States – Page 26 – Our RV Trip

Grand Canyon National Park

By Jennie Simpson | November 10, 2015

The Grand Canyon measures 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and more than one mile deep. That’s big. We spent a week exploring what Theodore Roosevelt declared as “the one great sight which every American should see.”

The Grand Canyon is split in to the North Rim and the South Rim. We only visited the South Rim on this visit.

Before we get into what we did, let me explain how the GCNP is laid out. The GCNP South Rim is basically split up into two parts. On the east side, you have the Desert View Drive that you can use your own vehicle to get around (except for Yaki Point and the South Kaibab Trailhead). The west side is where you’ll find the Village, Market Plaza, the Visitor Center and some campgrounds and is mainly navigable by shuttle bus. There are a few places you can drive in the Village and Market Plaza, but Hermit Road is shuttle bus only. You can get the gist of it in the map above.

Our first day at the GCNP we decided to check out the east side of the park and the Desert View Drive where we headed out to the Desert View Watchtower. It was built in 1932 and looks old, but it was designed to look that way so it would add to the ambiance of the Grand Canyon experience.

The view off of the balcony of the Watchtower gives you a great view of the Colorado River snaking it’s way through the canyon.

There’s really not a bad view anywhere here. This is at one of the other stops on Desert View Dr. I don’t remember which one…they all kind of run together after a while.

This is one of my favorite shots because you can see the Colorado River and if you look very carefully, you can see the Desert View Watchtower on the right hand side toward the top of the cliff.

I really love the colors here.

We’re going to let y’all in on a secret place not many people know about. Ok, it’s not really a secret…but not many people know about it. This is the Grandview Watchtower. It’s not in the GCNP but it’s right on the edge in the Kiabab National Forest. We went here right at sunset and had the whole place to ourselves.

The view was spectacular. We could see some of the canyon, but the coolest part was the way the forest stretched out forever.

On the west side of the park it’s best if you arrive early and secure a parking spot then utilize the free shuttle buses for the rest of the day. We spent one day and hit everything we wanted on the west side.

You can expect more great views. It’s harder to catch a glimpse of the Colorado River on the east side. There are helicopters all over the place. You might even find one in the picture above, if you look close enough. It kind of gives you some perspective on how big the Grand Canyon is.

We rode the shuttle all the way to Hermits Rest and the end of the road.

Inside the Hermits Rest building you’ll find a curio shop along with a snack shop. This is also where you’ll find the Hermit Trailhead. It’s one of the steepest, most strenuous trails and they warn everyone that it will take around nine hours to make the seven mile hike…if you’re in decent shape. We walked around the area and took in the views.

Just outside of the Yavapai Point Geology Museum, you can actually see one of only two bridges that cross the Colorado River in GCNP for the hikers who brave the trails. You can also see Phantom Ranch. In the picture above, on the right side you can see the bridge and then on the left side in that green spot, is the Phantom Ranch. What is Phantom Ranch? Well, it’s a place for hikers to stay overnight on the canyon floor in a lodge. You can get hot, fresh food and a shower before sleeping in an actual bed. You can, of course, bring your own tent and food.

You can see the Colorado River from a couple of places on the east side.

One of the neatest places you’ll find on the east side is The Lookout. It was built right on the side of the canyon and offers a great view.

You can also stay in the nearby town of Williams, AZ and ride the train into the park. For almost a quarter of a century, the railroad provided the most comfortable way to get to the Grand Canyon. Built in 1901, the Grand Canyon Railroad Depot is still in use today and is right in the middle of the Village where passengers can find lodging and shuttle buses.

Did you know there’s a cemetery at the GCNP? I didn’t. We heard about it from one of the shuttle bus drivers and went to check it out.

I thought there would only be really old graves like the one in the picture above. Rustic and old. But there were some newer graves too. We walked through to look at some of the more unique tombstones.

There are five hiking trails at the South Rim. Only five. Now, of these five, four are considered to be strenuous and two of those four are so long they warn you about trying to do the trail all in one day. The South Kaibab and the Bright Angel trails are the two trails that will take you all the way into the canyon to the river. For us, hiking some of the trails in a park is kind of a must so, we hiked part of three of the trails. More than 250 people are rescued from the canyon each year because they over estimate how in shape they are and under estimate how long it will take them to hike back out of the canyon. If you decide to hike there, know your limits and plan accordingly.
The first trail we hiked was the South Kiabab Trail. We did this one in the afternoon when it was the hottest part of the day, but that’s when we had time to do it and we didn’t want to miss out.

Pretty early on the trail we found this sign. We already knew mules used the trail from the…smell. Some parts of the trail were worse than others. The boys thought they were going to pass out from the stench of all of the scat left behind by the mules. It was pretty ripe.

South Kiabab Trail is the most direct route to the canyon floor. Do you know what that means? It’s steep and strenuous. For me this trail was harder than Bright Angel because of the way the trail was laid out with all of these steep “steps”. You can see a few of the more gradual steps in the picture above.

Here’s another shot of all of the “steps”.

To be fair…the trail wasn’t all like that. Some of it was nice and smooth with a more gradual incline.

We only went to Ooh-Aah Point which is about a two mile round trip hike. At the point you can walk out onto some rocks to get to the view.

It was a great view. It only took us about a half an hour to get there and it was worth the effort.

It took us an hour to get back out of the canyon. Can you spot the trail in the picture above? That cliff is the way out.

Here, let me zoom in for you. Can you see the tiny people walking up the side of the cliff now?

The other big hike we did was Bright Angel Trail. We did this one early in the morning when it was still mostly in shade and the temps were still low.

There are two tunnels on Bright Angel. This one is the upper tunnel.

And this one is the lower tunnel. This is as far as we went on Bright Angel. It made for about a two mile round trip hike.

Here’s the view from the lower tunnel.

You could see quite a bit of the trail from the lower tunnel. It was mostly in the shade and was more of a smooth, gradual decent.

We kept marveling at the way the trees grew out of the side of the canyon wall. Littlest took this shot on the way back up the Bright Angel Trail.

We were racing the sun to get out of the canyon. We didn’t have too much sun. We made better time on this trail. I think it only took us a little over an hour to do it. I can see why it’s the Grand Canyon’s most popular trail. We would have liked to have been able to hike more of Bright Angel, but we had an extremely full day planned and we were running out of time to get everything done.

