Annual Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas

Happy New Year

From the traveling Halls

We have had a wonderful year in 2007. It has been so exciting, as you know if you've read our previous posts.

We spent the summer in Alaska - a trip of a lifetime. But we hope not the last time we get to visit. Sally is even tempted to make Alaska home one day (but Tom adds that she says that about every place we visit!)

We visited with many of our friends and relatives - all the way from Tacoma WA to Seaford DE to Florida to New Orleans and Alabama.

Stephen finished his year of clerking with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, passed the bar in Louisiana and started work with a law firm in New Orleans. He and Katie bought a home in Uptown New Orleans. It's a beautiful modified shotgun - a very "New Orleans" type of home.

Tom turned 50 in Alaska - a big milestone celebrated with our friends Glenn & Karin (and Cooper).

We hope that all of you have had a great year, too, and that we all have a wonderful 2008!

Now to catch up with our posts for the past two months.....

You may have noticed that we haven't posted much. No excuses, we just could not keep up the pace of earlier in the year. We are sorry and will try to do better in the future. However, we currently only have a dial up connection, so the pictures will be few and far between.

Last you heard of us (on the blog), we were back in the US and headed for home, via I-90 (Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois).

We did make it; we did lots of sightseeing and have visited lots of family since then. We are settled in back at the Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge. Some things have changed here (one ranger has moved on to a job in the Smokies and the assistant manager is in Iraq for a year, the goats are gone). Other things are the same (lots of work for us to do, lots of birds, a great place to stay).

Places we saw and stayed:

• The Black Hills of SD, Wall Drug
• The Mitchell Corn Palace (SD)
• DeSmet, SD where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived as a girl and teenager and where most of her books were set
• The Wisconsin Dells where we visited with Tom's brother Roy and family (including 6 month old Peyten - a sweet little girl)
• The Jolly Green Giant - in Minnesota
• Peoria - to visit with Sally's sister Suzi and see her fancy new sheep barn

Pictures will be posted some day soon when we have faster internet access. Dial up just isn't fast enough!

Back in the Lower 48

Last time you heard from us, we were in BC having just visited Hyder, Alaska. We have traveled a long way since then...currently we are parked in Rapid City, South Dakota, visiting the Black Hills and Badlands.

Hyder Sign

Our last view of Alaska was this sign just as we crossed the border back into Canada. You can see where Hyder's dirt road turns into pavement and you can see the Canadian Customs office (the US doesn't have one at this border crossing).

And so south through BC to Vancouver.

Old Totems at Kitwangak - located at the end of the Cassiar Highway.

That was the beginning of a gradual return to civilization. We stayed at Smithers, BC, in a Safeway parking lot. Then in Prince George and in Hope before driving into Vancouver, where we spent about an hour in a traffic jam on a 4 lane highway. That's almost as stressful as driving an hour on frost heaves but much less interesting.

Double vision? This Starbucks is across the street from

this Starbucks...

We stayed at a park in West Vancouver, across the Lion's Gate Bridge from Stanley Park. Karin & Glenn got to do a lot of sightseeing. We all ate well - returned to a couple of our haunts from when I worked in Vancouver. Rodney's Oyster House, Jester's, Komi's (for sushi). We also went to the Sun-Yat Sen Gardens and ate a great dinner afterwards in Chinatown.

The next day we headed south across the border. This was our longest border crossing - we waited in line for at least 45 minutes. At least the crossing itself was uneventful.

We stayed in Tacoma two nights and visited family and friends. Darlene and Tony are packing up to move. We ate with them on the night they heard that their house sale was final - a celebratory meal at Warthog's Barbecue. Very good ribs. We also ate dinner with a work friend of Sally's from Seattle.

One goal in the area had been to get the RV fixed - we have several nagging minor problems. We didn't have any luck with the RV, but while we were driving down I5 we spotted Mt Rainier and I managed to get a picture from a Camping World parking lot. Not as scenic as our Denali pictures, but we did get to see the mountain.

Rainer from Camping World in Tacoma

The past three days we spent driving across Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. It's beautiful country - lots of mountain passes, ranch and grassland and now the Black Hills.

