Not having great internet so will see this this post. Today we took Beau and Bailey to Shenandoah National Park. They love all the attention they received everywhere they went. We also visited the New Market Civil War battle grounds. The views from the park should have been spectacular but there was so much smog coming out of the Northern Virginia DC area so really no view at all. Some of my favorites photos from today.

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We have had a chance to take Beau and Bailey into the NP this week. We leave on Sunday to head to Ct via the Shenandoah valley. The following pictures are some of the best I took. I am only using my iPhone 11 max pro camera for this trip.

We didn’t get out for the summer of 2020 because of the Pandemic and I ran for public office. I didn’t win so we are back on the road once again. This time we are heading to Connecticut to visit our grand babies and very excited about it!. But along the way we have a few stops. This week we are in Pigeon Forge. We too Beau and Bailey to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park yesterday and they were the main attaching at the visitor’s center. They love riding in the Jeep.

Hi Blogosphere friends!  I am finally home after traveling about 12,000 miles.  We got home just in time to prepare for Hurricane Dorian.  Luckily it past us by and stayed on the East coast of Florida.  We are, however, in hurricane season so who knows what the next couple of months will bring.

Wanted to talk a little bit about life on the road and traveling to Alaska.  First of all, you really need to be compatible with the person or people you are traveling with because this trip is not for the faint of heart (ours lasted 90 days).  It was just my husband and me and our two dogs(they were just the best travelers!), but we met many along the way that were in caravans or traveling with friends.  I think it safer to have other traveling companions in case of break downs and make no mistake at one time or another something will happen to your rig!  We were lucky in that the only real break down happened just outside Cheyenne and was able to find help right away. If you break down on the Al-Can you can be stranded miles away from the nearest help and the road isn’t patrolled regularly by law enforcement just too much road to cover and too little civilization.   Your rig will take a beating as the road is a huge mess!!! Even the so-called paved road is full of potholes and frost heaves and your average speed is about 40MPH so very slow going many of the roads are gravel and sometimes they were better than the paved.  Alaska really wasn’t much better.  The really wonderful thing about the trip was that the other fellow travelers are a lot of fun to get to know as we come from all over the world with a common bond of adventure and to complain about our rigs:-).  The isolation and the scenery were so spectacular that I had a hard time returning the lower 48 and all the big cities and traffic.

Although this is probably my last post on the Alaska trip I will keep the blog open so you can share and will from time to time add more pictures as I sort through the thousand or so I took along the way. If you like the page please “like it” then you will get notification of new posts.

Here in SW Florida, our season starts in November so it’s pretty crazy around the Metzler’s household, but I hope to post some pictures of Florida in the future as well as my Ikebana designs.

So enjoy the pictures!

This is what I saw on my return.  Up north there really were no sunsets as the sun stayed up til midnight.

My babies are just hanging out! We were just a couple of days from home.St Louis hated going through this city it is a mess!

Me and my bridges!

On our trip, we crossed the boarder six times. This was the last time.The Canadian Rockies. Canada did not get the memo that it was summer I was frozen.Fun SignThe correct amount of traffic on a bridge…take that St Louis!The road less traveled.The Yukon River

Dave driving our rig onto the ferry.  I drove the jeep.  Very tight spaces.

Flyfishing just outside of Haines AK

Not my best picture but liked that he was just hanging out with us.

You can tell by the sign how smokey it was many wildfires in the Yukon and Alaska

I will end here as I am having some issues loading more pictures.  So I guess there will be more blogging from our trip!

We have put on a few miles since my last blog and we have gone over 9000 miles so far on the trip! We are just outside of Winnipeg tonight and by tomorrow night we will be back in the States! I probably will not update again while we are on the road unless we find something really interesting or fun. I am running out of space on my IPad for picture storage and I have very few apps left to delete :-o. I should be able to hook back up to the cloud when I get better internet in the states and then I can offload my pictures and free up space.

We decided to go through Jasper and Banff National Parks because Dave still didn’t have a good bear picture…he still doesn’t but I will get to that later. Our first night after leaving Dawson Creek was at a very nice provincial park in the little town of Grande Cache Alberta. It is always hit and miss if we are going to fit into a provincial park with our size rig, but this was a nice pull through with nightly bears which of course we didn’t see.

Alberta has loads of money from oil, natural gas, coal and minerals and yet some of the worst roads. But I digress onto our trip.

From Grande Cache we worked our way into Jasper National Park and it is gorgeous and worth the crappy roads. We got many pictures of Mountain Sheep and Mountain Goats and beautiful scenery. We stayed the night in the parking lot of the Colombia Icefield where we were charge $15.70 for no facilities and we slanted toward the road, but to wake up to the icefield was priceless and very cold with no heat. I saw a chipmunk when I took the dogs out for their nightly stroll so was excited about that. The next day we headed for Lake Louise, Banff and then Calgary, but ended going onto Swift Current Saskatchewan a very long day. The next day we were in Regina and now Winnipeg.

