Travels with Gunther and Kara

Got a couple good things to tell ya about today. First up is a couple of photos from the past couple days that Neil finally got off his phone for me…so I can now post them for ya.

You’ll recall I talked the other day about the young lady in the lime green mini skirt, flip-flops and carrying the almost newborn that fell into the water down at the base of Thunderbird falls…I figured I would post a couple photos for ya showing you exactly how young, foolish and dumb people can be.

Here’s a shot from about 205 yards downstream of the falls. Looking just right of center see the flat topped rock jutting out from the right bank…this rock was about 4 feet tall and not climbable so you had to walk around the rock to the left (river side).

Standing in the water…well, actually perched on the rocks in the water looking past the rock about 6 more feet…Neil’s hiking poles are leaned up against the wall where he got the best shots of the falls. The water is 2-3 inches deep on that little piece of gravel bed.

Looking directly to the left from the position of the hiking poles in the above shows you this very nice view of the lower portion of Thunderbird Falls…it’s about 15 yards over to the base and the pool is 6 or 8 feet deep I’m guessing, it was too deep to be sure.

Standing by Neil’s hiking poles looking back to the rock you had to walk around and the second shot showing the remaining stepping stones put into the water to provide the walking area around the rock as the water there is over a foot deep, flowing pretty fast, and the rocks are wet and slimy with algae.

Having seen that…would any sane person go around on those rocks both in flip-flops and carrying an almost newborn baby? Crazy I’ma tellin’ ya.

On to the shot from last night…as i said we stopped by the Salty Dawg down on the Homer Spit…of which there are more photos coming later from today’s excursions. Nice little place to have a brew and that mighty tasty Duck Fart shot.

Off to the trolley ride…more later.

OK, today we got up and since we weren’t scheduled for the trolley ride until 1400 decided to hear up the road a bit that’s on the north side of Kachemak Bay to see what we could see. There are a couple of nice glaciers over on the south side of the bay (so they’re on the north side of the mountains on the south side of the bay…which means they’re in the shadow of the mountains most of the time and this helps them stay glaciers…most but not all glaciers are on the north side of the slopes). We were hoping the sun would come out and sure enough it did. We were up on the top of what is known locally as Homer Hill…it’s actually the ridge that parallels the north side of the bay…and ranged from 1,800 to 1,200 feet above the level in the bay…so we got some very nice views.

First stop was the ridge immediately above town…where we were able to get some nice glacier pictures as well as watch planes take off. Neil also got a nice pano of the whole city including the Homer Spit which sticks out into the bay and has all of the fishing dock facilities as well as most of the pubs, restaurants and some very expensive RV parks. 

Glaciers on the south side of the bay.

The Homer Spit where most of the night life is located as well as the fishing infrastructure.

A closer view of the spit itself…you can just see a couple of Sandhill Cranes just above the pond in the middle of the spit…lousy photos of them but we’ve now seen this species in both southern FL and here in AK.

Next up after some lunch was our Homer Trolley tour…the first stop on this was a visit to the Norman Lowell Gallery…he’s a famous Alaska artist and has a large gallery of expensive paintings for view…a few of which you can actually buy. We spotted an original oil painting about 12 by 15 inches and it was priced at $25,000…the largest painting in the gallery was probably 10 feet high and 15 feet wide…who knows now much it would go for but most definitely in the millions. We got a few shots of some of the paintings in the gallery along with some very nice sculptures that were also on display. We very briefly considered getting a print as there were several we liked…but at $750 for an unframed but signed/numbered print it was way too much for something we would just have to put in our storage unit anyway.

Along the way on our tour we learned about a new sport…combat fishing. Here’s a photo of some of the participants lined up trying to catch salmon…apparently the combat is partly with your fellow anglers who are lined up shoulder to shoulder and possibly partly with the potential bears that have been known to come down to the streams and steal the catch from the anglers.

After the tour we came home and had the 30 day into the caravan appetizer potluck here in the park. Neil then walked down to the beach and got some pictures of the eagles that are nesting a hundred yards from the RV park…but was too tired to process the photos tonight so I’ll do them in tomorrow’s post instead. Sorry about that…he’s gotta get up early to head off on a bear viewing trip down to Katmai National Park where they’re looking for coastal brown bears looking for salmon. I’ve also got some more news on those Kilcher people from the Last Frontier reality show…turns out they’re not nearly as far out in the sticks as one might think and we got pictures to prove it.

Cyas.

Caravan day 29 (Monday July 27) was devoted to the 230 mile transit from Anchorage AK to Homer AK. The transit was down the eastern edge of the Turnagain Arm which is part of the Cook Inlet (hey, I only tell ya what it’s named, look it up in da atlas if it don’t make no sense to ya)…then down the Kenai Peninsula mostly through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge to Homer which sits on Kachemak Bay. For those of you keepin’ score at home…this is the same bay that the Kilcher’s on that Alaska reality show The Last Frontier live…although if you watch the show you think they’re out in the middle of nowhere but they’re actually only 13 miles up the bay from Homer so it’s not nearly as far out in the boonies as one might think.

Anyway…it was a beautiful drive today…the best scenery we’ve seen to date and that’s going some as a lot of it has been pretty spectacular. We got hitched up and hit the road shortly after 0700…the weather started out cloudy and overcast but by 1000 had turned into a clear, beautiful day for the remainder of our drive.

Our major scheduled stop was at the Portage Pass glacier unit managed by the National Park Service…there’s a half dozen glaciers, a 600 foot deep lake at the base of the glaciers and a very nice visitor center that shows a great movie just chock full of beautiful Alaska scenery. 

Overlooking the Alaska Railroad and Turnagain Arm.

The road right down the coast of the arm…a couple of our RV caravan friends pulling out of an overlook.

A bergy bit floating in Portage Lake near the Portage Pass Glacier…this one is garage sized.

A couple of magpies on the roof of the visitor center.

Portage Pass Glacier.

Closeup of the other glacier at Portage Pass…didn’t get the name of this one.

Entering the Kenai Peninsula.

Some rafters on the Kenai River…it has class IV and V rapids on it so is not attempted by beginners.

Pano shot of the mountains across the other side of the Cook  Inlet…they’r about 50-85 miles away.

Closeup of Mt. Illiamna and Mt. Redoubt…two of the larger peaks in the above photo.

Overlooking the bay at Homer…the city is to the left.

Site 76 at Oceanview RV Park…after staying in probably a dozen parks over the years with ocean and view in their name this is the first one that actually lives up to the billing. The second photo was taken standing in front of BAT looking towards the bay.

Neil walked down to the tent camping area and took this shot towards the mountains opposite Homer.

We had leftovers for dinner and then wandered down to the Salty Dawg Tavern here in town…it used to be owned by the parents of the Hillstrand brothers who run the Time Bandit on Deadliest Catch. We had a couple of brews and Neil had a Duck Fart…this is the shot that Captain Phil Harris from Deadliest Catch used to drink by the handful…Kailua, Irish Cream, and Crown Royal. It’s a shot and hence is designed to be consumed in one swallow…the liquors in it are layered so it looks nice in the glass but this means the flavors aren’t mixed except when you drink it. Nice and sweet with a lot of flavor…but one could easily have way too many of them and get into trouble.

Tomorrow we’re off to the trolley tour…hopefully it won’t rain again. After that it’s halfway night for the caravan and we’re having an appetizer dinner here in the park.

Cyas.

Days 26 (Friday July 24), 27 (Saturday the 25th) and 28 (Sunday the 26th) were devoted to activities in and around Anchorage.

Friday we took in BAT to get an oil, oil filter and fuel filter change. In addition we headed over to the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to the commissary and package store for some supplies…we were bummed because for the second base in a row we were “randomly) selected for a vehicle search by the guys with guns and dogs. I’m thinking they must have a conspiracy against gold pickup trucks since it happened twice in a row. In the evening after all our chores were done we went over to the Alaska Wild Berry Gift Shop to spend money…then across the street for dinner at the Alaskan Sourdough Mining Company…the food at this one wasn’t so hot though. After dinner we went next door to see the Dusty Sourdough show. Dusty is a Glen Campbell wannabe who sings songs and tells stories…we had been told ahead of time that the show was terrible but we actually found it pretty decent. Dusty is a nice guy that sings mostly 50s music but did a pretty credible job of entertaining us for an hour or so.

