An Alaskan Adventure: A Travelogue - Softcover

Adaschik, Alan R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1491857064 ISBN 13: 9781491857069

Verlag: AuthorHouse, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Alan Adaschik's dream was to visit Alaska; America's last frontier and a place which abounds with wildlife and unspoiled wilderness. Upon retirement, Al and his wife Gayle sold everything and bought a thirty-seven foot Damon Intruder motor home to make his dream a reality. "An Alaskan Adventure" is a narrative about Al and Gayle's trip which highlights the places they visited and the wonderful things they experienced along the way. "An Alaskan Adventure" commences in Indiana following a visit with Al's relatives who live there. After negotiating the traffic jams of Chicago, Al and Gayle traveled I-94 across the northern Great Plains visiting Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana along the way. Heading north, they visited Glacier National Park and continued on to tour Yoho, Banff, and Jasper national parks in Canada. Afterwards, Al & Gayle picked up the Alaskan Highway which took them to a realization of Al's dream. The reminder of the book is about Al & Gayle's travels around the Great Alaskan Triangle, a circuit of 900 miles defined by the cities of Tok, Fairbanks, and Anchorage. While negotiating this triangle, Al and Gayle's primary goals were to find gold in one of the many streams they crossed and to also find a Wooly Mammoth frozen in a glacier. Toward this end, they took side trips to the White Mountains National Recreation Area, Denali National Park, The Top of the World Highway, and the towns of Homer and Chicken. "An Alaskan Adventure" is not just a book about touring Alaska. Al is an environmentalist and a theme evident throughout the book is that the beauty we find around us is fleeting and that if we, as a species, continue to over-populate our world, what we see and value so highly is sure to go away.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alan Adaschik was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. After graduating, he became a Navy Fighter Pilot. Following completion of his military obligation, Al earned an MBA from Long Island University. Eventually, he was hired by the City of Fort Lauderdale and retired in 2001.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

AN ALASKAN ADVENTURE

A TRAVELOGUE AND ENVIRONMENTAL TREATIS

By ALAN R. ADASCHIK

AuthorHouse LLC

Copyright © 2014 Alan R. Adaschik
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5706-9

Contents

Chapter 1: THE NORTHERN PLAINS, 1, 
Chapter 2: THE ROAD TO GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, 8, 
Chapter 3: THE ROAD TO JASPER, 17, 
Chapter 4: ON THE ROAD IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, 25, 
Chapter 5: THE YUKON, 31, 
Chapter 6: TOK TO FAIRBANKS, 41, 
Chapter 7: THE WHITE MOUNTAINS ADVENTURE, 49, 
Chapter 8: THE ROAD TO DENALI, 56, 
Chapter 9: A DENALI ADVENTURE, 62, 
Chapter 10: THE ROAD TO ANCHORAGE, 69, 
Chapter 11: THE ROAD TO HOMER, 75, 
Chapter 12: A HOMER ADVENTURE, 80, 
Chapter 13: ENCOUNTER WITH A GLACIER, 87, 
Chapter 14: CHICKEN ALASKA, 98, 
Chapter 15: THE END OF A DREAM, 104, 
Chapter 16: OUR ENVIRONMENT, 105, 

CHAPTER 1

THE NORTHERN PLAINS

Sunday, July 7, writing from LaPorte, Indiana

That's it for relatives for a while. Tomorrow, we leave for Alaska and begin our adventure. We will travel over three-thousand five-hundred miles during the next few weeks just getting there.

Gayle's goal is to pan for gold and find a flake or two. I'm a little more ambitious. I want to find a woolly mammoth frozen in a glacier. I am sure mammoth meat must be very tasty because of how long it has been aged. I can hardly wait to sink my choppers into a five-thousand year old chunk of hindquarter. Talk about a meal that spans the ages.

We also plan to fish for halibut. I didn't know much about this fish before planning our journey and was intrigued to learn that they are a huge flounder. The all time record halibut, caught commercially, weighed over nine-hundred pounds.

Saturday, July 13, writing from Miles City, Montana

Hoping to get through the Chicago area before rush hour, we left La Porte, Indiana on Monday at five in the morning. This was not early enough. It took three hours to travel ninety miles. Talk about over-population! The traffic finally opened up on the other side of town and as planned, we picked up I-94 and headed north for Wisconsin. We decided to take I-94 in lieu of I-90 because it is closer to Canada and I thought that this would be the more scenic route.

