Whitehorse to Kachemack Bay
Hello Again!!
This is the second installment of Ed and Kenneth's trip to Alaska and back.
When last we wrote, we were in Whitehorse, Yukon. We drove north from Whitehorse up the Klondike highway to Dawson City. Before we left Whitehorse we were able to reserve almost the last available spot on the Chilcoot trail (the trail the gold rush miners used) from Skagway, Alaska to Lake Bennett at the headwaters of the Yukon. This being the 100th anniversary of the gold rush, only the very end of August was available. But we're in and we've also reserved the (supposedly fabulous) train ride back to Skagway from the lake.
In Dawson City we spent a day doing all the tourist things in town. We took a walking tour where we learned that all of the buildings are on pilings or stilts to avoid melting the permafrost. We went out to Dredge #4 and took a tour. This is a gold mining dredge which is a machine that more or less pans for gold on a large scale. This one is the largest ever used in North America and was used to pan the entire Klondike River! It sits in the stream bed and shovels river gravel into a huge bin with enormous shovels. Water is pumped from underneath it (it is actually floating) into the bin and the gravel is passed through a series of grates of decreasing size. The gravel that doesn't make it through the grates is spewed out the back of the dredge and is called tailings. The fine particulate sludge that is left contains the gold and is sent elsewhere for separation (since there isn't very much of it at this point) Tailings from all the dredges operating in the Dawson area (as late as the '60's) are still all around the town and can be seen for miles on both sides of the road as you drive into town. They've really torn up the place! We also visited the Robert Service cabin where the poet lived. He wrote "The Cremation of Sam McGee" if you've never heard of him. At the cabin there was an excellent presentation given by a very talented local where Service's life was described and many of his best poems were read.
At the last minute, we decided to drive up to Inuvik on the Mackinzie River delta just south of the Arctic Ocean. The drive is 460 miles each way on a dirt road with very few services available. (The first gas is available after 230 miles!) The weather was very nice during the two days it took to get to Inuvik. There are two mountain ranges to be crossed along the way and the scenery was fantastic! We got our first look at a grizzly bear that we suprised along the road. The road was dirt, but fairly good and we were able to drive 40-50 mph most of the way. Camping at a Yukon Territorial campground the first night we found out how bad the mosquitoes can be up here. As soon as the door to the car was opened, there were hundreds of them in the car. We had to bathe in bug repellent and burn a citronella candle in the car with the windows open to get rid of most of them before we went to sleep. There is a lavender flower up here called fireweed that grows everywhere, especially along the roadsides. At times, the ribbons of fireweed on each side of the road stretching endlessly into the distance could be very spectacular.
Inuvik is a modern town of 3000 people, mostly Inuits (Eskimos). We visited the Igloo church which really is a Catholic Church built to look like a giant igloo. We had dinner of caribou and arctic char (a fish) in a local restaurant Both were very good.
The next day we flew the 1/2 hour flight to Tuktoyaktuk (which everyone just calls Tuk) which is actually on the ocean. We took a cultural tour of the town of about 900 Inuits. The most interesting part of the tour was a climb down a 30 foot ladder into a series of tunnels dug in the permafrost. The locals keep large quantities of food frozen down there all year around. The walls of the tunnels are solid ice with layers of vegetation frozen into them. We had lunch at the home of our guide who offered to let us stay the night in a large canvas tent behind his house right on the water. (We had planned to pitch our tent on the beach, but this was much better) He also drove us outside of town to see the pingos. We had an enjoyable 3 mile walk back to town from there since it was a beautiful day. Pingos are small hills (obvious on the otherwise flat delta) caused by upwelling of water through the permafrost. They look like grassy hills but are actually solid ice one foot under the surface. We had dinner at our guide's house and sat around talking for a bit afterward. He was the tribal leader of the Inuits for ten years and has travelled all over the world on trips investing his people's money (from land settlements with the Canadian government). Now he runs a tour company and owns the water concession in Tuk. His name is Roger Gruben. The name is German, but only his great grandfather was German. Most Inuits have European last names derived from some fur trapper or whaler in their ancestry. The next morning we said goodbye and flew back to Inuvik. We left town that afternoon for the long drive back to Dawson City.
