Yes we did arrive home from Canada, but once we were home and back on dial up, it's been very hard to get new posts to work. We did arrive home safe and sound and reflect back on a very wonderful trip to Alaska. Everyone should do it once!
We enjoyed a few weeks at home and then journeyed to Iowa to empty my parents house. It was a tough job!! So much to do while we were there and so many memories! Harv and I and my sister worked for about 2 weeks at it and completed the job. Mom and Dad are in the nursing home and doing quite well.
Now I'm in Virginia visiting our daughter's family and hugging on the grandkids. Nothing better than that!!
We are looking forward to Christmas in MI and then on to Lake Charles LA in January for DRS work, so will keep this updated then.

We left AK about four days ago and headed for home. The road was awful for the first couple of hundred miles but got better as we got further south. We got away from some of the permafrost and frost heave so that helped. The Cassiar highway south was for the most part an excellent road and the scenery was fantastic. We stopped off at Stewart BC/Hyder AK because that is where the bears can be viewed catching salmon. Problem!!!!!NO SALMON and ------NO BEARS.The salmon run is about a week or two late this year so I guess we missed that. We also drove 20 miles up a dusty gravel road to the Salmon glacier which was worth the 40 mile side trip to Stewart/Hyder. The ice field can be seen here in the pic for about 6 miles but actually extends back toward the west for something like 40 miles. Mind boggling!!!!!!
On down the Cassiar we saw this final pic of the seven sisters moutain formation and after looking at the pic we realized there are actually eight peaks so don't know why one sister didn't get counted!!
We are about 400 miles from the lower 48 so should be in Seattle area by the weekend and true civilization again with cell phone service and WiFi and WalMart and life is good. Time to go for now so see ya!

Finally got the picture thing to work so will add some pics that go back a few days.
This is some of the ice that has broken or calfed off the Columbia glacier near Valdez.
This is called a fish wheel and is sort of a ferris type wheel with a couple of baskets on it and as it rotates via paddle wheels in the water and as it does so it picks up any salmon that happen to get in it's way. The AK residents can get a permit to catch subsistance salmon for their families this way. The lady we worked for near Valdez took Dick and Lynne and Verla there to get some salmon while Kathleen and I were in IA at the funeral. Sorry to have missed that!!!!!!
A king salmon that got caught in the fish wheel wanted his picture taken with Dick.

Hi again,
We are having trouble with adding pictures to the blog so guess I'll just tell you where we are.
We are on the Cassier Highway about 150 north of Stewart in B.C. We will turn off at Stewart and drive west to Hyer, AK for our last stop in AK before heading home. The weather has been beautiful since we left AK for which we are praising the Lord. The scenery here is breathtaking! Everything is going just fine with the motorhome and car considering the condition of some of the roads we've been on, we are blessed. We stopped in Jade City today for a bit. Did you know that 70% of the world's Jade is from here? It was beautiful but pricey so we left it all here for the next traveler!

Hi again,
We are having trouble with adding pictures to the blog so guess I'll just tell you where we are.
We are on the Cassier Highway about 150 north of Stewart in B.C. We will turn off at Stewart and drive west to Hyer, AK for our last stop in AK before heading home. The weather has been beautiful since we left AK for which we are praising the Lord.

Hi again,
We are having trouble with adding pictures to the blog so guess I'll just tell you where we are.
We are on the Cassier Highway about 150 north of Stewart in B.C. We will turn off at Stewart and drive west to Hyer, AK for our last stop in AK before heading home. The weather has been beautiful since we left AK for which we are praising the Lord

Hi again,
We are having trouble with adding pictures to the blog so guess I'll just tell you where we are.
We are on the Cassier Highway about 150 north of Stewart in B.C. We will turn off at Stewart and drive west to Hyer, AK for our last stop in AK before heading home. The weather has been beautiful since we left AK for w

Monday morning and we are heading for home. We will be leaving the Al-Can and taking the Cassier highway soon. It will be very remote and won't have cell phone or email for about a week we guess. We plan to Stop at Hyer AK along the way and that will be the last we see of AK. What a kick this has been. We love you all and pray for you. Later, when we are out of the weeds.

