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The Road to Alaska – Part 8: Feelin’ Fall-y in Denali

Our adventure of a lifetime was in full swing by the time we left Anchorage for Denali National Park, which was our second park in Alaska so far.

Alaska has 8 National Parks:

Denali
Wrangell St. Elias
Gates of the Arctic
Kenai Fjords
Glacier Bay
Katmai
Kobuk Valley
Lake Clark

Due to the terrain and undeveloped nature of the state, however, only two are accessible by car: Denali and Wrangell St. Elias. We’d stopped at Wrangell St. Elias on our way to Valdez, but didn’t spend much time there since we were working with a bit of a deadline and the park is so huge that it could take hours just to see a small portion anyway. We did take a little walk through the park and saw both the namesake Wrangell and St. Elias ranges, and had even camped out with a beautiful view of the mountains the previous night.

Denali was the next on our list, and we couldn’t wait to get in there and see some wildlife and hopefully Denali (a.k.a. Mount McKinley) itself. They say on average only 1 in 3 visitors gets to see the mountain, as it’s often socked in by clouds or fog, and we had a cloudy forecast. So we arrived with fingers crossed and bought our tickets for a bus tour the following day. I didn’t know this before we went, but Denali National Park is only accessible to the public for 15 miles of the 92-mile road into the park. You can drive in as far as Savage River, but after that all tourists—other than those staying at Teklanika Campground—must pay for a bus tour in order to access the remainder. Some of the tours can last as long as 12 hours, but we went for an 8-hour ride since we had a doggy at home who would need to go out. It was a chilly morning, and the windows were steamed up for the beginning of the trip, but soon they cleared and we could all sit back and watch the fall colors roll by.

It’s been startling how quickly the season has advanced as we travel north! It has accelerated the timeline, but luckily I love fall and I’m exactly in the mood for it.

On the way to the Visitors Center that would be our turnaround point, we stopped a few times and got to hike around, use bathrooms, and take pictures.

Along the drive we saw ptarmigan, Dall sheep, moose, Arctic ground squirrel, and a mama grizzly bear and two little cubs in the distance running along fast! There was much speculation as to why they were running, since they’re so close to hibernation that they should be conserving calories. Our guide guessed that the mama could smell a male grizzly nearby and she was trying to protect her cubs. We stayed and watched for a long time, and still they ran and ran until we lost sight of them.

We continued on to the Visitors Center, and had a little time to walk to the lookout and admire the view.

Then back onto the bus, where we had fewer people since many had started hikes and would take another bus down later. So for the whole trip back we had great views on both sides of the bus, which really came in handy when a big male grizzly was sighted on the opposite side of the bus. We hopped over and I took some pictures that are grainy, but still fun to see.

We’d found a nice spot to park for the few nights we’d be in town, so we went back and settled in for the evening, taking the animals on a nice walk and even snapped our first 4-person selfie with the pets.

The next day we went back to the park and took a walk around Savage River, which was moody and cozy in the drizzle and fog.

During the summer the park has three daily demonstrations with their sled dog team, which we had timed our hike’s end to attend. I was so excited to see the dogs. They are actual working dogs who spend the winter helping the rangers get around and haul supplies to the cabins and outposts around the grounds. Since the park is a designated wilderness area motorized vehicles aren’t allowed anyway, but additionally the dogs are part of the history of the park and actually much more reliable than vehicles.

They are bred not for appearance in any way, but for their athleticism, double coat, closeness of paw pads (so ice doesn’t pack between them), bushy tail (to keep them warm when they sleep outside with tail over face, creating a warm pocket of air), and a trait where their arteries and veins are very close together which helps keep their blood warm as it travels around their bodies. But their appearance is still pretty darn cute too.

They were so sweet and eager to run. The trainer told us that they harness two fewer dogs to the summer “sled” for the demonstration than they do for the winter sleds, because if they didn’t she’d end up in the ditch!

Andy of course loved the sled.

We would have loved to stay extra days to climb all the mountains and watch fall continue to move in, but we’d planned a trip up to the Arctic Ocean and every degree counts when you get close to freezing. So we pressed on Northward for what was to become one of the greatest adventures yet!

The Road to Alaska – Part 7: Anchorage, AK with Family + The Kenai Peninsula

When we planned our road trip to Alaska, we wouldn’t have anticipated that we’d be spending so much time with familiar faces, but after our super enjoyable visit with friends in Anchorage, we still had more fun coming our way!

Knowing we were spending some time up north, Andy’s mom Genie had planned a trip with Andy’s nephew Will to visit Alaska while we were in the area. Will loves to fish, and the Kenai Peninsula has been on his list for some time now. So they flew in to Anchorage, where we kicked off the trip by catching up, having dinner, and witnessing the beginning to Will and Andy’s very promising career as meat smoker models.

We drove down the Kenai Peninsula and stopped at Deep Creek, a fishing spot that had been recommended to Will by a fellow fisherman back home. We stayed a few hours, enjoying the sun and scenery as we watched other people catch our fish.

After a few hours with no luck, we decided to head into Homer to check into the house Andy’s sister had rented for the travelers. We parked the Turtle in the driveway, and were instant neighbors! I’ll under-exaggerate here and say it was a beautiful spot.

The next day we tried another fishing spot, this one just as scenic as the last. We’re beginning to see a trend in our Alaskan fishing spots: so picturesque you’d go there even if there weren’t any fish.

