The Butchart Gardens 100 years in bloom.

 Butchart Gardens. There are 55 acres of flower gardens as well as a boat house/dock on Brentwood Bay along Vancouver Island. Weather is mild year round so flowers do bloom year round.

The Butchart Gardens are located on Vancouver Island in the Brentwood Bay area. The island is not very large and although the maps of the island are enlarged to show different places of interest. I drove from each location in 10 minutes or less. After three days I noticed my gas gauge had not changed.  After Alaska where people would drive four hours to go out for ice cream this is a nice change.

A view from the top as I walk down into the Sunken Garden that is as large as five football fields.

This Sunken Garden was a large excavation pit for Mr. Butchart who had a Portland Cement business.

Mrs Butchart wanted to have a place for a flower garden so she had millions of tons of top soil brought in to grow her garden on top of what was a lime and limestone quarry. Good idea Mrs. B.

 The deep dark forest was a nice relief on a hot day. Today the high temperature will be in the 80's with a cool ocean breeze and nights are usually in lower 50's. I have been camping for two months
and this weather does not require air conditioning and humidity is low.

 With the large trees and the ferns I imagined this is what the Jurassic period looked like.

Very old trees with huge roots.  Cool and shady walkway leading to the Sunken Garden.

 Huge trees.  I wanted to stand in the shade on a very hot day.

 More stairs to the Sunken Garden.  None of the trees, bushes or flowers were here in early 1900's when this are was a limestone quarry. Thanks to Mrs. B for her love of gardens.

Sunken Garden is 1,500 foot by 1,000 ft across. This is part of the 55 acre Butchart Gardens.

The Butchart Gardens are located on Vancouver Island about 20 miles North of Victoria the capitol of British Columbia. Because Vancouver Island is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Straits of Georgia the climate is mild year round and the garden can bloom year round. Victoria is located South of the Canadian -US border and is quite close to Seattle, Washington.

Sunken Garden

 Sunken Garden

 View of the Sunken Garden from above.

 Stairs in the middle of the Sunken Garden.

 Water Lilies

 Water Lilies not by Monet.

 This is an artist painting in oil paint the garden scenery.

 The garden artist is popular today.

 Water Lilies.

 Water Lilies by Butchart Gardens.

 The many stages of the water fountain.

This is the stage of fountain I like best.

 We can only hope these Dragon Flies are not real.  Who's that eating ice cream? Busted. Run.

Happy Children playing.

 Musical Carousel

 Concert tonight at 8:30 pm.

 Totem are big on the island- don't know who that is.

 Popcorn next to the musical carousel.

Ferns are big here.

 People- don't know any of them but never could take a picture without people.

 Delphinium  with a rose on the side.

 Rose garden

Make a Wish. Wish I had a place to sit down.

 Rose garden

 Japanese water sculpture

 Events center for large group meetings.

 Japanese fish sculpture.

A view through the trees to the boat dock on Brentwood bay below.

         

   This is a real Dragon Fly sitting on a sprinkler head.

 Japanese garden water fall.

 Japanese garden bridge.

 Red Japanese garden bridge.

 Boat dock to see the water lilies garden on Brentwood bay.

 Butchart Cove Lookout for the family's personal use.

 This is what it looks like when I was looking up at the tree tops while laying on the sidewalk. Tired.

 Japanese garden water.

 Water Lilies

Sunken Garden from top of the stairs.

At last the gift shop. 

Later there will be pictures and story of a Scottish Castle circa 1860 located on the tallest hill in Victoria.

One morning I was at the Natural History Museum in downtown Victoria.

There are still weeks I have not been able to get the blog written for.

Today I spent a few hours in the Coeur d' Alene library in Idaho the day before I head to Bear Tooth Pass near Yellowstone National Park in Montana. I will be there tomorrow.

Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria, the capitol of British Columbia is located on Vancouver Island. 

The only way to take the Roadtrek to Vancouver Island was by ferry. 

Earlier that morning I arrived from Skagway, Alaska to Bellingham, Washington by ferry.

 I drove the short 35 miles to the city of Vancouver, BC.

Vancouver, BC.is the city located to the East of Victoria.

The Fairmont Empress Hotel located in Victoria on the harbor.

