The Yellowhead Highway to Hazelton, Smithers, Fort St. James, Valemount, Kamloops, then on to Revelstoke and Golden

(posted from Safeway supermarket, Cranbrook, BC)

(This post covers 22-26 August, 2008)

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Tuesday, 26 August-

We drove into Revelstoke this morning. I’ve seen ads and hiking articles about Revelstoke in outdoors magazines so wanted to see it. Kamloops had been an interesting town but it’s located way out on the plains compared to Revelstoke. But there are Rocky Mountains everywhere when you reach Revelstoke. If I were a young guy looking to live and work in an outdoors-oriented town, I think it would make my final-five list. It just had the right look and feel and the ‘right’ combination of services, shops and restaurants.
After walking around the core of Revelstoke we drove up the Trans-Canada 1 a bit to Revelstoke National Park. Its claim to fame is the Summit Parkway, which climbs to spectacular meadows on the top of Mount Revelstoke.
As we neared the top we were stopped by a ranger at the Balsam Cabin parking lot. It seems there are two grizzlies feeding in the meadows between Balsam and the Summit. Normally you can walk to the summit up a road or take a trail. But he said the road was closed today and he suggested we take a shuttle van to the top.
We walked to the other parking lot at Balsam where the shuttle bus stop was but were disappointed to see it just leaving and at least another full van-load of people lined up. We noticed the Summit Trail nearby and decided we’d walk the Summit Trail. But before we started we wanted to double-check with the ranger that it was okay to take the trail; he hadn’t mentioned it.
As we started walking back to the first parking lot, I noticed something moving a hundred yards away. It was the two grizzlies. They had dropped down from the Summit meadows and were feeding between the summit road and the trail. If we had taken the trail we would have run right into them. We spent a few minutes photographing one but the other disappeared into the pines.
As we watched we saw a young woman tourist come down the trail right into the area where the grizzlies were. We could then see her standing still on the trail, partially obscured by trees but it was clear she saw the grizzlies. She slowly took her daypack off and I thought she might be doing that to get her pepper spray but she put the pack down. I could see her hands making a ‘shoo’-ing motion.
All this time we were only 15 yards from the bus-stop and the other people were completely oblivious to it. But someone must have alerted the ranger, perhaps the shuttle bus driver from her high-up viewpoint. He came jogging down the road and I signaled there were two and pointed out where they were, now both in the trees very near the tourist woman.
At that point another ranger truck appeared and they conferred and decided to clear the area around the second parking lot. The tourist now appeared to have gotten by the bears and was walking quickly down the trail toward us.
I hung back while the area was being cleared and talked with the tourist-lady as she walked up. She was amazingly self-composed. I asked if she had just had a big adventure and she said something like “It was no big deal, I had bear spray with me”. When I asked how close the bears had been, she pointed to a bush about ten feet away and said “I just talked to them and they moved away.” Absolutely incredible!
After the bears moved off we walked to the first parking lot—now the new location of the shuttle bus stop. But again there was a crowd so we decided we’d walk the road to the top. With the bears now down by the second parking lot, that seemed safe enough (and yes, I had my trusty can of CounterAssault (“Grizzly-Tough Pepper Spray!” says the can).
As we started the walk up to the summit a light rain started. And ten minutes later—magic!!--- it turned to ice pellets, then snow. I pulled out my camera to try to capture the snow coming down on the wild-flower meadows but the battery was dead.
We walked on with the snow coming down for another 15 minutes but shortly after we topped out the snow stopped and the sun came out. Fantastic!
We walked the Meadows In the Sky Trail, then an out-and-back half-hour of the Jade Lake Trail, then the North Summit Loop, and FireTower Loop, then back down the Summit Road to the van for a total of about four miles.
As we drove back down the Summit Parkway, we noticed the up-lane side was blocked well down the mountain. A ranger was there so I asked what was going on. She said the bear-trapping crew was on the way and they were going to live-trap the bears, collar them, then “hard-release” them. The hard-release means they will use bangers and other loud noises to try to scare the bears away from the immediate areas of the meadows. These two are siblings which they fear are getting too used to humans and may later cause a problem.
We then followed the TransCanada to another park feature, the Ancient Cedars Boardwalk. This was a half-K walk through old-growth red cedar trees approximately 500 years old. As one sign explained, these trees were seedlings at the time Columbus discovered America and still only ‘saplings’ when Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was first produced (in the 1590s).
We then continued east out of Revelstoke National Park and soon entered Glacier National Park of Canada. The latter is probably better known by mountaineers. The mountains are extremely steep and rugged and it has 400 glaciers. The pass through the area is Rogers Pass and the major story about it was the completion of Canada’s Transcontinental Railroad. The road has 30-plus ‘snow-sheds’ or man-made tunnels through avalanche zones.
We checked on camping in the Park but it was ridiculously expensive-- $21.50 for a primitive campsite with no showers and only privy toilets plus they were close to the noisy highway. And on top of the $21.50 we would have had to pay an additional $8.50 for a ‘firewood permit’ if we wanted to have a fire and another $15.60 for a one-day admission fee to the park. (The TransCanada goes through the park and you can drive through for free but you can’t stop at any of the features if you don’t have the pass). We kept driving.
We soon came to the town of Golden and gassed up and decided to have a quick McDonalds burger since it was getting late in the day and we hadn’t figured out where to stay. A BC Camping guide led us to the nearby municipal campground where we paid $17 for a very nice and quiet site near the Kicking Horse River. It was getting a bit late to be trying to find a forest-service campground and the nearest ones would both have involved a few miles of back-tracking in the morning.

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Monday, 25 August-

This morning we drove into Valemount to mail some letters and to look around. We’re amazed how the sleepy little Valemount we visited two summers ago is now a crossroads community abuzz with activity. The town now bills itself in some ads as ‘Midway between Edmonton and Vancouver’ but it doesn’t hurt that Mount Robson and Jasper National Park are nearby.
The last two hours of our drive yesterday were through farming and ranching country but it wasn’t long after leaving Valemount this morning that we were back into steep-sided mountains on both sides and 50 miles between little communities.
We stopped around lunch time at Avola, lured in by a roadside ad for ‘The World-Famous Burgers’ at the Log Cabin Inn. The Inn turned out to be a biker bar--- an upscale one in the world of biker-bars but it did feature a ‘headshop’ selling marijuana pipes, papers (blueberry-flavored was on sale today), and other paraphernalia.
The burgers were supposed to be ‘HUGE’ so we split one and it was about right for the two of us but the burgers in Alaska were about half-again as big. This one was about the size of a Fuddrucker ½ pounder. It was pretty good but I don’t think I’ll be stopping for one on my next trip through.
We continued south for a couple of hours to Kamloops. I had predicted it would be similar to Prince George but it was quite a bit nicer. We had followed the lead of the GPS in to find Starbucks and had to park a few blocks away. As we walked we were pleasantly surprised by the variety of nice restaurants and shops in the mid-town area. We checked out the art gallery store and once we had our drinks we sat on a downtown bench watching people go by.
Kamloops is also interesting from a geographical perspective. A half-hour north of the city we came out of steep, heavily-forested mountainsides but Kamloops sits in a very open (and very dry) valley which looks completely different than the terrain we had been seeing all morning.
After Kamloops we headed east, following the South Thompson River and Shuswap Lake for miles and miles of beautiful views as we went through small town after small town.
Once the main road began cutting its way though very steep-sided mountains we started looking for a forest-service campsite. The roads aren’t signed and there aren’t many distinctive landmarks so we had a bit of an adventure trying to find it. We turned onto a forest road after Three Valleys and it climbed very steeply… so steeply in fact that I was concerned about my how my brakes would do on the way down. After a mile or so we found a bit of a clearing but it was obviously a clear-cutting area and not the forest rec area on the map. We retreated to the main road and took another un-signed forest road. This time we were successful but I really should say we were lucky…the roads don’t match the map. Since the silly BC Atlas doesn’t put the names on sites, we could actually be at another one entirely. But no matter, we like our site. There’s a pretty little salmon stream nearby and we have giant stumps of old-growth cedars among the trees of our campground. They’re easily six feet in diameter and ten feet high.

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Sunday, 24 August-

Today we finally took care of ‘the body’. We’ve been carrying around a large bag of laundry we call ‘the body’. Each night we heave the body into one of the front seats and each morning we heave it back to the back of the van. The visitor’s center directed us to several Spotless Laundromats (“the largest Laundromat chain in BC!” according to our attendant) and the one we tried was a good one. After a couple of hours ‘the body’ was no more and our clothing-packs were replenished.
We also tried to connect to wi-fi today but that was a bust. The visitor’s center had told us we could pick up free wi-fi by parking under the library (in the parking lot under the raised building) and that would work even though the library is closed today. What they failed to mention is you need to a Prince George library card number or to ask for a free one at the front desk. We had a great signal but it’s tough to ask for a number when the library’s closed!
Before heading out to the backcountry we shopped for a few supplies at Wal-mart. I thought I’d ask whether they’d give me a partial credit on the tire I fixed on the McCarthy Road but I learned Wal-mart Canada and Wal-Mart USA are completely different businesses and do not honor each other’s warranties, returns, etc.
By mid-afternoon we were back on the road and headed east on the Yellowhead Highway (TransCanada Highway 16). The road was good but we had a strong headwind. That’s hardly fair. We had a strong headwind while crossing Alberta and BC in the other direction back in July!
By supper time we reached Tete Jaune Cache and the turn south. We recognized the intersection from our Canadian Rockies trip two summers ago. We had been in Jasper and I had wanted to see the lowest pass and the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. We had driven the Yellowhead from Jasper to Mount Robson for a long hike and then the next day had taken this turn to go down to a salmon-viewing area at Valemount.
Tonight we stopped at Valemount’s new visitor’s center. Our host was friendly enough but said there was no free or inexpensive camping in the area. But when Labashi asked about forest-service campsites, he directed us to a forest-service site a few miles back a dirt road near Valemount.
We had another of those ‘is this really the way?” experiences. The roads had no signs and kept getting narrower and sandier. But we did indeed find the Upper Canoe Creek Recreation Site, a single picnic table, fire-ring, and privy along Canoe Creek. We spent the rainy evening blogging and reading and enjoying our lonely outpost.

