The Grand Finale

Wonderful & Wild Wyoming! Our first Demolition Derby was experienced at the Wyoming State Fair, after tubing on the North Platte River with new friend, Jamie, and her family.

Sigh...only one more week of the best-road-trip-of-all-time left after that. We needed to boot-scoot home to Minnesota, as it was only a few more days until dear friend Meridith's wedding in Indiana. Dan won the license plate competition by two plates. (The only three states we didn't spot were West Virginia, Delaware, and Hawaii.) Three days of quality family time in MN, including meeting baby Quintin, a new addition to Cousin-Friend Jessa's family.  Hastings Waterpark adventures with Jessa and 2-year-old Dean was super-fun! In the days after I left, Jessa said Dean kept asking, "Where did Ava go? To Maine?" Such a sweetie!

On to Bloomington, Indiana, and Meredith! So much fun meeting her family, friends, and her wonderful man, Collin, and helping to prepare for her backyard wedding. It was a lovely wedding and awesome reception...YAY! Congrats, Meredith and Collin!

Home wasn't far now...I could smell the sea breeze and Jeff's coffee
over the horizon! I booked it home, driving 14 hours the last day. Ohio, Pennyslvania, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire zoomed by. I was elated to cross the border and see the sign, "Welcome to Maine - The Way Life Should Be."  I'M HOME! So great to hug and kiss my sweetheart! I've been back for a week and a half now and absolutely loving it. One of the best aspects of traveling: appreciating how great home life is.

 The End!

Pictures: Wyoming

Pictures: Nebraska to Maine

Homebound, into the Lower 48

This should have been Dan's senior class photo.

Only 10 days until I’m home?!?!  Time and miles sure fly by when yer havin’ a gud time!

Mile 10,040, Casper, Wyoming:  Brother Dan and I have been road tripping together for 10 days now. With a little help from the friendly Canadian border patrol, we decided to re-route our path to south of the CAN-US border.  The gorgeous beaches of Oregon; the solitude and majesty of Hells Canyon and Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho, and Grand Tetons, WY; free camping in an abandoned, ripe orchard with a fearless Mule Deer herd, a swimming moose, a fat black bear and a nightly diving swallow air show; savoring Tillamook cheese curds and Ore-Ida tater tots close to the source; and our obsession with beating the other in a newly-invented license plate identification game have filled our days with much oo-ing and aw-ing, lots of laughs, great conversation and debates, and, of course, a few new friends. (BTW, Dan’s winning the License Plate game, but not by much...there’s still time! But with him siting a U.S. Virgin Islands plate!?!  Hard to beat that! Where are you, Guam?!)

7th grade sense of humor still in there!

We have 3-4 more days to reach St. Paul, Minnesota.  Today’s agenda in Douglas, WY: tubing a river with some locals and checking out the Wyoming State Fair!  A wish come true: time to don the Stetson and check out those cute Wyoming animals.  Demolition Derby, anyone?




 Two new photo albums:

British Colombia Homebound

Oregon and Idaho with Bro Dan

 

Eureka!

I have truly found it...the perfect Alaska town, Hyder!  Pop. 100 during the summer, it dubs itself "Alaska's friendliest ghost town."  (As most mining towns, they empty when the mineral is vamoose.)  The remaining locals are so welcoming and open about their lives: comparable only to Key West in my book.  Didn't want to leave! 

In addition to outstanding humans, grizzlies abound when the Coho Salmon are running, which is NOW.  I got to see one up close and personal.  AWESOME. 

New photos, click here!

Youtube video of Miss Grizzly, click here!

So much more to explore, so little time...

Chicken, AK and Dawson City, Yukon are soooooooo fun!  I'm going back to Dawson some day.  With loved ones would be just
greaaaate - that's the kind of place it is.  I bonded with the locals at night (of course!), but daytime companionship was wanted to truly enjoy all there is to offer here.  I thought eleven days would be pleeeeeenty of time to leisurely make my way down to Vancouver from Anchorage.  HA!  Well, I think I'm about 1/4 of the way there, with 4.5 days' travel left.  You do the math.  ;) 

I'm in Yukon Territory for the last few momentos, then puttering slowly (but for many hours) on down the Stewart-Cassiar Highway with a little detour to Hyder, Alaska (just can't get enough of that place!).  And, get this!  Hyder is the one location in the US where you don't need a passport to cross the border!

