{Road Trip} Day Twenty-Two - Finishing Up Truman's Missouri

We started our day with a little trip to the middle of nowhere...because we hadn't yet hit up enough middle of nowhere stops on this trip to satisfy me...  You know, a couple of hours up a dirt highway, miles away from civilization (aka crossing the Arctic Circle), should've checked off that block for years to come, but that was already like A WHOLE WEEK AND A HALF AGO...

And, then there was that stop in Kansas in the middle of the lower 48 states, middle of nowhere...

but we're now on Day 22 of our road trip, and at this point I'm not even certain that I can remember my children's names (just kidding), so understandably, Day 20 is totally a blur...

Since we were close enough (read that as less than 4 hours) to another middle of nowhere stop, we just HAD to go...and to make it even better, the highlight of this stop was the grave of a guy that really wasn't even a president, but some people think he was, but you know...gotta cover all of our bases, in all of the middle of nowheres that we're kind of close to everywhere...

We first learned about David Rice Atchison last summer when we stopped at his birthsite in Kentucky...

So today, we came full circle...

visiting his grave in Plattsburg, about an hour north of Kansas City...

From Plattsburg, we turned around and headed back down toward Kansas City, and stopped east of the city in Independence where we stopped by more of the places where President Harry Truman once took a breath, I mean, lived, this time, as a young boy...

The man obviously moved A LOT before he settled here, in his wife's family home...

Can you believe that when we arrived at the office, they had just cancelled all afternoon tours???

The air conditioner broke...

Yep, us South Carolinians would've been just fine, but oh well, the tour will have to wait until the next time we're in Independence...

Thankfully, we WERE able to stop by the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum and pay our respects to the president's final resting spot...

before continuing on to Grandview to check out the Truman Family Farm where President Truman lived with his family as a young man, after returning from Kansas City...

Continuing on into Kentucky tonight.  More fun on tap for tomorrow...

More {Road Trip} 2017 Fun

Day One - A Presidential Start

Day Two - Getting Corny

Day Three - Oh, Canada! + Happy Birthday, Hubby

Day Four - Alaska Highway - Dawson Creek, BC to Muncho Lake, BC

Day Five - Alaska Highway - Muncho Lake, BC to Whitehorse, YT

Day Six - Well, Hello ALASKA!

Day Seven - Icebergs, Glaciers, and Fjords, Oh My!

Day Eight - All Around Anchorage + the Parks Highway to Fairbanks

Day Nine - Denali National Park & Preserve + Go UAF Nanooks!
Day Ten - Into the Arctic
Day Eleven - JUNEAU
Days Twelve & Thirteen - Driving for Days
Day Fourteen - Hello, Seattle!
Day Fifteen - A Couple of Capital Cities with Capitol Steps to Climb
Day Sixteen - Out and About in the Portland Area
Day Seventeen - Idaho
Day Eighteen - Utah, and a Goodbye
Day Nineteen - From the Mountains to the Plains
Day Twenty - Canvasing Kansas
Day Twenty-One - Good Bye, Kansas + Hello, Missouri!
Day Twenty-Three - Kicking It Through Kentucky and HOME!

{Road Trip} Day Eleven - JUNEAU

Oh, Juneau, you shy little thing...  What state capital gets the reward for the most remote capitol steps challenge to date???  Yep, JUNEAU!

So, noon yesterday we were jumping for joy in front of the Arctic Circle sign and noon today...

after an entire night of driving straight through...at least we had some simply breathtaking scenery on the Haines Highway...

TWO border crossings from Alaska into Yukon into British Columbia and back into Alaska...

 and a two and a half hour taxi cruise from Haines...which I'll get to later, but was an event all by itself...

  we were running up Juneau's state capitol building steps...

Hallelujah...our trip to Alaska is COMPLETE!

Sooo, let me back up a bit...

We were stressed from pretty much the time we left the Arctic Circle to the time we arrived at the boat dock that we were going to miss the boat!  And, getting to Juneau is NOT easy...  There are cars there, but you can't actually drive a car there...  As our bus driver in Juneau said, "There are 3 ways to arrive in Juneau - by boat, by plane or by birth canal."

