I'm ba-ack!

We are in Anchorage! We have teh internets! Slower internet, but still. It's the internet!

This is our last view of Arizona -- a beautiful sunset. Nice, especially since we haven't seen a sunset since leaving Washington (not that we saw the sun set in Washington -- we didn't even see the sun in Washington!) because we are so far north it doesn't get dark. Anchorage has 24 hours of daylight in June. It gets darker, but not actually dark. Not dark enough so you couldn't drive your car without headlights. Not dark enough so you can't read your newspaper outside at midnight. And definitely not dark enough so you know it's time to go to bed...(very confusing, especially when you don't have any wall clocks and no evening news to help remind you it's actually night time...

It was a very very very very very long drive. We don't want to do it again. We don't want to do any long drive again for a very long time...

The second day we drove from San Bernadino to Stockton, CA, I think...we drove through endless miles of Joshua Trees, which are fascinating to look at, for a while. Very twisty and bent. I like the Saguaro cactus better, myself.



We stayed in Grant's Pass, Oregon, the next night...getting into the lush and green and obscenely fertile environment. It was overwhelming, it was so green and everything was blooming. Being used to the Sonoran desert, where stuff blooms, but it's just a plant here and there, not masses of flowers everywhere.

The Space Needle, as we are driving through Seattle. (We stayed in Washington, with my sister, for two days. A very necessary break from the Suburban...). Not a great photo, taken as we were zooming along I5 (well, as much as a Suburban with a trailer behind and a canoe on top can actually zoom...) but notice the lovely gray skies? Yeah. That's my least favorite thing about western Washington...I love the Puget Sound region, just not the weather there...



My boys in front of some of that crazy green stuff. It's green here in Anchorage, but not as green and lush and just so dang fertile as it is in the Puget Sound region...



Our first stop in Canada. The dogs did great on the trip. They slept when we were driving, and were happy to get walks every couple of hours. They finally got used to pooping not in their backyard, but not before I began to fear for Abe's intestines. (Neither dog ever pooped on a walk. Never ever. We walked Mojo daily for months, and the only place he ever pooped was his own backyard, and he taught that to Abe.) They were always ready to get back in the back of the Suburban and go for another ride. We had one wall of their cage behind the back seat, their beds covered pretty much the whole back, so I think it felt pretty familiar to them. Plus they were exhausted from the weeks leading up to the move -- all the uproar and visitors and unusually high levels of activity at the house wore them out.

I need to sort out and mess with my photos some more before I post the rest of the trip...I haven't been all that anxious to relive the trip through photos, yet...

Whitehorse, Yukon Territories

Our last night in Canada. Our fifth night in Canada. We drove anywhere from 283 to around 400 miles most of the trip, which is nice in that we don't have to leave at the crack of dawn and drive until we are crazed -- and sunrise the day before yesterday was at 3:45 am...but which is not as nice, because it has taken us six days to drive from Washington to Alaska.

Let's see...we saw a moose today, it went running off into the woods when we approached. We have seen half a dozen bears, dozens of sheep and deer (that's rocky mountain big horn sheep, not the fuzzy wooly kind, and mule deer, we think), bison, and a porcupine-like creature. It was by the side of the road, and we thought it was road kill until it wandered away. I also saw a bald eagle. The dogs got all excited and ferocious at the bison, of all things. They didn't notice the Rocky Mountain sheep running along side the 'burb, but the bison standing there, barely moving as it grazed, they barked like crazy at. Fortunately they were snug in the back of the 'burb at the time...

Tonight as we were walking to a Chinese restaurant we walked by a bunch of people standing in front of a building. A very cheerful drunken man saluted us and then counted us off by banana. Mark was Banana One, Thor Banana Two, me Banana Three, and Zach and Tess Bananas Four and Five. We don't know what inspired the Banana countoff, as none of us were wearing yellow at the time...

Tomorrow we leave the Yukon Territories, the Feral Canadians, and the Banana Count behind, and will be spending the night in Tok, Alaska. And Friday we will be arriving in Anchorage and Fort Richardson, where we will be able to sign for our new quarters on post Friday afternoon. We have stayed in eight or nine different hotels in the last two weeks, and I am so ready to not be in a hotel any more. I am also so ready not to be spending six or seven hours in the Suburban. I love my Suburban, but I really don't love practically living in it...

More next time I find internet access! Thanks for all your comments!

Oh, yeah, and the feral Canadians came from Zachary, who was complaining to his dad that he had "been promised sightings of bear, and moose, and ...feral Canadians."

From the wilds of Canada...

We are getting closer...today we leave British Columbia and enter the Yukon Territories. Woot.

It's still three more nights on the road before the last push into Anchorage.

We have had adventures with high winds and the canoe -- always fun to think your canoe is going to be ripped from the roof of your SUV and crash into the windshield of the car behind you. Which is something I bet doesn't happen every day on the SoCal freeway system...(The canoe is still firmly attached to the roof of the Suburban, thank goodness.)

We saw a black bear along the road yesterday, some deer, a couple feral Canadians. Tess saw a moose, but the rest of us missed it.

Must go, we have 300-some miles to travel today.

Thanks for all the messages!