Back home - safe and sound!

After having visited Alaska twice before on short week long trips, it has been a dream of ours for years to drive to Alaska in an RV and spend the whole summer there – taking the time to really explore America’s last frontier. We finally did it! And what an incredible adventure we had – countless and priceless memories!

It’s hard to believe our 5 month trip is already over! We are thankful to be back at home safe and sound after driving 10,305 miles in Rose and 5,479 miles in Scooter – they both did a great job in all kinds of weather and road conditions. To add to the challenge Scooter had to dodge the big bison and bull elk along the roads too – not easy when the bison and elk were bigger than Scooter - pretty intimidating!

PLUS…..

6 Canada border crossings - every crossing is different

1 lost hubcap - still looking for a replacement along the highway

3 rock chips in Rose’s windshield - bummer

11 Continental Divide crossings- that's what happens when you spend lots of time in the rocky mountains!

13 national parks - a favorite destination for us

Bears, bison and elk at our campsite - great to see from a distance

Crossing the Arctic Circle on the Ice Truckers Highway ( glad it was in the summer)

Stunning mountain scenery, great hiking trails, glaciers and more wildlife than we dreamed we would see- truly a dream come true for us - especially bears!!



Now, all five of us – Gary, Molly, Rose, Scooter and me are in need of a little “maintenance”! Then we plan to  enjoy the wildlife and beautiful scenery where we live AND most importantly, spend time with our adorable little granddaughters ( and their parents of course!)– they are coming for a visit  in 2 weeks – can’t wait!

Then we’ll start planning our next trip in Rose to the Southwest US early next year!Thanks for following along!

Rocky Mountain National Park is the place to be during the Elk rut!

We left Grand Teton National Park and drove through Wyoming to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Fall is a great time of year in Rocky Mountain National Park. In the fall the elk come down from the mountains to the meadows for the rut (aka mating). In the elk world the girls get to pick their mateand they go for the biggest and strongest bulls with the loudest bugles. So the guys try to attract the girls by bugling loudly and by making themselves look big and strong when they “strut” around the girls. It’s fascinating to watch their “courting” antics. In fact it’s so entertaininnng that 100’s of people travel from all over Colorado every day to watch the rut in the fall. They bring chairs, tables, appetizers, wine and beer – it has become a social outing and a yearly tradition!

It’s also the time of year when the aspen leaves turn to gold – beautifully bright in the sunshine!

Our last stop before heading home was Colorado Springs. We wanted to go up to Pike’s Peak. There were warnings about engines overheating on the way up and brakes failing on the way down since it’s a very steep road. We had a choice of riding the cogwheel train or driving Scooter up the road – we decided to take Scooter ( much cheaper and a challenge!). Scooter did great – no problems going up or down! They have a ranger that does a brake check on the way down and they will stop you if your brakes are too hot. They checked Scooter's brakes and said they were the coolest they had ever had !Plus we drove the smallest car they’d ever had on the road to the top- 14,115 feet elevation! Way to go Scooter!!!

Highlights:

• Watching the elk “courting” during the rut

• Fall colors in the mountains

• The drive up Pike’s Peak and the views from the top

• Garden of the Gods park in Colorado Springs

Next stop – HOME! Our great adventure is reluctantly coming to an end but it’s not quite over yet. We’re hoping for 3 safe days of driving with 1,200 miles left to go – just two more nights at Walmarts along the way and we’ll be home. We'll miss the sense of adventure each day on the road brings but we'll enjoy the  luxury of having permanent hook ups, slideouts always out and my very own, private laundromat - no quarters required for operation!! Our next post will be our last one for this trip - stay tuned for the final leg home - it's not over til we're in the driveway!!!

Exploring Grand Teton National Park

What a contrast from Yellowstone and yet they are right next door to each other! The Tetons are very tall craggy peaks created by a major fault line and uplift of the earth’s crust. There’s no geothermal activity in the Tetons but still quite a few animals and the scenery is stunning!

We spent a week at two different campgrounds at the north and south end of the park. It’s a great park for hiking, rich with history of the early pioneers and great wildlife watching too! We took advantage of the ranger programs and even went on a wildlife caravan drive with a ranger one evening!

The last night in the park was our wedding anniversary – a great place to celebrate it!

Highlights:

• Incredible mountain scenery and fall color of the aspens 

• Learning about the early pioneers - they sure had a tough life....

• Wildlife watching - don't ever get tired of it...

BIG bull moose

Cute little pika

• Celebrating our anniversary at the national park - a fun day together!

