We have been trying to recover from our 60 day Alaskan Caravan. It took 2 days from the end of the tour to get back into the lower 48. We spent some time in Mt. Vernon, WA with our friends…
Please watch our 12 minute slideshow with photos and video, speakers on, at Click here for slideshow of our trip to Alaska If you would like to look at the photos go to Click here for our Flickr albums of…
As you can see from the lead picture, Jaye’s dog Chilli is ready to go home! The trip from Stewart, BC to Smithers BC was a better road, except for about 30 miles of Chip & Seal repair. We were…
Since we couldn’t make it to Dease Lake because of the fatal accident, we had a very long day today, 317 miles in 8 hours. In keeping with our positive attitude, we had a lovely meal at a local hotel…
Sandy thinks we should only put positive things in the blog about our experiences so I’ve revised some and…..here goes. There was a fatal accident on the road 37 south, the “Alaska Highway” early Sunday morning so they closed the…
The campground, Pioneer RV park, has a lot of issues. Power is intermittent for some sites, none in others, some have good water, some don’t. Some have cable TV, but most don’t. All have some weird Y pipe for the…
When we left Valdez in the morning it was beautiful. Hated to leave but we are on a schedule. On the drive back up the pass the weather turned blustery and overcast. By the time we got to Tok it…
We hated to leave Homer as the day started out beautiful after raining and windy for two days. But, being on a schedule we had to leave for Palmer. Back up thru Anchorage, another beautiful day and drive. It rained…
Another 3 days of rain, off and on. It has rained about half of our trip. The drive here from was uneventful, thankfully. A little stretch of road with some narrow parts and no shoulder. Another beautiful drive, in the…
Wow, 4 days in a row without rain, 2 in Anchorage and 2 in Seward. A record for this trip. It is raining again today and forecast is for rain for a week in this part of Alaska. Ug. The…
Anchorage population is 350,000 or half of all of Alaska’s population. Think about that for a second as Alaska is much larger than Texas! It stretches 30 miles north and another 30 miles south of the city proper. It is…
Denali National Park. We got up at 5am for a 6:40am departure on a converted Blue Bird school bus, run by concessionaire Aramark, 56 miles thru Denali National Park. The park road is 90+ miles long, and the park itself…
On Day 3 we did some shopping and visited the Santa Clause House in North Pole, AK. We took some pics of Santa and asked him to talk to Francis & Claudia, our grandkids, and we videoed it. It was…
Finally some decent TV and internet at the Riverside RV Park. The water is not great and they allow smokey fires. We haven’t had DirecTV since Calgary. We thought it was because of the mountains or the position at the…
The drive from Tok was a breeze. Like a super highway even, and we could even use our cruise control, the first time since before Whitehorse. The end of the Alaska Highway is at Delta Junction, AK, about 90 miles…
Short day, but we got a chip in our Dutch Star windshield. Hopefully we can get it repaired in Fairbanks or Anchorage. Otherwise it was uneventful. We arrived in Tok and fueled up. Then went to the RV camp and…
Yup, the drive was as bad as predicted. We got to the ferry right after it opened at 7am so we had a short wait. I will post a video of the ferry crossing soon, and Sandy took photos as…
The drive was not as bad as predicted. Yes, there were bad stretches of road, yes there were pilot cars and yes it was a long day. There were places you could only drive 30kmph or 50kmph (20-30mph) but all-in-all…
The climb out of Skagway to Whitehorse was uneventful for everyone, thank goodness. It is an 8% grade for 12 miles with the Canadian border crossing at the top. 109 miles later is Whitehorse, Yukon Territories with a population of…
The capital of Alaska is Juneau. Even the locals admit the capital building is, as they say, 50th out of 50 state capitals as far as beauty is concerned. Juneau is landlocked as the only way to get there is…
Skagway is a “port city” where the cruise ships come. We were on an Inside Passage Cruise on Princess Cruise Line in the spring of 2007 with 30 of our friends from El Paso. Again this trip we took the…
Day 13. We left Dawson Creek, Alaskan Highway Mile Zero headed northwest to Ft. Nelson, BC. Along the way we drove thru miles and miles of burnt forest on both sides of the road. Sad, and the locals told us the…
Dawson Creek, BC, Canada is Mile 0 for the Alaskan Highway. How did it get to be mile zero when it is 1,031 miles from the USA you ask? Good question. Right after Pearl Harbor in 1942 the US decided…
Banff Ice Fields. The Ice Fields are the Athabasca Glacier, which is over 750 ft deep and about a mile wide and many miles long. The actual glacier is one of 5 in this immediate area, and it is shrinking…
Long but beautiful day. After an overnight rain at the Lake Louise State Campground, a limited service national park campground located in tall Fern and Spruce trees, we departed for the day in an excellent Brewster passenger bus and driver…
On day two it rained in the morning but quit by Rodeo time. We headed out to the Stampede Grandstands, which are covered, and it rained until opening ceremonies then cleared off over the next few hours. The rodeo area…
Calgary is a big city with tall skylines due to the oil fields. Lots of friendly people and the young women wear short skirts, cowboy boots and tops. The young men dress like young men everywhere, although they do get…
Fort Steele. D-3, 174miles, 174mi total Our first stop in Canada was Fort Steele, BC. The drive was about like driving thru Colorado before the mountains. The border crossing into Canada was interesting. With 24 rigs going over about the…
The time has arrived. We are in Coeur d’Alene for day 1-2 of our Fantasy Tours Caravan to Alaska. Day 1 is the rig inspection, the placement of the Fantasy Tours decals on the rigs and tow vehicles and check-in.…
