The scenery was much of the same today so I get to catch up on a few things we noticed along the way. It has been funny to watch people take photographs - almost all the tall thin men stand with their hips pushed forward, shoulders pushed way back and their necks craned forward as if to balance the whole shebang with their elbows straight out to the sides. The women tend to sink their shoulders down, making themselves shorter while taking the photo. I am serious! Obviously there are many that do this differently, but in a crowd of people, that seems to be the norm and after seeing the first ten, it gets funny!
I had forgotten to mention a really big honor for me. When we were with Penny, a parcel arrived for us, Penny and I, and in it were the cd singles that Canadian singer, Aaron Walpole who is with "Notes and Hopes" has put out with Penny's song "My Sister, My Friend" on it. This is a song that Penny's sister Trish, wrote for her and Aaron Walpole and Sara Westbrook sing it. It makes me cry to hear it - it really is beautiful and extremely touching. The cover of this cd as well as the picture on the cd is my "The Penny" painting that I did for her a good few months ago. It was really such a tremendous feeling to hold this cd with this picture while in the room with Trish and Penny! It was all I could do not to bawl like a baby right there. You can hear a part of this song on the Penniesforcancer.com site and - shameless plugging - buy it from there too if you like it! It really is an amazingly touching song dedicated to a wonderful, gentle lady - Penny.
Steven and Penny's picture are on the passenger door of Skilpad, so all along the way in my side mirror - I see them travelling with us. Nice.
The lovely part of being in an rv is that while Frank is driving, I can get up and get food, water and even go to the bathroom. Sometimes its wonderful. The trick is always to have one hand ready to grab something to hang onto, especially on the bumpier roads. Today we hit a really bad 200 miles or so. I have had to re-learn how to have sea-legs - loose knees and hip joints, just roll with the bumps. It becomes really interesting when we want something from the fridge - having an open bottle of milk in there complicates matters somewhat. I open it just a crack, peer through the narrow opening to see what is leaning in the wrong direction. If stuff is leaning too much, we pick something else to nibble on right then. I found a small bungie cord and now tie the milk and orange juice in there! The rest can fall - even broken eggs are better than a bottle of milk on the floor! Most times we catch most stuff and on bad bumpy days we have learned to open the cupboards with our feet WAY back from where all the contents will land.
Going to the bathroom to day was, um, interesting. The road was really bad most of today - really bad. Sitting on the 'loo' was a reall trick - I could have done with a few bungie cords to tie me on there! There is nothing quite like sitting in that tiny little room, hearing everything in all the cupboards going nuts, sounding like bedlam, bouncing around like a rubber ball, trying not to bounce right off the "throne". The wheels sounded like they were going to part company with us and the bakkie yanked firmly at its tow bar while Frank muttered as each wheel hit all the potholes in the road - there are a total of 10 wheels on the ground or in a pothole which makes for some interesting muttering. One particular spot on the road had us literally airborne - and that was traveling at 40mph! That one left us speechless for a while as we quietly checked that everything was still functioning and turning right.
We catch glimpses of stunning lakes and sceneries before heading downhill again and having the trees swallow the view. I have, once again, photographed almost every piece of water since home..... Frank is coming close to getting cheeky, yelling 'water, Annie, water!" at the sight of any of the wet stuff! But it gets my camera arm working every time.
All along the Alcan there are numerous places where people write their names with stones on the small banks along the side of the road. Quite a few of the stones have been spray painted different colors, making it easy to read. You can see that some have been there for a long time and there are many hearts and " I luv you"'s along the way. Stories, so many stories. We went over the Teslin River Bridge yesterday, Thursday - this is the longest span on the Alcan highway, is a metal bridge and delivers simply beautiful views of the river. It would have been lovely to get out and walk around, but it was cold! It was interesting to hear how each different type of vehicle makes a different noise crossing that bridge.
There were NO animals at all along the way, apart from "Mo Crow" - he is the ever present black crow or raven that we have been seeing all along the way. You think the animals only come out in high tourist season?
Then Whitehorse 'arrived' way sooner than we had expected........ We drove the downtown road (by mistake!), took photos and breezed right on through. Neither of us was ready to stop yet and they seemed to have enough visitors anyway. I had not used the GPS since leaving Penny, so after going through Whitehorse I took it out again, plugged it up and updated our route. Will probably need it going into Fairbanks anyway.
