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…

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…

Home is where you park it | Alaska

There’s nothing we love more than finding the perfect place to wild camp for the night and Alaska sure is treating us to some phenomenal locations. After leaving Delta Junction the Richardson Highway was a wonderful drive with forest, wildflowers and meadows. The sun was shining and we saw more wildlife along the highway than…

Dog sledding, frozen rivers and meeting Santa in North Pole

As we left the Denali area and headed north we felt like our chances of seeing a bear outside the park were impossible. We’d seen how camouflaged they were in the wilderness and we’d also seen them up close and personal walking beside our bus. They just don’t act like that outside the park where…

Into The Wild | Alaska

A lot of people have read or watched Into The Wild and it seems they either love Chris McCandless’ adventurous spirit or think he was utterly stupid for going into the Alaskan Wilderness totally unprepared. To sum it up Chris left home in Virginia, gave his $25,000 college grant to charity and set off to…

Grizzly bears and scary rock slides

It was our final full day in Denali National Park so we decided to make the most of the buses and try and go up and down the park road twice in a day, about 10 hours travel time to maximise our chances of wildlife viewings. We waited for the bus but the first two…