The third trail we hiked was some of the Rim Trail. This trail will take you from the Grand Canyon Village all the way to Hermit’s Rest and is the South Rim’s only above-rim hiking trail. We hiked this trail between Hopi point and Mohave Point (just shy of a mile) instead of waiting for the shuttle bus. It was a nice flat-ish hike that stayed right by the canyon edge. We enjoyed it and if we’d had another full day to spend at the GCNP we would’ve hiked some more of the rim trail.

We also did an Astronomy Ranger Walk. It was one of my favorite things we did while at the GCNP. We met Ranger Mike in front of the Visitor Center at 8PM and he took us on an hour long walk along the rim of the canyon where we saw the brightest, best Milky Way we’ve ever seen. We learned about stars and planets and we got to hear some very cool stories about the park from a Ranger who’s worked there for over twenty years. Ranger Mike had the best laser pointer I’ve ever seen. All of the boys (all four of them) immediately wanted a laser pointer like Ranger Mike’s.

The Colorado River looked very different on the east side than the west side. Above you can see the pretty blue water of the east side.

And…here’s the murky, muddy water of the west side. Big difference, right?

This was the busiest park we’ve been to so far. There were tons of people everywhere. And 90% of them weren’t speaking English. Maybe that’s just an off season thing?

So many of the people we saw were climbing out as far as they could to the edge of the canyon for a selfie. I’m really surprised we didn’t see anyone fall.

Are you wondering where the pictures of the flowers are? Y’all know how I am about flowers…

I realize they’re weeds, but I couldn’t pass up the bright purple.

These are Mexican Cliffroses.

The Mexican Cliffrose does something very different when it goes to seed. Check out those feathery seeds! So cool!

Yup, it’s another weed, but I really liked the bright pink of the bud with the brown and all of those thorns.

We saw tons of wildlife at GCNP. The Dude (our middle son) is going to start doing Wildlife Watch posts so I’ll let him tell you about the wildlife we saw.

The boys ended up with the GCNP badge, a Paleontology badge, and an Astronomy patch.

I like to keep it real for y’all so I’m going to be very honest here. The Grand Canyon National Park will probably never be on my top ten list of National Parks. It was big…it had nice views…but it was a lot of the same view for me. We felt like we couldn’t really immerse ourselves in the park. Maybe it was all the hype…maybe we were expecting more? It’s on pretty much everyone’s bucket list for a reason and you should go see it at least once. We do plan on visiting the North Rim eventually. We enjoyed the view, but if we ever go back it will be to hike into the canyon and stay overnight at Phantom Ranch before hiking out.

See y’all down the road!

Pizza Round Up Fireweed

By Littlest | November 6, 2015

This time we are reviewing a good pizza place in Haines, AK named Fireweed.

Fireweed has burgers, calzones, salads, seafood and pizza.

Decor was cool but it was really crowded.

The pizza was really good, but nothing special.

Service was okay and it took forever to get in, get someone’s attention, and get out. The bathrooms were clean, but I’m giving Fireweed a 3.5 star review.

See you next time on Pizza Street!

Valley of Fire State Park

By Jennie Simpson | November 3, 2015

We spent a day visiting the Valley of Fire State Park while we were in the Las Vegas area. It was well over 100° the day we went. We’d planned on doing some hikes, but once we got there…it was just too hot so we stuck to the scenic road and saw as much as we could.

We spent the week before this exploring Death Valley National Park and to be honest, I really thought Valley of Fire would be pretty much the same kind of stuff we’d been looking at. It wasn’t. You drive into the park and boom! There’s this bright red rock everywhere! It was pretty neat. The formation above is called The Beehive. You can see why with all of the holes in it.

These little ground squirrels were everywhere and they weren’t too shy.

In the photo above, you can see some of the petroglyphs at Atatl Rock. We saw quite a few petroglyphs in this park. It was really something to walk along and look at all of the ancient graffiti and wonder why the Indians chose that spot and what they were really trying to convey?

This is Arch Rock. We drove by it and missed it. It took us a bit to actually see it because it was up higher than what we thought it would be. There were several arches throughout the park, but this is probably the biggest one we saw.

We almost missed this kit fox relaxing in the shade. He looked up as we passed and I caught sight of his ears and Jerl backed up. We had two cameras going and probably took twenty pictures of him and he just sat there watching us like we were paparazzi or something.

I love a good scenic vista.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at a rock formation called The Seven Sisters where the park had some covered tables set up. We had this whole side to ourselves.

We may or may not have dropped a few peanuts…and the ground squirrels may or may not have gotten them.

So, the rocks were neat…the vistas were grand…but my favorite thing at Valley of Fire SP is the area with the cabins. These cabins were built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps for travelers to use as shelter along the Arrowhead Trail.

There’s a small fireplace in each cabin.

We were the only ones in the cabin area for quite some time and we thoroughly enjoyed exploring it.

While we were hiking up to Elephant Rock I turned around and caught sight of this vista. I love those “oh, wow” moments.

And…this is Elephant Rock. Can you see it?

On the way home we stopped by Lake Mead and the boys got a Junior Ranger Badge. The Visitor Center was trying to close when we got there, but the Ranger was nice enough to let the boys mostly finish their workbooks and get their badge before kicking us all out.

Our last stop of the day was Hoover Dam. We didn’t take a tour of it…we just walked across the bridge and enjoyed the view. It was probably the windiest bridge I’ve ever been on! Oh, my goodness!! It about blew my hair right off of my head and pushed me along the walkway. The boys thought it was funny and we all laughed about it as we ran back to the car.

See y’all down the road!

Las Vegas, NV

By Jennie Simpson | October 29, 2015

Fabulous Las Vegas. We spent a week in the area and did our best to experience everything we could.

On our very first afternoon in the area we drove down The Strip and on the first big billboard I see…Elvis. Oh Lordy. Littlest and I are huge Elvis fans thanks to my mom. I grew up with Elvis music in the house and have passed that on to Littlest. I’m listening to his smooth, crooning voice as I write this post.

Elvis seems to be everywhere in Vegas. If he slept there, ate there, or graced an establishment with his presence at all, it’s advertised for all to see.

We spent one afternoon walking around The Strip and that was enough. We didn’t get to see everything, but I’m not sure I could talk anyone into going back with me. It’s not really our scene…too many people, too much noise, too…adult for kids. The boys learned not to reach out and take anything someone is trying to hand you. That’s a big nope in some places.

