Fairbanks and beyond to Denali – The High One!

 

After our adventures in Tok and Chicken we got back on Alaska Highway 3 and headed towards Fairbanks.  Along the way we were able to view the mountains of the Alaskan Range and were experienced enough now to discern the difference between the areas that had permafrost and those that did not.  The trees and vegetation are extremely stunted in the permafrost areas.  Even after being here for over a month now we can’t get over how vast and scenic Alaska is!

When we got to the Fairbanks area, we settled into a room at Eielson Air Force Base.  Then off to visit a place called North Pole, Alaska.  This is a real place and the residents there promote it constantly.  It all started when a couple named Con and Nellie Miller arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1949.  Con became a merchant and fur buyer in the surrounding native villages.  He would put on an old red Santa suit each Christmas as he made his rounds and earned a bit of a celebrity status as Santa Claus in the eyes of the village children - the very first St. Nick any of them had ever seen.

After a few years, the Millers had decided to build their own trading post thirteen miles south of Fairbanks, in an area newly dubbed "North Pole".  Then one day, while Con was hard at work on the new store, a young native Alaskan boy recognized Con and said, "Hello, Santa Claus!  Are you building a new house?"  The thought stuck and the new store ended up being called the "Santa Claus House!"

Now many years after it started it is quite the tourist (trap) attraction and the entire town feeds off of it in many ways.  Quite a few of the businesses have adopted the North Pole theme and you will see gift shops, welding shops, light poles, homes and all sorts of other businesses decorated as if it was Christmas.  And if you make the trip to visit the real-life North Pole, it would be hard to miss seeing jolly old Santa Claus.  There are currently three white-whiskered men who don the big red suit and sit in the big Santa chair.  One of them being the president of the local chamber of commerce who even legally changed his name to Santa Claus.

Yes, boys and girls, the North Pole is not only real, but has the motto - "Where the spirit of Christmas lives year around.”  It is the home to the Santa Claus House where children's letters are received and promptly answered, candycane-striped street lights line Santa Claus Lane and St. Nicholas Drive, not to mention a 45-foot-tall Santa surrounded by fencing topped with barbed wire welcome the visitors.  It's safe to say the 2,200 residents of North Pole dream of sugar plum fairies and the coming tourist season on a nightly basis.

Fairbanks is not a large city by any means but is the largest in the interior region of Alaska with about 33,000 hearty souls.  One thing we found interesting here in Alaska is that they have boroughs rather than counties or parishes.  And being Alaska, they are big – the Denali Borough covers an area about the size of West Virginia.  I don’t believe that I would want to spend a winter here being just 120 miles from the Artic Circle – it would make North Dakota seem like the Banana Belt.   

The history of Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska, can be traced to the founding of a trading post on the south bank of the Chena River on August 26, 1901. It’s really like any small city in the states, only further north.  I couldn’t help but smile when I heard (multiple times, mind you) the local folks tell the tourists - “We are part of the United States.”  Then with a side look of disgust and a mumbled “dumbass” they would return to their work with a smile.

It turns out that Fairbanks has an antler arch similar to the one in Jackson, Wyoming.  Only this one is made from over 100 moose and caribou antlers rather than elk.  If you are ever in downtown Fairbanks along the Chena River you should check this out.  It is very Alaskana!

Also there are a number of other attractions in the downtown area with one being the SS Nenana.  It is a five-deck, western style river sternwheeler paddle ship.  You can wander through it at your leisure and check out all the interesting stories throughout.  It is 237 feet long and 42 feet wide and she was rated for loads of 1,000 tons.  I kind of fell for the name Nenana.  Pronounced Ne-na-na, it is the name of the river that runs through Denali.  But the sternwheeler Nenana sits in a park now, for the locals to play on and the tourists to ogle – no more water for this old girl.

Soapy Smith’s Restaurant was an absolute hoot to visit in downtown – not only did you get a good lunch, you got a running vocal history lesson from the owner who just happened to also be a state legislator and son of the first governor of the state.  I really think he is practicing for a comedian act later in life.  Also he is one of the grandsons of ‘Wise’ Mike Stepovich (look this guy up!) who entered the Fairbanks mining district during the Alaska-Yukon gold rush and turned into an Alaskan version of George Hearst of the Comstock and Deadwood gold fields. 

All the public restrooms in the downtown area have the women and men signs dressed for the normal weather for Alaska and is something you don’t  see in the lower 48.  We thought it was kind of cute.

