Jun 07

It’s dreary out when we get up and looks like it could rain any time, but by mid-morning it’s not raining, so we head over to Anchorage’s Saturday Market, which is an open air market that they have on the weekends. Some interesting crafts there, but we get through all the stands with only spending $5 on a Christmas ornament (I collect Christmas ornaments from places that I travel to). Then we decide to splurge and eat lunch at a restaurant with a view of the Cook Inlet, Snow Goose Restaurant. Jere has a muskox steak sandwich and I have a caribou burger….Joe has chicken strips. Joe is not an adventurous eater.

After lunch we head over to the Anchorage Art and History Museum

and spend two hours looking at the exhibits. We learn a lot about the Eskimos, the Aleuts, the Athapaskans, and other native tribes found in Alaska. There are 13 tribes in Alaska and they each have their own corporation, instead of casinos as in the lower 48 states. The native corporations are given preference for government contracts and at the end of each year the corporation gives each of its’ members (I think they need to be at least ¼ aboriginal) a check. This arrangement has something to do with the hunting lands that they lost due to the oil pipeline and payments for the right-of-way due to the oil pipeline. From what I hear, the one tribe gave each of it’s members almost $50k a few years ago. We also hear on the news that each Alaskan, native and non-native, is expected to receive $1500 this year from investments due to the oil companies. Alaska also has no sales tax or income tax – the oil companies must be paying a lot of taxes to the state of Alaska.

Anyway, after the museum we walk through town to head back to the trailer

and pick up our bikes to head out to the Coastal Bike Trail again. We ride several miles to where the bike path bends around the end of the Anchorage Airport main runway. When we were here 13 years ago, we brought our daughters to this spot and got a kick out of how the jets take-off directly above your head. However, this time Jere and I look at each other and say “Dockweilers”. Dockweilers is the campground that we stayed at in April at the end of the LAX runway. Having planes take-off above our heads is 'no big deal' since we had jumbo jets taking off above our heads at LAX about every ten minutes.

We get rained on briefly, but by the time we bike back the sun in trying to shine.

After dinner Richard and Sally, come over and we spend the evening talking. Around 10:30 pm we realize how late it is (the sun is still shining; sunset is around 11:30) and say our good-byes.

I wake up and there is not a cloud in the sky, so I head down to the river to check out Mt. McKinley with no clouds.

It’s not the close-up/no-clouds view I was hoping for, but it is really a beautiful sight to see the 3 large mountains in the distance (Mt. Foraker, Mt. Hunter and then Mt. McKinley), blue skies, and a river in the foreground!

Even Talkeetna looks nice this morning. The town without the traffic and hordes of people is very quaint. Here's a picture of their general store:

We pack up and then stop again at the viewpoint along the road at the end of the town. The view yesterday of Mt. McKinley was nice, but this morning’s cloudless view is even better. I would have loved to have a day like this for our bus ride to Wonder Lake in Denali National Park.

The drive to Anchorage is uneventful. We had planned to stop at the Iditarod Museum, but missed the turn and didn’t feel like turning around. Joe is doing a packet that his Reading teacher gave him on the Iditarod dog race, and we are driving along the Iditarod trail at various times today.

We made reservations for an RV park in Anchorage. The park is easy to find and we set up the 5ver. We must be getting good—we have it set up way before the guy beside us and he started before us :-) Plus he can’t seem to get his 5ver detached from his truck – I can see that he forgot to unlatch the one metal piece, but it seems absurd that I would help anyone set up their unit. He eventually realizes his mistake and I can stop debating on whether or not I should say something.

We sit down for a lunch and a freight train passes the campground on the tracks that border the edge of the campground. Campgrounds often are near traintracks, but this RV park is VERY close to the tracks and the whistle as it gets close to us is EXTREMELY loud. But not only is the train noisy, the trailer is actually shaking! It feels like we're riding on a train :-)

Well, we have a quick lunch and then walk to downtown Anchorage and go to Jere’s first stop: the Ulu factory, to see ulu knives being made. I’m not sure why, but he seems fascinated by them….UNTIL he find’s out the ulu is the Eskimo word for “woman’s tool”. I kept telling him that if he buys one of them he’s going to have to start helping to cook :-)

We take the Ulu factory’s free trolley to the Anchorage Visitors Center

and then walk around the downtown area looking at their “Salmon on Parade” statues. Who doesn't enjoy looking at funny salmon statues?