On the way back down the Dempster Highway we stopped in Arctic Red River, a tiny town by a ferry crossing across both the Arctic Red and McKenzie rivers. There we met a very strange guy originally from Amsterdam who drove an even stranger vehicle. It was a pickup truck with a topper, from which 12 sleddogs poked their eager heads, 6 to a side. We also met a character working on the ferry who was from Stockholm, living in arctic Canada, who had high hopes of starting a business in Havana after marrying his Cuban sweetheart who he sends $500 each month. And strange enough, even types like these always remark to us something like, "you drove all the way from DALLAS?!" Go figure.
Now it was time for us to finally drive into Alaska. We crossed the Yukon River by ferry and drove the "Top of the World Highway" west to the US/Canada border. The road follows the top of a high ridge, with quite scenic with views of the Ogilvie mountains, and there was lots of fireweed along the road. The first town in Alaska we came to was called Chicken. It has only a couple of hundred inhabitants, and only a few dozen stick around throuh the winter, the low season, as in, "the low today will be 40 below." The town is really only a gas stop, but how it got its name is interesting. The miners who founded the town during the gold rush decided to name it after the ptarmigan bird found all around the area (we almost nailed a few of these white & black mottled birds on the highway). Well, most of the townspeople couldn't even come close to being able to spell "ptarmigan," so they decided to name it Chicken instead. The road continued, now called the Taylor Highway, to join the Alcan near a town called Tok (rhymes with "yoke"). The road was really rough with long sections of washboard. By the time we got to Tok and the paved road, we realized the truck was still shaking at highway speeds, as in, something was wrong with it. The next day we used a high pressure water hose to get off all the accumulated mud, which didn't fix the problem. Since the vibration wasn't too bad we decided to continue on to Fairbanks and get it looked at there.
The next day we got into Fairbanks and it seemed like the biggest city we ever saw, and even at only 60,000 people it was the biggest city we had seen since Calgary. We were amazed to find a Sams, where they checked and balanced all the wheels (and they were indeed all out of balance). And we didn't have to pay anything since I had bought my tires at the Sams in Lewisville before the trip.
The next day we called around and scheduled a 3-day canoe rental on the Chena River, northeast of Fairbanks. We then drove out Chena Hot Springs Road and took a day hike to Angel Rocks. These are rock outcroppings (called "tors") that you can hike and then scramble up to, affording an excellent view of the Chena Rover valley. The weather was pleasant and we were (empasis: "were") looking forward to a nice trip down the Chena for the next 3 days.
We got to the canoe outfitters at 9:30 AM, and because of the usual delays we didn't get started on the river until noon. Part of the reason was that the guy dropping us off didn't recognize the "Third Bridge" put in and passed it up. Now, we were told by the outfitter that this was a 3-day trip from Third Bridge to Fairbanks. So naturally, we believed him. In reality, we came to realize this is a 3-day trip only if you are an olympic athelete, or if you mount a trolling motor to the canoe. Anyway, the first 4 hours was great- sunny and the river was running well with some whitewater. The fact that we had, in all the shuffle to load equipment, forgotten our rain jackets was at this point no big deal, it was sunny, warm, and everything was going great. Of course, as evening came it started to rain and we just got wet, saved only by many layers of thermal clothing, and a grim determination to continue on knowing that we were experienced paddlers and outdoorsmen (?), and of course the comforting fact that the main road was within walking distance from the river almost the whole way. We had dinner on a sandbar huddled under a tarp. By this point we looked at the map and realized that to make Fairbanks in 3 days we would have to paddle more than we really wanted to, especially since the river would get slower the farther we went. So for after dinner relaxation we got back in the canoe and paddled to about 10 PM, made camp on a sandbar, and went to sleep hoping that the rain would abate.
In Alaska, at least, the weather gods are not merciful, so of course it rained the whole day. We made raincoats out of garbage bags and paddled our way down the river. We stopped at a B&B on the river and asked, beyond caring about how stupid we looked in white garbage bags, if they might have a couple of raincoats or something like that. Indeed, we were supplied with two dandy K-mart ponchos, for $20. Even though it rained all day we still enjoyed the scenery, mostly spruce trees and a few views of the hills on the river valley. We also saw some wildlife, including a moose with calf. We kept passing beaver lodges and hearing splashes every now and then, until finally we spotted a beaver just before he dove into the water, thumping his tail on the water as he went in. We got better at spotting them, usually they keep a low profile and look like a piece of wood, or sometimes a piece of wood towing a branch. That night we made camp at about 8 PM on another sandbar, thinking of how luxurious it would be to be back in the warm comfort of the truck.
