Mak'n miles

We have looked at the guide books. We have looked at the maps. We can't find anything we are particularly interested in seeing. To paraphrase that famous classic rock song "it's time for me to fly". We did nearly 400 miles today. That doesn't seem particularly impressive but 8 hours is pushing my limit. We stopped at "Dave's Campground" in Vanderhoof BC. We met Dave. A real nice guy with 2 hearing aids. Jenny thinks Dave and I might have more than our names in common soon. Tomorrow should be our last day in Canada. 

Looking for bear

That was our first stop this morning. We waited around for 30 minutes and left without a sighting. Next we drove 17 miles up a dirt road to get a view of a glacier. We were above it looking down. The views were really spectacular. We will send pics at a later date. We hiked around in the tundra for a while and then headed back. After lunch in Hyder we drove back to see if any bears had showed up. Nope. We then took a hike up into the Tongass national forest to have a look at the ginormous old growth Sitka Spruce trees. The hike could have been through the set of one of "The Lord of The Rings" movies. On our way back to the MP, right across from the bear viewing area, we almost ran over a black bear. Figures.

Stewart BC and Hyder Alaska

The drive today was reputed to be one of the most scenic in BC. Low ceilings and constant rain prevented us from seeing much of it. Things began to improve as we turned up the narrow, deep, valley that leads to Stewart. There is an ice field on the top of both sides of the valley that is melting. There are hanging glaciers on both sides of the road and a tremendous number of waterfalls that are over 1000 feet. It's sort of like Yosemite on steroids. We drove up to the bear viewing area but got skunked. We did see a few big salmon swimming up stream. We will give the bears another chance tomorrow. We are spending 2 nights here.

Iskut, British Columbia

Yeah, I'd never heard of it either. We drove on The Cassiar highway for about 5 hours to get here. We stopped at Jade City and Jenny bought Aubrey a gift. Try not to tell her Courtney. There is a reality Canadian TV show built around the family that runs Jade City. The highway wasn't bad. It was 1 1/2 lanes, had no centerline stripe and no shoulder and luckily, no traffic. This highway is not too far from the coast. It was the original route of the Alaska highway but the powers in charge at the time thought that it was too vulnerable to attack so they moved the route further inland. Tomorrow is Stewart BC. I've never heard of it either.

Watson Lake YT.

This is the place with the "signpost forest". We have been retracing our steps. Tomorrow we breakaway from our inbound route and take a short cut. It's called the Cassiar highway. We will be on it for 2 or 3 days depending on if we take a day off. There is a spur road off of the Cassiar that enters Alaska. There is no customs check point there because there is no place to go except back into Canada. There is a river there that is full of Salmon and it attracts bears. The bears are so used to people that they will let you scratch them behind their ears. No one has ever lived through the experience but apparently the bears are willing

Back at Whitehorse

Last night was Beaver Creek Yukon. Difficult to find on a map but a welcome stopping point after a rainy drive. Today we drove the portion of The Alaska Highway that we bypassed on the way up. This stretch follows the original route that was layed down in 1941. It's road bed is on top of permafrost so, consequently, it is a roller coaster ride. There was a 50 mile strength of dirt that was supposedly being worked on. We did 278 miles today and believe me, I had had more than enough when we got here. We have found what appears to be a neat place to view bears catching fish. That's a couple of days away. Since we are in canada we have to pay for wifi so no pics for a few days.

Passing through Tok

We are 100 miles from the border. We are Planning on stopping in Beaver Creek Yukon this afternoon. Jenny took the pic out the window on the road to Tok

Near Glennallen AK

We left Kenai, drove through Anchorage, got on the Glenn highway and 335 miles later here we are. Tomorrow we will drive through Tok. If you drive into, or out of, Alaska you have to drive through Tok. We should be back in Canada tomorrow. We will turn our phones off at the border. My blog posts will be less compelling. This is completely unrelated but last year an all time record high temp was set in Anchorage on this date.  79. We are not sure yet which route out of Tok we will take. We will need to talk to someone. We are camped next to a small Creek. (In Texas, it would be a major river) this is a pic of our camp.

We've made the turn

Today was: 1. A bike ride 2. A hike in The Kenai national wildlife refuge (mosquitoes were the only wildlife) 3. 18 holes of disk golf (have I mentioned how much I suck at disk golf?) Jenny and I are a disk golf team. We work together to find the tee. In disk golf it's not always obvious, then Jenny walks ahead and tries to find the basket, sometimes it takes a while. She then positions herself somewhere down the fairway where she thinks I might throw my first disk. I throw it, and she watches it. It usually ends up in deep grass or impenetrable forest. She points it out to me as I walk up and then she moves down the course to insure I don't loose the disk on my second shot. Most holes are par 3. I sometimes get a 3 but usually something larger. Anyway, after disk golf we went to Walmart. Tomorrow we start back. Since there are so few roads in Alaska and the Yukon we will be retracing our route some. I only took one picture today and it wasn't much. This is a pic of me writing this post.

