The Last Hoorah

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Alaska.  We've been here in Haines for a week, just enjoying ourselves.  It's very nice to slow down and not rush through a place, this way you can almost blend in and soak up the local culture.  Our campground,  Haines Hitch-up RV Park is right on the edge of town and makes it very convenient to walk to town, the harbor, and it's easy to make a nice walking route for my regular exercise.  Haines is a tiny town, only 2500 people that bulges every so often with a visiting cruise ship.  It is beyond picturesque with the towering mountains capped with snow and ice, the green forested hills, one huge braided river, the Chilkat coming down one side feeding into the Chilkat Inlet, and the gorgeous Chilkoot Lake, feeding down with it's own river teeming with salmon into the Lutak Inlet on the other side.  Fort William Seward sits above the town on a hill overlooking the harbor, the last of 11 forts established in Alaska during the gold rush days.  And it's a friendly town, so while walking around and into the various shops you are greeted with smiles even if they do know you're a tourist, because as Haine's own author Heather Lende put it in her book title, "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name".

Haines on a windy day

Another view as the fog wisps by with one of the few
cruise ships in town

We went back to Chilkoot River and were able to see the bear chowing down several more times.  It's easy to get sentimental about nature, in fact, you see it all the time, that everything in nature is perfect, animals only kill to eat or protect themselves, etc and so on, and it certainly is mostly true, so it is especially startling when you see or learn something else.  Two cases in point, we learned from a ranger that studies bears here in Alaska that a male brown bear upon finding a female with cubs will often kill the cubs, forcing her back into estrus, so he can mate with her, something, huh?  And then as we watched "our" bear sitting by the fish weir eating salmon, we were surprised at what she was doing, she would catch a fish, bite out its belly, eat the eggs if a female, and then toss the rest of the carcass.  Now I just mention this as we found it interesting, that she was "wasting" the rest of the meat.  Understand, there are tons of birds, including eagles, and many smaller animals that eat the fish, and don't forget all the salmon running up stream are going to spawn and die regardless.  The cycle of nature.  Still something to witness.

Look carefully, you can see some salmon eggs on her arms

The weather turned out great although we arrived in rain and fog, it got steadily warmer and sunnier throughout the week.  Jan and Karen took a hike to Lily Pond, and were planning to ascend Mt Riley, but the muddy trail took some of the wind out of their sails.  They did have a wonderful time.

The winding trail

Lily Pond

So along with our fun, we got some grocery shopping done, Karen took her coach in for some repair work, we got a few items done on our coach, did a little touristy shopping, had some great fish at little Big Al's Salmon Shack, scrumptious halibut and rockfish, Jan and I took a long peaceful canoe ride in Chilkoot Lake, and best of all, we did some relaxing and enjoying and savoring our terrific trip so far.

Tomorrow we start the last segment of our Alaska trip, we get on the ferry at 12:30pm, sail an hour over to Skagway, then we plan to drive up to Carcross in the Yukon for the night, then if you reference the map in the previous post, we will then go to Watson Lake, Dease Lake, stop for 2 nights at the intersection of the Cassier Highway and the road that goes to Stewart and Hyder, we hope to see a ton of brown bears there, then down to the Yellowhead Highway and stop right about where the highway does a sharp bend just to the left of the arrow pointing to the Yellowhead Highway in Houston, on to Prince George, then finally through Jasper down the Icefields Parkway into Banff.  1490 miles of hopefully decent 2 lane road, we haven't heard anything bad about the Cassier so we have our fingers crossed!  Now all this time we are expecting to be out of cell coverage, with very minimal internet until we get to Banff, and maybe noy until we work our way back into the lower 48 around Glacier National Park.  So bear with me if it's a bit until the next post.

Back to Haines in a change of plans

We had originally planned to leave Tok, drive back down to Haines Junction and on down the Alaska Highway almost to Watson Lake where we would turn south and continue down the Cassier Highway.  We have never been on that road before as we had driven back down on our last trip on the Alcan.  We want to visit Hyder, AK on our way.  We are hoping to see a bunch of brown bears there, and the town is supposed to be funky cool.  I had an idea come to me, so we called a powwow to see if we all wanted to return to Haines on our way back.  If you look carefully at the map you can see Haines all the way at the southern end of the Haines Highway, 146 miles south followed by 146 miles north to the Alaska Highway and our way south.  My idea was to see about taking the ferry across to Skagway instead, then north to Carcross.  Distance driving around, 292 miles, distance with the ferry, 67 miles.  We all had loved Haines, so this way we would be able to come back for a week, save some mileage, and get to ride the ferry the short way over to Skagway on our way out of dodge.  So here we are, ferry all reserved, hunkered down in beautiful Haines.

