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We wake up to the sound of rain again, but the steady rain stops by the time we’re having breakfast. There are very low clouds hanging around this morning, so we relax in the trailer and get some chores done.

After lunch we hop in the car for a drive over across the inlet to Allison Point. There are trailers parked there and we’re wondering if there’s a campground there. We find that the trailers belong to fisherman. There are lots and lots of fisherman by the edge of the water. We drive along behind them and see salmon jumping out of the water and a sea lion with a fish in its’ mouth, so we park and walk along the edge of the water. The salmon are jumping out of the water like crazy. We walk to the end of the inlet where the fish hatchery is and the salmon are swimming on top of each other to get to the hatchery.

The fishermen are not allowed to fish within 300 feet of the hatchery.

We learn that the pink salmon are returning to the area to spawn and that there is a bumper crop this year. They had predicted 12 million salmon would return this year, but they are now predicting 21 million. There are a lot of salmon in this inlet! I try to take pictures of all the salmon jumping in the water, but the pictures really can't show the jumping. This first picture shows a few of the commercial fishing boats and the city of Valdez in the background (on the other side of the bay). The little circles in the water in front of the boats are from the salmon jumping:

Many of the fishermen are tossing the salmon back in the water since they already have their limit or they don’t have any more room in their freezers. I tell Jere we should go buy a license and just take the salmon that the fisherman don’t want :-) We need to learn how to fish if we ever come to Alaska again.

As we’re watching the salmon, a bald eagle swoops down and grabs a salmon out of the water!

We walk along the water and watch the salmon for a long time, but eventually we leave and return to the trailer for dinner – pork chops (we had Copper River red salmon yesterday). Then we go for a bike ride around town. Here's a picture of the Valdez Oil Terminal that is located across the bay from the town:

After our ride Jere works on our bicycle rack; the one bike rail cracked on the bumpy McCarthy Road the other day. Then we build a campfire and enjoy the view.

There are lots of birds, jumping salmon, a sea otter and a sea lion. While Jere and I are sitting there, a camper from 2 trailers down asks us if we want any salmon—they have extra. We say sure and enjoy freshly grilled, freshly caught pink salmon. Earlier today I had been hoping that one of the fishermen would give us one of the salmon that they didn’t want, but this is even better – filleted and grilled salmon, complete with lemon and pepper!

We wake up to a beautiful morning – blue skies and 60 degrees. I walk outside enjoying the view of Mt Wrangell, drink my coffee and talk to a German tourist across from us. There are many German and Dutch tourists in Alaska with RV rentals. I'm not sure why German vs French or British, but there are. Later when we make our first stop this morning, there is a van full of German tourists and they seem more interested in our big rig than the scenery. I smile and say “ Yes, I know it’s big.” One of them smiles and says “So someone has already told you that?” I talk to them about our trip and rig.

The trip today on the Richardson Highway to Valdez is one of the most scenic drives in Alaska, so we enjoy the drive and take our time enjoying the scenery.

We find an oceanfront campsite at the Sea Otter Campground in Valdez. It’s not the fanciest RV Park in town, but the scenery out our back and side windows is great.

I’m making dinner and take a break to look out the window and there is a sea otter about 20 feet away in the water – so cute.

After dinner we walk around town, mainly along the harbor area. Then Jere decides he wants to take the trail up to the look-out next to the convention center in town. We turn the corner to walk up the hillside path and stop in our tracks. There’s a bear on the trail about 15 feet from us! The bear looks at us. We look at the bear (and forget anything that they’ve told us about bears in all the park warnings). We say, “whoa…that’s a bear”. The bear turns and continues up the path, so I grab my camera and try to snap a picture. It’s blurry – I was in a hurry.

But then we walk down the street (away from the bear, as instructed) and take another picture of the bear walking up the path that we had planned to take. We thought we might have a bear encounter at some point in Alaska, but NOT in the middle of a town park!

Jere wants to walk up the path and see if the bear is still up there, but Joe and I refuse. We walk back past the harbor and watch the fisherman again, before returning to our trailer for the night.

Another morning with raindrops hitting the roof of the trailer, but it’s a brief shower. We get an early start since we have a long drive through Wrangell St Elias NP.

We first stop at Chitina to read their roadside signs and take a few pics. Chitina is a small, picturesque town that reminds me of how Chicken, Alaska looked years ago (before the tour buses). Downtown Chitina has a few old, wooden buildings, including two saloons. It’s at the end of the Edgartown Highway, a 2-lane road off of the Richardson Highway. I’m guessing that as the national park becomes more developed, Chitina will also become more touristy and developed, but today it’s classic small-town Alaska.

There are only two roads in Wrangell-St Elias NP. We are taking the McCarthy Road, which is the larger of the two roads. McCarthy Road starts at Chitina and ends near McCarthy. It’s 60 miles of dirt and gravel. The road crosses the Chitina River and we get a nice view of Mt. Wrangell.

The first ten miles are horrible – pot holes and very washboardy, but then it gets better. McCarthy Road is an old railroad – they didn’t bother to remove the rails or trestles when they made the road. They simply covered it with dirt and gravel. We come to a long, one-lane bridge which was built for the railroad. The canyon it traverses is really deep and the bridge doesn’t look that sturdy, plus they are working on it – but it’s the only way to get to Kennicott, so off we go.