Aug 1st
Oh my goodness what a week. We enjoyed a few days at Valdez and then on Friday evening we drove back to Audrey's the DRS work site to work for a few more days. On Sat. we were notified that Harv and Kathleen's mother passed away. Harv and Kathleen drove to Anchorage on Sunday night to fly to Iowa for the Funeral. They had to leave at 7:00pm Sunday night because the highway was scheduled to be closed from midnight until 6:00am for repair so had to be passed the constuction site before midnight. They left Anchorage about 9:30 Monday morning and arrived in Sioux City 10:pm The funeral was on Tues and the returned on Wed. Some very long days but praise the Lord mom is dancing with Jesus now and we are so thankful for her 92 years. While they were gone the Jones and I worked some for Audrey and rested some because the rain. We also went to the Copper river to the fish wheel and got 9 salmon so cleaned those and Audrey taught us how to smoke them and can them. We are taking a few home with us.
On Sunday our new granddaughter Hannah Elyse was born to our daughter in VA. So we have moch to be thankful for. They are all well and we can hardly wait to visit them again soon.
We left Valdez area this morning and are in Tok tonight and should be in Canada again tomorrow, headig for home. It will probably be another 3 weeks before we get there.
God is good all the time. Love Verla

Finally got to do come salmon fishing today. These are pink salmon and average about 3 to 5 lbs. They are running by the thousands up this small river.

This is the house that goes with the next entry but it didn't download to that one so had to add it here.(Must have been operator error!!!)

We left Glennallen Sun after church and stopped at the home of our DRS project. It is a very nice log home that is horseshoed in a small river that flooded in 06 and brought not only unimaginable debris but also1 to 3 feet of silt over the entire property. We dug out some of her crawl space that was full of silt so that the plumbing could be accessed and to permit access to reinsulate the floor of the house because all the old insulation was washed out. We also repositioned her firewood shed and stabilized it (it got moved with the flood waters) and then put all of her firewood back in it after knocking off as much silt as we could. The silt is very very fine sand that gets into everything. We also moved a ton of debris to a burn pile. She went to Gennallen and got a burn permit on Mon so that she can burn all that stuff. Sister Kathleen also celebrated her birthday there and the owner there(68yr old widow)made her a birthday cake so we enjoyed birthday cake and coffee in her kitchen.We left there on Wed and came to Veldez where we are camped now. Are signed up to go on a glacier cruise on Fri so hope the rain stops long enough to get that in.We will go back to the DRS project on Sat and see what else there is that we can do there.

From Homer we backtracked to Anchorage (don't have a choice if you want to get home)then headed east on the Glenn highway to GlennAllen where we will spend Sun and then head south to Valdez on Mon. Halfway to Valdez we will stop at the home of Audrey Popelan and do some disaster relief work at her house due to flood damage. Don't know how long we will spend there because we don't really know how much work is there but I guess we'll find that out when we get there.

For those of you who don't know where Homer AK is ---let me say that it is not the end of the world but you can see it from Homer!!! Actually, it is about as far south as you can drive in AK. It is on the southern most tip of the Kenai Pen which is not the fartherest south you can go in AK but it is as far as you can drive. It is THE place to go if you want to go halibut fishing but other than that there isn't a whole lot to the town. This pic is of the spit and it's shops. The spit sticks out into Cook's Inlet, is 4.5 miles long and only 2 to 3 hundred yds wide, is nothing but stone and gravel and is a hugh port for all the charter fishing boats as well as private boats and is a port for the AK ferry line. Nice place to visit but ---- well, you know the rest.

For Alaska residence this week is net season for Red Salmon. They can net salmon on the Kenai river mouth to Cook inlet. The limit is 25 for the head of the house and 10 more for each member of the house. The salmon are about 5 to 6 pounds a piece. So that's a lot of salmon for their freezers!! It was amazing to see so many people with these big nets just waiting for the fish to swim into them.

We visited a Russian church in Kenai. The Russian influence is strong in places as they owned Alaska until 1867.

These guys are Puffins the state birds. They are cuter than a bugs ear.!

We spent a couple days in Seward and took a 5 hour cruise to see the Keni Fjord National Park. We were blessed with a sighting of a pod of Orca whales. Perhaps 6 of them. Wow what an amazing sight.

