Traveling North to the Yukon and Alaska in the Summer of 2009 was truly a trip of a lifetime. We departed home in northern Arkansas on June 25, 2009, returning September 13, 2009, 9,813 miles and 81 days later.
There were too many highlights to adequately summarize here, but Denali National Park and Mount McKinley were definitely our favorites. The bus ride on Denali’s Interior Road was the best part of the trip. Fish Creek at Hyder was a distant second. Obviously, wildlife viewing was one of our favorite activities. We also enjoyed the Kenai Peninsula. Whitehorse and Valdez were among our favorite cities, and though somewhat remote, Dawson City was a favorite of mine. Fairbanks was our least favorite, largely because of the unbearable smoke from 600,000 acres of forest fires. Two memorable restaurants were Ernesto’s in Valdez and the Seafood Express (affectionately known as the bus restaurant) in Hyder. Our favorite drives were the Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper, the Cassiar Highway, and Tok to Skagway via Destruction Bay.
The caravan experience was a very good one—it was well planned and organized, was an excellent value dollar wise, and was all encompassing. It included many activities that we would not have done solo, but are so glad we did in retrospect. Both the wagon master and tail gunner were outstanding. We met many new friends and acquaintances; only one person participating in the caravan was obnoxious and overbearing.
Campgrounds ran the gamut from outstanding to barely adequate, though most were quite sufficient. We would opt to “dry camp” more, particularly in Alaska, on any future trips.
We would do it again in a heartbeat—and can’t wait till next time!

Home We departed Nebraska City at 8:30 AM, looking forward to our drive home after traveling almost 10,000 miles and being gone 81 days. Nebraska City is located near the northern Missouri border, so we quickly found ourselves on I-29 in Missouri. Missouri has the best highways of any state we traveled this summer. We made a couple of rest stops, and bade farewell to the Todds just north of Kansas City. We filled up with gasoline at Gainesville, MO, paying $2.199 per gallon, our cheapest fuel of the trip, arriving home at 5:45 PM. We found the house to be in great order, but weeds had taken over our garden beds. After flushing the tanks and unpacking the bare necessities, we savored the wide open spaces of the house, and marveled at the size of the 46-inch HDTV. It’s good to be home.

Kay’s Take It’s amazing how clean a house stays when no one lives there! We cleaned it from top to bottom when we left because we were hoping we would be having several guests, but only one group came during Labor Day. Glad to be home but I can honestly say I haven’t missed the humidity at all! LOL.

Driving Statistics
Beginning Mileage: 18,760.5
Beginning Time: 8:30 AM Central DST
Ending Mileage: 19,205.1
Ending Time: 5:45 PM Central DST
TOTAL MILEAGE FOR THE DAY: 444.6
CUMULATIVE MILEAGE: 9,813.0