Except this time, there were!

A number of locals mentioned how sparse the fishing was this season, and it seemed like a pretty big deal when even the seasoned fishermen caught anything. So we felt very pleased that by the end of the day, all four of us had a caught a fish! Andy, Will and I all got humpys, and Genie got a nice big silver (gifted to her by some boys fishing next to us, but we all agreed it totally counted).

Afterwards we went down to the spit, which quickly became one of my favorite spots on our Alaskan journey. The whole spit is lined with funky shops and restaurants built on piers or decks or just smashed up against one another, people are filleting huge halibut and salmon right on the walkway, and the whole place is set against a backdrop you just can’t believe.

As we walked down the beach to get pictures of the rainbow, we took what will go down in history as The Greatest Photo of Us Ever Taken.

Sunglasses for the win!

The others did a much better job modeling and nailed it on the first try.

When we got home, Andy began preparing the fish for our big dinner.

We got so involved with preparations for a banquet, that by the time the meal was finished, it was midnight. (We didn’t know yet, but that would become kind of our thing during this trip.)

Even Scout had given up on us and went to sleep on the futon before we finished. Of course he woke up ready to play as soon as I tried to take the picture, but that’s to be expected with this one.

We still had three pink salmon on deck for us to enjoy, so before leaving for our third day of fishing Andy began experimenting with some new recipes and preparation methods. The night before he’d brined some for smoking, using the recipe given to us by Sam’s mom, and here he is removing it and readying it for smoking later in the day.

Here he is with his partner in mischief, who did not find Andy’s obsession with the new vacuum sealer strange in the least, and in fact suggested they try vacuum sealing the vacuum sealer bags.

I continued to find other goody bags stashed around the house, including this battery and handful of dried garlic chips. Also, all the dinner knives in a pouch, not pictured, but one of my favorites.

We packed up with discussions about how one might vacuum seal the vacuum sealer, and went back to Deep Creek to try a new spot this time. Unfortunately the weather had lived up to the rainy forecast, and as we fished it got colder and colder, until we finally had to admit defeat. Luckily, we had smoked salmon linguini on the evening’s menu, so we were excited to return to Homer and prepare it.

On the way, we saw more rainbows! Alaska makes really nice rainbows.

That last one is the view from the house, so we had that rainbow to admire out the big square windows as we made dinner. It really was an amazing spot. Will created a few antipasto platters that were as delicious as they were beautiful.

It was a good thing he did, too, because once again dinner wasn’t on the table until midnight! I think it must have something to do with the long daylight hours up here, but either way we partied into the A.M. every day. Andy’s smoked salmon linguini was better than any I’ve ever had in a restaurant, and fully worth the wait. Another fine fresh Alaskan fish meal!

The view from the rental house changed daily, each time a surprise and delight. The morning we left was another hit.

We took advantage of the scenery by taking a few group shots on our way out.

I had to get a photo of Scout and Will, the two best buddies you’d ever hope to meet. Scout is crazy about Will, who very generously spent much of his time playing outside with him and throwing the frisbee in the back yard. Nothing beats a boy and his dog!

We left Homer mid-day, and had planned on stopping to fish one last time on the way back to Anchorage, but the Turtle had other plans. We broke down (Andy easily agreed this one was official) and immediately got towed by a good Samaritan to a spot just up the road, which turned out to be a great place to be broken down.

Andy had no idea what the problem was. I said maybe we’d run over a lawn mower, because that’s what it sounded like, but he thought he’d investigate further despite my diagnosis. After a bit, this wizard not only figured out what the problem was, but also happened to have the spare part that we needed on hand!

Remember that time we broke down at Mike and Becky’s house in Bend, OR? While that problem was being investigated, Andy had bought a distributer to see if that was the problem, which we all know now it wasn’t. (It was Becky pulling fuses out.) So we had an extra!

While Andy pulled the Turtle apart and worked his magic, Will and Genie went fishing, and I used the time to run Scout and let Gracie play outside for a while, cleaned up the Turtle, and read my book in the sun with the animals. It was actually a very nice afternoon for all involved!

When we got back to Anchorage we decided to have an early dinner, so at 10 p.m. we stopped by 49th State Brewery to have huge delicious reubens and play with WikiSticks.

We still had a full day left in Anchorage before Genie and Will had to fly back, so we visited the zoo. . .

And saw the world’s largest chocolate waterfall at Alaska Wild Berry Products.

The candy store also had huge chocolate bars that Andy really, really wanted to touch but he obeyed the sign anyway, and a polar bear.

After a delicious Italian dinner, this time at a much more reasonable hour due to Will and Genie’s 3 a.m. wakeup call, we said our goodbyes.

The trip was unforgettable, and we’re so glad you guys came up north to meet us. Alaska isn’t the same without you!

The Road to Alaska – Part 6: Anchorage, AK with Friends

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times (I may have actually said it a thousand times): one of the best things about Turtle Life is the flexibility and freedom to visit our friends and family. And during our time in Anchorage, we were lucky enough to be able to spend quality time with both friends and family!

First we spent a week with Andy’s longtime buddy Sam and his wife Sara. Sam is a professor and has the summer off, so we took full advantage of his schedule by having a full week of fun.

Andy and I had caught some salmon in Valdez and kept two to bring along, which Andy prepared in his famous marinade and Sam grilled up for us.