Saturday we had a couple more chores…laundry mostly. Once all of that was done we headed out about 0945 for a trip 20something miles back up the road towards Denali to visit the Thunderbird Falls which are a nice 200 foot tall double falls in a canyon about a mile off of the highway. One thing we did notice in our travels around Anchorage is that there are an awful lot of freeway exits with just one or two places to go once you get off. The very small state park containing Thunderbird Falls was one such area…the exit went to the falls parking lot and only to the falls parking lot. After the hike up to the falls and our picture taking…Neil hiked down to the base of the falls as well but Connie wasn’t feeling great so she passed on the hike down into the gorge. In addition to some more photos of the falls…he saw a half dozen or so 20something braindead almost teenagers doing really dumb stuff. The rocks were wet and slippery and you had to sort of walk on some rocks in the stream to get to prime waterfall viewing and picture taking position…and while the rocks were perfectly navigable in hiking boots and with hiking poles as Neil had they were not so great to get out on when you were in a lime green mini skirt, flip-flops, and with a 6 week or so old newborn strapped in a carrier to your chest. He saw one young lady so dressed…warned her that where she was going was not the best place to go with her footwear choices…and was promptly ignored. He saw her a few minutes later with her lime green mini skirt pretty well soaked with the cold glacier water as she had obviously slipped on the rocks. The baby looked fine though…so the only apparent harm was to her pride. We were amazed at the number of toddlers, babies, and pregnant women we saw on this 2.5 mile round trip hike…it was pretty steep with a lot of ups and downs and not where you would typically expect to see those kinds of hikers.

After the hike we stopped by the Native Alaskan Heritage Center for an hour or so and took in some of the native exhibits. Came home after that, headed over to Mass and then grilled a pepper steak that we split with Bill and Linda along with some ‘shrooms and onions, cheesy taters, and some Turtle Walnut Brownies that Linda made.

Sunday we were scheduled for a trolley tour of downtown Anchorage…and in keeping with our trolley tour record from Dublin and Belfast last summer it poured rain most of the tour. Despite that we continued on the route and actually learned a few things…most noticeably about the Anchorage earthquake back in 1964. Known as the Good Friday Earthquake…it struck at 1756 local time on Good Friday which was actually a good thing as downtown was mostly empty due to the holiday. The quake went on for over 4 minutes and registered 9.2 on the Richter scale. Parts of Anchorage and Valdez dropped 38 feet. The resulting tsunami resulted in a wave 220 feet high in nearby Shoup Bay AK as noted by debris left behind by the wave after it receded. Despite the large magnitude…only about 140 people were killed but damage was about $311 million or $2.28 billion in current dollars.

We did get a few nice photos.

At the berry place they have a 20 foot tall chocolate waterfall.

And a medium sized…but not adult yet… polar bear that Neil and Connie posed in front of for a picture by our friend Nick on the trip.

On our hike out to the waterfall we spotted some nice berries near the path.

A shot of Thunderbird Falls from the viewing platform at the top of the gorge…the lowest portion of the falls isn’t visible from here.

Neil hiked down to the bottom of the gorge to get a shot of the lower portion…had to walk on some slippery rocks to the pool at the base but was rewarded with some nice shots.

On the way back to Anchorage…we spotted an exit marked Mirror Lake so got off the highway to take a look…nice view, huh?

At the Alaskan Native Cultural Heritage center we spotted this female mallard duck…but by that time we were a bit tired and it was raining on and off so we didn’t get many other photos.

Sunday evening we had a potluck here at the park with the other caravan members…as with all potlucks there was plenty of food and we all went home happy. Tomorrow we’re off to Homer AK, about 220 miles south and we have plenty of cool stuff to see on the way there.

Cyas.

Days 24 and 25 (Wednesday and Thursday July 22/23) were pretty much devoted to transiting from Fairbanks down to Alaska with a stop overnight at Willow AK right near Talkeetna.

Wednesday morning the weather was pretty clear albeit a bit cold for us as it was in the 40s. We knew that the clouds around Denali would pick up later in the day so planned our first couple of stops for views of the mountain before the visibility went to heck. Good thing we did. We headed south along AK-3 towards Willow and stopped at a couple of places where the mountain was visible and got some nice shots. Our plans included stops at the marked North and South Denali overlooks…but the weather was turning bad at the North one and completely bad by the south one so our best shots were from about 45 miles away along AK-3 near Cantwell AK and the northern viewpoint.

After arriving at the park at the end of our 147 mile drive we got setup and unhitched…then drove into the little town of Talkeetna to see the sights. Talkeetna…for those of you who’ve watched Railroad Alaska…is the little town that the whistle stop train stops at after it picks up all of the off-gridders south of the town…for them Talkeetna is the big city where they can get parts and other store bought items…for Connie and Neil it’s a small quaint little town with a very nice bar in it and a couple of tourist attractions.

Our first view of Denali today…about 60 miles away at this point and still have a few clouds in front of it…we hoped they would blow by in a little while as we got further south.

Couple of shots of the Talkeetna Mountains which are on the other side of AK-3 from the Alaskan Range which contains Denali. AK-3 runs roughly northeast to southwest and splits the plain between the two ranges.

A closer view from near Cantwell AK…about 35 miles away at this point.

What we think is the best shot of the day of Denali…maybe 33 or so mile away and about as close as we got. I am pretty sure this one was taken at the northern viewpoint…you can see the clouds starting to build around the peak at this point in the day. The southern summit is the higher of the two and the most common climbing route is from base camp which is located behind the saddle in the loser mountain right at about center frame. From there the route extends upward and southward until just about directly below the higher southern summit then up it mostly directly away from the camera position with the final approach to the summit being up and to the right on the ridge just to the left of the summit. Total distance from base camp to the summit is about 14 miles and the climb typically takes about 3 weeks with time to get acclimated to the altitude.

Denali…unlike most of the other tallest peaks in the world…is in the arctic instead of being pretty close to the equator…hence it’s weather-wise even harder to climb than Everest. Temperatures at the summit in summer average -40F…which is about the same as the temperature at Everest’s summit in the middle of winter…and the winds frequently blow to 100 knots as well. Climbers have been literally blown off the mountain by the wind. The rangers talked about whether it was the hardest mountain to climb due to the weather and said that a good training run for it would be to climb Mt. Ranier in Washington state in the middle of winter and you would have a decent warm up for Denali in the summer.

The climbing season lasts just 2 months June and July…after that the snow bridges over the crevasses in the glaciers get too soft to be safely crossed…with about 1500 climbers attempting the ascent annually; only about half of them succeed. Making it a bit easier than Everest no oxygen is necessary…but making it a bit harder than Everest is the fact that Denali is a clean climbing mountain…everything packed in must be packed out including human waste which gets put in cans carried by the climbers and flown out at the end of the season. With about 750 climbers reaching the summit in 60 days and with only probably a third of the total season having good enough weather for a summit attempt…that’s 30 or 40 climbers reaching the summit on every decent weather day…more like rush hour than mountain climbing I’m guessing.

This is the view at approximately eye magnification from the northern viewpoint…a mighty darn impressive mountain I’m tellin’ ya.

We didn’t take many photos in Talkeetna…but as seen on TV here’s the Alaska Railroad locomotive.

 Day 25 (Thursday July 23) we traveled from Willow AK to Anchorage AK…about 100 miles total. It was a pretty uneventful day…nice roads and good weather and we arrived at Golden Nugget RV shortly after 1200 and got parked in site 162. It was a bit tight getting in next to Bill and Linda’s rig…Bill and Neil were working on jacking the truck back and forth to get the rig turned into the site without hitting either the tree or the big rock when Connie (being alert to the big picture) offered us a much simpler solution. They were just trying to solve the problem while she saw the really easy solution which was to make a turn onto the next row and cut through a site across from ours. That was a much easier turn into the across the street site and allowed us to miss the tree and rock easily.