Day trip to Homer

Homer Alaska is the Halibut capital of the known universe. Halibut is, in my opinion, a weird fish. When it is young it's eyes are on opposite sides of it's head. Some how, one of it's eyes shifts when it grows older so that both of them end up on the same side. See? We spent most of the day just exploring. We needed 3 weeks and we had 6 hours. We can say we have been to Homer but that's about it. We took these pics during our visit.

Kenai AK

This trip has been chock full of once in a lifetime events. We had another one today. We are camped at the junction of the Kenai river and Cooks inlet. Once a year, for 3 weeks, Alaskan citizens can come here and catch salmon with a dip net. Glad you asked. It's a humongous butterfly net used to catch fish. (See pic) You push this thing out into the water and the fish swim into it. Drag it back to shore, club the salmon on the head with a stick, repeat. The number of fish being caught in this manner was not to be believed. Most of the fish were beheaded, gutted and fileted right there. The seagulls absolutely loved it. Of course, walking along the beach covered with fish offal did nothing for Jenny's appetite. She thinks she might have nightmares tonight.

Last day in Seward

No life affirming events were on the agenda today. I paddled for a couple of hours on a lake behind the campground and then Jenny and I drove into Seward for an Alaskan seafood lunch followed by a trip to the grocery store. Tomorrow we drive to the other side of the peninsula for 3 nights. The second pic is the view out of our restaurants' window.

Kenai Fjords tour

We were somewhat concerned as we drove into Seward this morning because it was raining. As has been the case most days, we only had to wait a little while and  the weather changed. I'm now thinking I got sunburned. We saw the following: Humpback whales, Orcas, Stellar sea lions, Harbor seals, Sea Otters, Dalls porpoise, Puffins and a smack of jelly fish (look it up). Between wildlife sightings we floated at the foot of an active glacier and watched it calve icebergs into the fjord for 45 minutes. That was cool. Oh, and we had a salmon and prime rib and king crab evening meal on a private island. Another trip with some personal "firsts".

Seward Alaska

We're actually camped 17 miles outside of Seward. At the moment we are sitting in a cafe in Seward looking out into Resurrection bay (named by Capt. Cook) after his boat. We are here because we have booked an all day boat tour into a couple of glacier filled fjords. It's supposed to be extremely cool. Cell and wifi are not to be trusted where we are so I will attempt to send this from this café.

Planning day

We decided we needed to figure out what else we wanted to do and how much time we had to do it. It is stunning how far Anchorage is from Beaufort. Anyway, we sort of have a loose plan that is set in jello. We actually can't dawdle too much more. Tomorrow we move to the Kenai Peninsula. We will dawdle there in 2 locations for 6 days. This should be our last bit of dawdling. There is an army post here. I rode my bike today along a portion of the perimeter fence and I came upon this sign. I guess its a 'fill in the blank.' I was thinking something like "shot on sight" or "asked to leave" or maybe "handcuffed to Ann Colter". Any ideas?

Chugach state park (near Anchorage)

We weren't here 15 minutes and we saw a couple of moose and a black bear. This campground has no hook-ups so we won't be able to stay here too long. After we got set up we drove into Anchorage and did a city tour. We got a text from Sandy Dudek while we were eating a reindeer hotdog. They were eating lunch (Musk - ox liver pate I think) at a restaurant down the block. They are flying out tonight. We had a brief get together and said our goodbyes. This first pic was taken at the Talkeetna cemetery. I'm thinking maybe he should of.

Glacier flight

We are 2 months into this trip. It's hard to imagine today not being the highlight of the entire trip. When we checked in for our flight at 2:30, no flights had been able to do a glacier landing because of bad weather. The flight ahead of us radioed in that things were breaking up and he was able to land. Off we went. Jenny and I were both blown away by what we were seeing. It was a high definition, 3D, IMAX, national geographic special!! 40 mile long, 4000 feet deep, ribbons of ice snaking up narrow U shaped canyons. We flew around for 45 minutes, awestruck, and then we landed. Mt. McKinley was right there. We puttered around on the glacier for about 30 minutes and then we took off. We flew up another glacier filled canyon and then headed back to Talkeetna. I'm still pinching myself. Sometimes, things just come together in magical ways. This was one of those times. 

The (no kidding) mayor of Talkeetna

The honorable mayor Stubbs.

Trapper Creek AK

We have moved only 120 miles south. We are here because this campground is fairly close (30 miles) to Talkeetna. Talkeetna is the place that Mt. McKinley climbers catch a flight to base camp. We have booked a 2 hour flight tomorrow that flies around the mountain and lands on a glacier. Another benefit to our camp location is that there's a grocery store only 15 miles from it. There was nada at Denali. We were there long enough that we were running critically short of supplies. There are some "free spirited" (I'm being nice) people who live out here. I'm confident some of the locals would feel comfortable living under a bridge in the lower 48. An interesting crowd. Here are some pics I took today. 