Much to our surprise, the last day on the Chena River was sunny and warm! We paddled all day, getting more and more into developed areas near Fairbanks. We talked to a few people on the river banks along the way, and we discovered that there was supposed to be a place on the outskirts of Fairbanks, on the river, that had a salmon bake. Wow, we thought, wouldn't that be nice? Well, we kept paddling and paddling until our arms were about to fall off, until we spotted a place that looked like it might be what we were looking for, but it looked closed. So we paddled some more until we got to downtown Fairbanks. At least on the way we saw a bald eagle flying up the river, and even better, it WASN'T RAINING. We pulled the canoe up on shore right by the visitors center and found a nice restaurant and had a great meal, but of course almost anything would taste good after what we had been through. We finally paddled up to the outfitters about 8 PM, tired, but still never losing our determination to never, ever, forget our rain jackets again. We pretty much randomly selected a commercial campground (since all the public ones would be filled by this time), and when we got there, in a twist of comic irony, it was the one on the river with the salmon bake!
Our last day in Fairbanks we took it easy (of course) and visited the museum at the University of Alaska- Fairbanks. The museum had nice exhibits on Alaskan geology, wildlife, the Russian influence, the northern lights, native peoples, the WWII in the Aleutians, and some other things thrown in for no appaent reason such as a butterfly collection and pottery.
Enjoying really good weather for a change, we drove south to Denali Nat'l Park, a truly amazing place. Now, they say that because of the weather only one in seven visitors actually get to see all of Mt. McKinley, and only one in three get to see even some of it. Well, even from 120 miles away we could see it from the road, impressive at over 20,000 feet high and perpetually covered with snow. Our intent was to find a suitable route for a 3-4 day backpacking trip. The park has instituted a complex reservation system for backpackers which involves choosing certain areas of the park to hike in, and reserving these several days in advance. This is because they don't want the park to be overrun with hikers, for the benefit of the wildlife, ecology, and the hikers. We were able to find a good area to hike in, along the Savage River in the east area of the park. Now, this is not like any national park in the lower 48. There are no trails. You have to navigate cross-country using topographic maps and a compass (no, we did not cheat and use a GPS). This was not a problem since both Ken & I know how to navigate like this, in fact it's more fun and challanging than using trails. However, we were both surprised at how difficult it can be to travel in the tundra found in the park. We learned the hard way to avoid willow thickets AT ALL COSTS- leave them to the moose. We followed the river through a beautiful canyon on what would seem to be an easy hike of maybe 5 miles, but it took almost 7 hours! Tired and bruised from smashing our way through the bushes we crossed the river and made camp. We set up our tarp (dining site) up on a bluff overlooking Primrose Ridge, our dayhike objective for the next day.
It rained all night. We awoke to a steady rain. We walked over to the river that we had to cross to find it twice as deep as the previous day, with the current running at breakneck speed and carrying so much silt it was now a dark brown. We could even hear small boulders being swept along by the river. So, we decided to scrub the dayhike and instead freeze our butts off at camp (it had dropped to 46 degrees). The rain kept up all day and it was our sincere hope that it would abate enough for the river to subside so we could cross and get back to the main road and catch a bus before our 4 days worth of food gave out. Fortunately, the next morning it was merely drizzling and the river was down enough for us to cross safely. We decided to return by climbing the ridge (with full packs) instead of following the river because all the gravel bars were now under water and we would have to slog through even more willows if we went back the same way. So picture this: a steady drizzle, temperature about 50, packs laden with wet camping gear weighing about 45 pounds, and before we can even start hiking we have to cross a stream and then a river which are fed by snowmelt. The water was very, very cold, and we were not carrying hip waders, no, we are talking shorts and sneakers, with the water high enough to, well... be uncomfortable. So after we crossed the river we started an unbelievably long uphill walk of 2400 feet to the top of Primrose ridge, with the wind almost blowing us off the mountain. But at least the rain stopped and we were walking in drier tundra without any willows. After we made it over the top of the ridge we celebrated by breaking out the lawn chairs we were carrying (really, they don't weigh much and they're really comfortable after a long walk), having granola bars, and wondering what the people in the tour busses were thinking about two guys on the top of a mountain sitting in lawnchairs.
