What is one of your favorite trips that youve taken what made it great?

As you know, we are so lucky to have been able to travel all around the w orld, but I think that one of the trips which will always be special was the trip that Dad & I took up to Alaska in 1971, the year after we were married. It took a lot of planning. We bought a brand new VW bus and Dad built the interior so that we would have storage and a fold down bed. I made curtains ( red gingham) and we stocked up our camping gear.

We had all our camp clothing in backpacks which Dad made a hanging place for inside the van. We set off with a huge trunk of foods, cans & dried and left on the May weekend holiday. Our first day we made it north of Prince George from Vancouver and drove on up through Northern BC, Liard Hot Springs, the Peace River and the Bennett Dam into the Yukon to Whitehorse and drove the old gravel Alaska HIghway as far north as Dawson City. We then headed north above the tree line to cross into Alaska at Tok Junction.

I will never forget the endless skyline, it felt like the top of the world. We drove on the Alaskan black topped highway to Fairbanks and then headed down to Anchorage and to Haynes/Port Chilkoot where we took an Alaska State Ferry down the Inside Passage to Prince Rupert. From the coast we drove inland back to Prince George and down through the Cariboo,finally full circle back to Vancouver. It was an adventure, we had to be pretty self sufficient as there were long distances between any towns or cities.

The countryside was amazing and it was exciting to feel that we were travelling some of the country of the PIoneers and of the Gold Rushes. I do remember the shower and the bed in the hotel that we treated our selves to in Fairbanks, that was such luxury. Dawson City was evocative of days gone by, we explored some of the old gold creeks and poked around the old abandoned homesteads, each seemed to have had a Singer sewing machine! Dad excavated what he thought were probably rubbish tips and found the two little bottles that we still have, one pink, one blue.

The ferry ride was the forerunner of the country that all the Alaska cruise ships do now, we saw whales and Indian villages and totems. Back into BC I remember the bugs one night when we tried to go fishing west of Prince george, they were MAN-eating and our dinner was NOT fish that night. It was an amazing trip and certainly fostered a love of and appreciation for the wild parts of the Province and the Pacific North West.