There is no electrical grid in Buhoma – the name of the settlement that includes the buildings both inside and outside of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. It took 180km (111 miles) of poor dirt roads to get here and the nearest paved road is 85km (53 miles) away. Our purpose for coming to Buhoma was to see the mountain gorillas in the wild.
We spent three days in the Denali National Park area, including stays at two different lodges. The highlight of this time was a bus tour on the only paved road inside the park.
We took the train to the Pacific Ocean, at Whittier, and boarded the cruise ship to continue our journey. The first stop was a day cruise in Glacier Bay National Park, which was spectacular!
As we continued towards Vancouver on the cruise, we sailed through Alaska’s Inside Passage and stopped at three well-known cities: Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan.
In August 2005 we spent three weeks exploring Peru, visiting the Amazon Basin, hiking in Colca Canyon and gazing on the lost city of Machu Picchu.
Traveling across the USA by train is an unique way to see and experience the variety and scale of the country. We broke up the journey, stretching it into a 17 day trip in August / September 2004, by stopping at Glacier National Park for five days and visiting Chicago before reaching New York City.
To begin this cross country journey, we went north by train to Oregon, where we had to resort to taking a replacement bus to meet our connecting train that left Portland before we were due to arrive. Once on the next train east, we made our way toward Glacier National Park.
The first few days of our time in Glacier National Park were spent on the west side of the continental divide. Here we enjoyed our lakeside hotel room, drove along scenic roads and took several day hikes to beautiful lakes.
The east side of Glacier National Park was no less spectacular than the west side. We continued our day hikes in the area and stayed in one of the historic lodges. A day trip to Waterton National Park in Alberta, Canada was a highlight.
After spending time in national parks, arriving in a big city like Chicago was a big change. During the three days we spent here we visited several museums and saw a Chicago Cubs baseball game.