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Saturday, 23 August-

We had rain during the night and this morning was overcast but warm. For most of the summer we’ve been wearing long pants and long sleeves but if this keeps up we’ll have to change.
Today our goal was Fort St. James, a fur-trade fort founded by Simon Fraser for the NorthWest Company in 1806, later taken over by Hudson’s Bay Company when the two merged.
Before going to Fort St. James we stopped at the visitor’s center in Vanderhoof. This area looks quite a lot like home with all its farms but its main industry is forestry. Unfortunately, the forestry industry is in a down-turn at this point. Two of the three mills in Vanderhoof are closed down, putting almost 80 per cent of the work force out of work according to one person we talked with.
We also learned about the mountain pine beetle. We see massive tracts of dead forest, all the work of the mountain pine beetle. And the devastation comes at a bad time. While the lumber can be salvaged if the dead trees are cut down reasonably soon, the lack of a ready market means the forestry-products companies can’t afford to spend the money to send out crews to salvage the timber and to process the wood, only to have it stack up in the yard. The pine-beetle-infested lumber is also ‘marked’ by a blue color. Finished wood from pine-beetle forests has a blue tint to some of the wood and it’s called ‘denim’ wood. It’s unclear (according to our visitor’s center host) whether this wood has a normal life-span of usefulness or is otherwise normal but for the denim coloration.
We very much enjoyed our visit to Fort St. James. The site is a National Parks of Canada site and the work done to re-create the 1896 time-frame is meticulous. All but one of the buildings were still in existence and the plans for that one were followed to re-build it. I love how Canada takes these sites seriously enough to stock them with reproduction goods of the period. The fish-cache building, for example, had hundreds of real dried salmon. The trading post had a very complete stock of trade goods and also an extensive stock of furs--- everything from ermine to silver fox to timber wolf, to grizzly bear.
The buildings were manned by costumed staff and they did a good job of answering our questions.
Last summer we visited the NorthWest Company’s Fort William in Thunder Bay, Ontario. That one represented 1815 so we were very happy to see this one representing the later period. In fact it seemed almost current. The guns, clothing, stoves, tools, etc, all looked very familiar and would have been well-known to our grandparents.
After the Fort we drove on to Prince George, British Columbia’s fourth-largest city. It too is a forest-products town and has mill closures and economic problems but has more diversity.
We first tried the Wal-mart to find our place for the night. Though there were no-overnight-parking signs on the lot I asked at Customer Service desk. Two girls said they just have the signs up so we come in and they can talk with us first and then it’s ok. One said some RVers had had a campfire in the parking lot and they wanted to be sure I didn’t try something like that. When I asked if that had really happened or was a story, another said she had seen it herself. A group of RVers had circled their travel trailers in the parking lot and one had a propane-fired campfire in the center of the circle where they were cooking hot dogs! Holy bratwursts, Batman!
We then drove on the visitor’s center and found it on the property of the Treasure Cove Casino. We asked about overnighting and it was okay there too (and would be much quieter).
We then drove into downtown Prince George to a Blockbuster and rented videos. After parking in the casino’s overflow lot we walked through the gaming area before returning to the van to watch ‘Lions for Lambs’ with Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise, then seven (count ‘em!) episodes of ‘Corner Gas’. Labashi liked the movie and would like to rent it again back home to listen to Redford’s commentary (he directed) and to see the extras. I had jumped at the chance to rent ‘Corner Gas’. I’ve been trying to rent it on Netflix back home but it was always on ‘Long Wait’ status.
We first heard of Corner Gas in Saskatchewan two summers ago. We had noticed Corner Gas-branded merchandise in several stores and learned it’s a popular situation comedy out of Regina but filmed (partially) on location at the little town of Rouleau, south of Moose Jaw, SK. The only place it’s broadcast in the US is in Chicago.
This year we happened to be headed for Saskatoon via Moose Jaw and as we drove along I saw a sign saying ‘Welcome to Dog River’ (the fictitious town in Corner Gas) and shortly thereafter saw a klieg light propped up against the outside wall of a closed gas station. It was the setting for Corner Gas exterior shots. That evening I talked with a fellow overnighter in the Wal-mart parking lot at Moose Jaw. The next day he was headed to Rouleau to see what he could of the station. I told him not to expect much— it just looks like a regular (closed) country gas station but with lots of vehicles parked around it.
I thought Labashi might go for two, maybe even three episodes of Corner Gas but she liked it and we stayed up till midnight finishing off the first disk of Season One.
Recommended!


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Friday, 22 August-

Today was another travel day. We left our campsite at Bonus Lake at 0800 in a very light rain and headed south, still in wilderness. As we came to the junction with the Yellowhead Highway, the weather cleared and we saw a marked change in the ‘feel’ of the area. Where the Cassiar Highway was wilderness, the Yellowhead had the look (and traffic) of the modern highway it is.
We drove for a few hours until reaching the visitor’s center at Hazelton. This small town was at one time a hub of activity for gold mining in that it was the point where men transferred from steamship or rail to horses for their trips to the gold fields. The visitor’s center has photos of strings of pack horses leaving town. The pack-trains reportedly were as long as 250 horses but the early-1900’s photos available ‘only’ show twenty or thirty horses. One of the locals, named ‘Cataline’, was famous for his freighting via pack-horse train.
I also learned of Simon Gun-an-noot, a Kispioux hunter and trapper who was accused of murdering two white men who had claimed to have committed adultery with Simon’s wife. The two were found two miles apart, each with a gun-shot through the heart. Simon disappeared into the bush and avoided capture for 12 years before a white man talked him into surrendering on the promise of providing a good lawyer. Simon said he’d surrender but first needed a year to trap enough furs to pay the lawyer’s bill. In the trial, Simon was declared a free man (in 1919) and returned to Hazelton to live out the rest of his life.
We then drove into Hazelton where Labashi took photos of a very old totem pole at the town landing. Within a few miles are totem poles which we understand are two hundred years old. However, this timeframe does not square with other information we’ve seen which said totem poles did not come into use until about a hundred years ago. Perhaps the truth is somewhere between,
After Hazelton we continued south for another couple of hours to Smithers, a major town. We spent two hours at the Safeway, using its free wi-fi connection to catch up on email and to make Skype calls home. Then we shopped for supplies, amazed at the variety of choices. They even had a Starbucks in the store and of course I took full advantage of that!
We continued driving south out of Smithers, noting a very abrupt change from forest to fields. From Smithers south, the area looks very much like Pennsylvania. The rocky snow-capped mountains give way to more rounded mountains and hills and we started seeing farms and ranches (though with mountains in the distance).
After a few more hours we reached Burns Lake where we found free camping in the municipal campground along the lake. After supper we walked the area and picked up a bottle of Irish cream. We are now officially out of the area covered by our camping book (which included the Cassiar Highway). I REALLY liked that book (‘Alaskan Camping’ by Mike and Terri Church). It not only provided good info on camping (including prices and locations of free campgrounds), it also charted gas prices by showing their percentage above the baseline (gas prices in Anchorage).

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Carcross, Cassiar Highway, Stewart, Hyder (AK)
(posted from Safeway, Smithers, British Columbia)

(This post covers 19-21 August, 2008)
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Thursday, 21 August-

We camped only a few miles outside of Stewart, BC last night and this morning drove in on this foggy day for a look. But the town wasn’t awake yet. It was only 0730. The town of Hyder, Alaska is only a few miles further so we drove on. Hyder too was sleeping but four miles outside of Hyder is the Tongass National Forest and the Fish Creek bear viewing area. Fish Creek is reportedly one of the top areas in Alaska for viewing bears when the salmon are running.
After passing through the sleeping towns, it was a surprise to us to have trouble finding parking at Fish Creek. ‘Trouble’ may be an exaggeration but we did have to park at the far end of the second parking lot and there were only four or five more spots available. I’d guess there were 30 other vehicles there.
Fish Creek Recreation Area is basically a boardwalk running along and about 15 feet above the creek. It’s a National Forest fee area but the Multi-Agency Annual Pass I bought at Denali covered our $10 admission.
The boardwalk was bristling with long-lensed cameras on tripods but it was immediately obvious there was no bear action…the cameras weren’t being used. We walked the length of the boardwalk and watched the chum salmon spawning. On the other side of the little creek we could see a few salmon carcasses. After reading the signs and watching an eagle for a while we walked back to the van and dressed in warmer clothes and took another slow tour of the boardwalk but again, no bears. We decided to go on to Salmon Glacier and then try the bear viewing area again later today.
The dirt road to the bear-viewing platform continues for about 23 miles to a glacier and then on to an abandoned gold mine. The speed limit is only 20 miles per hour but that was plenty. The road was pot-holed in the level sections but then started climbing the mountain. It was cut into the side of the mountain and of course there’s no guard rail so 20 mph seemed fast—particularly as we approached blind corners.
As we climbed the fog thickened and it seemed we wouldn’t see anything today. But as we turned a corner we saw a spectacular sight— a giant shaft of sunlight with clear sky behind it was lighting up Salmon Glacier. It’s a massive river of blue-ice and white snow, heavily crevassed. At the toe of the glacier, a river of glacier-melt roars out into ponds with blue icebergs.
As we continued climbing in first gear along the narrow road the view just kept getting better and better until finally we hit the summit. There we parked at a five-car pullout with restrooms and picnic tables. The ice surface now lies hundreds of feet below this spot. But you can also see at least another 1000 feet up above as your eyes follow the frozen river of ice up from the lower section to the mountain top—an incredible spectacle.
After the summit view point we drove another few miles to an abandoned mine looking for a sow grizzly and two cubs reported to be in this area but with no luck.
We then made a slow descent, careful to stop several times to allow the brakes to cool—this wouldn’t be a good place to have the brakes fade.
We took another walk through the bear-viewing area and this time did see a small black bear in the creekside bushes but no grizzlies.
During our drive back to Salmon Glacier I had noticed that the van was again making a metal-on-metal sound but this time it was more rhythmic. The sound would only start once I’d start rolling and would sometimes disappear completely but then come back later.
We crossed back through Canadian customs and after I explained the problem I had trying to extend my firearms declaration form deadline, she merely stamped the existing form and told me it was now good for an additional 60 days. Good deal! She avoided starting a new form so I didn’t have to pay the $25 forms-processing fee I thought I’d have to pay.
Once back in Stewart we stopped at a garage to see if they could handle my universal joint problem. They were tied up but referred me to ‘Bill’s Tires’ right down the street. I told Bill I suspected a universal joint problem and had even gone so far as to buy a spare universal joint in Haines since I knew I’d be hundreds of miles from the nearest parts-house for days. Bill had me run the van up on ramps and checked the universal joints and pronounced the front one bad. He proceeded to remove the drive shaft and had a heck of a time with the over-tightened bolts but finally prevailed. As I handed him the spare u-joint I asked if he thought it a good idea to go ahead and replace both of them and he agreed. The first garage I had visited also had a good stock of parts on hand so I walked over there and bought another u-joint while Bill replaced the bad one. When he took the second one apart we saw it was indeed a good idea—that one had imprints of the bearing needles on the bearing surfaces so it would also have become a problem before long.
Bill finished the job in about an hour and a half and charged me $95 labor. I had $50 in the two u-joints. I was VERY happy to get that resolved that inexpensively. Given the alternative of a breakdown somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia, likely a couple of hundred kilometers of towing at $40 hook-up plus $2.50 a kilometer towing (rates I saw posted in a garage in Haines Junction) AND the repair bill, this was a bargain.
While paying the bill I asked Bill for a recommendation for supper. He recommended ‘The Seafood Bus’ in Hyder. We followed his directions and had a wonderful halibut-and-chips meal in a very unique setting. To order, you open the school bus door and lean in. Behind the driver’s seat stands Diana, working over a hot stove and deep-fryer. She takes your order and puts it in line with the others she has to do, one or two at a time. That means a wait of about 45 minutes for supper but it was great and we had a good time talking with local resident Donna Wood. Donna is at least 75, lives in Idaho part of the time and Hyder for the summer. She gave us tips on visiting Idaho and invited us to come visit her there.
After supper we decided to leave Hyder and Stewart tonight rather than tomorrow so the fog doesn’t cover the spectacular view as we drive out the 36 miles to the main road. That turned out to be a great idea. We not only had a great view tonight, we saw seven black bears at seven different locations in an hour of driving. I’ve never seen anything like it.
We picked a freebie camping spot out of the camping book as our goal and tried two other possibilities but struck out on both of them. They were lakes that BC has established as recreation areas so we thought we might park there for the night. But once at the turnoff we found the lakes were too far back in—more than six miles. But we did luck out and find the freebie camping spot empty at Bonus Lake and pulled in there about 2100 for the night. What a great day!

