Goodby Alaska, Hello Again Canada
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We missed a sow grizzly by seconds. According to volunteers, something spooked her up on to the road just before our arrival. We saw her still wet paw prints in the road after we rounded a corner. I sure am glad we weren’t there when she burst out of the brush, scared for her cubs and soon to become mad at innocent us! All we saw at the site was a few bushes rustling. All this time in the far north, and not one grizzly sighting. Maybe the wet paw prints were more exciting than seeing her from the protection of a raised viewing platform. Read the rest of this article…

Our Best Anniversary Present Ever
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Claire and I looked at each other. We both had tears in our eyes. It was our twentieth anniversary, and we were witnessing the beginning of the end of a young marriage. It didn’t take words between us to know what we would do. Read the rest of this article…

On the road to, and in, Dinali National Park
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By noon our mountain bikes were loaded and we were off. The traffic was not bad, the hills fairly long. We saw the mountain (hooray!), two caribou, a family of ptarmigan, a snowshoe hare, and a huge set of grizzly tracks. We arrived at Sanctuary River with plenty of time to organize our camp and stow our food safe from bears, and from attracting bears. No bears. Read the rest of this article…

What is a Boondock? Why do we do it?
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This is a direct photo through the windshield of our motorhome, Turtle, of The Mittens in Monument Valley, Arizona. I doubt there is a very expensive RV resort, or Five Star hotel, that could offer an equal view. This was a no service parking spot on the Navajo reservation. Boondock spots (sometimes called dry camping) are free, but we paid $5 for this one. I’d say $5 is close enough to free to qualify. Read the rest of this article…

Character(s) at The End of the Road, Homer, Alaska
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After a good hard bike ride up East End Road out of Homer, we decided to celebrate the rare sunshine with ice cream for a late lunch. We bought a carton at Fred Meyer’s and took it outside to their … Read the rest of this article…

Midnight Sun Blues
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There is something about the light here this past week: soft and heavy and long nearly through the night; long and soft and ineffectual. I find it vaguely depressing, sometimes not so vaguely. An hour of blessed sunshine makes it worse, knowing it will go away and take the mountains and the spectral highlights, the sparkle, with it. The sun, slow to come, always going away, soon. I know I shouldn’t feel this way about the North. I feel guilty about, which doesn’t help any. All the beauty; moose, bears, lakes, mountains, and still snow patches and sometimes glaciers. But the light is just not there, just not right, yet.

There were days during the months we spent in Iceland
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Alaska Summer Camp, Deadman Lake.
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Not long after entering Alaska from Yukon Territory, Claire found a small lake with free camping through the Escapees listings. It was a short drive down a narrow dirt road, just small enough to keep out the big RVs. We were fairly early in the day and got the best lakeside site. We saw quite a few birds, Claire heard a loon, and I saw a pair of tundra swans patrolling the shore. Read the rest of this article…