Afternoon tea also called "high tea" has been a custom since 1807.

Boondocking at Walmart overnight to "high tea" at the Empress Hotel.

I am sure the Queen would not approve. I had felt like the Queen had been watching me.

Queen Elizabeth

The Queen has here portrait on the wall over my right shoulder.

I knew I had been watched.

The menu says:
Cucumber sandwich with saffron.
Smoked salmon & herb cream cheese pinwheel.

Dessert had five items offered for all those having lunch at our table.
That would be me. The advantages to traveling solo.

Next I was going to the Butchart Gardens a 55 acre display of flowers .

Denali National Park

Scenes from the drive North to Denali National Park.

Denali National park is the size of the state of Vermont.

 I try to imagine what Winter must look like with snow deep.

This is a typical Alaska roadside scene. Rivers with huge boulders,

 water as blue as the sky and tall slender trees.

 The name Mt McKinley is not used by locals as this name was chosen by an Ohio state senator disregarding the local Denali tribes. The local people call the mountain Denali Mountain.

I will have pictures of Mt McKinley later and its two peaks, the tallest 20,230 ft.

 I have been looking at the snow capped Denali mountain for last 150 miles as I drive North.

Monday, June 17th, I drove North to Denali National Park  from Anchorage about 250 miles.

Next week I camp at the Techlanika River site about 35miles into Denali. This camp site is the same area the book " Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer was written about. Chris McCandless, the young college grad who went to Alaska to show he could live a minimalist life in the back woods. Four months later his body was found by a hunter. Recently there were three German college students who went to the same area and were trapped in the abandoned structure Chris McCandless had died in. Luckily they were found and rescued.

When I hike next week into the backwoods of Denali I will not be looking for the structure Chris McCandless was found. I will be enjoying the immense scenery and looking for grizzly bears that could be a problem.

I will be going to Fairbanks to be at the Midnight Sun celebration. I hear it has developed into a week long party with druids who dress up in costume. Hopefully not like 200BC druids and there will not be any human sacrifices or cannibalism.

The real reason to come to Alaska has been to see the untouched beauty of the vast landscape. The wildlife that is so close it is impossible to not see moose, black bear and elk out especially in the morning and early evening. I have seen grizzly bears usually at higher mountain trails, although I saw three grizzly bear along roadside one morning from 15 feet away. With the sun up almost 24 hours a day it is easy to see what is around the area. At this moment it is 1 am and the sun is as bright as 11 am in the morning and it will be this way for the next week until after June 21st when the days will slowly shorten for Winter. 

Along the Alaskan Highway 3 is the Nenana River. 

On a very hot 93 degree June 19th, an adult bull moose was up to his ears in the cool river.

How deep does the river need to be to submerge a moose?  See picture below.

 

This moose was seen along the road that leads to the backwoods of Denali. 

This moose is over 7 foot tall at his head. There was a Japanese photographer maybe 5 feet tall standing within ten feet of this moose. She was asked to get back in her car by park employees. 

This is a juvenile grizzly bear from the Kenai Peninsula last week. Foggy last weekend, Homer, AK.
I saw two large adult grizzly bears with a cub eating sweet grass along the highway.
 Thought it best to not disturb the grizzly bears with the cub. A dangerous place to be at the time.

  Kachemak Bay, Homer, AK on Kenai Peninsula. Foggy at 1:00 in the afternoon.

There will be more photos and comments over the next six days while I stay at Denali Campgrounds.

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

The rain didn't stop. Everyday that I drove the rain was heavy at times and the temperatures were in the low 40's to upper 30's since the glacial mountain and valleys acted like a huge refrigerator.

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory is a larger town by backwoods mountain town standards. I had gotten used to the lack of services in the mountains, but now I needed car parts to continue driving in the rainy weather.

Whitehorse, YT has a Napa store and now I had hope of buying the electric wiper motor and repairing my wiper. I was getting tired of cheating death at every winding mountain turn with no guard rails.

