July 4th - July 6th

We spent the last several days in Dawson City.  What a unique town of about 1900 permanent residents.  The roads are still gravel, the sidewalks are made of wood, and the taps in your house must be left running in the winter or they will freeze. 

We stayed in the Downtown RV Park which was a little expensive but provided an ideal place to operate from.  We could walk the entire town in about 15 minutes… that is a WD walk, not a BA march!  In fact we walked from one end of town (our campsite) to the other (the Health Center) which was a very nice walk but didn’t do anything for my elbow.

Most of the buildings have either been restored or when new ones are built, they have to resemble the original Dawson buildings.  Today all of the buildings, new or refurbished, are built above the ground on pilings of a platform.  The reason for this is to prevent the building heat from melting the permafrost which is about 2’ below the surface… it never thaws.

There is also a prime business opportunity for Mary here… better hurry before it is grabbed up!  

  

We took a tour at Dredge #4 where N.A’s largest wooden-hulled, bucket-lined gold dredge is now stored.  It was built for about $200,000 over 2 years but paid for itself in 2 months once it went into production.  The enormity and ingenuity that went into some of the old tools/process is amazing.  It was retired in 1954 and is now a national monument.

We also spent time at Diamond Tooth Gerties which is a casino, bar, and stage show.  It was BA’s idea as you know her gambling habit but this time she was lucky as she walked away with $120… she was happy.  I also got to see 3 different shows which were very well done.  While some of the talent is brought in from other parts of the country, many of the performers were local people.  They did a great job!

We took a ride (truck) up the Dome to see the midnight sun.  Of course we didn’t see it first because we went at 10:00 PM and second, it is very seldom seen as one has to be at or above the arctic-circle to see this.  It does give a very good view of Dawson, the Yukon River, and surrounding area.  Unfortunately it was somewhat hazy when we were there… we actually went to the top twice.

It really is hard to explain daylight just about 24 hours a day.  As you can see, Arda is sitting by the picnic table at 1:00 AM and it is light out.  One loses all of the queues that we become accustom to.  For example, we find ourselves eating dinner at 8:00 PM while thinking it is only about 5… really strange.

On Monday, (the 6^th) we headed for Chicken, U.S.A.  Chicken got its name from early settlers who wanted to call the town Ptarmigan which is a common bird here in Alaska.  Many people had trouble pronouncing the name so they used the bird’s nickname which in Alaska is “Chicken”.  

It was only a 107 mile trip but it took us about 6 hours to come across the Top of The World Highway.  Well, I can tell you that highway is a misnomer.  For a few miles after taking the ferry across the Yukon River, it was paved but with many pot holes.  Then there were long stretches of road that are referred to as “maintained gravel”.  We these weren’t bad compared to a lot of the so called paved sections but the dust was terrible.  Then we crossed the border into the US.  The roads were even worse than Michigan if you can believe it.  Twenty miles an hour was about the fastest we drove with the speed limit being 50 MPH.  We had to stop once and re-screw the kitchen table down as all the screws holding it in place had come lose.  All of the cups were also up-side down in the cupboard but nothing was broken.

We learned something else today… watch out for the rental RV’rs.  The roads are narrow with soft shoulders as the rental RV’s are normally fairly wide, at least wider than a car so I am not many of the renters have experience driving larger vehicles on smaller roads.  We know one who didn’t.  I saw him coming and said to BA, he needs to get on his side of the road thinking that he would.  We he didn’t and we kissed mirrors.  The mirror on my truck was/is cracked.  BA & I walked back to see if everything was OK in the other vehicle but they were too busy trying to put their mirror back together.  They didn’t even say anything to us but we thinking it is because they couldn’t speak English.  Oh well, another thing to fix on the truck when I get home.

Now for the feature section… Did you know?  In 1905 the Dawson City Nuggets competed for the Stanley Cup in Ottawa, ON.  The 4400 mile trip took 23 days and cost $3000 for the entire team.  They arrived 1 day before the games started and lost both games by a 9-2 and 22-3 score.  Ottawa’s one-eyed Frank McGee scored 14 goals the second game setting a record that exists today.

Keep your loops open.  

4/10/2009 - Pictures

I've added some additional "albums" to Wrangler Dave's Picassa Wed Site.  If you "sort" the albums by "upload date" (top right corner), the first 4 albums will be the last ones that were uploaded... 

http://picasaweb.google.com/DaveTole



Enjoy & Happy Trails!

4/6/2009 - 4/9/2009

This will be my final Tally Book update for a while as Biker Arda and I are back in GR where we will stay for about 6 weeks while the dentist earns a few bucks. We will go Canada for a couple of weeks in May to help my Dad open the cottage. I will add a link to some additional pictures within the next week.

On Monday we spent the day sightseeing at the Grand Ol Opry Mall and the Opry Land Hotel & Convention Center. The Mall is huge with several large “anchor stores” but what was really interesting was the Aquarium Restaurant. In the center of the restaurant and along the walls were several huge aquariums filled with many unique fish such as sharks, stingrays, huge catfish, and many colored fish. We did enjoy more BBQ for lunch.