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Wednesday, 20 August-

Another travel day today. We continued south on the Cassiar Highway all day, bound for Stewart, BC—375 miles away. The road was only put through in the Seventies and there are still long stretches of gravel. The northernmost section has very few buildings of any kind—you go for miles and miles through boreal wilderness, mile after mile of white spruce and aspen. The more southern sections have a few more buildings—a cabin here, a roadhouse there-- but you can still count all the buildings you pass in an hour on one hand and have counting fingers left over—generally four of them. Gas stops are as much as 100 miles apart and are very small operations which may not have gas. We had seen such a situation yesterday in Carcross. The only gas station in the village was out of gas. Its delivery was due that day but hadn’t made it yet as of lunch time when we were there.
One notable stopping place along our route today was Jade City. It proclaims, “We mine it, we design it”—and it has more jade than you’ve ever seen in one place before. Even the bathroom door handles are made of jade. They pull in the passing traffic to/from the Alaska Highway by offering free camping and free coffee. We were amazed how many people showed up while we were there. The road had seemed empty but in our twenty-minute stop at least a dozen RVs pulled in. There was even a line at the register.
We stopped in Dease Lake to top off the gas tank at lunch time and then climbed through Gnats Pass and the scenery just kept getting better. The streams are clear and rushing, the pines are tall, the mountains have snow up high. We saw two bears, both smaller black bears, in an area noted for its huckleberry bushes.
About an hour before the turnoff for Stewart I stopped at “Ball 2”, a modern lodge which offers heli-skiing in the winter. Their road sign said ‘Tire Repair’ so I thought I stop and have the tire I had plugged myself checked or at least replace it with the spare since I’ve picked up an odd shuddering and vibration in the steering wheel at 45 miles per hour. We ended up simply swapping the bad tire for the spare but it only took a few miles to see I still had the shudder.
We made the turn for Steward and Hyder and soon entered a spectacular valley—the most spectacular scenery of our trip. I saw a glacier so close I think I could throw a stone from the roadside and hit blue ice. This valley was also very windy. With the dark rain clouds, the looming mountains on both sides, the roaring waterfalls coming down off the mountains, and the blue ice of the glaciers so close, we were truly in a wild setting.
About 27 miles in from the cutoff we turned back a stone road to a BC recreation area and trailhead—Lake Clement. At the end we found a small lake and turnaround and two-track leading further in. There we found a single camping spot—just for us! After arming up with the bear spray we followed the two-track and overhanging branches soon made it apparent we couldn’t have driven any further in Mocha Joe. A jeep with the windshield down or an ATV would be the only vehicles which could. And about then we saw a very fresh bear scat, filled with soapberries.
We made noise and walked another quarter-mile but the two-track turned away from the lake and steeply up the mountain so we decided that was enough and headed back for the van for supper.

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Tuesday, 19 August -

Today was a travel day. We continued up the South Klondike Highway from our camp along Tutshi Lake to Carcross. There we stopped at the visitor’s center to use the phone. This also happens to be a major station of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad and the train was there. Today it had four antique-style passenger cars and we saw it leave with a light load of passengers. We also saw at least four tour buses disgorging passengers for a few minutes of walk-around time in the tiny town before they’d reboard the bus and continue on their tours.
I needed the phone to call in for an extension of the non-resident permit for my shotgun; it expires on the 23rd. This sounds simple on the Canada Firearms Centre website: “If you need to extend the permit, call 1-800-xxx-xxxx.”
My first call was picked up quickly but the person could only transfer me to the ‘Chief Firearms Officer’ for Yukon and BC. After a ten minute wait, another person came on and said I needed to talk to the ‘Short-term Extensions Office of the Chief Firearms Officer’ and switched me. After a wait of about ten minutes, the phone answered with a recording announcing this is only a recording and short-term extensions may take up to a week to process and be sure to provide this, this, this, this, etc--- in other words a list of at least a dozen details. There is no way any human could keep up with all the details and then answer them in a recording.
I tried my best but was eventually cut off by the voice mail system as I was providing some of the details. The system asked if I wanted to hear what I had recorded or wanted to continue. I selected continue. It said ‘Sorry you’re having trouble, please call back at another time. Your message has been sent’. So here I am four days from permit expiration and no idea whether I’ll get an extension in time.
I called the Firearm Centre again and this time waited 15 minutes to talk to someone who, naturally, could not help but switched me to the Chief Firearms Officer’s regular (not short-term extensions) number. After another 15 minute wait, that one informed me that due to volume of calls my call cannot be taken at this time and hung up.
I called the border customs office where I had crossed in to Canada and asked if I could simply drive back the 50 miles to the border and get a new permit. Yes, that’s possible (but of course costs $25 and 100 miles of driving to get back here to Carcross). But then Labashi had another idea. We’re headed down through British Columbia and two-days down is another border crossing going west into Alaska at Stewart, BC/Hyder AK. I could do the same thing there. We called an agent at that border crossing and she assured me I could get a new declaration there. In the meantime I can try again at the Chief of Firearms office to see if my extension has been processed by that time.
After that bureaucratic adventure we visited the Carcross Desert- affectionately known as the smallest desert in the world. This is a quarter-mile-by-quarter-mile section of sand and pines. The sand is glacial and came from the bottom of a dried up lake. Winds blew the sand here and it’s deep enough to prevent most undergrowth from taking hold— making a nice little ‘desert’.
We then took the Tagish cutoff to connect with the Alaska Highway. Once there, it was a 200-mile jaunt to Watson Lake. There we used a wi-fi connection to check email and upload a blog entry before making supper, then heading south into BC on the Cassiar Highway.
We drove the very remote-feeling road for about an hour before finding an old gravel pit for the night.

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Valdez, Haines Junction, Haines, Skagway

(posted from Watson Lake, YT)
(This post covers 13-18 August, 2008)
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Monday, 18 August-

This morning we had a few little things to do before our ferry trip to Skagway. We picked up a real-estate brochure for a friend who may be interested in moving to Alaska, gassed up, visited the sani-dump, and visited Alaska Indian Arts, a non-profit organization dedicated to reviving Tlingit art. The artist we met yesterday, Wayne Price, is a key figure at Alaska Indian Arts and we wanted to see more of his work. Besides totem poles, Wayne also makes prints and drawings and several were on display. The organization also has a 35-foot totem pole under construction in the workshop for a camp in the Adirondacks. None of the carvers were working today but we were able to see the nearly-completed pole, their working drawings and their tools.
We drove to the ferry dock where we showed our confirmations and were given a lane assignment. We were amazed at the number and size of vehicles the ferry accommodated. While waiting in line the crew checked all the vehicles for propane tanks and if they had tanks, the workers would double-check that the valve was turned off and then put a piece of red tape on the outside of the compartment to show it had been checked.
After a loading and checking process which took nearly an hour and a half, we took our one-hour ferry ride to Skagway. We had good weather for our little trip and stayed out on deck the whole time but did not see any whales or other sea life. We had been loaded near the end of the loading process so were among the first off in Skagway.
We parked Mocha Joe a block off the main street and spent the rest of the afternoon walking the town. There were four cruise ships at the dock and downtown was quite crowded. The main street extends about 20 blocks from the cruise-boat docks and it’s lined solid with stores and there are more stores on the streets branching off the main one. The stores tend to be tourist-stores, i.e., lots of souvenirs and high-priced craft work. We were surprised, though, to find an interesting little Alaskan history museum in the back of a souvenir shop. With all the touring we’ve done here in Alaska, it was the souvenir-shop museum where I learned that the last shots of the Civil War were fired in Alaska. A southern gunboat, the Shenandoah, had been sent to Alaska to sink Yankee whalers and had done just that. But it didn’t get word of the war’s end until two and a half months after Lee surrendered!
Labashi wanted a slice of pizza so we looked around for a pizza shop and happened onto a good one called ‘Port of Call’. We had what I think was the best pizza we’ve ever had. It had artichokes, feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic-oil, and a perfect crust. It’s a good thing we can’t get those at home—I’d have at least three a week.
I checked on wi-fi but it’s the same deal here as Haines... expensive, slow, and unreliable. These folks need to take a drive to Whitehorse where we had good and free wi-fi at the coffee shops.
Late in the afternoon we visited the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park where we saw a good movie about Klondike history. It had very good historical photos and did an excellent job of covering the highlights of Klondike history in 30 minutes. I was surprised to see it had been made in 1973.
After a final walk through a few back streets, we elected to get out of Skagway but then saw a sign for the Gold Rush Cemetary at the edge of town. We walked up to nearby Reid’s Falls and then saw the graves of Soapy Smith and Frank Reid. Smith led a gang of ne’er-do-wells who made Skagway a ‘hell on earth’ according to one account. When the townspeople tired of the gang, they met to plan a vigilante action but Smith got wind of it and tried to enter the meeting. He was met by Reid and the two shot each other—Smith dying immediately of a bullet to the heart, Reid dying 12 days later of a bullet to the groin.
Once out of Skagway our road paralleled the famous White Pass and Yukon Railroad tracks and had many turnouts with historical information signs as we climbed White Pass. We crossed the border into British Columbia a few miles later. At the 64K mark, we found a camping spot at a picnic area and boat launch for Tutshi Lake and had dinner.

