Ila's Final Blog

So many of you have asked me what was "the highlight" of the trip and I just struggle to answer that question. It was SO vast, SO beautiful, and just so many different areas. It is impossible for me to just pick one thing that was most beautiful or interesting because it all was. I absolutely love the mountains so for one final picture post, I am using this shot of the St Elias mountains. As you can tell, they were as beautiful as all the other scenes we saw like this but I don't think we posted this particular one.

Some of you have asked about the price we paid for gas. I asked Phyllis because she was the one "in charge" of that area. She said Canada took tops for high with it calculating out to between $5.50 and $6.00 per gallon. She said Alaska was between $4.00 and $4.50 per gallon. We had no difficulty getting gas. I believe I remember a time or two that a pump or two was "sacked" but there was usually another one available.

And I know I commented I was glad to get home and I was. I am glad to be home. But that is true of me no matter where I go or for how long I am gone. The final section of the last chapter of Bob Benson's book "He Speaks Softly" is entitled "A Faithful Father Waits." In it he writes about going to watch marching band competitions when his son was playing in the band and how the band spends hours and hours in preparation for these events. In this scenario, everything is judged on precision and that final "pulling out all the stops" to "give the judges everything they have." He asked his son if he could describe what it felt like marching toward the stands filled with cheering parents and friends and his son just grinned. He told him that some day he would probably experience that same "rush" feeling when he had a son that was competing. But then he concludes with some thoughts about the heavenly Father. As a closing thought, he writes:

"It was Jesus himself who reminded us that we were to call him Father -- 'Abba Father' -- which is a lot more like calling him Dad. I think Jesus was telling us that our Father is the one in the stands who is standing on the seat, waving his coat in a circle over his head with tears of pride and happiness running down his face." I don't personally believe He is standing up in heaven waiting and watching for us to trip over our shoe laces or looking for a smudge on our face and whatever else people might dream of to conjure up "fear" of God. He loves us. He gave His Son for our sin. He wants us to succeed.

That is the final scene I want to leave in your minds. Yes this land (USA) is beautiful and we are such a blest people. But I want what I do here on earth to be part of what God recalls when He sees me approaching heaven. Do I do everything perfect? NO! God asks us to do our best and I truly try but I'm sure sometimes I fail even at that. But God knows my heart! I must strive to keep it "right" with Him. I love Him supremely and I know He loves me. PTL!

Many of you have commented on how much you enjoyed our blog. Well, we enjoyed creating it. There were times when we were quite tired and that was mentioned and probably came through in the writing. But, it was fun to write and we had so much to tell about what we saw. We even had some humor to throw in some times. Who knows, maybe you will even go back and look at it again and enjoy it once more. We surely do hope so!

Sunday 13th

Hi, it's Phyllis,
Guess I better weigh in on the last blog. It was a fantastic trip, and if I was 20 years younger, I would seriously consider Alaska as a place to live. But, like Ila, my recliner sure is great. Now, I'm not into cooking, so I haven't got that started yet. It was so good to be home, that I didn't leave, except to get groceries, go to the post office and to church today. Exciting things happened here while I was gone. For those who don't know, I live right next to the Des Moines River and the levee is in my back yard. Right now that levee is stacked high with sandbags. My daughter and son-in-law with the help of relatives, moved most of my things to higher ground, (Brenda and Bill's garage and house), and then on the 4th of July weekend, moved everything back. I knew it was happening, but there was nothing I could do from Alaska. Thanks to everyone who was reading our blog and praying for us. I don't suppose we will ever know how many people followed us day by day and shared in our adventure. We drove about 11,000 miles and OH the sights we saw. I can hardly wait to get my pictures printed. Thanks to all of you who accompanied us on the adventure of a lifetime.

This is Linda and I finally decided I shouldn't wait until I have time to do this or I'll never get it done! The amount of things I had to do since I returned home on Wednesday is astronomical. Yesterday I went to Tipton to pick up my mail and attend a grandchild event and Monday I am going to Lee's Summit to see my new grandson and his big brother.

I actually cooked today and it was really good! We had a lot of very good food on our trip as well as some that wasn't so good, but my own cooking definitely tastes good!

I can't really say that I have a favorite part of our trip. The most I can say is that I really enjoyed seeing a lot of scenery I had never seen before as well as a lot of animals in the wild I hadn't seen before. Some I had seen in zoos, but that is just not the same as seeing them beside the road or in the open water.