*A tip if you like delicious things: Sam also BBQ’s up frozen seasoned hashbrowns as a side dish, which were so good I just got jealous of myself when I saw this picture of the hashbrowns I was about to eat when I took the photo.

Sam took us on a field trip to the fish hatchery, where we saw loads of spawning salmon! Pictured are only two, so please just take my word for it that there were a bunch.

Sam, Sara, and their son Oliver took us for a crisp and refreshing rainy-day walk up to Portage Glacier.

We hadn’t seen snow in a while, so we had to take advantage of the wintery playground and make ourselves a slide. I paved the way with the classic bum slide, and Andy immediately took it to the next level, as he is wont to do.

On the way home, all our dreams came true when we spotted a moose grazing right by the road in town!

We were really beginning to believe the area moose were a rumor created by the Alaska Chamber of Commerce.

And luck was really on our side—or else the COC had gotten wind that we were on to them and planted that moose in two spots so we wouldn’t spread the conspiracy theory around—because a day later we saw another one!

This one was on a walk through a beautiful park on the way to the beach. She had been grazing on the trail blocking hikers, and the locals who warned us about her presence smiled curiously when I threw up my hands and cheered about a moose on the trail. Somehow they could tell right away that we weren’t from around there.

We stood up the hill from her to admire her moose-y cuteness, then walked on to the ocean since it’s weird to stare at a moose all day. And what a day for the beach!

Another highlight of the trip was the delivery we had waiting for us at Sam and Sara’s place! After catching so many fish in Haines and Valdez, we decided we should spring for a vacuum sealer so we can pack more of our fresh fish and berry picking surpluses into the freezer and keep them for even longer. I was super happy about our newest purchase, and Andy was even a little more so. (Sam and Sara, I’m aware that I’m grossly underselling Andy’s excitement about this purchase, but if I did his joy any justice everyone would think I was exaggerating.)

Well of course we had to test the thing out. An hour and 50 vacuum bags later, Andy had made it as far as testing out vacuum sealing tortilla chips just to see what would happen, and suddenly it was bedtime.

When we got back to the Turtle for the night, we found that someone had caused a little trouble back at home. The culprit still remains at large as we try to gather more conclusive evidence.

On Monday Sara was back at work, so Sam took Andy and me on a beautifully sunny and very fun walking tour of Anchorage.

I’ll have you know that we had way more than a week’s worth of fun that week. Sam and Andy are two peas in a pod, and it’s awesome to see your sweetheart having fun like the old days with his buddy.

Although we tried our best to convince Sam to blow off another week’s commitments to goof off with us some more, he somehow decided to take the responsible road. Go figure!

Before we moved onto the next leg of the Anchorage Adventure, we needed a little battery-recharge, at which point it became apparent which of our friends are helpful when it comes to naps . . .

And which aren’t so much.

Oh, and in case you’re still wondering what happened to the vacuum-sealed tortilla chips . . . they were all ground to corn crumbles, except for one, which stayed completely intact!

Weird and worth the suspense, right?

The Road to Alaska – Part 5: Yukon! Valdez! Gracie Cleans Her Tail!

Everything you’ve heard about the drive to Alaska is true.

Ok, wait.

I guess I don’t know what you’ve heard about the drive to Alaska. Let’s go with this instead: if you’ve heard that the drive to Alaska is mile after mile of astonishingly beautiful scenery that seems too enormous and perfect to exist in real life, then what you’ve heard is true.

Especially once you hit Yukon. I have so many photos of this drive that I promise you’re hoping I never show up at your house for a slide show. Because it would take longer to show you all the gorgeous scenery and tell the stories than it took to drive through it. But here are a few of my favorites.

Right??

If you make the drive, be sure to multiply your estimated drive time by 2 to account for all the stoping and staring you’ll be doing.

The beauty didn’t stop once we hit Alaska, of course. We went to Valdez, where we’d been told the best fishing awaited us. You’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that I caught a fish on my very first cast, and then caught two more before Andy had even finished attaching his lure! (In all fairness, he’d gallantly put mine on first, which is why I was fishing already. But it just goes to show you how good the fishing is in Valdez!) We estimate that we caught 25 fish—dollys and humpys. We kept two to bring with us and released the rest, not because we didn’t want them, but we just didn’t have any room left in the fridge after all the fish we caught in Haines. A fine problem to have, it’s true.

From Valdez, we took a very early ferry over to Whittier. As we drank our coffee and admired the ocean, the fog made the horizon completely disappear, which was lovely.

As the sun rose, a chubby little porcupine came out of the bushes and delighted everyone in the ferry line.

The Valdez-Whittier trip is about 4.5 hours, and so beautiful that even though it got chilly we stayed posted up on the deck under our blankets for most of the ride.

Once we arrived in Whittier, we drove straight on to Anchorage. We had so much fun visiting friends while we were there that I’ll make a separate post to cover all those adventures.

For now, I’ll make the title of the post accurate with the following pictures of Gracie cleaning her tail.

The Road to Alaska – Part 3: New Aiyansh, Stewart, & Hyder

Holy cow, you guys.

We knew before we began the drive through Canada to Alaska that it was going to be beautiful, but somehow we weren’t even prepared for how majestic this part of the world is!

Every new place we go, we just look at each other, wide-eyed, and laugh out loud in amazement that we’re getting to see all this.

One of my favorite spots yet was the next stop on our map after leaving Stewart. New Aiyansh, BC and the other neighboring villages of Nisga’a are so beautiful that I can’t possibly do it any justice with words. And believe me when I say that I’ve been trying! Even when we were there, both of us were more quiet than usual.