In the downtown park, where we wandered around, there is a memorial to the Women Air Force Service Pilots from World War II.  As I read the informational kiosks, I learned some things that I had only briefly heard about but never took the time to appreciate.  The female pilots of the WASP ended up numbering 1,074, each freeing up a male pilot for combat service and duties.  They flew over 60 million miles in every type of military aircraft.  

Thirty-eight WASP fliers lost their lives while serving during the war, all in accidents.  Eleven died in training and twenty-seven on active duty.  Because they were not considered military under the existing guidelines, a fallen WASP was sent home, at the families expense, without traditional military honors or a note of heroism.  The army, at that time, would not allow the U.S. flag to be placed on the coffin of a fallen WASP.

After reading this, even I was humbled! 

 

The further north we came the more native Alaskans we ran into.  The natives to the Fairbanks region are Athabascan Indians.  Though there was never a permanent Alaska Native settlement at the site of Fairbanks, the Athabascan Indians have used the area for thousands of years.  A bit longer than we have been in the area.

We made a stop one day at a small wildlife refuge in the area because we had heard there were quite the gathering of Sandhill Cranes there.  It is Alaska's largest game bird, and yes, they are hunted here – where they are protected in most other areas.  Residents of the Yukon Delta area have affectionately nicknamed it the “Sunday Turkey”.

They are one of the most comical birds we know of when doing their famous “mating dance”.  We saw a couple of the young males practicing while we were there – it is rather entertaining.   

 

While in Fairbanks I got caught up in the hype of a tour venue and “just had to go!”

“Hop aboard a narrow gauge train and stake your claim to gold on this two-hour tour of Gold Dredge Number 8.  Learn how 100,000 gold rushers fought the permafrost in their quest to get rich—then grab some gold of your own!”  They had me hook, line, and sinker!

We arrived at the location early - and being the first ones there had to wait around for a while, taking pictures of the Alaskan Pipeline and checking out the cute little train depot thinking that we were going to have a quaint little tour – then reality hit.  Tour bus after tour bus started arriving – cruise ship people!  They just kept coming!  Princess, Royal Caribbean, Holland America, and even Celebrity, just to name a few – we were trapped in cruise ship tourist hell.  So at the predesignated time we boarded our (not so little) narrow gauge train to the exclamations of “Where’s the coffee?”, “Where’s the donuts?”, and the often repeated, “When is Happy Hour?” with our thousand “new friends” who were happily snapping selfies with any inanimate or animate object within reach.  (I think Lee’s number of new friends are a bit high, but it was overwhelming!!)

It turns out that this entire operation is owned by Holland America Tours and is set up to dredge the gold out of the cruise ship tourists pockets – “There’s gold in them thar old people.”  (Yes, I have to admit we were two of them.)  Even with all the “new friends” we really did enjoy the tour of Gold Dredge #8 and the methods of hydraulic mining.  The dredge is quite the mechanical wonder.  It “walked” across the gold fields, scooping up pay dirt and mechanically panning it.  It had a huge conveyor belt of gargantuan metal scoops that carved out huge sections of earth as it pulled itself along at a snails pace.

This thing was never moved around to other sites and once it was assembled here – here is where it stayed.  In its entire lifetime it only moved 4.5 miles dredging gold as it went and produced a little over 7.5 million ounces of gold.

 

 

I had thought that this massive machine had been steam powered.  My first surprise came when our tour guide informed us that Gold Dredge #8, as well as the others in Alaska, were electric.  He then went into detail of how the gold company had built a power plant in the city of Fairbanks and had run a giant extension cord from which to run their dredges.  This same electric power plant is still in use in Fairbanks today, almost 100 years later.

These things used huge amounts of water and the gold companies had to build pump houses near the area to supply the dredge with the 6,000 gallons-per-minute it needed to operate – and this was on a 24/7 basis!

The dredge was built on top of a huge barge and didn’t have a propulsion system of its own.  Its only moving parts were the gang buckets (which helped drag it forward) in front of the barge and a large cement mixer-like a rotating steel drum containing thousands of quarter inch holes through which the water, sand, silt, and gold flowed through.  Also the conveyor belts, which then were used to carry out the worthless rock and debris.

 

Here is a photo inside the ship's wheelhouse with the recently certified and fully in control Dredge Master, Belinda.  She could use these controls to control the speed and depth of the gang buckets and the orientation of the barge.