I have been asked is I'd do it again, and yes, I would go again. I would recommend to anyone to go and drive all the way like we did. It was very special. Of course if you don't want your vehicle to get dirty inside and out, then don't drive. Alaska does have carwashes! We saw a lot of things that you wouldn't necessarily see on a tour and we didn't spend valuable time at the tourist traps. We visited with a lot of very intersting people, both Alaskans and visitors from other states and countries.

Sometimes we have been tired when it was time to write in this blog, but I am glad we did it and I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed doing it and reading it ourselves. Happy traveling!

Linda

Thursday, July 10, 2008

This is Ila and I'm writing to just let those of you who have gotten into the habit of checking on us daily know that we arrived home safely late Wednesday afternoon. It took a bit of time to get unloaded and we were all tired so didn't do update last night. If you are interested, you might check back here to see if we have been inspired to write a final few words about our trip. I'm not going to attempt to do that this morning. I want my cup of coffee and my recliner! If you can't relate, try taking a six-week trip and spending all those nights in a motel. Just see how good that recliner feels. HA!

July 8, 2008

Tues, July 8, 2008 – Day 42

This is Linda. We began our day today by driving from our motel into the Rockies. As we passed Herbert, Marceline, and Kay’s street, we waved at them. In the Rockies we visited the villages of Ferncliff and Allenspark and also the Wild Basin Area Copeland Lake. There we managed to see a mule-eared deer even though we were quite busy attempting to miss the millions of potholes. A few of them we did miss, but I tried to get them on the return trip. I think I got all of them. We took pictures at the St. Malo Retreat Center and went on through Estes Park and into Thompson Canyon. While there, there was an accident and we had to wait about 45 minutes while fire trucks, a trooper, and an ambulance went past us. We also saw the helicopter come to pick someone up. When we went past the accident scene, we realized it was probably quite serious. A small car had hit a tree and burned. Once again God was with us. If we hadn’t made a wrong turn earlier in Estes Park, we could possibly have been at the scene and possible even have been involved in the accident.

From there, we headed for home from Loveland past Fort Collins and to Cheyenne and onto Interstate 80. Shortly after we got gas east of Cheyenne we ran into quite a bit of heavy rain and had to slow down and finally even pull off at an exit for a while. It was finally done so that we could go on. In Nebraska we saw some deer or possibly antelope off in the distance.

We are in North Platt, Nebraska tonight and are even in the Central Daylight Time Zone again after being out of it since very early in our trip. Tomorrow will be a long day since we plan to drive home and it is a few more miles than we have driven in any other day on this trip.

Today was Ila’s birthday and though we had planned to have ice cream, that never happened, so tomorrow it will be a priority. Have a nice day! We plan to do a brief recap after we get home, so check on our site again.

Mon July 7 2008

Monday, July 7, 2008
Hi, it’s Phyllis again.
This morning after a continental breakfast in the motel, we got on the road again. This time we are headed toward Cheyenne. This is very interesting country. One minute things are fairly green, even with out irrigation, and just over the next hill, or around the next corner, it’s barren, brown and full of rocks. It is hard for me to imagine how anyone makes a living here on a ranch or farm. There are a lot of wind farms (turbines) and since there always seems to be wind, they are on the move. We see cattle scattered around the hills and sometimes pretty large herds. Not much wildlife, but a few deer, and lots of ground squirrels, many who did not make it across the highway. We gassed up in Laramie, where the gas was $3.89. That was the cheapest we found it since leaving home. We arrived in Cheyenne around 4:30 and stopped at the Lyle and Lorene Johnson home for a brief visit. Lorene was going to be doing crafts for their Vacation Bible School this evening, so we didn’t stay long, but really enjoyed our time with her. Lyle was on the road so we didn’t see him. Our motel tonight is in Longmont, Colorado. After finding a motel and a brief meal at Burger King, we went to visit Ila’s cousins. What a delightful family. Herbert and Marcelline Tennis and her sister Kay, made us feel just like family. Of course Ila was, but before the evening was over, we felt like we had know them all our lives. We did discover that since they were originally from the Cedar, Beacon, Eddyville area that we not only had several experiences in common, but also knew lots of the same people. It was a fun evening and we probably stayed too long, but if we tired them out you would never know it. If we had visited in the daytime, we could have seen Herb’s garden, and fish pond, and many flowers that he told us about.
Ila has reminded me that we never told you the story of “sleeping at the foot of the bed”.
It was in Langley, B.C. The bed was right against the wall, next to the window where the A.C. was located. Now since the cold air was blowing right on me, I decided that the only way to sleep at all was to change ends of the bed. Ila woke up, saw me down there and decided she would also change. When Linda woke the next morning , she thought we had lost our minds.
Well enough trivia for this time. Tomorrow we are headed East again and should be home by sometime Wednesday. Keep reading, the adventure is not finished yet.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Sunday, July 6, 2008

This is Ila writing tonight. Our breakfast this morning was compliments of the motel where we stayed last night so we had a warm meal to begin the day. There were at least 8 Nazarene churches in Nampa and we chose to attend church this morning at College Church in Nampa ID. This is the church where Kevin & Beth Borger had ministered at some time before they came to Oskaloosa.