The scenery on the hike was great- snow-capped mountains, tundra with wildflowers, rivers and streams- but we saw hardly any animals. No, the way to see animals is to take the tour along the park road. We spent a day on and off the bus and saw moose, caribou, and several grizzly bears. We got stuck on a bus with a bunch of birders, and they were all excited about a "Jaeger," which to me looked like an overgrown seagull. And while they were arguing about the mating call of some obscure bird, Ken & I watched a golden eagle alight its cliffside nest, the birders oblivious. Go figure.
Our next stop was Anchorage, the biggest city by far in Alaska (250,000 people, half the state's population). It really is a nice city, with parks, rivers, both the Turnagain Arm and Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet, and nearby mountains with lots of good hiking trails. It does have lots of urban sprawl and its share of chain restaurants, traffic lights and indeed, rush-hour traffic. Because of this, many Alaskans say about Anchorage, "Nice city, and it's only 20 minutes from Alaska." We went to the busiest seaplane base in the world (probably) and an Alaska aviation museum where we learned that most pilots eventually crash their airplanes, and the ones who are lucky enough to survive to old age are called "aviation pioneers." The weather was nice so we hiked the most popular trail in Alaska, up Flattop Mountain. This afforded us a wonderful view of the city, the surrounding arms of Cook Inlet, many mountains, and several schoolkids who hiked the same trail as we did, only they were passing us wearing sneakers and we had $150 Goretex boots and telescoping hiking sticks.
From Anchorage we drove south toward the Kenai Peninsula. It was an unbelievably beautiful day (we were due one) and the drive south along the Turnagain Arm of Cook inlet was spectacular with snow patched mountain slopes dropping straight down to the water. There's barely room for the road and the railroad tracks. Along the way we stopped along the road to watch a dragoon of beluga whales (or whatever a group of belugas is called) feeding in the inlet. We took a slight detour to visit the Portage Glacier visitor center on Portage Lake. This is a very fancy Forest Service visitor center with interesting exhibits on glaciers and a huge panoramic window looking out across the lake to where Portage Glacier once was. The glacier has been receeding for several years but in the last 2 or 3 it has retreated completely out of the lake and is now out of sight around a mountain ridge. So the Forest Service has this nice expensive museum, but the star attraction has left.
We continued around the western side of the Kenai Peninsula, stopping at a couple of very picturesque Russian Orthodox churches, complete with onion domes and strangely shaped crosses. The Russians left over 130 years ago, but there is still a large Russian Orthodox presence here. To our right, across Cook Inlet, we were treated to spectacular views of Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Illiamna which are 10,000+ ft tall volcanoes just on the other side of the inlet. Mt. Redoubt errupted in 1989 and caused a great deal of damage to Homer and other towns on the Kenai Peninsula. The road ends at the town of Homer and we got our first motel room of the trip near there. We went into town and drove to the end of the Homer Spit, which is a long spit of sand sticking out about 5 miles into Kachemak Bay (part of Cook Inlet). The spit houses a large boat harbor as well as commercial dock facilities. You can camp along the beach on the spit, but the wind is so strong that most people have constructed makeshift windbreaks in front of their tents from driftwood and pieces of junk they have found. Those who haven't done this have tents that look like this will be their last trip. We also visited the museum in Homer which had a great exhibit on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. They also had 3 remote control cameras on a small island out in the bay. The island is completely covered with birds - gulls, murres and puffins. The visitor can use a joystick to move the cameras and zoom in and out. One of the cameras is inside the cliffside crevice where a puffin is sitting on an egg. It's a great exhibit. We spent a long time watching the birds.
Today, we took a water taxi to the other side of Kachemak Bay and spent the day in a rented sea kayak. The day was beautiful, the water calm and we saw several sea otters and a bald eagle feeding a fish to it's young. Two guys who came out on the water taxi with us spotted killer whales just 100 feet away from their kayak. The other side of the bay is steep mountains, fiords and glaciers coming down from icefields out of sight over the mountains. Quite spectacular. Tomorrow, we head across the bay again, this time to a Forest Service cabin on an isolated cove that we reserved several weeks ago in Fairbanks. There are several nice hiking trails in the area and the cabin looks out over the cove. It should be nice.