The Napa store confirmed I needed a $800  electric motor replaced to make the wiper work again. They had no parts in stock and they only get deliveries once a week. It would be a week before parts are available. Now I was desperate so I tried the local salvage yard. My father would be proud of me digging up my used part to fix my own vehicle. I still remember being scolded because I bought a new part as a teenager repairing the family car. I wasn't real happy about not only having to fix my own vehicle but having to cannibalize used car parts that are greasy, dirty and remember freezing cold to fix my own car.  So I find the local junk yard and when I told the junkyard guy I needed a 2005 Chevy wiper motor I was told "Mister nobody here drives a car that new." Again, I would drive another day without my driver side wiper working.

 Next town is Tok, Alaska.

I was looking forward to being home to the USA. It had been almost a month without familiar use of English. Tired of litres of gas, paying with Loonies, Toonies and driving 110 km/hr and feel like I'm standing still. Don't get me wrong the Canadian people were very nice. But I'm used to services and parts being available, give me some US consumerism any day. One evening I had a long talk with a gentleman from British Columbia and he said the Canadian's really like to come to the US to shop, buy gas and have our heath care system. They have a carbon tax that has made gas very expensive and all products delivered to stores are given a carbon tax. The bad part is the carbon tax money goes to the general fund and the government wastes the money. The national health care in Canada is so poor that people who can afford to travel leave to have treatment but a health care tax is added to all products making everything more expensive. He is worried he will have no place for health care when Obamacare is the required health care standard.

First I needed to get through US Customs, I had heard it would be harder to get back in the US than it was to enter Canada. I arrive at the US Border Crossing station, "Do you have anything to declare" I was asked in a not so happy tone. It made me glad to hear the not so nice American way of doing business. God Bless America. "Nothing to declare". Let me see your papers. Sure I thought, I need papers. I, born here, need papers. But no, I was cool and behaved myself. I was allowed to pass and drove on. Immediately the roads were smoother, the Sun shone bright and all was good with the world. Really the Sun came out and the roads were not rattling my fillings out of my teeth anymore.  

I drove to the first town in Alaska, Tok. As many isolated towns are they are self-sufficient and have people within their town, who make it possible to survive the long Winter without outside help.  And they have a Napa store, I was sure the part would be there waiting for me. I asked the clerk for the part, told him my problem and he said "You don't need no part. If one wiper is working and the other is not, there is only one motor for two wiper blades". "Just tighten the nut on the blade that won't move" He showed me the nut, I took out my socket set and tightened the nut. It works, no $800 charge and only took three turns of the nut. This made my day.

Things got better from the minute I crossed into the US. Next was the gas I bought, only $4.00 per gallon. Yes, higher than back home but still good news to me, better than $7.50/gallon in Canada. The best part was the offer of a free car wash with a fill. A fill was considered 25 gallons. With an RV I could get a free car wash every day. It was a do it yourself pressure washer car wash but unlimited water and a bucket with soap and a long handled brush no charge. After muddy gravel roads with pot holes in the Yukon and log trucks coming head on, the Roadtrek looked more like a 20 foot long Tootsie Roll than an RV.  I cleaned up my language of what my RV really looked like. After the car wash I needed a good place to camp. Drove a ways down the road and saw a big sign $10 Boondocking, Free Shower included. I am really beginning to like this town of Tok, Alaska. First they save me $800 on repair, then a free car wash with low cost gas and a free shower when boondocking for only $10.00. What else could happen? Well I found out. In the town square they have a 15 foot tall glass box with a stuffed moose inside. My kinda people.

Tomorrow I drive to the city of Anchorage. I had visions of McDonald's milkshakes. Shopping on every corner. I decided since I had just put 6,500 miles on the Roadtrek in the last 28 days I will have a Chevy dealer check the engine and tires. I had synthetic oil put in at Great Falls, Mt and that was 3,000 miles ago. The oil will be good for another 3,000 miles. I have a college friend in Anchorage so it is time to call him.

I'll be back to Tok, Alaska on my way home. I'll be sure to get a picture of the moose in the glass box and the Boondocking sign with Free shower to add to the blog.

July 1st I board the Columbia Ferry, a 280 ft ferry that will take me and my Roadtrek the 1,900 miles Inside Passage from Skagway, Alaska to Bellingham,Washington. I will have a real private room with exterior window with shower and bathroom. The best 5 1/2 days of the trip I hope.