making a BIG comeback up north.

should be home soon.

jim and lynda

all aska tour.....2010

this was a really neat waterfall outside of valdez

we are in tok about to enter the top of the world highway. after today we will be out of contact a few days i would guess for email.

whitehorse is the capital of the youkon with 24000 people ...youkon has a total of 34000...we will be visiting with the other 10000 for the next day or so and that makes alaska look like columbus area population wise compared to what we are going to.

got gas/water and we are off to the most northern part of the trip!

then its the dash for home!

love

jim and lynda

all aska tour.....2010

first pictures were of large styrofoam blue blocks floating in prince william sound...although the boat captain swore they were icebergs....

2nd, as you cand see we visited sarah's house....and we couldn't quite see russia.

3rd...on a cruise in front of a glacier.

4th for trilly...we saw a lot of whales, but they kept going under water......

and lastly....this is lynda's....

we are having a WHALE of a good time but.....

we MOOSE be going north for our last leg of our adventure to dawson city...site of the klondike goldrush of 1898.

then its a quick 5000 to 6000 mile jaunt home...

love you all

later

jim and lynda

all aska tour.....2010

we are seeing beautiful sites and finding some decent camping areas. it is pretty cold here, not just cool. the wind makes it cold.

we went and spent a day on the spit in homer...pics to follow, and went on a 6 hour glacier cruise in seward.

tonight we head for valdez.....

we are going to try and hit two or three glaciers before we get to valdez .

all continues to go well.

see you all soon...we saw a sign in seward today that said seward nebraska 4133 miles/

guess they are into the all aska tour thing too...

later

as always

jim and lynda

Lauren and amber and I have been having a blast. Too much fun in fact. We are staying another day or so. Yesterday we went to amber's church. It was kinda on the wild side and reminded me of campus crusade in college a little bit. Then we went to the beach. The beach was swarmed with other people celebrating the 4th. It was like a beach party with thousands of people. Reminded me of Spring break or something. Everyone on the beach was between 20-30 years old. It was kind of weird. Amber and I went and played in the ocean. The water was cold and the shore dropped off really quickly. To get out where the waves were breaking you couldn't touch the bottom. There was a crazy rip tide where we were so the whole thing felt a little dangerous. I played until I couldn't take getting driven into the sand by another wave. The sets were coming in at about 5-7 feet. It was really cool.

After we were covered in salt and sand, we ran into this cool group of people that had a sweet suite at a hotel along the beach. We didn't have a place to shower and we wanted to stay and watch the fireworks that night so we went back to their hotel to hang out with them. They had 14 people in one gigantic hotel room. It was a crazy set up. After a while a bunch of us went down and went in the pool and hot tub. It was a lot of fun. The group were people from all over the world who were working as interns at UCLA. We had a great time meeting and talking with people. After the hot tub we split off from the group and went back to the boardwalk where the houses meet the beach which is what they call "the strand". I made friends with some people along the beach and amber and lauren went into this crazy fancy house party with bouncers and everything. I got a picture of them dancing in the second story window like idiots. LOL At this point it was dark and crowded and by the time they came outa the house party the fireworks started. The display was weak compared to red white and boom!!! After the fireworks one of the people who I was talking to before the fireworks got into an argument that the cops had to break up. It was pretty funny. Amber Lauren and I wandered around talking to people and people watching. We went up the beach and saw another house party where they had a michael jackson impersonator. He did a show and about 2500 people gathered. It was pretty well done with lights and everything. He performed off a huge balcony. It was really funny! As if the day couldn't get more random we ran into a couple people who we were talking to earlier and they needed a ride home so we all hopped in ambers car and drove them across town. Crazy end to the day. We were all tired and hadn't eaten dinner. WHen we got back to Ambers house we warmed up left over pizza and made quesadillas.

miles so far: ~4600
elevation: 190 ft
temperature: 84 degrees

all aska tour.....2010

well , heres the proof that we made it to the end of the alaska highway. delta junction.......

this is a shot out our window of the trucks trying to break our windsheild. the road was bad......

we are now crusing alaska and visiting the mcdonalads in wassilla and we can't find sarah...she must be at a classier place.

raining a lot here right now, lots of good campspots. just took a chance that roads will be good for a while and washed the motorhome. $5 worth of quarters still only took off half the bugs....

as always

dad and mom

Good Morning Los Angeles

We made it to Ambers house!!!!! YAY!! we have finally gotten to L.A. after all this time. I have yet to make actual contact or see the pacific ocean but Amber says it's only ten minutes away. She is graciously putting us up in her house and we are going touring with her today. The city looked huge and beautiful with all it's lights when we came in last night. It feels much bigger than new york but also less dense.