Back to Dave’s bear….well we think we saw a grizzly’s butt! Seeing the mountains help Dave get over the loss of a bear picture kind of 😦

Enough typing now for some pictures.

The baby and his mommy:-)

Hope you have been enjoying the blog as much as I have had writing it and of course taking the pictures!

Well we are back where we started our journey on the Alaska-Canada Highway. I need to bring you up to date as we have had limited cell and wifi service until now. We stayed an extra day in Whitehorse so we could play their municipal golf course. It was very well maintained. It was only a 9 hole but because of all the hills and water quite challenging. My chipping lessons really paid off on this course! After Whitehorse we landed in a little spot in the road called Toad River. A nice little campground with a beaver dam and Trumpeter swans. We really hadn’t seen very many animals until we left Toad River and then the mother load until Fort Nelson. On a sad note for my American friends you might not have been following, but I am sure my Canadian were. A young couple ( She was from North Carolina & he was from Australia )was murdered along with a B.C. Professor on the Al-Can highway near Muncho Lake. This was just after we passed through on our way to Alaska. There is a small memorial along side the road where the couple was murdered. A vivid and horrible reminder that life is short and precious. The murderers were found dead from suicide in Manitoba. So I know that the people of Canada and especially the community where the boys were found are resting easier now.

Now to some pictures.

Same par 3 from the white tees. From the red you actually had to play hook to get the ball on the green

Interesting

Porcupine

I think a male Tanager?

He didn’t seem to care that B&B were barking at him and the rest of the herd.

Can you see his horn buds?

This little guy was hiding:-)

All I ever get are butt shots..so this is the best butt shot! Of Mountain Sheep

Like how the mountains and clouds reflect in the water.

Beaver!

Fox

Believe it or not our 1st deer on the Al-Can.

You looking at me?

Sunset

Moonrise

Yesterday we took the ferry from Haines AK to Skagway AK hoping to stay overnight. Unfortunately neither of the two RV parks could accommodate our rig so we had to move onto Whitehorse. So we have decided that our next Alaskan adventure will be a cruise so we can visit all the places we missed this time. The ferry trip took about an hour, but it took about an hour to load and about 30 minutes to unload. B&B had to stay in the RV during the crossing they did fine even though it was one of our hottest days up here. The road from Skagway to Whitehorse had some of the most magnificent scenery so far on our trip and that is saying something. My pictures do not do it justice. I was playing around with my camera and forgot to re-set the settings so some of the following pictures look a little like paint by number, but I assure you they are the real thing. We leave on Saturday to head home via the Steward/Cassier highway. Not sure when I will be able to blog again as we haven’t been on this highway before my guess however is there will be very little if any cell service until we reach around Banff or Jasper. As much as I have complained about the cold up here I don’t think I am ready for the heat I am hearing about in the lower 48!

Paint by number Beau

The above and the next few are on the transit.

The road from Haines Junction YT to Haines Alaska has been the best quality road we have had in a loooong time! The mountains along the road are very much like the eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas with a few glaciers thrown in for good measure. The skys are still very hazy not sure if it is still from the fires or if is smoggy. We came to see the Eagles and we have seen enough although we have not seen them swarming. Dave fished one day but to no avail evidently this is the time for Sockeye Salmon to run but the commercial fishermen up here use drag nets so pretty much block them from swimming upstream , but he still had fun. This is a a quaint town kind of lost in the 60’s. A lot of self healing ,yoga and meditation along with some marijuana brownies throw in:-). It could really use a good cafe for lunch.

Tomorrow we head to Skagway by ferry and then back to Whitehorse YT and places east.

Now to my pictures:

The first set is just of the different mountains and roads we covered.

So we are now headed home with a slight detour to Haines Alaska tomorrow for a couple of days. We have just completed the worst part of the trip as the road is very bad and it takes about 8 hours to go just under 300 miles. At least the fires have died down and we could see some of the mountains although it was still hazy. So today I will let the pictures tell our journey.

The first picture was actually taken yesterday. This is Bailey my little stubborn, independent my way or the Highway dog. We have a routine in which we undo Bailey’s leash and he jumps into the RV and he doesn’t like any help. Yesterday after a rest stop Dave didn’t think Bailey could hop up so he went to pick him up and he ran off. I had Beau on his leash so this is the point and click picture I got. Luckily the road we were on had very little traffic so all was well.

It looks like the snow is blowing off the mountain, but they are clouds.