Another Alaska Trip, March 2011

Hello!!
Well, we did it again, Alaska is becoming habit forming. On  this trip, we wanted to see Alaska in winter.  So, we signed up for an Elderhostel/Road Scholar trip to Fairbanks and Coldfoot and into the Brooks Ranges on the Dalton Highway, of Ice Road Trucker fame.  I've sent along some pictures and commentary that sums up the trip.  It was another fantastic time of learning about and exploring a fantastically wild State.  Maybe we should just move there!!!

This is our first clear view of Mt McKinley, locally known as Denali!  It was taken from our flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks.  We have tried to view this mountain on our two other trips, but in Summer the clouds take over and a good sighting is rare.
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Our trip centered in Fairbanks for 5 days where we took in the local , as they call it "Spring" events.  The temperatures were still a bit below zero in the mornings, but the sun is high and warmed up the afternoons.  The day light increases about 6-8 minutes per day, much faster than at lower latitudes, so we gained about an hour and a half of daylight in the 15 days that we were there. We took in the Ice Art sculptures and dog sled races.

 This is an Ice Maze, really amazing! I was impressed by the clarity of the ice that was cut from a nearby pond. There were sculptures from all over the world. 

 Night time was another magical time!!!

The sprint sled dog races were held over 3 days with  each team traveling 25-30 miles each day, winner was the team with the fastest combined time.  The top two teams were 30 seconds apart!!!  These are sleek dogs bread for speed, they are not the typical sled dog.

Now it is North along the Dalton Highway, North of the Arctic Circle to the farthest north truck stop in North America, Coldftoot, Alaska.  This is where the History Channel films Ice Road Truckers!!!  We spent five days in and around Coldfoot, mainly in search of the Aurora. 

This is Roller Coaster Hill of Ice Road Trucker fame.

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We visited an old gold mining community from the early 1900's, Wiseman.  The book "Arctic Village" by Bob Marshall is a good sociological case study of the folks who live is this isolated community off the grid.

Then we took a day trip further North into the Brooks Range to Atigun Pass.  The road goes along the Alaskan Pipeline on the way to the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.

While in Coldfoot, we had a chance to meet real Alaskan Husky sled dogs!!!  Oh what fun!!   They loved to be petted and took us for a nice ride into the wild!

As for the Aurora, we did see them each night we were in Coldfoot.  Coldfoot is located right under the Auroral Oval, an area around the North Magnetic Pole where the solar wind energizes the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere to create the Northern Lights.  We had to look straight up to see them!!  The first night, the Aurora was a green belt from horizon to horizon with swirls of green and pink over head, it was quite the sight!  My camera was not good enough to pick up much of the action.  The lens needed to be open at least 30 seconds to capture enough light, ours went to 8 seconds.  I did realize that the camera can 'see' more of the Aurora than our eyes can!!  That realization was a bit disappointing!  My minds eye has done the recording.

 

This is what our camera saw.  We saw much more!

Travel to Alaska has been a great adventure for us.  The State is calling us back again--sometime.

Thanks for sharing our trip with us, stay tuned for more Travels with Carol and Ned!

Trip Reflections

Hello,
We are home, arrived Sunday evening.  Kitty was glad to see us, he had quite the summer living in the garage with a family of raccoons that decided to move in and mess up the garage and eat Kitty's food.  Thanks to our neighbor, Denny, for rescuing Kitty and catching the raccoons and taking them for a long ride!  

Traveling along the Cassiar Highway was nice, the weather for the most part was sunny.  We did a day trip down to Telegraph Creek, a small, almost ghost town on the Stikine River.  River boats used to come up the river from the Inside Passage to there during the gold rush era. The road was the trip!!  Gravel, narrow, 20% grades up and down river valleys, traveled over a lava dike that was not much wider than the road with straight down drops to rivers on both sides!!!  Impressive scenery.

