Alaska Adventure

The Inside Passage

2009-08-23T12:25:00.001-07:00

We had planned the trip to conclude with the Alaska Marine Highway System auto ferry to get home. If you want to do the Inside Passage but hate the thought of going to sea in a floating hotel with 6000 other people, this may be for you. If you love continuous food, shore excursions with large groups of old people, nightly shows, and swimming pools, you may prefer one of the cruise ships. But we thought the M.V. Columbia was great. A couple of hundred passengers, brief stops in Scagway, Haines, Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, and Ketchikan, and your entertainment is what you provide yourself. Food you either bring aboard or can buy at a snack bar or a very nice restaurant.

We boarded the Columbia at Skagway on Monday evening. We had to be there 2 hours in advance, and were among the first cars loaded since we were going all the way to Bellingham, WA. The loaders motioned me out of line as one of the first cars to load, and I drove in through a big door about midway down the side of the ship. They motioned me to the far side of the car deck to where there was what looked like a metal plate of some sort in the deck. I thought they might be going to weigh each car, but with a rumble a metal cage descended from the upper deck and I was motioned to drive into it - the metal plate was a little ramp up into the elevator. We were raised to the upper car deck, then motioned to drive forward and park behind another vehicle. We got our bags, dodged other cars as they exitted the elevator, and made our way to the purser's desk where we got the key to our cabin. There were two decks of cabins - ours was 201 on the upper deck and just behind the lower viewing lounge. Very convenient. The cabin had bunk beds, a bathroom and shower, sink, and small closet. Basic and cramped, but clean and comfortable, with a nice-sized window. Plenty of room under the lower berth for luggage.

We went out to explore the ship. On our deck (Deck 5) were the viewing lounge and a theater with reclining seats and two big-screen televisions. Aft was an open deck, partially covered, where people later pitched tents. Since the ship only had a hundred or so cabins, many of the passengers either slept in their tents, in the reclining seats in the theater, or on the floor in the lounges. There was a wait-list for cabins in case somebody didn't show up who had reserved a cabin. The ship had restrooms and showers on each deck for the "homeless."

The Boat Deck (Deck 6) had another viewing lounge as well as the snack bar and restaurant. Both lounges had windows the entire width of the deck and down the sides, with comfortable seats and booths with tables and bench seats. The National Forest Service (Dept. of Interior?) had a young woman on board who gave daily talks on the area we were going through, with catchy titles like "Our Flippered Friends." Other than that, we passed the three days watching spectacular scenery, reading, working puzzles, and doing counted cross stitch. Linda caught a couple of movies, but with limited choices (e.g., Baby Mama) I chose to read.

We didn't see a lot of wildlife, although there were some sightings of whales, porpoises and eagles. The stops in Juneau, Petersburg, and Wrangell were in the middle of the night, but we stopped for three hours one afternoon in Sitka, and six hours the next afternoon in Ketchikan. In general, except for Scagway the ferry dock was miles from the towns we stopped at, so the time available ashore was very limited.

When we got to Bellingham we were resigned to being one of the last off the boat, and were prepared for it to take several hours. They moved fast, though, and it took less than an hour and a half. Then the drive home was all that was left. Sigh! Back to crowded roads, big cities, and urban development. But the Columbia River Gorge does not have to take a back seat to any scenery we saw while we were gone.

This photo was taken as we backed away from the ferry dock in Scagway.

The photo above is near Sitka.

Leaving the ferry dock near Sitka.

The auto deck as we prepared to disembark.

So, the trip is over, we're home safe and sound, and the car survived with only minor dings.

The Penultimate Adventure

2009-08-16T18:10:00.001-07:00

Today we had our next-to-the-last adventure, the trip on the White Pass and Yukon Railway. We were picked up by the driver of a small bus, since there were only nine of us. The bus would take us to Carcross in the Yukon where we would meet the train and come back by rail. This was a repeat, in reverse, of the drive we had made from Whitehorse on Friday, but our driver had a line of patter and filled us in on a lot of aspects of the Klondyke gold rush. He took this picture of us at the overlook on the Dyea Road. We turned around here and started up the Klondyke Highway.

There were only nine of us on a train of three or four cars from Carcross to Bennett. We travelled for thirty miles along the shores of Lake Bennett, and then along a series of long, narrow lakes that served as the headwaters of the Yukon River. I posted pictures of some of these a couple of days ago. Lunch was at Bennett in the railroad depot (below) where we had beef stew and apple pie, both apparently made by the cooks at the depot. Very good. It had begun to rain so we didn't do the walking tour of Bennett, which was too bad because there was an interesting old log church there, on the hill above the lake. I think the railroad is the only way to get to Bennett - no road in. At Bennett we picked up a bunch of hikers who had walked the thirty-some miles up the Chilkoot trail. One poor girl was bandaging blisters on most of her toes and both heels as she waited for the train to leave.

The trip from Bennett started out across a level terrain of lakes, muskeg, and spruce forest.

Then from the Canadian border we started down what they call the "Oh My" section of track along a very deep, narrow, rocky gorge with tunnels, trestles, and stomach-wrenching views down to the rocks and class 6 rapids of the river far below. We didn't cross this trestle, which has been replaced by a newer one, thanks be. The newer ones are bad enough. The train rocked back and forth and the brakes squealed. What a ride!

I got the picture below of the train on a curved section of track, which doesn't give any indication of how steep or deep the gorge was. In fact, none of my pictures did.

Our trip is winding up cold, wet, and windy after the hot, dry, and smoky start. We've pulled out the "cold weather" suitcases we had packed when it was 104 in Hood River - sweaters, down vests, down coats. We'll need them on the boat, I think. Tomorrow evening we board the ferry for home. No blog posts for awhile, I don't imagine the internet will be available on the ship, so we may see you before the final post is made.

