Hello Everyone,

A puzzle for you   ---   today we decided to go back to Alaska.  And we did.  And then we continued on our way.  This evening we are in New Hazelton, BC.  So how did we return to Alaska and end up this evening in New Hazelton?

Today we saw four more bears.  The best pictures was a mother black bear with a cub, but the cub stayed behind mom.

 In the picture below the cub just barely shows behind its mom.  The salmon should be a good meal for mother an baby.

We saw better views of glaciers today than anytime previous.  This is called the toe of the glacier.  It is certainly the largest toe I have ever seen!  It is hard to tell from this picture how large the glacier is.  I guess it is 400 to 500 feet wide just above the toe.

 Distance when looking at a distant mountain is very deceiving.  I guess the glacier is two or three miles long before it disappears to the right behind the mountain.  The toe is barely hidden in this picture.

This is a close-up of part of the glacier.  Interesting how these peaks have formed.  Elva says it looks like whipped egg whites.

Most streams from melting snow or from springs are very clear.  These two salmon are getting ready to spawn.  They are king salmon and are about three feet long.

Water from glaciers is usually blue-green.  The darker part in this picture is in the shadow of a tree to the left.

We saw several logging trucks today.  The fjord here is about a half mile wide and much of it is filled with logs.  I don't know what they will do with them.  Will they float them to a saw mill?  Will they load them onto a ship?  I cannot answer this question.

Bee on flower.

 Fire weed much taller than any we have seen before.

Red berries.

One thing about Fairbanks and much of Alaska in general was few song birds.  Here we got a picture of a small song bird.

We even saw moss on some trees - just like we saw in Florida!

Our trek home has now covered more than 1400 miles.  We have not been away from mountains yet.  British Columbia is far more mountainous than I thought it would be.  We plan to see still more mountains.  Jasper and Banff are yet to come.  Some say they are the most beautiful mountains!  We will see.  We have seen some very nice ones.  Many valleys between the high mountains are lakes.

God did a wonderful job!

I will lift up my eyes to the hills - what a joy!  The mountains with their majesty and splendor remind me of the power and wisdom of God.

Larry and Elva

Hello everybody   ---

This continues our trip home from Alaska.  This will be day two and day three.  I tried to do day two on day two but the internet connection was too slow.  If I would have done it yesterday it would have continued into today before I finished.  

Yesterday we started at Destruction Bay and stopped at Teslin, both along the Alaska Highway.  This evening we are at Iskut, on the Cassiar Highway.

Yesterday we passed through Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.  The Yukon River goes through there.  From there it goes north then curves around north of Fairbanks and empties into the Bering Sea.  It is a very long river.  The Chena (across from our apartment in Fairbanks) empties into the Tanana River at the southwest of Fairbanks and it empties into the Yukon about 100 miles west of Fairbanks.  The Yukon becomes a very large river.  This is how it looks in Whitehorse.

At Whitehorse there is a dam (second below) so there has to be a fish ladder.  The salmon have traveled over 1000 miles from the ocean before they arrive in Whitehorse.  They cannot go up the dam so they have this ladder for them to continue up stream to spawn.  When we were there there were some salmon there ready to go up the ladder but were waiting until --- no one knows what they wait for.  The female salmon lays about 4000 eggs and if everything goes well two or three of those fish will return spawn.

Want to decorate your front yard?  Here is an idea for you direct from Whitehorse!  This is hundreds of bicycle wheels taped or tied together.  There was also a smaller one behind this one.

This is the town monument in Haines Junction.

Totem pole in Whitehorse

 And some smaller ones in Teslin.

Better weather today.  It did not rain much and there was a lot of blue sky.  Here is a low-hanging remnant of rain clouds.



Today we saw interesting designs on trees burned a few years ago.


There was a black bear just off the road, not more that 20 feet from the van.  It was very content to eat whatever he found there and paid no attention to us.

There continues to be many lovely flowers along the road.  This is a closeup of fire weed.

 The orange-colored flower is new to us.  Here it is beside a white flower we have seen all along the way from Fairbanks and fire weed.

 We don't know what this is either.  Seed puffs that look about like dandelions but they seem to stay attached long term and the plants form in circles or at least close groups.



And there are still beautiful mountains.

 Some with sharp peaks.

 Some with glaciers

Many bubbling brooks, far too many to stop and see very many.

This concludes day three.  So far so good.  God has given us a wonderful creation.  Let us each help make creation still more wonderful.

Thanks you  very much.

Larry and Elva

Friends    ----

We are on the move again, but before we left Fairbanks there were a couple other thing we have not yet told you about.  Every summer there is Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival (FSAF).  Many kinds of arts are offered, from making goat cheese (we know the people who did that) to bagpipes to dance.  We took in a few of the offerings.  One was steel pan drums.  These started in the fifties when people turned metal barrels into musical drums.  A very early one is shown in the third picture below.  The teacher of steel pan drums is shown in that picture and is also in the middle of the first picture.  These have a very unique sound and the same drum can play many different notes by different areas of the surface.  Many well known artists come to teach their expertise.  A lady at church said that when her daughter was nine years old the Boston Pops was at FSAF.  There were a few of the Boston Pops musicians practicing and had this nine year old play along with them.  The FSAF is intended to be fun for all.  The experts enjoy the informal atmosphere in Fairbanks.  In these pictures, anyone who had taken the pan drum class had the opportunity to play in the evening concert

The Red Green Regatta came to Fairbanks.  Local boaters made floatable crafts using empty milk bottles, water bottles, etc. and lots of duct tape.  Unfortunately the water was too high on the river so the boats were judged while sitting in a parking lot.  Some did go down the river, but that was not part of the competition.

 



And, yes, we have now left Fairbanks.  This departing was different.  All other places of significance  we have driven away from we assume we will return again.  We will likely never be to Fairbanks again.  We will likely never see our Fairbanks friends again, except those we will see in heaven.  That encourages us.

And so, we left our apartment in Fairbanks for the last time and headed down the road to the lower 48.  Alaskans refer to travel outside their state as going outside.  So we are now outside.  But we are always  somewhere.  So even though we are now outside Alaska we are inside Yukon.  We stopped for the night at Destruction Bay.

The trip today (Tuesday, July 29) was cloudy most of the way and rainy much of the way.  I like mountains with clouds, but I also like mountains with sunshine.

 (The specks below are rain drops on the van window.)

So far so good.  Pray for our safety.  We plan to not take the Alaska Highway the whole way but in southern Yukon take the Cassiar Highway which will lead to Jasper and Bamff.

Thanks for your interest.

Larry and Elva