David and Enid's Travels

Denali from stop along road

We drove north along the George Parks highway this morning, a beautiful sunny day, with stunning views of Denali all along the way.  The first opportunity to get any good pictures was when we crossed the Chulitna River bridge.  There is also a lodge here up Mount McKinley road on the east side of the highway.  Judging from the buildings and the spectacular views across to the mountain, we assume it to be a very high priced resort.

The best view of McKinley is from the South McKinley Viewpoint campground (not much of a campground, just a parking lot with a few picnic tables).  There are interpretive signs here, and a short trail up to an unobstructed view of the mountains and Ruth Glacier.

We stopped at Byers Lake, which has a nice campground, but you cannot see the mountain from there.  The North Viewpoint is a campground similar to the South, but the views are not nearly so good of the mountain.  There were also good views of the mountain as we travelled north to the summit of the George Parks highway, just before Cantwell.  Cantwell is not much of a town, just two gas stations.  We stopped at the first, and I thought since it was right across from the junction with the Denali highway, it would have the higher price.  That was the wrong call, as it was 10 cents a gallon more at the next station.

The summit area had very nice fall colors.  The dwarf birches are starting to turn red, and there are many at this altitude.  The poplar are turning yellow and so the mountain tundra is becoming very beautifully colored.

We set up in the Riley Creek (main) campground at Denali.  After getting our site set up, we booked a bus trip tomorrow in to the Eielson visitor centre.  Our bus leaves at 7:30, so we will have to get up and get going quickly in the morning.

There was a sudden shower after we returned to our campsite.  We were not prepared for it, but got the tarp set up quickly.  That shower passed, but we had a second heavier one about an hour later.  Now there are breaks in the clouds, and a bit of sunshine for the evening.

Nancy Lake

Once we left Eagle River it was a fast drive to tonight’s campsite.  North through Wasilla (whose claim to fame is that Sarah Palin was the mayor) and then we came to this Alaska State recreation site on Nancy Lake.  The lake looks somewhat similar to a Saskatchewan lake, as the terrain here is flat, and you can see no mountains.  There is a pump here for water and we tried to use it, but the water was so full of iron that we dumped it out and went down to the lake and got water there.  That is nice and clear, and since we’re boiling it for cooking anyway, it should be fine.   The campsite seemed perfect until we realized that on its edge is the Alaska Railroad’s main line.  So far a train has gone by about every half an hour.

After supper a thunderstorm moved in very quickly from the east, which is certainly different than the direction we’re used to seeing them come from.  It wasn’t a big storm, and we were on the very outer edge, so it only sprinkled a bit of rain.  Now it is another pleasant evening, and Enid is roasting marshmallows.

It was a lovely warm evening last night, and again this morning, one of the warmest nights we have had for some time.  Today is actually quite warm.  We drove north towards Anchorage, stopping along the way at Beluga Point where we did see some belugas swimming in Turnagain Arm, not far from shore.  They moved north from where we were very fast, so that while we could still see them there, they were too far away to photograph.  However, we did get a good view of them initially and then later with binoculars.

As we drove into Anchorage we saw the sign for a sporting goods store, “Sportsman’s Wholesale” so we pulled off at the next freeway exit, and drove back a couple of miles to a mall which had several stores.  We did some shopping in the store, and got some more socks at a good price, Mom got a new toque, and we also found a waterproof case for the shotgun.  That will be very useful when we are canoeing.  I’ve been looking for one for a long time, and hadn’t found one.  Here though you must be able to buy just about every firearm imaginable.

We are now on our way north to Denali this afternoon.  You can actually see glimpses of the mountain today to the north.  We hope that this weather lasts.  After we leave the park we will either drive across the Denali Highway, or north to Fairbanks, depending on the weather.  Apparently the Denali Highway is beautiful, but it is a highway in name only, as it is actually a rough gravel road.  Perhaps our tires will take it.  In any case I’m pretty quick at changing them now!

Fishing for Sockeye Salmon, Kenai River

It drizzled rain all night, and was still raining slightly when we awoke.  We ate our breakfast under the back door of the Yukon, and put the tent away as quickly as possible.  The fly was very wet, but the rest was not too bad.  It was a very good thing that we changed to a new groundsheet, as there were almost no damp spots in the tent this morning.

We drove back following the Skilak Lake road.  This lake is a large lake on the Kenai River, and also is fed from Skilak Glacier, another of the many glaciers that descend from the Harding Icefield.  We stopped at a number of the other small lakes along the road.  They are very pretty, but the sky was very overcast, though by this time it had stopped raining.  We ate lunch at Hidden Lake.  This is the most developed of all the campsites we have been at in Alaska.  The road in the campground is paved (though Skilak Lake road is not), and there were two picnic shelters, one of which we made use of. 

