Chapter Four (2009)

Chapter 4 – 2009

This trip started out again in early May…May 8^th to be exact.  I made it out of town and all the way to Alachua, about 130 miles to an old friend and roommate, Joe (Cracker) McLeod’s house where I spent a couple of days with him, his wife, Dee and one of his sons, Luke.  It had been many years since we had seen each other and we spent time remembering times about 45 years earlier. 

After leaving Crackers, I made it to somewhere near Panama City to stay over with a friend, Bill Booker, whom I had met thru Open Road Singles (ORS), an RV group of people who travel alone.  The reason I say somewhere near Panama City is the only way to get to the Booker palatial estate is via GPS.  Bill and I traded some discussion of past meetings and I was off again.  Prior to starting this trip, I had agreed to meet with two other members of the ORS group in northwest Montana and caravan from there to Alaska.  My ETA Lake St Mary MT was May 28 which allowed me time for a couple of stops along the way. 

The first was Cullman Al where I met up with and had dinner with my cousins Jackie and Ray and Ray’s wife BJ.  We had a long awaited meeting since we hadn’t seen each other in maybe 30 – 40 years.  Then it was over to the Allegro Plant in Red Bay AL where the Blue Goose was born in the late 90’s.  The next day, I was back toward Cullman to get the voltage regulator replaced in my RV’s generator. 

After that, on to Tunica and the Mississippi casinos just south of Memphis before taking off to Springfield Mo where my son Kevin and his crew Kelly, Sam and Lily, live.  I parked the  “Goose” in Kevin & Kelly’s front yard for most of a week, Playing with Sam and Lily, visiting some of the local establishments, a trip to Branson and Silver Dollar City for a couple of days, where Kevin had a live remote for his morning show.  Which by the way, if you are in the Springfield MO area, tune Kevin in at FM 95.5 KTOZ from 5:00 am – 10:00 am on the Kevin and Liz Show. You can also catch him on his sports show on the local ESPN station AM 1414 from 11:00am – 12:00am.  And if that’s not enough, go to Hammons Field and take in a minor league Springfield Cardinals game.  Kevin is the stadium announcer.  Keeps him out of Kelly’s hair.

After Springfield, it was north thru Missouri and Iowa.  I spent a couple of days in Sioux Falls SD, and took in some of the history provided by Lewis and Clark back in the 1800’s as they searched for a northwest passage.  I left for Sturgis South Dakota the last Friday in May and headed thru the northeast corner of Wyoming and into Montana.  As I was driving up US Highway 212 listening to Sirius radio, there was an announcement to visit a national cemetery over Memorial Day weekend.  What a neat idea…then out of nowhere about an hour later, there it was, right in front of me.  The Little Big Horn National Cemetery.  I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around, picturing what it must have been like on that knoll in late June 1878, facing several thousand Lakota and Cheyenne Indians.  Late in the afternoon, I headed north toward Billings Mt.  From Billings, it was on to Bozeman and Great Falls.  I stopped in Great Falls, about 100 miles south of Lake St Mary where I was to meet up with the rest of my caravan.  I went to my favorite campground (Wal-Mart) and stayed for a couple of days.  Great Falls has a lot of history, primarily related to Lewis and Clark.  While there, Beth Carol and Liz contacted me and said they just got to Great Falls, so I stayed another day.  We left Great falls to Lake St Mary where we finally caught up with Ron, the final member, or so we thought, of our group.  

We stayed at the beautiful Glacier National Park – Babb Campground and the next morning headed north across the Canadian Border.  We stayed west of Calgary, in a direction of Banff National park in Alberta stopping along the way to view the fantastic Canadian scenery.  On the second day, we had stopped for lunch in an overlook in the Canadian Rockies when a large familiar-looking motor home pulled into the parking area.  I had seen this coach before, but it took me a while to figure out.  When I was in Great Falls (Wall Mart, of course), this coach was also there both days that I was.  It was this chance meeting that I was introduced to Tommy and Olga Wood from Conroe Texas.  As it turned out, they traveled on to Alaska with us.  Next stop – Banff National Park, Lake Louise Which was completely frozen over when Tricia and I were there two years earlier), and the Colombia Ice Fields, a mile thick Glacier just west of Lake Louise.  Since I had visited the Ice Fields in 2006 with Tricia, and the fact that we were approaching Alaska too slow for me, I said goodbye to my fellow travelers and struck out on my own for Dawson Creek BC and Mile 0 of the 1422 mile Alaska Highway.