Saturday, Skagway

2009-08-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

Today we did only a short drive around to the next inlet where the site of the booming gold rush town of Dyea (prounced Dye-ee) lies on the Taiya River. It is cloudy and windy with spatters of rain, sorta like October in Hood River, which discouraged lingering very long outside the car. But we stopped at a few places for some photos. This first is from across the valley that Skagway lies in, looking back at the town. The Klondyke Highway and Skagway River are in the foreground.

This (below) is the Taiya River, looking back towards the townsite of Dyea. That is mostly spruce forest, with cottonwoods along the river.

This (below) is looking the opposite direction along the tidal river towards the inlet and the sea.

This is Dyea (below). Nothing is left of the town of 10,000 that stood here a hundred years ago, except for some pieces of stove pipe and part of the false front of a store that is currently propped up with some 2 x 4's. The forest has reclaimed the site, but there was a great trail where we walked back into the forest. The park service had warned us of habituated bears in the area but didn't tell us what to do if we saw one. It would probably have been an occasion for one of Patrick McManus's "Full-bore Linear Panics," however the occasion didn't arise. In fact, we saw no wildlife at all, although I think I will go looking for one of the little creeks that flow through the town where spawning salmon are now visible. I'll let you know what I find.

Skagway and Robert Service

2009-08-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

This is the land of Robert Service, a poet that I never particularly liked before coming to Alaska. But his poetry fits this land, expecially "The Spell of the Yukon":

It's a great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease'
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

It just keeps getting better and better. The drive from Whitehorse to Skagway is beyond superlatives. The mountains are closer and higher and steeper, the lakes are like fjords, the rocks are glacier-scoured to the bare bones of the earth where little life has taken hold yet. It was a drive of only 110 miles, but through breathtaking valleys with long narrow lakes and finally down the side of a deep, narrow defile where you couldn't see the bottom and the river from the road, although you could here it way down there.

This first picture is Lake Tutshi, I think. We drove beside it for miles.

Just beyond it was an area of glacier-scoured rock, granite it looked like, and Lake Bennett (third photo) lay in the rocky potholes that the glacier had left behind.

Starting down the side of the gorge towards Skagway, we could see the railway on the other side of the gorge.

Skagway is a delightful old town at the head of a real fjord, with towering mountains all around. It is a cruise ship stop for a few months in the summer, but that is apparently not enough to support much of an economy. There are only 800 or so residents and the town is not all tarted up as a resort - not condos or expensive homes or resort hotels or lodges. Just the small downtown with its old buildings painted up and selling souvenirs, furs, and a lot of jewelry. The port and railway depot are the focal point of the town. We walked around and looked in the windows and stopped for a cinnamon bun (Linda) and chocolate croissant (Diane).

Tomorrow we'll visit Dyea and the Klondyke Goldrush National Historical Park a short drive into the next arm of Taiya Inlet. The Chilkoot Trail, the route to the gold fields during the Klondyke gold rush starts here. For the young and/or ambitious, you can hike the Chilkoot Trail. We don't plan to, except for maybe a few hundred yards.

Tok to Whitehorse - Things we missed the first time, or why you should always travel a highway at least twice.

2009-08-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

Today we backtracked for 380 miles and we are in Whitehorse tonight. We had a chance to find some things we had missed on the trip up. The first were the mountains that dominated the southern horizon, that the smoke had obscured earlier. Turns out the route was a lot more scenic than we had originally thought - first the Alaska Range and then the Wrangell-St. Elias range, the two just sort of merging with each other somewhere near the Canadian border. The second was the border markers. Here you have the sign welcoming you to Alaska. There was also one facing the other direction welcoming you to the Yukon.

A stele and line on the pavement marked the actual border.

Someone had told us that part of the treaty between Canada and the U.S. required that you should be able to see from one end of the border at the Arctic Ocean to the other end by sighting between markers set in a cleared 60 foot wide strip. Sure enough, from this marker you could see the cleared strip, visible here stretching south. Looks rather like an electric highline right of way.

The third thing we had missed was a little museum in Burwash Landing in the middle of nowhere - the Kluane Museum of Natural History. Built largely by volunteers and contributions, using a building that was supposed to be a Catholic church, it was outstanding. The displays were well thought out and well executed, covering the animals of the area, the native peoples, and the native minerals. If you ever come this way, watch for it, somewhere between Beaver Creek and Haines Junction. And it only cost $2.95 Canadian for us senior citizens (so THERE, $30 drive to a glacier!).

We had a couple of good animal sightings to cap the day. We saw a cow and bull elk engaging in a little lead up to the rutting season - he was chasing her and she was being coy. And a bald eagle landed on the road ahead of us, forcing us to slow way down to avoid hitting it. We didn't see what little delicacy it was scoping out, but it took off again and flew right past the passenger side window.

Tomorrow we have a short drive south to Skagway where we will spend three nights.

Catchup - Anchorage to Tok

2009-08-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening we were in Tok, but if you will remember, internet was pretty new to Tok, so I didn't even attempt to post to this blog. Yesterday was probably the most spectacular drive so far, both because of the scenery and because it was neither smoky nor foggy, and there was quite a bit of sun.

We drove back north a bit from Anchorage, then at Palmer turned east on the Glenn Highway. Our plan was to drive to Glenallen and continue to Tok on the Tok Cut-off, Hwy 1 all the way (Alaska highways have names and numbers. Most people use the name rather than the number). The road entered the Matanuska Valley, a deep narrow valley with steep, rugged mountains on both sides - The Talkeetna Mountains on the left and the Chugach Mountains on the right. The Chugach are by far the most impressive, snow- and glacier-clad.