On our journey to Seward we stopped at the seaport of Whittier. It's on the Prince William Sound and was small and a little fishy, but charming. It was rainy that day so this pictures is a little dark.

We are in Seward today, July 12, and the sun is shining and so the scenery is wonderful.

Harv and sister Kathleen on the cruise to Portage Glacier. We are amazed at God's design!! The Glaciers are hugh and quite a wonder.

We spent two days in Anchorage. We did see a wonderful IMAX on Experiencing Alaska and a movie on the 1964 earthquake that just about wiped out Anchorage but other than that Anchorage was just city. We have seen too many gift shops so have resorted to taking our pictures by the stuffed Moose.

Right after we left Denali National Park we moved south to Denali STATE Park. Just across the road and South a little. We spent the 4th of July weekend there because we were concerned about finding campgrounds over the long weekend. It was lovely and had this great Veteran's Memorial. Just across the road form the Memorial was another great view of MT Mckinley. We were so blessed to get another few days of that beautiful mountain. Harv did get in some fishing but the fish were laughing this time.
We have moved to Wasilla, Alaska now, just about 50 miles north of Anchorage. We are again in the rain but are seeing all the sights we can. We plan to visit the Iditarod Headquarters this afternoon.

Greetings from Denali National Park. The past 3 days have been amazing again. We left Fairbanks on Monday and are camped outside of the park. The park campgrounds are full.
We went to a Dog Sled presentation and demo on Tues. And took the 8 hour bus ride 66 miles into the park today. We were so blessed to have sunny weather today so we got to see MT McKinley. It's only out about 20% of the time in the summer.

Here is a caribou behind the fence. Did ya know that Reindeer are domesticated Caribou? They have been breed to be shorter and heavier with more muscle and they don't migrate. That way they can be used for pack animals etc. (and pulling Santa's sleigh)

Here's the baby!

This morning (Monday morning) we started the day at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Center. We did an hour tour of the Muskox and Caribou. So this one was behind a fence. The tour was so interesting. Muskox are closer related to sheep and goats then cows and are much smaller than we thought they would be. This was a cow. We didn't get close to the bulls but we did see a couple of 6 week old little ones. They sure did look soft and cute.

Sunday morning we worshipped with the First Presbyterian church people in Fairbanks. Believe it or not we meet Retired Rev. Claude and Joanne Klaver. Their origins are about 6 miles from the Holland border near Friesland, and Claude and Joanne are from Webster City, Iowa. It's a small world after all!
Harv spent the rest of Sunday out fishing and had a ball. A cow moose was near him most of the time but he didn't have the camera with him and he also caught 47 fish. (but didn't keep any) Kathleen and Verla sewed for the afternoon on mission stuff. We have about a half of the mission sewing that we took along done so that is wonderful.

The Alaska pipeline near Fairbanks.

Kathleen at the end of the road monument in Delta Junction

Well it's been a few days since we have had WiFi so will try to catch up on where and what. After leaving Chicken we headed down to Tok which is not a lot of anything except that we rejoined the Alcan highway near there and headed to Delta Junction which is the end of the Alcan. We spent a night in Delta and then headed up the Richardson highway to North Pole and 'Santaland' which is about 12 miles south of Fairbanks. Not much there but it was a nice campground and close to "fishing" so we stayed two nights. We were supposed to have had WiFi but their system was down and we ended up not having service at all. Yesterday the girls went shopping and sightseeing in Fairbanks and Dick and I went fishing on the Shashna river which is really just a fairly shallow, wide creek. We caught a boatload of grayling and I brought a couple home for Verla's supper (She's the only one who likes fish)and she said they were very good eating. We caught them all on dry flies which to most will mean nothing but to those of you who are fishermen you will know we had a great time. The girls had a good time doing their thing and this morning we awoke to drizzling rain and a fully overcast sky. We moved to a different campground in Fairbanks so we would be closer to the sights here and we have wi-fi. Did some sightseeing and shopping in the rain and now are hunkered down in the camper. It is breaking up though so maybe I can go catch some more grayling!!!!!!
Found a church to go to tomorrow so will spend the day here yet tomorrow and maybe head for Denali on Mon or Tues. That's about it for now. Take care.

