Whittier

I'm Whittier 

Another blue sky day! Truly amazing weather, they say!

Fabulous overnight road  stop beside a a very small lake that was actually just a slow flowing, widening of an emerald green glacier fed river. A sandy beach made it look alluring but the water could have sustained floating ice!

We were just a few miles from the 3 mile tunnel through a mountain range that separates Whittier from Anchorage, etc 

The town of Whittier was originally built as a "secret" backup harbour to Seward, in case of an attack from Japan. The military built the access tunnel. 

Now the town handles a bit of freight, but survives as one of the main ports for Princess Cruise lines. An enormous 10 story cruise ship was in port while we were there. Whittier is an unusual tourist town. Over 95% of the town lives in one enormous high rise that was built to house 1,000 military personnel during the war. It was built during the "Cold War"--a highly valued ice free port that could handle ships of any size.  Then it was  decommissioned by Washington after only 6 years of use and the city bought it to house its complete population!  Another military building of similar size was built nearby and now sits as an enormous empty relic.  

We took a cruise from Whittier for almost 4 hours out to see the incredible glaciers nearby, some of which"flow" right down to the ocean. Turquoise, calm ocean waters and majestic white peaks in all directions made it spectacular. To top it off, it was warm enough to watch from the ship deck, in the sea breezes. 

Whittier is in a unique climate situation. On the opposite side of the tunnel (to the west) the area receives similar snow fall to the Okanagan and about 50 inches of rain (less than Vancouver). 

On the east side of the tunnel, Whittier receives over 30 ft of snow (100 ft in the mountains) and over 20 FEET of rainfall. Having a 22 degree day with a blue sky like today is a rare occurrence !

PICS OF GLACIER TO OCEAN

PIC OF CUNNY ICEBERG

Since there is nowhere to stay in Whittier, we headed north of Anchorage where even at 8:00 at night the temperature was still 22.degrees C. and sunny!  Writing this at 11pm with no lights on!  Still very light outside.

Bye bye Anchorage-- Hello Homer

Bye bye Anchorage

After packing up in our downtown rv location we headed to the museum. 

I am sure anchorage has its issues with the ongoing recession up here, homelessness, and other issues for a city of 300,000. However it is a beautiful place with parts of it much like Vancouver with the surrounding mountains, ocean, ocean front bike path, and even a lagoon downtown. 

The Anchorage Museum is an arghitectual masterpiece. Exterior 5 story walls of lined mirrors cause illusionary reflections. 

Inside the 30 ft ceilings on the main floor, highlighted with corduroy like vertical strips of edge cut fir stop you in your tracks. The elevator has artistic doors and is the size of a large home's bedroom!

Amazing artwork fills small side rooms in each of the floors. Video screen presentations on the land and its people's  history catch your attention at every turn. One floor is an extention of Washington's Smithsonian library/ museum. Displays are beyond what any of us expected. 

Rain coat made from seal intestines

In addition to the museum section, there were several very large rooms with modern science exhibits for kids focussed on such things as light, gravity, volcanoes etc. 

This was the type of facility where a person could spend a couple of hours a day for a week and not see it all. 

Our destination for this day is Homer, Alaska. Part of the town is situated on a narrow spit of land extending several miles into the ocean. It is the second longest land spit on the continent. 

Glacier peaks actually make a 180 degree half circle around you beyond the green waters of the bay. 

Once again the weather, ocean and surrounding glacier peaks are postcard perfect. This is definitely a recreational fishing town, with hundreds of boats in a perfectly sheltered marina, and dozens of guide operators eyeing for your fishing dollar. 

I guess you might call it the California  of Alaska. 

High tide covers the sandy beach in front  of Frankie. Lots of drift wood in the grassy area just in front of RV's which we are allowed to use as firewood. 

Anchorage

 On to Anchorage

We exited from Denali on the west side. Suddenly we were surrounded on 3 sides by snow covered jagged peaks. In front of us and beside us--almost like there was no escape. Enormous puffey cumulous clouds and blue sky finished off this spectacular scene. With the Nanana river beside us, we headed the 3 hours to Anchorage.  

After an hour or so the river led us on a route through the mountains and before we new it we were in deciduous flatlands with a number of streams and rivers. 

Once in Anchorage we were again surrounded with snow covered peaks. 

2 beautiful sunny days and visits to the cultural centre and museum were real hits. 

The cultural Center focused on the 6 tribes of Alaska. The the wall map of Alaska  is enormous, making BC or Texas look small. Being separated by such long distances, and different climates, the indigenous people are very distinct in their languages, housing construction, food and social arrangements. Over 200 village/towns exist today that will never see road links. Bush pilots are essential and in some cases uce roads. 

The center of the cultural center itself was a spacious, beautiful building with many outside exhibits and small lake at the center.  

For an hour we watched as young First Nation Alaskans showed us some of the events in their Artic olympics, where competitors also come from Russia, Geenland, and Canada to compete. We were surprised that over 4 million people live in the northern Artic region. 

Here is an example of one event. They see how high they can spring up and kick a ball. 