What can you say. Magnificent. It is also very hard to photograph the grandeur. We traveled the Going to the Sun Highway which starts in West Glacier and goes 50 miles up and over Logan Pass and down to St.…
We had a great visit with Blaine, Mary, Francis (11), Claudia (7) and Colby the dog. We attended baseball, softball games, swimming and hockey practices. Ate too much ice cream with the grandkids, of course. We had the ’08 Dutch…
Again this year we visited The Henry Ford (THF) museum and Greenfield Village. See my writeup from last year in the Archives Posts to the left. THF is one of the best museums in the world, with all methods of…
We are visiting Blaine, Mary, Francis (11), Claudia (7) and Colby the dog again this year in Ann Arbor, MI. Attending the grandkids Soccer, Ice Skating and Hockey, and Francis’ 5th grade graduation ceremony, see the pic nearby. Hard to…
Again this year we went to Spartan Chassis in Charlotte MI for our annual maintenance. Last year we were here in August after we bought the 2008 Newmar Dutch Star 40’ diesel pusher for a week long Chassis Class &…
We spent a few days in Branson again this year at the ABC RV park. While there we visited Crystal Bridges in Bentonville. We also went to Silver Dollar City (SDC) for Bluegrass & BBQ with Dennis and Nancy Bivens…
Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR We are in Branson MO and had a side trip, 2 hours each way in the rain, to Bentonville AR to go to Crystal Bridges. Check it out @ www.crystalbridges.org This is one of the best…
We left Paradise RV in Sun City AZ and headed to Joplin MO on May 1st. On the way we stayed at one not so nice but highly rated RV park in Payson AZ and a really nice park in…
“Turn the Page”. Bob Seger band 1973. Another major turning point in our lives. We have sold our home in beautiful Sun City Festival, leaving all our friends and acquaintances and clubs which we will miss. We are now full…
Lake Havasu Pyrotechnics Every year about Valentines Day, Lake Havasu City, AZ, has an annual Pyrotechnics event put on by Western Pyrotechnic Association, WPA, at the SARA park, just south of Lake Havasu City. This is the show event for…
Home at last. We headed out from Albuquerque on I-40 and were going to spend another night in either Snowflake AZ, if we were going south thru Show Low, or Flagstaff if we were going to stay on I-40 then…
Oklahoma City-Amarillo – Albuquerque We were setting in Hot Springs watching the weather in the Southwest, trying to guess which way Hurricane Odile was going after it left Cabo San Lucas. The weathermen said it was headed to Phoenix and…
With any RV, new or used, there will be things that go wrong. Some are serious, some are just funny. I’m sure everyone have their observations on crazy things in an RV. Some of the crazier things we have run…
The good. You sleep on the same bed every night. You eat your own food and it is much less expensive and more healthy than eating out every meal. You meet the nicest people camping. You can go where you…
Cummins in Joplin did a great job replacing the turbo and actuator and the generator expansion tank. We paid for the repairs and Cummins filed the claim with the extended warranty company but when we checked with the company they…
When we were at Spartan they did a 40+ point inspection for us. I was getting a “stop engine” light when I turned on the key but it went away after a couple of tries. So Spartan noted a Cummins…
The Newmar Factory. www.newmarcorp.com On our way out of Michigan, we stopped in Nappanee IN for a Newmar Factory Tour. This is where our coach was built on top of the Spartan Chassis. The chassis comes as a rolling, running…
Woodward Avenue Cruise. Billed as the world’s largest car cruise, the Woodward Avenue Cruise is the third Saturday of August every year. It’s really all week and Friday evening has as many cars cruising as Saturday. There are estimates of…
The Henry Ford Museum What can you say about the most eclectic, 452,000 sq ft, museum in the world. The Automobile section is all about the evolution of the automobile. From the earliest Model T’s to the iconic Mustang and…
Greenfield Village One of the least known parts of Henry Ford’s legacy is the Greenfield Village located next to the Henry Ford Museum. www.theHenryFord.org Their mission is to provide unique educational experiences based on authentic objects, stories and traditions. They…
The Spartan Chassis Factory. www.spartanchassis.com Our Motorhome came with a Spartan Mountain Master Chassis with a side radiator (makes for easier maintenance from the rear, not thru the bedroom). After we bought the coach we signed up for a week’s…
Ann Arbor, MI – July 30 to August 28, 2014, with a break for Spartan Owners Training. We spent 4 weeks off and on with the grandkids, Francis (10) and Claudia (6) while Mary was setting up for her new…
We visited Branson, MO, twice, on our first adventure. When we left Joplin we visited John & Elsa Gray in Nixa MO on our way to Branson. They have just built a new house and we haven’t seen them in…
We spent a few days at Sandy’s dad’s house on a lake in Joplin. We had another great visit with Carl and our relatives. Carl had a 50amp electrical outlet installed years ago when he had a 40’ Tiffin Allegro…
Portable Water Filters. Several of our friends in Sun City Festival are in the RV club and offered much needed advise and tips, mostly from Ed and Larry. Larry showed us a portable water filter system he put together from…
We were told by most of our RV friends that we should go for an overnight somewhere close to home to iron out the bugs and learn the basics. Because it took over 3 weeks to get everything ready, from…
The biggest part of getting a motorhome ready for travel is the maintenance. The previous owners of our motorhome said they had done the required maintenance the year before but could not produce any documentation to that fact. We purchased…
Our New Motorhome. After 6 months of research, bidding and missing out on motorhomes, we purchased a used Class A, 2008 Newmar Dutch Star Diesel Pusher with 29,000 miles at the end of June 2014 in Tucson AZ, from private…