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Sunday, 17 August-

This morning we were fogged-in at our overnight pulloff near the Haines Ferry Terminal. We could have driven but it was a good excuse to sleep in a little on this Sunday morning. As the fog was starting to lift Labashi pointed out a young bear just on the other side of the road from our pull-off. It was eating berries and would step into the woods when it heard or saw a car coming, then come back out after it passed. We’re not sure if this one was a brown-phase black bear or a brown-bear. It didn’t appear to have the characteristic hump of the brown-bear but on the other hand it was young and lanky—maybe it hadn’t developed the hump yet. But the coat looked a little too shaggy to be a black bear. Maybe!
At mid-morning we drove out past Fort Seward toward the Chilkat State Park. Note that yesterday we were at the ChilKOOT State Park and today it’s the ChilKAT State Park—they’re on opposite sides of town.
Along the way we parked at a pulloff and enjoyed the morning. I had picked up a very good mocha at the Top Frog (a drive-up espresso shack) on the way through Haines and was happy to sit nursing it while Labashi photographed a hanging glacier across the Chilkat River. By the time we made it to the state park it was lunch time.
After lunch we noticed a small trail opening in the trees at the boat-launch and thought we’d try it. At first it just seemed to branch out in many different directions and we thought it might be a game trail. But we found a wider trail at the top of the ridge and followed it through a magical-dark woods to the point. From the point we could see two glaciers, both of them blue, one down low and one high up the mountain with a waterfall streaming from it. We had a 270-degree view of water from this point and could see small fishing boats (aluminum skiffs) and sea kayaks. And on the way back from the open point to the edge of the dark woods, we saw an adult bald eagle in a tree.
We then drove to the American Bald Eagle Foundation center, our major goal for the day. The Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve is a 48,000-acre sanctuary lying between Haines and the Canadian border. Each November, thousands of bald eagles gather in this valley to feed on the chum-salmon spawning run. By the end of December, they’re gone- the rivers are frozen over. The Foundation hosts a Bald Eagle Festival the first week of November and it’s very popular with nature photographers. One of the informal contests for photographers is to capture the most bald eagles in a single tree. The record currently stands at 58. The Center we visited today has taxidermy mounts of the animals, birds, and fish of the Chilkat Valley and shows an hour-long film showing the gatherings of up to 3000 eagles.
After the museum we hung out at the soccer field. Today had been overcast most of the day but now the sun was out and we soaked it up. I had parked on one of the few paved surfaces (other than streets) in Haines so took advantage of that to try to figure out what is making the metal-on-metal screeching sounds we hear when I first accelerate, particularly up a hill. As I poked around and then tapped the muffler and catalytic converter, I saw stones bounce up. As I felt around the catalytic converter, I pulled out five or six stones, one of them the size of a large marble. The sound wasn’t metal-on-metal—it was stone on metal. And that stone and another in a wheel were the culprits.
We had almost skipped Haines and Skagway because of those stones. We were 260 miles from Haines and 220 miles from Whitehorse with no mechanical services in between when the odd noises started. At one point we made the decision to go to Whitehorse because we knew it had the mechanics and parts we’d need if it was a universal joint or a bad wheel bearing. But my conversation with the gas station guy at Haines Junction had changed my mind and we came to Haines.
After our break we drove to the Lighthouse Restaurant on the harbor for supper. We shared a ‘Captain’s Platter’ of seared salmon (sockeye), halibut, snapper, and shrimp.
After dinner we picked up some necessities from the IGA and then drove back to the Chilkat State Park campground. We took a short walk on the Seduction Point Trail near the campground and then read and blogged the evening away.

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Saturday, 16 August-

This morning we woke to brilliant sunshine at Kathleen Lake. As we continued our drive south, we realized how special this area is. Since Haines Junction the road has been much better and we have the wonderful Kluane National Park mountains on our right and beautiful lakes on our left. There are very few structures and where there are, they tend to be cabins or something unobtrusive. Every so often there’s a ‘lodge’ or ‘roadhouse’ which will have gas, perhaps a café, and a few small cabins for lodging. Unfortunately, many of them are closed. It’s apparently tough to make a living in this business.
A few hours south we began to see mountains on both sides of the road and it was in this area we experienced one of the highlights of our trip--- a grizzly bear. The grizz was feeding near the road as we came upon it. Its full attention was on its feeding and it was walking along quickly, ripping plants as it went. It completely ignored us, never once looking at us or in any way reacting to our presence. It had a magnificent coat, mostly a darker brown with lighter-brown patches and silvertip hairs. Its coat was extra-shaggy around the shoulders and front legs.
Its feeding course took it across the road and we thought it would disappear into the woods. But apparently whatever plants it liked were growing along the far edge of the mowing line and a few feet into the woods. It just continued feeding along this line as we watched for a good 20 minutes. In fact, come to think of it, as we left, it was still feeding along this line.
In the last few minutes of our watching the bear, another vehicle came along and parked nearby. We met the people at the next pulloff. They were a European couple from (as it turned out) a town about 40 kilometers from the home village of my 7th great grandfather.
Continuing south, we soon crossed from Yukon Territory into British Columbia and came to the Chilkat Pass, one of the mountain passes used by the Klondike prospectors. The summit seemed low to us because we were approaching from the north. But from there we had a spectacular descent through the snow-covered mountain tops. We don’t need a flightseeing trip; this was very much like flying.
At the bottom of the pass we crossed back into the U.S. and Alaska and 42 miles later we were in Haines.
One of the first things we did in Haines was to find the ferry terminal and determine how easy it was going to be to get the ferry to Skagway and that would determine how much time we’d have in Haines. We learned the daily 2200 sailings are easy to book (as we had guessed) but we were lucky enough to get a slot on the 1145 sailing on the day after tomorrow—perfect for our visit to little Haines.
We then visited the Sheldon Museum, a very nice little gem, particularly on the subject of Tlingit culture. Though it’s a local museum, the exhibits were extraordinarily well done and we enjoyed learning about the incredible Tlingit people. One of their trade goods was an oil extracted from fish and they traded this oil (and other goods) far into the interior. They fiercely guarded their trading path through the Chilkat Pass and it wasn’t until the gold rush that they were unable to hold it any longer. At one point they sent warriors 300 miles to a competing trading settlement at Fort Selkirk and destroyed it.
The lower portion of the museum had similar-quality displays about the pioneer days of Haines.
After the museum we went to the local library but it was closing in a half-hour so we didn’t stay long. It’s a beauty, though. It was named the ‘Best Small Library in America” in 2005. Unfortunately, it only has pay wi-fi and I’ve had very bad luck with that so I’ll wait for something else. Free wi-fi can be a hit-or-miss thing but when you pay, you should get what you pay for and that’s often not the case. I’ve had too many situations where a paid wi-fi connection didn’t work or was so slow it was unusable but there was nobody to complain to—the answer is always, ‘Sorry about that but we don’t manage the wi-fi, we just let them put their antenna here. You’ll have to talk to the provider about anything wrong with it’. Besides, the pay wi-fi in Haines is only a 256K connection if it is working.
We then drove to the Fort Seward area of town to look around. Fort Seward was an early-1900’s Army post which closed after World War II and its buildings were sold to locals. One of them had a bakery and as we drove by we noticed someone working on a large totem pole on the side porch. In the bakery we bought a few small items and met owner Sherry Price. In our conversation we asked about the totem pole and learned it’s being carved by her husband, Wayne. She invited us to meet Wayne and see the totem pole up close. Wayne is a Tlingit master carver. The pole is being carved for the new Thunder Mountain High School in Juneau. The bottom figure on the pole is an ‘auntie’-figure, a teacher. She is transferring knowledge to the two children carved in relief above her and they are climbing the tree of life. Atop the pole is a falcon, the chosen symbol of the high school.
Wayne was an absolute delight to talk with as he worked. Besides talking about the carving, he told us of hunting sheep up on the mountain across the bay, of making his adze blade from the leaf spring of a ’63 Chevy, and of using his little 16-foot boat year-round out on the bay, including the seal hunt in January. He has a great sense of humor and we laughed quite a bit in our conversation. Labashi was so delighted she had him sign her log-book…in totem-carving pencil. The pencil is a special one he uses to mark the designs on the totem pole before using the adze to carve it out.
We then drove across town to the Chilkoot Lake State Recreation area where we had heard we might see bears along the Chilkoot River. We didn’t see any bears on the way up so drove through the campground to see if we could get a site for the night but they all were taken. Salmon-fishing season is in and the lower part of the river was lined with fishermen. On the way out, though, we saw a brown-bear sow and cub on the far side of the river. We managed to get some photos but they soon attracted the attention of some very noisy tourists and the bears soon disappeared back into the underbrush.
We then drove back toward the ferry dock and found a large pulloff for the night. After supper we spent the evening—you guessed it--- blogging and reading.