We parked at The Cosmopolitan. Yea for free parking! Even the parking garages in Vegas are decorated. You can see just one of the many murals that can be found in the parking garage in the photo above. We had to walk all the way through the casino to get to The Strip. Once we found our way through, we went to the Bellagio to catch the first fountain show of the day.

The Bellagio Fountains were really neat. We took in the show then headed to The Buffet at Aria.

We got lost a few times trying to find it…the casinos are more like miniature cities, but we finally found it.

We did a ridiculous amount of research before picking a buffet. We finally settled on the one at Aria. It had good reviews and wasn’t the most expensive thing on The Strip. Everything I had was really good, there was a nice selection, but not as much as what I thought there would be. We all ate way too much, then headed back out to explore.

We eventually found our way out of Aria. We ended up seeing the inside of a few different casinos, and I do believe I like Aria the best. And not just because it had huge cakes on display…although, that was a definite plus.

The Aria felt more family friendly. Not to the point you thought you were at a kids place, but it had a nice balance of elegance mixed with some whimsical touches like the butterfly hot-air balloon in the picture.

We walked quite a bit of The Strip and I was the quintessential tourist the whole time with my camera in front of my face more often than not. I won’t put all of the photos up, but I’ll share with you our favorites. We loved the fun outside of the M&M World store.

Inside there was a really great mural that showed the progression of the M&M characters through the years.

They sure have changed.

The store has four floors. We never made it past the second floor where the wall of M&Ms is found. What you see in the picture above isn’t even half of the wall. I got a sugar rush from just standing there looking at them. Littlest wanted to buy an M&M dispenser, but we couldn’t figure out where we would put it in the RV. We have one more day in this area…if we can figure something out, we might try to talk Jerl into going back.

We got to see the big bronze MGM Lion. Did you know he weighs 100,000 pounds? That is one big kitty!

The boys liked Excalibur with its castle spires and turrets.

New York, New York was really neat with its skyline and roller-coaster.

As the afternoon turned into evening the street acts came out. Littlest and I could have spent hours listening to all the musicians.

We ran into Darth Vader. He was nice enough to pose for a picture or two. There were a ton of characters out and about.

We stayed to see the lights. They were magical.

We stopped back by the Bellagio Fountains for one more show on our way back to our car.

The Cosmopolitan was glitzier and more glamorous. It was all lit up as we walked back through to our parking garage.

Las Vegas was definitely a different kind of experience for us. The boys had never really been in a city like it. Vegas was one of those destinations I was looking forward to, but at the same time not looking forward to. It might have been less stressful without the boys in tow. We couldn’t really even go into souvenir shops without some highly inappropriate sights.

I think Vegas was probably a one and done type of thing for us.

See y’all down the road!

Death Valley National Park

By Jennie Simpson | October 20, 2015

Hottest, Driest, Lowest…Welcome to Death Valley National Park! Situated on the California/Nevada border, Death Valley is known for it’s extremes and oddities. We spent one whole day and four partial days exploring DVNP. Near mile marker 10 as you drive into DVNP from Beatty, NV you get to experience what they call Hell’s Gate. You can roll down your windows and stick your hand out the window and feel the temp outside raise by 10 to 20 degrees within a 3 mile stretch of road.

We like to stop at the Visitor Center first to get up-to-date info on the park. While we were there the little boys took the opportunity to grab another Junior Ranger Badge. We were lucky they were still doing the summer program and they were able to fulfill all the requirements in the air conditioned center.

Outside the Furnace Creek Visitor Center was a tad bit hot. Just a bit.

We visited Badwater Basin and stood 282 feet below sea level.

Badwater expands clear across the valley floor to the base of the Panamint Range. It’s quite something to stand out there and see the seemingly endless salt flats stretch out all around you.

We got to Badwater just before sunset and we watched as the sun dipped below the mountains. The heat in the valley instantly felt cooler. It’s quite something to look up into the Amargosa Mountains and see a “Sea Level” sign a few hundred feet above the ground.

Can you believe I even found flowers in the desert? They were gorgeous and something I’d never seen before. I probably took a dozen pictures of the same cluster of flowers.

Day two started with a castle. Scotty’s Castle. Walter Scott was a popular entertainer in Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West” show before he became known as Death Valley Scotty. He told tall tales of gold, took peoples money, then he spent it all on everything but mining for the promised gold. One of Scotty’s investors, Albert Johnson, found out about the dupe. Instead of being mad Johnson became friends with Scotty and even built the castle you see in the pic above in DVNP where Scotty was a regular visitor.

There are tours you can take of the inside, but we didn’t. We spent about an hour just roaming around the grounds.

Scotty’s Castle is unlike anything we’d seen. It seemed to fit perfectly with the desert it was built in.

In the visitor center at Scotty’s Castle, you can see a 1914 Packard seven passenger touring car. This is the way people used to get around DVNP.

Down the road, you can even see faint tracks left from the tour cars. If you look just under the sign in the photo above, you’ll see two tracks left over from a tour car.

The Harmony Borax Interpretive Trail was short and hot. It told of life in DV for the borax miners and the twenty mule teams they used to pull carts around.

After a quick picnic, we made it to The Devil’s Golf Course. Littlest thought he was being funny, taking a picture of me as I took a picture of him. At The Devil’s Golf Course, crystallized minerals reacting with groundwater have lifted themselves into tightly packed ridges reaching up to two feet high.

We walked the quarter mile trail to Natural Bridge. It was late afternoon and temps were soaring. We tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. As hot as it was in the sun (we could feel the sting of the sun on our skin), it wasn’t too bad in the shade.

Artist’s Drive is one of my favorites in DVNP. We actually drove it twice because the first time was just after the sun set and we wanted to see the color in full sun. You can see Artist’s Pallet in the photo above.

The colors of the desert were amazingly vivid. I took more pictures than I will ever need.

We had the chance to explore not one but two ghost towns! The easiest to get to was Rhyolite. You can see one of the abandoned houses in the photo above.

We walked past several crumbling buildings.

It’s kind of sad, really. To think of the families that used to live there and the hardships they must have gone through. Several buildings from Rhyolite were moved to the nearby town of Beatty.