This is the Matanuska River with the Chugach Mountains beyond.

The Matanuska Glacier comes to within a mile or so of the road. There is a private road that will take you right up to the edge of the glacier. We drove down a dirt road to the campground where you could pay to drive to the glacier, but they wanted $15 per person, or $30 for the privilege. I think that was a little steep to drive 2 miles on a bad road, get out, look at the muddy terminus of the glacier, say "Yep, that's a glacier alright," and drive back to the highway. Besides, we probably got a better view from the highway.

Another picture of the Matanuska River and Chugach Mountains. When we got to the upper end of the valley, we came out onto a high plateau of muskeg bogs, tundra, stands of stunted black spruce and hundreds of small ponds. Driving towards Glenallen the road went directly towards a big volcanic peak just emerging from of the clouds, which we found out was Mt. Drum in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. It is over 12,000 ft, and as the clouds cleared further we spotted Mt. Sanford at over 16,000 feet. We never had a good enough view of either to make a photo worthwhile. We had lunch at Glenallen while we pondered whether to drive directly to Tok or to alter our plans and drive north to Delta Junction and then southeast to Tok, essentially two sides of a roughly equilateral triangle, rather than just one. Our guidebook said that the route to Delta Junction, the Richardson Highway, through the Alaska Range crossed one of the most spectacular passes in Alaska, so we opted for that. As a result, we also followed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, so we are able to claim parallelling it for its entire distance except for the bit from Valdez to Glenallen and from Atigun Pass to Prudoe bay.

This is the approach to the pass on the Richardson Highway. It's hard to see, but there is a glacier coming down at that low point, and you can see a bit of the highway in the center right of the photo. I'm not going to post any more photos from yesterday because it takes forever to download them, but take my word for it - the Richardson Highway is well worth traveling, although I think the morning's drive through the Matanuska Valley was far more spectacular.

At Delta Junction we found the marker for the official end of the Alaska Highway, which we had missed on our trip up. The drive to Tok had been very smoky a couple of weeks ago, but yesterday the smoke was gone and we found that the Alaska Range dominated the southern horizon all the way to Tok, and indeed most of the drive today to Whitehorse.

Back in Anchorage

2009-08-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

Last night in Anchorage.

Yesterday when we drove down to Homer it was mostly sunny but very hazy so we didn't really appreciate the magnificence of the country we were driving through. We had a waterfront motel and towards sunset the haze disappeared and we could see the mountains across the bay from Homer. The sun didn't set until about 9:30 and it was still light when we went to bed.

This morning it was still sunny and only a light haze, so we could see the mountains. We stopped at the Two Sisters Bakery before leaving Homer where Diane got a ham and cheese croissant and Linda got a berry and cheese Danish. The bakery was in what appeared to be the "old" Homer, rather than the tarted up tourist destination that we had seen the day before. I could see the Homer of Bodett's "End of the Road." I'm glad some of it was still there.

On the drive up from Homer to Soldotna we saw two volcanoes across on the west side of Cook Inlet. One of them was, I think, Redoubt Volcano that was erupting earlier this summer. The eruption is over for now, but it was a very impressive mountain anyway, about 10,000 feet rising abruptly from the edge of Cook Inlet. It looked a little like Mt. Adams, while the other volcano was more pointed, more like Mt. Hood. At Soldotna we turned east and drove through towering, steep, rugged mountains, many with snow fields and glaciers visible. No photos, unfortunately. The best views had no place to pull off the road, and the residual haze did not encourage photo taking anyway. You'll have to trust me and look up any picture of the Kenai Peninsula. We reached the south end of Turnagain Arm and followed the shoreline north to Anchorage. It was an altogether beautiful drive.

For dinner we decided to splurge. We went to Phyllis's Cafe and Salmon Bake in downtown Anchorage where Linda feasted on king crab legs and Diane indulged her passion for wild Alaskan red salmon. Both were served with corn-on-the-cob and red potatoes, and Linda's crab came with about half a cup of melted butter. Delish!

As we were finishing, two young men in black suits and missionary name badges came into the cafe. We asked the waiter if we could pay for their dinners, but he said that Phyllis was a Mormon and she treated them to dinner whenever they came in. Linda wondered if they got tired of eating crab legs. I wondered if that was possible. We stopped to say hello to them on our way out.

Tomorrow we start back home, although we won't get there for another week and a half. We're driving back to Tok on the Glenn Hwy and Tok Cut-off. By the time we get to Skagway we will have driven on most of the paved highways in Alaska and quite a bit of the unpaved highways. It's been quite an adventure.

Homer, Alaska. The End of the Road

2009-08-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

To all you fans of Tom Bodett's hilarious book about small town living, "The End of the Road," we are here in Homer, the inspiration for his book. Since the town he wrote about existed 35 or 40 years ago, Homer is little like it was. It is big (relatively, about 5000 permanent residents) and busy and rather touristy, but the area is beautiful and the drive down was beautiful. This is the land of towering, glacier-sheathed mountains dropping abruptly down into the sea. The trees are a lot bigger and the scruffy black spruce is giving way to sitka spruce, the symmetrical Christmas tree kind of tree. It has been sunny but too hazy for good pictures, so I didn't take any today.

We drove out on the Spit south of Homer past numerous places where you could book a charter for fish for flounder, buy souveniers (this looks like it's misspelled), camp along the water, or find a seafood restaurant. We got excellent flounder fish and chips at The Boardwalk Restaurant, then got some fudge, and later drove out to the Fritz Creek Gardens where there were several different types of gardens showcasing the flowering plants that are adapted to this part of Alaska. Linda had talked to a woman on the bus with us at Denali who recommended the gardens, which were owned by her grandmother. She said to say hello to her grandmother if we stopped there. We tried, but the grandmother wasn't there, so we just left a message.