YAAAAY for ADVENTURES!!!!

Click here for new photos!

Home Bound!

Had a wonderful time with the family in Anchorage this past week.   Grandpa O.K. Smith came up from Corpus Christi, Texas; Dad from St. Paul, MN.  Each day we discovered one or more of the many buildings Grandpa helped to build and the homes in which they lived.  Stories, stories, and more stories!  Truly awesome. 
Link to photos.

Now, I'm home bound: looking forward to meeting bro Dan in Vancouver.  Funny: I woke up with Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" song in my head the day I left Anchorage...it stuck there all morning! Two days into the return journey now, exploring some new territory in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.  Really, really, really spectacular scenery absorbed and new friends made!
Link to photos.

I'm missing y'alls...looking forward to coming home!

I feel pressured to update this blog (my own doing).  No more!  I am missing out on opportunities to interact with locals, when I sit in a WiFi hotspot to upload photos and narrations in this wonderful historic Gakona Lodge and Trading Post.  Blah blah blah, is what I think when contemplating what to write next. 

New photos and map updates, though! Links to the left.

And, I am 200 miles from the final destination of Anchorage, AK.  Relaxing, preparing for a solo rafting voyage on the Gulkana River in the morn.  Then, family reunion tomorrow eve! 

Going to mix with the locals...bye bye!

Magnificent Geology and History Out West

If each picture is worth a thousand words, then I'll save having to write 180,000 words about the past glorious week!  Link to this leg of the journey, plus captions:  click here (the links are permanently on the main blog page, too).

I would like to share a Devil's Tower legend of the Kiowa natives:  "Eight children were at play,
seven sisters and their brother.  Suddenly the boy was struck dumb; he trembled and began to run upon his hands and feet.  His fingers became claws, and his body was covered with fur. Directly there was a bear where the boy had been. The sisters were terrified; they ran, and the bear after them. They came to the stump of a great tree, and the tree spoke to them. It bade them climb upon it, and as they did so it began to rise into the air. The bear came to kill them, but they were just beyond its reach. It reared against the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The seven sisters were borne into the sky, and they became the stars of the Big Dipper."

I like that story a tad bit more than the geological one. 50 million years ago, magma solidified under the ground.  Since then, and the landscape around it has eroded.  See what I mean?

From America's Hat to Canada's Underwear

Traveler's Log, Day 6:  How wonderful to have a GPS that doesn't stick to main roads!  Beautiful off-the-beaten-path drive across Ontario + hike.  Canadians are all aboot friendliness.  You know you are a significant distance from home when someone doesn't know where your home location: "Maine...is that where Boston is?"  Informally couch surfed in Parry Sound, Ontario, the second night.  Thanks so much, Mark!  Back to Canada's Underwear again @Sault St. Marie.   Boy, the Upper Peninsula Michigan is loooooong...another stay at Miss Honda at a roadside rest stop in the middle of the wilderness somewhere.  Woke up to raven calls...awesome.  Really special and extremely fun reunion with Mom, Joe's girlfriend Nicole, and her 3-year-old daughter Paityn in Bayfield and Madeline Island, WI.  Trip down memory lane along all the backroads of teenage years on the way home to Minong, WI, along with a stop at the Buckhorn Bar, where I worked as a cook when I was 17.  Great to be home!  Photos are online:  https://plus.google.com/photos/110803460228810715341/albums/5893445819397743057?authkey=CMqw18TBvrj2-AE

Alaska Ho!

Finally, my expedition to Alaska has begun!  Long have I yearned to follow in my Grandpa OK

Smith's tire treads and travel by road to The Last Frontier.  Here we go!

Traveller's Log: Rockland, Maine to Ottawa, Ontario.  Oh Canada....(meow meow meow meow meow meow - inside story!).  Accommodations (free!): very comfy passenger seat of Miss Civic (1999 Honda) in the parking lot of a vacant building.  Currently writing from a bilingual Tim Horton's in Renfrew.  I'd like a café, por favor.  Breaking news: Canadian kids are cute, too.