Wendover, Nevada

The Bonneville Salt Flats is one of the few places where you can see the curvature of the Earth. They're setting up on six foot poles six miles away for the motorcycle runs tomorrow and they are below the horizon...they expect to challenge 400 MPH in the morning....

It's good to see my brother once again.....he deals Texas Hold 'Em at the Nugget starting at 2AM...I ask him to teach me but the game doesn't seem to do much for me....My camera roll still has a few plant pictures from the morning walks in Red Deer, Alberta.

The B-29s of  the 509th composite bomb group trained here prior to the Hiroshima mission. The barracks have seen better days.

More Red Deer pictures.

This is the site of the beginning of the Atomic Age.

Red Deer morning walk....

Phred in Idaho Falls, Idaho....I saw the falls at dawn, but forgot my camera...so use your imagination...

On the road to Wendover...

Wendover at dawn....

The Enola Gay...

Mr. & Mrs. Phred at the salt flats...

Wendover at dawn...We have breakfast in the Red Garter....

Great Falls, Montana

Walking in the Morning

We're back in Great Falls. The weather is very windy and hot. I've been doing the two hours walks at dawn every morning.  Lewis and Clarke came through here over 200 years ago on one of humanities most amazing explorations...what would they think of the place now?  We're on the banks of the Missouri River....Lewis and Clarke spent a month portaging around 18 miles of falls and rapids while dealing with huge grizzly bears and rattlesnakes...Many members of the expedition were ill, including Sacagawea who had been suffering for more than a week from an unknown sickness. Clark, Charbonneau, Sacagawea and her baby nearly drowned in a violent storm of torrential rain and huge hailstones.

Friday I walked to downtown Dawson Creek. I think that's about 800 miles north. I saw the Greyhound bus pull in before dawn. It was pulling a big trailer with things people were shipping.. There were a couple of restaurants open for breakfast. Later we drove 400 miles to Red Deer, Alberta.

Saturday we found the Lion's campground on the Red Deer River in Red Deer. I could live there. They have 150 kilometers of parks and walking trails. We bought eight books at the public library which is located in the heart of downtown in a lovely park/flower garden....forgot my camera...

Red Deer was having a Latin Festival on Saturday. We watched the dancing and listened to the music for a couple of hours...they had food from Columbia and Salvador...no camera...

Saturday at dawn I walked my six miles on the banks of the Red Deer. Sunday I went downtown. I met a very disreputable looking character who asked me if I was looking for anything...It was Sunday at 6AM....I think he wanted to give me directions, but I knew where I was....then a kid on a skateboard asked me if I knew where the library was and I gave him explicit directions....

Today I walked around Great Falls....I ended up in a no trespassing area on the railroad tracks and had to climb over a high barbed wire fence to get out...it was that or walk over a long railroad bridge wondering if a train would be coming....

No walking tomorrow...we found a tennis court...Mrs. Phred and I will play tennis and test her broken foot....I smell victory...it's the smell of napalm in the morning....love it...

 

I bought some size 34 Levi 514s today...The 38s and 40s will go to the homeless shelter back in Sarasota....

The pictures in this blog are not related to the text in any way.....except that they are both mine...

Mile 0: Alcan Highway

Dawson Creek, British Columbia

We've been driving three days down the Alcan Highway and we are about 1,000 miles south from our campground in Carmacks.

The Alcan didn't exist before Pearl Harbor, but on December 7, 1941, construction priorities were changed. Within 60 days the construction of a highway to Alaska was approved and heavy construction equipment was moved by priority train to Dawson Creek.

Watson Lake was an important stop on the Alcan. Here is a picture I took on my walk this morning of the signpost forest that has become a tradition for travellers.

The long highway was completed by September, 1942. The route was dictated by the airfields along the Northwest Delivery Route, which were used to deliver 8,000 lend-lease aircraft to the Soviet Union. The road became impassible again in the summer of 1943. The removal of protective vegetation turned 100 miles of the road to muck after the permafrost melted.


The primary aircraft delivered to the Soviet Union was the P-39 Airacobra. Russian pilots took delivery in Fairbanks and flew on to Nome and Siberia. The mid-engine design was very unusual. The P-39 tended toward flat spins unless the nose was properly loaded with ammunition. It also lacked a turbocharger limiting its effective altitude to about 17,000 feet. The engine drive shaft ran between the pilots feet to the propeller. A 37 MM synchronized nose cannon made this a very effective ground support aircraft.

