2015 No. American Tour - Event Date: 20 Mar 2015 - 21 May 2015

Sounds like a great trip!!!

I thought I would add a few more details....(tell me when to stop). 

We crossed the border into the Yukon Territory with plans to drive the Cassiar Hwy south towards Washington state, but the snow was heavy and the road not well maintained, and more snow in the forecast.  There are long stretches of road between towns and little traffic, so we changed our minds and went back to the Alaska-Canada Hwy and headed for Dawson Creek, BC, then south to Prince George.  A highlight was a stop over at Chenwyth, BC, a small town that hosts an annual wood carving competition and then displays the winning entries about town.  There are 146 of them, so far and it takes all day to see them all.  Incredible!

We crossed the border again north of Spokane, WA and cut over into Idaho at the town of Moscow, a college town with a nice atmosphere and a great Food Co-op.  Going south from there through the Salmon River valley is a beautiful drive.  At Twin Falls, ID we met several base jumpers who were leaping off the Snake River bridge 519 ft. above the water and parachuting to the bottom.  Crazy people having fun.  From there we took a two lane highway through the Great Basin to Ely, NV and west to Beaver, UT.  At breakfast, we changed plans and decided to go through Bryce Canyon, Escalante Stairs, Capitol Reefs and so on across the state to Hanksville, UT.  On to Canyon De Chelly in Arizona where we stopped for a couple of days to tour the canyon and Navajo reservation.  We drove across New Mexico diagonally to Pecos, TX, then meandered to San Antonio through the Hill Country.  After a few days there, we went to Houston to visit friends.  Then to NW Arkansas to the Ozarks.  We decided to cross the Mississippi at Helena, AR and go looking for a good blues bar.  At one point, we were lost and heading west, instead of east.  We found a road going east and took it.  It was flat, straight, little traffic and had a 60 mph speed limit.  I told my wife "We may be lost, but we're making good time."  That became the slogan for the rest of our journey.

Clarksdale, MS is home to Morgan Freeman's blues club Ground Zero.  Good barbecue there, too. Then on to Tupelo to visit the birthplace of Elvis Presley.  Oxford was beautiful, but the streets were too narrow for towing a camper.  We cut across northern Alabama, looking for an old family cemetery from the early 1900's, but got rained out.  We checked into a remote campground at a lake and were told that if a tornado came to go to the bath house because it was made of stone, then everyone else left!  We were the only ones there that night.  Even the campground host left.  Lots of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, but no tornadoes that we were aware of.

Northern Georgia is beautiful.  We camped a few days near the head of the Appalachian Trail and met several hikers.  The architecture in Helen, GA is right out of Bavaria, Germany and they were hosting a Corvair Car Club rally.  I thought we had entered another dimension as we drove into town with all the tudor style buildings and everyone driving 1960's model Corvairs.

We entered South Carolina at the western-most edge and followed the Savannah River to Aiken, SC, then across to Charleston.  We met several other campers at James Island campground that were attended the Navy reunion with us.  After a week there, we went to Bishopsville, SC to see the amazing topiary of Pearl Fryar and got to meet him.  We saw a documentary about his work on PBS earlier and made it a destination for this trip.  It was well worth the time. 

Going north took us through North Carolina where we got on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Boone, NC.  The parkway is beautiful, but narrow pavement that made it tedious for the driver while towing. It has a 45 mph speed limit and avoids all the towns, much like driving the Interstate highways, except in slow motion.  After 200 miles of it into Virginia, we got off and headed for West Virginia and drove the Allegheny Mts.  I liked it much better.  We camped in the northern part of the state at Blackwater Falls, and later headed north through the western edge of Maryland across Amish farm lands into Pennsylvania. 

Whew!  I'll add more later, if anyone is interested.  I need a break.

Wow. Sounds like you had a great time and wonderful adventure. So, last we heard above, you traveled north from Blackwater Falls past Deep Creek, Md and into PA. Sounds like you may have gone east from there? Or north?

I want to make a correction from the last post.  The family cemetery I wanted to see is from the early 1800s', not 1900's.  They were among the early settlers in that part of the Old Southwest. 

Also, I failed to mention the campground at Monte Sano, at Huntsville, AL.  It is on top of a large hill and commands an awesome view of the city below.  Great place to camp for a few days while exploring the NASA center, or restored aircraft at the Redstone Arsenal.