We also spent a couple days in Hyder, Ak.  We can drive there from the Cassiar Highway, it is the most Southerly  town in Alaska.  It is also an almost ghost town located at the end of the Portage Channel. There is a salmon spawning area where the forest service has an observation deck for bear watching. We went twice and watched a black bear and then a sow brown bear with a cub fish for their meals.  Fascinating.

From there we pretty much headed home.  We did drive through the Canadian Rockys, stopped at the Rocky Mountain House, a restored Hudson's Bay Fur Trading Post near Calgary, camped at Cypress Hills in southern Alberta, then crossed the border into Montana.  While in North Dakota, we spent a pleasant  morning visiting the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. A gentler kind of badlands that has good hiking potential. We were amazed at how green the landscape was from Montana into Wisconsin.  A lot of standing water was evident and the rivers were running very high.

All the while we were in Alaska, not a single person mentioned Sarah whats-her-name!  The name was no where to be seen in Wasilla.  We did ask the gal that transferred our van to the ferry while we were on the Copper River about her, and I think Alaskans are embarrassed. Her book was seen in two places, each a grocery store check out, it was marked 50% off and it was located next the National Inquirer.  We spent a lot of time this trip around the Prince William Sound and the Exxon Valdez and the aftermath of the oil spill of some 20 years ago is still up front in the minds and people were reflecting on what changes it caused in their lives.  Small town museums gave that event most the space in their displays, even more than the '64 earthquake and tsunami.

I'll add pictures, this time the internet connection should be ok!

When we get an idea for the next trip, we will let you know!!!

Thanks for traveling with us!  Carol and Ned

Wasilla visitor center.

Hyder, Alaska

Telegraph Creek road.

Edge of the lava dike, along the edge of Telegraph Creek road.

The other side of the dike and road!

Black Bear feeding at Fish Creek near Hyder, Ak.

Success!!

Mama Griz and baby.

Where is that fish?

Got it!

Now, how did mom do it??

Pictures from Fire

Hi, here are a few pictures of the road through fire. 

This is the line up, our van is 3rd on the left, and the next picture is what was behind us!

The line extends as far as I can see, the smoke makes the picture unclear. Some of these campers were in line for 24 hours and slept along the road.  We were in a campground and squeezed into a spot where someone left, so we were in line about 5 hours.  Then the heliotropes flew over to check the road and then gave the pilot car the go ahead.

We met the fire about 15 miles down the road.  We did see flames and evidence of a very hot fire along both sides of the road.

We are finding out that downloading pictures is troublesome to the connection and to me!!!  Takes a bunch of time and the connections cuts out and then stuff disappears!

We are in Hyder, AK now, and went to the bear viewing area along Fish Creek, saw a black bear feeding, then drove up to see Salmon Glacier, drove till the clouds closed in and we couldn't see anything!  We did see the lower parts of the glacier. 
Take care, Carol

Driving into the Fire.

Hello Everyone,
We did it! We are on the Cassiar Highway!!  We are back on our planned track.

We did travel the Robert Campbell Highway through Faro and Ross River.  Both towns are in the middle on nowhere, actually The Yukon and are former mining towns trying to survive on tourism, or just plain survive.  The road for the first 100 miles was paved/seal coated, then gravel with a chemical to make it firm. Then the last almost 200 miles it was gravel and very dusty, with construction where it was muddy.  We camped at two beautiful lakes along the way. A new road for us.  The Campbell meets the Alaska Highway at Watson Lake.

At Watson Lake we checked on the fire and highway conditions for the Cassiar Highway that goes south into British Columbia, south of the 60th Parallel. The fire is getting bigger and going right down the highway corridor, and the road is closed. They may open it twice daily with a pilot car. Maybe if the smoke is not thick.  So, we stocked up and got a camp site by the intersection of the two highways.  We washed the van there as it was really dirty from the last few days.  Campers and trucks were lining up for the wait for the opening of the road.  The line was over a mile long, It did open once on Tuesday, we hoped to go on Wednesday.  We joined the line Wed. morning, with the hope of a 9AM or so trip through the fire area, about a 50 mile escort.  The opening came at 1PM.  Helicopters were overhead checking the route etc.  Quite the excitement!  The smoke at the intersection was thick and we wondered how it would be on the drive through.  I'll try to explain via pictures.  Take care Carol and Ned

Pictures won't send AGAIN!!!  So will do it later.