AH YES…The Alaska Highway aka the Alcan Highway.  Tons of history in this 2-lane ribbon that runs from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks.  You just sit back and observe…the snow-covered Rockies to the left, rivers and frozen lakes to the right, and too many small villages and towns to mention.  You travel thru the upper portion of British Colombia thru Ft. Nelson, Watson Lake and then cross the border and arrive in Whitehorse, the capital city of the Yukon Territory.  I usually spend a couple of days in Whitehorse, which is about 2/3 the way up the Alaska Highway.  Time to stock up and gas up (on those $5 per gallon Canadian prices.  Next stop will be back in the US at the Alaska border.

I have to tell my Watson Lake story.  When I left Grand Prairie in central BC, the news on Sirius Radio was a huge forest fire in the Yukon Terratory, so when I got to Watson Lake, around 4:00 pm,  I stopped by the Chamber of Commerce to get the latest information.  I was told the road was open and closed about 60 miles west at the discretion of the forest rangers.  And the best time would be early morning.  So, I set up in their parking lot for the night (WIFI available and a grocery store across the street).  I pulled out around 5:00am heading toward Whitehorse.  And sure enough there was a roadblock about 60 miles up the road.  I was told that the smoke was too thick to continue, but the rangers were allowing traffic thru with an escort, and the escort vehicle had just left.  I was the first in line, or the first one to miss the last escort run, so I knew I’d be there for a while.  As it turned out, it was only about an hour.  I was sitting in the driver’s seat listening to the radio when someone knocked on my door.  I opened the window and asked if I could help.  The man stood there looking at me as if I was crazy…I couldn’t figure it out, then he said “you don’t recognize me do you?”, to which I replied “no”…Then he said, ”Well you should, we spent every afternoon two years ago having cocktails together, and you  can’t remember”.  Then I got the picture.  It was Carroll Frecking, from Minnesota, one of my fishing partners on the Kenai River from 2007.  So much for short term memory.  And so much for how small the world is.  Me from St Petersburg, he and his wife Carolyn along with two of their grandsons Ben and Dalton stopped behind each other in a forest fire road block in the Yukon Terratory.  It must have been the smoke in my eyes.

As I crossed into Alaska at the northern most point of the Canadian Rockies, I was  on the only road into Alaska…there is no other way to drive it.  Still about 800 miles from Anchorage, I usually feel differently driving in the US.  I’m not sure what causes that, I just feel more comfortable back in my own country.  This part of the trip from Whitehorse to Anchorage took me 3 days.

The Blue Goose in Alaska

  I have taken the Valdez cutoff and spent a couple of  days in this unique fishing village, but knowing I will get there on my way out of Alaska, so,I passed. 

Once in Anchorage, I parked at a City lot on the banks of Ship Creek and headed out to my favorite eating spot, Humpy’s.  A couple of days in Anchorage, and then it was south to the Kenai Peninsula, and Soldotna.  I stopped at one of my most remembered towns, Hope, for an overnight stay in the local campground and trout fishing in the  creek at the end of the only street in downtown Hope. Always fresh fish for dinner in Hope.

Once I left Hope I hopped on down the Seward Highway to its namesake town. And started out my fishing trip with a full-day Halibut trip.  The limit is 2 fish per day and you always get your limit.  The problem with trip was the fish were small…about 20 lbs.  So, if it’s early in the day you throw them back and go for a larger one.  After hauling up about a dozen fish, I quit with 2 fish (the 2 to the left of my hand).

Then it was back up the road about 90 miles to Soldotna and Centennial Park where I would call home until August.  When I arrived, I was met by several people I had met two years earlier, and some I met on the Alaska Highway in a smoke screen.  I set up about 75 feet from the Kenai River where I would walk down the nice aluminum stairs and stand in the river until I caught my limit of 3 or 6 fish depending on whether or not the Alaska game and Fish Commission increased the limit due to more fish coming up the river.  After a couple of weeks in Soldotna, I headed back to Anchorage and took a flight back to Tampa to spend a week on the beach in Ft Myers…a vacation from my vacation.