Wisconsin is famous for its dairy products. However, it is also a progressive state that led the way to direct primary elections, regulation of public utilities, pensions for teachers, the establishment of kindergartens, minimum-wage laws, and workers' compensation. It was also the first state to abolish the death penalty and has been a leader in the development of farmers' institutes, farm cooperatives, dairy farmers' associations, and cheese-making federations. One of the nation's first hydroelectric plants was built in Wisconsin and it was the first state to adopt the number system for marking highways. It was the first state to pass a law mandating safety belts in all new automobiles bought into the state and Wisconsin played a major role in establishing the Republican Party.

As we drove through Wisconsin picturesque farms and rolling hills dominated the scenery. Monday evening, we stayed at a state park in the town of Hudson, just shy of the Minnesota Border. The park was beautiful and our camp site was about a hundred yards from a lakeside beach. Breaking out our folding bicycles, we followed a trail around the lake and were delighted when we came upon a dam with a fifty-foot waterfall. Two teenage boys were fishing in the pond at the bottom of the dam and it was a nostalgic scene; like something out of Huckleberry Finn.

Tuesday, we woke up to cloudy skies. We crossed the Minnesota border and took the I-694 bypass around Minneapolis/St. Paul, enduring heavy showers as we traveled. We were once again caught in rush hour traffic, but not as bad as Chicago. Minnesota is much the same as Wisconsin; farms and rolling hills. I am sure there are really beautiful places in both these states, but you do not see much from an interstate highway.

Minnesota possesses some of the nation's richest farmland which helps establish the state as a leading producer of milk products, corn, hogs, soybeans, and wheat. The state is also rife with scenic beauty and its sparkling lakes and deep pine woods make it a vacation wonderland. Minnesota is blessed with a plethora of game animals and fish that are a major attraction for outdoorsmen from all over the nation. Its numerous lakes and extensive woodlands also are an attraction to campers, canoeists, and hikers.

We drove through Minnesota, crossed into North Dakota and stopped for the night in Jamestown, a town on the James River. We chose Jamestown as a stopping place because their campground included a restaurant on its grounds. Jamestown is famous for its buffalo museum and a three-story tall statue of a buffalo that can be seen from I-94.

Gayle was anxious to see a real buffalo, so we planned on doing so before we left the following day. Unfortunately, the local buffalos were hidden behind a fence and you had to pay to see them. I was offended by this, so to protest, we stole a peek through a hole we found in the fence. Seeing those buffalo as they were saddened me. They once owned the plains, with their herds stretching from horizon to horizon and now they have been reduced to being a cheap tourist attraction behind a restaurant in Jamestown. I had no reservation about leaving this place. Gayle wanted to spend another day there, which illustrates a universal truth of life and RV'ing; men always want to move on and women always want to stop and smell the roses.

On the road again in North Dakota we discovered why the plains are called "great". Finally, we are traveling somewhere visibly different from what we are used to seeing back east. "Rolling hills" does not adequately describe the panoramic vistas that unfolded before us. The hills were immense, with summits three to five miles apart. They were covered in grass, with a tree or two here and there to break up the monotony. Crossing the top of one hill, in the distance, you could see the top of the next; but even more spectacular was the view up and down the valley for several miles in both directions. The feeling of openness was breathtaking. For the first time in my life I know what is meant by wide open spaces and believe me, unless you see the Great Plains, you will never really know the true meaning of this expression.

North Dakota was named after the Sioux Indians who once lived here. The Sioux called themselves Dakota or Lakota, meaning allies or friends. The geographic center of North America lies in North Dakota and is near the town of Rugby in the north central part of the state. The state is almost entirely covered by farms and ranches, with the chief crop being wheat. The state produces most of the nation's flaxseed, sunflower seeds, and barley. In addition to these crops the state also leads in the production of oats, pinto beans, rye, and sugar beets.

Few settlers came to North Dakota before the 1870's because railroads had not yet reached the area. However, this changed in the 1870's and with the advent of railroad transportation, large wheat producing farms developed. The farms were highly profitable and became known as bonanza farms. The success of these farms attracted more settlers and the population of the state exploded by the turn of the century.

Our goal for the day is to reach Medora, twenty-seven miles from the Montana border. We chose this town as a destination because its population is one-hundred souls and we had...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: AuthorHouse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1491857064
• ISBN 13: 9781491857069
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 120
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland