Alaska 2010 - Wrap-up

Well, it's over.  We're home.  The house phone doesn't work.  The TV picture is fuzzy.  It's hot.  And I just started my first load of laundry.  Reality has set in.

But what a great trip we had.  Joe drove the RV 10,290 miles, and probably another 5,000 in the car.  We went through 7 states and 3 Canadian provinces.  We toured 8 U.S. National Parks and 3 Canadian ones, and one National Monument.

We went fishing for halibut and salmon (reds).  We soaked our tired bodies in 4 different hot springs.  We took scenic boat rides in Waterton and Moab.  We watched an awesome Air Show.  We toured two knife factories and two candy factories, 2 paddle wheel boats, two fish ladders, and a dredge.  We went to numerous museums and climbed on an oil derrick.  We went to a wine tasting, watched clamming on the shore, watched dip-netting for salmon in the Kenai River,  watched fishing boats being launched and retrieved by tractors at high and low tide.  We took a plane ride to Prudhoe Bay and a van ride back, a ferry boat ride from Skagway to Haines,  a dog-sled ride at the Iditarod Headquarters, and a street-car ride in Edmonton.  We went to a musical show and a vaudeville show, watched a rodeo, went to a zoo, and drove through a wildlife preserve.  We walked on three different types of tundra, 2 glaciers, and held glacial ice in our hands.  We looked at countless totem poles, saw beautiful wood carvings, hung a sign at the Signpost Forest.  We watched thousands of salmon swimming upstream to spawn, lots of eagles soaring overhead, and lots of wildlife (some in the middle of the road).  We got to pan for gold several times (all without success, but it was fun wading in the creeks).   And with wonderful traveling friends, who made the trip even better.

Wildlife count:
Buffalo - thousands
Caribou - hundreds
Antelope - approximately 90
Deer-154
Moose-40
Bears-32 (black and grizzly)
Elk-49
Wolves-5 (both black and gray)
Bighorn sheep-58 (including stone sheep)
Wild turkeys-4
Fox-2 (1 red, 1 gray)
Plus several grouse (some ptarmigan), beavers, snowshoe hares, some whales and sea otters, and even a herd of camels in a fenced lot.

So you can see we had a busy summer!  But we wouldn't have wanted to miss a single day of it.  Every day was amazing, from Day 1 to Day 137.  What an EXCELLENT ADVENTURE it all was!