A Collection …

Day 7 – Wildlife day

2008-06-20, Friday

Toad River (07:58) to Big Creek Yukon Government campground (14:30)

This morning we left Toad River pretty early and continue the drive. The weather is very good and there is hardly any car on the road. Last night we were thinking perhaps we have been driving “too much” per day and didn’t get enough time in camp to enjoy the day. We made plans for a few days ahead and think we should aim for stopping around 4-5pm if we are camping, and 6-7pm if we will be staying in a hotel. We also decided to skip the Campbell Highway loop (via Ross River) to free up some extra days in case we needed more days later in the trip.

We spotted so many animals today we almost ran out of room recording them on the whiteboard!

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Day 6 – Alaska Highway

2008-06-19, Thursday

Kiskatinaw Provincial Park, BC (08:39) to Toad River, BC (18:30)

1800 miles away from home. The weather starts out great in the morning, high 50s and sunny. It rained a bit in the afternoon, high for the day is in the 70s.

Yesterday we took a little detour to get to a short section of the “old Alaska Highway” and this morning we get to drive on the wooden Kiskatinaw bridge.

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Day 5 – First windshield crack!

2008-06-18, Wednesday

Hinton, AB (09:11 MST) to Kiskatinaw Provincial Park (near Dawson Creek, BC)

We are 1500 miles away from home!

The proper title for this entry should have been “Alaska Highway, the beginning” or something like that, since this is the day we arrived Dawson Creek, BC (“Mile 0″).

We left KOA in the morning after turning in the survey in exchange for a deck of poker card. We waved at the driver of the yellow FJ who lives near the campground, looks like he’s on his way to work!

Our drive today will take us thru Highway 40 just outside Hinton – “the scenic route to Alaska” to Grand Prairie and then to Dawson Creek, BC, the beginning of the Alaska Highway.

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Day 4 – Columbia Icefield

2008-06-17,Tuesday

Columbia Icefield campground, Jasper NP (09:34) to Hinton, AB (17:30)

Cold and sprinkly in the morning.

We did not have a good night of sleep last night. First the truck alarm went off a few hours after we went to sleep in the tent. We really have no idea why the alarm went off so after it happened the 2nd time we decided to keep the truck unlocked. Sometimes after that it started to rain as well, and it was pretty cold (probably because we are camping across the valley from the glacier, a giant ice field even!). I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and it was not very pleasant at all (not to mention it’s freezing!).

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Day 3 – Banff National Park

2008-06-16, Monday

McLeod Medows campground, Kootenay NP (09:42 MST) to Columbia Icefield campground, Jasper NP

It took us a bit of work to get the stuff packed in the morning, something I am sure we will get better as we go (more practice!). The weather is still pretty good but we can see more clouds now. On the way to Banff National Park we passed the British Columbia and Alberta border, which also happens to be the park border between Banff NP and Kootenay NP, and also the “Continental Divide”. That’s a lot of borders!

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Day 2 – Canada!

2008-06-15, Sunday

Pasco, WA (06:55am) to Kootenay National Park – McLeod Meadows campground (18:30 Mountain Time)

We got up pretty early this day and continue our drive north. The goal is to get to the border before any sort of rush hour (if there’s such a thing) since it will be Sunday afternoon when we cross the border. The weather is again great with cool temperature to start with and some pretty clouds. We drove thru Spokane, WA then into Idaho. This is the first time I’ve been to the state of Idaho, although David kept saying there’s not much here… We drove by a dealer who has a yellow FJ with the stock roof rack painted yellow, that was kind of weird.

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Day 1 – Eastern Oregon

2008-06-14, Saturday

Redding, CA (07:20am) to Pasco, WA

The weather is great for the (real) first day of the trip. After trying to wipe off the bugs from driving thru I-5 last night (and failed) we head north towards Oregon. Mt. Shasta is clearly visible under the blue sky, something we don’t see very often driving thru this area in wintertime. We stopped at a few vista points to take pictures of the mountain and the bug covered truck. This is going to be hard to clean…

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Day 0 – We are going to Alaska!

2008-06-13, Friday

Milpitas, CA to Redding, CA

After spending months in planning and weeks in packing it’s finally time to go! We have most of the things packed during the weekdays so we just need to load them all up before we go. Dad stopped by after work while we were still packing and informed us that northbound 680 looked pretty packed, typical for Friday evening I guess. We decided to leave a hour or two late so we don’t have to sit in traffic much. We are planning to make it to Redding for the night which is about 4 hours away. We packed up and bring MaoMao to my parents’ house where we had her cage setup the week before so she can stay in a cage she is familiar with. 35 days of “Bird Camp” for her, I hope she likes it!

We checked out my dad’s “trip command center” where he has maps on the wall with our proposed route and daily (planned) stops marked.  Looks like he is all set to follow us on our trip! At 8pm we said goodbye to my parents and MaoMao bird and started our Alaska trip.

Total miles driven: 241.6 mile.

We made it to north Redding, CA just before midnight at 23:50.

The cooler experiment – 48HR

It’s been 48 Hours since Monday’s start of the experiment. This afternoon I opened both cooler to take pictures and the red cooler has no loose ice anymore, just two ziplock bags of water.

The blue cooler has maybe 1/3 or 1/4 bag of ice remaining. Considered the blue cooler is bigger and still has ice left it looks like the blue cooler is better insulated.

The plan is to stop the experiment and pull the temperature probes out when it’s been 7 days or when the large block of ice melt completely, whichever happens first.

The Cooler experiment

We will be on an extended trip this summer, and we want to make sure the cooler can keep a reasonable amount of ice for 3+ days at a time. In the past we’ve had pretty good luck with the big Igloo cooler we have, but we never really test it to see how long it’ll last. We went to Death Valley with it but for the most part we are putting ice in the cooler daily.

For this experiment we got a Coleman 5 day Extreme cooler. We will call it the blue cooler since it’s blue, and the Igloo we have is red.

I put two HOBO temperature probe in small tupperwares and left them side by side for the weekend to ensure we have enough readings for baseline comparison. I then loaded each fridge with:

two big round tub of ice

two bags of ice from the freezer’s ice maker.

one small yogurt tub of water

one large yogurt tub of water

put the temperature probe container on top of the large yogurt tub.

Now we will see what kind of temperature reading we can get, and how long the ice will last.

I am thinking it should last at least 4 days….