Our stay in Valdez started with a beer then a barbeque, it was a beautifully calm evening with a clear sky - it is actually getting dark at night now though. We couldn't find a full day hike that interested us but we had a few things that might fill the day. It was supposed to be dry until the evening but showers started early. Quick stop at the USFS office to see if they had more hiking info than we had already acquired. The office is right by a small creek an...

Roads up here in Canada and Alaska don't just have numbers but names as well - Yellowhead highway, Top of the World highway, Klondike highway and so on. All of these roads have a defined start which is mile zero and from there to the end are markers every mile in Alaska and every Km in Canada. The Alaska highway is 1422 miles long, Motels, gas stations, RV parks, etc all state what milepost they are at on their ads otherwise locating them would be difficult. Fr...

North American Travel update from our overseas correspondents Donna & Tony. · On Travelling South from Anchorage, the 1st stop was planned for hiking at Girdwood, the North Face mountain trail, the Crow Creek pass trail (up to a glacier) and more. The sky was cross and weeping heavily so Girdwood was saved for the travel back north. Now heading North Girdwood has no sky, just cotton wall all the way to the ground. Someone above is crying like a ba...

We parked up in Portage valley. Back to forestry services camping with drop toilets and no showers. Strip, bowl and jug and wet wipes for the bits that Donna won't let me use the soap and sponge for. The site is of course heavily wooded with a creek nearby so yet again there could be bears. Donna insists I go to the loo with her in case a bear appears! We followed the 'Blue Ice Trail' down the valley, this links up view points for several hanging glaciers. The ...

We still had a few more places to tick off on the Kenai peninsula, the next one was Hope or more precisely 'Six mile Creek' to experience possibly the most extreme 'commercial' white water rafting in North America. Back in Clearwater BC I reached a new high going from class 3 rapids to class 4, but there was actually only one class 4 rapid. Six mile creek has five class 5 rapids!!! To raft the class 5 you have to pay to raft 3 canyons. Donna had decided to sit...