North to Alaska (again) – Part 5

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Once again, I am pretty close to a year behind on this entry. These are the continuing adventures of our 2023 Alaska summer trip.

We headed back to ‘civilization’, Anchorage. We parked in the Cabela’s parking lot for the night and got some necessities done in town, shopping, laundry, and moose hunting? We were on our way to the first two on the list and got sucked into the last one. We were driving downtown Anchorage, passing a park by a Post Office and George spotted a moose eating in the divider. He hopped out of the truck and pursued the moose throughout the park, it went through a pond and ended up in a park parking lot. Most other people were pretty non-plussed about the moose wandering around downtown, I guess this is Alaska.

The next night was just up the road to Wasilla and an overnight stop in the Walmart parking lot. The interesting incident here was that Walmart was evacuated due to a fire alarm. George happened to be in the restroom then, so he claimed he caused it.

We continued our northerly trek with a bit of eastward movement on our way to just south of Glenallen. We stayed in Glenallen on our 2019 trip but we found that there was another free location at a boat ramp parking lot just south of there near Tazlina, and we headed there.

We were on our way to Valdez. Roxie and I did a day trip there in 2019 from Glenallen but this time all of us were going to spend a couple of nights there. On the way down we stopped off at the Wrangell/St. Elias National Park Visitors Center. This is the closest most visitors get to the actual park.

Valdez was pretty rainy and miserable. It is a small little town with a Safeway, a very expensive Safeway! We braved the weather, it was pretty well flooded in the campground and visited the local fish hatchery. We got to see the salmon swimming back to the hatchery where they started their journey. They are unable to continue up the local river so they get diverted to the fish ladder and on to their demise. However, sometimes they don’t even make it up the ladder as other animals want to intercept them.

Leaving Valdez, we passed a glacier and headed to the town of Chitina, the mining town of McCarthy, and the Kennecott Mines. This is an area that few people visit when seeing Alaska and our first time doing so. We drove just past Chitina and there was a small free campground where we stayed for two nights.

Worthington Glacier along Richardson Hwy driving from Valdez AK

We took the day trip to McCarthy. It is a road that we would not want to take with the trailers, although some people do. You drive to the river that flows out of the Kennecott Glacier. You park your vehicle there and walk across a footbridge to the other side. The Kennecott Mine is quite a few miles up the road but the local businesses provide shuttle vans to get you up and back.

Once you get to the mine, you can walk around and see the buildings, utilize some of the vendors there, or perhaps walk up to the Kennecott Glacier. We just stayed around the mine area but did have a view of the glacier.

Coming back from McCarthy on our road less traveled, we encountered a gentleman on the side of the road with a flat tire. We stopped to see if we could assist. He was a man from France who rented a minivan in Denver, drove it to Alaska, and ended up where we found him but no cell service. We also had no AT&T cell service where we were at, however, we did have a Verizon signal. We have two different providers on our cell phones for times when the other doesn’t have coverage, precisely for this.

His minivan came with no spare tire and the flat repair kit they provided was unusable. He was able to use my phone to call the car rental company and they said they have no way to help him out in Alaska. We called the state troopers and they gave us the number of a tow truck service in Glenallen. We contacted them and they said they could send one the next day to get him transported to a repair location. He felt secure in staying the night on the side of the road, sleeping in the mini-van as he had done this since Denver. We were glad we could help.

Our journey continued back north through Tok where we decided to take the Top of the World highway. Conditions seemed to warrant it. A couple of days in Tok to resupply and on to a night in Chicken. The US/Canadian border closed each night at 6 pm and we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get through.

The border crossing was uneventful, or at least we thought it was, and we made our way on to Dawson City, YT. The Yukon River crossing is via ferry boat between West Dawson and Dawson City.

The ferry only runs in the summertime, in the winter the river freezes over enough to drive across. We got a video of George and Marcia crossing and they got one of us.

We did a few different things in Dawson City and went to see some of the old dredges in the area.

As we were driving back to town from the dredges I noticed a small stream alongside the creek and a large pond had been created. Beavers! We stopped to watch them for quite awhile and got this video.

We drove up to an overlook and got a good view of the town and the river.

In Dawson, I was able to recreate another photo from my 1964 trip. There is a paddle-wheeler named Keno that is drydocked in town, as it was in 1964. Normally the current tour does not allow visitors to the upper deck anymore but once I showed the docent the old photo, she made it happen. Here are the photos, 59 years apart.

I need to explain about the non-uneventful border crossing. While we were in Dawson City, I got a phone call from the Canadian Border Patrol and asked if I was with George Chen. I said yes, and he stated that they neglected to return George and Marcia’s passports at the border crossing. Fortuitously, the agent was passing through Dawson City the next day and would drop them off to George. Crisis averted!

Back to Whitehorse for our next ‘big’ city. But first a quick overnight in a free campground at Pelley’s Crossing.

Here another odd thing happened. We had stopped on the way for a restroom break and I found someone’s wallet which contained ID. I saved it and contacted the RCMP in Pelly’s Crossing. They drove by and retrieved it from me. Good deed done.

