GoneToSee

Jean and I arrived back in Dallas last Saturday.  After leaving South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore we worked our way across the state to Sioux Falls and then headed south on I-29.  A week or so earlier, I’d made plans to stop in Kansas City and have lunch with an old friend I used to work with in television.  In the process of setting the day and time, he alerted me to the fact that there may still be an issue with flooding along that Interstate.

Sure enough, large portions of I-29 between Sioux City, Iowa and northwestern Missouri are still underwater from flooding in late June.  Jean and I saw considerable flooding between Sioux Falls and into Sioux City.  There was numerous places were water was at the edge of the highway and sandbags were stacked at low spots and on some low bridges.

We crossed into Nebraska north of Omaha and worked our way south to Nebraska City before stopping for the night on Tuesday.  I had stopped at an Iowa Tourist Information spot and talked with a representative there about the detours.  I was going to go south down US 75 in Nebraska and wanted to make sure it was open all the way into NE Kansas. As we headed south on US 75, there were signs indicating that various cross highways back into Iowa and Missouri were closed at I-29. We headed back east into St. Joseph, MO and picked up I-29 there.

After lunch in KC, we continued south to Jean’s parents and our hometown of Girard, KS.  We visited friends and family for a couple of days and headed home Saturday morning.  I was back in Dallas after 53 days on the road.

I was ready to come home but it was a fantastic trip.  I realize that none of you will undertake this kind of trip and that’s fine.  I wouldn’t have done it this way if I wasn’t traveling alone.

I’d like to offer some unsolicited advice if you were intrigued by what I told and showed you about Alaska and are thinking about going there.

Probably the majority of people who visit Alaska go on an Alaskan cruise.  I love cruising and I think it’s a great way to travel.  But a cruise to Alaska doesn’t show you much of Alaska.  You have to get off the ship more than a visit to the ports along the way. So take the cruise if you wish but either add a land portion or travel independently after the cruise.

When planning your trip, determine what you goals are.  Taking an Alaskan cruise shows you the west coast of the state with stops in several ports.  You’ll eat well, sleep in a comfortable bed and make some new friends but that’s a small part of what Alaska is.

Last summer, one of Jean’s brothers and his wife did an Alaskan cruise that was three or four days on the ship and ten days on a motorcoach, train and plane tour. They saw a lot of Alaska.  While that kind of tour still limits you because you have a schedule and you have to be somewhere at a specific time and can only spend so much time in a location or looking for wildlife along the road, it is an opportunity to see a lot of Alaska.  The cruise lines have a pretty good idea of what most people want to see and offer a variety of entertainment and experiences that make it an easy choice.

But you can see Alaska and do it independently.  It all depends on how much time you want to spend doing the research.  I met a lot of people who had flown to Alaska, rented a car or camper, and were doing their own thing.  On a cruise ship, you can tour Tracy Arm fiord and look at glaciers but not as close as on a small tour boat out of Juneau.  You can see whales on a cruise ship but not as close as on a whale watching boat.  And, on a cruise ship, you may see a bear or two on the shore but not as close as you will inland….even from a tour bus, if you’re lucky.

If you rent a camper for a couple of weeks in Alaska, you can live fairly comfortably and you don’t have to be in a campground every night.  In fact, you could spend two weeks driving around Alaska and NEVER have to spend a night in a campground if you chose.  Campgrounds do make it easier to do laundry and have electricity but in Alaska you don’t need air conditioning and most camper’s have propane for cooking and heat.

Over the 53 days I was gone, I spent ten nights in a hotel or hostel (including four after Jean joined me)….two nights in a private home (my sister’s in Kansas, the Interstate distributors in Anchorage)…twelve in a campground I paid a small fee for ($8-$20) and twenty-nine that were free (pullouts, public camping, rest stops, Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer parking lots).  I wasn’t alone at many of those free spots.  At one Fred Meyer store (basically they are unscale Wal-Marts in Alaska) there was probably 50-60 campers of all sizes and types from large motorcoaches to small pull-behind campers to my cargo van.

If you want to bring home pictures that you can put on the wall of wildlife, you need a long lens…at least 200mm to get some decent shots of wildlife along the road to 400-500mm for some of the animals in Denali National Park.  But if you just want to see them up close and don’t care about close-up pictures, then a good set of binoculars will work perfectly.