Aleksandr Pokryshkin flew the P-39 from late 1942 until the end of the war. His unofficial score in the Airacobra stands at nearly 60 Luftwaffe aircraft. His wingman, Grigori Rechkalov, scored 57 victories with the P-39. These are the highest score ever claimed by any pilot with a US-made aircraft. The Russian nickname for the Airacobra was Kobrusha, "dear little cobra".


“Frost heaves” are still common on the highway where sections are uplifted in winter. Axles break and windshields and headlights are shattered by flying gravel. We got a three windshield holes from flying gravel over the last weeks...also our awning frame warped and won't extend.

We stop at Watson Lake, sleep in a wild place on the side of the road at Kilometer 683 and end up today at mile zero in Dawson creek....it's still a long way to the Montana border...I want to stop in the Edmonton mall and buy new designer jeans that fit my body which is now 43 pounds lighter than it was in February...

We see some bear...they are more exciting when we meet them on foot in the woods...parts of the Alcan are very beautiful...mountains, lakes. rivers, mists, rainbows...we also see lots of bison and caribou....

Cooking hash and eggs on the side of the road...

Dawson City, Yukon

 On the Yukon River

 Up on the dome road you get a good view of Dawson City and the confluence of the silty Yukon and clear Klondike rivers.

The Yukon River flows about 2,000 miles from down south near Skagway to Dawson, across Alaska and then it empties into the Bering Sea on Alaska's west coast. If you started from Dawson when the ice breaks up in May, you could float the whole thing just before it freezes again in October...

In the winter they stop running the free ferry and drive heavy trucks over the river to the road to Chicken, Alaska.

The native people caught King Salmon here every summer until the 1898 Gold Rush when 50,000 stampeders arrived to look for gold. You can see where the Klondike river bed was dredged up into vast fields of rock in the search for gold....the salmon runs have been badly depleted by that and by commercial fishing downstream...

In the evening we go back to see Diamond Tooth Gertie and her dancing girls. Later we gamble, drink Diet Coke and I pay the girls a dollar a dance from midnight to breakfast....we smell whiskey and fried moose burgers in the air....

The natives have intermarried with the miners. This is a picture of Georgette Macleod in a birch bark canoe on the Yukon...

We take a tour of the Yukon River with Tommy, our native guide.

Tommy caught over 1,000 chum salmon last year to feed his 52 sled dogs though the winter...

Tommy lives in this cabin about five miles downriver from Dawson. In the winter he travels overland 25 miles to Dawson for supplies by dogsled or snowmobile....

 I am a lumberjack and I'm ok...

Lot's of fixer-uppers are available in Dawson...

Mrs Phred above Dawson...

This is Tommy's fish wheel...

Tommy shows us one of the King salmon in his fish wheel trap....he built the fish wheel himself.

Tommy keeps his winter food in this outdoor cooler.

Tommy's guesthouse cabin...

Tommy has a sense of humor...

The buildings in Dawson that were built on the ground suffer from melting permafrost...the heated buildings melt the permafrost unevenly...most of the newer buildings are constructed up off the ground...

The Road to Chicken

Chicken, Alaska

The road to Chicken and then up to Dawson City in the Yukon is 167 miles of washboard gravel road. It's called the Top of the World Highway. The first problem is a flat tire on the Honda. I find the wood screw and patch the hole

We overnight in Chicken and burn all our collected firewood before crossing the border back into Canada. When we try to put out the main slide in Dawson City, it's broken again so we go to the hardware store and buy a handful of bolts to replace the one in the slide gearbox that's sheared off.

Mama killed a chicken,

Thought it was a duck.

Put it on the table

with the legs sticking up

- John Lee Hooker

We had just washed the RV and Honda back in Ninilchik about 600 miles back.

The views have been good.

Two things you never want to do after you hit 50 are sing Karaoke in a bar after midnight and start a collection of ceramic chickens...

 I take a six mile walk along the dirt road at 6 AM in Chicken and see a moose and several reindeer. When I weigh in upon return, I'm gratified to tip the scales at 199  which is down 41 pounds from February....when your little brother calls from Nevada to tell you that you look pregnant in your blog pictures it might be time to cut back on the calories

Burning up the firewood in Chicken

 Leftover stage from the last Chickenstock rock festival.

Trip Adviser says that this is the best place to eat in Chicken...

This moose finally wandered off to stand in the forest. I met her on my morning walk near Chicken.

The reindeer were more shy than the moose.

 167 miles of this from Tok to Chicken to Dawson City....

Passing truck....

 The Yukon....Remember Sgt. Preston of the RCMP? No? Not old enough? Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!