On my way back to Anchorage, I got a call in Atlanta that my RV had been broken into.  When I got back, I found a mess and a lot of things missing.  The people at the Cummins Diesel place, and in particular, Bubba Tillery, worked with me and reimbursed me for my loss.  It was just the mess that I wasn’t happy with.

Back in Soldotna it was snagging Sockeye Salmon on a daily basis.  I got to know carol and Carolyn’s 9-year old grandson, Dalton real well while here.  He was a real trip.  He was required to wear one of the complementary life jackets.

Then as July turned  to August, the Red Salmon run began to slow down, so, several of us packed up and drove on to Valdez, about 80 miles as the crow flys, but around 300 by road. The objective to finish off the season and fill the freezer with Silver Salmon. With the freezer loaded with about 400 lbs of fish, I headed back down the Alaska Hwy to the lower 48 driving in the direction of Albuquerque to meet Tricia for the Balloon Fiesta.

I took a couple of weeks thru Canada, Montana, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona and finally New Mexico.  Tricia flew in to Albuquerque and we stayed in Santa Fe and took day trips to Taos and the surrounding area.   Tricia spent a day at the Ojo Caliente Spa, a mineral springs spa just outside Taos.  I wasn’t interested as I had done my spaing a couple of weeks earlier in the Liard Hot Springs in northern British Colombia. Tricia took a ride in one of the balloons while I kept my two feet planted on the ground.

 My visit to all the western states, other than Montana, was my first other than flying in on various trips. I found the west to be quite a pleasant change from what I have come accustomed to in Florida.  For instance, I left a Bryce Canyon UT campground one morning with the temperature right around 36 degrees, and stopped in Mesquite NV when the mercury was hovering around 110 at 9:00 pm.  Not only that, my Generator had gone on the fritz and I had no AC.  That caused me to spend several hours in a local casino.

                   Bryce Canyon                                               Grand Canyon

campground one morning with the temperature right around 36 degrees, and stopped in Mesquite NV when the mercury was hovering around 110 at 9:00 pm.  Not only that, my Generator had gone on the fritz and I had no AC.  That caused me to spend several hours in a local casino.

Tricia and I spent 3 days in Albuquerque watching hundreds of hot air balloons fly each day.  We had a parking site on the front row of the landing field which always offered balloon activity.  We had a chance to take a cable car ride to the highest bar in the world.  What a view…Then after about 9 days in the area, Tricia flew back to Tampa, and I headed east for Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri  visiting my cousin Earl Tillery and his wife, Jo, in Tulsa, and winding up in Springfield MO back at my son Kevin’s house for a few days with Kevin, Kelly, Sam and Lily. 

When I left  Kevin’s I traveled south to Petit Jean State park in Arkansas to catch up with my friend Fred Atterbury and his wife Maryann. .  This park is a plateau that I would guess to be about 1500 feet high, about 4 miles wide and 20 miles long.  It Was perfectly flat on top and covered with huge pine trees.  We stayed in the park for a couple of days, then they heeded and I headed east.   I drove on thru Mississippi, Alabama and ended up in Ellijay which is in north Georgia, and a reunion of my high school class..

Then it was on to Atlanta to visit with Janna and Joe Fackler for a couple of days.  It was Halloween which made a good conclusion to my trip.  All the ghosts and goblins reminded me of all the shadows and images I had seen over the past 14,000 + miles I had traveled.   I got back into St Petersburg on November 2nd, one week shy of 6 months…and immediately began planning my 2011 trip back to the Kenai…Stay Tuned!!!


On July 29, I got word that my friend Will Causseaux had passed away.  A pain in the ass, a lot of fun, and a good friend.   Will and I made the 2007 trip from Anchorage to Fairbanks, then to Vladez, Edmonton, Great Falls, Sturges, Souix Falls, Springfield, and New Orleans Will, you are missed...and I have a seat saved for you when I travel.

