Friendly locals and the ups and downs of van life

There was a horrible noise coming from Daphne as we left Skagway and we had no idea what was causing it. The town ‘mechanic’ was just a man that worked out of his garage and charged us $25 for a five minute diagnosis. He said we should make it back to Whitehorse OK so we…

Skagway’s eventful Independence Day

Skagway goes all out for Independence Day and this year it was in celebration of the national parks 100th anniversary. A float passed us with 6 women dressed in pageant theme but each one representing an American national park, from a cowgirl Grand Canyon to a silver Glacier. The town was bustling and had a…

Border crossing birthdays and gold rush highways

It was my 27th birthday and another new country to celebrate it in. So far I’ve had my birthday on an island in Thailand, in Toronto where Craig made me a cake and dropped it face down on the floor as he presented it to me, a cancelled flight due to the volcano smoke meant…

Roadtripping past stunning lakes, deserts and Bears

It was sunny everyday while we were stuck in Whitehorse but the day we left the heavens opened and it poured with rain. God damn! We were happy to be back on the road though and detoured south on the Klondike Highway to explore a little of south eastern Alaska. The storm passed and did…

Whitehorse the Wilderness City

Normally when we get to a city we head straight to a supermarket, stock up on food and gas, email the family and hit the road. But Whitehorse was different. We were waiting for our replacement windshield which ended up taking a couple extra days to arrive so we had no choice but to explore…

Kluane National Park, Canada

‘Hello, Bonjour, welcome to Canada’….we forgot how French Canada was but were quickly reminded with the road signs. Miles changed to kilometres and head lights were to be used at all times. The buzzer to notify us that our lights are on doesn’t actually work so we’ve already had one morning waking up to a…

Disaster in no-man’s-land

We are slowly grasping how wild Alaska is after nearly two months here. A 100-200 mile drive along a main highway might not pass a single village, let alone a roadside letterbox. Every viewpoint we get to amazes us, how can one state be so wild, remote and undeveloped. There’s nothing but trees, mountains, rivers,…

A day spent watching a Brown Bear Family

Daphne the van has been making some nasty noises while driving on bumpy dirt roads and it turns out that her steering rod needs replacing. The garage in Valdez (the one and only one) didn’t have the part but ordered them in for the next day. So we were stuck in paradise for another day…

Watching glaciers carve while floating in a sea of ice

Columbia Glacier is the second largest tide water glacier in North America and in recent years has been in catastrophic retreat meaning the bay its slowly carved is now full of icebergs for around 10 miles. We’ve seen glaciers and icebergs in Alaska already, but I really wanted to see some giant icebergs, like house…

Stunning Valdez and it’s dog eating Eagles

‘Even Mother Nature has her favourites’ – Valdez sure picked an apt caption for advertising the beautiful town and we were quickly wowed by the stunning location. Valdez is set beside the ocean where some of the worlds highest coastal mountains rise over 7000ft from sea level up to the sky. The sun was shining…