Tomorrow back to Anchorage, then we will be heading home: back to Tok and Whitehorse, then down to Scagway where we will board the ferry for Bellingham.

P.S. In a previous post I referred to the Dalton Highway, or Haul Road, as the Dawson Highway. Oops!

Anchorage

2009-08-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday, in Anchorage. First we attended the block of services at the Inlet View Ward in the stake center building. I don't know what stake. There are 25 wards in Anchorage. We enjoyed the services.

After church we drove down to take a look at the Anchorage Temple. Several of the sisters in the relief society meeting are temple workers here. You have to make a reservation to attend a session. They have a rather limited schedule.

We went back to the motel and changed clothes, then drove over to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, where we had lunch and participated in several of the programs they had available. Here are pictures of dancers representing the Yup'ik and Cup'ik peoples (on of five major native groupings). The women did most of the dancing, which consisted of standing in one place and using the arms to tell the stories. The costumes were very showy, obviously reflecting the influence of European contact with a lot of beading and braid on calico fabric. There was also fur and leather. They were accompanied by singers (chanters) and a tamborine-shaped drum beat with a thin stick. They put on a great half-hour show.

Tomorrow we're driving to Homer, the End of the Road.

More Denali

2009-08-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are a few photos from our trip into Denali. They are sort of backwards with the earlier photos at the bottom.

This is a rainbow that we saw near the end of the trip. The afternoon had been a combination of sun and showers, but as you can see, the air was clear.

The Alaska Range. Mt Denali is back there in the clouds. You can see some glaciers and a typical braided river channel.

We had lunch at a Wilderness Lodge near this little river.

Linda wanted to walk on the alpine tundra, so here she is in the rain. She said the tundra felt spongy.

Yesterday I forgot to mention that we had also seen snowshoe hares, ptarmigans, ground squirrels, and a merlin (type of falcon). There were large patches of willows that had had their bark stripped. The driver said that snowshoe hares did that in the winter.

Denali Park

2009-08-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to post any photos today - the Wi Fi at Denali is really slow, but hopefully tonight at Anchorage it will be better. Yesterday, Friday, we took the bus into Denali, the only way to get past the first few miles of road into the park. No private vehicles allowed. It had rained all night on Friday night so the air had cleared of smoke. There was some residual clouds and fog which stayed with us most of the 90 miles to the end of the road. But we saw some wildlife - little white specks in the distance that were Dall sheep, a couple of moose along the highway, a bear down along a river gravel bar, another grizzly sow and cub up on a hillside. We had lunch at the lodge at the end of the road and tried our hand at panning for gold. The clouds were clearing and the sun coming out.

The trip back was spectacular, although the clouds didn't rise enough to ever see Mt. Denali. But the lower mountains were visible and the sunlight and clouds made the lighting absolutely beautiful. For animals, I'll start with the least exciting and work up: We saw a little frog on the road that our driver, Peter, said was a very rare wood frog. It was pretty nondescript. We saw another little white speck at the far side of a pond that Peter said was a trumpeter swan. That would have ranked higher if we had seen it clearly, since trumpeters are so very rare. We saw two beavers in a roadside pond and watched as they cut a branch into two pieces and tow the pieces across the pond. They had built a really impressive dam but I never saw their lodge. We saw lots of caribou. The first were herds of mostly cows and calves grazing half mile or more away, but later we saw three large bulls, one at a time, spaced over a mile or two along the road. The first two were off a hundred yards or so from the road, but the third, a really massive fellow (as caribou go) was right alongside the road and as we watched, he came up onto the road and proceeded to walk along it, pausing to pose for us every now and then. Wouldn't you know, my camera batteries had died. Peter didn't want to stress him out, so we followed slowly until we were able to edge up beside him and coax him back off the road.

These last two were both so great I don't know which to rank highest - dead tie I'd have to say. The first was a grey wolf. Peter said he'd only seen wolves three or four times in the 80 or so trips he made into the park this summer, so it was a pretty rare sighting. We had driven down a short road into a rest area and gotten out of the bus. Looking back up at the road we had come down, where it ran parallel to the edge of the parking lot and a little up hill, we spotted the wolf, just walking along the road and pausing every now and then to look at us with those eerie yellow wolf eyes. It was no more than 50 or 100 feet away and we followed along in the parking lot until it reached the upper end of the visible road and disappeared over the far edge. Peter said the pack it belonged to had a den a mile or so away.

The other was way cool, like a Disney nature movie, except without the feeling that it was somehow staged. We had stopped to watch a grizzly eating berries on a hillside just above the road. Then a sudden movement drew our eyes to a fox that was trotting up the hill towards the bear. It was a beautiful red and black fox with a very bushy black tail with a white tip on it that made it very visible. The bear apparently heard it before he saw it, because he started to run up the hill. But he soon stopped and turned to look at the fox. The fox ran right at it, the bear charged but the fox darted out of his reach, circled around, and laid down. The bear just wanted to eat berries, but the fox repeatly ran at him, evaded his charges, circled around, and laid down. Peter said that he had seen fox kits in the area and thought the fox had a den nearby and was trying to lure the bear away from it. We watched for maybe 15 minutes as the fox worked the bear to the top of the ridge and the two finally disappeared. I think a person could go a lifetime hoping to see something like that and never see it. Almost as an anticlimax, a short while later we saw a sow and cub come down a hill, cross the road in front of us and go down into a ravine where she spent some time eating berries. Yawn!

Finally, we saw a really beautiful rainbow. What a day. It was a 13 hour roundtrip and we were tired but happy when we got back to our cabin.

Today we drive to Anchorage.

