Rest places on the Alcan

Mile 497 - Trapper Rays Liard Hot Springs Lodge. This is across the street from the hot springs. It is log construction has a pretty good restaurant and 12 rooms. Lois and I stayed here when the weather was wet and wild.

Whitehorse - Robert Service campground is privately owned and is located on Robert Service Way on the South Access road. It is about a 15 minute walk north to downtown and right on the Yukon River. Also has showers and it is for tent camping.

Haines Junction - There was a good Swiss or German? restaurant on the west side of the road just as the road turns north to Alaska.

Tok - Fast Eddy's Restaurant was a big restaurant used by truckers and tour busses. Seemed almost like a big city restaurant in the middle of the wilderness. We liked the food and it was pretty full, lots of trucks.

Mile 173 - (14 miles west of Glennallen toward Anchorage) Tolsona Wilderness Campground and RV Park is only about $12 a night. There is a centrally located mens and womens bathrooms with showers. That's the place i had 2 flat tires after driving towards home from Dawson City. The slow leakers caught up with us at the same time.

Mile 113.5 Sheep Mountain Lodge has good food and it is a well kept up place. Lots of flowers. Log buildings. Good place to stretch and get a snack if nothing else.

What's going on here?

Is anyone else having the same problem as I am? When I view the blog there is a huge blank space and the postings don't appear until after all the notations that appear to the left. And then the postings aren't indented to the right but to the left. If anybody else has this problem, I expect it to be fixed before we get to Alaska. Ok?

Chicken Little

You may have noticed a decided silence from the lake elmo sector lately. That is primarily due to the fact that for the last month I have been running around like a chicken with his head cut off getting ready for Peter's graduation party. Well that's over, but now we have only 5 days to get ready to leave for Alaska and virtually no thought has been put into it. The point being. . .expect more silence from Lake Elmo. Given the three week trip up and back again it could be a month!

Homer sights to see

This is the Ninilchik Russian Orthodox church. Lots of photos taken here.







This is part of Norman Lowells art studio and gardens. The best gardens in Alaska and a beautiful art gallery. Almost a place you cannot miss.






The Homer Spit is that small line going out into the ocean. The mountains and glaciers in the background are very impressive on a sunny day from up here.







Here is the small boat harbour in Homer. Homer is 100 miles from our home.

Weather predictions

Here are a couple of temperature graphs for the caravan coming to Alaska soon. We have been in the normal range recently. By the time you get here it may be 50 degrees at night which is kind of cool in a tent. May was very nice and we set some new records. Alaskans like global warming.

Heidi is wearing my t-neck polyester shirt. This is a good under-layer shirt for Alaska's cold and sometime wet weather. It keeps you warm even when it is wet if you wear it next to your skin. Cotton on the other hand would give you hypothermia.

The e Round Robin

The e Round Robin

Seward Attractions

Blogger has not been working a few times lately. Here is an attempt to post photos of some stuff to
see in Seward.



The boat trip to the glaciers is one of the top rated things to see in Alaska. It was cold on this particular day. Lots of sealife to see: whales, seals, many different birds, eagles, bears...








This 4th of July race up Mt. Marathon is a lot of fun to watch. There is a race for kids, women, and men. The runners are real animals to do this race. The chute at the bottom is very dangerous especially after running up and down the mountain.








The Exit glacier trail is another great day hike. I think it is 3+ miles to the top which overlooks the huge Harding ice field. It is not as hard as it looks. You always see black bears here.

Failure

Some of you may have noticed my failed attempt at trying to post a slide show on here last night. It was dismal... It was a slide show of Alyssa's open house and graduation. I have since deleted it and posted the pictures at Flickr. By the way, Flickr seems to be a good way to go. It's pretty easy and one can post up to 20MB a month. However, it ended up putting my pictures in reverse order and I haven't yet figured out how to change the order. Hopefully, this link will get you there. We had a couple other cameras snapping pictures also so I'll probably add some more pictures later.

Leap of Faith

This is the closes I've come to guessing. But that group lower right is a group of Bethany people, and I'm thinking they should be in the Church Directory no less than four years later. So. . .I'm guessing the lowest lady on the right is Mrs. W.R. Johnson. I vaguely remember the face, but I have no memories or connections to her. Can anybody help me out here? Who is she?

And. . .this is even more of a guess. . .the lady to the north of Mrs. VanRossum could be Mrs. Wilmot. She was also off my radar screen. Does anyone have a memory or connection to her?

You little beggars!

When I was four, we moved to Fon du Lac and lived in an apartment above Ollie and Esther's general store. Our next-door neighbors were Gladys and Van, their daughter Joan and Gladys's mother - Grandma Berquist.
Grandma Berquist was a typical Swedish woman of her generation, hard as nails exterior but deep down a cream-puff. (Grandma Lindstrom was like that.) Anyway I remember one day knocking on her door with a friend of mine

Grandma Berquist says, "What do you want?"

"Can we have some milk and cookies?" we respond.

This sends her into a loud rant. "You little beggars! The nerve of you coming up to the doors of strangers begging for food.
Don't your parents teach you any manners?"
And on and on and on she went like that.

Most of the time we could hear her but not see her because she had retreated into the kitchen and was preparing two glasses of milk and a large plate of home-made cookies

Dobs

I'm posting this for no particular reason. I'm done scanning the Lindstrom's slides and will soon begin on the Stynsberg's.

Just above Irene Hammerstrom is a slim woman in an expensive fur coat. When I saw the VanRossum family in the church directory I had a distinct memory that Mrs. Van Rossum wore just such a fur coat. No one said anything to me about it, but at the time it seemed to me a bit scandalous. Bethany was not into ostentasious fashion - and I was slightly embarassed about that fur coat. I asked Ron VanRossum about it a week ago, and he confirmed that she did indeed wear a fur coat.

Irene

Dean was interested in the group of guys upper left. I was drawn to the group lower right that included Einer Hammerstrom. Church directory to the rescue! The next few days I'll point out a few things. The second from the bottom is Einer's wife. At Josh's party, Corinne reminded me that her name was Irene.