Month: July 2014

After our perfect day on Mt. McKinley, the next day was rainy all day.  We stopped at a couple of scenic overlooks as we drove south from our campsite, but the rain and fog really limited visibility.   We also make a quick stop at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to restock the pantry.

To break up the drive, we stopped at the Indian Creek mine where a character talked to us about the mine and some of the antiques he had collected.  We were only able to see the mine entrance, but it was a good way to get off the road for a while.  The museum was housed in an old log cabin which had once been pushed all the way onto the river ice by an avalanche.  It was moved back and many years later was designated a national historic site, dating past the Alaska gold rush.  The owner said that initially the Smithsonian wouldn’t grant historic site designation, because the cabin wasn’t in its original location, but once they found out that natural forces moved it, they relented.

We stopped at another scenic overlook because of the rain.  After a few hands of dominoes, the rain subsided.  We walked around the overlook.  Again, the rain and fog limited visibility, but we found these interesting sculptures of beluga whales.

Near Girdwood we took a 5 mile hike.  The attraction here was the hand tram over Glacier Creek.  It rained the whole way, but it was a good hike.

The hand tram was really neat.  Up to two people could get in this cage and then pull themselves across with the rope.  All of us took a turn in the bucket.

After returning from the hike and drying off a bit, we bought a pizza in Girdwood and drove to our campsite for the night.  We stayed in the Willawa camp ground, managed by the Forest Service.  The campsites were far apart and surrounded by trees, so it didn’t seem very crowded.  When we went to bed, we weren’t sure about whether the weather would cooperate for our planned glacier cruise the next day.

We had a lot of low fog the next morning.  (This stream was supposed to be full of spawning salmon, but we saw none.)  We weren’t sure about the cruise, but there was a little blue poking through the clouds, so after a brief stop at a visitors center for information, we drove through the tunnel to Whittier.

The tunnel is the longest tunnel in the world shared by vehicles and trains.  On the half hour traffic is permitted to drive into Whittier.  On the hour, traffic comes out of Whittier.  In between, trains use the tunnel.

Whittier was built by the US Army during WWII as a supply depot.  Supplies would be unloaded in Whittier (on Prince William Sound) and taken inland by train.  Today almost the entire population of the town lives in a single high-rise building built to house soldiers and their families.

When we came through the tunnel to Whittier, the weather was beautiful.  It was sunny, warm, and blue.  We bought our tickets and boarded for our cruise to see 26 glaciers.  On board was a ranger from the US Forest Service who provided narration, which was terrific.  He also helped spot wildlife.

The first portion of the cruise was just getting out to the interesting stuff.  They served us a very nice cod lunch to pass the time.  The food was quite good.  Eventually we arrived at the sea lion rookery (shown above), where we saw many sea lions.  The boat could not get too close to the sea lions to avoid disturbing them.

We saw all 26 glaciers.  I was checking them off on the map.  There were so many amazing sights that it was difficult not to become jaded.

The ranger told us that there are only about 10 days this nice all Summer on Prince William Sound.  After the excellent day on Mt. McKinley and the crappy day the day before, we were amazed at our luck!

Among the wildlife we spotted we saw many sea otters lounging in the water.

The total cruise time was over five hours, getting us back in time to make the on-the-hour train out of Whittier.

The Cook expedition was stopped by ice, so his maps missed an arm of the Sound that led to this glacier.  When the Harriman expedition found this arm in a later expedition, they were greeted by this huge glacier, so it is called “Surprise Glacier.”  We were hoping to see it calve (a big chunk falling off into the water), but didn’t.  The boat loitered here for a while, and we got some amazing views.

After driving back through the long tunnel from Whittier, we headed toward Seward.  Candy found a very nice camp ground with full hookups about 20 minutes north of Seward, our destination for the next day.

The campground has its own lake front, and the kids took a turn in one of the paddle boats after dinner.

This was one of our last sights (at 2300 hours) before going to bed.  What a place!

After a quick stop in the town outside the national park for some souvenir hunting and lunch, we headed into the Denali National Park.  Denali consists of over six million acres, and there is just one road through it, so we took our time driving to the Teklaneeka campground deep inside the park, taking in the sights along the way.  The RV did reasonably well on the gravel road.

Before getting on the long road to the campground, however, we took a short hike around Horseshoe lake.  We didn’t see any animals, but we saw a beaver dam that was probably 40 yards long.  No beaver.

The next morning we got up very early to catch the first bus toward Wonder Lake.  Our thought was that we would see more wildlife on the early bus.  We did.  It started with a pair of moose hanging out near the bus stop.  You can see one behind Tommy’s shoulder in this picture.

Soon after departing we encountered another one.

It was a four hour bus ride from our campground to Wonder Lake.  Along the way we saw some beautiful scenery and many animals.  The only one of the “big” animals we didn’t see was a wolf.