Fires, flats and friends

2009-08-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight at Denali. The past few nights the Wi Fi has been weak or very, very slow, so I will catch up tonight, I hope.

We have driven the Dawson Highway, or Haul Road, and survived. We've been north of the Arctic Circle, and took the second obligatory tourist photo, which I posted in the previous post. So, here are a few observations:

The Road - About 195 miles from the beginning to Wiseman. The Dawson Hwy was not nearly as bad as we had expected. It was unpaved in places but had three paved stretches, one nearly 80 miles long. It was dusty in a few places, muddy in one section that they were working on and had wet down. Fortunately it wasn't raining, but there are some 300 fires burning in Alaska and it was incredibly smoky. The services were non-existent, gas at Yukon Camp (60 miles) on the Yukon River, and at Coldfoot (180 miles). The traffic was practically non-existent driving up, with only a few trucks and more cars and RVs. Coming back we passed maybe twice as much traffic, but still drove miles without seeing another vehicle.

The Terrain - Rollercoaster at the southern end, then flat for the last with rugged mountains on either side. Because of the smoke we didn't take any pictures. Too bad because the Brooks Range is supposed to be spectacular. The boreal or taiga forest got more and more stunted as we drove north, finally dwindling to tundra. There were huge areas of purple fireweed like the two photos below.

This typical of the northern area towards Coldfoot.

This is an old burn with dead birch and spruce and a lot of fireweed.

The pipeline parallelled the road for most of the distance.

We stopped at Coldfoot to mail some postcards since it has a post office. The postmistress was one of several friendly residents we came across, willing to talk for as long as we had questions. Then on to Wiseman where we stayed for two nights. I posted a picture of the log cabin we stayed in in the previous post.

Wiseman consists of a number of log cabins that appear to have been there forever. This is a picture of the local ATVs in summer storage. The owners of our log cabin B & B were a German couple with two children who live here year round. They use a combination of wind, solar, and gas generator for electricity, and a pump for water. The cabin was comfortable and, European-style we had down comforters on the bed, just laid on top of the sheet, no top sheet, not tucked in at the bottom. The comforters had a cover on them which served as the top sheet and was laundered between guests. We had a shared bathroom - knock before entering and lock both doors before using.

This is a picture of beautiful downtown Wiseman. Note the delphiniums growing six feet tall. The flowers are beautiful up here. We walked around the "town" and met several of the local people, all very friendly and eager to talk about the area. One was Flo, and Eskimo healer who comes up here every summer to collect caribou leaves, also known as wormwood, that she uses for her salves. Good for what ails you. We each bought some. The can said that it could also be eaten in an emergency.

Midnight. We toast the long twilight with Welches grape juice. The sun had set, or was at least behind the mountains but it was still light, as you can see. No flash needed.

We drove another 60 miles north to Atigun through treeless tundra to the top. It was so smoky we decided to turn around here. On the way back Linda fished the Dietrich River but didn't catch anything. I took some photos, but this stupid blog site keeps deleting some of the photos I post and it takes forever to load them, so you'll have to wait til I get home to see them.

On the way back, we got a flat. If we had to have a flat, it was a good place - the only wayside on the whole highway. We had pulled in for a comfort stop - it has the most well-made outhouses in Alaska - and I noticed that the left rear tire was low. As I watched, it went completely flat. We unloaded everything, got out the spare, and jack, and the manual to tell us where the jack points were.

We got the car jacked up and the lug nuts removed. As Diane was removing the last lug nut and reading the manual in a staged photo op, two angels arrived, Jim and Jeannie driving a red pickup with two blue kayaks on top. We must have looked like utter fools.

Jim finished replacing the spare while Diane tried to look like she knew what she was looking for as she examined the flat tire. Our angels then followed us as we drove another 45 miles south, favoring the spare, and not exceeding 45 mph, until we reached the Yukon bridge where there was supposed to be a place that repaired tires. Not so any longer. The guide book was outdated. But they had a compressor, so we were able to inflate the spare to its recommended 60 psi. I had had it checked before I left but the tire people had apparently thought that 35 psi was enough. So Jim and Jeannie followed us the rest of the way to mile 0 of the Dalton. They turned off to Manley Hot Springs while we continued another 90 miles to Fairbanks, not exceeding 50 mph and keeping our fingers crossed. Once in Fairbanks, it was too late to get the tire fixed but we went through a carwash and removed the mud and grime of our great adventure.

Next morning we found a tire store. Turns out the tire was ruined. We must have driven enough as it deflated to damage the sidewall. They sold us a good used tire for $35 (I had to trust them that our tire really was damaged beyond repair). Then we repack the spare and our luggage, g0t an oil change and headed for Denali.

It is raining today, first rain in weeks. The smoke has been washed from the air, but we still can't see the mountains for the fog and clouds. But tomorrow is another day. Tonight the hot tub and probably an early night. Our bus into the park leaves at 6 a.m.

Wiseman north of the Arctic Circle

2009-08-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well, we've made it up the Dalton Highway with no problems, crossed the Arctic Circle, and are staying in a genuine log cabin. There is Wi Fi, but it is intermittent and very slow, so more in a couple of days when we make it back to Fairbanks. Main comment for now, very smoky and we haven't seen much of the Brooks Range.

Fairbanks

2009-08-02T21:27:00.001-07:00

By morning a lot of the smoke had disappeared. Since it is Sunday, we decided to read aloud a lesson from the Teachings of the Presidents and play a CD of music from an evensong performance. Then we put in the CD Linda bought yesterday and listened to a rousing chorus of "Welcome to the Last Frontier" as we drove through rolling taiga forest. Diane was driving and fortunately saw the moose in time to brake sharply as she came out of the woods on the left and crossed right in front of our bumper. She was a very large, dark brown cow, and without even glancing at us she loped across the road and into the woods on the other side. At that moment the second song on the CD began, a lively little children's song that began: It's a moose! It's a moose! And it was, indeed, a moose. A little further we encountered another cow moose and calf grazing alongside the road. By the time we turned around to go back for a better look, the pair had disappeared, but we had at last seen some meese.