We spent almost four hours navigating the Titus Canyon drive. It’s a one way 26.8 mile dirt road that winds it’s way through the Grapevine Mountains, past a ghost town, and through Titus Canyon.

The vistas were simply amazing. You can see our winding road in the pic above.

The second ghost town was called Leadville. 300 people lived here between August 1926 and February 1927. There’s a spot you can pull of the road and walk around the ruins. We wandered around for a bit and headed on down the road. We were racing the sun. I didn’t want to be on the narrow dirt road in the dark.

Here’s another shot of the wonderful colors of the desert. We’d just left Leadville when we came upon this sight.

We spotted our first snake. It was small and fast as it slithered it’s way across the road and up the side.

Titus Canyon with it’s limestone cliffs.

We could try to tell you how tall the canyon walls are…but you know what they say…”a picture’s worth a thousand words”. The last 1.5 miles of the canyon are pretty narrow, in some places the walls are less than 20 feet apart.

On our last afternoon we headed to Zabriskie Point. There’s a short walk up a paved path to get to the view.

The point was nice…but this two tone formation was more interesting to me.

We drove through Twenty Mule Team Canyon on another dirt road. It was short and we took the time to climb up on a small rock to play with shadows. The boys thought it was too hot to get out so they waited in the car…I think they’d had all of DVNP that they could handle.

Our last stop in DVNP was atop Dante’s View. You can see Badwater Basin in all its glory.

On our ride back to the RV one evening, we stopped at Ash Meadows for a super quick drive through. Ash Meadows is a National Wildlife Refuge that covers over 23,000 acres of spring-fed wetlands in the middle of a desert.

We were losing light fast so we didn’t get to see much, but what we saw was really pretty.

See y’all down the road!

Carson City, NV

By Jennie Simpson | October 14, 2015

We made it to Nevada! You can’t get much different from Alaska than Nevada. Where Alaska is cool, lush, and green, Nevada is a hot, desolate desert. We’re loving it! We stayed in Carson City for a week. There’s not much to do in this area but we wanted to hit the Capitol City and a couple of other close-ish places.

The Nevada Capitol City Building is the smallest we’ve been in so far. In fact, I didn’t really take pictures of the inside. I snapped a couple pics of the marble floor that ran partially up the wall, but that’s really it. The outside of the building was more intriguing. We haven’t seen a Capitol Building made from sandstone. I did some digging and found out all of the sandstone for the building was obtained from the Nevada State Prison quarry.

The silver colored dome on top was also a unique touch. I liked walking around the grounds with its many trees and monuments, but I feel like it was lacking a little in the way it didn’t really feel like a Capitol Building. It felt more like a park with a pretty building that happened to be in it.

There were several casinos in the area, but for us…we were more interested in finding some good Mexican food! Something we’d been missing since we left the Missouri area.

Thanks to the internet, Jerl found two places he wanted to try. We stopped at El Paisano first.

The restaurant was small, everything was served on disposable plates, and the food was amazingly good!

And just like a true Mexican place, you had several choices for meat. Being the Foodies we are…it’s no great surprise our oldest got some of the…not so common meats. I believe he ended up with the pork stomach, beef head, and the beef tongue. He ate it all and went back for another taco.

The second place we tried was The Lady Tamales. Supposedly this place had the best tamales in town…how could we possibly pass that up?

This place did not disappoint. We all wolfed down our food and then got two dozen tamales to go. Yep, they really were that good!

This place not only had some of the best tamales we’ve ever had, it also had probably the best rice and beans. I would’ve gone back just for some more of the beans. Interestingly, neither of the places we ate at served chips and salsa the way we’re used to, but hey, when the food is that good…you don’t want to fill up on fluff before the main event.

We spent an afternoon in Reno to get some shopping done. New shoes and some groceries from the first Whole Foods we’d seen in months. We drove by the Reno Arch and The Strip on our way out of town.

We managed to fit in an afternoon at Lake Tahoe State Park! The little boys did the Junior Ranger program, but weren’t able to get a badge because all of the Rangers were at a wildfire that had popped up just that afternoon.

We walked around Sand Harbor.

Even in the late afternoon with a storm coming in, the water was beautiful.

We marveled at the big boulders sitting haphazardly all over the place.

We didn’t really get to spend as much time as we would have liked at Lake Tahoe, and someday, we plan on going back.

Carson City was a nice change for us. No overwhelming green…it never actually rained…and it was hot!

The boys even got to swim at the RV park pool!

See y’all down the road!

Alaska: Reflections from the Road

By Jennie Simpson | October 7, 2015

People call Alaska “The Last Frontier” and boy, they are not kidding. Everything from the locals to the wildlife in Alaska are rugged and wild. Our Alaskan summer is officially over and now that we’ve had time to reflect on everything that happened we thought we would do a review post for y’all. We’ve had several people ask about tips or how we planned our Alaskan summer so we sat down and tried to put it all down for you in a somewhat organized manner.

Before we even started to officially plan the Alaska portion of our RV trip, we knew we wanted to spend at least two months in Alaska and we really wanted to see the Northern Lights while we were there. We had read that the best time to travel to Alaska is between Memorial Day and Labor Day…so that gave us a time frame of June, July, and August. Since we wanted to try and see the Northern Lights we went with July and August…since it has to be dark to see the Northern Lights and summers in Alaska are known to be very…not dark. Once we had our time set, I started planning what exactly we wanted to do while in Alaska. What did we want to see, experience, do? The list was long. Really long. So, I had to narrow it down to the essentials and from there we had our areas within Alaska we would be staying. Most people do the Alaska Loop going from Fairbanks to Denali, Anchorage, Valdez, then up to Tok to head home. We, being the weirdos we are, did it in reverse. Our thinking was that if we saved Fairbanks for last which would be in August, we would have a better chance of seeing those elusive Northern Lights.

Our next step was to get The Milepost. If you only take one piece of advice from us, this needs to be it…get The Milepost! The Milepost was invaluable.
This is what our Milepost looks like. They come out with a new, updated one every year. So, what is The Milepost? Well, it takes the roads to Alaska and in Alaska and breaks it all down for you mile by mile. It tells you what the road conditions were like the last time they were there, any services available, and even goes so far as to educate you along the way about different interesting aspects of the route. I could find pull-offs beforehand and know whether or not it was double-ended, if it had a bathroom, and which side of the road it would be on. I suggest you get The Milepost in advance so you can go through and familiarize yourself with the way it’s laid out. I highlighted throughout mine and then sticky tabbed each drive so I could easily flip right to it. I found most of our RV parks from the Milepost. Speaking of RV parks…make sure you reserve. Seriously. There were so many times we would pull in and the spot we’d reserved was the only spot empty and there were people dry camping in the parking lot hoping for a spot to open. We’d never seen so many RVs in our lives! It really was insane how crowded most parks were. So plan ahead and reserve your spots!!