Outside, one exhibit was scaled down versions of the homes of various tribes. 

The First Nations people of the Alutien islands built community homes underground as large as football fields to protect them from the incessant winds and cold humidity of this treeless isolated region. 

Other tribes had housing that ranged from smaller underground shelters for one clan to individual log homes. Housing forms varied depending on access to timber and weather conditions. 

One tribe was the Haida group who lived in south west Alaska. This region is more mild than most of Alaska and like our Haida Guia had their lands blessed with enormous trees because of the annual rainfall that reached 20 FEET or more. Like our Haida they built enormous long houses adorned with art and pole carvings. 

Even though we saw this ridiculous roadside iglo house, apparently igloos are a Canadian thing. 

Sunday at Denali.

Yesterday was spent Iaid back a bit and kicking around town and vicinity. The highlight was a visit to the sled dog show. 

It is illegal to use motorized vehicles in the backwoods of the park except for extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, in the winter season, the moving of supplies and equipment  must be done by dog team. 

Teams of up to 16 dogs can haul a sleigh behind them of as much as 800 to 1,000 lbs. 

The dogs are all Alaskan huskies. This breed is not recognized by the America Kennel club because it is such s complex mixture of other breeds such as Malmute, Samoyed, Siberian husky etc. No two dogs look the same and they are bred to be a load pulling dog, not a race sleigh pulling dog.

The strength of dogs is amazing. Alaskan huskies can only pull between 50 and 100 lbs each on average. However in Dawson city there was a legendary dog named Buck that had a record pull of 1,000 lbs for a city block. 

There was several dozen dogs that we could view and even pat some. They were very docile but once the head person told handlers to choose 6 or 8 dogs for the show, all the dogs went crazy, barking and jumping up and down with excitement. 

The selected dogs were harnessed up and a musher piloted them around a course at full speed. It was a sight!  They stopped I front of a viewing stand and we had a wonderful ranger presentation. 

Today at 9:30, and heading towards the heart of the mountain. Since it was somewhat cloudy, we did not have high hopes of actually seeing the mountain. Actually this is a rare occasion.  They say on approximately 50 days a year the mountain is visible. So I our chances of viewing are only 1 in 7. 

The trip takes a considerable length of time, about three and half hours one way. En route the mountain scenery is spectacular with numerous sightings of Caribou, moose, doll sheep, numerous birds, and even a grizzly bear.

Although he have similar spectacular mountain scenery in British Columbia, the trip certainly was worth while. Our bus driver also added a touch of humour as well as knowledge to our day. 

Here are a few of the many pictures we took. 

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Denali.

Denali National Park  (3,955 km)....

Fairbanks definitely wins the most populace mosquitos environment award. Although we really never got bit, they were everywhere. Quite the nuisance. 

10:00 a we are on the road to Denali. 

Landscape enroute was something to be desired. Many hills with swampy flatland between. It made the dullest parts of Saskatchewan look attractive. 

Denali however did not disappoint. Land of extremes. Extreme beauty; extreme remoteness, extreme remperatures ( with summers up to 30C. and winter down to -50C.); extreme tranquility; extreme expanse (covering an area of 6,000,000 acres--larger than out PEI) while at the same time hosting millions of national and international visitors. Extreme controversy as miners attempt to open up its untold wealth of minerals, and developers want to capitalize on development opportunities. ...and on and on. 

We felt blessed to be able to experience its vastness for the next 4 days. Inspite of being a land of extremes, it is home to 39 species of mammals and over 100 other species. 

Being fortunate to precede the crowded tourist season we took George for a quick drive to explore the small shops of touristy down town and checked out one of the enormous resorts perched up on a mountainside ledge that tested the nimbleness of George, and took our breath away  with the shear drops at each corner hairpin turn. 

Here is an  example of some of the road signs heading to this resort. 

The uniqueness of our location, of course pressured us to purchase far too many souvenirs from clothes to fridge magnates. 

Our campsite was at Rily Creek about 300 meters from one of the info centres where we purchased our bus tour pass of the 20,000+ foot mountain for Sunday--7 hours return for only $26!  

Next was the first ranger presentation of the year. It was on the life of the Lynx in the park. He was a very interesting, elderly, slow talking man from Pennsylvania, who like most Alaskans, originally came for a visit but never left. His slow demeaned, full moustache and short heavyset-somewhat overweight body resembled Yogi the bear and added to the effect!

We were lucky in the timing of our holiday as it enabled us to attend a number of first day events in the towns we passed through.  They were all getting ready for the beginning of the real tourist season commencing the long weekend  and in June. Another one week later might have enabled us to see a few more public buildings but we might have missed the good weather we have been experiencing. Leaving any earlier would have been a mistake as most places would not have been open. 

...back to our camp location and another skunking at crib by the women. 😟

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Fairbanks.

Fairbanks  (3,760 km )

We woke up this morning 5 minutes from the end of Top of the World Highway, where we will meet the American border in a few minutes. 

