Category Archives: Touristy

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?

Delayed in Alaska

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When we headed to Homer there was a wildfire burning on the Kenai Peninsula and we came through some of the smoke on the way. But after a week, we had very minimal smoke on the way to our next stop, Seward.

We stayed there for 4 nights at the KOA. I know there are spots downtown, near the water, but they were only $20 or so cheaper but only electric and water. Plus you had some more ‘permanent campers there. Right by our spot was an eagle that made a nest in the only tree at the KOA:

We scheduled a boat trip to visit Kenai Fjords NP and some wildlife on the way. Naturally the day we went out was rainy and with rough seas. This meant Roxie got seasick in the 6′ swells. She didn’t have a very good time. She was able to be alert enough to see some of the wildlife and glaciers:

We took a day trip from there to Whittier. We were able to go through the tunnel shortly after the train came through:

Unlike Skagway, Whittier only had 1 cruise ship but it dominated the skyline:

Whittier was built by the US military as a base and they built the tunnel for trains. Here is one of the buildings they left behind. They decided not to tear down this one due to costs since it was built to withstand earthquakes and is filled with asbestos:

Leaving Seward, we headed back to Palmer. We had a medical issue to take care of. One of the primary reasons to head to Austin this year was to get a Spinal Cord Stimulator (SCS) for Roxie. This will block her nerve pain electronically. However, shortly after we left Austin she had a problem charging it. Her SCS has a rechargeable battery that connects inductively through her skin. She take a flat paddle and lines it up parallel to her internal battery. The problem is that she has to really jam her hand into her side at an odd angle to get any type of charge to the battery and it takes a very long time.

She has been struggling with this for almost 2 months. We got in contact with the representative of the device’s manufacturer (Abbott) and scheduled a time to meet with her in Anchorage. We were able to also meet with an MD that does the SCS procedure. They discovered that her battery had shifted location and was no longer in a vertical orientation but was in such a way that she could not get the paddle parallel with any consistency. Hence the difficulty.

We started the procedure to get the battery replaced with a non-rechargeable one. We needed to get insurance approval but we had some time. We had reservations for Denali NP and then on to Fairbanks.

We headed on to Denali. We stayed at a very nice spot at Riley Creek campground. We had booked a bus tour (the Kantishna Experience) which was 11 hours long for the round trip. It was a cloudy day with a bit of rain. We were only able to see small bits of the mountain for moments at a time. We did see a fair amount of animals: Caribou, Dall sheep, black bears, moose and various other small ones.

On another day at Denali NP, we went to see the sled dogs. Denali still uses sled dogs in the winter for NPS transportation as the majority of the park is a wilderness area. Here is Roxie and I with new friends:

On the 1964 trip, I remember visiting a bunch of sled dogs and all the barking. I was able to find a picture of my encounter back then:

In the background of this picture you can see a name on a doghouse. The name is Niski. On the walls of the building on the grounds, they have all the doghouse names. They take them off when they find a home for a retired sled dog and normally give the new family the sign. However they do put up replicas in the building.

I took this photo to the rangers there and asked them about it. According to their records, there was a Niski that was in a litter from 1961. This would have made the age correct. Looking for the sign:

My memory was pretty accurate. It was a lot of fun to track this down. I asked my sister about all of this and all she remembered is that she wanted to take a dog home back in 1964.

Next was Fairbanks for a week. We should know about the SCS status soon and we had our anniversary coming up (39 years).

I also remember, vaguely, from 1964 that we rode a paddlewheel boat. I remember looking down from the top deck and seeing a salmon wheel. In keeping with the re-creation of 1964, we also took a paddlewheel trip.

Roxie was a bit fearful that she might get seasick, I assured her she would not. She didn’t. The tour is a very enjoyable journey. They have a demo of a floatplane taking off and landing. They show a sled dog team take a lap around a track. They also take you to a remake of a Chena Indian village where local native americans show you the life and techniques of times ago. Here are some fox pelts:

I talked to the trip narrator and let him know about the 1964 trip. I wondered what paddlewheel was used then. He told me this one:

Still floating.

Before we left Fairbanks we still did not know that status of the SCS replacement but decided to head back to the Anchorage area in anticipation of good news. He stopped for 2 nights in Talkeetna and rode the Hurricane Turn train.

We also saw some salmon heading up the river to spawn

We got back to Palmer (for the 3rd time) and found out Roxie got the go ahead for the procedure. Alas, we can’t get the procedure scheduled for 2 weeks after we got here, which means being here for 3 weeks total. But this is part of life on the road. You have to become a local at times.

However, we can see this from our campsite:

Next entry hopefully talks about being on the road again (Go Willie!).