Ice Trucker's Highway to the Arctic Circle

We traveled 200 miles north of Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle on “the Ice Truckers Highway”. The road was a bumpy gravel road that is primarily used by truckers to haul freight to and from the pipeline at Prudhoe Bay. Our driver and guide is actually an ice trucker in the winter so we found out about what it’s really like to drive the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay when it’s 50 below zero…. They have to find a level spot to park because they can’t apply their breaks because their breaks will freeze and – they can’t turn their engines off for their entire trip because they won’t start up again in the cold! Plus – they aren’t really in danger of the truck falling through the ice – it’s only 2 feet deep!

 We stayed at the Walmart in Fairbanks for 6 nights – a record length of stay at a Walmart for us. We were hoping to see the northern lights but the only lights we saw were the lights in the Walmart parking lot! Fairbanks has lots of things to do so we stayed really busy while we were there plus we got to see our friends Joni and Rod that we went clamming with on the Kenai Peninsula!

It gets so cold in Fairbanks that companies like Walmart provide electircal outlets  (on the orange posts) for employees to plug in a heater in their car to keep the engine, transmission and battery from freezing!

Molly showing off her Husky Wanna Be kerchief from Walmart! It's her souvenir from Alaska......She's still practicing to be a sled dog!

After Fairbanks, we started our journey south on the Alaska Highway . We will drive the entire length of the highway 1,422 miles plus another 400 miles to get back into the lower 48! We had planned to drive back through Chicken, Alaska and Dawson City – destination of the 1898 gold rush stampede but the road past Chicken to Dawson City was washed out by mud slides and closed “indefinitely”. So, instead, we took a side trip to Chicken - we just had to see it. It’s a quirky little gold rush town where people are still prospecting for gold.  It’s 66 miles off the main highway and there’s no water, electricity or phones in Chicken – the summer population is 40 and in the winter it drops to 15! It was named Chicken because the miners who lived there couldn’t spell Ptarmigan which is the name of the state bird and the name they wanted to use for the town. We were tempted to stay in Chicken and prospect for gold ourselves with the price of gold now but winters on its way and we're headed south!

 

 

Our campsite on our way south…..a sunset over the Kenworth truck that was next to where we were parked! Oh how we wish for the campsite at Deep Creek with the view of the volcanoes and the ocean lapping at Rose’s tires!!

Our Alaska adventure is sadly coming to an end , we can’t believe we’ve been up here almost 3 months! We have one more stop in Skagway and then we travel almost 1,800 miles through Canada to get back to the “lower 48” where we plan to visit a few more national parks before we “high tail it” home!

Highlights of Fairbanks:

• Trip to the Arctic Circle

• Getting together with Joni and Rod again

• Panning for gold – we got $44 worth. At least it paid for our tour of the goldmine that day!

Click on the arrow to see a prospector wanna be panning for gold!

• Riverboat trip on an old sternwheeler. We saw Susan Butcher's sled dogs and a recreation of an old Athabascan indian village

Click on the arrow to see Susan Butcher's sled dogs in action

• Trip to North Pole Alaska to ask Santa to be extra special to our granddaughters Emmy and Lyla

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  Picking high bush cranberries on the way to Chena Hot Springs

Next stop Whitehorse, Yukon Territory and Skagway Alaska!

The mountain was out!!!!

We spent 9 days around the area of Mt McKinley – 3 days in Denali State Park and Talkeetna and 6 days in the national park. On our 5th day the clouds finally parted and the mountain was out in all it’s glory at 10:30 in the evening – what a beautiful sight! It towers over all of the other mountains in the Alaska range. It is 20,320 feet high. 18,000 people have attempted to climb the mountain – 60% succeed. 1% die trying. On the average it takes 2-3 weeks to climb the mountain. In the early 1900’s it took 3-6 months and sometimes longer than a year. 1,200 climbers attempt to climb the mountain each year.

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed at a campground in the national park for 6 nights and attended the campfire programs each night, guided ranger hikes, several hikes on our own and took a shuttle bus 85 miles into the park to wonder lake. The shuttle bus is one of the best ways to see the wildlife and we saw quite a lot – grizzly bears, moose, caribou, dall sheep, fox and arctic ground squirrels. The grizzly bears were busy eating the berries that ripen this time of year. There are signs of fall everywhere and it’s just the start of August –leaves are turning colors and the bears are eating berries all day long putting on weight for the long winter. They eat 200,000 berries a day – it doesn’t seem possible to eat that much in one day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Highlights:

 

• Campfire programs each night and hikes in the park

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Seeing

• Seeing Mt McKinley

   

Wildlife in Denali National Park

 

 

 

Click on the arrow to see the grizzly bear

Click on the arrow to see the BIG caribou running toward the bus!

Click on the arrow to see the dall sheep drinking from the river

 

 

 

Click on the arrow to see the trumpeter swan eating grass in the lake

 

 

 

Next stop: Fairbanks and the Arctic Circle!

 

Sea otters, whales and galciers in Seward!

Seward is our last stop on the Kenai peninsula. Seward was one of our favorite stops when we visited Alaska 23 years ago as a family with our son Drew. It was fun to think back on that magical trip as a family – our first time to Alaska – and first time to see glaciers, icebergs, eagles, grizzly bears, moose, caribou and all of the other special things about Alaska! One of the glaciers we had hiked to in Seward 23 years ago has retreated over a third of a mile in 23 years! It was amazing how different it looked!

We were lucky enough to get another campsite right on the sea! It has a great view of Resurrection Bay, surrounded by snow capped mountains – it is so pretty we decided to stay a week instead of just 4 nights! We saw sea otters, seals and dall porpoise swimming right by our campsite every day! What a thrill it was to watch the sea otters diving for sea urchins and starfish right in front of our campsite!