I wanted to get to Kluane Lake. I remembered it as being a tremdously quiet and lovely place and wanted to spend some time walking along the shores again. Not! Construction happened - ALL along the shore where one could walk....... it was very sad but we had no option but to follow the pilot car through and past where we were last time. Not long after that construction patch we started looking for a place to call it quits for the night and found a place that was as near to perfect as one could wish for. We once again made use of one of the many pull offs along the way and got really close to the edge in order to get as level as possible. Both of us were quite comfortable not putting out the slideout - that would have almost had us leaning over the water! The lake curved with the road, so when we looked out of the front, back or one side window, all we saw was water! We turned ourselves around on the bed and when we looked past our feet, it felt as if we were in the middle of the lake! It was simply glorious with a spectacular view in every window. The water swished and it felt like being in a boat. The wind blew, gently rocking the Skilpads. Our eyes popped open every 30 minutes or so, scanning the skies for the lights. Nothing at all except a brilliant moon, slowly marching across the sky and its reflection in the water. That Kluane lake is so beautiful - the color of the water is an ice blue that changes into a deeper blue and sometimes a greenish color near the edges, azure? The camera clicked away, almost automatically.
We both slept late this morning, again, which is definately something new for Frank - but good too. I know that with night sky scanning, neither of us sleep as soundly as we did before, but we really dont want to miss the aurora's! We have been told again and again that its way too early to see them, but we have already seen them so know that it could happen again. Unfortunately we have had cloudy skies for the past few days and nights, but are hoping that its clearer in Fairbanks.
I got a call from Debbie, my Seattle friend who's 19 year old daughter also has CML, who is on her way to Fairbanks this weekend. We had originally planned to meet in Seattle, but will meet up in Fairbanks instead. Anyway, she had spoken to someone in Anchorage who will be getting in touch with us and hopefully we can get something going on the fundraiser side in Anchorage. We will only be in Fairbanks for a week at most. We are waiting for another friend, Wendy, who is flying in from Atlanta to join us for 10 days or so. After that we will be going down to Anchorage, hopefully on a day cruise to the glaciers and maybe even Homer if we have time - thats the plan so far. If we have to time for Homer, I will call you Betsy! We have to be in Anchorage again around the 27th and then in Oregon on the 7th September for Steven's appointment with Dr Druker. Time seems to be simply flying past!
Today while driving, I spotted a bald eagle in the trees! I was not able to catch it with the camera, other than a white blurry spot where its head was - but it was a good healthy size. And then we came up on the Canadian exit border post but did not need to stop. A while later we stopped at the USA border inspection post, I got my passport stamped again and we were in Alaska. I know that I dont need the passport stamped and the guys there look at me rather strangely when I ask that they do - but hey - I like to have it on record that I left and came back again! We stopped at the official "Welcome to Alaska" boards and International Boundary. We have all the required and the fun photos of us both at the Alaska Board, the International Boundary and the Yukon Board. We also have numerous photos of the Skilpads and everyone riding with us at the border. It was a good feeling to be back there again and we know just how fortunate we are.
And it rained, the camera took a break as the lighting from inside the RV is not too good to take photos and the scenery was much like we had seen all day already except with no sunrays lighting the trees or lakes. There are many many lakes around here and the traffic was definately heavier than over the last two days. We drove for a while longer until we came across the Tenana River bridge when we both recognised the spot we had stayed on our first night in Alaska in 2003. We took the tiny, narrow little road down to below the bridge and are now happily parked here for the night. The river rushes, unstoppable, right past our front door carrying a tremendous amount of water with it. It looks milky brown and makes a wonderful tinkly sound and now has a few less interesting stones along its banks - they are safely inside with us :-) Its still raining lightly which has put Frank to sleep very quickly - its a very soothing noise on the roof - not Frank sleeping -The rain!. We have gone through another time zone and are now 4 hours behind Soddy Daisy, Tennessee. This has really messed with our body clocks and will take a few more days to get used to it. The "forever light" issue does not help much either!
It was such a joy getting a cell phone signal today - I immediately called everyone I could get hold of but had to stand dead still all the time as the signal was terribly weak - too weak to get me connected to the internet, sadly. If I breathed too hard while talking, we got cut off, but I did manage to talk wtih two of the U3 group - Steven and Lisa -as well as mom, Kate and Wendy before the signal died completely. A good day!
Tomorrow, Saturday, we head for Fairbanks. We are hoping that it is a bit warmer there as we both need a bicycle ride and a long walk or three.
With love to you all
Especially U3
Annie and Frank
XXXXXXXXxxxxxx
No comments:
Post a Comment