We stopped at what was one of the largest ranches in Montana in the first half of the 20th century - Grant-Kohr's National Historic Site. And we also visited Prairie Town State Park (it's a little pull off beside the highway where a prairie dog colony live).

Grant-Kohr's Ranch House

Prairie Dog

The weather has been fine so we cooked out in rest areas and just enjoyed ourselves. We plan to spend the next few days here in South Dakota visting Mt Rushmore, the Badlands, DeSmet (where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived as a girl and teenager and married Almanzo).

It won't be long till we are back down south, hopefully it will cool off and fall will arrive with us.

See you soon!

More fun on the way home

Last time we posted we were in Tok, AK, planning our travels home. Since then we have come a long way south and are finally saying goodbye to Alaska for 2007.

From Tok we traveled to Haines Alaska where we traveled through a bald eagle sanctuary. Unfortunately, there were only a few eagles around in September. There are thousands in late October and November. Seems there is one last salmon run near Haines and all the eagles get together for a fishy Thanksgiving dinner.



Juvenile Eagle near Haines, AK

Next we returned to Whitehorse and caught a couple of sights we missed the first time through. See Tom steer the riverboat SS Klondike (not really - it's permanently dry docked and serving as a museum). We also visited Muktuk Kennels where we got to pet 2 week old husky puppies and pet the other dogs, both young and old. Sally's favorite was Panda - he took a liking to me too.

Tom "steering" the SS Klondike


Sally in her Panda shirt petting Panda the sled dog

Next stop was Skagway - the 17th busiest port in the world. All the Alaska cruise ships stop here and the place was much more crowded than anywhere else we've been (except the Walmart in Fairbanks). We toured the historic district that was built during gold rush days in the early 1900's. The National Park Service offered a fantastic free tour of the historic area.

Tom just had to add to his garter collection, so we toured the "cribs" above the Red Onion Saloon.


Then south down the Cassiar Highway to Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK. Hyder officially has a population of 80 people and many more bears, we suspect. The Forest Service has built a boardwalk with very high rails so that people can safely watch brown bears and grizzlies catch salmon on Fish Creek right out of town. We saw two male black bears and a momma with a first year cub. We also saw one very large grizzly. They just ignore the people snapping pictures and go straight for the fish!


Black bear searching for a good fishing hole

Grizzly eying dinner

And enjoying the catch

Hyder is quite far south - we have driven south of fall for the time being. It's also the last place in Alaska that we'll be able to visit this time. We sorry to say goodbye and plan to come back as soon as we can.

Next, on to southern BC and Vancouver before returning to the US.

Keep checking on our progress! See you soon.

Circling Back - On the Way Home

Well folks, here we are again in Tok Alaska. You might remember, we have been here before. It is a town on both highway entrances into interior Alaska from Canada.

We have had an incredible two weeks since the last posting. We spent two nights in a Fred Meyer parking lot in Wasilla. We did maintenance on truck and motor home. We traveled to Anchorage for restocking as we headed to the coast. A night in Portage allowed us to closely inspect a glacial iceberg, albeit in a lake. It is a wondrous sight. We hiked up to see a glacier in the raw. It, too, is impressive.

The Exit Glacier - Close up and Personal

Seward

We moved on to Seward, a coastal town known for its fishing and tourism. Both nearly got us, as they were having a fishing derby and tourists on the last weekend before school started in a lot of systems. We did manage to get rv sites near the water, but we got two out of the last three. We did the touristy thing and got on a tour boat to view wildlife and hopefully see a glacier from the water, but it was rough sailing, so the bay’s wildlife was our limit. Fortunately, we got to see a very cute sea otter at length (several commented that it looked like he was enjoying looking at us!), many puffins, kittiwakes and the endangered Stellar sea lion. The highlight of Seward was the Sealife Center. It had several aquariums; in one we could see diving birds “catch” their dinner 30 feet below the surface. It is an amazing sight.

