Tombstone Territorial Park

Posted on September 1, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

We stayed in Dawson City a couple of extra days waiting for the rain to subside before heading to our next destination, Tombstone Territorial Park in Canada’s Yukon Territory. The road to the park, the Dempster Highway, is a gravel road with a terrible reputation. So ideally we wanted to drive there when the road was dry. But ultimately we decided to move on even though it had rained the previous night and the road was sure to still be wet.

Fortunately, it was only 44 miles on the Dempster Highway to our campground. The road was not as bad as we expected. In fact many times we asked others about it, their answer was “it’s not that bad”. That is because the overall perception is that “the Dempster” is horrible from beginning to end. And that is not true. There are bad sections, very bad sections and the “not that bad” sections with maybe a couple of “hey, pretty good” sections thrown in.

Alaska Day driving day 12 recap:

Road Name: Klondike Highway from Dawson City

Road Type: 2-lane

Road Conditions: Pretty good

Road Name: The Dempster Highway

Road Type: 2-lane

Road Conditions: Well-graded gravel road with minimal washboard, but plenty of potholes, very muddy after a rain

Miles Today: 83 (includes a drive back to town from our campground for gas)

Driving Time: 2 hours

Total Miles in Canada: 2217

Total Miles since entering Canada: 4405

The signs are a little scary

After arriving at our campground, we had to clean up our car, the Coquí, which was covered in mud and rocks. Fortunately, we had covered the windshield with a tarp, which helped just a little bit. Our collection of mud-covered rags keeps growing. Continue reading →

Dawson City

Posted on August 30, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

As we waited to board the ferry into Dawson City, Hector met the owner of Klondike River Distillery. He distills vodka off the grid, the only such distillery in North America according to him, and infuses each bottle with a bit of gold.

But what was serendipitous was that Dorian’s “day” job is as a ranger at Tombstone National Park, our next destination! So he gave Hector an update on the fall colors. We had been concerned about driving up the Dempster Highway only to find that we were too early but he encouraged us to go and told Hector that the colors were definitely beginning.

This was a great start to our stay in this interesting town. We chose to stay in a Yukon Government Campground just outside of town. We love the Yukon Government Campgrounds, they cost 12CAD, are located in lovely natural settings and offer free firewood.

It is always a bit of a shock to our system to come out of a really natural and wild setting to a town (even a tiny one) full of people, and so staying at this peaceful forested campground just outside of town helped to keep us in balance.

We kicked off our visit by going to the Farmers Market, which was really mostly an arts and crafts market as coincidentally it was the weekend of the Yukon Riverside Arts Festival. We did buy one amazing head of lettuce though.

Dawson is a very artsy town. In addition to the arts festival, it has the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture, the Dawson City Arts Society, the Dawson City Music Festival and the Yukon School of Visual Arts.

Their Visitor Center, as almost all Visitor Centers in Canada we have visited, offers excellent Wi-Fi for free as well as tons of information.

As with all of these northern towns, from the tiniest to the largest, flowers are planted everywhere and maintained beautifully until the very last moment that they can possibly survive. Really the flowers are just spectacular. Continue reading →

Haines Junction

Posted on June 16, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

The morning was really windy, no chance of taking the kayaks out on Dezadeash Lake. And so we hung out inside the RV in the morning.

Then we headed for a very short hike out by Kathleen Lake with Angel. It really is quite a beautiful lake, but there are lots of warnings about the wind picking up rather quickly. The hike is just a ½ mile mostly on a boardwalk but you can continue around the lake at the end of the boardwalk.

We were hoping to publish a blog post, so we had a plan A and a plan B. Plan A was to stop at the nearby Kathleen Lake Lodge and ask if we could use their WiFi, plan B was to continue another fifteen miles to the Visitor Center in Haines Junction and use theirs. Continue reading →

Day 7 on the Alaska Highway

Posted on June 10, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

We returned to the Rancheria Restaurant for breakfast. When we arrived, we heard that “we had gotten up too late and missed two moose in the pond”. Shucks. But we had a good breakfast and used their WiFi again. We had an ambitious plan on driving day 7 on the Alaska Highway, with a couple of town and museum stops along the way.

We took a quick walk over to the pond behind the restaurant after breakfast and after a few minutes, a cow moose came out on the opposite shore. She was a bit far but we got a nice long look at her as she walked around feeding by the shore. A great start to our morning.

Next, we did more doubling back in the car to take one last look at the road we saw just before reaching Rancheria as it was quite pretty.

This led us to a detour and across an old wooden bridge, but the road was impassable after that point. Continue reading →

On Beautiful Muncho Lake

Posted on June 7, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

We spent the next few days on beautiful Muncho Lake, combining relaxing and enjoying the view with some driving tours, some hiking, some kayaking, and, of course, photography.

