Traveling the USA

Gloomy day, so we take our time getting ready and then take a short drive to Whittier. To get to Whittier we need to drive through the Whittier Tunnel. It’s a 2.5 mile long, one-lane tunnel that is used by trains and cars. When the train is not using the tunnel, cars can travel east on the half-hour and west on the hour. We get there 15 minutes early and wait in line for the tunnel to open to traffic going east. It’s a long, narrow tunnel with train tracks to drive over. Unique.

We walk around Whittier. It’s a kind of drab town surrounded by beautiful scenery. There are several glaciers visible from the town; all the mountains have waterfalls running down the sides, and the mountains are bright green from the grass and many of them still have snow on the top.

We stop at the Orca Café for lunch. We had salmon for dinner last night, but one can never have too much fresh salmon and I order a fresh salmon sandwich for lunch—broiled with sliced veggies—very good! We sit at the window of the café and enjoy the view of the harbor. It’s still overcast and very windy, so we sit inside to keep warm and dry.

After lunch we take a hike up the mountain for a incredible view of the Whittier harbor on one side of the mountain (there's a Princess Cruiseliner at the one dock)

and an even more incredible view of the Portage Glacier on the other side of the mountain. It sprinkles occasionally on the way up but stops before we reach the top and the view is just breath-taking. The pictures do not begin to show how beautiful it is at the top of the mountain.

To get a perspective on how large the glacier is: there is a lake at the base of the glacier in the photo above and there is a large tour boat in the lake.

We stay at the top of the mountain enjoying the view of the glacier for about an hour. There are also 3 playful marmots 100 feet below us that we enjoy watching. And of course there are beautiful wildflowers along the trail.

We hike back down the mountain, wait our turn to go back through the tunnel, and then make a stop at Moose Flats (unfortunately we don't see any moose) before returning the campground for the evening.

After dinner we roast some marshmallows and have s'mores for dessert. Jere and I each have FOUR s'mores, so we walk around the campground several times for exercise. The Williwaw campground is very nice. It has a glacier on the mountain behind it and the clouds have finally lifted enough to see it. Very pretty blue hues in the glacier.

Steady rain all morning and we are slow to pack up, but finally get on the road around 11am. After stopping at Fred Meyers for groceries, we drive out to Williwaw National Forest Campground in Chugach National Forest. The drive along Turnagain Arm would be more scenic if the rain would stop and the low clouds would lift. We make a few stops to look at the scenery and try to ignore the rain.

After we set up the 5ver we take off for the Chugach USFS Visitor Center at Portage Glacier. When we were here 13 years ago there were lots of little icebergs in the lake and near the shore of the visitor center. However today there are very few icebergs. We learn that the glacier has receded so much that it is no longer 'over the lake' but is now at the edge of the lake, which has slowed it's withdraw.

It is still raining very steady, but they have some excellent exhibits to look at inside.

We also watch their 20 minute movie and their ranger talk on area wetlands. Hopefully tomorrow it will stop raining and we can come back and look at the lake and maybe hike back to the glacier. The Portage Glacier used to be visible from the visitors’ center, but it keeps receding and now can only be seen if you take a boat trip or hike out.

We broil our fresh sockeye salmon for dinner and spend the evening reading. It’s still raining and we have no electric, no internet, and no television.

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.