my travels in pixels

Bella Coola, British Columbia, Canada This place is special and this trip has been planned on the time we wanted to spend in Bella Coola. We don’t actually stay in Bella Coola, but in the valley which is at the end of Highway 20 aka the Freedom Road after descending the Heckman Pass otherwise known as “the hill”. A steep, winding, narrow in parts gravel road that descends from 5000ft to the valley floor in just over 21 kms which takes about an hour to travel. There are places which are only one vehicle wide and while downhill traffic is supposed to give way to uphill traffic, they don’t! The drops are breathtaking and I was much happier when our lane was closest to the mountain side. We only had to pass one truck which happened to be in a wide section, all the other vehicles were cars. As we passed the Provincial campground at Fisheries Pool, we stopped outside and I walked in to see if there were any vacancies. As I was walking down the pot-holed dirt road overhung...

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming Yellowstone is so large that you need to spend time in different areas. During our first year we came in the south gate from the Grand Tetons and stayed at Grant Village, then moved up to Tower Fall so that we could visit the Lamar and Tower area, then Norris to see the western side of the park. view from our campsite This year after Fishing Bridge, we moved up to Mammoth where we have stayed numerous times before. Our favourite campsite wasn't available, so we stayed in another for one night and moved the next day. The campground is full every night, and when we went to renew our site, they had taken the envelopes away to stop people stealing other people's campsites!

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming Yellowstone would have to be the most famous national park in the world. We have returned for the fourth year in a row because it is so unique. We have stayed in seven of their campgrounds and they are all different, the park is huge, so it makes sense that you find one in the right location. Then there are the opening times to consider and whether we will fit or not. We decided to try Madison this year which is near the west entrance. It's a really nice campground run by Xanterra, not the national parks system, and as a bonus it has a dump station, on the down side there is no cell service. We had booked ahead which was a good decision as the campground was full that night, we asked to add two extra days onto our booking when we arrived but they could only give us one. The first afternoon we arrived I suggested that we drive south to Old Faithful as I knew that Lindsay would want to go out each day looking for bears and therefore would be m...

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming Tom Tom took us through Idaho which looked longer but a quicker route than the one we took last year, but was the same as the one we took the year before. There were a few times when she got lost and told us we were going in the wrong direction, but we recognized some of the landmarks so knew she was wrong and kept going. We got into Gros Ventre campground (pronounced gro-vont) in the late afternoon and the lady couldn’t believe that we wanted to stay a week. I had to confirm that Lindsay was indeed serious. Most people it seems only stay a night or two. We have been there three times before and love it. Unbeknown to us, the campground had only been open a day! What luck we didn’t arrive earlier. There was only one loop open, right at the end – why wouldn’t they just open the one closest to the entrance? The following day we went in search of bears. Lindsay had heard from a guy whose Facebook page he follows that there had been sightings up...

Lake Clark, AK About 18-months ago I researched where we could go to photograph some bears, and decided on Silver Salmon Creek Lodge at Lake Clark and booked it; so it has been a long anticipated wait. The booking included flights from Soldotna to Lake Clark, accommodation, food and a guide to take us to photograph the bears and a boat trip to photograph the puffins. We chose August as this is when the bears are fishing for salmon and our whole trip has been based around this holiday within a holiday. Prior to our flight from Soldotna to Lake Clark it pretty much rained for two weeks, apart from about four days, which we spent looking around the rest of the Kenai peninsula with day trips to the towns of Kenai and Homer.  On the way to Homer you see a number of beautiful snow capped mountains, with glaciers and mountains greeting you as you drive into town.  We also went down to the Russian River an hour away a number of times as we were told that we would defi...