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Friday, 15 August-

This morning we continued southbound on the Alaska Highway. At the Alaska-Canada border there were only three vehicles ahead of us but there was apparently only one agent. He finished the car two vehicles ahead of us and then disappeared. We thought he must have been on a break or something but after ten minutes or so we saw him come out and put a seal on a semi trailer. It seemed odd that staffing would be so thin. We had no problem passing through. The shotgun was not an issue. I merely gave him our passports and the Firearms Declaration Form I had gotten when we first entered Canada a month and a half ago (it’s good for 60 days) and he asked a few questions (How much ammunition do you have? Do you have any handguns? Is the shotgun loaded? Where in the van is it stored? Where in the van is the ammunition stored?) He also asked whether we had pepper spray and I said yes, bear spray. He asked if it was marked for use on bears (because pepper spray designed for self-defense against humans is illegal in Canada).
After the border we were bound for Haines Junction and everything was routine until our lunch stop at a rest area about 140 miles above it. As I pulled out of the parking lot I heard an odd sound, a metal-on-metal screech with each rear wheel rotation-- but it went away after a few rotations. As we drove, we thought we could hear an odd sound sometimes but it was hard to tell. This section of highway is the worst we’ve been on for never-ending frost heaves and pavement breaks (stretches of gravel road) for more than a hundred miles. With the bad road and the possibility of a wheel bearing or universal joint problem, I drove no faster than 45 miles per hour.
We checked the GPS for a garage but there was nothing until Haines Junction. And an interesting coincidence happened shortly thereafter. We came up on a tow truck towing a Ford van, about a 1989 model. At a construction zone we stopped behind him and since the pilot car was nowhere in sight, we both got out. I asked him where he was towing the van and he replied ‘Silver City’ (not far) and told me the van was his now. The owner had had a rear-wheel bearing failure and, because he was towing it behind another truck, did not know it until the axle broke. The axle broke and somehow took out the rear panel. The owner had abandoned the van, i.e., he had signed over ownership to the wrecker guy to pay the towing bill.
When I said I had a noise of my own, he said Ford vans are well-known for rear-wheel bearing failures and of course I had to wonder if that’s what I have going on.
Finally, we made the Junction by 1630. I spoke to the garage guy there who immediately said he doesn’t have a mechanic right now and they don’t have a parts run from Whitehorse (100 miles away). But then he asked about the symptoms. Since I didn’t have any obvious overheating of the wheels or universal joint and the rear-wheel seals weren’t leaking (a seal usually goes if there’s a rear-wheel-bearing problem because of the overheating), it may simply be dirt buildup in the rear brakes or a stone somewhere it shouldn’t be—like between the drum and backing plate. In any case, I felt better about it.
In Haines Junction we visited the Kluane National Park Visitor’s Center. This park is the twin to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska. It’s just one very, very huge park with an international boundary through it. In 1979 the two parks were named a World Heritage Site. Like Wrangell-St. Elias, there’s very little access by vehicle. Access is by float plane or bush plane or, of course, flightseeing plane. Costs for flightseeing are: $115 (per person) for 40 minutes, $150 for 60 minutes, $200 for 75 minutes, $250 for 90 minutes, and $325 for 120 minutes.
After Haines Junction we turned toward Haines, Alaska (we’ll have to cross the border again) and drove about 20 miles to Kathleen Lake Campground for the night ($15.70 for the night). While Labashi made supper I jacked up the van and took off the rear wheels but didn’t find anything. Afterwards we walked down to the beautiful lake,f framed by the King’s Throne, a huge cirque dominating the mountain above the blue lake. With the blowing about 20 knots, the lake had whitecaps and the entire scene was fantastic.
The lake has Kokanee Salmon. These are sockeye salmon which don’t make a sea run. They don’t make a sea run because thousands of years ago their route to the sea was blocked by a glacier and they adapted—they use Kathleen Lake as their ocean and they spawn in nearby Sockeye Lake. By the time the glacier melted and opened up the way to the sea again, the salmon had lost their ancestral ‘memory’ of going to the sea.
After our walk we blogged and Labashi worked on her ‘salmon story’.

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Thursday, 14 August-

It rained lightly much of the night but my little thermometer said it was 60 degrees when we woke around 0700. A fog bank lay on the waters of Port of Valdez and another hid the mountain-tops from us. As we watched, a fog bank rolled in and quickly covered the pipeline terminal.
After a leisurely breakfast we drove back in toward Valdez and saw a small black bear along the road, attracting a crowd of tourists. This bear and several others (we heard) are hanging around the hatchery area because of the many dead salmon after their spawn.
We then drove to the Crooked Creek Salmon Information Center we had visited yesterday. Labashi wanted more information about the hatchery’s background and operations and this turned out to be a great resource. The center had an amateur video recently shot inside the hatchery. We saw how the workers strip the eggs from the females and the milt from the males, then clean and fertilize the eggs, then monitor and manage the growth process. When the fry are big enough, they are transferred to a floating pen in the bay from where they are released. Two years later, approximately 4% of them return (compared to a 1% return rate for naturally-spawned salmon).
When the salmon return, the first boats allowed to fish them are under contract to the hatchery. The first catches pay back the operating costs of the hatchery. Once that’s done, the fishery is opened to commercial and sport fishermen. The commercial fishing boats fish right in Port of Valdez, the Valdez Narrows, or just inside Prince William Sound. The hatchery is a non-profit organization supported by the fishermen’s organizations.
We then dropped into Valdez to mail some letters and browse through a sporting-goods store. The clothing of choice for the fishing industry is Grunden of Sweden, maker of heavy rubber rainwear. Their ‘Herkules’ bib-pants run about $110 and the raincoats about $95. Helly-Hansen makes a competing product but for every non-Grunden set you see, you’ll see at least ten Grundens. There’s also a good bit of Woolrich and Filson wool clothing, including some interesting Woolrich bib-overalls called ‘Malones’. The material looks and feels like felt liners made for boots. But I bet it feels good under a cold, wet rubber rainsuit.
We headed out of town but stopped at Robe Lake to make lunch. The weed-harvester guy was still at it. Among the floatplanes there, I spotted a very interesting homebuilt. Though it was only about the size of a Cub, it had full-wing-length ailerons as well as some type of flap or lift-booster on the front of the wing—like something you’d see on a commercial jet. I’d love to see that one in action.
We headed north and soon climbed past waterfall after waterfall up through the spectacular Thompson Pass. In another hour and a half we passed the turnoff to McCarthy and shortly thereafter Glenallen before making the turn for the Tok Cutoff.
The Cutoff road was good-enough asphalt but had many frost-heaves. But the scenery was great. Again we’d have mile after mile of stunted-growth black spruces characteristic of poorly-drained soil. And among them would be (naturally) many small lakes. Whenever we’d come to higher ground, we’d see willows and aspens, some of them showing hints of turning color already.
There are many cabins in this area. We stopped at one where a guy who calls himself ‘The Knifeman’ sells handmade knives. His are a bit too massive for me but I liked seeing the workmanship. His knives had ivory, bone, antler, or whale’s-tooth handles. Something like a hunter’s knife sold for $180 but the fancy one (Damascus steel blade, carved whale’s-tooth handle) goes for $2600. As I turned to leave he asked whether I’m interested in guns and he showed me several he has for sale, including a very good-looking 1895 octagonal-barrel lever-action rifle he’s selling for $2500.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on the Tok Cutoff road, finally reaching Tok and the Alaska Highway at 1700. Labashi had a hankering for pizza and we had a good one at Fast Eddy’s Restaurant before gassing up ($4.68 per gallon) and moving on.
For 47 miles we had pavement breaks and loose gravel and took a few stone hits on the windshield. One of them gave us another star-crack, one of the worst of our six windshield chips and cracks of this trip.
In another few miles we entered the Teslin Wildlife Refuge for camping for the night and had a great site away from everyone else — and it’s another freebie. We spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading.

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Wednesday, 13 August-

Today is supposed to be rainy but it’s a light rain this morning—just enough to put the wipers on. We departed our campsite on the McCarthy Road early (about 0700), hoping to see a wolf. One had been spotted recently around milepost 13.
We didn’t see any new wildlife on our bouncy trip back to the hard road but Labashi took photos of fishwheels in action at the Copper River. Fishwheels are only permitted in certain places and they are considered tools for subsistence fishing (as opposed to sport fishing) so can be used only by Native-Americans.
Back on terra asphalta we drove out through Chitina and then 33 miles to the turnoff to Valdez. This is one of the few areas where we’ve seen farms. It’s a little odd to see log-cabin farmhouses.
We spent the next few hours traveling down the Richardson Highway. In this area it’s a scenic road, trending down and down through mountains with occasional views of the Alaska pipeline off in the distance. Then we climbed up a final pass (Thompson Pass) above the snow-line (meaning there were patches of snow still remaining from last winter along the road) and by the Worthington Glacier before making a long descent to Valdez.
Just outside of Valdez we turned off to Robe Lake and had lunch. We parked beside an inlet teeming with salmon—‘pinks’ or ‘humpbacks’ we later learned. These had reached the furthest point of their long swim and were spawning. And on the several-hundred-acre lake was an odd sight—a weed harvester. It looked like a floating backhoe. The cab looked like the tractor cab of a backhoe, complete with rooftop air conditioner/heater but where you’d normally see tires there were wide, finned wheels to push it forward or backward in the water. Up front was a cutter and arms to pull the cut weeds aboard to a conveyer belt which carried them through to a collection basket. Every so often the operator would paddle on over to the edge of the lake and dump the collection basket ashore, apparently to be trucked away later.
After lunch we drove out a side road to a campground along the bay. Along the way we saw hundreds of salmon trying their best to get past a fish weir at the hatchery but many dying off after the attempt. We later learned these were fish born at the hatchery and therefore imprinted with the smell of its water. But the hatchery already has all the eggs it can use so the weir blocks the fish from entering.
After visiting the campground running along the bay, we were surprised to see the road ahead blocked off. This was the Alaska Pipeline’s Valdez terminal. We could see the tops of eight (I think) storage tanks high on the hill. The pipeline can either fill the tanker ships directly or fill the storage tanks and then gravity does the job of filling the ships.
Back on the Richardson we stopped at a salmon-viewing station and watched a live-action camera’s underwater view of humpies and chum salmon in the creek nearby. We could also walk outside and watch them from above. We learned this year’s salmon run started on July 19th and runs into September.
We then did the driving tour of downtown Valdez, a town of 1400 folks. After stopping at the visitor’s center for logistics info, we went to the harbormaster’s office for showers and to a nearby fishing-charter shop for block ice for our cooler.
At the library we attempted to use their wi-fi hotspot but it was having problems and we thought we’d have to give up connecting for a few days. But we checked again at the visitor’s center and they suggested the local community college—Prince William Sound CC. That worked out fine—we picked up our email and posted the blog update.
Labashi then decided she wanted to compose an email so we drove back to the library and she did that while I read the Anchorage paper and some magazines.
We felt we had ‘done’ the town of Valdez but swung through for a few more pictures. We saw a life-size replica of one of the ‘barndoor’ halibut the area is famous for. Incredible!
We drove out to the campground beside the pipeline terminal and picked a site overlooking the bay ($12) and had supper. As we watched through the evening we saw seals and sea otters at play nearby and had spectacular views of the mountains ringing the bay. The sun even made an appearance. As the wind died, the bay went glassy and made for a picture-perfect evening.