On the way we stopped by something called the Iditarod Trail Museum…apparently it commemorates some sort of dog race. Doesn’t sound nearly as interesting as say a bear race to me…but ya gotta wonder about those people. We did get a few shots and watched the movie…but mostly it was about dogs and dog sleds…go figure.

Here’s a status of the guy that invented the race.

After parking we headed out to the local greenhouse/botanical garden and Connie got some pictures.

Neil thought this was a cool cactus.

Once that was done…we came home. Bill and Neil went out hunting keys with no success then we had another wonderful dinner. Linda grilled some salmon for the three of them and some halibut for Neil since he doesn’t prefer salmon. Neil made a curry rice concoction to go along with it.

Tomorrow will be chores day for us…we need to get BAT’s oil changed and get some groceries and beer. The only scheduled caravan activity for the day is a trip in the late afternoon to the local chocolate factory (gee, I wonder if they’ll give free samples) then dinner and a show. 

Cyas.

Days 21 through 23 (Sunday July 19 to Tuesday July 21) were devoted to Denali National Park.

Sunday we drove the 128 miles from Fairbanks to Denali Park AK which is just outside the entrance to the park. Denali National Park and Preserve encompasses over 6 million acres of which 4.7 million are federally owned for the park and another 1.3 million acres in the preserve. They are located in south central Alaska and contain mostly completely undeveloped wilderness…along with the peak in the Alaskan Range Denali or as you might know it Mount McKinley. This is the highest mountain in North America at 20,237 feet high and was given it’s name in 1896 by a gold prospector in honor of the then president. Alaska and it’s citizens do not recognize this name and call it Denali…which comes from one of two Athabascan Indian words Dinale or Denali meaning “the high one” or “the great one” respectively. There are an additional 5 names for the mountain in other indigenous Alaskan languages. It’s their mountain so I’ll just stick with Denali.

In addition to being the highest peak in North America…Denali’s approximately 18,000 feet from base to peak is the largest of any mountain situated entirely above sea level. It’s also the third most prominent peak after Everest and Aconcagua in the Argentinian Andes based on topographic prominence (the vertical distance between the peak and the lowest contour line which entirely surrounds the mountain…essentially the height above the surrounding valleys). The first verified climb was in 1913 with an Alaskan native named Walter Harper being the first to reach the summit of the taller southern summit…the slightly shorter 19,470 foot northern summit is rarely climbed.

Other than the drive…which pretty much sucked as it rained during the entire pack/move/setup sequence once we got here in site 76…with our sole exception being dinner and the show at the Cabin Night review. There was a slight mixup with this as our fearless leader David thought it was just across the street and downhill from the RV park…it used to be there but moved 9 miles away a couple of years back. He quickly scrambled around and got them to send a bus to take us over and bring us back…and they even held the show until our arrival. Dinner was OK but not anything to write home about…and the show was similar to the vaudeville type shows we’ve seen a couple of times already albeit it with a history of Denali bent.

Monday July 20 was the big scheduled event for our 2 day stay here in Denali Park…we were all booked for the 8 hour 120 mile round trip shuttle into the park for wildlife viewing and Denali viewing (weather permitting). The park doesn’t allow private vehicles into the park other than the first 14 miles of the park road…after that you have to take the shuttle which (a) cuts down on the traffic and (b) undoubtedly save many lives each year as the road is narrow, dirt, and frequently perched with drop offs of 1,000+ feet just 2 or 3 feet away from the road. Connie didn’t like it much on the way out to the visitor center…and she was sitting on the inside side of the bus on the way out. She really didn’t like it on the way back when she was perched on the outside edge and frequently lost sight of the edge of the road out her window…all she could see was air and rocks far below. Add in the fact that Lee our driver spent way too much time searching for animals with his eyes not on driving and well, let’s just say she’s glad to be back down.

Okay, enough blathering on already…let’s get to the photos…captions where they seemed right. Just be glad I didn’t let Kara write this blog or ya would be learning all about tectonic movement, the Pacific and North American plates, subduction, and granitic plutons.

 A female grizzly bear…ya can tell because all the wimmen grizzlies are blondes.

A different female grizzly.

And a male grizzly…they’re mostly brown. All three of these were pretty far away with the male being probably 500 or 600 yards out…even cropped pretty close in they don’t fill the frame. 

Neil and Connie standing in front of Denali…I promise ya it’s there but unfortunately they weather didn’t cooperate. Only about 30% of the visitors to Denali National Park actually see the mountain…we’ve got 2 more days with supposedly better weather so hopefully I’ll have something for ya later. Donald is about 30 or 35 miles away right over Neil’s right shoulder and if the darned clouds weren’t there the summit would be about 1/2 way from the top of his head to the top of the frame.

Caribou…know what the difference between a caribou and a reindeer is? It’s a fence. The ones on the outside are caribou and the domesticated ones inside the fence are known as reindeer. Want to know another strange caribou/reindeer fact? Both sexes have antlers but only the female keeps them throughout the winter…males drop theirs in the fall right after the rut. Following this to it’s logical conclusion…it means that all of Santa’s reindeer are females. Following this to it’s logical conclusion…Rudolph is “faaabulous” and wears tights?

Another caribou…no telling whether it’s male or female but it’s smaller than the one above so likely the first is a bull and the second a cow. Notice how the antlers are much less mature on this second photo…and also much more similar to the antlers that Santa’s reindeer are typically depicted with. In any event…it’s likely from a different herd that lives at a lower elevation and hence grows antlers and has the rut later in the year.

Neil saw these two and was immediately reminded of the story about the meanest animal in the jungle…the wild African Duwalley.

Denali’s northern (left) and southern (right) summits. They’re there…honest. The etchings on the window show you where the peaks would be if the weather wasn’t so darned cloudy. As to the eerily similar set of outlines on the lower left that are not being pointed to by the conveniently located black arrow……those aren’t the outlines you’re looking for. You have to stand in a different place in the visitor center and be 4’6” for those to look right. There are places to stand inside the lobby of the center that are marked by your height and each has a set of outlines that outline where the summits would be if you were that height. The arrowed ones are for Neil’s 5’9” height.

This looks strangely like a glacier…but it isn’t. This is a series of valleys that serve as washes during the spring thaw…they’re filled with gravel and silt that washed down from the mountain over the millennia. For scale…this was taken at a pretty hefty zoom with Neil’s bird lens and the V-shaped wash in the middle is about 6 or 7 miles away…the gravel/silt filled legs of the V are probably 200 or 300 yards wide each. From the top of the frame to the bottom is probably 1,500 feet vertical distance.

And another female grizzly…this one still has some of her winter coat left after coming out of hibernation. As compared to the first 3 bear shots above…no zoom really necessary for this one…she’s about 30 yards in front of our bus.

Connie’s version of the shot of the same bear as above.

Another of the same specimen after she crossed the road. Why did the grizzly bear cross the road? To get to the berries of course…she’s chowing down on chokeberries and…at least according to our bus driver Lee…a bear will eat 200,000 chokeberries in a day. Of course…he also said that the entire park only has 300 or so bears. We saw 6 of them today so the odds that we saw 2% of the entire bear population in the entire 8 million acre or 12,500 square mile park during our 120 or so miles or road travel is essentially zero. I don’t know how many bears the park has in it…but then the Park Service doesn’t know either…but it’s gotta be many thousands.

And still another female…this one is probably only 2 years old max as she was much smaller than the other ones we saw. She was pretty skittish so the bus couldn’t get very close.

A view through the mountain pass of Denali…again you can’t actually see the mountain but the first shot with Neil and Connie was looking pretty much due south and this one was taken a couple hours later and 40 miles to the east so it’s looking pretty much due west. Still no mountain though…although Denali rises in the background about halfway from the top of the snow capped peaks you can see to the top of the frame.