Not only is your latitude near the top of the world,but for a big part of this road you are on a gravel highway that runs alongthe top of rolling old eroded mountains and you can see forever in all directions. With snow covering many of the mountain tops, the view was forever awesome. Fortunately the road had been plowed sometime earlier in the month, but it was often very wet and muddy. This caused a thick layer of clay based mud to build up all over the under carriage and sides of Frankie and George, and our poor bikes that were clinging to the bike rack behind George. 😟

Once through the boarder our first stop was Chicken, Alaska--the smallest of towns, with a reported permanent population of less than 20. However it is a small center for seasonal gold mining. It also has a very unique gift shop with the most "chickened" theme in the world. Over half of the items are branded with their chicken logo. But also, they sell everything from sluice boxes to candy in an enormous log structure with taxidermied animals strategical located for effect. 

For many it is also a gas and snack shop with an ancient dredge behind along a small stream with mining artifacts neatly scattered everywhere. 

The highway was a mixture of good pavement and 100 plus yard patch sections for about  hundred kilometres. It was interesting to see all modes of transportation heading out to their claims. One was an old sizeable motorhome pulling a trailer with an excavator on it. Another was a large converted Greyhound type vehicle with a large insulated stove pipe extending 3 ft above the middle of the unit. Many trucks were pulling large cargo trailers presumably with equipment in them. 

Not much attention seems to be given to ecological stream management, as you see rubber and steel track machines tracking through streams and digging up the gravel. 

First order of the day in Fairbanks was to find a car wash and try to clean up our vehicles in places there was over one inch of clay based sandy mud. Even the pressure washer had a job cutting through it. Our bikes needed special attention to even get the wheels rotating. With his long trailer, Terry went through over $40US. 

After finishing his cleanup, Terry found the car wash exit too small for his long trailer.  Manoeuvring in every direction could not earn him and Julie, myself and ago od Samaritan that precious inch to get the back of his trailer by that steel gate post. I thought we might have to unhook and get little George to bail us out of this "sticky wicket" with his short wheel base. However some coordinated signalling and driving precision by Terry saved the day and we inched backward out of this dicy delema. 

Once in Fairbanks we settled in at the Tanana valley RV stop down town. This city of 32,000 services another 100,000 in its vicinity. It's reason for being seems to still be gold, plus tourism, fishing, hunting, government, and military. A reasonably large squad ran of transport, bomber and fighter planes service the area's national security. 

A replica of a pioneer village in the center of town seems to be a cash cow for the city. A grad was taking place  when we were there. Big events are almost a daily occasion with weddings, meetings, festivals etc. With workers in authentic clothing of the era at prime tourist months, it must be a fine spectacle. 

Even though the location is scripted, most of the building are authentic and have been moved to the site by a heritage society. 100 years ago, the town residences and buildings (including the church) were all constructed out of logs, as are many new homes today

Fairbanks will not be remembered as a highlight of our trip, it was with the effort of using George to tour the down town, pioneer village and get a flavour of the town. 

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Bye bye Dawson City.

Almost ready to hit the road for Chicken, Alaska.  

We had one last bit of excitement last night. Terry and Julie and I went to the Downtown hotel. In this hotel is located the sourdough bar.

This place is famous for its sour toe drink cocktail. It is a right of passage for those visiting Dawson. 

While reciting an ode to the north, Captain Terry drops A real human's severed off big toe (toe nail and all) into your big shot glass of liquor. You have to down the drink with the tow touching touching your lips. Once you have drunk your glass, the tow was removed by Captain Terry and he then squeezes it to get every last ounce of liquor from the toe and you must what he calls, "drink the toe jam". Once completed you are given documentation that you are a member in good standing of the Sourtoe Club. I was member #63,968!  Terry also went through the initiation ritual. 

We were officially witnessed by a group (mostly young women) who were taking a swimming pool administration course during the day and becoming club members by night!

Another quiet evening!!

For today, it is off to the American border, via Road to the Top of the World--60 miles of gravel!

Before getting on the highway we have to cross the Yukon river on that small 2 car wide and 4 car long ferry. This is a little daunting for us. Yesterday we crossed over to explore and the gravel entry ramp was far from flat. We are hoping Frankie does not let us down by hanging up on her undercarriage. Terry has the same concerns.

PICS. From our camera

Well we made it across the ferry in one piece!

The next hundred km to the US border was like no other road we have ever travelled. The Top of the World Highway is truly "Top of the World". A constant climb for at least 40 km puts you above the tree line and snow line. Last night 2 inches of snow fell at the top!  Gravel and mud almost all the way. 

Even though it was cloudy and hazy in places, the views from the median of the high but level peaks allowed you to look down to valleys on either side that were 1,000 ft drops almost straight down. 

It was amazing to watch the serpent like "highway" snake its way ahead of you-- a 100 km drive that resulted in us seeing  only 4 cars on the road 

Alone with a couple of other 😃RV's, we made camp only a half mile from  the US border. It was due to open for the first day of its season tomorrow at 9:00. What an awe inspiring location to spend the evening when darkness never really sets in.