A volcano eruption in the 18th century left the area covered in lava rock, which now is blanketed in dozens of different varieties of moss, ferns and little succulents. And the pools of water scattered around the lava fields are a perfectly clear aquamarine color that felt like something out of a fairy tale.

The Drowned Forest was a favorite stop for me.

A neighboring village has a bouncy suspension bridge spanning the Nass River, so we crossed it and I quickly admired the view as I hurried to the other side. Andy, of course, loved it!

Vetter Falls was a rainforest wonderland, and we walked out as far as we could to see if we could spot the “phantom fish”—steelhead that get trapped at the falls and develop snake-like bodies with large heads—but they lived up to their name.

Andy tried very, very hard though. So you have to give him credit.

We stayed the night at a lake near Cranberry Junction, which had a name but will now just be known as “mosquito lake” in our memory. It was a gorgeous spot for a feeding frenzy though!

Although staying indoors to escape mosquitos has its advantages.

The next day, we drove to Stewart, BC, which took us five times as long as it would have had we not stopped every half mile to marvel at the mountains, glaciers, and waterfalls.

Right next door to Stewart is a little town called Hyder. . . Alaska! They’re minutes away from one another, and have a very similar vibe; they’re just separated by a border agent on the BC side.

A local tradition is to get “hyderized” at the Glacier Inn, so we did. A bracing shot of Everclear later, we had our official cards!

The next day, one of the locals we’d met found us and invited us out for a day of fishing on their boat! We had a phenomenal time, especially considering the weather was clear and sunny so we could venture out on the speed boat to explore, fish and pick wild blueberries.

There were other perks as well:

It was such a treat and we’re so grateful we got to join! Thanks again, Kim and David!

After we left the dock that evening, we drove up to the Salmon Glacier, the fifth largest glacier in Canada. Because the sun doesn’t set until 11 p.m. around here this time of year, we had plenty of time to drive up and stop for photos along the way.

We found a great lookout to stop for the night, and watched the sun set behind the mountains.

The view from our front yard when we woke up the next day was pretty incredible!

We even had friendly neighbors!

Scout and I took a little walk while Andy made coffee.

I love our morning coffee views these days.

We drove back down the mountain to Stewart, where we got our fishing licenses and headed out to the dock to see if we could catch a few crabs. We had great luck catching crabs, but for a little while it seemed like the only crabs in the water were females! We met a local who was also crabbing from the dock and enjoyed hanging out with him while we all released the ladies back into the ocean. By the time he had to go he’d caught a number of prawns, which he gifted to us. We were totally thrilled. I’ve never had fresh prawns before, so it was generous and very much appreciated! Thanks again, Tim! 🙂

Well, I have more tales to tell and I’m not nearly caught up all the way yet, but I just looked at the time and it’s almost grizzly bear feeding time here in Haines, and we want to see more bears!

Yes, I said more! Spoiler alert:

The Road to Alaska – Part 2: British Columbia, Eh?

Greetings from Beautiful British Columbia!

It’s been an exciting first few weeks in Canada as we make our way north to Alaska. We’ve covered some ground and have been really enjoying watching the landscape change and become less and less familiar. The road signs are more frequently featuring moose, and though we haven’t yet spotted one yet, we did see a sleek little silver fox slinking around a park as we pulled in for the evening in Prince George! So that will tide me over for quite some time.

Our first adventure over the border began in Vancouver, BC. I briefly mentioned our stay in Vancouver in my last post, but now that I have all the photos uploaded I thought I’d fill you in further on the fun we had while we were there. Especially since, despite the fact that both of us have lived in Seattle, neither had ever been to nearby Vancouver so we were really looking forward to seeing the city.

One of my favorite resources as we visit new cities has been the online Atlas Obscura site, which suggests interesting attractions that aren’t found on most other “Things To Do In _______” sites. This time I told Andy that I was going to take him on a surprise tour of Vancouver and lead him to all the spots I thought sounded fun without telling him what they would be. He’s a good sport and agreed!

Our first stop was the VanDusen Botanical Gardens, which was one of the loveliest botanical gardens I’ve ever visited. The grounds are enormous, and the circuitous layout lends itself to a full day of wandering through paths and gardens reminiscent of Alice’s Wonderland.

Check out this delphinium garden:

Ok so if I’m being honest, the gardens were lovely, but the real reason for going here was something that’s been on my to-do list for as long as I can remember:

A hedge maze!

It’s one of only six Elizabethan hedge mazes in North America, and it was so much fun and more challenging than we gave it credit for going in.

Afterwards we went to the Granville Island Market, which my uncles in Seattle had highly recommended to us. It took us some time to find a spot to park, and it came in handy that Andy is a wizard. Look at this park job!

We wandered around the market and were totally in love. It was a bustling throng of people and the wonderful smells of hot espresso, cooking meats, fresh flowers and herby soaps. After picking up some darling wood map pins, we had lunch at a tiny Chinese restaurant downtown and then hit the road for the next stop on the secret tour . . .

The Steam Clock in Gastown. It’s a working steam clock built in 1977, which you can look inside and see the gears and levers moving. We were even there to hear the hourly musical whistles blow. In honor of the clock, we popped into nearby Steamworks Brewing Company for a beer.