The worst road we encountered in our travels so far was the 60 mile section south of the Yukon/Alaska border below Tok.  We had hoped since 7 weeks had gone by since we had come north, maybe it would be better on our way south.  No such luck!  It was even worse than we had remembered, and it went on for perhaps 85 miles.  85 miles of being pounded, on and off gravel, potholes, and washboard all at maybe a screaming 13 mph!  We were so relieved to finally get to Kluane Lake in the Yukon and much smoother road for the second half of our journey back to Haines.

I thought it would be interesting to share some data.  We arrived in Haines on June 26th, and left on Jan's birthday June 30th, we arrived back in Haines on August 17th, and will be leaving on Karen's birthday August 23rd.  We traveled 3091 miles from Haines to Haines, stayed in 22 campgrounds, and paid an average of $4.37/gallon for diesel fuel, all in 49 days!  And we still have 1730 miles to get back to the lower 48 entering the USA near Glacier National Park on our planned route.

As I had mentioned we are sad to be leaving, but we are definitely noticing signs of fall, leaves turning, chilly mornings, only barely in the 60's in the day, and the biggest thing of all...........darkness!  It is actually dark by 9pm!  It happens so rapidly here that you can see the days getting shorter.  Remember by Sep 21, the autumnal equinox, night and day are equal, but up here you go from about 19 hours of daylight with the sky never really getting dark on June 21 all the way to 12 hours of daylight in 3 months.  Quite a change, especially the farther north you are.

I'll give you a few parting shots of our journey to Haines.

Not kidding, airplanes are everywhere!

Another mom moose and her calf

Here's looking at you babe!

What scenery!

Lunch stop

Our little caravan

We had heard there was a good chance of seeing bears in Haines later in the season, so we had our fingers crossed.  Salmon come up the Chilkoot river into Chilkoot Lake to spawn, and when the pinks come so do the bears, at least that's what we had heard.  So Jan and I decided to run over just before dinner last night and see.  We saw 2 bears, one meandering along the river, and the other at the buffet:-)

Prowling around

She is propped up in the water right up against the weir
This weir is here so they can count the salmon runs

Aaaahhhhh, fresh salmon!

Winding down

I hate to say it but our wonderful trip to Alaska is winding down.  Hard to believe we have been here almost 8 weeks!  I digress.  So Sunday morning, okay maybe more like Sunday noontime, John and Diane took off for Fairbanks, and we went into the park to the Savage River, the farthest you can go with your own vehicle, to do a hike.  Yeah, maybe we needed a little extra time since we had solved all the world's problems the night before, sounds better than admitting John and I must have caught the same illness:-)

The view from behind J&D's room

Actively solving world problems

John and I very seriously considering the menu

Karen and Diane not

We did have a wonderful short hike along the Savage River, my illness completely cleared up, on a beautiful day.  It is a 2 mile hike along one side of the river, crosses a bridge and comes back the other side.  Interestingly, beyond this point there are no trails or paths in the park.  You can take a bus wherever you want, get off for however long you want, and then jump back on, even several days later.  They want it to be a real wilderness and wildlife preserve so no official trails.

Karen leading the way

Looking back out

Nice day

A little guy we met on the way

A happy Jan

And a happy me!

The next day we went down to Talkeetna, spent the night, walked around the cute little town, talked to some very interesting people including a lady who came and homesteaded in 1959.  Talkeetna is the jumping off place for many of the climbing attempts on Denali, they fly from the airport there up onto a glacier, and then climb the mountain, no we did not do that.  Meanwhile John and Diane were planning their own assault on the Arctic Circle, but the road won.  50 miles up the Dalton a errant pothole jumped out into their path and blew out a tire and destroyed a wheel, so their mission came to an end:-(

We then drove down to Palmer to stock up on groceries for our trip south.  We are going back to Haines now for a week, then plan to take the ferry over to Skagway and then drive down out of Alaska that way.  So Palmer was our last chance for big grocery stores before the lower 48.  We have wanted to have some King Crab sometime on our trip, so the opportunity came up in Palmer, so now I can say we enjoyed some King Crab while here in Alaska.

Grilling up the feast

Devouring the feast!

We somehow with pure serendipity ran into John and Diane one more time.  They were coming north from Valdez, and we were pulling into a campground in Glennallen, just as they were going by!  So another quick visit was enjoyed by all.  Now we are in Tok, where we entered the main part of Alaska northbound, for our trek down the Alcan and then the Haines Highway back to Haines.  The road is terrible down that way, or at least it was on the way north, so we are sadly leaving early tomorrow out of mainland Alaska to give ourselves lots of time.  Back with you in Haines!

Absolutely Amazing!

What a time we had!  One of the culminations of our entire trip was had in Denali National Park.  Months and months ago we made plans to take a 93 mile bus ride into the park and charter an airplane to fly the 3 of us back out along with our good friends from Atlanta, John and Diane.  So not only were all sorts of plans to be made by John and Diane to meet us there, but we needed, desperately needed, the weather to cooperate.