The Top of the World highway is steep, rough and narrow. Yikes!! And no guard rails. A little hair raising at times. :)

Land of the midnight sun. Top of the Dome Mt. in Dawson City, Yukon June 20, 2008

Tisha's school and room in Chicken, Alaska

June 23
We are in ALASKA! We left Dawson City yesterday and crossed the border yesterday afternoon. Yippee. Right out of Dawson City we crossed the Yukon river by ferry and started up the "Top of the World" highway. The ferry was small and only held 2 campers and about 3 cars at one time, so we were in line for 2 hours but even that was a kick. It felt real funny setting in the motorhome and floating on the ferry. The road after that was part paved and a lot of gravel and not so good but do-able. The sights were awesome. You climb a long ways up and then follow the ridge along the top of the Mts, really does feel like you are at the Top of the World. We crossed into Alaska at the top. It was a tiny little guarded border crossing and we sailed right through. We had read that we couldn't even bring raw eggs into Alaska so we hard boiled them but they didn't even ask so we didn't have to surrender any food. Well let me tell you the road up to Alaska wasn't so hot but crossing over into Alaska was a shock, the road was much worse. Very rough gravel, narrow and washboardy. We creeped along. Had lots of time to enjoy the views. But it was again awesome and just plan good to be in Alaska.
We camped at a BLM campground and drove on into Chicken, Alaska today. We had a tour of the old town of Chicken and by the way that's where "Tisha" the book about a school teacher who came to the wilderness to teach back in 1927 happened. We saw the school house and the room in the back that she lived in.
We drove on to Tok, Alaska for the night. We are just 203 miles from Fairbanks so we should be there by the end of the week.

Black Bear!!!

We enjoyed a Salmon bake at Mukluk Annie's. We were thrilled to see the sign above the door "Jesus is Lord" on the way in.

The wild flowers are amazing. The Klondike Highway has been decorated all along the way with flowers.

Harv with Diamond Tooth Gertie and the Can Can dancers at a show in Dawson City

Jack London's cabin in the town of Dawson City

We are in Dawson City, YK tonight and hopefully we can get an organized blog out. We have had pretty spotty WiFi and have not been able to complete our entries so if the pics and the explanations seem a little off kilter it is because we get cut off and then have to add and subtract and readd etc so bear with us. The last pic that we put up was of Teslin Lake with the explanation after it.
We left Whitehorse a couple of days ago and jumped on the Klondike Highway which heads north off the Alcan and ends up in Dawson City which is famous for the big gold rush in 1898. What a neat, somewhat authentic little town. Still boardwalks with gravel streets and old time store fronts. Most have been restored somewhat but the side streets are still dirt and gravel with no curb and gutter (curb and what!!!}
We will spend Sat here doing some gold panning (Verla bought a gold pan at the local hardware Store}and relaxing. We found a really authentic little church that we hope to attend on Sun and then we will take the ferry accross the river and cross over into AK.
Hopefully this thing will let us post some pics but other than that - see ya

It is Fri evening and we are in Dawson City, YK. We have pretty good WiFi tonight so hopefully we can get something put together with pics.

Teslin is located about half way between Watson Lake and Whitehorse in the YK. Teslin lake is 72 miles long and 7 miles wide. Mukluk Annie's is an RV park/resturant/curio shop famous for it's salmon dinners. Of course we had to check that out!!! If you ordered a salmon dinner you could camp for free down by the lake and go for a houseboat ride (1 hr)for free as well at 8:30 in the evening. That may sound late but we are far enough north now that it doesn't get dark until about midnight.(It gets light by about 3:30 a m)
What beautiful country!!!

June 18 Hello from Whitehorse in the Yukon. Inch by Inch, Mile by Mile we are moving to Alaska. Yesterday was a bonas day for the guys. FISHING In the Yukon. Squanga Lake was the winner. The guys went out in the belly boats and had a ball. Harv caught a 36 inch Northern but of course I wasn't there with the camera but Dick Jones was so we should be able to get a picture from him.