This is the second installment of Ed and Kenneth's trip to Alaska and back.
When last we wrote, we were in Whitehorse, Yukon. We drove north from Whitehorse up the Klondike highway to Dawson City. Before we left Whitehorse we were able to reserve almost the last available spot on the Chilcoot trail (the trail the gold rush miners used) from Skagway, Alaska to Lake Bennett at the headwaters of the Yukon. This being the 100th anniversary of the gold rush, only the very end of August was available. But we're in and we've also reserved the (supposedly fabulous) train ride back to Skagway from the lake.
In Dawson City we spent a day doing all the tourist things in town. We took a walking tour where we learned that all of the buildings are on pilings or stilts to avoid melting the permafrost. We went out to Dredge #4 and took a tour. This is a gold mining dredge which is a machine that more or less pans for gold on a large scale. This one is the largest ever used in North America and was used to pan the entire Klondike River! It sits in the stream bed and shovels river gravel into a huge bin with enormous shovels. Water is pumped from underneath it (it is actually floating) into the bin and the gravel is passed through a series of grates of decreasing size. The gravel that doesn't make it through the grates is spewed out the back of the dredge and is called tailings. The fine particulate sludge that is left contains the gold and is sent elsewhere for separation (since there isn't very much of it at this point) Tailings from all the dredges operating in the Dawson area (as late as the '60's) are still all around the town and can be seen for miles on both sides of the road as you drive into town. They've really torn up the place! We also visited the Robert Service cabin where the poet lived. He wrote "The Cremation of Sam McGee" if you've never heard of him. At the cabin there was an excellent presentation given by a very talented local where Service's life was described and many of his best poems were read.
At the last minute, we decided to drive up to Inuvik on the Mackinzie River delta just south of the Arctic Ocean. The drive is 460 miles each way on a dirt road with very few services available. (The first gas is available after 230 miles!) The weather was very nice during the two days it took to get to Inuvik. There are two mountain ranges to be crossed along the way and the scenery was fantastic! We got our first look at a grizzly bear that we suprised along the road. The road was dirt, but fairly good and we were able to drive 40-50 mph most of the way. Camping at a Yukon Territorial campground the first night we found out how bad the mosquitoes can be up here. As soon as the door to the car was opened, there were hundreds of them in the car. We had to bathe in bug repellent and burn a citronella candle in the car with the windows open to get rid of most of them before we went to sleep. There is a lavender flower up here called fireweed that grows everywhere, especially along the roadsides. At times, the ribbons of fireweed on each side of the road stretching endlessly into the distance could be very spectacular.
Inuvik is a modern town of 3000 people, mostly Inuits (Eskimos). We visited the Igloo church which really is a Catholic Church built to look like a giant igloo. We had dinner of caribou and arctic char (a fish) in a local restaurant Both were very good.
The next day we flew the 1/2 hour flight to Tuktoyaktuk (which everyone just calls Tuk) which is actually on the ocean. We took a cultural tour of the town of about 900 Inuits. The most interesting part of the tour was a climb down a 30 foot ladder into a series of tunnels dug in the permafrost. The locals keep large quantities of food frozen down there all year around. The walls of the tunnels are solid ice with layers of vegetation frozen into them. We had lunch at the home of our guide who offered to let us stay the night in a large canvas tent behind his house right on the water. (We had planned to pitch our tent on the beach, but this was much better) He also drove us outside of town to see the pingos. We had an enjoyable 3 mile walk back to town from there since it was a beautiful day. Pingos are small hills (obvious on the otherwise flat delta) caused by upwelling of water through the permafrost. They look like grassy hills but are actually solid ice one foot under the surface. We had dinner at our guide's house and sat around talking for a bit afterward. He was the tribal leader of the Inuits for ten years and has travelled all over the world on trips investing his people's money (from land settlements with the Canadian government). Now he runs a tour company and owns the water concession in Tuk. His name is Roger Gruben. The name is German, but only his great grandfather was German. Most Inuits have European last names derived from some fur trapper or whaler in their ancestry. The next morning we said goodbye and flew back to Inuvik. We left town that afternoon for the long drive back to Dawson City.
