Month: August 2012

I was in a bad way yesterday, desperate to just get away. I packed the minimal gear I needed to go hiking in some form and hopped on the bike, headed for Skagway, but was unsure what it was exactly that I needed. It was cold when I left...

My Road Scholar tour has been over for 3 days now, but I want to catch up for those of you who were following along. We began Monday morning with a drive up the Midnight Dome, elevation 2,911 feet, or 1,860 feet above Dawson City. The morning light is...

Yesterday we made the fairly short but spectacular drive from Tok, Alaska to Dawson City, Yukon. We were away from Tok at 08:30, and an hour later made our first rest stop below Mount Fairplay on the Taylor Highway. At 10:20 we reached Chicken, and the post office was...

Over the last couple of days we’ve traveled from Healy to Fairbanks and had a look around that city, then continued on back to Tok, where we stayed last night. We arrived at Golden Heart Park in Fairbanks just before 11:00 am on Friday. This statue is called The...

Yesterday we took an 11-hour bus trip to Wonder Lake in the heart of Denali Park. While the scenery is always spectacular and I love seeing any animals up close, it’s the grizzly bears that make or break a trip for me. From that narrow perspective, yesterday was a...

I’m now 2 days behind on my posts, so I’m going to post these photos with little commentary. On Tuesday we took a 6-hour boat tour into Kenai Fjords National Park, and these photos, posted in the order they were shot, show some of the highlights of the day....

We got off to a very early start from the Mountain Sky Suites Hotel at Valdez on Monday, with luggage out and a continental breakfast served at 05:00. Check-in and boarding the ferries is an increasingly lengthy process even in a quiet port on a little 40-vehicle ferry such...

Yesterday our route took us on a route that is “off the beaten track,” from Tok to Valdez. In the early and mid 1990s I used to take tours to Valdez regularly, but haven’t been there in years, and I see few itineraries that include it. Most people like...

Dawn light on the Kluane Mountains from our motel at Haines Junction yesterday morning at 06:55. Most of the folks walked over to The Village Bakery while I drove the rest over in the bus. It started raining lightly a few minutes after we arrived, and the rain got...

I’m back on the road again, this time as Group Leader for a 15-day tour of the Yukon and Alaska for a company newly returned to the region, Road Scholar. I worked for them many years ago when they came north as ElderHostel, and it’s great to see them...