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Homer, McCarthy, and Kennecot

(posted from Prince William Sound Community College, Valdez, AK)
(This post covers 10-12 August, 2008)

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Tuesday, 12 August-

We had one of our coldest nights of this trip last night—38 degrees--- but an early sun rise put us in the mid-Forties by the time we finished breakfast.
We drove the remaining 12 miles to McCarthy over some of the roughest road of the trip— minefields of potholes and more potholes, all steep-sided and water-filled. It was miserable but do-able if driven very slowly— under ten miles per hour.
The town of McCarthy is not at the end of the road, it’s actually beyond the end of the road. The road ends at a river- the Kennicot. To visit McCarthy, you walk across a footbridge and either wait for a shuttle van ($5 per ride) or walk the half-mile into town. We parked at the national park’s remote visitor’s center and walked the half-mile to the bridge, then the half-mile into McCarthy. Labashi was hungry so we tried a little lunch-counter-style shack called ‘The Potato — God Fod’ (someone had painted over the other two ohs). Though it was only ten in the morning we shared a delicious pulled-pork sandwich and curly-fries and I had a very good Kahladi mocha.
We then walked all of McCarthy in about ten minutes. It’s dirt roads, tiny little ramshackle houses, a saloon, an old hotel, a ‘mercantile’, and several storefronts for guiding and flightseeing businesses. About 75 people live in McCarthy, most of them younger. Somehow, it works. I make it sound depressing but it’s actually interesting.
In the flight-charters shop we asked about prices and they ranged from $95 per person for a 35-minute flight to $210 each for 90 minutes. When I asked whether I could walk to the air-strip, the guy said we could take the Kennecot shuttle as far as the airstrip for free, get a good view of the mill and glacier, then walk back. The Kennecot shuttle is another $5-per-ride van ride, this time five miles up the valley to a massive abandoned copper mine and processing mill. There are 70 miles of mine passageway in the mountains behind it. The Kennecot mill took a $100 million dollars worth of copper out of these mountains. The National Park Service now owns many of the buildings and is slowly restoring them.
We took the guy up on his offer and loaded into the van, telling the driver to drop us off at the airstrip. After what seemed like a long ride I asked the driver how far it was yet to the air strip—I had thought it only a mile total. He had forgotten about us and right around the corner was the Kennecot mill. He sheepishly said we were free to look around the mill or come back with him to the airstrip. Lucky us!
We walked the mill for the next hour and it fascinated us to watch the workmen rebuilding the old mill and to try to imagine the hustle and bustle all around and through these buildings in their working days. And the view is spectacular. The icy-blue glacier hangs in the mountain and its moraines fill the valley in front of us. Another glacier lies in the distance and the river winds toward the horizon.
We took the shuttle back to McCarthy and Labashi was hungry again (Ok, I didn’t object). We once again relied on The Potato to give us something good—and it didn’t disappoint. We shared a Thai Peanut Wrap, again a winner.
We walked back to the van, again watching for bears. We had been hearing stories of the townspeople seeing black bears in the soapberry patches near town. And there were soapberry patches everywhere.
We then headed back out the McCarthy Road and declared today a good one. We really enjoyed eccentric little McCarthy and the Kennecot plant.
The trip back the McCarthy Road was immensely improved. Last night we had seen two road-graders parked near Long Lake and they had been working all day. The worst of the potholes were gone. Great!
Our good mood lasted until mile 33 when we had another flat. This time I felt the steering feeling go less responsive. I stopped to check and the tire was losing air as I watched.
We first tried something else I had picked up at a Wal-mart—the Fairbanks Wal-mart in this case. In preparation for the trip up the Dalton, I bought an Ultra-Instant Tire Inflator-Sealer. It’s a can of compressed gas with a foaming sealer-adhesive inside. You plug it in to the tire valve and let it pump in the foamy adhesive gunk while also putting some air pressure in the tire. Then you’re supposed to drive for 1-3 miles and the pressure is supposed to continue to build, pumping the tire up to near-normal.
Well, it only partially worked. It did pump the tire up enough for me to drive very slowly but when I checked the hole, there was still foamy adhesive (and air) leaking out. I put the jack under the frame and was about to unbolt the wheel when I thought I may as well try a plug. The plug did its job and we were soon underway again, another lesson learned. Forget the inflator-sealer. Stock up on tire plugs.
We drove on to mile 17.5 and stopped there for the night. If the tire has a problem this is a good place to wrestle the spare out from under the van. And if we need it the tire shop will be open by the time we get there in the morning. And this is a free campsite with a great view!
As we drove in we noticed a dog running about and eventually checked his tag and saw that he was from the milepost 15 area (his tag said ‘McCarthy Road, Mile 15’. But he seemed confused. Eventually Labashi came up with the theory that he had crossed the high trestle-bridge carrying the McCarthy Road over the Kuskulana River at milepost 17 (just before our pullout) and he was afraid to go back. She walked him back across the bridge and as they neared the far side, the dog made a dash for familiar territory. Good deed for today. Check.
We spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading.

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Monday, 11 August-

We slept well but woke very early and decided to look for wildlife as we drove out to the hard road. We were underway by 0600 and saw a ptarmigan as we left our site at Lower Ohmer Lake. Since it was only 8-1/2 miles to the hard road, we drove back each of the side roads, hoping to spot something on the move. At Upper Skilac Lake we saw more ptarmigans--- a half-dozen or so--- and more snowshoe hares (we had been seeing them all through the Refuge). At Hidden Creek Campground we just came out to the stop sign as a large bear ran across the road. This one was dark brown in color and crossed the road in about three seconds.
On the hard road we headed for Anchorage, some 108 miles away. At Tern Lake we stopped at the salmon viewing area and took some pictures of the bright-red sockeyes. The air was cool enough that we could see our breath so we didn’t tarry.
As we left I noticed a forest road at the back of the parking area. The sign had a forest-road number and said ‘Old Sterling Highway’. Well it may have been old and it may go toward Sterling but it was no highway. At first it led through tall pines and may have been wide enough for two vehicles to pass very close but then it narrowed. We passed several places where a vehicle could turn around so I figured I’d just keep going—I could always back out to the turnaround. This went on for another mile of leading me on, all the time narrowing, now to the point where one mirror, then both were pushing aside vegetation and the overhead branches were getting low enough to sweep the roof. We had a few mud-holes but they weren’t bad—but then again I wouldn’t want them any deeper. The turnaround-spots ended and we kept going—we’d just have to back out further if nothing showed up. The right side dropped away and we had a steep slope—better watch out for soft spots. Finally, after we passed a wider spot in the road at the top of a hill, we found the road dropping steeply and could see muddy ruts at the bottom. It was time to say enough-is-enough. And we didn’t see a thing in there—it was too overgrown. But still an adventure. What a ‘highway’!
Our drive through the remainder of the Kenai Peninsula led us through sweeping views in morning light; it looked very different now.
As we neared Anchorage we noticed a dozen vehicles at the pullout called Beluga Point and that made us look closer. There in the river were belugas. They were traveling in groups of three or four and all we’d see would be a good, long view of the white backs and sides lit by that pretty light from behind us. What a sight to see them in the foreground with Turnagain Arm stretching into Cook Inlet off in the distance and the steep snow-topped mountains to our right and behind us.
We buzzed through Anchorage and turned for Palmer. This area is the Matanuska Valley and Alaska’s largest agricultural area but there’s not a lot of evidence of it here along the Glenn Highway. Before long we started seeing snow on the peaks on the far side of the Matanuska River and the road narrowed to two-lane. We then had several hours of nice driving with one interruption—a long road-construction delay. But once past the delay we drove through very interesting country. After viewing the Matanuska Glacier, we had arctic-like vegetation on the right in muskeg-and-lakes zone with steep mountains in the far background while on our left, the land sloped and therefore drier and much of it covered in aspen and larch.
At Glenallen we turned south toward Valdez. But within a few miles we saw the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Visitor’s Center. It was now about 1600 and we had been driving since 0600 so we were looking for our place for the night. But once we saw the introductory movie for the national park and saw the weather report for the next several days, we decided we’d go into the park. Today was sunny but tomorrow overcast-and-showers and the next day rainy. If we went this evening, we’d get the best views and tomorrow might be okay for most of the day.
Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest of the national parks but is difficult to visit. There are two roads into it, both dirt. The Nabena Road is the rougher of the two and has washouts and stream crossings requiring higher-clearance vehicles. The McCarthy Road is 62 miles of old railroad bed leading to the old copper-mining mill at Kennecott and nearby McCarthy.
We were 40 miles from the latter and it was almost 1700 already but the evening was so nice and we were re-energized by the views of the massive snowy peaks in the distance.
We were on the McCarthy Road by 1830. But at mile 12.5 we came upon two young guys with not one but two flat tires. As I passed I asked if they had everything they need and one said they sure could use an air pump. Thus we met Sven Johnson and James Heuser. Sven was driving an old Mercedes station wagon with badly worn tires. They had apparently changed one only to have a second puncture.
Once they got used to the novel idea of my 30-year-old manual tire pump and exercised it a little, it became clear the hole was too big to just pump up the tire and dash for Chitina and the tire shop. I had an el-cheapo tire-plugging kit I had bought at Wal-mart last winter in Florida so we gave that a try. When that appeared to work we plugged the other one too but both had very slow leaks. But it would work for the trip to the tire shop. At that point Labashi served pink lemonade all around in celebration.
Sven, we learned, is from Talkeetna and his buddy James is visiting from Ohio. Labashi had them sign her log book and Sven took the opportunity to thank us. But if it hadn’t been us, it would have been someone else.
We continued east on the McCarthy, sometimes through short washboard or pothole sections but comfortable enough at 20-25 miles per hour. We checked a possible informal campsite – a very nice large pullout-- at mile 17.5 but decided we should go on— let’s try the railroad trestle at 30. But that didn’t work so we thought we’d try a fishing lake at mile 45. And from that point our options kept getting smaller and smaller and it was almost dark. Finally, at 2130 we found a large pullout which allowed us to get off the narrow road far enough. We had a quick supper and went to bed.
We had enjoyed the views but the massive peaks we had seen in the distance as we approached the park had all but disappeared behind closer, smaller mountains. The only wildlife we had seen was snowshoe hares.