I had estimated that I would drive 10,500-11,000 miles.  I went over that and turned 12,350 miles.  Despite the extra miles, I came in about 5% under the budget I had estimated for the trip not including my truck repairs.  That wasn’t in the budget and it was significant.

I met a lot of wonderful people along the way.  I held what I consider meaningful conversations with folks from Greece, Italy, France, Germany, Peru, England, Australia, Romania, all over Canada, and many of the lower 48 states.  I was tipped to some places to go and things to photograph by talking to people I met everywhere.  The photograph of Mt. McKinley reflected in Reflection Pond was from a conversation with a photographer I met waiting to board a plane in Anchorage to Brooks Camp. The elk I photographed in Wyoming I learned about from the garage owner who replaced my transmission.  He loaned me the car to go hunt for them.  And I’ve told you about my new friend, Mike, the teacher from North Pole, Alaska who I met in a campground in Skagway and who ended up giving me a ride around Sitka and Juneau when we met up again on the ferry to Sitka.  I even met a family of seven from near my hometown in Kansas. (I had volunteered to take their family picture at a visitor center in Denali National Park and we got to talking.)

All in all, I had a fantastic time.  I got a lot of great images. You may not see them in National Geographic but some of them will make it to a wall near me.

If anyone has any questions about anything related to this trip or about planning your own trip, please don’t hesitate to contact me.  I’ll give you whatever information I can or direct you to resources I found useful.

Thanks for following my trip.  I’ve appreciated the many good comments and suggestions you’ve made.  You all helped me enjoy this trip more than I would have otherwise.

Jean arrived Saturday afternoon in Great Falls.  We did lunch and headed for Lewistown, MT for a bed and breakfast there.  It was about 5 miles outside of Lewistown on 20 acres.  It was very quiet.  After a great breakfast Sunday morning of fresh raspberries crepes, link sausage, scrambled eggs, juice and tea we were off.

First stop was the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn or as it is also known, Custer’s Last Stand.  In 1868 a treaty was signed with the Lakota, Cheyenne and other tribes of the  Great Plains to move the Indians to a large portion of eastern Wyoming as a permanent reservation.  In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the heart of the new Indian reservation.  When word spread of the gold, thousands of gold seekers swarmed the area in violation of the treaty.  Attempts were made to buy back the land to know avail and Indians started leaving the reservation to conduct raids against the settlers.  When the Indians refused to obey orders to move back to the reservations, the army was sent in to resolve the issue.

In June 1876, three groups of troops departed from three different locations to converge on a village of 8000 Indians including about 1500-2000 warriors.  Due to various problems, the three military groups did not connect.  One of the groups of less than 50 soldiers led by Lt. Col. George A. Custer, were surrounded by several hundred warriors.  Custer ordered his men to shoot their horses and use them a shields from the Indians to no avail.  These markers show where the soldiers fell on the Last Stand Hill. 

Custer’s marker is in the center.

One of the other groups arrived after Custer’s contigent were killed.  They buried them in shallow graves and moved on.  In l877, the 11 officers and two civilians killed here were removed to eastern cemeteries.  Custer was reinterred at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point.  In 1881, the remains of the enlisted men were buried in a mass grave beneath this memorial.

Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, two of the primary chiefs that were involved with the Indian, were killed later in separate incidents for resisting arrest.

Jean and I moved on to Gillette, Wyoming.  Today, we were at Mt. Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota.

This is the Avenue of Flags.  The 56 flags represent the states, districts, commonwealths and territories of the U.S.

When the original concept for Mt. Rushmore was conceived it was to be sculptures of numerous significant U.S. citizens.  The carvings were to be done in spires of Black Hills rock.  When the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, was selected, he determined that the spires would not work.  They were too soft.  He proposed using the face of the mountain itself.

The idea for these sculptures were not without controversy.  There were many local people who felt that it would deface the mountain.  But congressional approval was secured and money raised.  It was decided to base the sculptures on Birth, Expansion, Development and Preservation.  Washington for Birth, our first president.  Thomas Jefferson for Expansion, the Louisiana Purchase.  Theodore Roosevelt for Developement, the Panama Canal, Trust Buster and National Parks. Lincoln for Preservation, saving the union during the Civil War.

