Living Life In The Wilderness

Today is July 1, 2014,  seems like we left home yesterday, seems like a year.  It's actually been 45 days, which really seems impossible with all the things we have seen.  Coming back from the Arctic Circle our trip odometer passed 7500 miles and we still have 8 to 10 weeks before we get back to Montana to pick up the camper from storage to head south. The picture above was taken yesterday on our way back from Galbreth Lake, 115 miles north of the Arctic Circle along the Dalton Highway.  For 2 nights we had 2 different campsites so I guess that makes North Pole, Alaska our domicile. We left our big tent set up near North Pole,  at Rivers Edge campground (great place with super nice owners and hosts and really hot showers only 9 miles from Fairbanks).  Then we drove up the Dalton Hwy. and pitched the small tent at Coldsfoot, at the BLM campground Marion Creek for two nights and drove the other 115 miles up to Galbreth Lake.  This took us past the line where there is no more forest.  The mountains and valleys had beautiful green colors as you drive by but when you walk around  there are so  many flowers of different colors and sizes, so of course we spent hours photographing them.    I won't show you flowers right now though, because I need to go back a few weeks and do a photo essay of where we've been living in the wilderness with no internet and very rarely a phone signal.

OK, so I had to show you a few , I couldn't  help myself.

The last blog was us leaving Lake Superior, so I'll give a condensed itinerary then do some pictures .   We left the Upper, into Wisconsin, and followed Highway 2 west.  We only traveled a short distance into Minnasota before we took our 2nd side trip, the 1st being the "Porkies" on Superior.  The side trip was to Lake Itasca State Park, 60 miles south of  Hwy.2, and lasted a week. The park is a huge old-growth hardwood forest and also includes the site of the headwaters to the Mississippi River.  There is a fantastic outdoor interpretive center  and stairs where you can walk across the Mighty Miss. Since it was Thursday of Memorial weekend we actually camped 5 nights at a nearby rustic state forest campground at Hungry Men Lake with only 14 sites as opposed to Itasca with it's 224 sites.  The 1st night we had the whole place to ourselves.  Signs were posted near the boat dock that this was a Loon Nesting area and we were certainly serenaded each night.


                                 Bond Falls on Hwy. 45 on way to the " Porkies"

                           Hungry Men Lake  and  Lake Itasca State Wilderness

        Hungry Man Lake



Tallest White Pine


                       Tallest Red Pine








               Headwaters

Walking across river and 
remembering past 
family and friends.