Sometimes when bad things happen you can turn them into experiences of a lifetime. I was relatively young when the plant I was working at as Quality Supervisor shut its doors after over 100 years of operation. I took my severance package and seeing that I was not tied down to returning at a given time I packed up the van and headed to Alaska from my home in New England. I took my elderly parents with me since they had both recently retired paying them back for all of the family trips they took us kids on when we were young. We headed north up through Vermont passing over the border to Montreal. You can click the links for more in depth posts on each attraction. In Quebec we picked up the Trans Canada Highway and headed west averaging 600 miles per day.
Into Alaska and the end of the Alaska Highway at Delta Junction and then on our way to Tok where a meal of caribou sausage and salmon chowder in a bread bowl was our welcome to the state.
Instead of repeating the route south along the Alaska Highway we took the Cassiar Highway south. We passed by Bear Glacier and made our way to the charming communities of Stewart, British Columbia and Hyder Alaska.
Badlands National Park was next on the agenda. This again was one of my mother’s favorite parks as it was a setting of many of her historical fiction novels she liked to read.
A visit to my aunt and uncle in Cohoes, New York and then home. It was good to see New England and home after many months on the road but the memories of the trip will last a life time. My parents would both pass in a few years and I was glad I could give them this trip in their final years.
Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is America’s first national park and one of its crown jewels. This park has so much to see and do you could spend a week here every year and still find something new each time. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with its waterfalls, Old Faithful and the bubbling mud pots and other geo-thermal features. In addition to the physical attractions Yellowstone is a prime location for viewing wildlife. Because of its national park protective status the animals are not hunted and are not nervous around people or traffic. Wolves, bears (both black and grizzly), and any number of ungulates are easily seen.
Yellowstone sits atop a supervolcano which means the fiery molten core of the earth lies dangerously close to the surface. This results in numerous geo-thermal features throughout the park,
I have traveled from Maine to Alaska and found no place better for viewing wildlife then Yellowstone. Believe it or not one of the most dangerous animals in the park are the bison,
Glacier National Park is located in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, adjacent to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses over 1 million acres and includes parts of two mountain ranges, over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the “Crown of the Continent Ecosystem,” a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 square miles. You can easily spend a week in the expansive park and not see everything as it truly is one of the jewels of the national park system.
The rangers will confiscate your cooler if you leave it out on your picnic table.
The many lakes in the park are beautiful with their frame of mountains surrounding them.
Earthquake Lake is a lake in southwestern Montana. It was created after an earthquake struck on August 17, 1959, killing 28 people. US Route 287 follows the lake and offers glimpses of the effects of the earthquake and landslide, and a visitor center is just off the road. The lake is mostly within Gallatin National Forest.
