Dunfey Alaska Journey

We arrived in the Cottonwood Campground on 5/16/2009. It was located 5 miles into the park. We toured the campground to select our site for the next 3 days. We found Bison seeming to occupy one site.

Cottonwood Campground

The campground was still in winter season. Only half of campground was open and not all facilities were fully available. The winter rates were half price. Fred got the National Parks Senior Pass for $10 which gets us lifetime free admissions to all National Parks and half price on camping.

We met several locals who love to come to the park for the peaceful setting and to see the Bison, wild horses, prairie dogs, white tail deer, elk and big horn sheep that populate the park. We were glad to be here before the summer season got going. We had the scenic drives to ourselves and met no one while hiking the trails.

The town of Medora is close to the entrance to the park. The main Park Visitor Center is here as well as several museums to visit. During the summer, many shops and arcades keep the tourists busy. A daily musical extravaganza is played out in an outdoor amphitheater on a bluff above the town.

There is a 34 miles scenic loop drive though the park. Our pictures do not capture the unique beauty of this land. We went on this scenic drive the first day here. When we went on subsequent hikes in park, we took the scenic tour road the other direction. It gives a different perspective the other way around.

Scenic Drives and Hikes

We wanted to take a kayak trip on the little Missouri River which flows through the park to see the land from the river. We decided to put in at Medora and paddle/ride the river flow down to the campground about 5 miles a way. Then, Fred was going to hitch a ride back to get the car. Our trip down the river took about an hour. A local by the name of Moby Dick from Dickson, ND met us when we got to the campground and volunteered to drive Fred to get the car.

Kayaking on Little Missouri River

We found the local people we met all over North Dakota to be very warm, friendly and accommodating. We stayed our 4thnight here in the Red Trail Campground, a private place withfull services – including great showers. With the high winds and cold weather here in winter, these people have to be very hardy indeed. While in Medora, the trains rumbling through town were a slight disturbance when you were trying to get to sleep. We recommend staying in the park but also felt that getting a camping spot in season may be a problem since there are no reservations in the park.

We are now off to Glacier National Park in Montanna with a few stops along the way.

It is Saturday May 16, 2009 at 8 am. We are now sitting in Jamestown, North Dakota, which is about halfway between Fargo and Bismark.

The last several days have been spent in transit.

On Wednesday morning as we were leaving our Ottawa campground, we went to the camp dump station to unload our grey water. Milly noticed we hadn’t put down our TV Antenna. We raised half the trailer so Fred could lower the antenna. In the process, we raised the trailer tongue onto its “stand”. We started to drive off without lowering the trailer off the tongue “stand”. The crunch, crunch told us we were dragging the “stand”.

We drove to Sault Ste Marie, Ontario where we pulled into a Walmart at about 7 pm for our first overnight boondoggle . There were 4 other campers packed there. We noticed a municipal sign “ No RV Overnight Parking, Etc”. We dutifully went into to Customer Service desk to seek permission to park. We were told by the clerks “No problems” but they did mention something about laws. We went back and knocked on a couple of RV’s and woke up the “residents”. It seems that none of them had sought permission and they hadn’t seen the signs. By this time, Fred had walked the parking lot and had seen at least one other similar “No Overnight – municipal law, etc.” sign. One of other campers was all set to use bolt cutters to remove the sign. Instead, we moved our camper into middle of other campers away from sign. “There is safety in a group”, we thought as we had supper and turn in for an uneventful nights sleep.

We decided to travel to another Walmart superstore in Ashland, Wisconsin near Apostles Islands about an hour from Duluth, Minnesota.

When we crossed the border, we experienced a few questions from the agents. After we were cleared to enter the USA, there were tolls to be paid for the bridge. We got to “Pass Holders” lane booth by mistake. Attendant in next booth told us we had to back up. Milly was driving. She had never backed up with camper in tow. Sure enough as people behind us backed away, we started to go off course. Fred jumped out and took over and actually was able to backup the rig and get over to the correct booth.