It rains off and on during our drive, but stops when we reach the park’s small visitors’ center. The last 5 miles to get to Kennicott Historical Park is not accessible by car, since there is no bridge big enough for cars. So we need to switch from our truck to our bikes. We could have walked across the pedestrian bridge and then paid for a shuttle to get us there, but it's only 5 miles to Kennicott (and the shuttle is $10/person) so we decide to bike it.

We bike about a half mile to get to the town of McCarthy, where we have lunch. The place is a converted lunch truck with quirky décor. We are twice the age of anyone else there, but we enjoy the ambiance and enjoy our lunch.

Kennicott is only a 4.5 mile bikeride from McCarthy; however, it is entirely uphill! When we finally arrive at Kennicott, it begins to rain. We go into a few buildings that are open til the rain stops and then take a ranger-led tour of the town. Kennicott was a large copper mining town in the early 1900s and is the home of the largest wooden building in North America (14-stories tall). The National Park Service acquired the town in the late 1990s.

After our tour we take off for a 1.5 mile hike to the Root Glacier. It rains off and on, but we ignore the rain and take a walk on the edge of the glacier.

The glacier is slippery and we have sneakers on, so we don’t go very far on the glacier.

Then 1.5 mile hike back to Kennicott

and a 5 mile bike ride back to the car, BUT I coast downhill for the first 4.5 miles. I can’t believe I actually biked up this hill:-)

We drive back the bumpy McCarthy Road, seeing no wildlife except for rabbits and squirrels. We have a few occasional sprinkles and then see a rainbow when we get back to Chitina near our campground.

We wake up early today – I think the fact that there are no raindrops hitting the trailer invigorates me -- I’m anxious to see scenery without rain. We are planning to drive 280 miles to Valdez today, so it’s good that we get an early start.

We only drive about 10 miles til we get to our first stop, The Palmer Muskox Farm.

It’s Jere’s idea to stop, but it actually turns out to be fairly interesting for all of us. They raise muskox for the quivohute (sp?) fur that the animals shed each spring. The fur is worth $150/pound. Apparently the yarn made from the muskox fur is extremely warm, lightweight and waterproof.

The Glenn Parkway is very scenic

so we make lots of stops, including an unplanned 30-minute stop for road construction. We stop to have lunch at a very nice rest stop that overlooks a glacier and meet a guy who is bicycling from Prudhoe Bay (the northernmost city in North America) to Argentina (the southern most city in South America). He’s been on the road two weeks and is still very excited. Jere finds the guy interesting, but says he’s crazy to be bicycling so far alone.


The fireweed along the Glenn Highway is gorgeous:

We stop in Glenallen for diesel and a snack, and then head south to Valdez. At least that’s where I think we are heading, but apparently Jere neglected to tell me that he is thinking of stopping at the Wrangell-St Elias National Park visitors center. We look at the exhibit and watch two films at the visitors center, and then Jere says he wants to go into the park tomorrow. So, no Valdez today.

We drive to Chitina, Alaska, where we find a small RV park near the airport. We are the only tourists at this campground and I’m a little nervous about the place, but the scenery is nice and there are no other choices, so we stay. It’s odd: I can look out one window and see this incredible vista of mountains, including Mt Wrangell, and I can look out the other side of the RV to what appears to be a rundown trailer park.

The road into Wrangell-St Elias NP turns to gravel after Chitina, so we can’t take the RV any further than Chitina. We are stuck at this campground, whether I like it or not. I’m trying to focus on the incredibly blue, cloudless sky and the snow-covered mountain in the distance.

Jere and Joe take a walk down to the river but I elect to stay at the trailer and read. Joe is concerned that I am not going with them and picks me some wildflowers to cheer me up.

We wake up to the sound of rain again. The steady rain lasts all morning as we drive out of the Kenai Peninsula and onward to Palmer, Alaska. The scenery is beautiful between Anchorage and Seward, but the rain puts a damper on the scenery. We see some mountain goats on the rocks, so we stop and Jere hikes up the hill through the rain to take some pictures of them.

We arrive at the Homestead RV Park in Palmer in time to watch the All Star Baseball Game. The park has a nice view, so I decide to take our cat, Rosdale, for a walk. He’s only been out of the trailer a few times on this trip. He normally gets upset and wants to go back inside the trailer, but today I get him outside for about 30 minutes and we both enjoy some fresh air and patches of blue sky.

I do some laundry while Jere and Joe watch the game. A mother from Holland, who is also home-schooling while they are RVing, is doing her laundry at the same time. She’s from Holland and explains to me that home-schooling is illegal in Holland, and they will probably have to pay a fine when they return. Holland requires children to attend a brick-and-mortar school, not a homeschool. Interesting that a country that is so liberal in many other ways is so strict about schooling. A young woman who is tent-camping across Alaska this summer joins us and we all have a nice conversation, so laundry time seems to go very quickly.

Jere and I take a walk around the full campground after dinner. There’s actually another Colorado 5th wheel trailer here—we have not seen another Colorado 5th wheel like we have for the entire trip and this is the first time we’ve ever had an opportunity to talk to another Colorado RVer.