The project was begun in 1927 and completed in 1941…a period of 14 years but the actual work took only 6 plus years.  It was stalled several times to raise additional money and overcome objections along the way.

The total cost was under a million dollars and involved 400 workers.  Each face is 60 ft. high and each eye is 11 ft. wide.  Washington’s nose is 21 feet long and the other’s are 20 ft.  Initially, the plan was not to use dynomite but rather, drills.  After a very short time, it was determined that this method would take far to long and dynomite became the normal method of carving with the smoothing being done with drills and chisels.

I’ve sent my special email on Alaska to about a third of you.  I’m still waiting to hear from the rest as to whether you want me to email it to you.  Those that have received it so far have indicated it takes about 8-10 minutes to download and only one system rejected it as too large for it.  That, and it can’t be sent to Interstate Batteries email system.

More to follow….

I was up at 5am this morning to shoot sunrise.  Sunrise didn’t come, however, where I located until after 6am.  It gave me time to scout out where I wanted to shoot from.

I went back to Vermillion Lakes at the outskirts of Banff.  I shot probably 25 images but I think this one turned out the best.  I was able to include the full moon.

Then I drove the length of the Bow Lake Parkway roundtrip looking for wildlife.  It was scarce this morning.  Actually, I had spent the night at a roadside parking area on the parkway next to what I soon learned was railroad tracks.  Between 11pm and 3am, four trains went by within a hundred yards.  Each time I thought, “well, that’s it for the trains”.

Anyway, the parkway is really a narrow two-lane road that runs parallel to the main highway.  There are supposed to be bears and wolves along the road but I haven’t seen any.  I’ve driven the road three times now.

I did find this elk, though.

I’m getting a little cocky now that I’ve photographed a number of elk and bear.  I thought, why not try to get a little something extra for all the good folks back home.   So I tried to encourage him…..SMILE….

Ah, c’mon.   SMILE.

How about a little somethin’ for the folks back home?

Check out his tongue.  I can’t believe he doesn’t have more respect for you than that.

I think I had one of his cousins for dinner last night.  I tried an “elk burger” at a local restaurant.  Actually, it was pretty good.

I head to Calgary later today.  Hope you have a good day.  I intend to.

The rain departed and the sun came out.  I headed out to the Vermillion Lakes at the edge of Banff to take some pictures.  No particular dialogue here.  Just a couple of pictures.

Yesterday I shot these near Jasper….note the cub hidden in the grass in front of Mom.

I shot this mountain goat through the front window because he was almost in front of the truck and I was blocked in.

And one last waterfall from this morning near Lake Moraine.

And for you ladies who think all there is is beautiful mountains, waterfalls, bears, goats, whales and other creatures.  Here in Banff, there is also shopping.

Well, I no more than got this shot and returned to the library to upload this blog than the rain returned, as well.  Those poor shoppers!!!

That’s it for today….

I started to edit this post and the library system I’m on went down.  So we’ll try it again.

I’m in Banff and it’s raining.  Yesterday, I entered Jasper National Park which is north of Banff and even though it was overcast most of the day, took a few shots.  I haven’t transferred them to my computer yet but will shortly.

I just wanted to send a short post to acknowledge that I’ve been unable to connect since Saturday morning in Dawson Creek.  Now I know I can get on here, I’ll get some photos ready and send them later today.

Hopefully, the rain will clear later or tomorrow and I can still shoot some of the amazing scenery around here.

‘Til next time….

And as an added bonus, you get three postings today.  I’ve got a seat staked out at McDonald’s in Dawson Creek and I’m not giving it up!

Let’s go back to Denali for this one.  As I’ve said, you can drive your personal vehicle into the park about 12 miles.  After that you need a camping permit to get you to Teklanika where I camped for three nights.  That’s 30 miles into the park.  From that point on the only way to see the park is aboard one of several buses.  There are green buses like I posted some time back.  Basically, they’re school buses that are painted green.  There are tan buses that are more like city buses and there are some buses that are white with red and blue stripes.  Those white ones are run by the resorts that are located at the very end of the park road at 92 miles in.  They transport their customers to and from the entrance and stop along the way to view wildlife and at the various rest stops.  It’s about 6 hours from the entrance to the resorts.  They typically run about $450 per night.