Last stops are Rocky Mountain National Park and Pike’s Peak then home to enjoy the scenery and wildlife where we live and see our two little grandaughters Emmy and Lyla!

Camping in the Yellowstone super volcano

We spent 10 fantastic days in Yellowstone. It is such an amazing park – it’s easy to see why it was the first national park back in 1872! We had been here 18 years ago but we didn’t have the luxury to really take our time to explore each area of the park – they are all so different! The fall is beautiful here and at 8,000 feet above sea level – it’s been chilly. It even snowed ½ inch one evening!

Yellowstone is a super volcano that last erupted 640,000 years ago. It has more geothermal features than anywhere else on earth and has i10-14 earth quakes every day but fortunately you can’t feel them because they are so small ( at least for now)! The magma is only 3 miles below the service here instead of the normal 100 miles so it’s still a very active geothermal area and it’s fascinating! We saw geysers erupting, beautiful hot springs, hot steam fumoroles that sounded like jet engines and mud pots bubbling. There’s lots of wildlife too! We saw grizzly and black bears, elk, coyotes, wolves, mule deer and LOTS of bison! It was the rut for the bison and the elk so we saw the males posturing for dominance. The male bison were butting heads and fighting. The male elk were bugling and chasing the other males away from the “women”! The scenery is beautiful too and they have 1,000 miles of hiking trails– we took several really nice hikes to some of the backcountry geysers. It has been 22 years since the big Yellowstone fire when a third of the park burned. The park is rebounding quite nicely. The areas that burned are covered with lodge pole pines and lots of underbrush for food for the animals.

It looks like fires but it's steam from the geysers

Meanwhile- back at the campground

We were about to leave to go explore one of the geyser basins when Gary noticed the toilet making a funny noise. Whenever something doesn’t sound normal, you know there’s trouble! When we got back from our trip to the geysers Gary started trying to figure out what the problem was. He discovered a screw had come loose from the toilet seat cover and had fallen down in the pump that is inside the toilet. The toilet was not usable with the screw in the pump and the only way to get it out was to COMPLETELY dismantle the toilet and all the “parts”. He disconnected the wires for the pump, unscrewed the toilet and took it outside to the picnic table to work on it. Picnic tables make good workbenches – keep that in mind the next time you have a picnic and be sure and take a tablecloth along! We still have about a month left on our trip so we were REALLY hoping it could be fixed. Well – the chief of maintenance did it again! The toilet is fixed and reinstalled in Rose. Thank goodness – it’s no fun to trek to the bathhouse in the middle of the night – especially when it’s cold!!!

Highlights:

• Exploring the geyser basins to see geysers, hot springs, fumoroles and mud pots

Old Faithful erupting - it erupts about every 90 minutes

                                        

Noisy Fumarole in the geyser basin

•  Yellowstone falls and the canyon

• Camping in the national park

• Watching the wildlife

                                           

Bull bison fighting over the "girls"

Black bear

• Beautiful views on the Beartooth Scenic Highway - 11,000 foot elevation at the summit 

Next stop is the Grand Teton National Park just south of Yellowstone. It’s not a super volcano but it sits on a major fault line that they say is overdue for a major earthquake! Livin’ on the edge!

Canadian Rockies and Glacier National Park – how different they look from when we were here in May!

We visited Glacier National Park and the Canadian Rockies in May on the way to Alaska. We were surprised at the time to encounter so much snow and ice – everyone told us it was a REALLY late spring! Since we missed seeing the beautiful colors of the lakes and many of the trails were closed because of snow, we decided to stop by and see the parks again on  our way south to the lower 48 after the Alaska Highway. Spring was finally over and in both parks we enjoyed their very brief summer! The day we left Glacier, the weather forecast was predicting snow that night!

Lake Louise in May

Lake Louise in August

We were rewarded with incredible scenery and beautiful blue and green colors in the lakes plus some wildlife along the way too! It’s amazing how different the same place can look just three months later!

Highlights:

• Peyto Lake in the Canadian Rockies - the prettiest lake in the rockies

• Going to the sun road and the Highline and Hidden Lake trails in Glacier National Park

• Wildlife in both parks

• Our campsite and ranger programs in Galcier National Park

 A 1.5 billion year old rock!

Rose nestled in the woods

• Crossing the US border into the lower 48 - cheaper gas and food, yippee!!

Next stops:


Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. We visited both of these parks 18 years ago – it’s been so long it will all seem new again!