After lunch we stopped at the Kenai Lake trail, and walked in about 2 kilometres in total to the top of the canyon.   About 500 metres in we reached the bank of the Kenai River, where there were several fishermen catching sockeye salmon.  They were actually snagging them with their hooks there were so many in the river.  They released them all (you aren’t allowed to take them by snagging) though they put up a pretty good fight.  The one fisherman we talked to said they were past their prime.  He said they would be ok if you smoked them, but, “they’re spawned out,” so they were releasing them all.

We watched them fish for a while then continued on down the trail.  There were a large number of mushrooms of different varieties.  We also saw some fresh bear scat along the trail, full of berries.  The Alaskan Brown Bear is genetically the same as the grizzly, but much larger because of all the salmon that it has available.  The young man we shared the fire with last night said that there are many bear encounters right within the city of Anchorage each year, mostly with bikers and runners who come on the bears suddenly.  He also said that the Alaskan Brown Bear is much less aggressive than the grizzly (though more so than a black bear) probably because it has a much easier time getting sufficient food.

We stopped hiking when we came to the high cliff about 30 metres above the water of the Kenai River.  The canyon is quite narrow at this point, perhaps 25 to 30 metres wide, and had some white water.  Of course if you were on the water rather than looking down the rapids doubtless would be much larger.  We saw a raft floating through the canyon, and it looked as if it was a fairly easy ride.

Shortly after we started driving again the rain started anew.  It wasn’t too heavy, though as we got close to the Hope junction, it was raining heavily enough that we were thinking about getting a motel room, since our tent was put away so wet this morning.  However the rain had stopped by the time we arrived at Bird Creek campground.  In fact the sun broke through around supper time, so the tent is nicely dry, and its warmer this evening than it has been for some days.

After supper we walked down to where Bird Creek enters the ocean.  There were many people fishing there, and though we saw no one catch a fish, we did see one person carrying a large silver salmon.  The creek is stocked, and according to the sign there are about 7500 salmon caught there every year by anglers.  We spoke to a man on the footbridge overlooking the creek, and he said you can often see Beluga coming up the creek following the salmon.  However we saw none tonight.

Enid on Anchor Beach

Last night we met a couple around our age when we arrived at Anchor Point and walked on the beach.  Enid talked to the woman and found that they were from Cincinnati, but originally from South Dakota, so they actually knew where Saskatchewan was.  Like us they have been on the road since July 15, and like us they are tenting (most of the time), which is pretty unusual for people our age.  Most of those in tents are young families or Europeans.  We’ve been in the tent almost every day since the beginning of July, only three days at home while packing, one night in a cabin in Dawson City, and one night at Colleen Polson’s in Eagle River were in buildings.

In the conversation the woman mentioned that there was an art gallery along the road to Homer that we should visit.  It was called the Norman Lowell gallery.  When we left this morning we didn’t take the main highway, but followed an older road.  It was paved but narrow and crooked.  Because it was not the main road we didn’t see the gallery, but when we pulled into the viewpoint at the entrance to Homer we did see the couple again.  They had camped in one of the other campgrounds here just to the east.  They mentioned the gallery again, so we made a point to go back by the other main road.

We found the spot on the way back to our campsite from Homer and pulled into the gallery, which is about five miles south of the town of Anchor Point.  It is a short drive up a gravel road to the top of a bluff.  We expected to see a small commercialized site selling souvenirs.  We were very surprised instead to find a large building, several thousand square feet in area, with somewhere around 100 paintings on display by the artist, Norman Lowell.  An elderly gentleman, he greeted us at the door and shook our hand, and then we spent a relaxing hour walking around the gallery and looking at the paintings.

All of the paintings there are his original works, many done in the 1990’s when he lost his sight in one eye to glaucoma, but some from both earlier and later periods.  Much of the work is largely scenic, but beautifully done.  He had some pictures in other styles, notably one that was quite abstract done in the 60’s that I really liked.  It was a representation of “Fire” though I don’t recall its actual title.  He does a remarkably good job of capturing light on snow.  Perhaps that is not surprising for one who has lived there since 1958 when he homesteaded on the spot where the gallery now stands.  It was a very peaceful relaxing experience, with soft music playing, beautiful scenery in the art work, and no charge at all.