The city gardens have very colorful flowers. Twenty hours of daylight must grow big, beautiful flowers.

We walk back to the trailer, start dinner and then get in touch with Richard, who drives tour buses in Alaska. I would explain how we know him, but as I typed out the explanation I realized that it is way too convoluted to explain. Anyway, Richard came over and we chatted and then went out biking together on the Coastal Trail. Richard is a much fast biker than we are, but Jere and I would eventually catch up to him -- when he stopped and waited for us :-)

A long day, but a good day. I like these sunny, warm days in Alaska.

We wake up and there is not one cloud in the sky! We've been at Denali National Park for a week and the day we leave -- a picture perfect day. Oh well. Yesterday was nice except for a brief shower and at least we'll have nice weather for our drive to Talkeetna.

We pack up and start our 30 mile drive to get back to the entrance of Denali National Park. It's a gorgeous day and we stop and take a picture of the elusive Mt McKinley in the distance:

We drive about 150 miles today and make lots of stops to view the beautiful scenery along the Parks Highway.

I took this picture as we drove down the road. That is Mt McKinley in the middle of the clouds:

When we get to Denali STATE Park, there are several roadside stops to view Mt. McKinley and we stop at every one of them and take lots of pictures.

We turn onto the Talkeetna Spur road and we have a great view of Mt McKinley as we drive towards Talkeetna.

We arrive at the Talkeetna Camper Park and set up.

I have a cousin who recently moved to Talkeetna, so I give him a call and leave a message. This is Talkeetna's busy season and today is a beautiful day for flying and rafting, so I'm wondering if we'll be able to touch base or not during our short visit here.

And then we walk to downtown Talkeetna.

We visited Talkeetna 13 years ago when we came to Alaska. It is much much busier this time with traffic and lots of tour buses. We passed at least 8 tour buses as we drove into town on the spur road! Between the traffic, people and dust, I am not real impressed with the town. It's claim to fame is that it's the jump-off point for many climbers of Mt McKinley. They pick up a flight here to base camp.

We are looking for a place to have dinner, but the cafe that was recommended to us is overpriced (in my opinion) and seats are outside in the sun. Yes! It is actually hot today in the sun! It is close to 80 degrees today and we've not seen temps higher than 65 for the last week.

We decide to walk back and check out the restaurant that is in the lodge that we stayed in 13 years ago when we visited. We remember this place because we had satellite TV here, but found out we had to watch whatever station that the downstairs bar was watching (sports). We have a good meal with great atmosphere and spend time remembering our trip 13 years ago.

After dinner Joe plays on his computer while Jere and I walk down to the river and enjoy the views.

I wake up and BLUE SKIES!!! I’m pleasantly surprised since it was still raining when we went to bed last night. We pack up and head for the bus with hopes of getting a ride to Wonder Lake. Our “Tek Pass” is for seats IF AVAILABLE on any bus west of the campground. The bus to Wonder Lake is full so we grab 3 seats on the Fish Creek bus, which will get us to within 3 miles of Eielson.

This is the view from our first stop on the bus at Teklanika rest stop:

We pass a sign that warns hikers that the area is closed due to wildlife (grizzly bears) -- the sign has been gnawled by bears :-)

And then drive through Polychrome pass area:

Our bus driver is very, very talkative and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, by the time we get to where we can see Mt. McKinley it has clouded up in front of the mountain :-( We’re still hoping to see the mountain today, so we get off the bus at Fish Creek and walk a couple miles to Eielson Visitor Center, which is still under construction. On the way we take a break for lunch and enjoy a wonderful view:

We then hike the trail up to the north of the Eielson visitor center.