Denali day 8 (the last day)

The Dudeks arrived last night and we got together for drinks and to catch up on things. They are touring the park today. Jenny & I did a long hike that required a shuttle. We hired a young man to drive us 8 miles to the trailhead. We once again climbed up pretty high but we stayed in the trees. The scenery was super spectacular. We took so many good pics it's hard to choose which ones to post. Tomorrow we pull up stakes and move a little further south. We will probably stay in Alaska for a while longer. We have been collecting Alaska tourist  propaganda for some time now and the clever brainwashing that occurs while reading it has convinced us to stay and spend more money.

Denali day 7

Today, Jenny hauled my bike and I up the park road 15 miles and I rode back to the visitors center. My bike has been collecting dust for the last few days and needed to be ridden. On the way up we had a pretty good view of Mt. McKinley. The mountain is almost always shrouded in clouds. It's fairly common to visit the park and not see it. We have had several good views. This evening the Dudeks,  our friends from Tega Cay, (currently residing in Georgetown) will be arriving by train. They are on an Alaska cruise and the park is a side trip. I found a good pic of the skree slope we had to negotiate on our hike yesterday and decided to include it today.

Denali day 6

Today was our "Discovery Adventure Hike". We caught the bus at the, Wilderness access center, and motored up the park road 35 miles. Our ranger guide, Peter, led us into the woods. There wasn't a trail. In fact there aren't too many trails in the entire park. We Bushwacked up to tree line then continued up on tundra. This was a very steep ascent. We got to the summit and had to negotiate a traverse around a rotten rock outcropping. I began to wonder if Peter was secretly insane to be exposing his group to this fairly dangerous routes. We finally began our descent down a 45 degree skree slope. He suggested we skree ski down. This turned out to be a not so good idea. Big rocks began breaking loose and a pretty good rock slide got started. We all survived, and I enjoyed being off the beaten path. Jenny did fine but I think she probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone that she wasn't the beneficiary of their life insurance.

Denali day 5

Today was sort of an admin day. The campground we're in doesn't have individual sewer hook-ups so we needed to button up and drive 100 feet to the dump station. That was fun. We also did laundry. ($3.50/machine) Tomorrow we have booked a guided hike. It's described as 'difficult'. That's what attracted it to me. Since we've been hitting it pretty hard the last few days we figured we should chill for a day before we do the guided hike. Here is a pic of one of the caribou we saw yesterday.

Denali day 4

Another day on the trail. This was a one way deal. We had to leave our car at one end and hike to the other end. We caught a bus back to our car when we finished. The hike was pretty cool. We started along a Creek and ascended up, and up some more, until we were in sub - alpine tundra. The wind was howling when we got up there so we had to bundle up. As we began our descent we spotted a big grizzly bear off in the distance. We kept an eye on him (or possibly her) as we neared the trailhead. At the bottom, 2 gigantic caribou showed up.

Denali day 3

We hiked a trail today that took us up on a mountain overlooking the park HQ and assorted other places. The hike had 2 highlights. First: it rained on us most of the way up (2 1/2 hours) we were over prepared as usual because we had umbrellas with us. A walking stick in one hand and an umbrella in the other. Sweet. Second: the rain made a rainbow that formed below us. First time we have ever looked down on a rainbow. Double sweet.  We are not sure about tomorrow. Probably another hike.

Denali day 2

Long day. We rode a bus up the park road 62 miles and had a great informative narrative along the way. This park is certainly one of the top 5 coolest places Jenny and I have visited. We saw moose, Dall sheep, grizzly bears, a fox and some of the most spectacular scenery in North America. We had some fair views of Mt. McKinley, (20,000 feet of ice covered peak.) We were taking pictures like true photographers. (With our phones)

Sign post forest Watson Lake

Denali national park

We made it. Today we are just sort of getting the lay of the land. We have booked a 8 hour narrated tour tomorrow. Our campground is 5 minutes from the entrance road.

An afternoon on the links in Fairbanks

Fairbanks day 3

Today was the city of Fairbanks tour. We went to the visitors center, saw some sights downtown, spent some time in the university of Alaska museum and visited a section of the trans-alaska pipeline. During the drive around town we found a Mexican restaurant and also the super  wal-mart. When the tour was over we hit both of those places. Mexican food in Alaska is pretty much like Mexican food anywhere else and a super wal-mart is a super Wal-mart. There is supposed to be a disk golf course somewhere around here. We are going to try & find that in a few minutes. Tomorrow is Denali. We will be there for 8 days.

Fairbanks day 2

Today's big event was a paddle wheel tour of the Chena river. This was a very tourisity thing, not something that I am drawn to, but worthwhile nonetheless. There were people on the shore who were part of the show. The narrator told their story and low and behold, there they were, waving at us and talking to us through the boats PA system. A float plane took off and landed a couple of times next to the boat. The pilot was talking to us while he did it. One floating stop was Susan Butcher's sled dog kennel. I'm sure you all know that she is/was the most successful Iditarod dog sled musher ever. I took a pic of her kennel. Tomorrow is a city tour. We're not sure about that one. Fairbanks isn't really much of a city.