In our trek on I 84 across Idaho, we saw various types of irrigation units with some crops of corn and lots of what appeared to be hay fields. We also saw herds of cattle – some dairy and some feed lots. There was one HUGE Holstein dairy herd just west of Twin Falls, ID. At Twin Falls, we did stop at the Snake River canyon. At the bottom, there was a golf course that I’m sure would have challenged all you golfers who are reading! We also came by a HUGE hay field and there were seven large balers working and the rows of hay they were baling were really big. We also saw what we think may have been potato fields.

Animal sightings today in addition to cattle and horses were some antelope. We kind of think that maybe some of the cattle had mountain goat blood because there were some who we way up on mountainsides and did not look all that safe. Not sure what in the world they were eating that would have been better than the wonderful green grass down low.

As we came through Ogden UT, I remembered being there in 1986 when Aaron McKee graduated from high school in Logan UT. We didn’t take time to investigate any of the area there. Heading farther on east on I84, we encountered quite a bit of highway construction and crossed over some of the rumble strips, which caused a bit of start for the one in the driver’s seat! HEE! Coming through Ogden, we also saw a Cracker Barrel sign so we know we must be getting closer to home! HA! We saw several “ranch” signs but the ranches were out of sight from the highway.

We are tonight in Evanston WY. I also have a 1986 memory of this place because on our way to Aaron’s graduation, we stopped to see our good friend, Sandy Pacha, who was living here at that time. We have this evening, called and touched base with friends in Cheyenne WY. We are hoping to perhaps catch an opportunity to stop by and say a brief “hello” to them on our way through their area but they are busy people. We will know by some time tomorrow afternoon. It looks like we should be back in Osky/Eddyville/Beacon either Wednesday or Thursday. We are getting pretty close to 10,000 miles on the van and also on three travel-weary bodies since we left.

Sat, July 5, 2008

Saturday, July 5, 2008 – Day 39

This is Linda and in case anyone wants to know, yes, I am tired of blogging. But, it will soon be all over and I won’t have to do it again. This morning I got up at the crack of dawn (5:00) to have breakfast at the motel and get the van serviced at Wal-Mart. Actually I didn’t get up until 6, but I woke up at 5 and couldn’t go back to sleep. You’ve heard enough about my woes.

We then left Yakima and went to Milton Freewater, Oregon to take out Dena Ward for lunch. Her husband was Bob’s mother’s first cousin. We had a very nice visit with her. For those of you who know her, yes she is still not acting her age. She told us she will be 94 in December. A “boy” does mow her yard now, but she still has a garden, has lots of flowers, drives, takes care of her two cats, cans fruit, etc. The area from Yakima to her place has a lot of fruits and vegetables raised commercially. It is a little strange for people from Iowa to look at acres and acres of onions! This area is just plain desert except where they irrigate and it is green there. They also grow hops for use in beer making.

From there we went on to Nampa, Idaho where we are staying tonight. Tomorrow morning we hope to take in a church service with some sort of patriotic celebration before heading on east toward home.

Have a nice day and we’ll write to you again tomorrow night.

Fri, July 4 2008

Hi, it’s Phyllis,
This was an interesting day, or at least we thought it was. Before we left the motel at Langley, the lady there gave us directions to Stanley Park in Vancouver. We decided that would be a valuable stop. In the process of finding this park, we saw China Town (twice). When we arrived at our destination we found it was indeed worth the effort. This was a beautiful place. We could drive clear around the bay, where we saw many sail boats and big yachts. There were lots of people walking, biking, and families as well as tourists taking advantage of the great day . There was a sea wall all the way around and people could walk, bike, and skate on it. We saw some larger ships out in the harbor and just spent some time watching people. But now it was time to move on and find our way through Vancouver. The tolleys run on overhead wires and some of the streets still have the rails down the middle. It is a very busy place and since there was a cruise boat in the harbor, that helped the busyness.
Since we had not heard back from Ila’s friend in Seattle, we decided not to go there so were looking for highway 99 out of town. This proved to be harder than it looked. We followed the highway clear through Vancouver, and out or town and found ourselves at the airport. There was no good place to turn around, so we just drove clear through, watched people departing, and on our way out, surprise, surprise there was 99. We just took the exciting way.
We crossed into the lower 48 at about 1:40 p.m. Guess what we did first thing? Found a Mc Donalds. Yes, they have them in Alaska and Canada, but this was better and even had the dollar menu. We thought the security at the border was the most watched, with cameras, etc. than the previous ones had been. We drove on to Yakima, Washington, where we spent the night. We had supper at a neat diner called, Mel’s. Then we did laundry and went to Wal Mart, where we had a really good view of the local fireworks, from the parking lot. Tomorrow we will have quite a lot of driving, and do plan to visit Linda’s relative on our way. So tune in again tomorrow for further adventures.