Jan and I made this same trip 9 years ago when we were here, and although the morning was crystal clear as we neared the end of the road, the wisps of clouds over the mountain got thicker and thicker so when we flew out we could not see the mountain at all.  So let me back up a bit.  Our plan called for meeting John and Diane at our motorhome for drinks and dinner friday evening.  They had flown into Anchorage 2 days before, rented a car, and drove up, amazingly they passed us on the road just as we were turning into our campground 7 miles south of the park entrance, and about 8 miles south of their hotel.  They came down and the 5 of us had a wonderful visit and a delicious dinner in preparation for our 0545 rendezvous for the bus in the morning.  Now we had been following the weather reports each day for weeks, and it was looking like we would have the best day of 3, but it still called for mostly cloudy and a 20% chance of rain.  Oh well, we'd have to take what we got.  Now on our drive down from Fairbanks, we had several views of the mountain, fantastic.  The mountain, Mt McKinley or Denali as you see fit, the highest peak in North America, 20,320'.  The base to peak rise is considered the largest of any mountain above sea level at 18,000'.  It is something to behold, and the chance of seeing it is only about 20-30%.

Now the morning came bright and early, somewhat cloudy, but not too bad, John and Diane pulled in right on time, and the 5 of us made our way to the bus stop a few miles away.  Got on the bus, got great seats, and settled in for our 6 hour, 93 mile trip on the only dirt road into the park headed for Kantishna, an old gold mining town at the end of the road.

John and Diane smiling even with the early hour

And so is Karen!

Denali National Park is 6 million acres, slightly bigger than the states of New Hampshire or Vermont, yeah an enormous park, with only one road, and essentially no trails, and the only way past the 15 mile point is by bus.  It is truly wilderness.  

Along the way

One of the goals for the trip is to see all 5 of the large animals, bear, moose, caribou, wolf, and Dall sheep.  We got 3 out of 5 with a kicker, we saw both a grizzly and a not often seen in the park, black bear, along with lots of caribou, and 3 Dall sheep.  

This beautiful male caribou was right near the road
Now that's a rack!

A big grizzly prowling along a river

Several females, yes they have horns too

A big healthy black bear

He is filling up with blueberries, winter is right around the corner

The Dall sheep were high up on a mountainside and hardly visible.  We were disappointed in not seeing any moose, but as you saw in my last post we were pretty lucky a few days ago, and we, having spent much time in Yellowstone, realize seeing wolves is very, very difficult.  But the scenery was spectacular, and the best news, the sky was clearing!!

A little hairy here and there

And a little narrow, I had my eyes shut through here

Gorgeous, the Polychrome Pass

We had our fingers crossed that the mountain would be visible from the bus, but especially from the airplane, and yes, it was really clearing!

It's peaking out

A little better

What a view!  Reflection and all

About as good as it gets!

We were flying high or would be pretty soon, looks like mother nature is cooperating, how lucky are we?  We view the Denali Backcountry Lodge at Kantishna, the end of our bus ride and our lunch stop.

Looking down from the road

A very nice place

We were feeling good, and anticipating our flight out.  We had a good lunch, walked around a bit and were shuttled over to the plane.  Now we have 3 pilots in our group, so the seating arrangements are somewhat important to us, the plane only holds 6 including the pilot so we know he's going to sit the left front seat, that leaves the "co-pilot" seat, 2 in the middle, and 2 in the back, so we decided the night before the only way to do it fairly was to draw for it, and that's what we did.  Jan drew last and got the co-pilot seat, Diane and I in the back, and John and Karen in the middle.  Now we all knew deep in our hearts that the pilot for weight and balance considerations might change it around.

We arrive and the pilot assigns the seats, and NOT the way we drew

And he did!  He put Jan and Karen in the back seat, told Diane and I to get in the middle, and John in the front.  Well my good buddy said he'd sit with his wife and for me to get in the front, and the pilot agreed it would be okay, so I was a big winner.

Lucky me

Diane and John in the middle

What a flight it was!  It was absolutely magnificent, the weather was superb, the mountain was superb, the scenery was superb, what else can I say.  The photos are terrific but they just can't do justice to the sensational experience we had!

One of the many glaciers

Another glacier

The knife edge on these ridge lines were amazing

Coming near the entrance to the park

The intrepid flyers

We had a wonderful day, a wonderful flight, and it was especially fun thinking about the folks on the bus ride out, bumping along for another 3 hours or so after we had landed.  We got cleaned up a bit, met back at John and Diane's hotel for a great evening of camaraderie, good food at the Base Camp Bistro, and maybe a few drinks to boot.  It was so fantastic to spend such a spectacular day with such good friends and family!