We came back to our campsite at Halibut Campground and again went for a walk on the beach.  The tide was going out, and so there were bigger waves from the current.  A couple of kayaks were out in the inlet.   After that we came back and cooked our halibut supper, which was delicious.

A young couple from Anchorage is camped as our neighbours.  Enid spoke to the woman who had a two year old son and a four month old baby while she was down watching the ocean this evening.  Later the woman and her son came by and invited us to join them at their fire.  We went and Enid roasted a marshmallow.  We took a quick tour of their twenty two foot long boat, which is outfitted so that you can sleep on board.  They were planning to put it in the water tomorrow to go fishing.  We left them at about 10:30, just as it started to rain.

Homer small boat harbour, on the spit

We are in Homer Alaska today.  This will be as far as we go.  We’ve run out of road, and so now we will be heading back.  We’ve been on the road now for over five weeks, and we won’t take that long to get back. 

It’s getting cold here at nights.  When the sun is out its ok but not hot (15 – 18 degrees).  At night as the sun goes down it cools off very quickly.  I bought a pair of wool fingerless gloves today, as its hard sitting at a picnic table with the computer and writing my blog entries in the evening.  My fingers get pretty cold.

It is a partially cloudy day today, and may rain later tonight.  We are going to be looking for a new tarp to use as a ground sheet.  The one we have seems to be letting water through from the ground, so in the morning the bottom of the tent is wet from condensation.

We drove down the Homer Spit today.  It is a large concentration of tourist shops and fishing charters.  We went in to nearly every store, but didn’t see much of interest to us.  There are some nice carvings, but they are in ivory and whalebone, so we won’t purchase those as we don’t think we could get them through customs at the border.

The city of Homer is spread out all around Katchemak Bay, which is a very large bay off Cook Inlet.  We drove east as far as the site of Fritz Creek, not much more than a gas station.  There are many names of sites on the map, but most of them would be considered part of the Homer metropolitan area.  There must be a good deal of commercial fishing here, as there are a lot of marine places with big fishing boats drydocked for repairs.  We bought some fresh halibut for supper tonight.  It had just come off the boat.

We will be going back to our camp site at Anchor Point tonight.  Then tomorrow we’ll head back toward Anchorage.  We would like to be in Prince Rupert sometime for the first week in September.  What route we will take to get there isn’t perfectly clear.  I suppose if the weather stays nice we might drive by Denali and Fairbanks, but if it’s raining we’ll probably take the Tok cutoff.

Sunset over Mt. Iliamna

This morning was very cold. Although it was clear, the sun didn’t strike our tent site before we left at 9:30, and the tent was very wet with dew when we packed it.
We drove along the Kenai River and saw some fishermen this morning. We then drove into Kenai and after buying a few needed groceries went on a walking tour of Old Kenai. There are some of the oldest buildings in Alaska there, though none are really old, except for the church itself which is from the 1890’s. We had a very hard time finding the cemetery. Although it showed on the map, we couldn’t find how to get to it. We walked by a road marked “Private Road” several times, which looked like it was the way to go, but couldn’t find any way through. We stopped at the Russian gift shop, and the clerk told us to go up the private road, which we did and found the cemetery.

We ate our lunch on the beach at Kenai, looking out over Cook Inlet to the west. There were clouds in the west, and the mountain tops were obscured at first, but just as we finished our lunch they cleared enough that we could see the top of the volcano, Mt. Redoubt. After lunch we drove down Kalifornsky Beach Road. On the map it looked like you’d be able to see the ocean, and you could occasionally get glimpses of it past the tree shrouded private houses. Everything along the beach is private property until you get to Kasilof Beach road. Here we could drive to the beach, to a free public area.

We next stopped at the Clam Gulch campground, but it isn`t much more than a parking lot. There were a few picnic tables and tent sites, but not many. We drove on to Ninilchik where there is an old Russian Orthodox church built in 1901. It sits high on a bluff overlooking the ocean, with a beautiful view of the volcanic mountains to the west.

Tractor loading boats at Anchor Point

We are camped in Anchor Point at Halibut Campground. Anchor Point is the most westerly spot in North America that you can drive to by a continuous road. The camping area is less wooded than those we have been at for the past weeks, but we have a nice spot in some of the few trees that are here. At this beach they launch boats directly into the inlet using large tractors. We saw several of the boats get hauled out. The boat radios in, then the crew on shore gets the boat trailer hooked up, backs it into the ocean, and waits for the boat to sail into the trailer. It is a remarkably quick operation to get the boat out of the water, and those in the boat never get their feet wet – not so for the person riding on the back of the tractor.   The last time we saw anything like this was in New Zealand where they were using tracked caterpillar type tractors to do the same thing.  However we watched that for over an hour and they still didn’t have the boat in the water.  Here they are in and out in five minutes or less.  We walked down the beach tonight and watched the operation. The man in the booth said they charge $58 for the put in and take out.