We traveled US 40 going west to Pittsburgh, PA to pick up a small, antique motorcycle to carry back to Alaska, as a favor for our house sitter.  It fit nicely in the back of the truck.  The weather turned hot and we were driving into bad weather across Ohio into Indiana.  The R-Pod tilted to one side from the wind, but tracked OK.  Even the tractor-trailers were tilted a little.  We camped at Brown County State Park, near Nashville, Indiana and just about had this huge campground to ourselves.  While there, we spent a day at Columbus, IN touring modern architecture.  There are 61 buildings in that town designed by renown architects of the 20th century and is a great example of a place where the residents made a decision to create an identity for their city. 

We spent a week visiting Hoosier friends and replacing the brake pads on the truck.  They had 126,000 miles on them and needed to be replaced.  Towing the camper pushed them to the limit.  After that we decided to head for home like a horse for the barn.  We camped one night in Illinois at a state park suffering from neglect.  It wasn't as much in disrepair as it was simply filthy.  The caretakers weren't doing their jobs.  The strong head winds stayed with us across Iowa and Minnesota, making the driving difficult and burning up lots of diesel fuel.  We camped at Turtle Creek State Park in North Dakota on the last night in the Lower 48.  We crossed the border the next day at Portal, ND into Saskatchewan.

The farms in southern Saskatchewan are enormous.  It was like driving across a sea with few things disturbing from the landscape.  They must produce an enormous quantity of grain each year. We stopped for a break at Fort Battleford, near the eastern border before entering Alberta, where we were treated to a personal tour of the settlement and given a 2-hour history of the settlers in that part of the continent during the western expansion in the mid-1800's. 

The Great Plains are interesting, up to a point, but by the time we got to British Columbia we were happy to be back in the mountains again.  Dawson Creek, BC is the beginning of the Al-Can Hwy -Mile 0- and was where we began retracing our path from the beginning of this trip, but without the snow this time.  The part of the highway from Fort Nelson, BC to Watson Lake, Yukon is a very scenic drive over the Canadian Rockies.  A wild land fire came very near the roadway and we managed to get through without a delay, or too much smoke.  Liard Hot Springs, BC was 60 miles from the fire, where we camped for the night and enjoyed a long soak in the hot water, visiting with fellow travelers from all over.  It is a favorite place to stop over for travelers on the Al-Can.  Watson Lake is home of the Signpost Forest.  A soldier working on the construction of the road in 1942 nailed a sign from his home town on a post and it started something.  There are thousands of signs posted there now from all over the world.  Be sure to bring one with you if you ever go there.

There is considerable road repairs being made in the Yukon, especially west of Whitehorse.  We headed that way on a Sunday when the road crews were off work.  The following day was Memorial Day holiday in the US and we knew Alaska road workers would be off work that day, too, so we made a push to get home.  I drove 850 miles on Sunday from Liard Hot Springs, BC to Tok, Alaska, and 525 miles the following day to home on the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage.  It was made difficult by the terrible road conditions.  The spring breakup heaved and tore up the pavement for several hundred miles.  The best part was where all asphalt had been removed and the highway reverted back to a gravel road.  It was dusty, but smooth.

Another wild land fire burned all the way to the highway just west of the Alaskan border, but was contained enough to allow cars to pass, just before we got there.  The firefighters sprayed our rig with water as we drove past.

Besides being the navigator, my wife counted wildlife.  She lost count of the bison we saw from the road, counted many Dall sheep, a grey wolf, coyotes, swans, porcupines, and 20 black bears.  The snow on the Wrangell Mts. west of Whitehorse is very thin and the streams are drying up.  Kluane Lake is so low that several boat launch ramps are out of the water and closed.  It's disturbing to see it like that.  The lake is 75 miles long and hundreds of feet deep at the deepest part. 

My reunion was for with the former crews of the USS Batfish SSN681, a nuclear fast attack submarine.  I was on the commissioning crew in 1971 and served on it until I was discharged in 1974.  This was our first reunion in all these years.  We toured the USS Yorktown at Patriot's Point while in Charleston, SC.  It was fun to see some of the guys I knew way back when.

The trip was a good one and gave us lots of good memories, but it sure feels good to be sleeping in our own bed again.  The R-Pod performed well and took all the abuse given it by bad roads and my driving. 

The USS Batfish was built by Electric Boat in Groton, CT and homeported in Charleston, SC.