What I wish I’d known as I was planning is that the speed limit throughout Alaska is usually 55 mph and the distance between cities is often insanely long. We could quite literally drive for hours and not see another person. Alaska has twelve main highways, numbered 1-12. Most streets seemed to be named after mountains or animals…and presidents…with a lot of roads name Hidden this or Lost that. Quite a few parts of Alaska are only reachable via boat or plane, so when you’re planning your Alaskan vacation make sure to pay attention to whether or not there’s an actual road to your destination. Since we’re on the subject of roads…let me dish the dirt on the roads in Alaska. There are some very nice highways and then there are the towns where the main road is paved, but all of the side roads are dirt.

Road construction is a given in Alaska.

Expect it.

Accept it.

And be grateful to those willing to do it. The road crews in Alaska have a horrible time trying to keep up with the destruction the hard winters and permafrost due to the roads. It’s just one of those things. Keep your eyes peeled for frost heaves. They’re very cleverly hidden sometimes…or maybe we were just too busy looking at the amazing scenery or wildlife…whatever the reason, sometimes you’re going to miss seeing the frost heaves until you’re going over them. It can be scary. If they’re grouped just right, they’ll throw you in the air and by the time your back wheels get to the first one you’re bouncing and flailing pretty badly. You know how on a trampoline you can double bounce someone? It’s kind of like that. You get to bouncing along and the back end of the RV is double bouncing the front end. There are some experiments going on trying to help prevent frost heaves. I really hope they pan out.
There are many roads that aren’t paved. The road crew grades them, so what you’re left with is miles of washboards, potholes, and mud because they come through and water the roads. It makes for very slow going, but just slow down and take your time…you’ve made all of your RV park reservations, right?

This was something we saw quite a bit of. Wait for the pace-car…and wait we did…sometimes 20 or more minutes.

Bicyclers were another big road irritation. There were loads of these guys just willy-nilly on the roads. They were usually so laden down with gear they could barely pedal down the strait road in front of them let alone the huge hill coming up. And if the shoulder (when there was one) was unfit for a bike, well, they’d just stay in the lane. I don’t get the bikers. They really were a thorn in my side. Alaska is a wild place filled with animals and plants that want to eat you. Humans aren’t really on the top of the food chain there. I don’t understand why someone would willingly choose to put their lives in danger by biking across Alaska.

Are all roads in Alaska crap? No, not at all. They’re not stellar, you’re going to run into frost heaves, pot holes, and washboards. Just be aware. In the photo above, you can see the road was nicely paved, but there was an accident. People forget to watch where they’re going because the wild beauty of Alaska really is like throwing a squirrel in front of a group of dogs…it’s a huge distraction. And slow down…we heard horror stories of bolts being sheared right off and the insides of RVs breaking apart…I can only imagine it was because those drivers didn’t slow down.

We drove a LOT. Above is a map of exactly where we went in the RV, from the time we crossed into Canada in June, to when we crossed back into the Lower 48 in August. That’s over 5,620 miles in the RV!! This data is taken directly from our GPS unit, and shows all the gritty details. You can find a few places where we had to double back or re-route due to the GPS giving us questionable directions.

The weather in Alaska is a complicated topic. People want to know how to pack, right? Well, it really depends on where and when in Alaska you’re going. At night when we would watch the local weather man (I’m pretty sure all of the news and weather comes out of Anchorage), he would give the weather for all of Alaska. There would be reports of snow in the north to 70s in the south with everything in between. For us, we had to plan for it all. I can only talk about the one summer we spent there. We were told it was a dry hot summer and we didn’t mind at all. Usually, summer is the rainy season for most of Alaska, but we only experienced a handful of rainy days. We heard other travelers complain about being trapped inside for a week in Valdez because of the rain, but when we were there it was sunny and beautiful. Just the luck of the draw? Maybe. While we were in Alaska, we experienced everything from mid 70s during the day to low 40s at night. The best solution to this is layering. When you’re planning your Alaskan trip make sure there are some things you can do indoors on days that it’s rainy. We would save things like museums for those days.

Alaska is also known as “the land of the midnight sun”. We were in Alaska for two months and in that time, we never once had a completely dark night. It would get to about dusk and then the sun would rise again. The photo above was taken about at 10:30 pm. There are easy, cheap things you can do to make sure that you have a dark interior so you can sleep. We bought some blackout material at a fabric store, cut it to the size we needed and then using the 3M adhesive we were able to cover what we needed.

One of my biggest worries was being stuck in Alaska because of snow. If you’ve followed our blog along at all, you’ve seen the umpteen different photos of fireweed that I’ve posted. I might be a tad bit obsessed with it. Well, not only is fireweed pretty, the locals use it to let them know when winter is coming. No lie! And you know what? It totally works! In the photo above you can see fireweed. Notice it blooms from the bottom up.

Here’s a better picture. You can see that there are blooms on the bottom and still buds at the top.

As the season goes along, the fireweed blooms move up. When the last blooms fall off of the stem, you have about six weeks left of summer.

When the fireweed goes to seed…it’s time to get the heck out of Dodge! We had planned on staying two weeks in Fairbanks. It was our last stop before heading back down to the lower 48, but almost overnight the weather turned cold and we noticed that all of the fireweed had gone to seed.

Winter was coming.

We ended up leaving a week early and you know what? The week we would have been leaving…it snowed! Alaska had snow that whole week and it was even down into parts of Canada. No. Thank. You. Driving those mountains and roads on snow and ice…that’ll be a great big nope.

We get asked a lot what our favorites are so we made a few summary lists for you. I’m a lister…it’s what I do.

Animals Seen In The Wild:
Puffin, jelly fish, Dall porpoise, harbor seals, humpback whale.
Orca whale, fin whale, Dall sheep, caribou, grizzly bear, black bear, wolf.
Chipmunk, salmon, sea lion, Bald Eagle, moose, elk, ptarmigan.