June 15 Happy Father's Day from Watson Lake in the Yukon. We have been in the boonies for a few days so no cell phone or internet but we are here now and have both. Yippee. We spent 2 nights in Strawberry flats by Muncho Lake in B.C. It was just beautiful and would have been a great place to fish but the local guy wouldn't sell license to anybody who wasn't staying in his lodge. You run into all kinds of funny people. Anyway the second day there it rained most of the day so we just relaxed and enjoyed the peace. Last night we were at Liard Hot Springs. There is a lovely Hot Springs pool about a 10 minute boardwalk back in the woods so we soaked away the travel kinks. It was great. We were overrun by a camper caravan in the campground which was a hoot. Seems like it's the thing to join a caravan and have the plans all made for you. Anyway as the two of us alone we sort of are swallowed up. We did see some campers from Colorado so felt like home.
We arrived in Watson Lake about noon today and are enjoying the sign post village. Back in 1942 when the Al-Can highway was being built some poor lonely GI made a sign that his home was so many miles away. 64361 more signs have shown up over the years. What a hoot. We found many from Colorado and even a VERLA St. sign from CA.
We will head out tomorrow and should be in Alaska by the end of the week. We should be able to download more pictures soon too. Love and God speed to all of you.

This is from the first week of our trip when we went to Phillipsburg, MT and mined for sapphires. We did find 6 big enough to heat treat and facet should we decide we would like to do that and have them mounted in jewelry.

Harv and Kathleen in the Banff National Park in B.C.

Here is a picture of Moraine Lake from a few days ago.

June 9
We arrived in Dawson Creek today, which is the mile 0 of the Al-Can Highway. We enjoyed a lovely drive today. This is the first day in the 2 weeks since we left that is hasn't rained. We stopped in Grand Prairie about noon and drove through farm country and wooded areas most of the day. We had a black bear run across the road in front of us but we didn't get a picture of him. He took one look at the motorhome coming his way and ran like heck!

Here is the Elk that about joined us for breakfast in Jasper National Park.

June 8
We are in Grand Cache, Alberta today. The drive from the National parks was lovely but again rainy. Yikes that's 14 days straight of rain part or all day. Yesterday we drove through Jasper National park. The road is named the Iceroad and it runs between icefields. We stopped at the Columbia icefield. That's the same an inland glacier. The ceiling was low all day so we didn't see the tops of the mountains but the bottoms are beautiful. We stayed at Whistlers campground last night and had elk in the campground with us. We looked up from the breakfast table this morning to see one almost looking in the window at us. We found a Safeway today, so seemed like a touch of home.

June 6
We are in Lake Louise in the Banff National Park. It's just amazing and beautiful. It has been cool and some rain so the scenes are sometimes in the mist but still just lovely.
We are on a timer for internet right now so we will have to add more at a later time. And hopefully we can add pictures at that time. Our new camera is great and we are racking up the pictures!
We just viewed Moraine Lake today and it is just like the pictures. Wow God is really something!! And to think he loves us even more than all the beauty.
We have had very good travel and safety and are all well. We will be going to Jasper National Park tomorrow and then out of the Park into regular old Canada.
We have seen Big horn sheep, coyote, deer, elk and a little black bear so far.

May 26
Hi you all, we left Parker, CO and headed for the great north. We camped in Glendo, WY the first night.
May 27
We visited Worland WY and stayed with dear old friends, Ed and Mary Lou Hunter. After a wonderful visit and great hospitality we again headed on our way.
May 28 On to Cody WY and a few sights and then ventured into Yellowstone!! It's always so beautiful. It was however cool and still have a LOT of snow and Yellowstone Lake was still iced over believe it or not! We were treated to some very close up looks at buffalo on the road on our way out of the Park.
We then spent one night in Butte MT.
May 30 we left Butte and camped at Anaconda for 2 nights. From that park we drove the car to Gem Mountain and we had a ball mining for Sapphires, a real fun adventure! We found 2 good ones to cut and 4 that were big enough but had a couple of flaws. Also lots of small ones. We'll have to decide later if we want to have them heat treated and faceted. It was a little pricey so we'll see if we have any money left after the vacation.
We visited a lovely community church in Phillipsburg for worship and then on to Missoula.
So here we are ready to head north again and God speed to us and all our loved ones.

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