Next we walked a number of blocks to the Marine Building, a remarkable Art Deco building that was conceived to look like it had risen from the sea, and it truly does. I mean it looks like something from a movie . . . oh wait, it is! To my fellow nerds out there, it’s also been featured in a number of movies, as the Baxter Building in Fantastic Four and for The Daily Planet in Smallville. Fun!

Afterwards we walked to see the Digital Orca sculpture, which we weren’t able to see up close due to an event that had the terrace roped off. (If you look closely, you can see empty glassware at the tail.)

It was a full day in Vancouver, and we left very satisfied. But after over a month staying in cities, I’d been so looking forward to getting back outside, and was happy to arrive at our next campsite at Gillis Lake. We stayed two nights, and got plenty of reading and swimming done.

When we woke up the morning of third day, the entire forest was flooded with smoke, which we later found out was due to dozens of forest fires throughout BC. A handful of towns had been evacuated, and the road we’d planned to take was closed. So we rerouted and drove through Kamloops to Prince George, windows rolled up to minimize our smoke inhalation. It was so thick my eyes watered, and you couldn’t even see the mountains beyond the freeway through the grey. And in the areas that we could see a fair distance, we saw fires licking the mountainsides. It was unreal.

We spent a two days in Prince George, or “PG” as the locals call it. (Which is pretty cute for a city in Canada, where everything is sweet and friendly and very “rated PG”.) When we got to town, we went to one of the best Railway Museums we’ve been to so far, and that’s saying something! We go to a lot of railroad museums, apparently.

We rode the little train around the grounds, and got to go inside most of the cars and engines. Andy had more fun than all the other museum-goers combined.

We stayed until they closed, then walked right next door to Cottonwood Island Park. I’d read that a local artist sculpted little pieces right into the trees, and as you walk through you can treasure hunt for them.

It likely comes as a huge surprise to nobody that my favorite was the gnome houses.

We stayed the night at the park’s lot and that’s where we saw the silver fox!

It’s a poor picture, but it was the best I could do at twilight while squealing with joy.

Over the next few days, we found ourselves in more picture-perfect campsites, all of which are free! We stayed a few nights at Co-op Lake, where we noticed a strange bubbling at the shoreline. As we got nearer to investigate, we saw that it was a massive mob of tadpoles!

We all had a wonderful time there, reading, hammock-ing, swimming, fetching frisbees in the lake, pouncing on bugs, paddling out to the middle of the lake in our floaties and watching the clouds roll by.

We then moved to another great campsite at the Eagle Creek Opal Beds, where we went on a gorgeous hike, hunted for—and found!—raw opals, discovered and ate the huckleberries along the path, and then hiked up a hill at midnight where we saw the Northern Lights flickering on the horizon. It was a pretty magical spot.

Scout even remembered how to pick huckleberries!

I could have stayed in any one of those campsites for weeks, but there is much to see in these parts, so we pressed on. We wanted to see Prince Rupert, a darling coastal town in northwestern BC, even though it was a few hours out of the way. On our way there, other things happened and they looked like this:

When we got to Prince Rupert it was a brilliant sunny day, which—we were informed by the locals—is not usually the case. We walked all around town, in and out of cute little shops, through the Museum of Northern British Columbia, and ended up on a bright patio overlooking the ocean.

We looked down and noticed crabs walking along the ocean floor, and the next day’s plan was born. After all, we’ve been carrying our crab traps around for over a year!

The next day we got our licenses and some bait, and headed down to the docks, where we discovered the depth off the edge was around 80 feet! We spent the entire afternoon into the evening sitting on the dock, chatting with locals, fishing, and reading books. We caught three crabs, one was a keeper, and Andy caught a small flounder.

So all in all the day was a success, and as we packed up we were treated to a perfectly picturesque coastal sunset.

Today was our last day in Prince Rupert, and we visited the North Pacific Cannery Museum on our way out of town. We accidentally stayed three hours, and enjoyed every last minute.

We’re now back in Terrace, BC, heading north for some serious camping way-off-grid, so the next post will be on the other side of the wilderness when we have service again. And though the silver fox was a superior thrill, here’s hoping that next post will include some photos of a moose. 🙂

The Alaska Road Trip Begins!

Well hello there!

A lot has happened since the last time I updated the blog on our roving whereabouts, wild shenanigans and general goings-on, and if I could, I’d catch you up completely on what we’ve been up to since I last reported. But as I sit here writing this post, I realize how long that could take, as we’ve been moving at breakneck Turtle speed for the last few months! (Of course I’m not referring to miles-per-hour speed, as that remains as slow as ever. I’m talking about how much ground we’ve covered, which for us has been a lot in an uncharacteristically short amount of time.)

Instead, I’ve decided to pick up where we are at this moment, which is the beginning of such a fun adventure that I think you’ll agree this is the best place to begin. Because we just crossed the border into Canada, which (in our minds at least) is the official beginning of the Overland Trek to Alaska!

The general plan is as follows:

The Timeframe: A month driving up to Alaska (July), a month exploring Alaska (August), and a month returning home (September). We’d stay longer, but we’d like to stay ahead of snowy road conditions and by October the roads can start to ice over.

The Route: We are going to loosely follow what some travel guides call the “Gold Rush Route” on the way up, and then follow the Alcan Highway which ends just north of Montana, so we can drop in to see family at the end of the journey.