There is some disagreement between Delta Junction and Fairbanks over where the terminus of the Alaska Hwy is, but we noticed that the mileage markers for the distance from Dawson Creek ended at Delta Junction, so I guess that is the official terminus. But Fairbanks still has a marker celebrating the end.

We followed the Tanana (rhymes with Panama) River into Fairbanks. It is very muddy with glacial "flour" and is very wide. This picture doesn't do it justice, but you can see that it has several channels. Many of the rivers up here have characteristic braided channels. Anyway, we finally reached Fairbanks, which is a largish town with no redeeming characteristics that we have discovered yet. We got in quite early, checked in, got some lunch and went for a ride on the sternwheeler "Discovery III." It is a four-decked tourist boat that took us down the Chena River to it's confluence with the Tanana.

From the Discovery III we saw this bush pilot take off from the river. We hove to near a breeder of sled dogs and had a little pre-arranged lesson in breeding and racing sled dogs, then went on to Chena Village, which was a reconstruction of early Athabascan camps and dwellings. A lovely young Eskimo girl was our guide and talked about how they had lived by fishing, hunting, and trapping before the arrival of Europeans, and how that arrival changed their lifestyles. Here she is modelling a woman's parka. Beautiful workmanship.

I heard some criticism of this blog for posting pictures of Linda, but none of Diane. So here is Diane posing at Chena Village with a stuffed moose. Diane is the one in the foreground.

Tomorrow we start up the Dalton Highway, known as the Haul Road. We got Linda a fishing license so she can try out a lake just north of Atigun Pass in the Brooks Range. We were told by a very friendly local that if you throw your lure into the lake you will have at least two fish fighting over it. We'll let you know if this is true.

Tok, Alaska

2009-08-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we reached Alaska and stopped for the night in Tok (pronounced Toke). Tok is a tiny place that is just acquiring modern conveniences, so the Wi Fi was intermittent at best. I decided to wait till Fairbanks to make this entry.

We left Whitehorse and headed towards the U.S. border. The early part of the day was beautiful and soon we could see the massive Wrangell and St. Elias ranges of the Coast Mountains. We drove through mostly flat taiga with the mountains on our left. About halfway through the drive it became really, and I mean REALLY smoky, so that we couldn't see much more than the trees alongside the road. It was that way for the rest of the day.

The road was smooth to begin with, but we soon encountered the dips and bumps that come with permafrost and frost heaves. We bounced along to the US border, where we entered Alaska effortlessly. The border official told us that there were a lot of fires in Alaska, which was causing the poor visibility. Once in Alaska the roads improved.

Like I said, Tok is very small. No government, no building permits, no zoning regulations, no local taxes, no police, no lawyers. They like it that way. We were told of a show where a local man sang his own songs and played the guitar. It was free and a very good show. He was a good singer, wrote good songs, and had a young lady who was visiting play the violin. Linda bought one of his CDs. More about that later.

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

2009-07-31T15:51:00.000-07:00

We've made it to Whitehorse, a veritable metropolis compared to the last few days. It even has a Starbucks and traffic lights. Today's drive was through rolling hills densly covered with boreal forest. No wildlife although there was plenty of evidence of past and present wildfires. We came around the northern end of the Rockies at Teslin, then began to see the rugged mountains of the Coast Range to the west. The ocean inlets and fjords are just beyond the Coast Range, not too far from where we are, but it will be another couple of weeks before we actually reach the sea.

The main point of interest today was Teslin Lake and a stop we made at the Tlingit Heritage Centre just outside of the town of Teslin. It sounded like they pronounce Tlingit as "Klinkit." The native Americans here are called First Nations, and one of them is a coastal tribe called the Tlingit. They are trying to re-establish their traditions and heritage here at Teslin Lake. The Heritage Centre was opened about ten years ago and as part of the opening ceremonies the clan poles for the five clans, Raven, Frog, Wolf, Beaver and Eagle were set up in front of the Heritage Centre for the first time in a hundred or more years.

Some of the photos I took around Teslin and the heritage center I have posted below.

This is the town of Teslin and the bridge across one of the bays of Teslin Lake. The lake is narrow but very long and we drove beside it for miles. The mountains in the background are probably the beginnings of the Coast Range.

The clan pole for Wolf Clan.

Linda standing beside Raven Clan pole.

Two Tlinglit canoes.

The beach below the Heritage Centre and Lake Teslin.

Wildlife, wildfires and the Yukon

2009-07-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

We've reached Watson Lake in the Yukon, north of latitude 60. We were told this morning that the best time to see wildlife was early morning, so we left about 6:15. The first thing we saw was a sign saying "Extremely dusty conditions." And they were. The road was being patched for about the first 100 miles and was really very dusty, but there was very little traffic, so except for one stretch where we had to follow a pilot car, we were not forced to endure anyone's dust.

We headed northwest and were soon in the Rockies, and no wildlife. But near the summit we saw signs warning of sheep in the road. They come down to lick minerals from the road, apparently. Near the summit we saw a single small caribou, a cow with little short antlers. Further down the road we saw some ewes and a lamb, stone sheep not bighorns. They are beautiful sheep with much darker coats than the bighorns. Didn't get a picture, though. Cars had stopped in both directions, blocking the road, and then a big truck came up behind us and gave us an impatient blare with his air horn. Can't say I blamed him. We also saw a band of sheep scrambling up the shear wall of the highway cut a little further on, and another cow caribou.