A slightly closer up view of the same peak/pass as above but a couple miles later on the road so the view here is more southwest than west.

The view from the road at the top of one of those steep cliffs that Connie was skeered of. It’s a long way down, ain’t it.

Looking at one of those cliffs from the side…this was one of the less steep ones. The road is just visible at the top of this drop-off…the road was literally blasted out of the side of the mountain. It’s like 2 feet from the road to the cliff and although it doesn’t look like it in the photo you would not be able to climb down this even on hands and knees…and it’s probably over 1,000 feet to the bottom.

These on the other hand…are glaciers on the flanks of Denali…both of them are probably a mile wide and 300 feet thick at the lower edge.

Since we missed seeing Denali Neil checked with the RV park desk and the guy in there said that driving 11 miles into the park would get us to a nice viewpoint assuming the weather cooperated…which it was supposed to on Tuesday. With that in mind…he said to get up early in the morning and look over the mountains across the road to the west and if we could see blue sky down to the tops of the mountains the Denali viewpoint should be clear as well…but to go earlier in the day vice later. He also gave us a couple of places we’ll stop by and look at on the way down to Talkeetna AK tomorrow…again assuming the weather cooperates as it’s currently forecast to do.

So…Day 21 (Tuesday July 21) we got up about 0600 and took a look…blue sky abounded to the west so we grabbed a cup of coffee and a couple of granola bars, our cameras, and headed out. Driving into the park the weather was in the high 30s so we bundled up a bit and drove westward on a beautiful early morning day. Sure enough…11 miles in we got to the viewpoint and discovered this wonderful sight. The first shot is zoomed in a bit to show you the details and the second one was taken with Connie’s “normal” lens so it’s essentially the same field of view and magnification as the naked eye. Denali…in case you’re not sure…is the snow capped mountain in the distance and it is 73 miles from the point where we were standing. Pretty impressive that you can see as much detail as this from that distance.

A few more shots from our morning…some of Denali plus others.

A pano shot of the entire tundra area we were overlooking for the above shots…about 150 degrees field of view in this shot and Denali is at right center. This pano doesn’t do the actual “with the eyeball” view justice because of the extremely wide field of view, to the naked eye the second shot above is pretty much the way it looked…pretty magnificent.

The view from the Savage Creek parking lot…this is as far as personal vehicles can go at 15 miles into the park. Yesterday we went an additional 48 to the Eielson Visitor Center on the shuttle before turning around…and there are an additional two tours that go past Eielson to Wonder Lake and Kantishna Lodge…our trip was 8 hours to Eielson but the latter two are 11 and 13 hours respectively…and you have to carry all your food and water with you as the only services provided are pit toilets every hour and a half or so. Savage Creek is the water in this shot and it runs left to right (westward). The shuttle crosses a bridge just to the right and out of view in this shot then climbs over the ridge at the top right then continues westward towards Eielson and beyond.

Climbing down from the Savage Creek to get a shot downstream from the gravel bed.

A couple of what Connie called artsy-fartsy shots…she wanted to capture the sun flare coming from behind the rocks (these were taken 180 degrees from the Savage Creek shot 2 photos back). Her original shots were way underexposed (naturally) due to looking into the sun with the camera but since they were shot in RAW mode instead of jpg mode on the camera he was able to duplicate the image, adjust the exposure in one to get the rocks to have a little detail, then layered them together in Photoshop for the finished shot. The first one has better lens flare but the second one has better composition since it doesn’t have the parking lot and cars in it.

Savage Creek looking upstream.

The Nanana River which runs on the park boundary and is about a half mile from the campground…in this shot if Neil had rotated the camera about 30 degrees to the right you could see the hotel/tourist trap district here in Denali Village.

Here’s the Grande Denali Lodge and Hotel…Connie rotated the said 30 degrees to the right from the above area and got this one. The RV park is just out of sight to the lower left in this shot…we’re walking over to the tourist trap area in a bit and we’ll get some shots of it and our site in the park and add them before I post this.

Ok, 2 more Denali shots for ya before I stop for today…since we actually saw the mountain the second photo is justified. As you recall from above here are Connie and Neil standing on the patio at Eielson Visitor Center.

Here’s a photo taken in 2010 by our friends Bill and Linda from pretty much the identical spot…except it was clear the day they were there. From here Denail is 33 miles away…and I was careful to pick a shot with about the same field of view as the one of Neil and Connie.

 As promised…here are the campground and tourist area shots…they’re iPhone shots though as Neil was too lazy to carry the camera back down there when we went on our walk.

Our site 76…a little cramped when there are rigs parked next door but not the most cramped we’ve ever been in or even the most cramped we’ve been in on the Alaska trip…that would be Pioneer RV in Whitehorse YT so far where we had to park nose to tail with the adjacent rigs for access to the utility connections…and we also needed to make sure that our sides wouldn’t conflict when they were extended. We do have woods behind us…but both the site and the roads are gravel and full of pothole but then this _is_ Alaska so such things are to be expected. It’s not what you would call an “it factor” campground by any means…but again this is Alaska and mostly the RV park is a place to park.

The RV park entrance between the two halves of the shopping/tourist trap area. Neil tried to get Connie to do the whole Vanna White thing and wave her hand at it…but she’s a party pooper so declined (to be fully honest though she did wave but Neil wasn’t able to get the phone up fast enough to catch it and she said “you snooze, you lose” when he told her to do it again).

The tourist area in front of the RV park. Denali Park consists of a single row of hotels, restaurants, gift shops and the like about a block deep on each side of the highway (AK-3) and extending for about 3/4 of a mile tops. We did walk over to the Prospector Pizzeria and Ale House for dinner last night with Bill and Linda…all was good. MacNCheese for Connie and Cheddar Ale soup and an Elk Meatball Sandwich for Neil…both with leftovers we had for lunch today. Brews were McKinley Stout then a Chiula Stout for Neil (first was more chocolate with hints of coffee and the second was the other way around…both were good but theMcKinley was superior)…and Dolly Varden Nut Brown Ale and a Smoked Porter for Connie, the porter was smokey but was more like a brown ale in color rather than a porter which is typically very dark like a stout and thick.

Tomorrow we’re off to Willow AK which is about 150 miles south then after parking we’re carpooling 22 miles back northward to visit Talkeetna AK…which for those of you who watched the Railroad Alaska TV show on Destination America (a Discovery channel) is a prime spot seen in the show. Then Thursday we’ll be off to Anchorage.

That’s it for now…hopefully we’ll get some more Denali photos on the way south tomorrow as the forecast has changed and is supposed to be great.

Cyas.

Day 19 (Friday July 17) was one of the days we were especially looking forward to…our visit to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Anaktuvuk Pass up at the north end of the Brooks Range of mountains here in Alaska.

Our schedule was to catch a flight on a twin engine Piper 8 passenger aircraft out of Fairbanks Airport, fly north to Anaktuvuk Pass…a small native settlement…for lunch and a tour of how the native people live then return to Fairbanks about dinnertime.

Things started off pretty well with takeoff from Fairbanks with our pilot John…who it turned out worked for a different part of the Warbelos Arctic Tours company and had only flown into Anaktuvuk Pass by himself once before our flight…I’m sure he flew there while getting approved by his company to fly there but Connie thought it was pretty grim when he pulled out his map…although he was actually checking frequencies and such and not trying to navigate…he was using GPS and Visual Flight Rules (VFR)  for that part…which meant that you watch out the windows to keep from hitting other aircraft or mountains instead of relying on the air traffic control system to route you.