We had a blast at Joshua tree yesterday and saw two rattlesnakes. One of them even rattled!!!!! We stayed up late talking with Amber last night and had a delicious pancake breakfast this morning. It is nice to have a break from the mini van.

all aska tour.....2010

well now we are at the north pole.....but here is a picture of me talking to you from skagway alaska...

this shoot on the speedo is old...we are over 12k now...and the roads are BAD ,,,,,,bad really bad

it was really windy in skagway which means whitecaps in indian talk.

feather not dot...

the shot of the train is an ice drill they used to clear the tracks for the white pass railroad

ran from 1900 to 1982 as a train..now a tourist attraction that hauls up to 7ooo tourists A DAY

wow..that worked out well......

cruise ships dump out here...and they all ride it...

julie my sister has ridden the train and pat and jane will be here in a couple of weeks

now we all sing ...its a small world from disney....

later

jim...and lynda

Eating & Touring

Many of our posts seem to revolve around what we are eating. Part of the fun of traveling, we've discovered, is finding the 'hole-in-the-wall' or top restaurants to eat in the area and try them out. We have a special interest in pizza, so whenever we hear about an amazing pizza place we always make it a point to stop there. This lead to our two most recent stops - Belgian Jennie's Bordello Bistro & Pizzeria and Pizzeria Bianca. Two totally unique experiences, but each fabulous. Belgian Jennie's is in Jerome, AZ an old mining town of less than 400. The owner, Tom, had many interesting stories to tell about the town and the woman the restaurant was named after. It was fascinating! Pizzeria Bianca is in Phoenix, AZ and it took 7 and I back to our time in Italy. Their pizza was the closest we have had to italian pizza in the US (besides 7's pizza oven pizza, of course!). Both pizza places were yummy in their own way. I would definitely go back to both again.



We also enjoyed some delicious Mexican at El Rincon in Tlequepaque Arts & Crafts Village in Sedona, AZ. 7 even scored us a free appetizer! :) Of course, we also stopped at our first In-n-Out Burger! Yum! Too bad these aren't in Ohio! 7 and I were impressed with the all around quality of the place. As you can see, we also seem quite excited to be there...

In addition to eating, we're also seeing some pretty amazing things. Today we saw Montezuma's Castle National Monument, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, & the Mexico-US Border. No, we didn't cross into Mexico because we didn't have our passports...we'll have to save that for our next trip! The challenge of Organ Pipe was running across the gravel road quicker than the tar could melt to your shoes. High's reached 118 degrees where we were today. This is the slow season for this park as made up half of the visitors for today.

all aska tour.....2010

i am doing something wrong..i can only load one photo at a time...

anyway here is the signpost forest ...its really a weird place. cannot wait to show you all pics signs from everywhere in the world!!

we are doing fine ..slipped into alaska for a day at skagway and are now in whitehorse youkon.

not much here at all even though it contains almost 2/3 of yukons people!

lynda could hardly find milk at the only grocery in town.

unless you wanted goat or soy...the meat dept was SAD.....they did have fresh produce which

surprised me compared to the sorry milk and meat section

this is one of the grizzely bears we have spotted.

had a 6 bear day yesterday..none today

having a fun safe time

lauren and 7

you guys ought to try a church next week
we have gone to two and they have been fun and interesting.

love you all

dad

cool houses

yesterday we went hiking and then snuck into grasshopper for some swimming/cliffdiving. I didn't go off the high spot. The water wasn't all that deep.... and it was really cold. This morning we went on a tour of some crazy hippy house that was built out of domes. They had some really weird floor plan ideas and it was really unique. The acoustics were awful though because of the room shapes. All in all the house was a lot of fun. We also toured the Chapel on the hill and saw a crazy mansion with it's own observatory.

here is a link to the dome house so u can see pics of the inside. Really weird place.

all aska tour.....2010

well we are on the alaska highway and have made it to the yukon!

saw a really weird signpost place in watson lake yukon...google it

today we saw 4 black bears and 2 grizzleys...why does it always have to
be about color??????

going is slow due to fun stuff to see and bad roads combined.

thats all for now..

mom and dad

so much to post!!!!

we are now in sedona. We spent the last few days boondocked on a mountaintop by a lake next to flagstaff AZ. Flagstaff was in the middle of a horrible forest fire and it is still dry so no campfires all this week. Sedona is hot but we are having a blast. I am blogging from a bench in front of Safeway... lots of people buying groceries and staring at me. It is about 2:00 and already over 100.