So, obviously we chose boat...  I searched high and low for a boat that would go to Juneau (from somewhere that we COULD get to by car), and that wasn't easy, either.  Juneau is a popular cruise ship port, but not a lot else that I could find...

But, I did eventually find a day cruise that takes passengers to Juneau and back in one day, so we signed up...

That proved to be interesting...  It was basically a mom and pop ferry business that shuttled passengers from a couple different pick up locations to Juneau and from there to a bus that dropped off at the airport, as well.  So, it was a modge podge of stuff, but we got there!

Our captain was a trip.  He was often seen steering the 40+ passenger catamaran with his feet, and here he is eating dinner while taking us all home...

Yep, that's for real...and it totally worked for him...

He was, though, very good at finding wildlife and was not afraid to pull right up to it...  We got to see a lot of the same animals that we saw on our cruise to Kenai Fjords National Park, but we got a lot closer, which was awesome...

Still hard to capture on camera, but the whales were amazing...  We saw groups of 4-8 at a time and would see them blow...

and then their backs as they surfaced...

and lastly, their tails...

We even saw 3 jump in the air in sequence.  I think that this is called breaching.  But, of course, I didn't get a picture of that in time...

We loved watching the salmon fishermen, as well...

All was well as long as you were holding on tightly if you were out on the deck viewing wildlife, and the captain decided to move on.  Warning everyone of sudden movement wasn't his forte, but that's all good, we didn't lose a child overboard, thankfully.

Of course, he boasted that in 28 years they'd never had a passenger go overboard.  Good to know...but I'm not sure I believe him...just kidding...or maybe not...

Once we arrived in Juneau, we boarded a bus, made a drop at the airport, and were then transported to downtown Juneau.  It was cloudy and drizzly, true to form, from what I've read...

On the way to the state capitol, I found so many pretty, but wet, flowers!

{this makes me so excited to get my peonies in the ground this fall}

First stop, the Alaska State Capitol...

for B's 34th set of state capitol building steps scaled!

From there, we stopped next door at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum for a picture with the totem pole...

We walked around a bit and grabbed lunch at the uber popular, Tracy's King Crab Shack right downtown by the dock...

After our time in downtown Juneau, the bus picked us back up, and we made a stop at Mendenhall Glacier, on the outskirts of town...

It was so neat to see this glacier up close on foot, rather than from on a boat...

B wasn't feeling so well...too much king crab, I think, so Hubby & I took turns with the girls at the glacier...

It had a beautiful parklike setting surrounding it...

 

From there, we headed back to the boat, and back to Haines.  At this point, we were pretty exhausted from our 36+ hours of straight travel, and grabbed a room in downtown Haines to crash for the night...

Beginning the slow, but steady, trek HOME tomorrow...

 

More {Road Trip} 2017 Fun

Day One - A Presidential Start

Day Two - Getting Corny

Day Three - Oh, Canada! + Happy Birthday, Hubby

Day Four - Alaska Highway - Dawson Creek, BC to Muncho Lake, BC

Day Five - Alaska Highway - Muncho Lake, BC to Whitehorse, YT

Day Six - Well, Hello ALASKA!

Day Seven - Icebergs, Glaciers, and Fjords, Oh My!

Day Eight - All Around Anchorage + the Parks Highway to Fairbanks

Day Nine - Denali National Park & Preserve + Go UAF Nanooks!
Day Ten - Into the Arctic
Days Twelve & Thirteen - Driving for Days
Day Fourteen - Hello, Seattle!
Day Fifteen - A Couple of Capital Cities with Capitol Steps to Climb
Day Sixteen - Out and About in the Portland Area
Day Seventeen - Idaho
Day Eighteen - Utah, and a Goodbye
Day Nineteen - From the Mountains to the Plains
Day Twenty - Canvasing Kansas
Day Twenty-One - Good Bye, Kansas + Hello, Missouri!
Day Twenty-Two - Finishing Up Truman's Missouri
Day Twenty-Three - Kicking It Through Kentucky and HOME!