We were the first camper to arrive at the Walmart, how lonely it felt. There were many, many “No Overnight Camping signs. Having experienced this the prior night, Milly checked with the store attendants, “People park overnight all the time and no one has had problems” was the response. We decided to park in back near truck unloading docks, out of sight. Shortly thereafter, an RV with Australians pulled in. All of us proceeded to shop in the Walmart. We swapped some travel stories before cooking supper of freshly purchased steaks on our new portable grill.

We discovered on internet that all attractions on Apostles Island were not open as yet. We headed for Fargo and picked a campground to make reservations at in Jamestown, North Dakota about 1.5 hours west of Fargo. We experienced heavy winds on our journey to Jamestown as well as some heavy rain at times. The gas mileage was horrendously bad dropping to 9.5 miles per gallon from the 12-14 range we were getting.

When we arrived here in Jamestown, we discovered that one of the weight distribution arms on hitch was almost off due to now missing ridge on hitch that holds the bar in place. We need to replace hitch holder since it’s all one piece of steel. We have locations to go to this morning to see about repairs. We also discovered that water had infiltrated the lower cabinet area above right wheel well. We packed contents into water protective “baggies” and put the problem on our issues list.
  I guess we are still in the break in phase as little mishaps are still part of our days, oh the joys of travel!

We are hopefully headed to Theodore Roosevelt Park for several days of relaxed camping, trouble free we hope. We’ll probably be out of touch.

Milly and I left Eastman at 9:30 am on Monday May 11, 2009. The journey to Ottawa area was uneventful. We went north of Burlington VT through New York to Cornwall, Ontario and on to Ottawa. The mountain views across northern Lake Champlain were magnificent. We spent two nights at Ottawa Municipal Campground located in a forest about 10 miles west of downtown Ottawa.

On Tuesday May 12th, we spent the day in Ottawa. After briefly visiting the Canadian Parliament area, we headed to Dow Lake and Commisioners Park to attend the Tulip Festival. We saw many, many Tulips in all different colors and hues.

We saw no boats on the canal when we drove the length of it down to Dow Lake from the Parliment area. We knew the locks were closed and thought that maybe the canal was closed to all but the excursion boats. All the signs indicated that you couldn’t access to launch a kayak. We persisted and asked an attendant at the Dow Lake Pavillion. He told us we could put our kayaks in on the boat ramp that was locked.

We had an outstanding kayak paddle on the Rideau Canal in downtown Ottawa. It was strange but very neat to be paddling while so many others were biking, rollerblading or walking almost right beside us. We essestially had the canal itself to ourselves. We saw two canoes and one excusion boat in our 2 hour paddle on the canal.

Unfortunately, we have discovered the campgrounds in North Bay, Ontario area at which we planned on staying tonight are not open until after May 15th. This means that we may experience our first Walmart RV overnight. Our plan for next several days is to stop on way to hike and kayak any “attractions” we pass and then stop later in day at a Walmart. We have found that there are many WIFI locatioons in moderate size towns ahead.

It is hard to believe that we are actually leaving in a week!! Our research, reading, planning and kibitzing with friends have resulted in an overall game plan for the trip. Now is the time to relax. The heavy lifting is over. Our Rig is ready and our bags are almost packed. We promise to take this trip one day at a time, enjoy each moment and remember that our plan was made to be changed as often as we want.  

Overall trip plan currently has us visiting these locales:

1. Ottawa Tullip Festival and Theodre Roosevelt National Park
2. Glacier National Park
3. Banff/Jasper/Prince Rupert
4. Alaska Inside Passage – Ketchikan, Wrangel, Petersburg, Sitka, Juneau, Haines,  Skagway, Hyder
5. Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Valdez, AK
6. Kenai Peninsula – Kenai Fjords
7. Anchorage Denali National Park and Fairbanks-Interior, AK
8. Dawson City ,WhiteHorse , Yukon and Telegraph Creek, BC
9. Vancouver, Victoria BC and San Francisco, CA