Alaska 2011: May 4-6 - Crossing the Great Plains

This is the second page of our Alaska 2011 trip. The first page is here.

Shake and Rattle, but thankfully no roll

We woke up Wednesday morning to a howling wind. Forecast only called for 30 mph but it was definitely stronger than that. To top it off, we had some electrical problems in the coach - most of the outlets were dead, and every time we reset the breaker, it popped again. So it was starting out to be not such a good day.

We took care of our business at Blue Ox, and then ended up calling Holiday Rambler where we learned that there is a reset button on the inverter. When we reset that, everything was fine. But the wind problem did not go away. We decided it was too windy to be out on the road, so we arranged to stay another night before taking off.

What do you do in Pender, NE?

The answer is not much. The town is about 10 blocks square. Blue Ox is the major industry, and the biggest business seemed to be a really big John Deere dealer. They did have a city park with exactly one geocache, but that didn't take long.

We ended up driving over to a state park we had spotted near the border, with a Lewis & Clark exhibit. Turns out the park was still closed for the winter, so there wasn't much to see. But there was this really amazing stump. Except for the roof someone added, it's all real. I think a whole family of gnomes could live comfortably in there.

On the road again

Thursday brought calmer winds, so we continued North on I-29. Surprisingly, we actually saw some "leftover" snow that had not yet melted. It was in spots that probably would have attracted deep drifts, and protected so it would melt slower. This was our longest driving day so far, at 384 miles.

Friday was more of the same. A few more patches of snow as we got farther north, but mostly just a lot of nothing. We stopped a little west of Bismarck. We are now over 1,000 miles total for the trip, which puts us just over 1/4 of the way to Fairbanks. The Western half of North Dakota actually has a few places to see, so we will do a little sightseeing the next few days.

Alaska 2011: May 2-3 - The Adventure Begins

This is the start of our 2011 Alaska trip.

Off Like a Herd of Turtles...

We are estimating this trip will put 10,000 to 12,000 miles on the motorhome, and a few thousand more for side trips in the car. But we are not going to let gas prices deter us.

That was how I started my first tweet of the trip. We were up bright and early, but it usually takes us a while to get out and get going the first day. There are always a bazillion things to wrap up before leaving the house for a period of time. So it was late morning before we were really on the road.

I don't expect too much excitement the first few days. We have a lot of miles to cover, and we don't want to get distracted by things that are close to home. Even though we expect the trip to last all summer, I'd hate to run out of time and miss something in Alaska because we used up too much time getting there. As we get farther from home, we will no doubt start spending more time on distractions.

Approximate Itinerary

We are going to take a bit of a zig-zag path across the plains. Basically, you have 3 or 4 east-west roads to choose from and 3 or 4 north-south roads. At this point, we plan to go I-74 to I-80 to I-29 to I-94 to US85 to US2 to I-15.

Did you know that you cannot drive to Juneau? You can take a marine ferry up and down the coast, but there are no roads that go there.

We will cross into Canada from I-15. From there, we will head across Alberta and into British Columbia to Dawson Creek, where the Alaska Highway begins. We follow the Alaska Highway across British Columbia and and Yukon Territory to Alaska.

Once in Alaska, we have a whole list of places to see, and not too much of a plan for getting to them. There are only a few major highways, so all we really need to do is decide what sequence we want to see things. We also haven't decided what way to go for the return trip. It will depend on how much time we have left before winter sets in, but our preference would be to take a different route across Canada than we did on the way up.

But of course none of this is etched in stone. More like scratched in jello. And the farther out in time, the softer the jello is.

Getting Started

Monday we made it to I-80 and into Iowa. We made the obligatory stop at the Iowa 80 truck stop (self-proclaimed as the world's largest truck stop). We had been there before, but it's kind of like Wall Drug - if you go by it, you just HAVE to stop. We spent Monday night at the Amana Colony RV Park. Looks like some interesting things to see around here, but this is much too close to home to spend time on this trip. We will just add it to the bucket list for another day.

Tuesday we continued West on I-80, then North on I-29. Stopped at Des Moines for a photo of the capitol and a geocache, but didn't really do much of anything on this leg of the trip.

We stopped at Blue Ox, in Pender, NE, which is where the hitch for pulling the car comes from. We had ordered a rock shield accessory, and it was missing some parts. There was not time for them to ship the parts to us before we left, so we decided to stop and pick up the missing pieces on the way by. They have a nice campground by the factory, where you can stay for free if you are getting work done.

To be continued...

I'm still a few days behind on the trip journal, but I expect that to be normal. Check for Twitter updates to see where we really are at any given point in time.

Vacation 2009 - First Stop Nebraska

This is the second page of our vacation 2009 blog. The first page is here.

North Platte

When you are from the Midwest, you don't really feel like you are on vacation until you cross a good portion of the Great Plains. North Platte isn't all the way across the plains, but it was our first real stop. It is home to Bailey Yard, the largest railroad hump yard in the world. It was also home to Buffalo Bill, but we saw that site a couple years ago. This time we were here for the new observation tower near the yard, and a park with a railroad display that we couldn't get into before. (Motorhome exceeded the weight limit, and at that time we had no other transportation.)

Cody Park

First stop was Cody Park, where the steam engine Challenger was on display.

Here are some vital statistics about this beast

I got to play engineer...

The museum also had a DDA40X Centennial diesel engine on display. This was one of only a few dozen eight-axle diesels ever made. There are only about 10 or 11 remaining, all in museums now.

Many of the cars were open inside, including a caboose, and a railway post office. There were also a few artifacts on display inside the depot building.

City Park

Another little park was nearby, with a display of a smaller steam engine, the 480. This one is a bit smaller than the Challenger.

Golden Spike Tower

This tower was built to allow visitors and railroad aficianados the opportunity to view the yard in action. Bailey Yard is the world's largest classification yard. According to the tower's website, they handle 10,000 cars through this yard every day, 3,000 of which are sorted in this yard - the rest of them just pass through as is. It was a little hazy the day we were there, so the pictures aren't great, but here they are:

Entering Colorado

After spending most of the day in North Platte, we continued our journey west into Colorado. I grabbed a couple pictures at the "Welcome to Colorado" rest area on I-76, as a reminder that not all of Colorado is mountainous.

This is the part of Colorado that I always thought should have been still Kansas. Or in this case, Nebraska.

Are these sunflowers, or black-eyed susans? I think sunflowers, but they're kind of puny, even for wild ones.

We spent Sunday night at a Wal-Mart parking lot somewhere in Eastern Colorado. It was a little way off the highway, but it was getting late, and we were ready to stop. Monday is not only Labor Day, it is also Dale's birthday. So while there, we picked up a birthday cake, and also some dried-out chicken from the deli that had probably been there since supper time. It didn't look that bad in the case. Oh well.

Next page: On the Way to Glacier