Buck's Blog

Despite taking the family on a rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon and two weeks in Alaska, I was informed that I was a failure because we didn’t visit the beach all Summer.  Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of the beach, but the next thing I knew we were spending a huge wad of cash to visit Ocean City for the long weekend.

A highlight of the weekend was a spur-of-the-moment parasailing adventure.

We also bought tickets for all we could play miniature golf.  Over the four and a half courses we played, we had a record 20 holes in one!

We spent both evenings walking up and down the boardwalk, had some nice meals, and generally had a good time.  Considering this is the last big weekend of Summer at the beach, the crowds weren’t nearly as bad as I expected.  It was a nice way to spend the weekend.

 

Our last morning, we finished packing all our gear to get ready to turn in the RV.  Then we drove back into downtown Anchorage to see the Park Service visitor center.  There were some nice displays and a couple of really nice movies, including this one on the Northern Light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdy8jjc9-TM

On the way out we stopped at this cart to get a reindeer sausage.  The sausage was terrific, but the guy was a little brusque, including a sign saying, “Get off your cell phone and complete your private conversations before stepping up to order.”  Reindeer sausage was terrific!

We then drove near the RV rental outfit and stopped to fill up the gas tank and the propane tank.  We then ate most of the leftovers we had left in the refrigerator — our last vacation meal.

As a sort of recap, here are a couple of neat pictures that didn’t make it into previous posts.  You may need to open the panoramic pictures in another view to see them fully.

In this picture Tom moved part way through the picture so that he could be in it twice!

This is a replica of a navigational aid that Alaska natives would build along the trackless tundra to help guide themselves to good hunting grounds, home, etc.  This one was set up across from the restaurant at which we had our last dinner in Alaska.

Farewell Alaska…

We had a third beautiful weather day.  We drove to Seward and couldn’t believe our weather luck!  The sky was mostly clear, the weather was warm, and there was a nice breeze.  We began by walking around some of the souvenir shops in “downtown” Seward.

Seward is the southern terminus of the Alaska railroad and a port of debarkation for coal from the interior of Alaska heading to Asia.  It is also a port for cruise ships.  The winter population is about 5000 people.  There were a number nice little stores and cafes in town.

After walking around the town, we made sandwiches in the RV and drove to Exit Glacier.  The Harding Ice Field is a huge glacier (sort of a lake of ice in the middle of the Chugach mountains) that feeds several glaciers.  One of the first expeditions to try cross the ice field exited at this glacier, hence the name.

We had a chance to take a hike up alongside the glacier for a couple of miles.

As we got closer to the ice, we found that the glacier was creating its own cold breeze.  The lower area near the visitor’s center was actually hot, and we were attacked by flies.  Once we got up a few feet, it was quite pleasant, perhaps chilly.  There is a longer hike (approximately 8 hours) that takes you up to the edge of the ice field, but we didn’t have time for that.  We needed to get back for our second cruise.

Before heading out to Exit Glacier, we had signed up for a four-hour cruise out Resurrection Bay into the Gulf of Alaska to look at wildlife.  Our hope was to see porpoises, whales, and puffins.

The cruise included an all-you-can eat prime rib and salmon buffet.  The food was terrific.  On the way back to port, there was an all-you-can eat dessert buffet.  Based on prices for food in Alaska, one serving of each would have cost more in most restaurants than we paid for the buffet.

The boat holds up to 200 people, but for whatever reason only 19 were signed up for this cruise.  The limited number of passengers enabled the crew to provide more personalized attention and reduced the jockeying for position on the rail to see wildlife.

Again the cruise included a National Park Service Ranger who provided narration throughout the four-hour ride.  The ranger told us that these charter cruise companies pay the Park Service to provide these rangers, which in turn allows them to hire more part-time rangers to assist with managing the vast lands controlled by the Department of the Interior.

The porpoises were designated “awesome” by Sammy.

We never got too close to this whale, but he was clearly visible several times.  The ranger explained that when whales are sleeping they bob near the surface, coming up from time to time to breathe.

Just kidding… but we did enjoy soft drinks and later some hot chocolate.

We met our objectives of spotting porpoises, whales, and puffins!  Tommy was hoping to see a Beluga whale, but we didn’t.

We slept that night in a campground right along the water.  When we woke up we were greeted by yet another perfect weather day!

The agenda called for us to visit the Alaska Sealife Center in Seward.  Partially funded by Federal money and partially funded by an Exxon Valdez trust fund, this center is involved in aquatic research and the rehabilitation of wounded animals.  When the weather was so nice the previous day, we pushed this off a day, fully expecting that the weather would turn bad and it would be good to enjoy an indoor activity.

The Sealife Center was nicely laid out with some innovative exhibits.  I thought it was worth the time we spent there.  They also had once of the nicest gift shops we’d seen throughout our visit to Alaska.

Sadly our trip is beginning to come to an end.  After lunch in Seward, we headed back toward Anchorage for our last night in Alaska.  Along the way we pulled off at some scenic overlooks to see some of the sites that were difficult to see because of the rain on our way southward.

Somewhere during our drive, I got an Email from my buddy Sam Fuson who was once stationed at Ft. Richardson.  He recommended that we have halibut at the Sourdough Mining Company.  The food was terrific and so plentiful that even Tom had trouble finishing his dinner.  Most nights there is a singer and storyteller in the evenings, but we happened to get there the one night in 10 years that he was ill.

Well…  we get on the plane tomorrow for another 12 hours in the air back to Baltimore with stops in Seattle and Detroit.  Ca ca.  Another vacation has come to a close.

 

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.