We encountered two golden eagles perched on rocks above the road.  This picture is one of them flying away.

Two German girls were on the bus, taking pictures of their own moose at various stops.

The bus driver, Darlene was quite good.  She stopped frequently and had lots of good stories.

This picture was taken at a short rest stop along the way.

We saw more moose on this four-hour bus ride than we did during our entire visit to Maine.

Considering its name, Wonder Lake was a bit anti-climactic.  From here, however, we took a five mile hike out and back along the McKinley Bar trail, which took us through rocks and woods to the river.

On the way back we encountered three rock ptarmigans, the Alaska state bird.  They looked a lot like pheasant or grouse to me.  They eventually flew off as we continued our hike.

Another caribou near the bus on our ride back toward camp.

The rest stops along the bus route looked like this.  The doors were probably three inches thick and heavily reinforced to keep out bears and other animals.  All were very clean!

That night we played rummy and watched a little television before bed.

The next morning we left the campground and headed southward.  On our way up, we had tried to get a flight up to a glacier on the slopes of Mt. McKinley.  This morning the clouds cleared, and it looked like we might be able to fly, so we packed up and headed back to Talkeetna.  During a portion of the drive, the kids worked on their Summer reading.

Then we turned a bend in the road and there was Mt. McKinley.  They say only 31% of visitors to Alaska get to see the whole mountain.  It was much more impressive than this picture conveys.  Mt. McKinley is the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere, at 20k+ feet of elevation.

We stopped several times along the way to get different and better shots of the mountain.  The sky got better and better all day.

We were lucky to get a 1430 flight up the mountain for a glacier landing from Talkeetna.  Each of us donned a pair of protective over boots so that we could walk around in the snow on the glacier.

There were six of us plus the pilot on this DeHaviland Beaver.

The flight was smooth, and along the way the pilot had a lot of interesting things to point out.  I got to sit up front and take lots of pictures.

The glaciers on Mt. McKinley are growing at an average rate of about three feet a day.  The guide said that the glaciers act like frozen rivers.  They have falls, currents, and even cataracts.

Here you can see where ice has formed, cracked, and fallen.  These falls grow at a rate of six or more feet per day and push the glacier down the valley.

Landing on the glacier was interesting.  The surface was slushy, so the plane slid around on its skis until it came to a stop.  The temperature was about 30 degrees, but it felt much warmer due to the sun and the heat radiating off the snow and rocks.

We spent about 25 minutes on the glacier before returning to Talkeetna.  The guide told us that glaciologists come up here to study the McKinley glaciers quite frequently.  They have taken deep core samples.  Air is trapped in the glaciers, so core samples reveal things about the air 10s of thousands of years ago.  For the global warming crowd, the scientists who study these glaciers say that the percent of greenhouse gasses in the air 10,000 years ago is about the same as it is today.

In this picture you can see how the ice cracks as it flows downhill.  Also note the light blue patches.  The color of the glacial ice is blue.  It doesn’t show in most of the pictures, but in person you could see the slightly blue color.  The light blue patches in this picture are deep fissures or crevasses that have filled with snow.  When the sun is out, the top layers melt a little and turn into these light blue lakes or ponds.

After returning to Talkeetna, we played in the elementary school playground for a few minutes and then headed South to Houston to stop for the night before continuing south past Anchorage.

 

Day three involved a drive from Anchorage to Talkeetna with ad hoc stops along the way.  Candy has a great book that has everything in Alaska by milepost.  We made an impromptu stop at a pullout for Thunderbird Falls.  After a mile hike over mostly easy trail, we reached the falls.

They were nice, but not the most spectacular falls we’ve ever seen.  Still, it was a nice hike and a great way to break up the drive.

Farther up the road, in Wasilla (Sarah Palin’s home town), we visited the Iditarod Race Headquarters.  The race actually begins in Anchorage, but the headquarters is in Wasilla.

Inside the gift store they showed an eighteen-minute movie and had some very interesting race memorabilia.  I was hoping that the movie would talk more about the history of the race.  It was in fact more like a racing documentary, discussing the mushers competing in the 2012 race.  In anchorage we learned that this race commemorates an historical event.  One winter there was an outbreak of diphtheria in Nome and the only way to get the serum from Anchorage was by dogsled.  Sometime in the the 60’s or 70’s someone came up with the idea or resurrecting the event for sport, not unlike running a marathon, which was initially to commemorate the end of the battle of Marathon.

Still farther up the road toward Talkeetna we stopped at Miller’s roadside cafe.  They were reputed to have great burgers and ice cream.  They did.  This was a neat place: combination general store, ice cream parlor, burger joint, coffee house, and post office.  In fact the Postmaster is the person who cooked our food.

We topped off our food with ice cream and got back on the road.

