We dropped Mom and Daniel at the Airport this morning and we’re moving to Seward for tomorrow’s cruise. Staying in a B&B tonight. Don’t know if there will be network access. Will post today’s pictures when I get a chance.
Posted at Breakfast.
We found a really cool diner not far from the Hotel when we got into the Anchorage area and have been here a few times. Since we’re rolling out of town today I thought I’d post a little about it… The menu has some pretty cool choices. It’s been busy every time we’ve come here and we think the food is great.
Here is some of the City Diner “Lingo” from their menu:
They have items on their Menu like:
Their menu has a lot of stuff, most with interesting names as you can see. I’ve just listed a few to give an idea what’s here. The staff here are very friendly and always make sure your coffee cup is full. If you’re ever in the Anchorage area I would recommend a stop at the City Diner on the corner of Northern Lights and Minnesota. It’s Great!
We’re staying and Mom’s flying home in the morning… Actually she’s going to visit my brother and his family in Cali. We lined up her tickets when we were in Whitehorse. Nan and I are going on a 9 1/2 hour cruise Tuesday to check out glaciers and some of the marine wildlife.
We took the Book Bug to the library and went to Elmendorf AFB today. A lot of things were closed since it was Sunday.
Here are Book Bug pictures from today…
We did tourist stuff today. Took book bug with us and went to a flea market where they don’t sell fleas… Nan bought a fleece and we visited Bernd and Susan Richter‘s table at the flea market. Bernd and Susan are authors of childrens books about Alaska. Nan bought some books to read and Bernd gave Nan two books for the Library. Bernd autographed all of the books. We explained what the Travel bug was and how we’re visiting libraries and geocaching along this trip and then Nan and Book bug got a photo op with Bernd and Susan…Susan held the bug for the photo.
It just so happens that Elmendorf AFB is having it’s open house and air show this weekend. We were treated to the Air Force Thunderbirds doing some of their airshow maneuvers over Anchorage and I was able to snap a couple of pics as the flew by, they were off in the distance, so kind of hard to see.
We went to the mall for a little so Daniel could look around for a while and we did some souvenir shopping. One of the souvenir shops apparently was a Woolworths five and dime store years ago. After we did some walking around and found a geocache. Book bug liked this one too but it’s not quite time to release him yet… soon, but not yet. We found the library but it was closed and will be open in the afternoon for a few hours, so we’ll go there for a little while tomorrow.
There is a lot of buzz going around town this week because it’s the 50th anniversary of the June 30th 1958 approval of the Alaska Statehood Act allowing Alaska to become the 49th in the Union. The state was admitted officially on January 3rd, 1959 when President Eisenhower signed the bill into law.
Here are some pictures we took today:
Stephanie from the Fort Walton Beach Library brought it to my attention that you have to be a member of Geocaching.com to view the map of where the book bug has been. You do not have to give personal information or pay to be a member, Nancy is a non-paid member and can view the maps. I am a paid member in order to take advantage of the ability to use some of the advanced features the site makes available.
And I’m absolutely amazed at the technology of Google maps and GPS etc… Google maps says the route we planned on taking was 4517 miles and that it would take 3 Days plus 6 hours of driving time… 72+6 = 78 hours… With the pit stop at Mom’s, our GPS odometer got 4637 miles with 79 hours and 28 minutes of moving time.
Book bug took a break today. He came out when we crossed the border into Alaska, but for the most part he rested today. He was pretty tired and said we could visit the Anchorage library tomorrow.
The border crossing was cool… There is a monument at the border between the Yukon and Alaska… it’s on the 141st meridian… the cool thing I noticed is that the 141st meridian seems to be mowed, or groomed or treated or however you want to put it… These pictures were taken today on the border looking south… If you click on the picture to the left, it will open a larger version of the picture… note the distinct notch in the tree line on the horizon directly above the book bug on the top of the monument.
We noticed a small crack this morning in the windshield… turns out that a small stone hit the windshield a couple of days ago… when I put the defroster on today one of the cracks streaked across the windshield in about half a minute. We’ll have it replaced when we get home, our insurance and AAA covers it… yes we’re members of AAA.
Here are some of today’s pictures…
Well it appears there’s WIFI available in the Laundry room of the hotel so… here we are again. We covered about 360 miles today. We moved on three geocaches. The first was in the sign forest, in Watson Lake.