Chapter Three (2007)

When in Alaska in 2006, while we were in Cooper Landing, I drove down to the confluence of the Kenai and Russian Rivers where I watched what is termed to be combat fishing.  This is where fishermen are lined up along the bank shoulder to shoulder fishing for Red (Sockeye) salmon. Once I had seen this, I was hooked.  As soon as Tricia and I got home, I began planning my next trip to Alaska.  Only this time, I would not be flying…It would be a 6500-mile (one way) drive in my 28’ Allegro motorhome aka “The Blue Goose”.  I spent a lot of prep time trying to figure out what I would need to have with me on this six-month trip.  The longest I had ever been out in the RV was about 2 weeks, where if you forget something, you’re only a week away from getting it.

This was to prove a much different trip than all my two previous trips.  I began by meeting up with a group of people I had met thru an RV website for people who travel alone.  We met in Wilmington NC for a few days, and then I left for east Tennessee to visit my friends Paul and Dee Cleveland in Seymore.  After I left their place, I stopped in Oak Ridge to have lunch with my mother’s surviving sister, Alle, and her daughter, Ann.  At 97, Alle was still driving and mowing her own yard.  Hope I got her genes.  At this time, I had been gone about a week, and was still east of my starting point.  I’m sure I needed to be going in a westerly direction, so I headed to Springfield Mo where my son Kevin and his family live.  I stayed in Springfield four or five days and then started north and west…no real time frame or specific destination other than getting to Alaska. 

The next week I spent rambling thru Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska,  Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana.  Now it was time to leave the “Lower 48”.  Tricia and I had set up a trip where she would fly into Calgary AB and we would spend a week in Banff National Park and Lake Louise BC.  We stayed a campground in the park at the base of Mt Rundell, visited Lake Louise, and the Columbia Ice Fields, a one mile thick glacier.  After taking Tricia back to Calgary and spending a day touring the city, she flew out and I continued north to Alaska.

Mile 0 of teh Alaska Highway - 1474 to go

From Calgary, it was on to Edmonton and a quick visit to world’s largest mall, tne West Edmonton Mall.  This place is huge…a full water park, submarine  ride, the world’s largest indoor amusement  park and about 20 full sit-down restaurants . After Edmonton, I left Alberta, into British Columbia.  Once I got to Dawson Creek BC, mile 0 of the Alaska Highway, there was no getting lost, as this is the only road into or out of Alaska.

I left home in early April, and I got to Dawson Creek BC, in Mid-May.  A little early as there was a heavy snow on May 16 just as I was pulling out of town.  Then on up the Alaska Highway to Ft Nelson BC, Watson Lake BC, and Whitehorse, the capital city of the Yukon Territory.  I was still about 400 miles from the Alaska border at the north end of the Canadian Rockies.  I traveled on down to Glenallen and to Valdez where I stayed a few days.  Valdez is a great little fishing town which is the southern terminus of the Alaska pipeline.  As I traveled from Glenallen down the Richardson Highway, I saw spectacular Ponytail and Bride’s Veil waterfalls, each about 500 feet tall, and drove thru Thompson Pass, the snowiest place in Alaska averaging 550 inches per year…550 inches, that’s 45 feet.  I only stayed in Valdez a couple of days because I figured to be returning on my way back out of Alaska when the Coho or Silver Salmon were running.

Leaving Valdez, I motored on down to Anchorage, about 400 miles where I fished for King Salmon in Ship Creek which runs thru the downtown area, just behind the train station.  I also needed my fix so it was back to Humpy’s for fish and chips and a Pale Alaskan Ale.

Next it was on to the Kenai Peninsula where I would stay for a couple of months.  I visited the town of Hope that Tricia and I found a year earlier.  There is a small RV park at the end of the main street in Hope that has a small creek about 15 feet wide next to it.  This is a Pink Salmon run later in the year, but I was able to haul in a couple of trout that made it to the skillet about 20 minutes later.  It takes some imagination to call the place an RV park.  There are water and electric hookups for about 10 units, and a sign at  the end of the road stating the rules…”Select your site and pay the Bartender”.  The bartender is the owner of the bar and the park, who I had talked with a year earlier.

I left Hope the next day and was back in Seward that afternoon.  The next day I went out on an all-day Halibut trip and caught my limit of 2 fish…one 46 lbs., the other 64 lbs.  I spent that night fileting, shrink wrapping and freezing about 60 lbs. of fish.