We got some nice photos on the way up and John tried to stay low enough to fly through the pass in the Brooks Range…when we got to the close part he kept circling lower and lower looking for a way through that we could see. Eventually we got to about 500 feet above the ground and looking through the pass it looked like even less than that of clear air…under VFR you don’t want to fly into the clouds and if we switched to Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) we would be much higher. Eventually he gave up…Neil was about to ask him if he really wanted to fly through there…and we started climbing as we headed south away from the mountains. We checked in with the air traffic control folks and got cleared to 10,000 feet which is well above the mountain heights for a direct route to Anaktuvuk Pass. Once north of the range we looked around and eventually found a way to get below the clouds into the valley at the village and after a quick approach we touched down on the gravel runway at Anaktuvuk Pass.

Our plane for the day.

Aerial view.

The Yukon River.

Our pilot John hunting for a way through the clouds and mountains.

First view of Anaktuvuk Pass once we got below the clouds and into the valley.

So…Anaktuvuk Pass…what is it. It’s a village/city with a population of just over 300 people…almost all of which are native Alaskan people…these are members (mostly) of the Nunamuit tribe of Indians…very similar to the Innuit or Eskimo people that live over in the coastal areas but the Nunamuit live inland. The Nunamuit were nomadic people back before contact with non native people and followed the caribou herds as they migrated. Anaktuvuk Pass comes from a Nunamuit word that roughly translates to “Place with Caribou Poop”. The climate ranges from -40F or -50F in the middle of winter up to mid summer highs of the mid 50s. Most of the native people living in the village work for the native people corporation that manages the resources of the area owned by the tribe…most of the public land in Alaska including the mineral rights is owned by the various native people tribes. We met several natives…our guide Francis Hugo and also Ben who is probably 70 years old and sort of a local celebrity.

The runway at Anaktuvuk Pass airport.

Overlooking town.

Our guide Francis.

The medical clinic.

Main Street…USA.

After a tour around the village to see some of the buildings…at this point almost all of the inhabitants live in government constructed 1 or 2 story houses and within the past few years all have running water, sewer connections, and electricity…we hopped onto an Argo ATV…an 8 wheeled waterproof sort of vehicle that is optimized for travel both on wet, mushy tundra as well as the many muddy roads and areas that the natives travel to…for a trip out into the tundra. We went with Ben who looked for some bears to show us but the local grizzly was nowhere to be found…so we checked out their cemetery and went a mile or so out into the tundra for a walk around. We discovered that tundra is quite spongy in nature…sort of like walking on a very firm mattress but with sticks and rocks mixed into it so it’s not smooth at all. Very strange feeling.

The mountains surrounding the village.

Riding the Arto.

Lichens on the tundra…these are about a half inch in diameter.

Neil walking around…by this time it was raining pretty steadily and the wind was blowing about 30 knots…mighty darn chilly for July I’m tellin’ ya.

Francis at the post office.

Heading back home to Fairbanks…we had to make a brief unscheduled fuel stop. John had burned too much looking for a way through the mountains so as to give us better views so although we could have gotten home he wasn’t happy with the amount of fuel we would have had left. So…we stopped about 1/3 of the way back at a smaller village named Bettles for some fuel then continued our journey home…luckily the weather had gotten much better and we were able to remain under the cloud cover and VFR all the way back to Fairbanks…in fact the weather got pretty nice the last 80 miles or so.

The John River valley…this is the river that runs through Anaktuvuk Pass southwards and we were able to follow it all the way to Bettles.

The Bettles Lodge.

The Yukon River bridge on the Dalton Highway between Fairbanks and the town of Deadhorse up at Prudhoe bay on the North Slope where the oil fields are. This is the fourth vehicle capable bridge over the 2000 mile length of the Yukon and the only one we didn’t get to drive over…the other three as well as both pedestrian bridges were featured in earlier posts.

Day 20 (Saturday July 18) was devoted to two major activities…a visit to Santa Claus’s house in North Pole AK and a trip out to Dredge #8 which mined Alaska gold up until the 1950s.

Here’s where the jolly old gentlemen lives…110 Saint Nicholas Lane, North Pole, AK.

He’s even got a large statue of himself erected in the back yard to help guide Rudolf and the team home after delivering presents on Christmas. Connie’s standing next to it in the lower right to give you a sense of scale.

We went inside his workshop…and there might be some stuff that we picked up…but you’ll have to wait until later on in the year to find out.

After the trip over to Santa’s house we came home and had lunch…then left for our tour of the Dredge #8 and some gold panning to see if we could strike it rich. On the way we stopped by the Alaska Pipeline over look and got a nice shot so I can ‘splain to you how it works.

Over it’s 800+ mile length the pipe is constructed either above ground or as a standard buried pipeline…the difference being that in areas that are melt stable…which means that they remain stable geologically whether frozen in the winter or thawed in the summer… the pipe is buried. In areas that are not melt stable…essentially permafrost areas that turn into mud bogs when they thaw…the pipe is constructed above ground with some ingenious mounting hardware.

In these areas the pipe is supported about every 40 feet on pairs of hollow pipes driven about 30 feet deep into the permafrost. Between each pair a beam is installed and the pipeline is mounted on the swear black piece you see in the above photo so that it can slide back and forth a little for thermal expansion and in the event of earthquakes. To help keep the permafrost frozen (since it isn’t melt stable) the vertical pipes are hollow and have an antifreeze type liquid circulating within them…the gray things on top are radiators which help transfer cold from the outside air to through the circulating antifreeze to help maintain the ground frozen. This ensures a stable platform for the pipeline which is carrying heated oil while keeping the ground frozen.

The pipeline carried about 16 billion barrels total of crude oil between 1979 when it became operational and 2010. The flow has slacked off a bit since 2010 and oil now takes about 16 days to travel the entire length of the pipeline down to Valdez for trans-shipment on tankers. With an estimated 40 billion barrels remaining in the North Slope oil fields…the pipeline won’t reach it’s end of life anytime soon. The pipeline cost $8 billion when it was finished in the late 1970s.

Continuing on to the dredge site we did our tour in a pretty much constant rain. We had a nice train ride…well, as nice as it could be in the rain…looking at some of the old equipment then got to the dredge itself.

This is Earl…he entertained us on both guitar and fiddle on the train ride and was quite a character with lots of stories to tell. After 20 years of being in the band for Don Ho and Johnny Cash he came up here and went to work for the tourism industry

Here’s the dredge itself…with some explanation after the photo.

So…how does this thing work? It’s a multi year process actually…first the land owners went around and took thousands of core samples to determine where the gold bearing gravel was and how deep it was found. Once that was finished the dredge company planned where to start the dredge. Next…all of the dirt overburden was stripped off down to the gravel layer…essentially using high pressure water cannons to wash it away. Once that was complete the permafrost was thawed and by the time that was completed 3-5 years had passed.

Next…a large pit was dug at the beginning of a dredge area and the dredge…which was built in Pennsylvania and then shipped via rail to San Francisco then north on a ship to Seward then again via rail to it’s final location where it was assembled in the pit. Finally the pit was flooded and the dredge started it’s work.

Starting from the left side of the photo…the dig arm is essentially a giant chain saw that rotates clockwise as you’re looking at it…only instead of teeth it’s bot buckets that dig into the gravel and bring about 6 cubic feet of gold bearing gravel per bucket. The dig arm speed was about 22 buckets per minute and ground to gravel into the upper level of the dredge.

Once there…it was dumped into a trommel which is a long rotating pipe about 8 feet around and 50 feet long, it’s also angled down about 2 inches per foot from left to right. The gold bearing gravel is dumped into the trommel which rotates slowly and works the large rocks down to the aft/low end…washing it down with water the whole way. The cleaned large rocks are expelled from the trommel at the right end of the barge then dumped out on the tailings conveyor that you can see rising behind the trees on the right side of the photo.

As the trommel rotates the finer gravel along with it’s gold falls through holes in the trommel that are a couple inches around onto another conveyor. It’s then fed into a series of sluice boxes which are angled troughs with a fibrous rug like material on the bottom. Gold…being much heavier than either water or rock…falls into the material while the gravel and dirt continues out the end of the sluice box.

