{Road Trip} Days Twelve & Thirteen - Driving for Days

So, due to our overnight in Haines, we were running a bit behind, as I had planned to have us a few hours down the road that night, but there was nothing available in the town that I had planned for us to be, and we were so happy to have a bed waiting close by as soon as we docked!  We went ahead and agreed to make it up by driving through the night once again.

Now, on long trips like this, I do usually plan a night or two like that, most often on the night that we first leave and maybe one other night, just to minimize the time (awake) in the car for the kids...  And yes, we are fortunate that they all 3 will still fall (and stay) asleep in the car.  Otherwise, there's no way we could cover the ground that we do!  That, and the fact that my husband is generally game for all of my crazy antics...  I plan it all out, and he helps make everything happen.  We make a good team like that.

So, after sleeping in, we were even more behind, but we set out to cover a good chunk of ground.

More beautiful views...

More wildlife, that we stopped counting, though I never stopped looking for my big man moose with antlers...never found him either, though we did see a good many moose, and bears, especially!

The girls loved seeing this group of wild horses on the side of the road...

We made a lot of rest stops...loved this one with HUGE dandelions...

and watched a lot of cartoons - got the kids hooked on both The Flintstones and The Jetsons on this trip, super proud parenting moment...

 Realizing that we'd be driving the Cassiar Highway, a different, more direct, but even more remote highway, home, we made a necessary stop that turned out to take a little longer than expected, and bought a couple of gasoline cans to fill up and tie on top...just in case...

{seriously thankful that I get to do life with this guy right here}

So if we weren't already looking a little Clampett-ish...

All of this preparation put us a little bit more behind, so when we hit the much anticipated Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake, Yukon, we only had one taker (read that as, only one sweet little thing came close to even budging when we stopped) to help with making our Greenville mark...

And the winner is, L...

 All the kids had their Greenville shirts on, and I had great plans for some super cute pictures of them walking through the forest of signs from all over the world, but oh well...next time...

We DID, though, leave our little mark!

L representing #yeahthatgreenville

From there, we powered on...

The next night, as originally planned, we had a room booked in Vancouver, British Columbia, but seems that there are some pretty intense wild fires going on in British Columbia right now, and once we got on the road headed that way, we saw a sign that basically said...the road is closed, and there are NO detours currently in effect...

Sooo, what to do???

We figured out an alternate route that had us backtracking a bit adding a few hours to our trip, but taking us clear around the area that was affected...

We met a nice family from Edmonton, Alberta at a rest stop, and they told us a little more about the situation, ensuring us that our new route was a good plan.  They said that while there are other, smaller roads, the wild fires are so bad that they are covering even the normal detour roads leaving us not much choice but to back track...

So, we cancelled our hotel room in Vancouver and scratched it all together (as our new route had us arriving at 4:30 in the morning!), and continued on our new route, through the night yet again, but heading straight for Seattle, Washington...

It was a little eerie...  Even though we were supposedly going around the wild fires, it smelled smoky in the air and the night was pretty creepy, and I was seriously missing that midnight sun in Alaska...

 We crossed into Washington at 8:00am, and never in my life did I ever think that the tip top corner of Washington would ever feel so close to home!

  {still in our Greenville gear, a fabulous investment, I'd say}

I think Hubby and I were both happy (and relieved) to be back in the lower 48!

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
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 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 Six - Well, Hello ALASKA!

We left a cold and rainy Watson Lake, YT and grabbed a quick breakfast at Tim Horton's...

All of the locals were pretty much wearing parkas and hats and rain boots and looking at us crazy Americans like we were dense in our patriotic t-shirts and shorts with NO coats!

After breakfast, we hit the highway again.  One of the reasons I love road tripping so much is that you actually see the change in landscape as you move along.  These bright, purple flowers were a welcome addition along the road today...

A couple of favorite stops along today's route were beautiful Kluane Lake...

{getting a little delirious after all the driving & M was over the smiling}

and the area around Tachal Dhal, formerly called Sheep Mountain...

Much excitement ensued when we saw our first grizzly bear, a mom and her two cubs right on the side of the road...

 and, even MORE excitement for crossing into ALASKA!

It's a new state for all 5 of us!!!

 

The international border is marked with a wide clearing...

The girls attempted to leave their brother behind in Canada...

and we attempted to recreate the same picture we took in both Texas/Arkansas in 2012 and Delaware/Maryland in 2015...
 

before continuing on to the town of Tok to grab a late lunch at the renowned Fast Eddy's...

before leaving the, now familiar, Alaska Highway motoring on to Anchorage via the Glenn Highway...

The exciting news about this part of the trip...we saw our first moose, like in full, on the side of the road!!!

First of all, here's a little history about me, and the elusive moose...

I went all the way up to Maine in 2013 looking for a moose to cross the road, and clear up to the Northwest Angle of Minnesota in 2014 looking for moose, and all I ever saw were a whole bunch of "Watch Out for Moose" and "Moose Crossing" signs...

Today, we all FINALLY saw a for real, moose, and then again, and again, and again...4 moose!!!   I was a little excited...just a teensy bit, as verified by M's fairly accurate impression of me, here...

"We're in Alaska!  We saw a moose!  We're in Alaska!  We saw a moose!..."

(For the record, I did see the face of a moose peering over a bush our first day on the Alaska Highway, but it was kind of far away, and I was starting to think it was a figment of my imagination as no one else in my family saw it and we never saw anymore until today!)

Anywho, now I need to see a man moose...these were all girls, but I want to see a big moose with antlers...not leaving until I see one...ha!

The running count for Day THREE is:  4 MOOSE, 3 bears, 3 bunnies, 2 foxes, and 1 eagle...

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 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-Two - Finishing Up Truman's Missouri
Day Twenty-Three - Kicking It Through Kentucky and HOME!