On the way back down the Dempster Highway we stopped in Arctic Red River, a tiny town by a ferry crossing across both the Arctic Red and McKenzie rivers. There we met a very strange guy originally from Amsterdam who drove an even stranger vehicle. It was a pickup truck with a topper, from which 12 sleddogs poked their eager heads, 6 to a side. We also met a character working on the ferry who was from Stockholm, living in arctic Canada, who had high hopes of starting a business in Havana after marrying his Cuban sweetheart who he sends $500 each month. And strange enough, even types like these always remark to us something like, "you drove all the way from DALLAS?!" Go figure.
Now it was time for us to finally drive into Alaska. We crossed the Yukon River by ferry and drove the "Top of the World Highway" west to the US/Canada border. The road follows the top of a high ridge, with quite scenic with views of the Ogilvie mountains, and there was lots of fireweed along the road. The first town in Alaska we came to was called Chicken. It has only a couple of hundred inhabitants, and only a few dozen stick around throuh the winter, the low season, as in, "the low today will be 40 below." The town is really only a gas stop, but how it got its name is interesting. The miners who founded the town during the gold rush decided to name it after the ptarmigan bird found all around the area (we almost nailed a few of these white & black mottled birds on the highway). Well, most of the townspeople couldn't even come close to being able to spell "ptarmigan," so they decided to name it Chicken instead. The road continued, now called the Taylor Highway, to join the Alcan near a town called Tok (rhymes with "yoke"). The road was really rough with long sections of washboard. By the time we got to Tok and the paved road, we realized the truck was still shaking at highway speeds, as in, something was wrong with it. The next day we used a high pressure water hose to get off all the accumulated mud, which didn't fix the problem. Since the vibration wasn't too bad we decided to continue on to Fairbanks and get it looked at there.
The next day we got into Fairbanks and it seemed like the biggest city we ever saw, and even at only 60,000 people it was the biggest city we had seen since Calgary. We were amazed to find a Sams, where they checked and balanced all the wheels (and they were indeed all out of balance). And we didn't have to pay anything since I had bought my tires at the Sams in Lewisville before the trip.
The next day we called around and scheduled a 3-day canoe rental on the Chena River, northeast of Fairbanks. We then drove out Chena Hot Springs Road and took a day hike to Angel Rocks. These are rock outcroppings (called "tors") that you can hike and then scramble up to, affording an excellent view of the Chena Rover valley. The weather was pleasant and we were (empasis: "were") looking forward to a nice trip down the Chena for the next 3 days.
We got to the canoe outfitters at 9:30 AM, and because of the usual delays we didn't get started on the river until noon. Part of the reason was that the guy dropping us off didn't recognize the "Third Bridge" put in and passed it up. Now, we were told by the outfitter that this was a 3-day trip from Third Bridge to Fairbanks. So naturally, we believed him. In reality, we came to realize this is a 3-day trip only if you are an olympic athelete, or if you mount a trolling motor to the canoe. Anyway, the first 4 hours was great- sunny and the river was running well with some whitewater. The fact that we had, in all the shuffle to load equipment, forgotten our rain jackets was at this point no big deal, it was sunny, warm, and everything was going great. Of course, as evening came it started to rain and we just got wet, saved only by many layers of thermal clothing, and a grim determination to continue on knowing that we were experienced paddlers and outdoorsmen (?), and of course the comforting fact that the main road was within walking distance from the river almost the whole way. We had dinner on a sandbar huddled under a tarp. By this point we looked at the map and realized that to make Fairbanks in 3 days we would have to paddle more than we really wanted to, especially since the river would get slower the farther we went. So for after dinner relaxation we got back in the canoe and paddled to about 10 PM, made camp on a sandbar, and went to sleep hoping that the rain would abate.
In Alaska, at least, the weather gods are not merciful, so of course it rained the whole day. We made raincoats out of garbage bags and paddled our way down the river. We stopped at a B&B on the river and asked, beyond caring about how stupid we looked in white garbage bags, if they might have a couple of raincoats or something like that. Indeed, we were supplied with two dandy K-mart ponchos, for $20. Even though it rained all day we still enjoyed the scenery, mostly spruce trees and a few views of the hills on the river valley. We also saw some wildlife, including a moose with calf. We kept passing beaver lodges and hearing splashes every now and then, until finally we spotted a beaver just before he dove into the water, thumping his tail on the water as he went in. We got better at spotting them, usually they keep a low profile and look like a piece of wood, or sometimes a piece of wood towing a branch. That night we made camp at about 8 PM on another sandbar, thinking of how luxurious it would be to be back in the warm comfort of the truck.