Tonight we watched the sunset over the volcanoes on the western shore of Cook Inlet. Steam is rising from both Augustine Volcano to the southwest, and Mt. Redoubt to the north. The sun set spectacularly directly behind Mt. Iliamna directly to our west.

Cooper Creek at the junction with the Kenai River

We drove north to the junction with Highway One after leaving Seward.  There are supposed to be Trumpeter Swans at Tern Lake; however, we didn’t see any.  We drove to the campsite at Cooper Creek.  They have a big red warning sign posted about bears, but they also have a campground host.  I asked him, and he said he hasn’t seen a bear in a long time. 

“Take site 18, “ he said. “It’s the best site and is right back against the creek.”

Other than the host, we are the only others camped in this site.  It must be busy sometimes, as many of the sites are reserved for the weekend.

We are upstream perhaps 100 metres from the junction of the creek and the Kenai River.  Just a half a kilometre up the river we can see many rafts beached on the shore.  We saw a group of rafters on the river when we walked down to view the river tonight.  The Kenai River is not a spectacular white water river, as the rapids we’ve seen are just Class 1.  However, it is supposed to be one of the prime salmon angling rivers in Alaska.  There were guiding camps and guest cabins all along the highway this afternoon as we drove in.

Salmon spawning in Tonsina Creek

Once again it was another another beautiful day in the Seward area.  Originally we had planned to hike in to the Exit glacier, which is about 8 miles out of town, but when we got close, the road bridge was closed, and it would have been a couple of miles extra to hike in.  Having seen a lot of glaciers, we declined, and instead went on into Seward, and to the south of the town where there is a trail along Resurrection Bay.

Yesterday when we checked in the morning with one of the kayak rental companies they indicated that they did a tour for half a day to Tonsina Point, where you could see the spawning salmon in the creek.  Since there is a hiking trail to the point we felt that that this would be a good hike to take, and it’s only about five kilometres return.  We hiked in to eat our lunch, and when we got to the stream we could see the salmon spawning in the stream.  There were about 50 or more fish, all in the last stages of their life.    Here they were only about 200 metres in from the ocean, but they were obviously not going any higher upstream.  The water was very clear and shallow, and so you could clearly see the exhausted salmon.  There were also many dead carcasses in the water, and there were some gulls and magpies present.  While we were there a bald eagle flew overhead and landed in a tree not far away.  However, it didn’t try to eat any of the fish, probably because there were quite a number of people there.

We also waded out into the braided stream where it entered the ocean, then after that we sat on some large rocks on the beach and ate our lunch.  Now we are preparing to leave Seward.  We will be driving north, and this time will be able to see the mountains along the road as it is perfectly clear.  We are going to Homer over the next couple of days, and that will be as far as we get, as it’s the end of the road.

Aialik tidewater glacier

This morning the sky showed some signs of blue when we awoke, so after breakfast we decided that we would try and book a cruise today.  We signed up with Kenai Fjords Tours for an 11:30 departure, and the day turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip so far.

With the wind behind us from the north, it helped to flatten the swells coming in from the Gulf of Alaska, so the trip was never too rough.  We saw a number of different kinds of animals and birds, including a pod of orca that we followed for some time, and saw a mother and baby swimming together.  We also saw a young sea otter with its mother.

The mountains surrounding the fjords are spectacular, with high hanging glaciers and rugged peaks.  The  farthest point of the tour was Aialik Glacier, which is a large tidewater glacier.  We spent about half an hour here, and the glacier calved several large chunks of ice.  The noise of the glacier is very loud as it creaks and roars when the ice breaks free.  There was a very strong wind blowing from the glacier, so strong that when the boat was travelling at speed into the wind it was very difficult to stand up against the force of the wind.

On the way back from the glacier we saw a single humpback whale.  It dived and blew in the general vicinity of our boat for some time, then just as we were about to leave surfaced very close to our boat.

The day was capped by a great supper at “The Salmon Bake”.  This restaurant was recommended to us by the clerk where we had our tire fixed yesterday, and although it is off the main path and a bit out of town, it was well worth the visit.  Enid had her favourite, salmon, and I had halibut, and both were delicious.  All in all, with a beautiful sunny day, and a great cruise,  it has been a fantastic day.