Bezaire’s Ramblings

Spring    Summer  Fall

A beautiful plant for all three seasons! Time to be heading back home where we’ll be asking at the nursery if we can grow fireweed in Ohio.

Hyder was our last Alaskan stop. As we traveled across BC to Jasper National Park in Alberta, we chatted about all the great places we visited and the wonderful Alaskan ambassadors that shared the best spots to eat, see and paint. Continue reading ‘Adios Alaska’…

Why visit Hyder — which boasts a population of 100 and no paved roads? There is a fantastic opportunity to safely view black and grizzly bears as they fish for salmon the second week of August (give or take a few days). There’s also an even narrower, gravel road that climbs to Salmon Glacier and great views all the way and down! Continue reading ‘Bear…ly Contain Ourselves’…

We decided to head south on the Cassiar Highway so we could stop in Stewart and Hyder - what a wonderful time we had traveling this route. Although the road is very narrow and has long patches of gravel, the mountain views more than made up for the bumps. Continue reading ‘Can’t Buy Bread, but the Cassiar’s Beautiful!’…

The payment for all the beautiful blue sky days we had in May and June has been a significant increase in fires in both Alaska and BC. While the lower 48 was reporting on a 200 acre fire in California, as of August 1, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center reported 469 fires have burned 2,097,293 acres across the state in 2009. Continue reading ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’…

Wild is right! the WSTENP has 13.2 million acres to explore - and only 100 miles of gravel road to travel on! The largest national park in the USA, Wrangell is larger than Switzerland, with taller mountains! Six Yellowstone NPs equals the size of this National Heritage site. Continue reading ‘Wild Wrangell-St. Elias National Park’…

Thank goodness for the Alaskan Tour Saver Book! We have enjoyed every single cruise that we’ve been on, even though Dave grumbles about them as we boarded the boats. Continue reading ‘Glacier & Wildlife Cruises’…

WiFi Internet access has become a common feature at RV parks, and, here in Valdez, the service was about average: not too speedy with all too common service drops. Today I learned one of the causes.
Continue reading ‘Works Better Plugged In’…

Before this journey, the only thing I knew about Valdez was the Exxon oil spill that occurred in 1989. I hadn’t even thought to visit, figuring that the impact on the bay would still be visible. But as we traveled north, people kept mentioning how beautiful Valdez was and that we shouldn’t miss it. Continue reading ‘The Resiliency of Valdez’…

It’s a small state park, just south of the Wothington Glacier and Thompson Pass, on the way to Valdez - but it has fantastic views in all directions!

Continue reading ‘Blueberry Lake State Park’…

All the main roads in Alaska have names as well as numbers but the names are what everyone uses when referring to a route - we have traveled the Alaskan, the Top of the World, the Parks, the Edgerton and the Nabestha in Wrangell-St. Elias NP, the Haines, the Klondike Loop, the Richardson, the Seward, the Sterling, the Glenn and are now on the Tok Cutoff. Continue reading ‘The Glenn Highway’…

Well - we didn’t - but practically everyone else we’ve met these past 3 weeks is. The salmon are running, and the Kenai peninsula is frequently referred to as “South Anchorage” during the salmon runs. Never seen a salmon run??? Just check out Susi’s video at the end of this story. Continue reading ‘Gone Fishin’’…

Homer, population 4,000,  is the most Western stop, via freeways, on the Kenai Peninsula - it’s as far as we can go without hopping on another ferry. It is a primary spot for sport fishing, both on the shore and by boat. It’s obviously a very tourist-oriented place, but we were surprised to find that most of the other campers we met were also from Alaska! Maybe Homer is actually a suburb of Anchorage??? Continue reading ‘Homer - The Spot on the Spit’…

There are some new words that we’ve added to our vocabulary on our journey this summer - most of which define specific land masses that are not found in the flat corn fields of Ohio. Continue reading ‘Alaskan Vocabulary’…

Each time Susi suggests another tour, she silently accepts my quiet grumbles. “What? Another boat ride?” I’m just glad she’s gracious enough to never say, “I told you so,” because our Kenai Fjords Tour was such a magnificent day that we had to upload two albums of pix and videos titled 07-14 Kenai Fjords Wildlife and 07-14 Seward & Kenai Fjords at right. Continue reading ‘Whale of a Tour’…