 

 

 

 

 

 Included in the tour was a quick lesson in gold panning.  Here they had literally hundreds of troughs set up – gave you a little poke of “paydirt” and taught you how to separate the gold from the dirt.  I think we ended up with about $22 worth of real (planted) gold between the two of us.  If you happened to catch the fever while doing this the tour company would gladly sell you additional pokes at about $25 dollars each.

 

 

 

So with a short train ride back to the parking lot lined with multitudes of cruise line tour buses, we found our little rental car and headed back to Fairbanks to plan our next great experience.  The riverboat Discovery on the Chena River!

We’ve been on our share of boat rides at tourist spots around the country and were looking forward to this one when we found out about it.  If you are ever in the area this is one well thought out and well run experience.  It's a show along the river... not just a boat ride.  It's all about the culture and history of Alaska and what I would consider a must for a Fairbanks visit.

 

As we left the dock we saw one of Alaska's bush pilots taking off and landing right from the river right up close to the boat.  At a riverside fish camp, we learned how Alaska natives traditionally prepared salmon for smoking and drying. They even gave us a sample of Captain Jim's smoked salmon (tasted like fish!).  Further down the river we stopped by one of the Iditarod dog kennels, run by the family of the late Iditarod champion, Susan Butcher.  There we were treated to how the dogs are kept and trained - and watched a “training sled” being pulled by the dogs.  The training sled was an old stripped down ATV with the engine removed.

We stopped at, and were able to get a guided tour, at a Chena Indian Village where native Alaskan guides took us around their Athabascan village, while explaining how everything worked and about their heritage.  We did learn quite a lot during the tour – the native Alaskans providing the tours were all young people - college educated in the lower 48 - then came back home to earn a bit of money during the tourist season and tease any Texans they could identify.  They do seem to make quite the sport of that up here.

 

 We enjoyed Fairbanks but it was time to move on once again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main attraction for us during our stay in Alaska was Denali National Park and Preserve.  It encompasses over 6 million acres of Alaska’s interior wilderness with only one main (sometimes harrowing) road winding into its center.  The centerpiece of the park is 20,310 feet high Mount Denali (formally known as Mount McKinley), North America’s tallest peak.  With its terrain of tundra, spruce forest, mountains and glaciers, the park is home to an array of spectacular wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, moose, caribou and Dall sheep.

 You can only drive about 15 miles into the park before you need a special permit or you hop on one of the shuttle or tour buses.  We did drive that allowed stretch repeatedly while we were there and spotted quite the number of animals.

The pretty little guy above is a Ptarmigan that is just starting to change into his fall/winter colors.  In the winter time he is pure white.  We were walking one of the paths in the park and he let me walk right up to him and take this photo.

 

This bull caribou just happened to be grazing near a river as we were driving by.  There are lots of these guys and gals in the park and I’m sure we had seen at least 50 in various locations during our visit.  They are the wild version of reindeer - or put the other way Reindeer are the domesticated version of the Caribou. 

 

 

 A young female moose that came and visited one day.

 

We took one of the tour buses to get back further into the park and so glad that we did.  Once you get in as far into the park as they allow you to drive the road turns to narrow, curvy dirt with no guard rails.  The shuttle and tour buses go an additional 75 miles on these roads viewing the scenery and wildlife as they go.  We only went in about 50 miles or so more further on the tour bus than what we could drive.  This view is of Polychrome Canyon as we rode those narrow, curvy, no guardrail dirt roads.  Some pretty shear drops on those roads also.  But we did see lots of bear, caribou, Dall sheep and moose along the way.

 

One of the Grizzly Bears that we saw on the tour.  It kind of looks like he is answering that age old question of “Does a bear poop in the woods?” 

One of the things that caught my attention as we wandered some of the trails in the park was the amount of people who had bells tied into their shoes or clothes.  It is supposed to make enough noise so the bears don’t bother you.  We have been told by park rangers that this does not really work and the only purpose it serves is to identify which bear has been eating tourists by the number of bells in their scat (poop).  They act more like a dinner bell to the bears – the small chunky tourists are the bears favorite ones.

The soft jingle of bells as you walk through the forest does put you a bit into the Christmas spirit though.

 

On one of our drives into the park we saw a ranger putting up signs to warn the tourist of the upcoming rut for the moose population.  We didn’t think much of it until just a short distance down the road were two bull moose – not in the fighting spirit yet, just meandering along.  This is the guy that came out right in front of the car.  When he was standing on the pavement his hump had to have been close to 7 feet.  An up close and personal perspective is pretty awesome!