Must See: Denali National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, The Cook Family in Anchorage, Harding Ice Fields, Kenai Peninsula, and a moose. (It doesn’t matter which one.) Other than that we’ll play it by ear, as is our general travel style. There’s a lot of Alaska up there and we want to see as much as we can without moving so quickly that we forget to relax and enjoy the quiet moments that we’ve come to love most during our travels. I’ve been surprised to find my sweetest memories are the little surprise spots we stumble across between official destinations, and we try to make sure we leave room for improvisation for that reason.

Aaaaand, honestly, that’s as far as we’ve gotten. It’s tricky to make new travel plans while you’re in the midst of traveling and enjoying your current location! So we’ve become accustomed to making detailed itineraries a day or two in advance and then making more general plans where the upcoming weeks and months are concerned. It’s just no use trying to nail things down when we could see an interesting road and end up somewhere completely different than we’d anticipated!

We just arrived in Canada yesterday, and already we’re just charmed to pieces. It’s very familiar of course, but different enough that we’re excited to see what unexpected twists we’ll encounter as we go.

Unanswered questions include:

How different are the regulations regarding boondocking? Can you stay overnight at any turnout or viewpoint along the highway like you can in the states we’ve visited in the US?
What are “good” prices for fuel and propane? Our brains are already so tangled by conversions, and then by the time we work out what the prices are in US Dollars we realize that we don’t even know if the price is good or bad for the region we’re in!
We were surprised by the questions they asked us at the border, but they let us in so who are we to complain? They had a lot of questions regarding our lack of jobs, even though we explained we were living off of savings, and wanted to know what jobs we had before we left them for life on the road. The agent asked to see bank account balances to ensure we had enough money to cover our trip, which makes sense. He didn’t ask about pets, even though we did have all the documentation for Scout and Gracie including immunization records, etc. The one we’re still puzzled about though is that he asked how many guns we own. Not how many we were carrying with us, but how many do we own anywhere in the world. Interesting, right? The answer is none, so I’m not sure what the outcome would have been had we said we had an arsenal somewhere in the states. But again, we’re not here to tell the man how to do his job, especially since we crossed over in very little time.

Today we went to Vancouver, BC and had a great time at the Granville Island Market and VanDusen Botanical Gardens before hitting up a few points of interest including the steam clock, a “metaphysical supply store,” the Digital Orca, and the Marine Building. All awesome.

We love Vancouver!

And now that we’re all up-to-date on the current adventure, here is a sampler platter of the aforementioned shenanigans we’ve been into the last month or two, for those who like pictures of cute animals, lovely scenery, fun friends, and other general niceness.

Everything Rolls: Lessons From the Road

Living on the road full time has proven to be even more drastically different from “real life” than we’d anticipated when we began this adventure almost two years ago. We assert that it’s waaaaaay better (for us), but there definitely have been a whole lot of lessons we’ve gradually been learning along the way. These are all things that we’d never had to consider when our house didn’t move, and it’s funny when we find that our new behaviors are now so deeply ingrained that when visiting friends in their stationary houses, we still anticipate things falling out of cabinets whenever we open them, for example.

I thought I’d list a few of the funnier lessons we’ve learned in the last year and a half.

Never trust the flatness of any surface, no matter how level it may look. Everything rolls. Put that egg on the counter without hovering your hand above it for a second first, and you’ve got a cleanup job in between you and breakfast! It’s not a matter of will it roll, it’s what direction, and you better be ready.
Always open liquid containers slowly, because you’ve more than likely changed altitude since you last closed it. I mopped up a whole lot of wasted sunscreen, shampoo, and ketchup before learning this lesson. You can’t trust a bottle on the road.
You can’t take people’s recommendations for the “best food in town” unless you’re in your home state, or at least a neighboring state. Regional tastes vary so much that Yelp has been rendered useless to us. You just don’t know what the ideal flavor profile is. We’ve gotten tips from locals about where to go for dinner for the “most amazing Mexican food we’ll ever have” only to discover that in that state, sweet marinara-flavored salsa is the standard, among other atrocities.
If you see a sign for a free dump station and potable water that’s right on your way, it’s going to be a good day.
There are loads of great places to park when boondocking downtown. One of them is not the local newspaper office. At 3:30 a.m. the trucks pull up and idle while metal doors are flung open, and the workers chat loudly while tossing heavy piles of paper into their trucks. This all happens six feet away from your face. Newspaper offices may seem harmless, but they’re hazardous to your sleep.
Never assume that the mess you don’t feel like cleaning up right now is your secret. A house tour could happen at any time. We vandwellers just love to check out each other’s setups, and if you meet some fun fulltimers and you slacked on clean-up duty that day, you’d better just come to terms with them being in close quarters with your dirty dishes and sandy dog cushions, because you just can’t forfeit the tour swap!
Let yourself wake up enough in the morning to realize where you are before opening the back door and hopping out. Just because your back yard has been the woods for a week doesn’t mean that you won’t step out—in your pajamas and —into the middle of some town’s morning commute.
We also just recently learned that we are Napa Blue. You really do learn something new every day!

Let’s Refurbish a Van – Part 8: Hood Scoops (By Andy)

A post by Andy

{Modified the title theme some. We think of ourselves much more as a big van than a small RV. I now want to start prefacing this and future posts to be more representative of our self-image.}

So, to the meat of the subject. I just finished our hood scoops! Why did I make hood scoops? Well, for one, they look pretty cool and I needed a prominent place to put my new go-fast emblems that I ordered from Amazon.

