Canada & Alaska in May

[UK-RV]

Hi Guys

We are now in Valdez, Alaska.

I'm relaxing and enjoying a nice cold beer in temperatures that must be over 80F !!

Attached are a couple of photos I just took, which show the beautiful snowy mountains and bright sunshine.

During the past 3 weeks, since entering Canada, we've enjoyed brilliant sunshine every day but 2 - and then we only suffered a light shower.

We've lost track of the wildlife encountered along the way.

I would recommend to any of you, that this is a GREAT time to head north.

The campgrounds are nice and quite (a few have been closed, but we just dry camped 'somewhere').

We've just got our Alaska Toursaver book ($100) and will save $90 on a boat trip tomorrow.

After using the book for 2 of our future tours, we will be in credit by $100.

We're here for 3 nights, before heading toward Anchorage.

You can see some of the photos at our website www.ukrv.co.uk - remember, Im not a travel writer - the site is more geared toward letting family know where we are etc.

Paul

 

[Ron]

Sound like your having a great trip.  Thanks for sharing.  Great photos.

 

[Ian]

Hi Paul, like the photos. I have been interested in the progress of your journey. If ever I get to drive around the US then your diary will be an essential part of the planning, if it went wrong for you it would probably be a disaster for us

You can see some of the photos at our website www.ukrv.co.uk

The web site, mmm, for starters it isn't friendly to Firefox, especially the Gallery. Even in IE it was a pain to work though the mouse presses to get to the photos I was looking for near the end of the collection. Some of the other pages didn't play nicely for me either.
Perhaps we can open another thread to have a talk about the site and what you are using to build it with. Maybe there is room for others to come up with some ideas that might help.

 

[UK-RV]

Hi Ian

Yes, Im aware of the problem with the photos page.

I only had a few minutes to spare one day, so just uploaded every photo I had into the easiest option available to me.

Im SLOWLY going thru and placing the photos into each relevant part of the tour.

The problem is trying to limit the file size to make loading easier but also keep the pics a decent size/quality.

Unfortunately, the site is designed for a few family/friends rather than mass market, and I know these people are only using IE, so there is little need for me to expand my software developing skills  ;D

Having said that, Im using Frontpage and any advice would be more than welcome !!!

In particular, I have been trying to find why the 'stripes' image keeps appearing down the right hand side of the pages, after adding any pics to the page.

Paul

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

You have had outstanding luck with the weather, Paul, so enjoy it while you can.  Drizzle and chill is pretty common in the coastal areas, though it never stopped us from doing what we wanted.  I think we saw 80+ degrees for two days in Anchorage during our 75 days in Alaska and northwest Canada.  Lots of pleasant days in the low 70's, though,

 

[UK-RV]

Gary

There is just one reason we are having such good weather - we had purchased Rain Suits especially for this part of the trip? ;D ;D

If we hadn't, it WOULD be raining !


Ian

Ive just taken a look at the website in Firefox and the only problem I see is that the photos, which are meant to have 3 which scroll and one which enlarges underneath, are all shown in a line which requires the use of the horizontal scroll bar.

Is there anything else ?


Paul

 

[Ian]

Having said that, Im using Frontpage and any advice would be more than welcome !!!

Would it be rude of me to just say DONT!
Yeh, I'm sorry, that wasn't helpful, but at least it got it off my chest
I guess I am from the old school where FrontPage was always a shocker, and I have yet to be convinced that it still isn't all that much better.
I craft my sites with HomeSite 5.2 and NoteTab Pro (and I have even done them in NotePad and wont ever do that again!)
My latest sites are built with Joomla! CMS which would do the job nicely but that is usually for a much bigger site than you are planning to use. This is a Joomla! site I made up for a college assignment a month or two back. It is just a dummy site using the elements they insisted on.  If anybody wants to look behind the scenes just drop me a line for access.

Back to the task at hand. I cant advise on how to work with FrontPage, I don't use it. I can take a look at the pages to see if I can help with advice on anything that I can see might be going wrong. Maybe that will help?

 

[Karl]

Ian,

I looked at the source for your site and, quite frankly, found it hard to follow. Maybe it's easier with the Joomla editor, but I find the nested functions look kind of haphazardly laid out, i.e. cooresponding <div>/</div> not lined up; not in a nice tree form. Also lots of white space where things like <label> (text) </label> could very easily be on the same line. How does it look in the editor? I'm going to take a look at the Joomla site and see if they have any screenshots. Nice looking home page, though!

 

[Tom]

Paul,

Since your site is really 1-way communication aka a blog, why not just use blog software such as Wordpress?

If photos were your only concern, you could use Coppermine Photo Gallery. You can see Coppermine in action with our forum photos by clicking the Photos button above.

Easier yet is one of the photo sharing sites. I use pixagogo for our family on both sides of the Atlantic to share photos. All photos and albums can have text attached. Unlimited albums and unlimited photos for a flat fee and no software or hosting to worry about.

I'm with Ian as far as Front Page is concerned.

 

[Tom]

I looked at the source for your site and, quite frankly, found it hard to follow.

Karl,

Joomla is a menu-driven Content Management System (aka CMS) which started life as Mambo, the CMS we use for our forum web site. The original Mambo developers left the company and went on their own. Don't expect to make sense of the code by looking at any displayed page, just like the code of this page you're viewing doesn't make sense; There are several layers behind it that are not visible &/or not apparent.

Mambo and Joomla are an overkill for what Paul is trying to do.

 

[rhmahoney]

Brewers, reiters and I have crossed into Canada today and are boondocking at a rest stop S of Radium Hot springs BC after visiting Gordon and Linda McMillan in Cranbrook.

 

[Shayne]

I'm envious of the group.  Russ, hope you the Brewers and McMillans keep the wonderful pictures coming as you did during the Moab expedition.  Thank you for keeping us informed.

 

[Ned]

Here's a couple of photos from the last few days.  The B&B is in Cottonwood, ID, then the 3 motorhomes ready to depart Sandpoint, ID, and a view from our "campsite" for the night.

 

[UK-RV]

We've just enjoyed an OK day out with Stan Stephens cruises - but NOWHERE near as good as the one out of Skagway to Juneau (and back? ;D)

Although SS was with a half price toursaver ticket.

Here are a few pics of us at 10.30-11.00 PM !!

YES - we had been for a meal and a drink (well a few drinks).

Paul

 

[Tom]

Where did you buy your saver book Paul?

 

[UK-RV]

Tom

We finally got one in Safeway/Carrs in Valdez

The toursaver web doesnt give any option other than buying thru them, but when I tried calling them with a question there was just an answering machine - all 5 times of calling !

Paul

 

[JohnSandyWhite]

Hi Paul. I have just looked through your website and saw a mention of the expense of phoning back to the UK. You have Wifi like we had? We used Voipbuster to spend as much time as we wanted to phone both in the UK and the USA for virtually nothing. Free in the USA and only a couple of Euro cents per minute to phone the UK.?

I am seriously considering flying over for another 3 months.? ;D ;D

 

[Tom]

Thanks Paul.

 

[Chet18013]

Hi Paul,

With the increase in WiFi availabilty, you might want to consider  looking into

www.skype.com

With this system, you can make FREE dialup calls to anywhere in the US and Canada until 2007. Calls to England are about $.02 per minute also. I just made a call to Lincolnshire 3 days ago, talked for 22 minutes for less than $.50 US. The sound quality was better than my cell phone has ever been.

Chet18013

 

[Ron]

I second Chets recommendation on using Skype.  We use it to talk to friends in Nova Scotia frequently.  Should work very well for you.