Much to our surprise, the last day on the Chena River was sunny and warm! We paddled all day, getting more and more into developed areas near Fairbanks. We talked to a few people on the river banks along the way, and we discovered that there was supposed to be a place on the outskirts of Fairbanks, on the river, that had a salmon bake. Wow, we thought, wouldn't that be nice? Well, we kept paddling and paddling until our arms were about to fall off, until we spotted a place that looked like it might be what we were looking for, but it looked closed. So we paddled some more until we got to downtown Fairbanks. At least on the way we saw a bald eagle flying up the river, and even better, it WASN'T RAINING. We pulled the canoe up on shore right by the visitors center and found a nice restaurant and had a great meal, but of course almost anything would taste good after what we had been through. We finally paddled up to the outfitters about 8 PM, tired, but still never losing our determination to never, ever, forget our rain jackets again. We pretty much randomly selected a commercial campground (since all the public ones would be filled by this time), and when we got there, in a twist of comic irony, it was the one on the river with the salmon bake!
Our last day in Fairbanks we took it easy (of course) and visited the museum at the University of Alaska- Fairbanks. The museum had nice exhibits on Alaskan geology, wildlife, the Russian influence, the northern lights, native peoples, the WWII in the Aleutians, and some other things thrown in for no appaent reason such as a butterfly collection and pottery.
Enjoying really good weather for a change, we drove south to Denali Nat'l Park, a truly amazing place. Now, they say that because of the weather only one in seven visitors actually get to see all of Mt. McKinley, and only one in three get to see even some of it. Well, even from 120 miles away we could see it from the road, impressive at over 20,000 feet high and perpetually covered with snow. Our intent was to find a suitable route for a 3-4 day backpacking trip. The park has instituted a complex reservation system for backpackers which involves choosing certain areas of the park to hike in, and reserving these several days in advance. This is because they don't want the park to be overrun with hikers, for the benefit of the wildlife, ecology, and the hikers. We were able to find a good area to hike in, along the Savage River in the east area of the park. Now, this is not like any national park in the lower 48. There are no trails. You have to navigate cross-country using topographic maps and a compass (no, we did not cheat and use a GPS). This was not a problem since both Ken & I know how to navigate like this, in fact it's more fun and challanging than using trails. However, we were both surprised at how difficult it can be to travel in the tundra found in the park. We learned the hard way to avoid willow thickets AT ALL COSTS- leave them to the moose. We followed the river through a beautiful canyon on what would seem to be an easy hike of maybe 5 miles, but it took almost 7 hours! Tired and bruised from smashing our way through the bushes we crossed the river and made camp. We set up our tarp (dining site) up on a bluff overlooking Primrose Ridge, our dayhike objective for the next day.
It rained all night. We awoke to a steady rain. We walked over to the river that we had to cross to find it twice as deep as the previous day, with the current running at breakneck speed and carrying so much silt it was now a dark brown. We could even hear small boulders being swept along by the river. So, we decided to scrub the dayhike and instead freeze our butts off at camp (it had dropped to 46 degrees). The rain kept up all day and it was our sincere hope that it would abate enough for the river to subside so we could cross and get back to the main road and catch a bus before our 4 days worth of food gave out. Fortunately, the next morning it was merely drizzling and the river was down enough for us to cross safely. We decided to return by climbing the ridge (with full packs) instead of following the river because all the gravel bars were now under water and we would have to slog through even more willows if we went back the same way. So picture this: a steady drizzle, temperature about 50, packs laden with wet camping gear weighing about 45 pounds, and before we can even start hiking we have to cross a stream and then a river which are fed by snowmelt. The water was very, very cold, and we were not carrying hip waders, no, we are talking shorts and sneakers, with the water high enough to, well... be uncomfortable. So after we crossed the river we started an unbelievably long uphill walk of 2400 feet to the top of Primrose ridge, with the wind almost blowing us off the mountain. But at least the rain stopped and we were walking in drier tundra without any willows. After we made it over the top of the ridge we celebrated by breaking out the lawn chairs we were carrying (really, they don't weigh much and they're really comfortable after a long walk), having granola bars, and wondering what the people in the tour busses were thinking about two guys on the top of a mountain sitting in lawnchairs.