Flagstaff was a blast. Our campsite was great. We stayed up there the last 4 nights and made day trips to different places. Everything was much cooler on the mountaintop. I didn't think there were mosquitos when I went to bed the first night. In the morning I found out that after it gets below 50 they come out in a thick fog. The whole side of my right thigh looked like I had chicken pox. Lots of itching. We kept the windows closed after that. Flagstaff is a college town with tons of atmosphere. We had fun hanging out on the square talking and people watching. We flattened pennies on the railroad tracks because Lauren had never done that. We wanted to go to the observatory to check out the stars at night but didn't get the chance. Flagstaff was a blast and has been our home away from home the last few days.

One day trip we went on was to the grand canyon. I made Lauren hike Bright Angel trail with me. We did 10 miles of it and made it down to Indian Gardens. I thought I was going to die on the way back up. We spent 2 hours going back up the first mile and a half. We would take baby steps and go a hundred feet or so before taking 5 minutes to catch our breath. In the five miles uphill hike we covered 3200 feet of elevation change. Thermometer in the gardens was pegged out at 120 degrees. We heard from a few campers it was topping out at more than 140 degrees in phantom ranch.

Dad.... I don't know how u and I did the full 20 miles to the river and back in a day all those years ago. At one point when Lauren and I were in the bottom I got tunnel vision and nearly blacked out. My whole face went numb and I couldn't drink any water cause I wasn't breathing right. As it was happening I was thinking... man if I have to get hauled outa here that would be expensive. It was a lot tougher hike than I remembered. Really glad we got to do that together. Lauren and I made it out .... it was smoother after the bottom stretch in the sun and Lauren and I pushed our way out. The worst part about our hike was the 90 minute drive home. Lauren slept.

The hike behind us, we spent yesterday resting, eating, and shopping in sedona. I did a little climbing in Oak Creek canyon before driving home last night. This morning we are all packed up and found a new campsite about 40 minutes south of sedona. We will be there a couple days.

Lots of funny things happening. Mom.... we are seeing all kinds of coco pali crap!!!.>>>>>> I knew that would make you jealous. Tril and barrett..... we were in a store the other day and I heard nicolas gunn... sounds of the grand canyon playing........ out of nowhere there was this horrible music playing and a voice saying "formed 320 million years ago in the jurasic period... home to over 300 species of birds.. .. 1200 species of fish.... 9 species of grasshopper..." I took a video you will like of me talking with a lady who was obsessed with nicolas gunn and had all his cds (which she showed me) and for the record... the van doesn't have any NOS to pop but I am drifting all over the dirt mountain roads.


Last few days have been good to us... we are looking forward to the next few and will probably post again in the next day or two. Hope you are all well and safe travel mom and dad.

road miles so far 3672 (partly off road miles : P )
altitude 4348 feet
current temp 101

ps... dad i'm sure u got us beat on miles... why not give us a look at the odometer?!?

all aska tour.....2010

well,

we continue to go north..

we are now in grand prarie .

we have see many large long and big waterfalls.

yesterday was a 5 bear day...but now we are out of the mountains again. we did see a momma moose with two little moosers this morning by the highway.

we also rode this big bus thing you see here...an ice crusier or something they call it up onto th columbia icefield in central canada.

hope all is well with you guys.

dad

all aska tour.....2010

this lake was a beautiful tourqouise color...

there was snow everywhere and we were near bow lake which is the divide for north south flow for canada rivers...we are now on the north watershed

all aska tour.....

we are in the middle of alberta canada today.

went on a 5 hour atv ride

saw 4 bears yesterday including this one which was hanging around our campsite for about an hour...

all going well

its a bit cold...

jim and lynda

june 26th i think

Border Crossing

Right now we are sitting in a McDonalds using their internet! Nothing like ice cream for breakfast. :) We are in Arizona, so there is now a 3 hours difference between us and you all back home. It's my first time in this time zone or to Arizona for that matter, so I'm pretty excited.

Last night as we were driving we stopped to eat dinner at El Pinto in Albuquerque, NM...7 had read a recommendation for it somewhere online, so we decided to give it a try. We pulled into the parking lot and it was HUGE; I'm talking like Walmart style, but with nice landscaping. So we walk inside, the place is hopping, and put in our names. The wait is not too bad and we get seated in a very pretty outside patio. As we're being lead to our seats we're amazed at the size of the place. We come to find that there are 6 groups of 30-40 people eating, which is part of what was making it so busy. So, we're thinking the restaurant holds about 400 people. Well, we eat dinner...amazing salsa, hot red chile, some sopipillas, and a free dessert (awesome!)...then we ask are waiter how many people the restaurant serves...you'll never believe it....1,200!!! Woah! We were shocked. I guess it's the biggest restaurant in all of NM and they had pics on the walls with a bunch of different famous people who have eaten there. To take a restaurant tour check out this link... http://www.elpinto.com/restaurant/restaurant-tour

Anyway, today we are headed to Winslow, AZ to see the massive barringer crater. Then we're headed off to Flagstaff to hopefully find a camping spot for tonight.

