My wife passed away Dec 2005 at 41 years old , I thought the world ended there and then. I isolated myself in my home full of remorse, guilt and a lot of self pity. I can hardly write this now after 10 years. My eyes are full of tears as I write this. I'm not a drinker of alcohol, but I tried it I figuring this would numb my feelings, it made things worst. My late wife and her parents were talking about a trip to Alaska via a cruise from Vancouver, for the summer of 2006. I decided in June 2006 I was going to do this trip myself, but I would be driving my Tacoma pickup truck to Alaska myself so in June I left for my road trip. En route I decided to pay a visit to my good friend in Sook on Vancouver Island retired Colonel Lee Drover to see if he wanted to go on my trip to Alaska. Lee was building a new house when I got there, so I spent a week helping him move into his house. When he got moved into his new home he decided to go with me to Alaska. We loaded the truck with a tent, axes, chainsaws, an old pump up Coleman stove that took white gas, gas lantern and lots of deer meat in the cooler, and off we go on our trip. We stayed in our tent at campsites along the way once in awhile getting a hotel for a good night's sleep and a wash. While driving in the mountains on gravel road in northern BC three birds hit the windshield of my truck within one half hour. Lee said that is a bad homen that something bad was going to happen. I asked if this bad thing will it happen to us and he said no but we will be involved. Lee is a religious man with strong belief in god, I believe in god also and religion in my OWN way. We drove for about an hour through hail, and sleet, when we reached the bottom of the mountain the hail and sleet changed to a very cold rain. I was driving and the road was gravel, as I was taking a right turn in the road along a glaicer river I caught something out of the corner of my eye on the river bank. I stopped the truck and Lee and I went back to check it out. There was a man with blood streaming down his face trying to crawl up over the embankment. There was a motorcycle out in the river and this man was in trouble. We both have advance first aid and we were trained for this kind of insident. It was cold so we gave this man some dry cloths and tended to his wounds and pulled his motorcycle out of the river, and got a fellow with a flat bed truck to take his bike and take this man to the hospital. He was a retired fireman from Ohio, on his way home from a trip to Alaska. We stayed in Whitehorse that night and crossed the border into Alaska the next morning. The next morning after about an half hour of driving we saw two guys at a rest stop with some kind of aircraft that I had not seem before, only on TV. I have a private pilot licence so I stopped the truck to take a look at those aircraft's. They were ultra lites, two seaters with a big prop at the rear and a parachute on the back, we talked with the guys for awhile about their aircraft and they told us they were going into the mountains for a week hunting sheep. The back seat of both aircrafts were loaded down with gear for their trip. One of the guys decided to take off, so I said to him I'm a pilot and I would not take off there in a fixed wing aircraft because the wind was blowing directly at the face of the mountain. He said that those aircraft were very safe and it would be no problem taking off with this wind. He started up the aircraft and began taxing on the rest stop next thing I knew he was travelling down the rest stop for take off so i grabed my camera and started taking pictures. A few minutes the aircraft turned on its side and started fallin into the side of the mountain. The aircraft went down in a bunch of trees about one third of the way up the mountain. My friend Lee has a bad leg and the other guy was dumbfounded so I ran up the mountain to pull him out of the plane before it would explode. When I got to the aircraft he was trying to get out soI helped him get out. He had some cut and bruises but he was ok. He was very concerned about his plane and how he was going to get back to his trailer to take it back to his home in Anchorage. My truck is a 4 wheel drive and I'm use to putting my it in hard to reach places because I'm a hunting guide in Newfoundland. I drove up the side of the mountain until I reached the trees. Then Lee and I pulled out chainsaws and axes and cut a path to the aircraft. I hooked the ultralite to my Tacoma and pulled it out of the trees and down the mountain to their trailer. Those two guys couldn't belive want they were witnessing and how efficent we were at getting things done. They thanked us and were on their way home, with most of there injuries to their prides. Lee drove after this and neither one of us spoke for about one half an hour, then Lee said, " that's two birds down the next one his going to involve water". I looked at him with both fear and excitment. We stayed at a campsite in Toke Alaska that night, not talking much about our recent experiences. The next mornig we left for Valdez to do some salmon fishing on Prince William Sound. We checked out the prices from some local charter companies but the price for a day on the sound was too much for our budget. Lee went for a walk that evening and when he came back a couple of hours later he said that he had a day on the sound for us. Two eldery fellows that had their own boat and had been coming to Alaska from Texas for the past 13 years salmon fishing. They would take us out for 50 bucks worth of fuel for the boat. This was great news so we bought our licence the next day. We were allowed 6 salmon each so we could catch 24 salmon for the boat. We had 18 fish caught when we had a distress call on the radio that there was a boat capsized near us with 3 people in the water. We rushed to the nearby area and found one fellow floating face down in the water so we grabbed him first. The others were treading water and some other boats came around by now and took the other two aboard their boats. We had to give this fellow we had aboard CPR he through up a lot of water, he was ok now so we took him ashore where the police and ambulance were waiting. That night i couldn't sleep thinking about all that had happened in a short few days. I had a sign on the tailgate of my truck which my niece gave me in Manitoba it read " parking for newfies only all others will be towed" that sign got a lot of attention from their on as word spread. Eveywhere we went in Alaska people would say "You're the 2 newfies who did those rescues. We were heroes all through Alaska and were treated like royality. The U.S milirary base at Fairbanks gave us a log cabin to stay in with food and the works. Lee said after the third rescue, " everything will be ok now no more trouble, that's the 3 birds". I dropped Lee off at his home in Sook BC and left for Calfornia. I drove down the western seaboard of the USA and across Arizona to Florida and back up the eastern seabord of the USA and back home with no trouble, not even a flat tire on this whole trip. My sister, the Reverand Ellen Curtis is an Anglican minster in New Brunswick and she had given me a cross so I would be safe on my trip. I still have that cross in my truck and it goes where I go and I swear that is what kept me safe on my trip the cross. this a very true story, of my trip there was a lot more experinces on this trip to much to tell hear. that trip was the best medicine I could take for the lost of my very lovely wife.   Submitted By: NULL