The road was pretty rough through the mountains, narrow, winding, with either patches being repaired or patches needing repair. This was more what I had thought the Alaska Hwy would be like.

About noon we reached Liard Hot Springs, which are quite popular in these parts.

The Canadian government has provided bathhouses and walkways. Linda took a dip in the lower pool, which runs 40-49 deg. C (104-120 deg. F), and she declared it quite comfortable. She did not try the upper pool, which is around 54 deg C (about 130 F, which would probably boil corn). We had lunch here and had our first encounter with mosquitos. As we left the park we saw a black bear grazing on the roadside grass and weeds.

After the mountains the roads improved, but we started through an area where a massive wildfire had recently burned, and was still smouldering in places. It must not have been too hot, because there was not total kill of the trees in most places. The terrain was rolling and forested with birch and spruce, and there were a lot of rivers. This is the Liard River.

Along the route between Liard Springs and Watson Lake we saw a number of signs warning of bison in the road. We finally found a herd of about 20 or so bedded down in a dusty spot right beside the highway, and later one massive lone bull grazing the grassy shoulder of the road. Neither paid us any mind.

We got to Watson Lake about 2:30 and checked in at the Airforce Lodge. It's like a college dorm, twin beds in the room and the "facilities" down the hall. But it is clean and the hosts, a German couple, are very friendly. Watson Lake is a really small town, maybe 1500 people, so the accomodations are pretty basic. But lottery money had built them a first class "Northern Lights Centre" with a planetarium-type theatre and a beautiful show of northern lights. And very friendly and informative staff. The other point of interest in town was the Sign Forest, where people from all over the world have left signs, some they made especially to post here. This last picture is of just one small part of the "forest."

Dinner was at Bee Jay's, a truck stop that was a little rough on the outside but served good food. But it was not very effectively airconditioned. In fact, this is the first time in five years they've even needed airconditioning the lady at Bee Jay's told us. The Lodge isn't airconditioned, either. They tell me it should cool off this evening, though. I certainly hope so.

Tomorrow we will reach Whitehorse.

Dawson Creek to Ft. Nelson on the Alaska Hwy.

2009-07-29T16:19:00.000-07:00

Bear with me, I'm finally getting the knack of this. So, this morning we stopped at milepost 0 and took one of two obligatory tourist photos for the trip. You'll have to wait to see what the other one is, but I'll let you know when we get there. We set out to drive what my guide book (Guide to the Alaska Highway, Ron Dalby) calls "the last great driving adventure in North America" and "more adventure than many drivers experience in a lifetime." We passed more fields of bright yellow canola and gently rolling fields of hay and pasture to Fort St. John, where civilization ends and the landscape becomes gently rolling hills of white spruce mingled with stands of birch, and an occasional pine tree or tamarack. We crossed the Peace River, one of the great rivers of the north, then continued on over long, nearly straight stretches of mostly empty highway.

We only drove about 280 miles today. We have stopped for the night at the Ft. Nelson Hotel, which was not much to look at from the outside, being under renovation. The upstairs rooms on the front side had window ACs which had been removed, but the desk clerk told us that the rooms were airconditioned, which was welcomed news because it was hot (about 85 F.) and sticky and we wanted somewhere cool. But the room is great and has a glass door that opens into a central courtyard that has a pool.

Linda has already tried out the pool and declares it a bit cool, but refreshing.

We got here a little after noon and, being early, went over to the local museum. It had an old WWII newsreel-style film of the construction of the highway, and some dusty and moth-eaten stuffed animals, some old antiques and some rusting WWII vintage vehicles. In all, a charming little museum staffed by charming young Canadian college students. They had never heard of the Burgess Shale Fossil Beds and had no idea where they are located. Guess I'll have to Google it.

Tomorrow we will look for the Laird hotsprings, about 2/3rds of the way between here and Watson Lake, where we will stay tomorrow night. They are supposed to be world-famous, but they warn that the upper hotsprings are, unofficially and against the rules, sometimes "clothing optional."

Did it really get to 107 deg. yesterday in Hood River? Yikes! At least it's getting cooler day by day as we get further north.

2009-07-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

More Columbia Mountains.

We had lunch here - Huble Homestead Park

The Rockies north of Prince George.

Folded strata

2009-07-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

These are the Columbia Mountains just north of Valemont.

Linda

Dawson Creek, BC, Milepost 0 (Day 3)

2009-07-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

Today was our longest day, 455 miles. It was a beautiful day. We started up a valley between the Rockies and the Columbia Mountains, on the Yellowhead Hwy. Very green with lots of fir and spruce, and more and more birch as we got further north. The land gradually changed to rolling hills. The road was good and almost no traffic, especially after we passed the Hwy 16 junction that went to Jasper National Park. At Prince George we got back on Hwy 97, the John Hart Highway. We crossed the Continental Divide, barely noticeable, then the mountains started closing in again as we headed towards McKenzie, Rockies on the right and some other range (Cariboo or Wolverine?). The Rockies were all folded and distorted sediments from probably hundreds of millions of years ago. I'll try to post a picture. Once we got around the Rockies, the land flattened out again and between Chetwynd and Dawson Creek it was very agricultural, mostly hay and canola, which surprised me. Dawson Creek is a good sized town, 10,000, and not at all like either of us had pictured it. We expected a little one-street town with a saloon and a couple of motels, maybe in a wooded valley, but it is flat and busy.

We had lunch at a neat little park just past Prince George which was an old homestead beside a pretty good-sized river. There was a sign that said that if you saw a bear "Don't panic. Notify staff. Go indoors." Okay! But we didn't see a bear. In fact, no wildlife so far, except for some ravens (or crows).