You Won't Believe This!!!

Hi again!,  We are in Whitehorse, Yukon.  We checked in with the travel information place, and guess what????  Foiled again!  We are now on the rain shadow side of the St. Elias Mountains and it is dry here, (although it is sprinkling and cloudy right now!!!).  So dry that they have a fire ban and the road into British Columbia has a forest fire and is currently closed.  That is the Cassiar Highway we want to take south.  We also found out that the Demster Highway is also closed due to washouts. We weren't planning on that one anyway.

We do plan to go North from Whitehorse to Carmacks and turn east on the John Campbell Highway and travel a road we have not done before.  It is north of the Alaska Highway, is gravel most the way, goes through Faro and Ross River and connects with the Alaska Highway at Watson Lake.  There we can check on the Cassiar Hwy, and still be able to take it if it is open!!  We will probably be about 3-4 days taking the Campbell Hwy., so I hope by then the road is open!!! 

Will keep you posted!!  Take care, Carol & Ned

Rain foiled again!!

Hi,
 We are in Tok, Ak. where the Glenn Hwy meets the Alaska Highway.  It is a spot that everyone goes through twice, coming and going into Alaska.  We are 90 miles from the Canadian border.  Just down the road is the turn North on the Taylor Highway which goes to the Top of The World Highway that goes into Canada farther North.  The road to Eagle on the Yukon River goes north from that road also.  BUT The Taylor Hwy just opened today after being closed due to several washouts due to heavy rains about 2 weeks ago.  It is a gravel road to begin with, and now the road report and the visitor information place here says it is 40 miles of large crushed rock.  It is open, but travel at your own risk!  The road to Eagle is closed. SOOOO, I guess we are heading East on the Alaska Hwy to Whitehorse and then South on the Cassier Hwy in British Columbia to Hyder,AK.  We plan to see more bears eating salmon there.

The sun is out for the first time in many days.  We did not see Denali, nor did we see the Mountains in the Wrangell Range or the Alaska Range as we drove from Cantwell to Tok.  It is flat here, so go figure!!!
We did see a lot of Caribou along the Denali Highway.  We also met a couple from Michigan that happen to be from the same town as Ned's brother and they know him will!!  We were standing along the gravel road in the middle of nowhere looking at caribou and started talking about where we were from!!!  Small world!

Take care, will keep you posted on progress east.  Carol and Ned     

Rain bound in Talkeetna!

Hi, Rain, Rain, Go Away!!  We have had one sunny day in 7!!! Lucky, that is the day we hiked up toward the Harding Ice Field along side of Exit Glacier.  We had a nice hike, up switchbacks all the way, to a good overlook of the Glacier.  We kept meeting hikers with seeing bears along the trail stories, but we didn't see any!!  We had the bear spray ready just in case.  We went back to Hope, Ak, in the rain, and are now in Talkeetna, in the rain.  Our hope was to get a better glimpse of Denali, as last time it was raining when we were in Talkeetna for 3 days!!!  The forecast does not look promising, rain for the week.  Guess we will start to head east along the Denali Highway if that is the case.  We are sitting outside the Talkeenta Roadhouse using their wifi in the van.  Works.  Will try to upload pictures that wouldn't work last time from Kodiak and others.
Take care, Carol and Ned

Brown Bear along Hidden Lake Creek, along Skilak Lake road, Kenai, Peninsula.

Soldovia, AK

Kachemak Bay, from ferry leaving Homer.

Kodiak, Island

Kodiak City, Kodiak, Is.