After a couple of days in Seward, I drove the 90 miles up the Seward Hwy and then down the Sterling Hwy toward Soldotna and the Kenai River.  A super drive that Parallels the river for about another 90 miles.  I couldn’t stand not spending time on the river, so I spent one night in a small state park in Cooper Landing, the place where my friend Charles  and I had stayed 12 years earlier.  Little did I know that I would be spending the next two months even closer to the river than the location in Cooper Landing.

When I arrived in Soldotna, I went directly to Centennial Park and found a campsite in a great location.  I stopped and spoke with a Swedish couple, Henry and Maryanne who said they were from Texas. As I began setting up next to a couple who I came to know as Jack and Anita from northern California, I met others from all over the US.  On the other side of my site were Sam and Leon from Michigan, Carroll and Carolyn from Minnesota, and Gary and Mary from Colorado. I would get to know all of these folks and many more as we would fish and tell lies every day at the 4:00 pm cocktail hour.  We would all return in 2009 and do it all over again.

Days Limit

Kenai Krew

Fishing was great, but I needed a vacation from my vacation. So, it was back to Anchorage, put the RV into storage, and fly home for a week on the beach with my girls, Sally and Kelly and their two girls, Ally and Jaylee, in Ft Myers Beach.  I was limited to 2 50-lb pieces of luggage, and boarded the plane with a 46 and 48 lb box of frozen Fish.  After the beach, it was back to Anchorage, and down to Soldotna.  The fishing got even better and everyone usually got the 3-6 daily limit of Sockeye Salmon.  Daily fishing was interrupted only by trips to Clam Gulch for clams of course, and Homer for a ½ day Halibut trips. 

Will and Me in Danali

McKinley 20,320 feet

Before I left home, I had made arrangements with my friend Will Causseaux to come up and visit me when I was in Alaska.  If you knew Will, you’d know that he may or may not make it.  To my surprise, I got a call from Will saying he was ready, so we decided on him getting to Anchorage when I was on my way out and headed to Valdez.  I picked Will up at the airport and we drove up Park Hwy to Talkeetna and on to Denali National Park, where we stayed a couple of days and then went to Fairbanks and then down the  Richardson Hwy which is the north end of the Alaska Hwy, to Valdez. This a beautiful drive.  Lots of wildlife (bears eagles, moose, deer and others) as well as mountains, rivers and lakes, and you also get many views of the Alaska Pipeline along the way.  We got to Valdez after a 1200 mile trip, north and then south,  rather than the direct route from Anchorage to Valdez which was only about 300 miles.

We stayed in Valdez for about 3 weeks and topped the freezers with Silver Salmon. Then Will and I left Alaska for the 7-day trip thru Canada.  We stopped in Whitehorse,  at the Liard Hot Springs, and other places along the way to the lower 48.  Will had said that he may drop off and fly home once we got to Montana, but when I told hip I wanted to see Mt. Rushmore, he said he would stay on until after that. Before we got to Rushmore, we stopped at the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.  Then as we headed east in South Dakota, I told Will I was going to stop for a couple of days at my son’s in Springfield MO for a couple of days, and as may have been scripted, will said “I haven’t seen Kevin for a while, I think I’ll stay on”.  And of course while In Springfield, I mentioned I was going to stop for a day or 2 in New Orleans, Will quickly came back with his usual response, “I guess I’ll stay on for the New Orleans leg of the trip”.  As it turned out,  I dropped Will off in Brooksville where his friend, Peggy, picked him up to return to Orlando.

Washington, Adams, Roosevelt, Lincoln and Howard

It was a great trip.  About 13,000 miles. No major RV problems…the Blue Goose held up fine.  Lots of fantastic scenery.  Plenty of fish.   And a whole bunch of really nice people.  I visited 17 states, 3 Canadian Provinces, and an unrecorded number of state, national and provincial parks.  I’m really glad I had an opportunity to make this trip, and see places I have only dreamed of, and it didn’t take long for me to begin planning my 2011 trip.

Chapter Two (2006)

In 2005, I had a boatload of frequent flyer miles in my account and decided to give Tricia a free trip to a place of her choice for Christmas.  The only catch was it had to be Hawaii or Alaska.  I was looking forward to a super trip to Hawaii, but Tricia had different ideas.  She had a friend, Dianne Simms, who passed away a couple of years ago, whose family had migrated to Seward Alaska in the early 1800s and Tricia wanted to see where she was from.  Soooooo, we were Alaska bound in June of 2006. 