So, besides seeing the sites and eating at the local hot spots another thing we've been doing is noticing all the weird burger joint names - here are just a few...

Lotaburger
Whataburger
It's Burger Time
Carl's Jr. Charboiled Burgers

Kinda random, but just wanted to share.

Now that we are in Arizona, I'll be curious to see whether it feels as Mexican as New Mexico. I've really been feeling like I'm not in the US...

The king is alive, Wildlife sucks, We are Sweaty

We had a lot of fun reading all your posts this morning guys... Lauren and I are getting beat to a pulp. I am reminded constantly of lewis and clark. Sometimes I wonder if our trip is more difficult (**cough sarcasm).... it has been a little rough the past few days. We keep telling ourselves to push forward knowing we'll probably never come back to a lot of these places. I'll post a pic of our tarantula and diamondback rattler for your amusement. The real things that sucked the last few days (but were also the most memorable) were the intense heat and the fire ant attack.

Right now we are in a town in southern NM called Ruidoso. It is really nice and the closest thing to an american town we have seen all week. There are even other white people!!! It is a ski town like aspen and the weather is nice at 6900' .... Yesterday we toured the Very Large Array. It can be seen in movies such as "Contact" and "Independence Day". It was super geeky and a lot of fun for me. Lauren humored me and faked excitement looking at Giant (and I mean giant) steel dishes in the desert. They were about 100 feet in diameter and there were about 30 of them mounted on a 3 axis railroad system. Each arm of the railroad went 13 miles into the desert. The dishes move on the railroad so they can focus the radio telescope. It was fun to see their labs and operations and read about it. Tour was free and a lot of fun. Lauren enjoyed seeing the lizards and jackrabbits. After that we drove south into some really shady area and went to a town called truth or consequences. It was a totally mexican town. We bought gas and continued to Hatch, NM. This is a little speck of nothing town that happens to be the chile capital of the world. We went to a restaurant run by a family of sisters that make the best stuff in town. I knew about "the pepper pot" restaurant because it was shown on anthony bourdains show "no reservations"....... The town hasn't lost any charm to tourism. There aren't any tourists here. Everyone knew everyone else in the restaurant completely and totally. We felt a little out of place because we didn't know everyone in the place to say hi to when we walked in. We were also the only people who didn't order iced tea (out of about 20 people in the place). The journey didn't end there!!!! Last night we continued on south to white sands missile range and test facility. We took some great pics and went hiking barefoot on the white sand dunes. It was an amazing experience driving and playing in the dunes. The thermometer peaked at the hottest part of the trip so far right before we went hiking..... it was 107 degrees!

I was sweaty
and so was lauren

White sands was a lot like the badlands. I actually think I liked it better. It was a lot like a weird bleached out version of boars tusk dunes.


the really crazy stuff that you probably want to hear about was from a few days ago. Laur and I camped in a rocky BLM area away from the world. We went on about an hour hike before dusk and on the way back I stepped over a rock and the biggest spider i've ever seen outside of the zoo was right in front of me. It scattered and looked for a second like it was gonna run up my leg but instead just backed up and looked at me. It was crazy. I would guess it was 5-6" in diameter. I could hear each leg click as it walked over the rocks. Then we went back to camp...watched a beautifull sunset and as laur was getting ready to take a shower we both screamed "OUCH!!!! SOMETHING STUNG ME!!!! in unison. Kinda funny but also sucked. I turned on the flashlight and there were hundreds and hundreds of fire ants all around us in attack mode. My chair and the van were set up right on top of an ant hole and they dont come out till sundown. The sting hurt bad enough neither of us could go to sleep for about 4 hours. In the morning we packed up and high tailed it out of there.... on the way out there was about a 3 foot diamondback rattler that looked like it was dead on the road. It was laying flat on a tire track. When I got out to look at it ... it wasn't dead. It was alive. First time I've seen a lot of these things. We asked one of the locals about the tarantula. She said she had seen them walking across the highway before but never been up close to one. I guess they are sorta rare.

Our only other exciting experience was going to the hippy dips and hiking around Jemez. We ran into some nudists and it was funny.

AS always ... continuing to meet cool and exciting people everywhere we go. Having fun.