Every 2 weeks the dredge was shut down and the material removed from the sluice boxes…it was then washed to remove the gold and fine dirt which was then again washed to remove the final dirt using an angled vibrating table…this dredge usually pulled about 4000 ounces of gold each two weeks. The dredge master swung the dig arm back and forth and also moved the dredge forward or sideways as necessary to essentially chew through the gold bearing gravel strata that was originally found using the core surveys.

Here’s a shot of Connie panning for gold and also our take…we each got a poke (small sack) of pay dirt to pan and we ended up with about $19 worth of gold flakes by the time we were done.

Pretty cool huh…although it seems like a hard way to make a living to me.

With that our day was ended so we headed first off to Mass at the cathedral in Fairbanks and then home for taco nachos with Bill and Linda. While we were looking at the bulletin in the cathedral…we noticed the following advertisement on the back page.

This Villa is only about 5 miles from Seminole Campground where we winter over down in North Fort Myers…we thought it was funny that we came 7000 miles to Alaska and found an add for a retirement center that close to us.

We’ve now completed 1/3 of our Alaskan adventure…tomorrow we’re off to Denali National Park where we just might be able to see Denali…or Mount McKinley as it was renamed to the dismay of the Alaskan citizens…but with the weather forecast we’re doubting it. We’ll be in Denali 2 days and have only about a 30% chance of seeing the mountain on any given day…maybe it will b e nice enough at least 1 day that we can get some shots of the mountain itself.

Cyas.

Day 16 (Tuesday July 14) our scheduled activity for the day was a ride on the riverboat Discovery III…which Connie thought was cool and Neil thought was way, way over the top. It’s like Disneyworld of the North with the exception of not having any animatronic puppets. Our three hour tour consisted of an hour boat ride maybe 2 miles downriver with a couple of stops at places where we  happened to be just in time for a sled dog demonstration by the family of the late Susan Butcher (who won the Iditarod race several times)  and a native Athabasca Indian who just happened to be filleting a freshly caught chum salmon.

After the short ride we stopped at the Indian village for several other pretty contrived demonstrations along with about a thousand of our closest friends from the boat…then had a short ride back to the dock. We had many opportunities to spend more money at this attraction…buy their book, buy their canned salmon (at $13 bucks for a can the size of a tuna can), have dinner at their dining hall, etc.

It was way, way over the top…but Connie liked it so I guess it was OK.

A few photos we got today.

A float plane landing sequence…again, this friend of the captain just happened to be landing nearby just as we left the dock.

After a short conversation between the boat captain and the plane pilot…along with video over the boat television system the plane took off and headed home.

A couple of multi-million dollar homes right alongside the river…most are fairly recently built on land the family has owned for several generations.

Our impromptu sled dog demonstration including some puppies, the dogs pulling an engineless ATV, and a post run swim by the dogs.

Some shots from the Athabasca Indian village.

Village hut…these were lived in full time.

Birchbark canoe.

Women’s winter parka…caribou skin with ermine around the face/hood, beaver at the cuffs, and wolverine decorations.

Fish wheel…used to catch salmon on rivers upstream…nearer to the ocean nets are used. The wheel faces downstream and is turned by the current scooping fish out of the water then gravity dumps them into a catch bin.

Salmon drying in the smokehouse.

Trappers hut…these were built about a day apart on the hunter’s trapline for winter overnighting…thus allowing a trapper to cover a larger area and still have a safe/warm place to spend the night or shelter from unexpected storms.

Sled dogs in the yard.

That was it for day 16…we came home and then ran over to the army base commissary for some groceries in the afternoon. Dinner was pot pies at home…Linda was making smoked salmon soup…and since Neil doesn’t care for salmon we each did dinner on our own today.

Day 17 (Wednesday July 15) we took a trip to the Botanical Gardens and the Alaska History Museum at the University of Alaska Campus.

A really huge cabbage…over 3 feet across the leaves and a basketball sized veggie in the middle.

Flower photos by Connie.

The master at work.

We moved over to the museum which was actually pretty cool…although we did pass on the art gallery museum upstairs and stuck with just the history portion.

Mastodon fossil.

Polar Bear.

This is Otto. He’s a coastal brown bear taken in 1950. 8’9” tall and weighs 1250 pounds. Interesting bear fact…brown bears, grizzly bears, and coastal brown bears are all actually the same bear…species is Ursos Arctos. They vary enough in range, characteristics and color to be classified as sub-species but are genetically the same. He’s a lot taller than Connie is even though he’s standing on a platform about 14 inches high…mostly bears stand up to get a better look at things as they have poor eyesight.

After an hour or so at the museum we came home. Neil grilled some Italian marinated chicken breasts and onions and Linda brought over some buns, tomatoes and tortilla chips and we had grilled chicken sandwiches for dinner…followed by an ice cream dessert social over by the river for which Riverview RV Park is named.

Day 18 (Thursday July 18) was a work day for us…Connie did a little work for NVCC and Neil did laundry and a couple minor repair jobs around the house…the only scheduled event for the day is dinner and a show over at the Pioneer Village 

Tomorrow Day 19 we’re off to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Anaktuvuk Pass for a visit…it’s about a 90 minute flight north of Fairbanks and will make for a long day. After that we’re headed over to the northernmost Elks Lodge for dinner and a brew…maybe they’ll give us an award for coming just about the absolutely farthest you can to to get to an Elks Lodge…there are a couple down in the Florida Keys that are actually a couple hundred miles farther but it’s pretty close to the farthest…that’s my story and I’ma sticking to it I tell ya.

Cyas.

Days 13 through 15 (July 11-13) were strictly travel days…so not really that much to report although we did have a couple of scheduled activities.

Day 13 we traveled from Destruction Bay YT to Beaver Creek YT about 30 miles from the international border.

Day 14 we traveled to Tok AK after crossing the border and then had a scheduled visit for a talk by a guy that drove in the first Iditarod Sled Dog Race back in the 1970s and a visit to a gold shop where we got to hold a 57.something ounce gold nugget. The owner’s husband was prospecting up in the 40 Mile River area in Alaska about 40 years ago and they were stripping off some overburden…overburden is the non gold bearing dirt that sits on top of the gold bearing gravel underneath and is typically stripped off late in each summer mining period up here in the north. That way the permafrost containing the gold bearing gravel will melt in the spring and hence be mineable next year. Anyway…while stripping the overburden off some mining operations go ahead and run it through their sluice box (the part that separates the gold flakes from the gravel) since the plant is running anyway. So he ran the overburden through and found the nugget we got to hold in the top six inches of dirt that was removed. While not the largest nugget ever found by any means…it is worth about $65K or so based on it’s weight and the price of gold but as a large nugget is worth more…the owner has been offered a quarter million dollars for it but says she’s going to will it to a museum on gold mining here in Alaska.

Day 15 (Monday July 13) we traveled from Tok AK to North Pole AK…which is about 13 miles east of Fairbanks and we’ll be here until we leave for Denali National Park on Sunday.

So…on the the pictures we got during our three travel days…along with a couple more words later on when I get to the sled dog and gold nugget on Day 14.

A shot and pano of the Tanana River which parallels the highway for miles. This river doesn’t have a very well defined channel for most of it’s length…but is what is known as a braided river for the many seasonal paths it takes with sandbars and gravel bars moving almost weekly.

A couple of lake reflection shots.

The Catholic church in Beaver Creek YT…we missed Mass as it only has services every third week and this wasn’t it.

Wildflowers.

Day 14 (Tuesday July 12) we traveled to Tok AK and changed our clocks back to Alaska time for almost the next month. 

A cache at the Tallin NWR. Caches are used to protect food from both the weather and bears up in the north.

The visitor center at Tallin…one of the chores you have at this NWR is to mow the roof. The sod actually serves as insulation for the roof of the building.

The obligatory “we were there” shots at the Alaska border. Our friends Bill and Linda Napier are on the left side…they’re the ones with the New Horizons with the suspiciously similar paint job to our home.