Sat am, July 5

This is Ila again. We will write a blog for Friday and post it tonight. We are in Yakima WA this morning and Linda is out getting the van serviced (3rd time). Heading off to Nampa ID for church in the AM. By the time we got supper last evening, went to WalMart to shop for a few necessary things, and watched the beautiful fireworks from the WalMart parking lot, we were all too tired to write. I just wanted to let those of you who faithfully read our writings that we are fine and on our way home. Are stopping somewhere along today's route to see a relative of Bob H that Linda has talked with and she knows we are coming. I understand she is a spry young one of 90 some years. So that will be fun. More later.

Thurs July 3, 2008

Thursday, July 3, 2008
Day #37
This is Ila writing tonight. We left Williams Lake BC this morning and headed toward Vancouver on Hwy 97. Near Cache Creek, we decided to go on the Sea to Sky/Sky to Sea highway. That was a most beautiful drive. The Fraser River runs down deep in the canyon. We saw many, many spruce trees that are dead. There is a beetle that attacks the spruce tree and it seems to be prevalent from Arizona to Alaska. If you want to read more about that, I will simply tell you to check out Google.

At a town called Lillooet, we decided to take another highway and head back down to the main road we left when we began the Sky to Sea journey. While driving through this canyon, we saw several places where they were irrigating hay fields. There were beautiful farms nestled on both sides of the river. Also along this highway, we came to a place that had growing plots that were covered with a type of black covering. We discovered these were Ginseng gardens.

Also while on this highway, we came across a rock processing plant. It appeared to be processing a lot of rock. They had what looked to be terraces a long way up the side of one of the mountains and we could see them driving up higher than the equipment that was doing the process work. We also came across a couple of deer. They didn’t appear to be too old but decided they were both male because both had the beginning of a rack of antlers. The antlers looked so soft and velvety. They were standing on opposite sides of the road and we got pictures of both of them. They didn’t seem too frightened by three ole ladies! We also caught sight of a little grizzly bear but by the time we turned around and got back to where we saw him, he was gone or we couldn’t find him.

We also came across the Rocky Mountaineer train running through this valley. We sat at the crossing and waved at the people on the train. We stopped at Hell’s Gate and saw the tram come across the valley but we weren’t interested in riding it so went on our way. In getting back to the highway leading into Vancouver, we passed through several tunnels. They were all very nice and well lighted. It rained on us probably more today than any other day. The clouds were drifting in and around the mountains, which made for a beautiful scene. Some of the places along the canyon road were very narrow and at least two of them had “no stopping” places because of the danger of rock slides. At one point, we had to stop to let a pickup go past before we could proceed.

After reaching Hope, BC, we pretty much had what I would call an interstate highway. We are in Langley, which is a suburb of Vancouver. We’ve had a nice supper and are in our room for the night. It is a somewhat “snug” room but we will manage. We get spoiled by a big one with queen beds and plenty of space and then we get one that isn’t so “great” and we have to learn all over again that we need to be more picky!

pics Mon June 30 & Wed July 2

We spotted this black bear off the road a ways on Monday. This was the best shot I got of him
There was a pretty large group of these mountain goats right along the road but we were on a section of road that had loose gravel and a couple of semis passed us and scared most of them away before I could get a picture. Wasn't a very ideal place to stop for a picture. This one looks pretty scrawny but most of the animals are molting and they just don't look the greatest.
This was where we stopped to eat a picnic lunch. It was a rest area beside Dry Williams Lake south of Fraser Lake. It was a beautiful setting. Obviously one didn't look at me. There is an advantage to being on the camera end! HA! A group of ants provided our lunch time entertainment! Pretty amazing what they do as they seem to work all the time. They even buried one of their dead while we watched. No. We are not losing it. It was just interesting.
Linda mentioned in her blog writing about the detour road. This doesn't really show it in all its "glory." It wasn't really too bad as far as driving went but there sure was a long string of vehicles. There was at least two logging trucks ahead of us totally loaded with logs. I don't know how many semis in addition to the other vehicles. They had watered it down so the dust wasn't too bad.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - Day 36

Hello, hello, hello! This is Linda blogging tonight. We had a great day today. At one point God protected us from a major calamity. As I was cruising down the highway, I glanced to the shoulder and there was a moose standing there at the edge of the ditch looking at and trying to decide if he/she should cross the road. God told it, "No way! You leave my ladies alone!" Evidentally it obeyed and just looked at us and returned to the ditch. It wasn't a large one and had no rack, but any size moose would cause a lot of damage!