Top Five Experiences:
Denali National Park bus ride
Kenai Fjords day cruise
Worthington Glacier
Gold Dredge No.8
Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center

Damage Report:
A flat on the trailer
A chip in the front window
Our smoker was totally destroyed

Places We Want To Go Back To:
Valdez
Denali
Palmer

Expenses. Alaska is not cheap. Everything there, and I do mean everything, is at least triple the cost you’re used to paying down here in the lower 48. Produce in most places is pretty horrible, which is weird considering the fact that Alaska grows some monster veggies. One of the biggest expenses for us during our visit was the price of the RV parks. They were extremely high compared to what we pay in the lower 48. In some cases, it was as much as two to three hundred dollars more for one week. But when you want to stay in that city…

Let’s talk about border crossings. We crossed the US/Canadian border six times on this trip. We were so nervous that they were going to have to search us (even though we had nothing to hide) or take our stockpiled food, but that just wasn’t our experience. We had no troubles at all. We found the Border Guards to be efficient and very professional. My advice…don’t try to take something across that you’re not supposed to. Don’t hide something…these guys have seen it all and know all of the hiding spots. On two crossings we had to drive through some kind of sensor. We could never get them to tell us what it was, but I’m guessing they were looking for hidden passengers.

We had the best summer. There are places we would go back to and places we wouldn’t. Now, having said that, I would do the entire trip again if it was my first time. There are just some places you only need to see once. Yes, Alaska is gorgeous. It is, for us, the Postcard State because we couldn’t find a bad view. We were surprised by how Hawaiian it felt in parts of Alaska…huge mountains with waterfalls all over the place…lush and green. Would we do anything differently? Maybe. I’d try to stay longer so we could have taken our time and enjoyed some of the other cities that we could only drive through. I would definitely have taken into consideration how long it takes to drive anywhere…maybe broken up the distances a little. If y’all decide to make the Ultimate Roadtrip and head up to “the final frontier” make sure you have a plan A and a plan B and then make a plan C. But most of all, slow down and be in the moment.

See y’all down the road!

Washington

By Jennie Simpson | September 30, 2015

We stayed in Washington for two weeks. We only did two things on our Washington list, but that’s ok…these two weeks were more about catching our breath after the long Alaskan Summer and the super long drive days through Canada to get back to the lower 48. We needed decompression time and we needed to get some maintenance/repairs done on the RV. The first thing we did once we crossed the US/Canadian border (after finding a spot for the night) was get some dinner. I don’t remember what the name of this place was…it was in Lynden, WA and it was good ole’ American food with good ole’ American prices!

I think this burger was called the There Can Never Be Too Much Cheese burger. It was amazingly good. We all got different things to eat, but I didn’t get pictures of anyone’s other than mine…we were too hungry and too tired to think of it.

The next day we headed to Olympia to check out the State Capitol Building.

It was very majestic, but then again…I do love the dome buildings with all of the columns.

We didn’t know until later that it’s supposed to be good luck to have your picture taken with this bust of Washington. The Little Boys are always up for being my models.

We found this huge tree right next to the Capitol Building.

We found the original Capitol Building called “The Castle”. I believe it’s aptly named.

This year (2015) commemorates the 35th Anniversary of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. We spent two days exploring Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. There are three sides of the volcano that you can explore and we hit things on all three sides.

The day we did the Johnston Ridge Observatory side of the volcano was rainy and cold.

We started with the Forest Learning Center where we got our first real look at what happened the day Mount St. Helens blew her top. The Center had a short video to watch that had actual footage of that day shot by a cameraman who was close to the blast zone but not right in it. We were able to read stories from the survivors.

We spent quite a bit of time in the Discovery Room at the Forest Learning Center. I love it when there are things for the kids to pick up. We learned a lot that day about the forests of Washington in general.

There was an actual helicopter at TFC that the boys could sit in and push all the buttons. They’re expert button pushers…

The Johnston Ridge Observatory is at the end of this road. We spent a good deal of time here exploring some of the hiking paths and listening to a Ranger Talk. The boys completed another Junior Ranger Program and got their eleventh badge.

This is an actual tree. They’ve moved it into the Observatory. There’s a plaque that talks about how the force of the blast snapped trees like matchsticks.

There’s also this really nice 3D model that explains what happened during the May 1980 eruption. There are colored lights that turn on and off as a recording explains the different stages of the blast.

You don’t need a sign to tell you that you’ve entered the blast zone…you can tell. It’s still obvious 35 years later.

The forests around Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument were replanted and helped along, but the land within the Monument has been (for the most part) left alone so that scientist can see how nature takes it’s course.

Because of this you can see trees laying right where they fell on that day back in 1980.

This was the best view we got of Mount St. Helens that day.

Some lakes, like the one above, were made because of the 1980 eruption.

The next weekend we went to the other two sides of Mount St. Helens. While I enjoyed the Johnston Ridge side, I like the other two sides better. There aren’t any big visitor centers like over at Johnston Ridge, but there are more scenic views and trails with interpretive signs.

This area is right at the edge of the blast zone. Not all of the trees were knocked over, but all of them were killed by the heat of the blast.

In the photo above you’ll see what they call Miner’s Car. The Pontiac belonged to a family who hiked to the Black Rock copper mine claim, about 8 miles from Mount St. Helens. On the morning of the eruption, Mount St. Helens released a 300 mph lateral blast of searing gas, ash, and rock that flattened the forest and took the lives of the family. The NP leaves the car where it is to remind people of the 57 people who lost their lives.

At the Meta Lake site, there’s a small trail down to the water. All along the trail are reminders of what happened.

Meta Lake was protected by a cover of mushy snow and ice when the blast came. The layer of snow and ice protected the small plants, bugs, and animals burrowed under it and by the next summer signs of life started returning to the mountain.

In a matter of seconds, the May 1980 eruption destroyed cabins, camps, and forests. The mud slide that came down the mountain plunged into Spirit Lake (seen above) causing the surface of the water to raise 200 feet and submerge the sites.

With the mudslide came thousands of trees felled by the blast. You can still see them on Spirit Lake. There are signs up warning people not to try to walk on them because they’ll plunge to the bottom.

At the Windy Ridge Interpretive Site, you can walk up the nearly 400 stairs (yes, we counted) to get a view of Spirit Lake and the Crater of Mount St. Helens.