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Sunday, 10 August-

We had planned to visit the Pratt Museum today but it wasn’t open yet when we arrived at 0900 so we went to the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor’s Center again and continued our visit of yesterday.
We then drove to the ferry terminal to get an idea of costs for ferry trips in the Alaska Marine Highway system. I see the trip from Haines to Bellingham (Washington)—the famous Inside Passage-- would cost us over $2000 (!!!!).
But I also see the Haines-to-Skagway ferry ride is $111. That one would pay since I’d otherwise have to spend about $300 to drive around to Skagway and then backtrack from Skagway to the Alaska Highway to continue on. Hopefully we can get a ferry ride there.
After the ferry terminal we shopped at the Safeway for supplies and I took advantage of their free wi-fi connection to check mail and update the blog.
We then once again drove to the Pratt but while in the parking lot remembered we had seen a poster about a 1300 lecture at the Islands and Ocean Center—and it was almost time.
We thoroughly enjoyed a lecture and slide show about the Pribilof Islands by Jeff Dickrell. Jeff’s specialty is history and he did a terrific job of recounting the history of the hunting fur-bearers (sea otters and fur-seals) by Russians, then Americans, then Japanese. It’s not difficult to understand the rush for the furs when you understand this point: a single sea-otter fur (and later the fur of the fur-seal) was worth (on the Chinese market) the equivalent of a year’s pay to a sailor.
It was also here that we learned about the devastation of the sea-bird populations by artic foxes and by rats. The arctic foxes were imported and released on the Aleutians for fox-farming, i.e., growing foxes for their furs. Rats were in some cases released for the foxes to eat and in others were inadvertently introduced to an island by a shipwreck. An arctic-fox eradication project has been going on for 40 years --- one island a year --- and has been successful. A rat-eradication project has more recently been started and it’s as yet unclear whether complete elimination of rats on an island is even possible.
The natives of the Pribilofs and the Aleutians in general were treated badly, particularly in 1942 when the Japanese invaded the far reaches of the Aleutians and even bombed Dutch Harbor. Because the natives had not been ‘conquered’, as had the Indians of the Lower 48, there were no treaties and they did not fall under the Bureau of Indian Affairs but rather under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Service removed the people from the islands but had difficulty determining what to do with them and the results were predictable. In some cases, community death rates were as high as 25%. And in some cases the young men were forced to hunt fur-seals in the very areas where they were told it was too dangerous for them to live and subsist—and all the fur profits went to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This went on as late as the 1960’s!
We took a short walk to Beluga Cove and decided it was time to leave Homer. We never did get to the Pratt but we were nevertheless ready to go. We drove north for several hours, back to the same campground (Lower Ohmer Lake) in the Kenai Wildlife Refuge. As we neared the campground turnoff, Labashi spotted a black bear but I didn’t see that one.
After supper we blogged and read and watched for loons and bears across the glassy-smooth lake.

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Anchorage, Crow Creek Mine, Seward, and the Kenai Peninsula to Homer

(posted from the Homer, AK Safeway)
(This post covers August 5-9, 2008)

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Saturday, 9 August-

We woke to light-overcast-and-50 weather and the sound of loons calling this morning. Labashi had been up early and had seen five loons in the lake near our campsite.
After we broke camp we continued driving the dirt Skilac Lake Loop Road, stopping at each of the viewpoints and driving through each camping area. The views are incredible. Jagged, snow-capped mountains in the middle-distance in all directions, pretty little wilderness lakes and mixed forest closer to us. The Refuge was originally set aside as a national moose refuge but we’ve only seen a few of them—a young bull yesterday and a youngish cow with calf today, all right along the road.
We rejoined the hard road at Sterling and drove on to the town of Kenai. There we found the Beluga Overlook. The Overlook sits high above Cook Inlet and according to the signs, we would be able to see three volcanoes in the distance on a clear day. But not this morning. We also visited a Russian Orthodox church just down the street from the Overlook. An attendant gave us a quick overview of this area. Kenai was originally a native settlement and when our attendant was a little girl it had only 300 people. But the discovery of oil brought rapid growth in the Seventies. Also, two chemical plants and several fish canneries opened. Today the chemical plants only have skeleton crews and the canneries are struggling. There is much concern for the salmon and the ever-more-stringent limits which have to be placed on the salmon fishery. Tourism is big business but spiraling gas prices have hurt that too.
After Kenai we drove out interestingly-named Kalifornsky Beach Road and were stuck in a construction zone for a half-hour before we could get by and rejoin the Sterling Highway. We could see glimpses of Cook Inlet beyond the vegetation lining Kalifornsky Beach Road but once back on the Sterling, the sun came out, the road started climbing and descending and we were offered views of the Inlet and the mountains beyond. At Ninilchik, we visited yet another Russian Orthodox church, this one on a bluff overlooking the Inlet and the little village below.
We drove down to the village and the waterfront, idling slowly along as we took in the magnificent scenery.
A few miles later we visited the Norman Lowell Gallery back a narrow dirt road. Mr. Lowell has been painting since the Forties and has built a very professional gallery worthy of any art-loving city. He has hundreds of paintings on display and has collected beautiful artwork (mostly three-dimensional works) to accompany them.
As we browsed into the second room, still trying to take in the incredible variety of his body of work and his collection, an older gentleman approached and welcomed us. It was the artist. We delighted in having the chance to make small-talk with him. Later, in the sales shop we had another exchange with him about our favorite of his paintings- ‘Russian Influence’.
We continued south to Homer and as we neared we stopped at an overlook above the city. This is undoubtedly the best viewpoint. For 180-degrees we see snow-capped mountains off in the distance. To the right and far below, Kachemak Bay meets Cook Inlet. Ships on it are little toys and it reflects the sky and clouds, making unprecedented shades of blue and green. Off to the left and in the distance is Homer Spit, a long, narrow arm of land curving away from us. Lasbashi almost wore out the word ‘Wow!’ in one visit here. We tried to capture it in photos but I’m sure with little success—you just can’t capture the sense of scale in a photo.
We drove into Homer and visited each of the city-owned campgrounds, knowing they may be full since today is the start of the Silver Salmon Derby, a fishing contest. We picked out a couple of possibilities and then kept going.
We visited the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor’s Center where we saw a film about research in the Aleutians and toured the well-designed exhibits. I particularly liked a computer-driven one where you saw a map of Alaska and could select research briefs on different offshore islands. The view then zoomed in on the island selected, showing an aerial view, then showed footage of researchers working on and explaining their projects. If I had seen footage like this when I was in junior high, I would have wanted to be a wildlife specialist—what a cool job!
The museum closed at 1800 and kicked us out. We drove out of Homer to the east and decided to try the Homestead Restaurant which apparently has a good reputation. Today is my birthday so the birthday boy had prime rib and Labashi had freshly-caught silver salmon.
Afterwards we drove to the end of the hard road, marveling at the glaciers atop the mountains across the Bay, then turned back to our campground in the hills above Homer.

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Friday, 8 August-

Today was our departure day from Seward but first we drove south to Lowell Point for the view. We then shopped for essentials at the Safeway and visited the sani-dump before heading north.
Just a few miles out of Seward is the ‘Exit Glacier’ unit of Kenai Fjords National Park. The Exit Glacier is a glacier outfall from the Harding Icefield in the mountains above. We walked a half-mile to the first view of the glacier above the braided river, a massive, almost ominous presence. Another trail took us another half-mile above and to it’s edge where we could see the blue of the calving ice. As we climbed the trail we had to take off our jackets but then the trail led us out near the glacier and we felt the cold air flowing heavily down along it, just as we had two summers ago on the Columbia Icefield in the Canadian Rockies. The valley all around us was absolutely pristine and stunning and we stared and tried to capture a sense of it with our cameras.
After the Exit Glacier we headed just a few miles north to Lost Lake Trailhead. I had read about Lost Lake Trail in a copy of ‘Trail Runner’ magazine distributed by the Seward Visitor’s Center; it’s one of the top trails in Alaska.
The trail immediately climbed steeply but we took our time. We were in old-growth woods and everything around us had massive proportions. As the steep trail leveled off we saw a beautiful side trail leading off to the right and took it, thinking it was leading off to the next valley over but after a while it started a series of switchbacks and circled us around to our parking lot and there we noticed rain clouds starting to gather.
We drove north in on-again-off-again rain and turned toward Homer at the Sterling/Seward intersection. Shortly after making that turn we saw a sign at a turnout about salmon-viewing. There we saw a dozen-or-so big sockeye salmon cruising the clear water for insects. Their bodies looked like they were on fire, they were so red. We talked for a bit with a young ranger-woman who gave us the following tip on how to remember the various species of salmon.
Look at your hand to remind you of the salmon. The little finger is the pinky and has a humped shape, reminding you of ‘pink’ or ‘humpback’ salmon. The ring finger could have a silver ring on it and reminds you of silver salmon (also called coho). The middle finger is the longest one and reminds you of Chinook (the longest salmon-word) or King salmon. The index finger could be used to poke at or take a ‘sock’ at your eye, reminding you of the sockeye salmon. And poking your eye would make it red, the color of the sockeye salmon.
We had intended to go on to Homer today but we also wanted to drive into the Kenai Wilderness Refuge and we saw there are some free campsites in the Refuge. After spending two days among the crowds at Seward, we were ready for some solitude. We drove eight miles out the Refuge road to Lower Ohmer Lake, where we found a nice little tent campground of just four sites on the lake and had it to ourselves.
Lower Ohmer Lake is a loon nesting site and we saw a solitary one out in the middle of the lake, repeatedly diving for his supper. Later, we heard his wonderful trill, but only twice.
We spent the evening reading and blogging and occasionally scanning the lake and mountains.