Stellar Sea Lions in Resurrection Bay near Seward

Juvenile Puffin at Sealife Center in Seward

Downtown Seward

Homer

The next port of call for us was Homer. It is a quaint village best known for its sport fishing. We parked the rig facing the water, so our view out of the windshield was the bay. We took another tour boat out to an island city called Seldovia. On the way we stopped to view a small island called Gull Island to view, you guessed it, gulls. But there were many other seabirds nesting on the island, including Puffins with their colorful mating beaks. Another extra was a sighting of five black oystercatchers.

View from our campsite on the Homer Spit

Seldovia Harbor

The Gulls, Kittiwakes and Murres on Gull Island

Four Sand Cranes Flying at Sunrise in Homer

We traveled back for another stop at Portage to go to the Wildlife Conservation Center. It has fenced animals, including bears (black and grizzly), wood bison, sitka black tail deer, and others. They have two main missions: to increase the size of the wood bison population in Alaska and rehabilitate injured animals back into the wild.

Anchorage & the Fair

We spent two days in the Anchorage area. One day we went to the Alaska State Fair which is famous for the VERY large vegetable contest. The day we were there they weighed in a world record kale (106 POUNDS!). And we saw the Kenai Racing Pigs (they race for oreo cookies!)

The Alaska State Fair

World Record Kale - 106 pounds

We also “toured” Earthquake Park, a small park dedicated to the devastation caused by the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. The epicenter was near the port of Valdez, which was our next stop.

Valdez

We viewed a film in Valdez on that earthquake; the documentary was filmed in 1964 at the time of the quake. Some of the footage was shot by sailors on a ship that had just that morning docked and was being unloaded. The ship apparently bounced off the bottom of the bay 3 times, surged into the downtown area and ended up back in the bay – floating! It is an impressive and moving film. The effects on the southcoastal part of Alaska was tremendous. Even today, you will hear “it was different before the earthquake” about lots of natural and manmade features – Valdez was moved four miles to be safer should there be another quake, the Home “spit” where we camped is 6 feet lower than before, the industries of all the towns in the affected areas changed significantly. Before they were big ports and industrial areas; today they survive mainly on fishing and tourism.

More Glaciers - Worthington (near Valdez)

Valdez, like Homer, is a fishing village. It is also the terminus for the Alaskan Pipeline. We stayed in a city RV park close to the terminal where ships are loaded. The area was crowded with fisherpersons trying for the heaviest fish which carries a $15,000 prize. The salmon are spawning, so many of them die at the stream and river feeds into the inlet. There was discussion of trying to find a large dead one to see if we could win the prize. That idea was nipped in the bud. We also took another cruise, this time getting to see the Columbia Glacier from about a mile away. We could not get any closer because of the ice that had calved off the glacier blocked the water route. It is wild going through such large ice remnants in a boat.

Glacial Ice near Valdez

"Campsite" in Valdez

We stopped for two days at a crossroads town called Glennallen, visiting the Wrangler-St Elias National Park and Preserve. This brings to mind, we have seen at least 7 active volcanic mountains (a couple of times we thought we saw steam, but who knows with the clouds in the area.)

Now we are at Tok, planning our trip through Canada. There are stops in Haines, Stewart/Hyder, Whitehorse and Watson Lake planned. Sometimes we will park off the side of the road for a night. This has been an exciting trip so far, with more excitement to come.

On the Road Again!

We are on the road again! Summer is winding down in the Denali area and the number of RV’ers visiting has dropped enough that we are able to leave and do some sightseeing in other parts of Alaska.

Our last few days in Denali were spectacular. We had a very wet July and early August; then we had a string of beautiful clear days. We were able to get a reservation for a campsite at Wonder Lake on Saturday the 11th, which was one of the best days all summer. Most days people can only see Mt McKinley early in the morning, if at all. On Saturday, we were able to see the mountain from the time we go on the bus to ride out to Wonder lake until we finally went to sleep in our tent. Wonder Lake is only 26 miles from Denali, so the view is spectacular.

Bear on the side of the park road - 8/11/2007

View of Denali from our tent - 8/11/2007

The blueberries were real good!