We flew from Tampa to Phoenix where we missed our flight to Anchorage due to a storm delaying us from getting out of Tampa.  Luckily, I had planned a slack day in the beginning of the trip for something like this.  We drove around the Anchorage area for a couple of days visiting the Independence goldmine on Hatcher pass, Ship Creek and the Ulu (a knife used in Alaska to clean fish and wildlife) factory.  We also found our favorite eating establishment and watering hole in all of Alaska. Humpy’s, The great Alaskan Ale House with some 60-80 draft beers on tap.  Tricia and I voted Humpy’s the best fish-and-chips in Alaska. Humpy is the nickname of the pink salmon.

On the third day, we left Anchorage on the Denali Express, an observation train , and headed to Denali National Park, the site of Mt McKinley, to the tallest mountain in the western hemisphere.  Once at McKinley, we took a 14-hour tour into the park to the Kantishna Roadhouse, a stopping off point used by trappers in the 1800s.  We saw more wildlife in this day than I believe I have seen in my total time in Alaska.(Bears, brown and black, Dall Sheep, Antelope, Fox, Moose, and more).  We never did get a clear view of Mt McKinley due to the low cloud cover.  I found out later that this is normal.

After Denali, we took the train back to Anchorage, rented a car and headed to the Kenai Peninsula, and Seward.  On our way to Seward, Tricia saw a road sign indication the town of Hope was 16 miles down a side road.  I wasn’t too excited to go to a town at the end of a dead-end road, a town I had never heard of, but Tricia’s persistence won out.  Hope turned out to be a diamond in the rough…two buildings, one a bar, the other a restaurant.  After Hope we continued on the Seward where we met Dianne’s brother who still ran the family business, a general store named  Brown and Hawkins.  It was, at the time the oldest family owned business in Alaska.  We went fishing for Silver salmon, and finished with about 25 pounds of dressed fish which we had to keep frozen for about a week while we traveled around south-central Alaska. It took a lot of begging to get the hotel managers to let us use their freezers.

After Seward, we motored thru the Kenai to Cooper Landing, the place where Charles and I had stayed 10 years earlier, Soldotna, the place where I would visit on later trips, and Homer, “A great little drinking village with a fishing problem”.  After the Kenai, we headed back to Anchorage, more fish and chips at Humpy’s,  and on back to the “Lower 48”  It turned out to be a great two weeks which we did on a shoestring budget using the Trip Saver Book.

What a fantastic trip.  Alaska was everything I hoped it would be. What I didn’t know is there would be a repeat performance next year.
 
  

Downtown Hope

              

                   

Brown & Hawkins in Seward

Kantishna Road House in Denali

Tricia and Silver Salmon

Chapter One (1996)

This all started in January 1996 when my friend Charles Stuart called and invited me to join him in an outing that I couldn’t attend due to a prior commitment.  So when he called again, a month later, and said had a couple of other activities, I replied I would accept both offers before I knew what they were.  Then Charles said “first I have two extra tickets to a Billy Joel/Elton John concert in Tampa”…So far so good.  I had agreed to see a fantastic dueling piano concert in advance.  The other activity according to Charles was a fishing trip.  Since I had already agreed to go, I asked him “where are we going?”  His response “ALASKA”.  Now you have the background on how it got started.

Charles wife, Judy, began planning our trip.  She was a fantastic travel agent.  Charles and I just sat and watched her plan a two-week fishing trip with George Reith, a local doctor, one of his friends whose name I can’t remember, and Georges two sons, George and John.  The younger George has a CPA firm on Kodiak Island.  What a change, St. Petersburg to Kodiak.

We set off in late June, north to Alaska and in search of King Salmon.  It was a 10-day trip I’ll never forget.  We bummed around on our own for a few days taking in the sights around Anchorage and up to Talkeetna where I got my first view of a clear shot of Mt McKinley. Then it was down to the Kenai Peninsula and Cooper Landing where we fished the Kenai River out of Soldotna’s Centennial Park. SUCCESS!  Saw a lot of wildlife, bears, moose, eagles, and a 37-pound King Salmon in the fish box.  This fish would probably be, and as it has turned out, the only King I ever caught.

This fantastic trip turned out to be the first of several that I have taken to Alaska.