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Thursday, 7 August-

We heard the fishing ‘fleet’ going out early this morning and I noticed the RVs on either side of us had turned around early this morning, apparently to lower the noise level. But I didn’t think it that bad. We slept soundly until eight.
Though Seward has been having a very bad summer of rain and cloud, we had a great, sunny morning today.
We rode the bikes to the Sea-Life Museum and locked the bikes up, intending to walk to the Seward Historical Museum, then come back for the Sea-Life Museum. The Historical Museum was very good--- well-organized and very thorough. One of the highlights for me was seeing a photo of ‘The Land of the Soviets’, a very strange-looking airplane that landed in Seward in the late 20’s. This airplane was part of a campaign to demonstrate that flights were now possible between Moscow and New York (in the Twenties!!)
After several hours at the Historical Museum we had coffee and bagels at the Resurrection Coffee House, a nice little coffee house/art gallery in a former church. We walked to the Sea-Life Museum but were put off by the high price--- $20 each. We elected to pass it up since seeing the real thing is so much better than any museum representation. And we were rewarded during our ride back to the van by seeing a sea otter close to shore. It was diving around a rock and then floating on its back while opening and eating shellfish.
That afternoon both of us felt a bit slow. I’m guessing we’re a bit travel-weary and need a lazy-day, i.e., one where we don’t need to plan or research anything. We returned to the van and did just that.
Late in the day I rode into town to look for a movie but didn’t come up with anything—we had seen everything worth watching!—but it gave me about a four-mile exercise ride.
After supper I again wanted some exercise so rode around the bay to the Sea-Life Center and then out a dirt road along the Bay before circling back through town, stopping for a half-hour to listen to a live singer at the bistro. On these bike rides around campgrounds I enjoy looking at all the camping and boat rigs, always on the lookout for new ideas or to see actual examples of rigs I’ve only seen previously in magazine ads. I saw three Alaskan-brand telescoping truck campers but none of the owners were there for me to strike up a conversation and perhaps even get a look inside. The boats are very rugged looking. Most are heavy aluminum and have cabins or full canvas tops, attesting to the sometimes-blustery conditions here. And it’s nothing to see a small boat of perhaps 16 or 18 feet rigged with double 90-horsepower engines plus a 20-horse kicker. They like their power up here.
We finished up the evening catching up on our blogs and reading.

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Wednesday, 6 August-

We drove down to the Crow Creek Mine entrance and paid our $5 for the night. We asked about the music and learned two guys were practicing for an upcoming gig for a small blueberry festival to be held in a week or so.
On the trail yesterday evening we had met a hiker from Seattle who had walked down from the Aleyeska Resort a couple of miles away and he said it was very nice. This morning we drove back out of the Chugach and turned left when we hit the hard road, toward the resort. We walked through the big hotel and pronounced it very tastefully done. As our hiker-guy had said—‘understated elegance’. I enjoyed a mocha on the veranda as we marveled at the ski-lift going straight up the mountain to the ski-bowl on the other side. Nice!
We drove south to the Kenai Peninsula and saw why it’s so highly recommended for touring — mountains, mountains, and mountains! It’s mid-August and the mountains still have a lot of snow up high. And ‘high’ isn’t very high. Anchorage is at sea level and we did little climbing until we were level with the lowest snow-fields.
We heard there’s a big silver-salmon tournament at Seward this weekend so we thought we’d hit Seward now and then move on to Homer (rather than vice-versa). But then we learned there’s also a tournament in Homer at the same time. But we chose Seward anyway.
We picked up a hitch-hiking young couple about ten miles above the Homer turnoff. We’ve had some great experiences with interesting hitchers but this young guy and his girlfriend won’t be going on that list. Labashi is great at asking leading questions but these guys weren’t responding and it seemed we already knew more about Alaska than these natives-Alaskans do. We were glad could drop them off at the turnoff.
With the tournament coming up in a few days I wanted to get a campsite early on so we could walk or bike to town. Seward is kind of unique in that the waterfront is almost all campsites. That’s because the 1964 tsunami wiped out the lower part of the town! All the docks and the Standard Oil terminal were destroyed by a tsunami after the 1964 earthquake. The streets are numbered from first street down the hill toward Resurrection Bay and the tsunami waters came up as high as Third Street.
A paved walking and bicycling trail follows the curve of the bay and there are six or seven campgrounds inside the arc of that trail. There’s a separate tenting-only campground but most of the waterfront is taken up by lots painted on the stone parking lot. One section is for ‘RV- Utility’ lots (meaning they have electricity, water, and sewer connections) for $30 a night or ‘RV- dry camping’, which is just lots about the size of two car-parking spaces for $15 a night. We were lucky and found a nice dry-camping spot in a prime area.
The views around Seward are absolutely stunning. The blue waters of Resurrection Bay are to the east of us, the historic downtown to the west of us and the docks and large marina to the north of us. And on all sides are the steep-sided mountains, all of them green down low, a treeline about mid-way up, and crags and patches of snow on the higher elevations. We can see glaciers in multiple directions.
Though Seward has been having a rainy summer, we had sunny-and-60 with a light wind. Rather than drive around we parked Mocha Joe and got out the bikes. I had been thinking I should have left the folding bikes at home so I’d have had more space for the extra spare tire and the shotgun but Seward has completely erased that thought. I would have kicked myself to be here and NOT have the bikes.
Seward is an interesting town. It clearly has its problems in that there are many shuttered shops and businesses for sale. Fishing charters are big business. A full-day fishing tour runs almost $300 per person. And we talked with a Pennsylvania couple who had done a fishing charter and they had spent another $300 shipping the filets home (to their daughter).
Tours of the Kenai Fjords National Park are also big business. They run $100 for a tour of the bay to $300 for a water-tour well into the backcountry of the National Park. That’s too much for our budget but we’re still very glad to be in Seward.
After touring the historic portion of Seward, we rode to the marina and docks. There we watched the fishing guides filet fish at the fish-cleaning station. Labashi loved seeing the filleting process and seeing the different fish.
We had had an early and light supper so later in the evening we had a bowl of tasty smoked-salmon chowder in the fishing-docks area.

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Tuesday, 5 August-

This morning we did some re-stocking at the Safeway/Carr’s next to Sam’s. Carr’s was an Alaskan chain bought out by Safeway but by now most of them look like Safeway’s but for the Carr’s name on the building.
Our weather today was overcast but it’s not supposed to rain. According to our tourist brochures, Anchorage doesn’t get much rain—only about 16 inches per year while just a few hours south Seward gets over 100 inches per year.
We drove downtown to the Visitor’s Center and that turned into a problem. Anchorage does not provide parking at the Visitor’s Center and has the street meters set up for 12 minutes per quarter. I put in two quarters, thinking a half hour should be plenty. Service was slow at the center and you have to go to a second center (behind the small log-cabin one) to get brochures. And if you want to use a rest-room, you are directed to other public buildings in the area.
When we returned to the van, we had a ticket with a time stamp exactly 25 minutes after we left and I could still see the officer walking down the street; we were two minutes late. I walked back to the Visitor’s Center and gave back the brochures, telling the staff it seems odd the City of Anchorage has so little regard for tourists and I wouldn’t be needing any of their brochures.
While recovering from the shock of getting a ticket for trying to give Anchorage merchants our money, we drove out to Lake Hood and watched floatplanes take off and land. We had a low overcast but still plenty of action on the lake as we had lunch. We were amazed at the number of floatplanes and bush planes around the lake.
We then went to the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum. We really, really liked the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Museum in Sault Sainte Marie (ON) last year and this one didn’t quite come up to that standard as far as aircraft on display. There you could climb inside several of the classic bushplanes (including the fabled Beaver) and walk around in the bay of a water-bomber. Here the displays were subtle and heavy on the reading. The more interesting planes were hanging from the ceiling and you couldn’t peek in. The museum’s mission, of course, is Alaska’s aviation history and much of that would be found in pictures and news articles anyway, so perhaps I’m not giving this one its due.
After the museum we drove to the library for a wireless connection. We checked email and I posted a blog update while Labashi was seeing what the web had to say about salmon filleting. She had been fascinated watching the woman filleting silver salmon in Sheep’s Creek near Talkeetna.
After the library we mailed our ticket payment ($20) and considered going to another museum downtown but the ticket had put a damper on our mood. At that point I didn’t want to spend any more money than absolutely necessary in the City of Anchorage and didn’t have a burning desire to see anything in the touring books anyway.
We drove south, along the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. The water is very wide and shallow here and there’s a high tidal range. I understand sometimes you can see a tidal bore, i.e., a wave of incoming tide, reportedly as high as six feet. Years ago we had ridden a tidal bore (in a Zodiac) in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia and that was quite a memorable ride.
Before leaving Anchorage we had been reading about possible campsites along the way and had chosen Crow Creek Mine because it was in the Chugach National Forest and had $5 campsites. The mine had been an operating gold mine and had taken some 40,000 ounces of gold in the past. It lay some four miles back a pot-holed dirt road but we wanted to see what the National Forest looked like back there anyway.
We picked out a camp site along the road to the mine and walked down to pay. But it was after six and they had a sign up asking for privacy after hours. We could hear music—someone was playing the bass fiddle and sometimes a fiddle would join in. We retreated toward the van and found a trail marked ‘Hand Tram’. A short way in the trail connected to the Iditarod Historic Trail, which we followed another mile to the hand tram. That turned out to be a hand-operated cable car. It was built much like a skiing cable-car. The ‘car’ was a metal basket big enough for two or three people (but with a 400 pound limit). It was suspended from a two-inch steel cable but motive power was a rope running through the middle of the car and connected to a weighting system on each end (to keep the rope tight).
The car is suspended over Crow Creek, perhaps 50 feet above the rushing water. After we boarded, the car drifted easily down toward the middle and I wondered how tough it might be to get up the other side. But it wasn’t bad. And the view down between our feet (through the steel mesh) was great!
Once across we walked another two-tenths of a mile to a pretty gorge with blue glacier water roaring through, then crossed the creek again and walked back to the van for the night. We spent another hour reading before falling into a heavy sleep.

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