Category Archives: Alberta

North to Alaska (again) – Part 1

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We went to Alaska in 2019. It was a kind of ‘spur of the moment’ thing. We saw the RV’ing to Alaska group was having a 4th of July get-together near Anchorage. We signed up and made that a target for our initial travels.

Our friends, the Chen’s wanted to go to Alaska so we decided to go with them this year. We made a decision on a specific date to be at Denali National Park and used that as our target for this trip.

We left our place in Arizona on May 26 and had scheduled to leave Great Falls, MT with the Chen’s on June 19. This gave us time to head to California to visit family. The first stop was to see our youngest grandchild and her family (we also got to see our oldest grandchild here also). Here is Roxie taking Charlee out for a walk in her trike.

The next stop was the middle grandchild, Atlas, and his family. When Hannah and Roxie were doing something, we boys (me, Lukas, and Atlas) went to a park to wait and could overlook San Francisco.

As our whirlwind tour continued, we saw Roxie’s sister (Desiree) and her daughter (Tiarah). We were there for Tiarah’s high school graduation. She graduated from Central Valley High School which, ironically, is the same high school I graduated from 45 years previously. It was still held in the same venue.

After all this California ‘love’ we headed north. The first stop was Collier State Park in Oregon. It was by a beautiful creek.

We headed to Washington and stayed at Charbonneau Park, an Army Corp of Engineers campground. We spent a couple of nights there and did the ubiquitous laundry loads. Here is Roxie telling me something.

We turned east to get into Montana and eventually to Great Falls. We also stopped a few nights to see a family friend and his family, Jared.

Unfortunately, Jared’s family had to leave before we got there to attend to an ill relative. We are sorry we missed them but are glad they were able to go. Jared lives next to Post Falls, so we went to see the falls.

One more travel night and we made it to Great Falls and met up with the Chen’s. They had an extra passenger, their daughter Maya. We knew she was coming along on the trip for half of it. She would fly back home midway through the trip. Great Falls also has many waterfalls around the area.

George is king of the selfies.

We were off the try to get into Canada. I took a shotgun with me the last time and decided to do so again this time. You should declare, on the US side, that you are the owner of the shotgun and use a form that states such. This took a bit of time as the border agent came out to our trailer and verified it, but the longest time was waiting until an agent asked us what we needed.

Now the Canadian side. The initial questioning went easy. The agent did ask about guns and I had already said I needed to get a permit for the shotgun so she never asked about any other guns, which I did not have. Pull over to the side and come into the office.

I got a great agent for my shotgun permitting. All went smoothly and it took some time also. But we were in Alberta.

There was a caribou farm of some type on the side of the road and Roxie had an interest in them as they had a curiosity with her.

We headed north to get to Dawson Creek, stayed in small campgrounds (municipal ones if we could) and avoided large towns as we could. We did make a stop in a Calgary Costco and saw something very Canadian.

We stayed for a few nights in Morinville, AB, just north of Edmonton.

We went to Edmonton for a few days to see the sights. At the University we were able to do some solar observations (sunspots, corona, etc.).

A large replica Stanley Cup.

The city skyline.

And, of course, the largest mall in North America.

Back on the road and after a few more nights we made it where all Alaska travellers want to take a photo. Mile 0.

As mentioned previously, Roxie and I were in Alaska in 2019. However, I went to Alaska with my family in 1964. It was my dad, mom, sister and me. We drove from Southern California and had a total of 9 flat tires. Some of that 1964 story is here. I tried to recreate many of the 1964 photos that I have found. Here is the Mile 0 photo from 1964 (I am the short one).

Halfway to Anchorage

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Well, actually, over halfway. The approximate distance from Austin to Anchorage is 4200 miles (the way we are going). We are currently staying at the St Albert Kinsman RV park just north of Edmonton. From here we have just under 2000 miles to go. Here is our spot, overlooking the river, taken around 10:15!

All this started about 3 weeks ago when we left Austin. This was our cute little spot there:

Our next stop was the North Texas Airstream Commmunity in Hillsboro TX. It was an odd feeling to be somewhere else after spending over 3 months in the Austin area. But we had to get moving toward Alaska. The plan is to head basically due north to Minot ND and enter into Saskatchewan.

Keeping with our normal 200 miles a day (sometimes more, sometimes less), we ended up the next night in Lawton OK at the Comanche Nation Casino. They have about 4 sites that have 30amp electric for free overnighting, you just need to register with security. Here was our spot:

Next state was Kansas but on the way we had to dodge some inclimate weather, like tornadoes and flooding!

We were watching the weather apps, radar maps and ended up at the Pratt County Veterans Memorial Campground:

Still heading northish, next state Nebraska and still being weather wary, we continue on. However there is one detour I just HAVE to make.

The Geographical Center of the Conterminous United States:

If you remember from a previous post, we had already been to the Geographical Center of California, so this was a natural. That night we stayed at a city RV park (Cozad MUNY) in Cozad, NE.

The next stop was also in Nebraska in Valentine at the Wacky West RV park:

This is where a slight direction change was in order. I determined that we should not go through Minot but head west to Montana and through Alberta to Canada. This made our next stop in Sturgis, SD. Where we were treated to a 30 minute hailstorm:

We survived that without any visible damage and continued on to Billings MT to stay at the first KOA in the KOA system. We stayed a few nights here as opposed to the single night hopping since leaving Hillsboro TX. That means we disconnected for the first time in that period. Roxie found some friends there:

We also purchased a new bed for the trailer. It is a normal queen so we have to squeeze by the ends. I will have to cut 5″ off of it one of these days:

The next stop was Great Falls MT to do some more prep for crossing over the border. I also had to repair a drawer slide that failed:

Roxie recommended a detour on the way, Glacier National Park. We found a spot for 2 nights:

On into Alberta. We had a bit of an ‘issue’ with the agent in Canada but more on that after we get back to the states, stay tuned. We ended up staying the night just Northwest of Calgary at a combination RV camp/golf course. We had a bit of weather here also:

Now we start the last portion. Almost to Mile 0 of the AlCan.