There are over 60,000 signs here. The sign forest started in 1942 during the construction of the highway. When the road was built signs, were put up at the intersections to tell how many miles it was to the different towns along the road. Well there was an army soldier who put his hometown and how many miles it was to his hometown. Military people do this as a tradition now, when I was in the Air Force several of the places I went had signposts showing how far it was to other places… You’ve probably even seen this on M.A.S.H. on TV too. Anyway, there is a geocache, but all of the metal signs wreak havoc on the satellite signal… Here is a picture of the Book Bug on a sign from close to home in Florida.
The second Cache we weren’t satisfied with the location as there was about 200 meters of bushwhacking to do to get to the cache. Had lunch in Teslin, Yukon Territory at a really cool restaurant, the Yukon Motel and Restaurant.
During our travels yesterday and today we crossed the British Columbia/Yukon Territory seven times; We crossed it twice today after lunch on the way to the Library in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. The Book bug got to check out the children’s section and saw a totem pole in the front of the Library.
After we left the library we drove to Haines Junction, Yukon Territory. The view outside of the room is awesome… as I write this sentence it’s 10:28pm and the sun won’t set for over another hour. There is a mountain range outside that looks almost close enough to touch.
These two were taken with the lens in wide-angle mode but you can see they go together…
This is the ALCAN motel where we’re staying tonight. Here are some of the other pictures we took today:
We’re in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. Yesterday was a haul, I can do 600 miles on regular roads in about 9 and a half hours… this run was longer due to road conditions. The road to Fort Nelson, British Columbia was pretty nice; The road between Fort Nelson and Here was pretty good until you get into the Northern Canadian Rockies. The road narrows a little and there are a lot of gravel patches along the way and a few places where construction turns the road into a one lane road.
We got to see a lot of wildlife… Horses, stone sheep, bears, and Bison. We’ve never seen buffalo in the wild; Now we have. We visited the site of one Geocache but there was a sheer cliff and we decided against trying to bushwhack to find it for fear we could lose track of where we’re at. The scenery was beautiful we took some opportunities to stop and take some photos for posterity.
Here are SOME of the pictures we took along the way.
Well, we’re here. Got here at about 3 this afternoon. We did some Geocaching… visited two. and went to the "0" milepost. Things are going pretty well haven’t had any problems so far with the trip… We HAVE had technical issues with one of our GPS units… It seems the Garmin eTrex Vista decides it doesn’t always want to show us that it’s 2008… I’ve seen 2024 and 1994 on it and some other strange year… It takes FOREVER to get a lock when it does this… I need to contact Garmin for a replacement or repairs.
When we drove through Grand Prarie, Alberta today we stopped at the library (of course) and met the children’s staff. They were excited about what we’re doing. Their summer reading program is on Laugh Out Loud or LOL for short… but the Children’s Librarian did have a catch the reading bug pamphlet that she said she got from British Columbia.
When we got to the the provincial border between Alberta and British Columbia we got out of the car for the standard tourist photo op and even took Book Bug out for it.. he’s in the pictures… Nan got busy looking for rocks and I was busy taking other pictures and we each thought the other picked up the Book Bug. We LEFT Book bug at the border… but got about 3 kilometers down the road when we figured out our mistake and did a U-turn… Book Bug was right there waiting for us when we got back. We took him to two geocaches this evening and to the 0 mile marker for the Alaska Highway. Both geocaches were pretty easy to find and they were both within a kilometer of our hotel.
Tomorrow is the day we begin driving the famous Alaska Highway. It was built as a US Military project as a supply route to the Alaska Territory (Alaska was a territory at the time) in the early days of WWII. Retired US Army Colonel Boulton B. Miller wrote an Autobiography about his life… chapter 3 covers a little about the construction of the Alaska Highway from an insiders perspective. You can find it at: http://boultonmiller.com/Handonsh3.htm. The full text of his autobiography can be read online from his home page at http://boultonmiller.com.
Here are some photos from today:
Well We’re here. Covered a lot of ground today… noticing gas mileage is lower when ethanol is in the tank. We got 19mpg with ethanol in the tank and 23 with RFG. did some calculations and the gas is cheaper to buy the super without the ethanol than it does to buy regular with the ethanol… here it is by the numbers…
10 gallons at 4.39 of super unleaded without ethanol gets me 230 miles…
10 gallons at 3.99 of regular unleaded gets me 190 miles…
All told it’s a 40 mile difference. at 19 mpg it takes just over 2 gallons to make up the difference.we’ll round it to $4 for numbers… so it takes $8 to make up the 40 mile difference. 39.99 + $8 = 40 – 48… so it takes roughly $48 bucks to go the same difference that the $44 tank of super takes me. Keep in mind this is doing 75 miles per hour…
Granted we’re talking super versus regular but there is also ethanol in there too…