 
  

After lunch we went to the Opry Land Hotel which has 2881 rooms, a “river” with water that was brought in from many lakes all over the US, Canada and Europe all under 14 acres of glass. We wandered through each of the 4 – 5 specific areas which contained restaurants, souvenir shops, swimming pools, etc. etc… only took about 4 hours which included a stop for some very good ice cream cones.

   
We also found a couple of horses for Biker Arda and our friend Painter Sidne. These are the perfect horses for these 2 ladies. They do not require feeding, brushing (maybe a little dusting sometimes), training (they are house broken), really mind their manners. Not sure what the ladies will name them but here is a picture of them.

    
On Tuesday we woke up to 38 degree, rainy weather – at least it wasn’t snow! We packed up and headed north towards GR. The weather soon gave way to sunny, dry periods with lots of wind. At least it wasn’t a head-wind. As we were in no hurry to get back to the cold, we only drove about 5 hours before stopping at our favorite campground ~ Wally-Mart Kokomo, IN.

  
It was windy and cold all night but we were determined to get home on Wednesday… like 3.5 hours is a long day – HA! We were on the road by 8:00 AM and arrived in GR just after lunch (remember we lost an hour). We dropped our trailer off at Veurinks RV so they could put an estimate together for the damage done when we blew a tire and when the roof kissed a tree. So for about $1100 and a week later, Biker Arda and I will be back in our home. We are hoping to stay at the Woodchip Campground in Wyoming providing they answer their phone.

 

Well that is about it for this trip. A new Tally Book will be created for our trip out west to the Red Lodge Montana branding and then north to Alaska… Gee that would be a great title for a song… “North to Alaska” .

 

Happy trails and be safe until next time.

3/30/2009 - 4/5/2009

A lot has transpired since I last wrote in my Tally Book.  Monday Arda and I “toured” some of the areas in Arlington that we were familiar with and some we weren’t.  Most of the places were in the latter category as it has been 20 years since we were last in Arlington.  We drove past our first house in TX (in fact our first house together) and it wasn’t in too bad shape although the neighborhood has declined over the years especially when one considers the amount of new houses in the area which are considerable larger and more expensive than our house.
 

Next we drove past the 2^nd and last house we owned in Texas.  This house and neighborhood is pretty much as we remembered it.
  

We did enjoy the company of Fred and Lynda (Freemonski) Weekly and also Lynda’s daughter Leslie and son Joe.  We all had Nachos in our trailer on Sunday.  Since all of us enjoyed the Spring Creek BBQ, we went back there for dinner Monday night… you just don’t get good BBQ like that up north (as in MI).
  

    
Tuesday started out beautiful after we had rain and wind most of the night.  We hooked up and head to Mesquite TX (the east end of Dallas) to visit our good friend Marguerite Kelly.  She and Norm, who passed away 4 years ago, stayed at the same Lexington Apartments (A day or a life time) when we first moved to Texas in 1979.  They have a beautiful daughter, Heather-Ann who lives in NY and is getting married in Oct.  We had a very good time visiting Marguerite with one exception… Wrangler Dave kissed a tree in front of her house with the top of the trailer.  We will see what the final cost is… can’t wait!

  
Thursday morning saw us on the road again headed towards Nashville TN.   As we have chosen not to drive long days when we don’t have to, we decided to stop in Hazen AR which was a real treat.  We pulled in, hooked up the electrical and water and just got inside before the heaven’s opened up.  We were under a severe thunderstorm warning with a tornado watch.  Fortunately we just had the rain and wind as the tornados did not materialize – this is one time we were happy the weatherman was wrong.
   

  
Here is a picture for one of our favorite relatives who shall remain nameless but know that “Jack” is a good friend of hers… HA!  We are in his neighborhood!
  

   
Friday morning we hit the road again to Nashville – about a 5 hour drive.  We looked at the weather forecast for GR and decided there was still too much snow and cold so we decided to spend 4 days instead of 2 in Nashville where it is supposed to be warmer.  Guess what the weather forecast is… you guessed it colder and possible snow although not as bad as GR.

   
Saturday Arda and I just goofed off catching up on some reading, internet stuff, and a little shopping.  That evening we went to the Grand Ole Opry where we saw Bill Anderson, Jim Ed Brown, Joe Diffie and others.  It was a 2 hour show that we really enjoyed. 

   
Sunday we woke up to another beautiful day.  We drove to the other side of Nashville to visit with friends, the Barrys, who moved back to Nashville from GR about 8 years ago.  We went to church with the Barrys and then returned to their house where Kats and Mark served a great lunch… it was more like a dinner.  Needless to say we did not go hungry. It was good to see them again and catch up on old times.  Petra used to baby sit Joe, their son, but he has grown so much I’ll bet she wouldn’t recognize him. 

    
Kats also looked up several places to visit on the way home to our trailer… we did get to see the Loveless Café and General Store but we were still full from lunch so decided to pass on the pies.  We also got to see the Belle Meade Plantation, at least for a minute and they were in the process of closing when we got there. 

Our luck held as the Parthenon was closed when we got there. 

 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Oh well it gives us something to see next time.

   
Tomorrow we will do some more sightseeing, like the 14 acre hotel under glass and other places.

  
Happy Trails to next time.