The tan buses run special tours…natural history tours, discovery tours that specialize in plants, etc., and wilderness tours that only go part of the way into the park.  The cost ranges from $31 up depending on what you’re doing and where you’re going.  There is also a camper bus that hauls campers to the various camp grounds.  They have more room at the back for backpacks, bikes, etc.

I rode the camper bus to Wonder Lake and two other green buses on separate days to Wonder Lake. Here’s a nice quiet picture of everyone looking for wildlife along the road.

If someone spots something they holler…”Bear, 10 o’clock” for example and then it looks like this.

The drivers are generally well informed and give a guided tour and history lesson along the way.  I road with five drivers.  Three were pretty good, one was like riding with Wikipedia (he talked constantly and was well-informed. Number five was a disservice to the park service.

You can get off any of the green buses anywhere along the road you wish and hike away from the road.  That’s what I did with to get the Reflection Pond photo.  Then you hike back to the road and wait for the next bus going in the direction you want to go and hope….hope that they are a seat for you.  If not, you wait until the next one comes along until you find one with space for you.

The drivers would stop as quickly as was possible at a wildlife sighting.  You could open the windows for better shots and just about everyone tried to share window space on opposite sides of the bus.  You could not get out of the bus!  There was an exception to that rule, though.  You could exit when the driver or passengers requested a landscape shot…like a good location to see McKinley or a mountain range, for example.

At first I didn’t think I’d like this bus idea but if you consider that when I shot the bear encountering the wolf that I posted a couple of days ago.  While I was shooting my shots, there were four additional buses in front or behind us.  With 44-52 passengers each that 250 people.  If they’d all been in private cars at an average of 3 per car, that’s 80+ cars lined up.  I believe the National Park Service is trying to give all of us the ability to see nature in the wild and I think this works.  We’ve all heard horror stories of traffic jams in Yellowstone.  I think Denali has avoided that.  I also believe their bear policy has saved lives by not letting bears become acclimated to food handouts.  How many times have you seen pictures of happy, smiling faces as people fed bears from their cars in Yellowstone?  One day, one of those bears may kill or maim someone.  I believe Yellowstone has changed that policy and no longer permits feeding the animals.

You can still camp in the backcountry of Denali.  You have to get a permit for whichever of the 43 regions within the park you intend to hike into.  You are required to carry a bear vault to store anything that has an odor….food, perfume (I put mine in a bear locker at the campsite) toothpaste, lip balm, chewing gum, etc.

Most of the campgrounds have vault toilets.  That is a glorified outhouse.  It’s a toilet setting over an open container much like a port-a-potty.  A few have flush toilets.

Well, it’s about time for the dinner rush here so I guess I’ll give up my seat and head on down the road.

More to come…..

So I head south out of Watson Lake and about 20 minutes down the road I start seeing the droppings from what I assumed was bison….but no bison.  I drove on..about 2 hours… and when I had just about given up, there was my herd of about 25 bison.

Careful, he’s got his eye on you!

A little further south is Liard (Lee ard) Hot Springs Provencial Park.  As I was walking out the boardwalk to the hot springs, a guy approaching me waved.  I waved back thinking he was being friendly.  When we met up he ask me, “Did you see that black bear that crossed the boardwalk behind you?”  Uh….no.

Sure enough, a small black bear was headed away from the boardwalk.  I took a picture but it wasn’t worth posting.

Anyway, the hot springs in the river range between 106 and 126 degrees.  Everyone’s in shorts and swimsuits and relaxing in the river.

A short distance further south is Smith Point waterfall.  It was sunny at the hot springs and it’s back to light rain here.

I cruised on.  I spotted this wolf approaching the road from a ravine.  I stopped and the wolf crossed the road, watching me the whole time.  I got several shots and then it disappeared into the trees.  Like I did with the moose a few days earlier, I waited and he stuck his nose above the ridge and moved back across the road again.  I got out of the truck and he came up to the edge of the ridge and look down at me.  The streaks you see in this picture is rain.

And finally, I got this shot of two Stone sheep.  It was the only picture I was able to shoot as a car came between us and scared them away.  There was a third one but all took off for higher ground.

More later….