It was cloudy this day too, but we got to see a little of the top and some of the glacier inside.

We sat in our car after climbing all of those stairs and had lunch. There was a big herd of Roosevelt Elk to watch while we ate. Elk were one of the first animals to come back to the mountain after the blast.

Here’s another picture of the edge of the blast zone and all of the dead trees still standing. If you look really closely toward the middle of the photo above, you can see an RV on the road. It kind of gives you a good idea of the size of the mountain.

Our next stop was Ape Cave. Ape Cave is a lava tube that was formed about 1,900 years ago. Ape Cave marks an unusual part of Mount St. Helen’s eruptive history. It was the only time in it’s 300,000 year existence the volcano erupted red, hot flowing lava (like what you can see in Hawaii). Mount St. Helen’s lava is thicker and doesn’t run…it’s more of an ooze.

Can you see the white stuff in the picture above? That is mold. Fungus. And it’s apparently really important to the cave. We saw signs not to touch it because it takes a long time to grow back. Ape Cave is the third longest lava tube in North America. It has a constant temp of 42°F and is pitch black. Complete and total darkness. We had planned ahead and brought some flashlights and some headlamps. We saw people walking around with just small dingy lights though. I wouldn’t suggest that…the floor isn’t smooth…it was made from lava and if you fall you can slice your hand open.

In the photo above, you will see Jerl and Alex looking at “The Meatball”. Yup. The Meatball. What the heck is The Meatball? Well, it a chunk of round lava that fell from the ceiling while lava was still flowing through the cave. The chunk floated on the surface of the lava and was carried downstream until it got wedged in the narrow spot you can see it in today.

I didn’t really know what to expect with The Trail of Two Forests. When we got there, it was raining and we were the only people silly enough to still hike it. But it was on a boardwalk, so it wasn’t bad at all. At the Trail of Two Forests you get to walk among casts of old-growth trees buried by lava 1,900 years ago during one of Mount St. Helens previous eruptions.

In the photo above you can see a tree cast or mold. The lava would flow around the tree and catch the trees on fire and then the trees would burn up. Over time, the charcoal left by the burning tree erodes away leaving behind a cast or mold of the tree. There’s a set of these molds that make a tunnel called “The Crawl” where you can actually crawl through the tunnel to an exit.

You can see the lava bed all around the ancient forest.

It’s really pretty neat. We only had two days to explore this area. I would have loved to spend another two so we could’ve taken our time and done a few more hikes. I wanted to do the Lava Canyon hike, but we didn’t make it there this time. Luckily, we’ll be back to Washington to do the rest of the stuff on our list!

We drove in and out of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest during our Mount St. Helens explorations. I had to get a shot of this sign so y’all could see how the moss grows on everything in this part of Washington. It’s really everywhere. We’d originally planned on staying in Washington for a month or more to do our entire list for the WA state, but after Alaska…we were kind of done with cool, wet, and green. So, we decided to head South for the winter.

I wanted to share the only splash of color in the sea of green… This was a flower farm. I’m hoping to make it back to Washington in the Spring to see all of the tulips!

See y’all down the road!!

Fairbanks, AK Part Two

By Jennie Simpson | September 17, 2015

Fairbanks is different from all of the other Alaskan towns we’ve been to. It’s not so tourist, there aren’t gift shops on every corner and there’s really not much to do. We did everything “touristy” in Fairbanks in one day. It was a full, long day, but not the longest we’ve had in Alaska.

One of the coolest things we’ve done in Alaska is The Gold Dredge No. 8!

You start off with a train ride where they stop every so often to explain the different types of or equipment used in gold mining.

The train would stop and they would actually demonstrate the old equipment.

In the photo above you’ll see pipes strewn across the ground and rods stuck into the ground. One guy would be in charge of driving 20 to 30 of those rods into the frozen ground each day. Then, water would be pumped through the pipes into the rods and in the ground to try and thaw the ground enough to dredge for gold. I always here the term “get rich quick” associated with the Gold Rush…but there really isn’t anything quick or easy about finding gold.

At the end of the train ride, we ended up at Gold Dredge No. 8

where they gave us a gold panning demonstration

and then let us try panning for gold on our own. We all got a bag of dirt, a pan, and a little container to put our findings in.

There were big water troughs set up with benches so that we could pan for gold. We all found gold! All of us! When you’re done panning, you can take your findings into the main building and they’ll weigh if for you and tell you how much your gold is worth. Yup…your gold…you get to keep everything you find. Alex was the luckiest and found $38 worth. In all we found a combined $116 in gold. Not bad, right? After you get your gold weighed, they have a gift shop to roam around. The prices weren’t bad and the selection was good. If you need to do some last minute gift shopping in Fairbanks, this is about the only place in town worth checking out.

On top of all the other awesome at Gold Dredge No. 8, you can actually go into the dredge and look around.

It was old, dirty, and smelly. But it was really neat to look through. With very little imagination, you could picture what it must have been like when the dredge was running.

There were informational signs near each of the dredge stations explaining what you were looking at. Things are always more interesting when you know what it is you’re looking at.

At the end of your short two hour tour, the whole crew of Gold Dredge No 8 lines up outside as you ride the train back to your car. Gold Dredge No 8 is one of our top ten experiences in Alaska.

Just down the road from the dredge, is the Felix Pedro Memorial. Felix Pedro is the guy who first found gold in the Fairbanks area. You’ll learn all about him during the Gold Dredge No 8 tour.

Y’all know we’re foodies. Alaska has been…well…it doesn’t have the best selection of restaurants. We found Bad 2 Da Bone BBQ in Fairbanks and we were skeptical. First of all, it’s in a gas station…and secondly, it’s smoked meat. We walked into one of the cleanest gas station restaurants we’ve ever seen.

It was expensive, but everything in Alaska is. The portions were bigger though.

I got the loaded fries. You can see them in the photo above. We liked Bad 2 Da Bone so much we went there twice! We were all pleasantly surprised, but when a restaurant’s slogan is “Sauce on the side cause the meat don’t hide”…well, we were hopeful.

There’s a place just outside Fairbanks that you can see the Alaskan Pipeline. You can see it in quite a few places in Alaska running near the road, but this place has informational signs and is designed for people to actually come close and touch it.

We all had to touch it.