Eventually we arrived in Talkeetna.  The town, which has a year-round population of ~800, was originally a transit point where goods were take off barges and the hauled by mules, horses, or dog sleds farther into the interior.  Today it is largely a tourist attraction, with gift stores, place to eat, river rafting excursions, and flights to glaciers on Mt. McKinley.

We signed up for a flight up to a glacier on Mt. McKinley the next day and walked into town to look around.

This town was the model for the town in the television show Northern Exposure.  One of the locals told us that the high school (fed by three towns) graduated 22 last year.  This general store reminded me of the one in my grandmother’s home town in Illinois.   There was a little bit of everything in the store, from bread to bait and from animal skins to snacks.

That night I made chicken kabobs on the grill for dinner.  We finished the day with a little ice cream while watching an episode of the Mission Impossible TV show.  It began to rain that night.  The next morning, clouds hung low in the sky and visibility was limited.  Our flight to the glacier was cancelled.  We, therefore, took our time getting packed up and then headed toward the entrance to Denali National Park.

One of our stops this day was in Denali State Park, where we saw the Alaska Veteran’s Memorial.  Nearby were some VERY interesting placards describing interesting vignettes about Alaska at War, mostly WWII and the Cold War.  There was also a story about a Confederate ship, the Shenandoah, which was sent to Alaska to sink Union whaling boats.  Apparently, profits from whale hunting were important sources of revenue to finance the war.  The Shenandoah sank 6 or 8 Union whaling vessels, continuing its mission for six months after the war had officially ended.  There is debate among historians as to whether the crew knew the war was over and kept sinking ships anyway.  This whole memorial area was a really unexpected gem.

You can see by this picture that it was drizzly all day, and visibility was limited.  We should have been able to see Mt. McKinley most of the day, but the thick clouds got in the way.  We eventually arrived at our campsite just a few miles outside the gate to the Denali National Park.  I barely had time to finish cooking burgers for dinner on our little grill before the sky opened up.  We are told that the weather will get progressively better throughout the weekend, so we have hopes of a good visit to the National Park and making another attempt to fly up the mountain and land on a glacier.

This year’s family vacation is a trip to Alaska.  Once again, Candy has painstakingly planned this event.  Day one was a travel day from Baltimore through Detroit through Seattle to Anchorage.  In Detroit Metro airport we had a long layover, which enabled us to get a stack of Coney Island hotdogs at National Coney Island.  I was quite disappointed in not being able to find a Vernors ginger ale.

We also learned — almost by accident — that there is a USO-like organization operating in the Detroit airport, so we had a chance to sit on comfortable couches and have a drink in a quiet place while we waited for our flight.

After nearly 10.5 hours in the air and two layovers, we finally caught a glimpse of Alaska.  You can see a glacier under the wing along the southeastern coast of Alaska.  This was about 0100 East Coast time.

We are renting an RV for this trip.  We arrived after the rental agency, Great Alaska Highways, was closed.  The rental agency is used to having people arrive late, so they had the keys for our RV on the rear wheel and allowed us to sleep in it overnight.  The picture above was taken at about 2200 at night; Anchorage had 17.5 hours of daylight yesterday.  We arrived got to bed after midnight after we unpacked our suit cases into the various drawers, closets, and cubby holes.  The next morning we got our training on the RV and were on our way.

Our first stop was downtown anchorage for a trolley tour and brief history lesson.  We learned quite a bit about the great earthquake (the second largest in world history) and some other interesting facts.

I found this sign near the visitor’s center interesting.

After a couple of hours wandering around some gift shops, we headed out of town.  Our first stop was our proposed camp sight for the first night — just a couple miles outside Anchorage near Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.  We reserved our camp sight and then went to visit the Alaska Heritage Center.

The Alaska Heritage Center includes villages representing the 11 major cultural groups in Alaska.  Most had high school aged docents from those regions and cultures who described the traditional dwellings, tools, and other artifacts.  Except in the southeastern part of Alaska, which is classified as rainforest, most of the state is permafrost.  The native Alaskans built semi subterranean dwellings that protected them from the harsh temperatures.  The picture above shows the entrance to a reproduction of one such dwelling.

In addition there were a number of talks by the high school aged kids and some demonstrations of native dancing and sports.  The picture above shows one native athletic event in which the participant, starting from a standing position, jumps straight up and tries to kick a ball hanging in the air.  The demonstrator placed third in the recent native Alaskan athletic games.

We also took the time to do something really touristy at the Alaskan Heritage Center:  we got pulled in a training sled around a short course by a team of dogs that completed this year’s Iditarod competition.  Afterward we had a chance to see some of the dogs, who were amazingly friendly.  I expected them to be more wild.

After about four hours at the Alaska Heritage Center we went to Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson to stock up our camper with food for the next week or so.  Then we retired to our camp sight for a light dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup.  We were quite tired from the previous day’s traveling and late night, so we hit the sack early.

The temperature was between 55 and 65 all day.  The weather and scenery were terrific.