{Road Trip} Day Ten - Into the Arctic

So, for anyone thinking that driving to Alaska was enough of an adventure for us, just wait...

Today, we drove from Fairbanks, clear up to the Arctic Circle...

 

and crossed it, of course!

The adventure up there was something...

I had done a lot of research and had watched a lot of videos of others who had attempted the drive, and this was honestly the part of our adventure that I was both most excited about AND most nervous about!

We got up early, and left Fairbanks around 6:30am.  We took the Elliott Highway a couple of hours north to the infamous Dalton Highway, also called the "Haul Road"...

It's the road notoriously featured on the TV show, "Ice Road Truckers", as it follows the Alaska Pipeline and connects the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Shore to the Elliott Highway, and from there to Fairbanks...  So, that's another show I'm going to have to check out, now!

Once we hit the Dalton Highway, it took us about 2 hours and 45 minutes to make the 115 mile trek north.

We crossed the Yukon River...

 and for most of the trip, the pipeline was our only companion...
 

 

A lot of the scenery looked like this...

but, we made it!

As crazy as it sounds, when we got there, there was a sweet couple all set up with a tent and information about the Arctic Circle, handing out Arctic Circle certificates!

It was such a welcoming sight after passing only a handful of cars, trucks, and motorcycles our whole route up.

During the 45 minutes or so that we spent up there, probably 5-6 cars pulled in, out popped a few people, more photos were snapped, and they continued on their way...

From the Arctic Circle, you can continue on up to Coldfoot at Mile 175 or ride the highway all the way to Deadhorse which ends at the Prudhoe Bay oil fields at about Mile 414, just under 10 miles from the Arctic Ocean...don't you know...if we only had a couple more days...  :)

Most people that drive the entire highway (and seriously I've even watched video accounts of people riding the entire highway ON A BIKE!) take a couple of days, spend the night in Coldfoot, and arrange for some sort of tour to the Arctic Ocean at the top, because of course you can't actually drive to the Arctic Ocean...you can get close, but not all the way without the help of a private tour!

So, seeing that we were scheduled to be in Juneau, that's right, Juneau, in about 24 hours, we had to turn around and head back...

On the way back we saw more of this...

and this...

 and this...

We stopped at Mile 60 for lunch at the Hot Spot Cafe...

and continued on...

This is what our car looked like as we left the Dalton Highway!

On our way back to Fairbanks, we a stop at the Alaska Pipeline viewpoint just north of the city...
 

 and made another quick, but important, stop...

 
before continued on through the night to Haines...

We have an 8:30am boat to catch tomorrow morning!

More {Road Trip} 2017 Fun

Day One - A Presidential Start

Day Two - Getting Corny

Day Three - Oh, Canada! + Happy Birthday, Hubby

Day Four - Alaska Highway - Dawson Creek, BC to Muncho Lake, BC

Day Five - Alaska Highway - Muncho Lake, BC to Whitehorse, YT

Day Six - Well, Hello ALASKA!

Day Seven - Icebergs, Glaciers, and Fjords, Oh My!

Day Eight - All Around Anchorage + the Parks Highway to Fairbanks

Day Nine - Denali National Park & Preserve + Go UAF Nanooks!
Day Eleven - JUNEAU
Days Twelve & Thirteen - Driving for Days
Day Fourteen - Hello, Seattle!
Day Fifteen - A Couple of Capital Cities with Capitol Steps to Climb
Day Sixteen - Out and About in the Portland Area
Day Seventeen - Idaho
Day Eighteen - Utah, and a Goodbye
Day Nineteen - From the Mountains to the Plains
Day Twenty - Canvasing Kansas
Day Twenty-One - Good Bye, Kansas + Hello, Missouri!
Day Twenty-Two - Finishing Up Truman's Missouri
Day Twenty-Three - Kicking It Through Kentucky and HOME!