Since it was just almost next door to our motel we had to start our day at Tim Horton. For those of you from our area, Tim Horton was a hockey player who now has his name in a large string of bakery type stores. Phyllis had fruit for breakfast in the form of an apple fritter, I had milk in the form of a pudding-filled pastry, and Ila had a fruit explosion muffin.

This afternoon just after Kitwanga we passed an area with several Mennonites. Later near and past Prince George (or Prince Albert as Phyllis calls it) we went through hay country for miles. This is for the benefit of my kids: If you took all the fields south and east of where our house was on the farm and put them into one field, it wouldn't be as large as any one of the hay fields we saw. Many of them were covered with big round bales waiting to be moved. (Sound fun Jodi and Lee?) One field even had some little square bales in it. Most, if not all of it, appeared to be grass hay. We saw one dairy set-up and a few stock cows, so we have no idea what they used the hay for. Evidentally they sell it as a cash crop. I had to wonder if they use it in some way like I've heard they are starting to use straw and cornstalks to make products like plywood for the housing industry. Since we didn't have Dad in the van with us we didn't stop to inquire about the use of the hay.

I'm not sure if Ila will drive again or not. While she was driving, she decided to drive us off the highway onto a dirt road, so I took a picture of where we were driving and she is going to put it on the blog tonight. Actually it was a detour so that they could build a bridge over the road we were traveling on. Next they'll have to build a road to the bridge. It was the longest string of traffic we have been in for road construction. Maybe next time she'll try to stay on the road.

We will cross back into God's country late tomorrow or Friday. Believe me, we are going to be glad to be back on US soil. It has been a great trip, but nothing compares to the our great country. If it wasn't so far down, we'd possibly kiss the ground. Perhaps we can grab a hunk of it and pick it up to kiss it!

We are at Williams Lake tonight and had a nice meal at Denny's even though some people were waiting so long that they walked out. There is another Tim Horton near here as well as a McDonald's, so we'll probably find something for breakfast.

Have a nice day or evening or whatever it is when you read this. Oh yes, we saw a deer in the ditch today too.

Tues, July 1, 2008

Hi, tonight it is Phyllis, doing my own typing.
Today we were on the "Road Again". We on on the Cassier Highway. It was a long, long, long, long road. In case I forgot to say, it was a long road. There really wasn't anyplace in Dease Lake to get breakfast, so we ate out of our supply box. In fact we "grazzed" out of it all day. I think we drove around 400 miles today and there was litterly nothing to stop and see, in fact it was hard to find a place to pull over to change drivers. The only animal we saw (and we were in an area where there should have been many) was a little grey fox and he just stood and watched us go by and then proceeded to go on his way down the road. We purchased gas twice today, because we try not to get lower than half a tank. I forgot that we also saw about seven horses right on the roadway. It was strange because two had bells around their necks, and all appeared to be shod. But you could tell they were very familiar with the road, and there was evidence that they had been up and down the road a lot.
We finally reached Kitwanga where we left the Cassier Highway for the Yellowhead Highway. It wasn't too long until we saw signs of civilization (like homes, farm fields, bailed hay, mown hay, cows and domestic horses,and traffuc, We said finally we are back where there are people. Our motel tonight is in Smithers, B.C. It is right next door to a nice resturant . We actually felt like we had real food, not too high priced and not a hugh serving. There is a D.Q. and Mc Donalds in town, so guess where we are headed as soon as I finish this. We haven't had ice cream (milk) for at least three days. Also, there is a Tom Horton's here, so that may be where we get breakfast. Tomorrow we hope to make Prince George and maybe further, as we make our way toward Vancouver. This has not been a very exciting day, but we covered a lot of miles.
Linda got good news this morning. Jodi and James have a baby boy. His name is Judah David Light. He weighed in at 8 pounds and 7 oz, and is 21 inches long. He has a big brother named Asa, who will be very surprised when they get home with the new baby. Asa is 17 months old, so his reign is about to be compromised. That's all for tonight. Keep us in your prayers for safety.