At 7 ½ miles long, Muncho Lake is one of the largest natural lakes in the Canadian Rockies. The Terminal Range west of the lake is the northernmost section of the Rocky Mountains. These and the mountains east of the lake, the Sentinel Range, climb to 7,000 feet. The views of the lake framed by these mountains are spectacular.

Since it was raining and we did not see any wildlife during our drive to the lake, we doubled back in the car once it cleared for another opportunity to spot some wildlife. We drove back as far as some spots that are known for wildlife and had much better luck. Continue reading →

On to Muncho Lake

Posted on June 1, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

Day 3 on the Alaska Highway is a record for us, four driving days in a row. Although it is not the way we usually prefer to travel, there are a lot of miles to cover. But we plan to slow down at this point as we head on to Muncho Lake. Continue reading →

Our first Canada Stop

Posted on May 28, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

We crossed the border into Canada at Piegan / Cardston, having driven from Glacier National Park in Montana (Piegan is on the Montana side in the Blackfoot Nation, Cardston is on the Alberta side). Our first Canada stop was Cochrane, located on the Northwest of Calgary, where we were planning to meet friends.

In preparation, we ate all of our produce, made sure dog food was in original bags, got our Canadian insurance cards (our regular insurance covers Canada but they provide special cards), got our passports and Angel’s rabies certificate out and took inventory of food and liquor in case of questions.

It was a fairly uneventful crossing. The officer asked these questions:

Was there anything we had with us that we intended to leave in Canada?

Where were we going?

How long did we plan to stay?

Did we have guns, or defensive weapons such as mace or pepper spray?

Did we have liquor on board – how much?

Had we been to Canada before?

We explained that we live in the motorhome and told him we had one and a half cases of wine plus open liquor bottles but were not charged duties. This is the third year we cross the border with liquor – the first we were charged duties – but even paying duties was cheaper than buying liquor in Canada. The other years we were not charged any duties on our liquor although we were well over the small allowance.

I am going to include a few statistics on each post during our journey to Alaska, if there are any other ideas or items of particular interest, let us know.

Road Name: Highway 2 and secondary roads for our last thirty miles across Calgary

Road Type: Smooth two-lane for the first 50 miles (border to Fort McLeod), changing to four-lane divided highway all the way to Calgary.

Total Miles travelled today: 183 from Canadian border: 183

Driving Time: 3 hours, 15 minutes

Continue reading →

Carson City and Lake Tahoe

Posted on May 16, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

We headed north along Hwy 395 towards Carson City and Lake Tahoe to join our friends Nina and Paul, and Todd and Russ one last time before our routes diverged. Along the way we passed more fabulous California scenery and cute towns.

We camped at a Nevada State Park recommended by Nina, Washoe Lake State Park, which turned out to be a wonderful place – read my review here. This was Island Girl’s first time in Nevada and the northernmost point we would visit on Hwy 395 for the time being.

This stop was also important to handle some “business” items – mail, laundry, for Hector to fix some maintenance items with our pantry drawers and doors (he did), having a new water pump installed (hired that out), some car maintenance, shopping and a couple of other items.

The state park was lovely and had walking trails to the lake bed that used to be Washoe Lake, unfortunately the drought situation has dried it up. But it is still a beautiful setting.

Continue reading →

Bodie, A Ghost Town

Posted on May 12, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

While at Mono Lake, Hector, Angel and I and our friends Todd and Russ visited Bodie, a ghost town that in its heyday was a gold mining town of 10,000 residents.

Bodie State Historic Park is one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the country.

Bodie’s heyday was in the 1870’s, several years after gold was discovered there, and after mining on the other (western) slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range had declined. At the town’s peak, it had 2,000 buildings, including more than 60 saloons and dance halls.

Bodie had a red light district where miners spent their earnings. It was also known for robberies, stage holdups, and gunfights.

There is a legend of the “Bad Man of Bodie” who may or may not be a composite of several outlaws from the town.

Continue reading →

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Posted on January 19, 2015 by islandgirlwalkabout

There is tons to see and do in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the largest state park in the state of California. Last year we enjoyed some hiking and drove to Borrego Springs to see the fabulous Galleta Meadows sculptures.

This year, we’re taking some time to work on Hector’s photography website while enjoying our beautiful campsite. But we have managed a few outings. Starting with the small but pretty good quality farmers market in town on Fridays. We’re big fans of farmers markets so we sample them whenever we can. Continue reading →

Island Girl Walkabout

Hector and Brenda on a journey of discovery

Tag Archives: State Parks

Tombstone Territorial Park

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Dawson City

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Haines Junction

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Day 7 on the Alaska Highway

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On Beautiful Muncho Lake

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On to Muncho Lake

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Our first Canada Stop

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Carson City and Lake Tahoe

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Bodie, A Ghost Town

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Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

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