Other interesting sights during the last few couple of weeks at Denali:
- A trip to Fairbanks to see the Ice Museum and the rest of the Museum of the North at University of Alaska Fairbanks
- Sally got to take a second flightseeing tour.; The day was pretty cloudy, but it was still very exciting
- Sally & Karin hiked the Mt Healy Overlook Trail in Denali park. It has about a 1700 foot elevation gain in less than 2 miles and has been described by one of our co-workers as “brutal”

Our first destination after leaving Denali was Wasilla, a town just north of Anchorage. We did routine stuff (oil change, grocery shopping), then hit the Seward Highway headed for Portage Valley where we stayed last night and for Seward where we will spend the next three days.

Our plans include walking up to the toe of the Exit Glacier and taking a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords National Park – more glaciers, whales (hopefully) and seabirds.

After Seward, we’ll move to Homer to visit our friends who have been working there this summer. Next week, we’ll retrace our steps towards Anchorage where we plan on spending some time at the Alaska State Fair and then on to Valdez.

We’ll be in Alaska till around Labor Day and then head back through British Columbia to Vancouver.

More Tales from Alaska

It's been a while since we posted - we continue to work and to sightsee up here.

Last week we went on a ranger led hike in the park. It was a beautiful day - we got to see Denali several times on the ride out. Quite a hike too - we went out one stream bed, crossed over the end of a small mountain and back up towards the road on another stream bed. Wet feet and aching muscles at the end - a success. Sally got a good close look at a ptarmigan. It's a male; you can tell by the red eyebrow.



Bus ride out to hike

Hiking up stream

Ptarmigan

Last Sunday we went up to Fairbanks to see the Red Green Regatta. It's a float down the Chena River in craft that are built and/or decorated by the participants to reflect the theme of the Red Green show and Red's favorite handyman's helper - duct tape. It looked like so much fun that we wished we had entered a boat ourselves. The weather was warm and the water didn't look like it was too cold (though Sally would have probably turned blue). We saw everything from Santa to the Loch Ness monster to 3 Men in a Tub. The course was only a couple of miles, but there is no telling how long it would take to float or how many of the craft actually made it. Many of them didn't appear to be under control at the starting line.

Santa in the Red Green Regatta

Finally we took a ride on the Alaska Railroad down to a little town called Talkeetna. It was supposedly the inspiration for Northern Exposure. A very interesting place - it has 800 year round residents. There are about 10 flight-seeing companies in town and a bunch of gift stores featuring crafts made by the residents. It looked like they must spend the whole winter knitting, painting and making jelly. It has spectacular views of Denali and lots of old historical buildings. We enjoyed our stay in a local lodge and a great breakfast in the Roadhouse - sourdough berry pancakes withe fireweed jam. Yum!

All Aboard

Coming round the bend

Talkeetna store and visitor center

A different view of Denali from the south

We'll sign off for now - only a few more weeks before we have to head towards southern Alaska for more of the great adventure.

The Artic Circle and more Denali

Official Arctic Crossing Certificate
As we left you last, we were headed up to the far north - past the Arctic Circle. And now we have spent a night in the true land of the midnight sun.


We left on Sunday and drove first to Fairbanks on the Parks Highway, then on the Elliott Highway. Both of these are paved and as good as roads get up here - only minor frost heaves and potholes.



"Bushwhacked" and visiting real Alaska in Joy

As we passed through the town of Joy, we stopped at a little gift shop for some lunch. While we were there, we were "bushwhacked" - a friendly highjacking by two ladies who live in the backcountry in a house they built of materials they scrounged, bartered for or bought as cheaply as possible. They took us home with them and showed off their rustic home, complete with screened in porch, greenhouse (with tomatos growing strong), outhouse (a two-seater with men's and ladies' side), bear proof doors and LARGE woodpile for the winter. They even gave us a jar of moose meat from their stockpile.

Dalton Highway and the Alaska Pipeline

Next we turned onto the Dalton Highway. It's about 500 miles of the worst road in Alaska. The first 90 miles are gravel and dirt, including a ten mile stretch being prepared for paving that is covered with a layer of rock chunks larger than a good sized fist. Tough driving. The highway was built to roughly parallel the Alaska Pipeline. It crosses the Arctic Circle after about 120 miles, then continues to Coldfoot and Deadhorse (at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean).