The wildflowers are again wonderful! There are many dainty Forget-Me-Nots in this area:


If there were no clouds in the skies, we would have a wonderful view of Mt McKinley. We are seeing some breaks in the cloud. As we’re hiking up the trail, we see parts of the mountain, including a glimpse at the peak.

We didn't get the view of Mt. McKinley that we were hoping for, but it was a great view even without seeing all of McKinley.

We hike down the mountain and catch a bus to Wonder Lake. We see more and more of Mt McKinley as we travel to Wonder Lake, but never a completely unobstructed view. BUT at least we get to see most of the mountain.

Apparently it was out this morning – we talked to people who were on the bus that we wanted to take (but was full) and they said they had a great view. I really wish they hadn’t told us that.

Here's another great view of the area from the bus:

On the way back to the campground we see a moose very close to the road,

And then see a mama grizzly and 2 newborn cubs playing – very cute! And then we see something NOT so cute – a fox raiding a ptarmigan nest beside the road and snatching a couple of the baby ptarmigans. Mama and papa ptarmigan are very upset with the fox. The fox has several baby ptarmigans in his mouth and runs across the field with them. We're assuming that he is taking them back to his den, possibly to feed to his/her offspring.

We make several stops on the busride back to the campground, including one at the Toklat River, where Jere & Joe play around with the telescopes while looking at the Dall sheep on the hillside above the area.

One last picture of the view from the bus near Polychrome pass:

Here is a picture of the narrow one-lane road that the bus drives on, sometimes on the edge of the mountain:

We are tired by the time we get back to the campground around 6pm (we left around 7am), so we have dinner and then relax by the creek behind our campsite. Joe works on the dam he's been building and I take a picture of the snowshoe hare near the campsite:

A long day, but very enjoyable. We were hoping to get a good view of Mt. McKinley....didn't really get a great view of Mt McKinley, but we did see a lot of other beautiful scenery and wildlife.

We were hoping for blue skies and an early bus trip out to see Mt. McKinley, but it had started raining last evening and continued to rain off and on til 3am at which time I got up and re-set my alarm for 7am. Cloudy skies again this morning, so we have a big breakfast and try to figure out what we want to do today. We ride bikes for about an hour and then try to get a bus to the Eielson Visitor Center to hike the trail north of the construction. We are not successful in getting a bus that goes that far and instead take a bus to Fish Creek. The bus driver again today is wonderful with her information about the park and wildlife, plus this one is also a comedian (“I appreciate everyone being helpful in finding the wildlife, but it’s not really helpful to others in finding a bear by saying ‘the bear is right there’ ”). After seeing lots more Dall sheep

and several grizzlies,

caribou and moose, we get off the bus at Fish Creek to do some hiking through the alpine tundra in the area. This is the height of the tundra wildflower season and there are flowers everywhere!

We walk around the area for about 2 hours with sunshine about half the time (yea!) and enjoy the area.

I really, really enjoy the wildflowers – so many different kinds and they are everywhere! Joe is not as thrilled about the wildflowers as I am and decides he's going to hike to the summit of the stone covered moutain. Jere and I say 'go ahead' and we wait at the bottom of the stones. Joe makes it to the top, but getting down on the loose stones presents a bit of a challenge, but he makes it without injury and loves the hike. Joe is the tiny dot on top of the hill in the picture below:

Unfortunately, no sighting of Mt. McKinley today. We wave down a bus to take us back to the campground. Soon after hopping on the bus it begins to hail! It eventually turns to rain, but some of the hills that were brown on the top earlier today are now covered with a coating of white. What weather! Hopefully Mt. McKinley will come out tomorrow, but the weather forecast is again partly cloudy with showers. We’re in a rut here with weather – partly cloudy, occasional showers, high in the 60s.

The road that we take to drive through Denali is a one lane dirt road that hugs the side of the mountain at several places. I look over the edge and it is pretty much straight down, several hundred feet. I try to take a picture, but not sure it will show how steep and how far down it is. In the photo below, the braided river bed going across the picture is wider than the width of a football field. The drop is big:

I'm not bothered by heights, but when we pass another bus on one of the turns where there is an 800 feet drop-off at the edge of the road, I close my eyes :-)