Whitehorse was two nights and we visited the transportation museum where they have the world’s largest windvane. A DC-9 DC-3 (thanks Roger Ritter) was donated and they mounted it on a swiveling stand so it could swing into the wind.

Now being back in Canada and heading to the lower 48, Alaska is no longer on our list, or is it?

North to Alaska (again) – Part 4

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Please remember that this blog entry recalls our trip in 2023, but I am posting in 2024, slightly less than one year later. With that in mind:

We made it to Denali National Park and took the spot the Chens saved for us. However, they were nowhere around when we got there. We disconnected the trailer, went to the visitors center, and then headed into ‘town’ for a bite. The ‘town’ is a collection of hotels, restaurants, etc, just up the road from the park. Very tourist-oriented. When we returned to the trailers the Chens still were not there. We found out later that they had taken a much longer than expected hike and were pretty tired.

We all got up the next day and headed south to our next destination, Palmer. We stayed at Paradise RV (now called The Springer RV). We got to know the owners pretty well when we stayed there in 2019 since we were there for over 3 weeks! This time we were only planning on staying a week as the Chen’s had to send their daughter back home at this time.

On our trip to Palmer, however, we got 2 more chances to view Mt McKinley.

and

We filled our week in the Anchorage area with mundane things like laundry and groceries but we also got to visit some sights around there.

We went to Earthquake Park, where you can see where the ground shifted in 1964. You can also just make out Mt McKinley again to the north (it’s the white blob, really).

We drove out the see the Matanuska glacier.

It was a bit too far to walk to and you had to hire a local company to get you there. But on the way back we did see some wildlife. A moose with two babies.

We continued down to Eklutna Lake. This is where we met the RVing to Alaska group in 2019. We took our chairs and sat by the lake while the Chens took a little hike. We all stopped for a hike to see Thunderbird Falls. It was a bit tasking on my old knee but the mosquitos were worse. So bad that George ran back to the car!

Another stop we took was a road trip up to Independence Mine, we continued down the loop road around through Wasilla. I think we went pretty close to the homestead that the Raney’s have from Homestead Rescue, but I didn’t see it. It always amazes me how much man did in Alaska to mine the minerals based upon what years they did it! Some tough people back then.

Our time in the Anchorage area, for now, was done. We had to come back through on the way out though. Now we were heading to Homer, one of our favorite places. We decided not to push a whole day to get down there and stayed the night in Soldotna in the Fred Meyer parking lot, with about 15 other RVs!

We made it to Homer in good time. We went to the overlook and down to the spit before starting off the next day to do some things here. We drove to Anchor Point, the westernmost point in the American Highway system. We noticed there is a boat ramp here into the bay but it was unlike any boat ramp I have ever seen. The water is so shallow that they use a tractor to drive out into the water with the boat trailer and then retrieve the boat and trailer back to dry land.

There is a Russian influence in the area. You see many Russian Orthodox people and we drove to their towns for a small excursion. We visited Razdolna and Voznesenka. We drove by the Kilcher’s ranch, they were on the TV show Alaska: The Last Frontier. It was very scenic.

On our last day in Homer we took a ferry ride across the Kachemak bay to the town of Seldovia. Another Russian town with no road access. We were a little unsure about Roxie on a boat but it worked out just great. We saw some wildlife on the ‘cruise’ and toured the town for as long as we could before catching the ferry back.

That evening, Roxie made sure she had one last meal of halibut fish and chips as we were departing the next morning.

We headed to Tenderfoot campground, our 2-night base for our next drive. The night we got there, we headed to Hope AK. This is a quaint town that had people fishing in the stream that goes through town and a good view of the mud flats.

Our main reason for staying where we did was a day trip to Whittier AK. Marcia went to high school in Whittier CA so it only made sense. The odd thing about Whittier is access to the town is through a multi-mile tunnel which is a vehicle and train tunnel. Only one way at a time though. We passed by the Portage Glacier on the way.

The majority of Whittier’s population lives in one building but there always seems to be the ubiquitous cruise ship at the dock.

We went to a park to see some salmon running and people trying to catch them. These two photos are at different tide levels, it changed while we were there.

The next stop on our whirlwind tour was Seward. We stayed at the KOA there, like we did 4 years prior. George and Marcia had set up a boat tour to the Kenai Fjords NP. We tried that last time we were here and Roxie got deathly seasick on it, so we were skeptical of doing it again. However, she did well on the ferry to Seldovia so we thought we would roll the dice and we got tickets.

Our first day there was very rainy and we could not do much but the second day was the boat tour. It turned out to be overcast with occasional rain. Roxie loaded up on Dramamine and she did well the entire trip. We took the longest trip that they had and saw numerous glaciers.

We were also witness to an ice waterfall, and George was able to capture it.

We also got up close to a regular waterfall.

We did see a lot of wildlife on the boat excursion and the crew was quick to spot them and slow down. Here is a killer whale.

We all made it off the ship after about 130 miles on the water.

We made a quick stop at Mile 0 of the Iditarod race.

The next day was our last day there and finally saw the Exit Glacier near town. George and Marcia did another strenuous hike up to the glacier.

This leg marked a turning point of sorts as we had pretty much gone as far south on the Kenai Peninsula and we were starting our return trip. However, we still had a few places to go on that route.