Date:         Thu, 12 Aug 1999 18:21:16 -0400
Reply-To:     William Dummitt <williamd@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         William Dummitt <williamd@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject:      Alaska trip report (long)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

July 10-13

My longtime sweetheart Bev and I have dreamed about driving a Westy to
Alaska for years.  This was the year we finally decided to get over all the
obstacles and do it.  We had only a month, but decided that would have to

do.  We left St. Louis on Aug. 10 about mid-day.  After 20 miles, I
discovered that I had no shoes packed, only the sandals I was wearing, so a
quick turnaround resulted.  Very typical of my trips.  We made it so
Salina, KS that night and camped near a gray Westy identical to ours with

Virginia plates.  Continued to Estes Park, CO that night and stayed at a
GREAT commercial campground called Estes Park Campground.  It is a small
place that caters to tents and vehicles like ours- no rows of big RV’s. 

Had a great stay in Rocky Mountain NP, spending the next night at Timber
Creek campground in the park.  Continued the next day through Walden, CO,

up to Thermopolis, WY.  Found another great commercial campground called
Country Campin’ on a ranch just outside of town.  The owner was a former
Westy owner and treated us royally.

July 14-19
Next day we visited the Cody museum and took a quick drive through
Yellowstone.  Didn’t stay long in Yellowstone on this trip, since we spent
a week there last year.  Spent the night in Livingston, MT and continued
the next day, avoiding the interstate, via Helena on US 287, and MT 200,
83, and 206 (a great drive) to Glacier, where we spent 2 days in the cabins
at Apgar.  Glacier is one of the first places Bev and I visited together
when we first started dating and it has always been special to us.  From
there, we crossed the Canadian border at Roosville and spent 2 days in
Kootenay, Banff, and Jasper parks, enjoying beautiful weather and scenery. 

The highlight was photographing a black bear mother and cubs in Jasper.  


July 20-23
From Jasper, we headed west on the Yellowhead highway.  Our favorite stop
in this stretch was the Gitksan village and museum in Hazelton.  We then
turned north on the Cassiar highway.  The trip up the Cassiar was
definitely one of the highlights of the trip.  The road is rough and I had
several windshield chips and a broken headlight by the time we merged with
the Alaska highway.  Logging trucks driving 70 mph on the gravel road
sending up rooster tails of rocks are a definite hazard.  But the
spectacular scenery and abundant wildlife (especially bears) on the Cassiar
was worth it.  


July 24-Aug. 1
After two days on the Cassiar, we emerged onto the Alaska highway and
headed towards the Alaska border.  About 80 miles east of Whitehorse, the

VW gremlin struck with a venegance.  My transmission, which had never made
a sound and always shifted smoothly, locked in fourth gear and would not
come out.  An Alaska family stopped and gave Bev a ride 20 miles back to
Johnson’s crossing to a phone.  While I worked on the linkage, trying to
figure out what was wrong, a ’77 Westy stopped.  The driver was named
Tommy, owner of a VW shop in Blaine, Washington.  He put on his coveralls

and crawled under and was able to tell me the bad news- internal tranny
problems, probably a fork and/or the 3-4 hub.  He recommended a repair
place in Whitehorse, only 80 miles away, practically next door by Yukon
standards.  We had thankfully upgraded to AAA Plus before the trip and got
a tow to John’s Auto Repair.  When I saw the lot full of VW vans and buses,
I knew I had come to the right place.  I had no idea such a place existed

in the Yukon.  The staff and mechanics there really treated us well.  In
the interests of time, we got a tranny from VW of Canada.  Not cheap, but

at least I could pay for it in Canadian dollars.  He ordered it on Friday

and by Tuesday morning we were back on the road.

We spent the time waiting for the tranny in a rented Blazer exploring
Skagway, AK and Kluane National Park in the Yukon, both of which we
enjoyed.  I can heartily recommend stays in the Golden North hotel in
Skagway and Kathleen Lake Lodge near Haines Junction.  We had many bear
sightings in Kluane.  On Tuesday morning we picked up our beloved camper
and forged on.  The Alaska highway was pretty rough in much of this
stretch.  Once while I was sleeping in the back seat two exhaust bolts
vibrated out and one of the manifolds separated from the rest of the
exhaust system, giving me an immediate wakeup call.  Nothing a roadside
repair couldn’t fix.  We did an overnight drive to our ultimate
destination, Denali NP where we spent three great days enjoying the
spectacular scenery and wildlife.  I’ve been to Denali many times but this
was my first trip by Westy.  While eating pizza at Lynx Creek we saw the
family that gave Bev a ride to a phone earlier in the trip and were able to
thank them for their help.   My 2DNALI Missouri license plate was much
enjoyed by the locals.  I also picked up a replacement headlight graciously
sent to me by Darrell Boehler, many thanks Darrell. We drove back east to

Haines and boarded the ferry, bound for Prince Rupert in southern BC.  We

shared the ferry with two other vanagon Westys, an orange air-cooled from

Oregon and a white 91 from Michigan.

Aug. 2-Aug. 5
We really enjoyed the ferry trip, with humpback whales and killer whales in
sight much of the time.  A short distance from Prince Rupert, we spent the
night in a spectacular provincial park called Exchamsiks River.  This park
had the most appealing campsites I have seen anywhere, with towering Sitka
spruces around each site.  We went back through Jasper and Banff again,
since that is both the shortest and most scenic route.  We encountered what
I am certain was the same bear family in almost the same spot as on the
outbound trip.  Just before going through the town of Banff on our way out
of the park, a huge mudslide crossed the road in front of us.  The road
ended up being closed for at least a day.  There was nothing we could do
but take a long detour north and east through Rocky Mountain House and Red
Deer.  Instead of spending the evening of Aug. 4 in Calgary, we spent it in
Cline River and didn’t make it to Calgary till the afternoon of the 5th. 

This cost us almost a whole day and we had to hustle a bit from this point.
 


Aug. 5-8
We went home via Havre, MT, Bismark, ND, and Omaha, watching long lines of
Harleys head to Sturgis.  Highlight of this leg was Theodore Roosevelt NP

in ND.  I really wished we had our lost day back so we could have spent
more time there.  We got home on the 8th and both agreed we could
cheerfully clean up the camper, turn around, and do it again.  It was a
great trip and even the tranny replacement didn’t spoil it.  We saw many
vanagons and type 2’s making the same or similar trips.  Most of the
vanagon owners I talked to were not aware of the list.  If any of you read
this, I hope you enjoyed your trip as much as we did.