One of the locals told us about a place to go that had good views. It’s called SkiLand and it’s just down the road from Gold Dredge No 8. We drove up to it and found, not only great views of the area,

we also found blueberries! There was a couple there when we got there and they told us about the blueberries. They also mentioned that the bears don’t usually visit the area, but the moose do. We didn’t see any wildlife, but we got to taste some wild Alaskan blueberries!

We weren’t the only ones picking berries so we felt pretty safe to wander around.

SkiLand was in pretty bad disrepair. Apparently, they don’t do much business with the ski-lift, but they do really well with the aurora tours during the winter months.

Our first Sunday in Fairbanks we spent an afternoon hitting a couple of “touristy” things just outside of the city. We went to The Knotty Shop because we’d heard it’s one of those places you have to go to. We went (it’s 45 miles from Fairbanks). We looked.

The statues were neat. The inside was a gift shop. I’d already finished all of my souvenir buying so we didn’t buy anything here.

On that same Sunday, we drove through North Pole, Alaska. The street lights looked like candy canes and all the street names had something to do with Christmas.

We stopped at the Santa Clause House where all things Christmas have a home all year. It was a huge gift shop for all things Alaskan Christmas.

It’s pretty easy to find with the 50 ft. Santa out front.

The two little boys took turns sitting in Santa’s chair.

We bought the obligatory Christmas tree ornament.

Fairbanks was the last stop on our Alaskan Summer tour. We found some really cool things here and some really…not so cool things, but Fairbanks should definitely be on everyone’s must visit Alaskan list.

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

Fairbanks, AK – The Good, The Bad, & The…Weird

By Jennie Simpson | September 14, 2015

We started our Fairbanks visit off on…well, not the best foot. Y’all know I’m a planner. When we decided to do Alaska this summer, I mapped out and plotted the entire trip. I researched each place we were going to stay and then we made reservations. When I planned the Fairbanks portion of our trip (the last place we would stay in Alaska), I found an RV park called Northern Moosed. I couldn’t really find anything about it other than it was in The Milepost…so we took a chance on it. According to The Milepost, Northern Moosed its the northern most full-service RV park in Alaska.

We were really excited to stay here and had hoped to see some of the moose that supposedly roam through the camp daily.

When we pulled in I had a feeling we should just turn around and get out of there. It was…rustic, but hey…it’s Alaska, right? Camping is supposed to be rustic? I thought it would get better when we went inside to register, but as the Camp Host kept telling us about the place, that little feeling of unease kept growing. We’d been told it was full service…that we would have full hookups. But, as it turned out, we wouldn’t want to use the water there….it was full of rust. Sigh. Well shoot. We went ahead and pulled in and found a place. You can see in the picture above, that there were random items strewn about. FYI…rustic does not mean trashy.

The site we settled on was the best of the lot. We had our pick. That was another red flag…but it was late in the season…maybe the main season was over? After we got set up and Jerl saw just how bad the water was we decided we would have to get some extra filters or just move. We spent our first afternoon in Fairbanks trying to figure out what the best course of action would be. After hitting the Lowes and Home Depot and talking with some locals (who told us all the water in the area was unusable due to arsenic) we decided to move to a different park. One that was on city water that had been cleaned and was totally drinkable.

The next morning, we started packing up. Jerl had talked to the owner of Northern Moosed and told her we would have to move due to lack of phone service (which happened to be true) and they gave us a full refund (which was super nice and we weren’t really expecting). While we were packing up and trying to get the heck out of Camp Weirdo, the goat you see in the photo above decided to terrorize us all. He was extremely, aggressively charging at the boys. He was trying to get into the RV. What’s sad is we could tell this place had once been someplace very cool to stay.

There were signs that someone actually put some time and effort into making Northern Moosed a good place. It’s been with the current owners for six years and it’s obvious to us that they’ve done nothing to it. The Camp Host was pretty sure the goat was from her neighbor (who she’s convinced is a crack addict). The RV park we moved to was wonderful! It was very clean and kept. We could use the water. And most importantly…there weren’t any crazy goats trying to kill us!! The whole Northern Moosed experience was just…bad.

We went to two museums while in Fairbanks. The first one we went to was actually free. It was at the Fairbanks Visitor & Cultural Center.

The museum inside was great. It had some great displays all about the Alaskan’s heritage and history.

The bead work was my favorite.

Here’s another shot of the amazing bead work. The beads they use are called seed beads and are tiny.

While the inside of the museum was really interesting, I preferred all the stuff outside. There were five different murals around the grounds all based on Native art techniques. This one was based on a basket weave.

There was a small garden to demonstrate how ridiculously big the veggies get in Alaska. The cabbages above were absolutely huge!

And, of course, the flowers…

With all the Alaskan sunshine, the flowers were out of control.

I took more pictures of flowers than I did the displays inside the museum. I won’t post all of them up…there are too many.

There was an arch made of moose and caribou sheds. I have a friend back in Texas (you know who you are) who needs to do this on her ranch!

The boys earned another badge at this museum. In the photo above, you can see them getting sworn in. Alex got to wear an actual Ranger hat. He was really excited about that.

The second museum we went to was at the University of Alaska.

The Museum of the North was one of the best museums we’ve been to.

This is the first museum we’ve been to that had hands on things for the boys to do (that wasn’t a kids museum).

The main exhibit was sectioned off into the sections of Alaska and had items specific to the section of Alaska it dealt with.

The weaving techniques were quite impressive.

There was even equipment out for the kids to use. At this station, you could use a microscope to check out some fossils.

Some of the interaction stations allowed the boys to feel actual bones and fur or what a mastodon tooth feels like. My only issue with this museum is that the lighting was really dim. It was hard to see some things and taking pictures was a challenge for a newb like me.

Pioneer Park was a big disappointment for us. We had heard about it from several people and we’d seen advertisements for it in several places so we had high hopes for it. Admission is free, but anything you want to do inside you have to pay for. That’s fine. Gotta pay the bills somehow, right? But, the park is very rundown.

There were some neat displays. No rides.

A small portion of the park looks like a small pioneer village with shops in a few of the buildings. The shops were…odd. Mostly handmade items or things that looked like leftovers from the year before. We didn’t stay long. It was…weird.

I’m going to do Fairbanks in two parts so stay tuned for Fairbanks part two!!

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

#keepingitreal