The scenery on the hike was great- snow-capped mountains, tundra with wildflowers, rivers and streams- but we saw hardly any animals. No, the way to see animals is to take the tour along the park road. We spent a day on and off the bus and saw moose, caribou, and several grizzly bears. We got stuck on a bus with a bunch of birders, and they were all excited about a "Jaeger," which to me looked like an overgrown seagull. And while they were arguing about the mating call of some obscure bird, Ken & I watched a golden eagle alight its cliffside nest, the birders oblivious. Go figure.
Our next stop was Anchorage, the biggest city by far in Alaska (250,000 people, half the state's population). It really is a nice city, with parks, rivers, both the Turnagain Arm and Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet, and nearby mountains with lots of good hiking trails. It does have lots of urban sprawl and its share of chain restaurants, traffic lights and indeed, rush-hour traffic. Because of this, many Alaskans say about Anchorage, "Nice city, and it's only 20 minutes from Alaska." We went to the busiest seaplane base in the world (probably) and an Alaska aviation museum where we learned that most pilots eventually crash their airplanes, and the ones who are lucky enough to survive to old age are called "aviation pioneers." The weather was nice so we hiked the most popular trail in Alaska, up Flattop Mountain. This afforded us a wonderful view of the city, the surrounding arms of Cook Inlet, many mountains, and several schoolkids who hiked the same trail as we did, only they were passing us wearing sneakers and we had $150 Goretex boots and telescoping hiking sticks.
From Anchorage we drove south toward the Kenai Peninsula. It was an unbelievably beautiful day (we were due one) and the drive south along the Turnagain Arm of Cook inlet was spectacular with snow patched mountain slopes dropping straight down to the water. There's barely room for the road and the railroad tracks. Along the way we stopped along the road to watch a dragoon of beluga whales (or whatever a group of belugas is called) feeding in the inlet. We took a slight detour to visit the Portage Glacier visitor center on Portage Lake. This is a very fancy Forest Service visitor center with interesting exhibits on glaciers and a huge panoramic window looking out across the lake to where Portage Glacier once was. The glacier has been receeding for several years but in the last 2 or 3 it has retreated completely out of the lake and is now out of sight around a mountain ridge. So the Forest Service has this nice expensive museum, but the star attraction has left.
We continued around the western side of the Kenai Peninsula, stopping at a couple of very picturesque Russian Orthodox churches, complete with onion domes and strangely shaped crosses. The Russians left over 130 years ago, but there is still a large Russian Orthodox presence here. To our right, across Cook Inlet, we were treated to spectacular views of Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Illiamna which are 10,000+ ft tall volcanoes just on the other side of the inlet. Mt. Redoubt errupted in 1989 and caused a great deal of damage to Homer and other towns on the Kenai Peninsula. The road ends at the town of Homer and we got our first motel room of the trip near there. We went into town and drove to the end of the Homer Spit, which is a long spit of sand sticking out about 5 miles into Kachemak Bay (part of Cook Inlet). The spit houses a large boat harbor as well as commercial dock facilities. You can camp along the beach on the spit, but the wind is so strong that most people have constructed makeshift windbreaks in front of their tents from driftwood and pieces of junk they have found. Those who haven't done this have tents that look like this will be their last trip. We also visited the museum in Homer which had a great exhibit on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. They also had 3 remote control cameras on a small island out in the bay. The island is completely covered with birds - gulls, murres and puffins. The visitor can use a joystick to move the cameras and zoom in and out. One of the cameras is inside the cliffside crevice where a puffin is sitting on an egg. It's a great exhibit. We spent a long time watching the birds.
Today, we took a water taxi to the other side of Kachemak Bay and spent the day in a rented sea kayak. The day was beautiful, the water calm and we saw several sea otters and a bald eagle feeding a fish to it's young. Two guys who came out on the water taxi with us spotted killer whales just 100 feet away from their kayak. The other side of the bay is steep mountains, fiords and glaciers coming down from icefields out of sight over the mountains. Quite spectacular. Tomorrow, we head across the bay again, this time to a Forest Service cabin on an isolated cove that we reserved several weeks ago in Fairbanks. There are several nice hiking trails in the area and the cabin looks out over the cove. It should be nice.