Mainly, we are trying to get as much power out of the engine so we can get our heavy old self up the high steep hills. In that vein, I have been playing with the spark timing, carb mixture, and intake airflow. By tweaking and adjusting these parameters we are working to get the most power and efficiency out of our old engine. Specifically, advancing the timing can get the engine to produce more power, but too much spark advance causes engine problems—pinging and preignition. If the engine is cooler, one can run with more advance. Another way to look at it is that with a given timing advance, if the engine and intake air get hotter, then the timing is too far advanced.

Maybe a side note about my “go-fast” emblems. Car companies try to sell cars. Sometime fancy cars come with racing stripes, cool graphics, and badges on the side about engine stuff. A joke among car people is the question “How much horsepower do the stripes add?” The answer is, of course, none. But… they do look cool. Look around, they are everywhere: M3, AMG, Hemi, 440, HiPo. The only thing the badge or stripes could actually do is add an immeasurably small increase in drag, or some unneeded paint weight. They are simply for the people in the car next to you. All the same, they look sporty, so I bought some that state the displacement of our engine and say it is “High Performance”. What I’m saying here is they do nothing, but they truly do look great!

So, I wanted more air to get in and out of the engine compartment to cool the engine, and have the air flowing into the air cleaner be as cool (and dense) as possible. To make sure I had an understanding of the pre-hood-scoop environment, I first taped the probe end of my digital temperature gauge to the air cleaner. Over a few weeks in different driving conditions and different altitudes, we took notes about the temperature measurements of the air cleaner and air filter. You can see the wire to the probe, and the tape holding it in one location.

Overall, we are in the 150º–160ºF range under the hood after the engine gets warmed up and when the ambient temperature is in the 70º–80ºF range. So, to get more outside air in and more inside air out we need some kind of venting. I looked online, and $50+ plastic vents and scoops can be found, but they were not really van-sized, and seem flimsy. Metal ones can also be found, but are more expensive, and again, really don’t fit. Apparently there is an untapped market of people who want to mod 1985 Ford vans! (Investors be wary—the market may be small.) I finally hit on the idea that rectangle cake pans are about the size I wanted, and they are inexpensive, and they are made of metal designed to withstand 500ºF+. Going with this thought, while we were camping in El Malpais National Monument, I made some cake pan-sized cardboard mockups and spray painted them with a blue that I had.

Test fitting…

I thought that looked good, so a few days later when we were in a town, we got some cake pans.

One morning, a few weeks later, when we where camping at the Great Salt Lake, I got out the pans, tin snips, sandpaper, and primer, and got to work remaking our sweet cake pans into even sweeter performance hood scoops (please note the word play).

Here they are.

Test fitting.

We stashed them away for a bit and traveled onward. Another week later we had a free day while visiting our friends the Higdems in Kimberly, ID. I measured, moved, marked, measured, and measured and marked again. Then I started drilling holes in the hood.

Lots of little holes now!

After fitting and drilling the mounting holes, I now knew what piece of the hood (bonnet, for any Brits out there) to cut out. Out with the jig saw.

Another side note here: When putting the Turtle together, we set ourselves up with a few DeWalt cordless tools and the battery charger that plugs into a 12V cigarette lighter. The tool charger is now wired to our solar-charged batteries, so we are using the sun’s energy to drill, cut, and modify our hood. It feels fun to know that when working on projects such as this!

For the final install, I put down a small bead of RTV sealant, aligned the scoops, and screwed in the 6 screws per scoop that I had already pre-drilled. After the RTV cured a bit, I got out our boat paint and went at it.

Included above is, obviously, a photo of what Scout and Gracie were doing at the time. A few days later, at Dave and Ryann’s place, I added more RTV to smooth the transition and put on more paint to finish it all off.

All finished now, after the last painting and with the great go-fast badges installed.

We should call this the conclusions section of the post, for you science people out there. Well, they have been on now for a week, and we don’t move fast, so we have only driven a few hundred miles. We will need to collect more data, but so far the maximum under-hood temperature we have seen in 135ºF, and most of the time it has been in the 100º-120ºF range (and we are actually in hotter weather than when we took our non-hood scoop measurements). We have also driven through crazy heavy rain and, as expected and hoped for, the small amount of water that enters through the scoops has no adverse effects on the engine. Generally, a pretty solid success, and I have since advanced the ignition timing just a bit with no pinging.

Oh, maybe a cost breakdown. The sum total of the cake pans, primer, quantity of screws, RTV, and paint used is less than $20. The go-fast badges were $11 each. Dave suggests I sell it as “The whole project was less than 45 dollars.” I think I shall adopt that tract!

All that for less than 45 dollars!!!

Let’s Refurbish a Van – Part 7: Our Batteries Phase 1 (By Andy)

A Post by Andy

{Note: The work detailed in this part of the post was completed over the summer of 2015, before we moved into the Turtle. I am just getting to writing the post now.}

So, we like to have our computers run, have lights, have the controls for our fridge work, have a charged Wi-Fi hotspot, and have our furnace fan powered to keep us warm. For all this we need electricity, and since we want to be off-grid, we need batteries. We started with this:

If you are familiar with the Turtle, this compartment is behind the largest access door on the passenger side- the door with the vent in it. In the following photo, I put in a dotted line where the plane of the floor on the inside intersects the compartment.