 

One thing that we have been battling since we arrived in Alaska has been the weather.  The clouds and rain have been ever-present, and for people that love the sunshine, this has been a bit tough.  We were told early on that our chances of seeing the entire Mount Denali were about 1 in 6.  Of the 5 weeks we have been here we only heard of one small time frame that the mountain was not covered in clouds and we were no where close.  But one of the last days here the mountain gave us just a little peek and a promise that it is not going anywhere.  I guess we will just have to come back.

We’re bank in Anchorage now doing a few last minute things before we end this Alaska adventure and head on back to the lower 48.  It has been cloudy, wet and cold but we have enjoyed it all and learned so much from this place called Alaska.

We hope you have enjoyed our little adventure and when you next hear from us it will be back to the RV life.

Home – will be - where we park it!

Lee & Linda 

 

On the Road (the only road) to Valdez

 

 

We left Glacier View one morning as the sun was promising to clear off the mountain fog.  We didn’t need a map this time, as in this part of Alaska there is just a couple of roads.  In all of the approximately 200 miles we traveled that day there was only one right hand turn to make. The scenery was outstanding as we made our way through the mountain passes - the drive was pleasant.

Then as we were driving along we saw these Grizzly Bear cubs playing along the road.  Of course we stopped (and stayed in the car!) knowing that mom might be around somewhere - and remembering what we had learned about grizzlies while we were in Jackson, Wyoming.

 

Even though these guys were cubs (or yearlings) they still went an easy 150–200 pounds.  So we kept our distance (somewhat - inside the car) and took these pictures with the windows down.  We kept a cautious eye out for mom (just in case) knowing that if she showed up and decided that she wanted to get at us she could probably open up our little car like a tuna can and just scoop us out.  Grizzlies are surprisingly fast.  Though they look big, heavy and lumbering, they can really move, hitting speeds up to 30 miles an hour, or possibly faster.  This was timed with the bear setting his own pace.  What they could do when protecting the babes or when “PO’d” might be entirely another matter.  We weren’t going to test it.

 

 

We never stopped to think that Alaska, being the largest state in the union, may have some rather large National Parks.  It does!  Wrangell-St. Elias fits the bill rather well being almost six times bigger than Yellowstone, about 13 million acres – and has four mountain ranges and nine of the 16 tallest peaks in the entire country – four of them over 16,000 feet.  And here I thought Colorado was incredible with its group of mountains over 14,000 feet.  This is only one of 23 National Parks/Refuges in Alaska – pretty awesome!

 We stopped by Wrangell-St. Elias visitor center on our way to Valdez and learned a little about the local culture and how they survived.  In the below photo is a fish wheel/trap that was used for salmon - it was placed in a river and it worked all by itself with the river current.  The little cabin looking thing was actually a winter food cache used to store all the dried/smoked salmon and keep it safe from the bears.  Last but not least is a short explanation on Moose Head Soup (Yum!). 

 

Moving on down the road we encountered the first (of many) kiosks explaining the infamous Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline.

Completed in 1977, this 48-inch oil pipeline is truly quite the engineering marvel.  It covers over 800 miles of frozen tundra, northern forest, 800 rivers and streams, three major earthquake faults, and three rugged mountain ranges. Wow!  It also has built into it more than 550 wildlife crossings for moose, caribou and other wildlife.  The Trans Alaska Pipeline System was built as a means of transporting crude oil from the oilfields at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope to the port in Valdez, where it is loaded aboard tankers for the journey to the lower 48 refineries.  This pipeline alone carries approximately 15 percent of the nation's total domestic oil production.

 

When we were able to walk up to it, the thought that was put into the building of this thing really impressed me.  If you look closely at this pic which is only one support structure, you can see the pivot and slide points to allow a huge range of motion in the event of land shifts, earthquakes, avalanches and stuff like that.  And that is only a small part of the technology that went into this thing – the scraper pigs are pretty awesome little gadgets that they use to keep the pipes clean and check for problems – remotely.

 

The Worthington Glacier, just a short distance above Valdez, is a good stop and another one of those accessible glaciers.  So we stopped, got out the hiking shoes, heavy coats and cameras and were off once again.

 

As far as we could tell we couldn’t walk on this glacier without a guide so we stayed on the trail. 

We found some pretty bizarre information at this glacier and if you would have asked prior to this trip I would have said you were tripping a bit.  Believe it or not, and contrary to what many people say, ice worms do really exist!  But, they do not give the glacier ice its blue color, nor do they grow to lengths of 50 feet like some people say.  Here is a little ditty by the poet, Robert Service, at the Annual Cordova Ice Worm Festival – yes, there really is an Ice Worm Festival!