Klick on the arrow to see the video of the sea otters!

We also were fortunate that Beth and Dick - our new friends we met in Homer- joined us at the campground for a few days. They invited us over for a delicious fresh caught halibut dinner! What a delight to see them again!!

Our campground was at mile 0 of the Iditarod Trail. Molly was so inspired by the story of the Iditarod and how the dogs helped deliver medicine to children in Nome that she has decided to train to be a sled dog! She practiced running in the park every day! Molly is also practicing her driving skills so she can help with the driving in Rose on the way back home. We still have 6,000 miles to go before we get back home!

Click on the arrow to see Molly practicing for the Iditarod race!

Highlights:

• Seeing Exit glacier again – 23 years later

• An 8 mile hike to the Harding Icefield - a black bear along the trail, marmots and a fantastic view of the Icefield

Click on the arrow to see the video of the balck bear we "met" on the trail!

Click on the arrow to see the video of the marmot on the Ice fields Trail

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  Boat trip to the Kenai Fjord National Park – whales, puffins, sea otters, sea lions and beautiful scenery

Click on the arrow to see the video of the humpback whale!

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  Camping right on Resurrection Bay

Click on the arrow to see the video of the sea otters from our campsite!

Next stop: Denali State Park and Denali National Park

Close encounters of the bear kind.....

But first we had four beautiful sunshiny days in a row in Homer

It was a quick 35 mile drive down to Homer from Deep Creek Beach. We got there mid morning hoping to improve our chances of getting an oceanfront campsite on the Homer Spit with views of the surrounding  snow capped mountains – and we did! The Homer Spit juts out 4 miles into Kachemak Bay – it’s a thin sliver of land where all of the fishing charters are located along with some restaurants, bars and shops.  The added bonus was 4 straight days of blue sky and sunshine – a rare occurrence in Alaska this summer…. We’ve had some nice days but rarely even 2 in a row – so four straight days of sunny, warmer weather was a real treat!!!!  We even had our jackets off during the day and wore short sleeve shirts – wow! We don't expect those of you who are enduring the heat and humidity to give us one smidgen of sympathy!

 Highlights of Homer: 

• Camping on the Homer Spit – what a fun place to be – fishing, sea otters, seals, eagles

• Boat ride through Kachemak Bay to Seldovia – lovely scenery on the boat ride plus whales, mama sea otter with her baby, puffins, seals. Seldovia is a quaint old Russian Village only accessible by boat and plane. 

• Hike through the lupine along Kachemak Bay

• Seeing a mama moose and 2 babies at Anchor Point – it’s the western most road in North America

Click on the arrow to see the video of the mama moose and TWO babies!
• Campfires in the evenings with our new friends and campground neighbors - Beth and Dick 

• Islands and Oceans Interpretive Center – learned a lot about the natural history of the Aleutian Islands and hiking trails down by the sea where we saw two eagles performing a mating dance!

Click on the arrow to see the two eagles mating dance

A close encounter of the bear kind – grizzly that is……

After 5 nights in Homer we headed north a couple of hours drive to Cooper Landing – it’s where the Russian River flows into the Kenai and is where the term “combat fishing” was born. There are so many salmon spawning on these two rivers that fisherman line up shoulder to shoulder along the banks of the rivers.  They are so close to each other that many wear protective goggles for their eyes. The local clinic has a permanent sign out front advertising that they do “fish hook removals”!  We suspect they have gotten lots of practice removing all the hooks!

Fisherman we met on the Kenai River Trail - off on a 5 day fishing trip

We stayed in the National Forest at the Russian River Campground where many of the fishermen stay. The campground is between the Kenai and the Russian Rivers so there are loads of places to fish along the banks of the river and where there are fish there are bears and eagles nearby….. The campground has bear warnings posted all around and also requires each camper to sign a form acknowledging proper storage of food to avoid attracting bears.

After we got  Rose set up we took a hike with Molly on a trail down to the Kenai River armed with our trusty “bear” whistle around my neck just in case we saw a bear  “up close and personal” - hoping we wouldn’t get that close to a bear. We didn’t get very far on the trail before we encountered a grizzly bear hiking right toward us – about 30 feet away!  I immediately forgot everything I’ve learned about bear avoidance and had visions of all three of us being the next meal for the hungry grizzly but luckily Gary kept his cool and said – “we need to back up and blow the whistle and you’ve got the whistle” .   Oh my gosh – I had forgotten about the whistle – so I blew it several times really loud and fortunately we found out that the bear didn’t like the sound of the whistle and ran into the woods.  Needless to say, our hike ended abruptly and we went back to the safety of the campground – or so we thought!

The next day we were at the campsite and a black bear came walking right by us – thank goodness we were all safe inside good ole’ Rose and could enjoy watching the bear as it ate berries in the campground. It’s hard to enjoy the wildlife when you’re afraid you’ll get eaten!

Highlights of Cooper Landing

• Not getting eaten by the grizzly bear – thank goodness it was just an adventure!

•  Float trip on the beautiful upper Kenai River – we saw 23 eagle nests  and beautiful scenery

• Watching the “combat” fishing  along the Kenai and Russian rivers and also watching the fisherman cross the Russian River on the “quirky” Russian River Ferry - it uses the fast flowing current to propel it across the river

Click on the arrow to see the video of the Russian River fisherman's ferry in action!

• Seeing a black bear in the campground from a safe distance in Rose

Next Stop is Seward – it’s the gateway to the Kenai Fjords National Park. We hope to snag another oceanfront campsite like we did at Deep Creek Beach and Homer. Could we possibly have 3 great campsites in a row?????