Mollie was quite polite today, no arguments about which route to take. There actually wasn't much choice, anyway, so she didn't have much choice.

Day 2

2009-07-27T16:31:00.000-07:00

We're in Valemont, BC this evening. It is at the western gateway to Jasper National Park, in a broad valley surrounded by tall, jagged peaks. The Rockies are on the east and the Columbia Mountains are on the west.

Linda had brought along Mollie, the Garmin GPS device. Diane had already planned to go Canada 97A to Kelowna, then Armstrong, and via Canada Rte 1 to Kamloops. Mollie had other plans, and as soon as we turned onto 97A she began harassing us to turn around. She wanted us to take Hwy 3 to Princeton, then north to Merritt and Kamloops. When she saw we weren't going to cooperate, you could almost here her humph as she rearranged her schedule and gave us directions north on 97A. But at Peachland, just before Kelowna, she again began to browbeat us to turn west on 97C to Merritt. Rather than endure her sulking, we followed orders. I guess she really did know best. We had 4-lane freeway all the way to Kamloops.

It was a nice drive. We started in the Okanogan Valley, which is an agricultural area, mainly orchards and vineyards, and followed a valley alongside a series of lakes to Peachland. Mollie's route took us over a mountain range with a 5800 ft (1788 meter) summit. The vegetation changed from pine and sagebrush to firs and spruce (a lot like the area up around Mt. Hood). There is a tremendous amount of dead trees, whole hillsides were reddish brown rather than green. I don't know if it tussock moth, pine beetle, or some other disease or insect, but it is devastating. Worse than anything I've seen in Oregon.

From Kamloops we were on Rte 5 to Valemont. It got greener and lusher and less agricultural as we drove along. The last 80 km or so was through a narrow river valley, with glimpses of the jagged rocky peaks of the Rockies. But it is still hot, hot, hot. 34 deg (remember, we're in Canada now, but that's 94 deg to you Luddites). We saw our first "Moose crossing" sign, but no meese so far.

Speaking of the metric system, it is taking some getting used to to drive 110 (70 mps) and slow down to 50 in towns (about 35, I think). The car has kph as well as mph on the speedometer, but you really have to squint to read the kph. I bought gas at 1.019 Canadian dollars per liter, which comes out to about $3.47 US per gallon.

Tomorrow we should reach milepost 0 of the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek.

By the way, we have found "poutine" on the menu both times we've eaten in a restaurant. Wasn't that what Bush thought was the prime minister of Canada? It is french fries topped with cheese and gravy, and is apparently the national dish of Canada.

Day 1

2009-07-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

Here we are in Osoyoos, British Columbia, lakefront room. We left a little later than we will be leaving for most of the trip. It was about 9 a.m. by the time Linda's luggage was loaded and her husband Norm had given each of us a blessing. We headed east on I-84 and picked up US97 at Biggs, then followed 97 north through Yakima, Ellensburg, Wenatchee and Omak. We had a picnic alongside the Columbia north of Wenatchee at a nice state park, where we sat on the grass under a tree. Linda brought provisions for an army, so we dined quite well. The big adventure of the day was Canadian customs, where Diane chose the slow lane, as she always does, and we watched three cars go through in the other lane for every one in our lane. When we got to the customs man, he asked the usual questions: where were we going, did we have any firearms or explosives, did we have any fruits or vegetables? We confessed to a small ziplock bag of Hood River cherries, a few celery sticks, and some carrot sticks - illegal to bring into Canada we were informed (which I suppose we should have known). We were directed to a shed where the contraband could be deposited in a freezer (and informed that they would be watching us by closed-circuit TV). The large chest freezer was full to the brim with cantaloupe, watermellons, blueberries, grapes, and other goodies. We added our pittance to the stash, wondering why we hadn't been eating it while waiting in line.

The motel is located on a beautiful lake (we were informed that it is the warmest lake in Canada), but Linda opted for the heated motel pool. Diane forgot her swimsuit, so spent the time blogging. We're about ready to go out for dinner, then probably call it an early night.

Vern, if you are reading this, the corn in the Yakima Valley is six feet high and has tasseled.

The car is checked out

2009-06-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

The car is a 2004 Suburu Outback. It went in last week for a pre-trip checkup and now has a new battery, brakes, sparkplugs, belts, transmission and differential fluids, and a new outlook. I will put new tires on it by the middle of the month. Then we should be in good shape. I'm figuring about 4000 miles, but that is just a guess. The most challenging stretch for the car will be the Dalton Highway (featured this year on Ice Road Truckers), a mostly gravel highway that serves the Prudoe Bay oil fields. We will drive it about halfway, to Wiseman, a little north of Coldfoot at the base of the Brooks Range.

2009-06-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

You can ignore this photo. I was just seeing if I could download a photo from my digital camera. JoJo, the Japanese Chin, will not be going to Alaska with us. We don't need a hyperactive carsick dog penned up with us in a car for a month.

Preliminaries

2009-06-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

Our general plans are to leave on Sunday, July 26 and drive by stages to Dawson Creek in British Columbia, where we will pick up the Alaska Highway. We will then proceed to Fairbanks and, after spending a couple of weeks seeing the sights, will depart for home from Skagway via the Alaska Marine Highway System (the Alaska auto ferry). We will arrive in Bellingham, Washington on August 21.

It would be lovely to be spontaneous, but having no desire to sleep in the car when we find that the few motels in town are booked up, we have made a number of reservations for overnight accomodations. Other than reservations for a bus excursion into Denali National Park and the train trip on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, we will otherwise let the moment determine what our daily excursions are to be.

Any friends and family who would like to follow our adventure are welcome to check here occasionally. I hope I will be able to figure out how to post photos from my digital camera.