A couple of shots of the border itself…the first is where the line passes through the parking lot next to the sign and the second shows the cleared (by the International Boundary Commission) but un-fenced and un-patrolled border. The cleared section goes completely across the border from the Arctic Ocean to the south…you can see it faintly on the far ridge…it’s the little notch in the tree line just between the top point and left side of the marker.

A swallow nest at the Tallin NWR visitor center…complete with swallow.

The far dog sled was used in the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. This race happens in early March each year from Anchorage  AK to Nome AK and commemorates a high speed dog sled run between the same places in 1925. A diphtheria epidemic had broken out in Nome and native children had no immunity. The nearest supply of vaccine was in Anchorage and no planes were available to deliver it…so it was  put on a train up to Nenana and then passed on to the first of 20 mushers who delivered it the last 674 miles to Nome in five and a half days. Each musher can start with a maximum of 16 dogs and must finish with at least 5…no replacements are allowed…and each must visit various checkpoints where both musher and dogs are checked for health and supplies before being allowed to continue. Racers set off from Anchorage at 2 minute intervals and total elapsed time on the trail between checkpoints is used to determine the winner…the race record is a bit over 8 days and 13 hours.

Dog teams are composed of the leader, two wheel dogs at the front of the sled and various pairs of dogs in between them. Mushers typically have several dogs that are capable of being the leader and rotate them through the day depending on what characteristic the lead dog needs at the moment…good at running in a blizzard, good at finding faint trails, or good at setting a fast pace.

Our talk was given by the musher who drove the far sled in the first race.

Three sled dog puppies…they’re for sale, and only $500 each.

Sign on the gift shop next to the sled dog demonstration.

Connie holding the ginormous nugget and then a closeup of the nugget itself. It’s gold which is pretty heavy…this nugget weighs almost 4 pounds.

Day 15 we set off from Tok AK to North Pole AK right outside of Fairbanks.

We did see…finally…a couple of moose on the last leg of the trip but both were while we were at speed on the road with no place to pull off…and both cows were hightailing it for the woods anyway so no photos were possible.

On arrival at North Pole…we were ready to sit for a few days…arriving on Monday about noon with departure not until Sunday. Neil helped Bill troubleshoot and achieve temporary repairs on his door latch until the replacement parts arrive in Anchorage at our stop there mid next week. After that Neil asked Bill to help him figure out why our basement doors were not shutting properly…Bill’s response was “You need to water your doors.”

Turns out that he was exactly correct. Most RV doors are made by the Challenger Door Company and the hinges are essentially 2 long C shaped tubes. One is fixed to the side of the rig and the second to the door with the 2 C shaped cross sections mating and one slides inside the other. The problem is that the fixed tube on the rear basement door actually faces forward…and with all the dusty roads in the Yukon it just gets filled up with this almost talcum powder fine dust which prevents the one on the door from sliding inside it. Sure enough…Neil got out his skinny/flexible water heater cleanup wand, attached it to a hose and rinsed the intersection area of the tubes while wiggling the doors up and down…and voilà the problem is solved. The basement door now works again…so he went ahead and rinsed out the hinge areas of all our outside doors. We’ll probably have to do that again once we get down out of the dusty road conditions I guess.

I’ll post again later this week…we have some scheduled activities in the Fairbanks area the next couple of days…then on Friday we are off for an optional part of the trip…a flight up to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Anaktuvuk Pass about 150 miles north of here.

Fairbanks is the farthest north that we’ll take the rig…from here we head south about 300 miles to Anchorage then meander eastward along the SE coast through Homer, Seward, and Valdez before heading back up to Tok again in a couple of weeks…then northwards to Chicken AK (albeit it not quite as far north as Fairbanks is). After that it’s slightly south of East to Dawson City YT then southwards through Whitehorse again (we saw a weather vane there at the airport made out of an entire DC-3 airplane…gotta go back by and get a shot of that for ya…then southwards through YT and BC with a trip back into the far south part of Alaska at Hyder before the trip ends in Prince George.

Cyas.

Day 11 (Thursday July 9) was reserved for our all day boat, bus, and walking tour of Juneau, the capital of Alaska. We boarded our boat…the Fiordland…which is a 70 or so foot high speed catamaran excursion vessel and set off on our 75 mile boat trip leg…arriving at the dock about 20 miles north of Juneau in just a bit over 2.5 hours…we averaged about 28 or 29 mph for the trip even including a half dozen stops to see stuff. The boat served muffins with juice, coffee or tea as well as apples to keep us going.

Along the way down the Chilkoot Inlet we viewed a number of glaciers, mountains and various wildlife. Suffice it to say that the views were pretty excellent…a nice calm day but there was a bit of cloud cover drifting around the peaks so you had to get photos when you were able and a lot of them ended up with what Neil calls mood photos.

Anyway…on to the views for the boat trip.

This eagle was sitting right outside the boat harbor where we boarded the boat so we grabbed a few photos of it.

A couple of miles down the Inlet we spotted another eagle and then a group of sea lions resting on a rock ledge.

A mother nursing her pup.

This group came over to the boat…they thought we were gonna feed ‘em I guess.

Some of the many glaciers and waterfalls we passed on the trip.

Another eagle and a restored 1930s era fisherman that is now a yacht…both of these were right as we got to the dock to get off the boat.

We debarked the boat and boarded our bus for a 20 mile ride to Juneau…our driver talked about some of the sights on the way nut it was mostly just a bus ride. Once downtown we had lunch at a place called TheHanger…crab sandwich for Connie and a halibut sandwich for Neil/Bill/Linda along with some Alaskan Red Ale. After lunch we got back on the bus and headed for the Mendenhall Glacier which is about 5 miles from downtown…got some very nice photos of both the glacier itself and Nugget Falls which is about a 30 minute walk from the visitor center at the glacier…we only had an hour so had to settle for distant pictures of the falls rather than closeups…you an see some folks standing at the base of the falls so have a little sense of the scale of it.

A duck we spotted on the way back from the glacier overlook.

Hopping back on the bus…we arrived at a different seaport and rebounded our boat for the 2.5 hour trip home…although actually it was a little longer than that since we boarded closer to Juneau than we got off. Along the way we spotted more glaciers and wonderful views.

A couple of the lighthouses helping mariners navigate the Inlet.

A brief and far away glimpse of a humpback whale…this is a mother feeding a calf which sounded before we got this shot. She’s swimming away from us and a little to the right and is displaying the humped back just before they sound (dive deep to feed) that gave the whale it’s name. The mother is almost exclusively eating and nursing her calf at this point in it’s life…it’s gaining about 8 pounds an hour so growing pretty quickly. 

Another of the many glaciers…the water in the fjord is as much as 2,400 feet deep and the fjord is about 5 or 6 miles wide at this point..

Arriving back home we were full from the fish chowder and cookies served on board so we just skipped dinner and got ready for day 12’s travel period.

Day 12 (Friday July 10) we had breakfast and coffee then got hitched and hit the road for our 200 mile drive back into Canada to Destruction Bay YT where we’ll overnight. Reentry into Canada was pretty easy this time at customs…probably a 2 minute stop and we were on our way. After a long grade back up out of the sea level Haines AK area to the top of the plateau at the north end of all the glacially carved fingers of steep mountains in between the inlets here we pretty much had a very nice drive to Destruction Bay which is on Lake Kluane in the Yukon.

The only decent photos we got on the way were of this big ol’ grizzly bear right on the side of the road…we pulled over and got these from inside the car as he was only about 10 yards away at the time. It was eating the fireweed flowers…the little purple ones you can see…but kept eyeing us like he was reconsidering his breakfast choice and might like to have us instead.

We briefly spotted a black bear a couple miles later but it was gone before we could get a shot.

Arriving at Destruction Bay…we got situated in site 20, a nice pull through level site…but we only have 15 amp power here so we’re almost boondocking. There’s water at the site as well and no sewer…but we put water in our tank yesterday so Neil didn’t bother hooking water up at all. Here’s a few shots of our view…note how clear the water is in the last one.

