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.

all aska tour.....2010

then we crossed into canada and went to the waterton park..canada part of glacier.

this is prince of wales historic hotel..kinda like the old faithful inn canadian version.

everyone was dressed scottish...

we saw lots of glacier melt falls, and the suddenly our pulse motorhome reproduced!!!

heard about the scary animals you are seeing 7 and laur

we are now in calgary.

as always

dad

all aska tour.....2010

i am splitting this entry as i am having trouble loading it at mcdonalds

well, we arrived at glacier, and then as lynda pointed out we had a "chevy chase" moment as we found out that the main attraction...the road to the sun...was closed.

oops...would have been nice of them to mention that when i talked to the park people the week before from nebraska.

we still saw some neat things ..like this watefall from a melting glacier

montana pics

here is an entry in the notebook... as you can see, its just a spiral regular notebook....

muh hee co!!! and nyc day uno

Hello everyone!!! Our trips are now over, so I might extend our postings about NYC over the course of a few days or week.
We just got home from honeymoon part 2. But, there is lots to do so this post may be short. We'll start with mexico...it was AMAZING!! Barrett and I definitely want to go back someday. The pools were like hot tubs, everyone was nice, and the food and room were wonderful. It was like paradise. We relaxed and truly enjoyed each other for a stretch of 24/7. You guys have already seen the pics and heard the stories so I will just post the highlights of that portion of the honeymoon.

After getting home, we basically repacked and left for honeymoon part 2. We made great time and got to NYC in about 9.5 hours. We ate dinner at Luke's Bar and Grille which Gary recommended and it was delicious! Then we went back to the apartment to plot out our week. I think we

did a pretty good job!

We woke up Tuesday

and headed to downtown Brooklyn and started in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which were massive. They were free on Tuesdays and definitely worth the visit! We then ate at a diner which was tasty and wa

lked some more through Brooklyn. After that we hopped the subway to Coney Island. It was entirely different from anywhere else around the city!

The amusement park was right next to a board walk that lined up with the beach. We road the Ferris wheel which was the largest in the world when it was built in 1919. Very fun! Then we walked along the boardwalk and beach and up to the end of a peer. It was a fun afternoon! Then we went back to time square and got tickets at the half price ticket booth for west side story! We got the tickets at 6:30 and the show started at 7 so we walked across the street and went to the show. Below is a picture of our view of the stage. The seats were very good! Neither of us really knew the story line which made it all the more exciting! The music and singing was awesome and I'm really glad we got to see it! That's all for now! I'll discuss day 2 of NYC when I feel inspired!

the all aska tour 2010

well, yesterday was a lot of fun and very interesting as we toured the custer battlefield site. its about 5 miles long and there was fighting along a long ridge and valley.

after the tour of the area, you really get the flow of the battlefield and what happened.

then we hit this site in the middle of no where. they had a nice little note book where you signed in and said whatever you wanted to....i ask lynda how often she thought they had to change notebooks....she guessed once a year....nope...same notebook since 1993! last one to sign before me was june 6th.

thats right ....we are hitting ALL the hot spots.

hopefully both kids will get something in here soon.

dad
pics didn't load...will try in a seperate post

all aska tour.....2010

well, we are in our favorite place...the wallmart parking lot.

just stocked up on enough stuff to get us to canada and back without buying any food.

most will likely rot under the motorhome.....

bought the 205 widescreen garmin so we could look for campsites on backroads...the

gps we have now doesn't seem to go off road very well.

barrett and trilly..it will come your way!

this sorry town we went through had some real american small town desolation going on....

off to glacier today..don't know if we will make it today or tommorow.......

still rolling along and having fun

jim and lynda

greetings from Santa Fe

hello there.... been a few days. Lauren and I are alive and well in Santa Fe, NM. Camping has been scarce last few nights. Food here is amazing. We are learning to order like the locals and say "Christmas" when we get food so we get both red and green chile. Laur and I had an awesome campsite a few nights ago for our anniversary. We camped at 9800 ft and cooked tacos for dinner. Last night was high again and we cooked chicken. Haven't done much hiking yet except around Santa Fe. there is tons of awesome pottery here and we have enjoyed just walking around exploring the shops. In the main square there is an arts festival going on. We are planning to head out of town tonight and look for some good camping and hiking about an hour west in Jemez Springs.

THe other town we went to and loved was Manitou Springs, CO. We tasted water from each of the springs which was sort of horrible. They tasted like flavored carbonated water. Each flavor was a different dose of awful. We went to some art galleries and had pizza for lunch. We also ran into our old buddy Floyd who has the airstream and knows all the secret boondock spots. He hooked us up last year. We saw him again and he sent us above woodland park on a dirt road. Another cool guy we met in Manitou was at a custom guitar shop where they make cripple creek guitars. I played for a while and it was probably one of the best guitars I"ve ever had my hands on. It sounded and felt really good.

Last but not least we went to the local King Soopers (or as everyone back east calls it "KROGER") and stocked up on mountain dew throback!!!!! Now the vacation is really underway.

elevation 7100 ft
temp 93
not a cloud in the sky

2010 all aska tour enters wyoming

well, we are in casper...

castle rock and nebraska are behind us ...a LOT of driving north is ahead of us.

7 and lauren are in santa fe with dead air cond on the mini rv

trill and barrett are going to jersey boys tonight in nyc...they will post later

as they have no internet there

all aska tour.....

sitting in the front yard blogging..

trill and barrett hit wicked last night...lauren is whineing right now....i wanna go again....

its not too bad here in nebraska...they are having statewide FLOODING if you can

believe that....

trill and barrett get posting!

dad

day three...nebraska

well here we are in nebraska on our second day of the aska states tour.

only one more aska state to hit and we will be done...althogh i guess it it quite a drive there...

just helping do paperwork here etc,

all the kids are having fun, while dad works as usual.....

love, dad

Smelly

Day 3 - Denver

Camped in Walmart again last night... we met some cool people and went to an awesome mexican restaurant with the best chile i've ever had. My back is going nuts from all the driving but i think it will loosen up when we start hiking and stuff. We got here about 630 last night and were trying to get to red rocks ampatheater for a showing of the princess bride. It just didn't work out. Van is doing great..... we are already starting to look at options to put in a deep cycle battery and fan for sleeping at night!

Today is a big day... we are going to camping world, rei, and red rocks. Then booking it to the boonies (blm or national forest) for the night.... We should be camping for real this evening. I am trying to ask around town for good secret boondock spots. No luck so far..... I need to find just the right person.

We get to shower tonight!!! YAY!!!

current temp: 68
trip odometer: 1308 miles
elevation: 5511 feet

day one and 2 ...dad

we got off late but 7 thought we passed him and was getting out west first.

talked to 7 and lauren and trilly and barrett all day long as we traveled.

slept in a rest stop..then tues morning headed out for kearney, while 7&l headed
for denver.

tril and barrett were going to west side story tonight!!!! great seats too.

sitting in the mcdonalds parking lot blogging like a pro.

don't know how long we will be here helping gran ma hall

love you all

dad

Too flat

Day 2

Nothing too exciting on the first day.. we drove to Kansas City, MO and camped in the Walmart parking lot. I woke up at 6:00 and started driving again. Lauren and I both need a shower... we are driving to denver today ... hoping to make it by 530 tonight. right now we are at a Mcdonalds in Topeka. We might be trying to go to the Brown vs. Board of education Historical site in a few minutes. I would say "we're not in Kansas anymore todo".... but I think we will be in Kansas for another 8 hours : (



Denver or bust!

miles so far: 745
current temp: 73
Elevation: 925 feet