One of our grandest adventures was a 10k mile, 30 day roadtrip with Klug to Alaska. When I think of Brent, it is often on this trip. So much of our private lives were on roadtrips and travels, but the remoteness and solitude of this trip was really special. Our first stop was Glacier National Park. We thought that was breathtaking...until we saw Banff National Park, in Alberta. Truly the most spectacular place we've ever seen on earth. We drove all 1,500 miles of the Alaska Highway (dirt road!). Lots of wildlife and incredible vistas. On Brent's birthday we made it to Alaska. From Dawson City, we crossed over the "Top of the World" highway...100 miles of dirt road across the ridges of mountain ranges from the Yukon to Canada. The first stop was Chickin, Alaska, a Gold Rush town of three buildings where we stopped for buffalo burgers and Reindeer sausage bratwurst. Our last stop was the end of the Alaskan highway in Delta, Alaska. You have to force yourselft to go to sleep at night....the sun never really sets! We decided to take a detour off the Alaskan highway onto the Klondike highway. We made it to the "Paris of the North" as it was called during the Gold Rush. Had dinner at Klondike Kate's at 10 pm in the bright sun! We camped at a couple of hotsprings along the way. Night was just a perpetual sunset. After exploring the Chena Rivera area outside Fairbanks (where, incidently, it can get up to 106 in the summer!), and enjoying another hotsprings resort, we headed south toward Anchorage. First stop was Denali National Park, named for the largest mountain in North America, at 20,300 ft. Continuing on to Anchorage, a surprisingly small city at only 200,000 people we enjoyed an endless sunset over the bay. We went as far south as Seward Bay, in the Kenai Penninsula with a front row camping spot with a view of the glacier packed peaks across the bay. No time to rest, the next day we were headed back to Anchorage to pick up my brother James who flew in for the second half of the trip. From there we headed straight back to Denali, as we had previously reserved a special camping spot 60 miles into the park on a dirt road. The camping spot turned out to be unremarkable...but we were treated on the entire drive up to the most memorable scene of the entire trip. Although the sun never really sets this time of year, it does get fairly low in the sky around midnight. As it happened, it was "setting" directly behind Denali mountain, creating a perfect silhouette against a firery sky for the entire trip. That's the kind of natural drama you see in Alaska. We headed straight back to the picturesque fishing village of Seward with my brother James (sailing is one of his hobbies) for a very pleasant couple of days after a quick stop to an Alaskan beach...a surreal scene with beach umbrellas, and people laying out under 80 degree sun with the waves crashing on the sand...except for the view of the glacier topped peaks in the distance, it could have been malibu! While we were in Denali the first time, I had to ask a woman driving a huge motorhome if she wouldn't mind parking on the other side of us and she was blocking my satellite dish. She was quite happy to and took advantage of the broadband connection by checking on the results of the Belmont Stakes. As it turned out, she was part of a bluegrass band playing in the local bar that night. She let us in on a secret happening: There is an annual bluegrass gathering in the tiny town of Hope, Alaska each year. Its not an advertised event, but all the best attend. And that would be our next stop. To get to the Kenai Penninsula from Anchorage, you have to drive around the most incredible bay. Almost 100 miles of tidal mud flats surrounded on three sides by towering glacier covered peaks. The mud flats are filled and emptied from the sea daily in an incredible show of tidal surge. Bald Eagles are very fond of this area and walk around on the mud. Hope, Alaska is on the other side of this bay and consists of no more than 4 or 5 turn of the century buildings protected from the tidal surge and mud by a grassy expanse. It was here that the woodstock of bluegrass happened. When we arrived, the bands' RV's were parked in the center of town, and everyone else was camped out in the grass. All night long there was the sound of acoustic music from every direction. Alaskans are incredibly friendly and it was easy to make new friends. Each of our next adventures would take us further south and towards home. The next day was a day of glaciers. First a visit to one on a ship. 90 years ago, visitors could still walk up to the glacier. With global warming, the glacier has retreated 4 miles and created a lake in front of it. It is hard to grasp the scale of what you look at in Alaska. This glacier (a small one), was 1/2 mile wide and 200 feet high. And glacier ice is really dark blue! Further south we walked up to a glacier and climbed around in it. Its more than a little unnerving to realize something that big is alive and moves quite a bit in a day. We had to breifly enter the Yukon in order to reach one of Alaska's southern port towns, Skagway. One of the few southern towns in the inside passage reachable by road (Juneau, the capitol is only reachable by boat and plane) , Skagway was the gateway to the 1890's Yukon Gold Rush, it is a place caught in time. Every building is the same as when the prospectors (hundreds of thousands of them) reached the town and started the treacherous journey up and inland. There are pictures of thousands of them looking like a line of black coal as they asceded the white snow bound passes in single file. This was our last stop in Alaska, and happened on June 21, the Equinox. Our most incredible day of animals actually happed in a Nation Park in Britsh Columbia. In one day, within 10-50ft of the car, we saw buffalo (with calfs), foxes, moose (including a bull moose with antlers), beavers, bald eagles, elk, caribou, bears, Dahl sheep, mountain goats and wild horses. Crossing back into the states felt like the end of the true Alaskan adventure: we were in familiar territory now. After a short visit with our James Blakesless in Bellingham, we headed down past Seattle to pick up my Dad who had been visiting a childhood friend from Austria for a few weeks. We wound down our trip with visits to Crater Lake in Oregon, and the Coastal Redwoods in Northern California. A Celebratory chinese dinner in San Francisco the last night meant we didn't get in until 5:30 am on the morning of tuesday, June 28, 9000 miles and 30 days later. By the time we returned, Alaska already seemed like a distant dream. Only the pictures we took confirm that it was really every bit as magical and spectacular as we remember. The force of untamed wilderness creates a drama in every moment that really is breathtaking to behold. It truly is not an experience that we had ever had before. Only a place as pristine as Alaska preserves the interplay of nature in true life color.