Sally at the Arctic Circle

We went as far as Coldfoot, where we drank a beer at the northern-most saloon in the US, got to see the sun in the sky in the middle of the night and slept in the back of our truck along with many mosquitos. They are not too bad down near Denali but up in the tundra area there is a lot of standing water and so there are many insects.

Midnight Sun in Coldfoot

Altogether a great trip - but a tough one. And then on the way home we passed a line of antique cars operating in conditions that might have been familiar when they were first built. It makes you appreciate what our grandparents went through.



Old cars on the way up the Dalton Highway


Jeep Safari
On our return, we scheduled a Jeep tour of some backcountry near Healy. Tom drove one of the Jeeps on our off-road adventure. I think he really enjoyed the four wheel drive experience. The day was absolutely gorgeous. We got a real great view of Denali - our best picture so far (from land at least).

The best pic of Denali (from the ground)
Finally on Sunday, we took another trip into the park. This time we did a 4 mile hike from Highway Pass back down a gravel stream bed towards the Toklat River. This trip, we got to see a wolf close up. One of the bus passengers spotted movement in the brush and got the driver to stop the bus. At first we thought it might be a caribou, but once we got a clear look, it turned out to be a wolf. He headed straight towards the road, turned and ran through the ditch by the roadside next to the bus, crossed the road right behind us and then ran along the other side of the bus. It was fantastic!

Close-up of a wolf at Denali

Tom hiking near Highway Pass

We are having a ball - seeing and doing so much. The work is fun. It's not too difficult and we get to meet and talk with people from all over the world.
We'll continue to keep you up to date on what's going up here in the North. Hope you like the new blog capability for placing pictures in the text.

Lots to do

I think we have mentioned before how much there is to do in the area and we have been very busy the past few days.

Sunday morning we were washing clothes and relaxing around the RV when the RV park manager knocked on our door and asked if we wanted to go white-water rafting in 30 minutes (!!!). At first we weren't going to go since we were using 3 of the 4 washing machines. Then Tom insisted on staying to take care of the laundry and so Sally took off with 3 other workampers.

The Nenana River is a glacial river - very cold. We all had to wear dry suits. Even so, the cold of the water splashing on the suit can make you chilly. Fortunately the day was nice and sunny so were very comfortable. The trip involves several class II and III rapids. It was a lot of fun and very scenic. No pictures yet since I used a film camera and have to send it off for processing. Tom is hoping to get a chance to go soon - he will probably decide to take a swim in the 35 degree water - brr!

Monday, Tom sang at the open mic night at the Salmon Bake near Denali Park. It was a lot of fun and he sounded great. He sang several CCR favorites and two of his own compositions. As we left about 12:30 am, we noticed that the sky was very clear off to the southwest and thought we might be able to see Denali (Mt McKinley). Only about 20% of visitors actually see the mountain so we decided to take a chance, drive down the park road and see if we would be lucky - and we were! It was very quiet in the park; we only saw one other car. And the views were really neat. Note how light the picture of Denali is - that was taken without a flash at about 12:45 am. The mountain is in the center of the picture - it may be hard to see since the background was a little cloudy.

..........

The moon over Denali Park (1 am)............Denali Mountain at 1 am

Then Tuesday, we got the chance to go "flightseeing" to Denali (Mt McKinley). We rode in a 10 seater plane and it was the most exciting thing we have done so far on the trip. It was a bit cloudy on the way, but the views of the mountains and glaciers were spectacular. We even saw some climbers coming down off the summit. Words just are not adequate in situations like this..

Sally in the air

Denali above the clouds......and.... The Summit

A view of one of the glaciers and mountains

Thursday was the summer solstice - the longest day of the year. We stayed up past midnight again to celebrate. The sun set at 12:24 and rose again at 3:37. There has been 24 hours of daylight up here for several weeks - that will last till the end of July, I think.

Our next adventure will be a drive up past the Arctic Circle on our days off this weekend.

Stay tuned for more...