That’s it…we’ll just laze around for the evening with a campfire and then head off to Beaver Creek YT tomorrow…only 100 miles so it should be an easy day.

Cyas.

Day 9 (Tuesday 7 Jul) of our caravan was our transit day from Whitehorse YT over to Haines AK…about 250 miles total but about 150 of those were south. We went west in YT until we got to Haines Junction…named for it being the junction of the Haines Highway and the AlCan. Over to Haines Junction the road got a bit bumpy…lots of frost heaves and construction areas and the scenery was just so so. However…once we turned south the 150 miles through YT, a bit of very northwest BC, and AK the scenery was the most spectacular we’ve seen so far. Too bad it wasn’t a bright sunny day…it was fantastic even in mostly cloudy conditions but would have been even better under clear.

On the way over we got an alarm on one of our rig ABS brake sensors…it said it was disconnected. Once we arrived in Haines and got set up in Site 17 at the Haines Hitch-up RV Park Neil put on his coveralls and jumped underneath with Bill. Cleaned the contacts in the sensor cable connector and popped it back together…it says it’s fixed now but we’ll see later on I guess.

Tonight Neil is making shish-kebabs on the grill for dinner…Bill and Linda are coming over in a bit. Tomorrow (day 10) is a free day in Haines and Connie will be picking out some Fun Stuff™ for us to do.Thursday (day 11) we take the ferry down to Juneau for whale watching, glacier watching I think, and orca watching maybe…followed by some time spent in Juneau for the afternoon then we get back on the ferry to come home…so Thursday will be a long day.

OK, on to the pictures.

First a few catchup ones…these are actually from day 8 but if I go back and edit that post anybody that’s already read it won’t see the new photos.

Yesterday we wandered around Whitehorse a little more and got a few nice shots for ya’.

We kept hearing and seeing float planes overhead at Pioneer RV…so we looked around and just down the road from Miles Canyon where we visited the other day look what we found.

A plane at a privately owned dock.

The float plane airport.

The runway at the base.

And the runway decorations.

Afterward we went out to eat with Bill and Linda at the Klondike Restaurant downtown…had some great food and Yukon Red Ale on draft. On the way home we spotted an eagle flying and then landing in a nest right near the road…so we stopped by and got a few photos. There was at least 1 eaglet and both mom and dad brought home a seagull for the family to feast on.

The other adult flew off with it’s catch and the eaglet was down in the nest…so you’ll have to settle for shots of (I think) the female ripping the gull apart.

On to today’s photos. First stop was the Canyon Bridge overlook where we got some shots of one of the few original bridges from the pioneer road that became the AlCan. It’s still in sort of serviceable condition at least for walking across at your own risk. 

Some  wildflowers near the bridge.

We spotted this little guy alongside the road and Neil got a few shots…he was eating flowers like they were on sale.

Kluane Lake and the Kluane Mountains behind it.

This pretty sheer and vertical rock wall was just a couple hundred yards from the road and probably 2,000 feet higher than the road elevation.

Pano shot of the Kluane Mountains.

More Kluane Mountains

A shot of the Saksaia Glacier that we spotted once we came across the border back into the US. Three photos so as to give you both a view of how it looks from the roadside and then zooming in for a closer look.

Overall…day 9 was the best so far…still not too much wildlife but the scenery today was outstanding. Once we turned south at Haines Junction you could literally see for miles in pretty much any direction and all you could see was mountains, rivers, and valleys…very little sign of civilization and very few cars. They did take our eggs away on reentry into the US though…they’re worried about bird flu so any eggs from Ontario get confiscated:-(. We’ll have to buy some more tomorrow and we’ll hard boil whatever is left before leaving Friday as they don’t care about cooked eggs.

Day 10 (Wed 8 July) was devoted to stuff around Haines and errands. After breakfast and coffee we set off for the half mile walk down to town from the campground and then did the walking tour around historic Fort Seward…just don’t ask me what’s historic about it other than being old. It’s your basic frontier army post…not any sort of fort like down in the old west where they had to defend against Indian attacks but more of a non-enclosed base type arrangement. We got some good photos of both the port area and the Fort during our walk about.

Haines sits at the north end of the Chilkoot Inlet…more of a fjord really…about 80 miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean. Just past Haines heading inland the Inlet splits and the right fork goes up to Skagway while the left fork becomes the Lutak Inlet for 7 or 8 miles with a short stream up to Chilkoot Lake. Haines is about 5 miles as the crow files due east to the BC border but it’s about 40 miles northwest to the road border crossing…that’s the only way in or out of here by land. There’s also a road to Skagway AK which is about 10 miles north as the crow files but there are no roads between Skagway and Haines due to the mountains in between…although there is a ferry but I don’t know if it’s a people only ferry or if cars and/or RVs can travel on it.

A shot from the campground itself…pretty nice back yard, eh?

A gold mining drill. Used back in the day to figure out where to dig the pit mine for gold…worked by being picked up and dropped repeatedly to fill a hollow pipe with a core sample…analysis of the core told you that the gold bearing rock was 30 feet down or whatever and estimate how many ounces of gold you would get per cubic yard of dirt.. Once that was known you could decide whether it was worth digging down to get it out. No longer used for active mining. 

Pano shot of the boat harbor, inlet, and cruise ship dock at the water’s edge.

A visiting cruise ship at the one and only parking place…fairly small as cruise ships go, maybe 500 feet long tops and 600 or 700 passengers plus crew. Anything bigger would find it hard to get into the ports along the Alaska/Vancouver Inside Passage as Haines is a fairly large port for these parts.

Boat harbor and inlet closeup shot.

A carved totem near the waterfront.

Several shots of the fort buildings…officers quarters, trading post, and fire brigade.

A view across the Lutak Inlet looking eastward.

Howard Payne Memorial Dead Tree Photo for the month.

Eagle on the gravel flats.

Same eagle after it moved over to a treetop.

Some sort of strange waterfowl preening itself on  rock right at the southern end of Chilkoot Lake where it proceeds southward through a short section of river rapids to join Lutak Inlet and then Chilkoot Inlet. After some research with Peterson’s we decided it was either a female common Merganser or a male Northern Pintail but the shots weren’t clear enough to make a definitive determination and the darn birds never turned around where we could get a decent look.

Pine cone shot Connie got…we kinda like these.

Two shots of a waterfall across Chilkoot Lake, one to show perspective and a closeup of the falls itself…probably 400 or 500 feet total waterfall height but cascading over in a dozen small drops.

Chilkoot Lake Pano…the waterfall above is on the right side mountain.

Pano looking south from the upper end of Lutak Inlet. The narrow opening at center left is where it joins to Chilkoot Inlet which proceeds to the right behind the mountain at the Lutak Inlet entrance. Haines is about 6 or 8 miles downstream from this location. Obviously low tide due to the large exposed gravel flats section…based on them the tidal range here is probably 10-15 feet by Neil’s guesstimate…this checks pretty closely with the 13 feet he got when he looked up aide table. The water is about 200 yards from where we were standing at low tide (and it looked like we were about at low tide when we took this shot)…at high tide all of the brown grassy areas are under water but the higher green spots are above water plants of some sort…more like lichens or small shrubbery type plants and not grass except in the very near foreground.

With that our photo day was done. After a quick stop by the library to see if we could find some fast Internet…note to self, the Internet at libraries here in the far north is lousy…both here at Haines and previously at Whitehorse it was almost the slowest we’ve ever seen…anyways we stopped by and got a few groceries. However, the prices reduced us from buying our list to just buying the things we are out of, hopefully when we get to Fairbanks on Monday the prices will be a little more reasonable. Prices in Alaska are expensive…but the ones here in Haines were ridiculous. We paid 3.98 US a gallon for fuel compared to 2.79 we paid in ND on the way up a month back and 3.60something equivalent on our Canadian stops. I guess that Haines is at the far end of nowhere (the closest place on the road is Haines Junction and that’s 150+ miles back north from here) and with the shipping costs it just is expensive. 

Cyas.