The walls of the compartment above the floor line are plywood, and bump up under the couch inside. The sides and bottom below the line are made of heavy steel. I have deduced the compartment was originally designed for a generator, as there was old 120V AC wiring running to it, an unconnected fuel line that ran into the back, and the door vent.

I had a hard time figuring out what all the wires were hooked to, as it was a bit haphazard in the compartment. In the above picture, (1) is a port that goes outside, below the floor of the Turtle. The wires there threaded out of the box, ran a short distance under the Turtle’s floor, then threaded up through the floor to the old inverter. There is a second hole (2) that the wires from the old 100W solar panel and the wires between the battery and main 12V distribution panel were run. (3) is the unused electrical box that had 120V AC wires run to the compartment where the shore power cable is housed.

Maybe I should back up a bit and throw out a few concepts and definitions and explanations for the terms we will be using.

Battery: A thing that stores electricity in chemical bonds. Here, we are just referring to 12V lead-acid batteries.
12V/12VDC/DC: 12 Volt Direct Current (DC). This is what cars use for their electricity for headlights, the radio, starting, etc. It is the kind of power all the batteries we talk about will produce.
120v: 120V Alternating Current (AC). This is what is in your house and in businesses you know, the typical wall plug Amy and I look for at restaurants to plug our computers into. It’s generally 120, 121, or whatever it takes.
Current: The flow rate of electricity.
Voltage: The force pushing the electricity through the wires.
Inverter: An electrical box that changes 12VDC to 120VAC. It changes car electricity to house-hold electricity. This is so we can plug our AC computer cords into our DC batteries.
Converter: An electrical box that changes 120VAC to 12VDC. The opposite of the above—pretty much a garage battery charger that you use to get your car started after you leave the lights on.
Charge Controller: An electrical box that changes the output of the solar panels into DC voltage, hopefully charging the house batteries.
House Battery: Now, I probably use this too freely. When I talk about house batteries, and I mean batteries dedicated to our living compartment. If I say house (or household) electricity, I mean 120 V AC. Got to figure this out… but, house batteries are 12V batteries separated from the car system, and dedicated to lights and heat and powering the inverter in the house part of a van. One should be able to run these dead flat, and the car will still start, as they are fully independent circuits.
Starting Battery: The batteries under the hood, used for starting the car, sparking the gas when the engine is running, running a radio (if you had a functional one), and lighting the headlights.
Shore power: Kind of a boat term, but a source of 120V AC electricity you can plug into. When you pull up at a friend’s house, and pull out your extension cord, and plug into their electricity, they are your “shore power”. (Thanks Alex and Julie, Kari and David, Connie, Mag and John, Dave and Ryanne, Mike and Becky, Blake and Martha, Roger and Mary, Chris, Dad…)

Now, back to the good stuff! To start the battery box rebuilt and modification, I first labeled the wires and removed the old battery. I then cleaned the compartment with baking soda and water to neutralize the sulfuric acid and prevent further corrosion. Lucky, the metal compartment is super stout, so it was still in great shape. As usual, after a final thorough cleaning, I caulked the seams and painted the compartment with black Rustoleum. I can’t find a picture of the completely empty, cleaned and freshly painted compartment, but trust me, it looked good!

After getting the compartment beautified, I cut and painted a plywood plate to fit into the bottom, bolted and glued it to the metal base of the box, and mounted battery trays to it. I painted up everything with oil-based paint and used stainless steel hardware to affix everything.

Since we had just gotten the Interlux blue boat paint, I practiced the painting technique on the top surface of the plywood base, so it is the same shiny blue as the Turtle exterior. In the following photos, you can see the two new Fullriver 115Ah 12V DC sealed AGM batteries that we started with in there, but just patched into the cleaned up existing wiring we are reusing at this point.

I decided to go with Absorbed Glass Matt (AGM) batteries. They cost a bit more than flooded batteries, but they do not spill, they will not develop corrosion at the terminals, and can be mounted sideways, if that configuration seems important. Additionally, they do not require venting, so they can be safely installed inside the living compartment, if that is necessary. Here is the site. We have been happy with this choice, and as you will find out in future posts, choosing AGM sealed batteries will allow us to make some future cold-weather modifications.

As to wiring, I was just starting to adopt the boat convention for new circuits and runs I would rewire. The convention is as follows: For 12VDC, yellow is ground, and red is positive. For 120V AC, the wires are white, black, and green for ground. Examples of the wires are here:

The reason behind adopting this convention is that at a glance, you can tell which circuit they are supposed to be wired to. Additionally, the boat 120V cable is stranded, as opposed to the household solid copper wire. Stranded wires should always be used in a vibration environment. Logically, then, a van should have no solid copper wires (though most RV builders do actually use cheaper solid copper for the 120V runs). As you might have observed, we have concluded that one should think of their van as a boat, and look to boat paints, wires, latches, and hardware for the upgrades and work. Though the boat cable is a little more expensive, it is paired and tinned for corrosion resistance, and gives a real nice finished look. Additionally, it can be purchased in any gauge.

So, at the end of our Phase 1 battery configuration we had our two new AGM batteries with a combined storage of 230Ah at 12V installed and secured, with the connections cleaned up. With this battery pack, we simply used the old converter to charge them when we were connected to shore power, and the old inverter to make our 120V for our computers when off-grid. At this point in our journey I also had just finished the install of our 300W of solar to charge the batteries (we will cover the panels and solar charging and solar controller in a different post).

That’s Phase 1 for you!

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