Category: Travel to and from Alaska
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Blind Date

I have been chuckling all day since adding “arrange Blind Date” on my to-do list. My proposed dates to reserve a Greater Prairie Chicken Viewing Blind in Minnesota were rejected late last night. Thus, the top priority today was reviewing open dates for the popular blinds at Bluestem Prairie and working one of these dates…
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Home! Arrived in VA October 1, 2024
Day 10: We are home in Virginia after driving 4408 miles from Healy, Alaska. We supposedly added 70 miles by going through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to get through the Great Lakes rather than going south of the Great Lakes via Chicago. But somehow, it was 4408 miles this fall via the UP, and…
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Wakefield to Gaylord, MI

Day Eight, we have now driven 3650 miles, with 750 miles to go. We both had sore shoulders today and started late. We also stopped frequently at various sites along three of the Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, and Huron). Tonight we are staying at a nice Best Western in Gaylord for $105. We enjoyed the…
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Steinbach, MB to Wakefield, MI
Day Seven: We have driven 3300 miles from Healy, Alaska and have 1100 miles remaining. We are ready to be home! We left Canada this morning, happy to be back to miles per hour, which we can clearly see on the speedometer. Neither of us can reasonably read the kilometers per hour markings on the…
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Lanigan, SK to Steinbach, MB (plus piece of Alaska)

Day Six: we have now traveled 2800 miles from Healy, Alaska and have 1600 to go. We will cross into the United States tomorrow at the Warroad, Minnesota border crossing. Our fun stop for the day was Portage Spillway Provincal Park, which surprised us by having thousands of birds. We saw a White Pelican, a…
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Fort Nelson, BC to Lanigan, SK – Halfway!

Days 4 and 5 brought us to 2300 miles completed with 2100 miles remaining. We saw 2 bison, 1 coyote, and lots of elk and deer. Over the past two days the terrain has changed from hilly forests to farmed plains. The photo below catches some of each during the transition zone. Fall colors are…
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Watson Lake, YT to Fort Nelson, BC

Day Three, we have driven 1300 miles so far and have 3100 left. Today was the Northern Rockies, which is our favorite section of the 4400 mile drive. I finally saw the caribou calves I was looking for all summer. We watched 6 caribou near Summit Lake for at least 10 minutes. We had 2…
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Destruction Bay to Watson Lake, YT

At the end of Day Two, we have driven almost 1000 miles with 3400 to go. This morning, I went for a short walk from our motel to the shores of Kluane Lake. On the other side of the windswept lake, I could see glistening gold patches of trees, plus peaks with new snow. It…
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Healy, AK to Destruction Bay, YT

Day One of our 4400 mile trip to VA. We started the day seeing a wolf and ended the drive seeing a grizzly bear. In between, there were many pretty snow-capped mountains with fresh snow. It was snowing as we packed yesterday, then turned to rain, then dropped to 21 degrees overnight. Two of the…
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Denali, Susitna River, and Fairbanks

While it is warming up fast, much of interior Alaska’s infrastructure is closed for another month or more. The George Parks Highway is open pavement, but most rest areas and overlooks to the side of the road haven’t been cleared. Many people before us had trudged thru the snow to this viewpoint of the Alaska…