“Their bellies were a bilious blue, their eyes a bulbous red, their backs were grey and gross were they, and hideous of head, and when with gusto and a fork the barman speared one out, it must of gone 4 inches from its tail tip to its snout.”

I suggest you look this one up – I did!

 

These guys are real and have a home in the glaciers of Alaska.  Over to the right is an ice worm hole in the Worthington Glacier and the guy above it is the bait.  I waited around a while as Linda scaled one of the upper paths but the worm never did come out to eat the guy.  Oh well – maybe next time.

 

 

 

 

We went over to the Valdez Museum and ran into this little object of attention.  It claims to be the jaws of an Ice Worm from the Valdez Glacier, caught in 1947 and had a length of 27 feet.  I guess this is Alaska’s version of a Jackalope.

In reality the above hole is a Moulin and part of the plumbing/lubrication system of a glacier.  These holes go all the way to the base of the glacier and the water that flows through it lubricates the base of the glacier as it slides across the rocks.  You do not want to go down these tubes as they can suddenly fill with water or collapse under the weight of the ice above.  The real ice worms?  Well the real ice worms are tiny little things that most people would have a hard time seeing without their glasses.

 

The Valdez harbor was first named by a Spanish explorer named Salvador Fildago in 1790.  Little attention was paid to it until the Alaskan gold rush - when a scam was developed by a few dishonest steamship companies to lure prospectors off the Klondike gold trail to use the Valdez Glacier trail – claiming that it was a better route to the Klondike gold fields.  The poor fools who believed them found out that this trail was twice as long and twice as steep and many of them died attempting the crossing.

A little more current history is from 1975 to 1977 when the Trans-Alaska pipeline was built to carry oil from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in northern Alaska to a terminal in Valdez, to this day oil is still loaded onto tanker ships for transport here.

Then in 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred as the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was leaving the terminal at Valdez full of oil.  The spill occurred at Bligh Reef, about 25 miles from Valdez.  Although the oil did not reach Valdez, it devastated much of the marine life in the surrounding area.

 

 

You don’t see any evidence from the 1964 earthquake and tsunami damage here anymore.  They tore down and burned what was left of the town after that and rebuilt the entire town 4 miles down the road.

 

 

 

The little town and port of Valdez is one of the most scenic ocean ports we have ever seen.  It is surrounded with lush green and snow capped mountains, water falls in every direction and a harbor full of boats and ships.  Unfortunately on the days we visited two and a half were nothing but grey and rain.  I just hope that we can make it back here some day – but not when there is an earthquake, avalanche, tsunami or oil spill!

 

 

 

As we were roaming the area and headed towards the salmon stream and hatchery, we ran into this little black bear stuffing himself on the salmon that the gulls hadn’t got to yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We worked our way down to a local salmon hatchery and were surprised to learn that we had arrived right in time for a major salmon run.  These were pink salmon or Humpy’s as the locals call them.  There were hundreds of thousands of them and all the gulls, eagles and bears were looking for that tasty salmon that didn’t try hard enough to get away.  The noise from the gulls was incredible and the smell even more so.

In places the salmon were so thick that you could not even see the bottom.

Watching these hundreds of thousands of fish make their way up the stream was quite the sight as was watching the process at the hatchery of stripping the eggs and milt for the unlucky ones that made the left when they should have turned right.  I guess it didn’t really matter though as they all die after spawning – no matter how the spawning takes place.

 

 

The area is loaded with waterfalls and this one caught my eye as we passed by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ever present eagles – this guy just doing his eagle thing as we were hiking one afternoon.

 

 

 

There is nothing better than a few glacial ice chunks to go with a single malt scotch – this one from the Valdez Glacier.  I had my mind set on a 20 year old scotch and a 1,000 year old chunk of ice.

Before I could sample that combo I found out that the ice from this glacier was only about 100 years old.  I guess I won’t ruin the scotch on that. 

 

 

After rain, rain, and more rain at Valdez we headed north to the little crossroads town called Tok.  There are two theories about how Tok got its name – one is that it was named after a husky pup and another is that it was named for the road construction camp in the 1940’s named Tokyo Camp and then shortened.  I really think that the forefather who named this place had a “vision” of the day that Alaska would pass legislation for use of recreational marijuana.  Well that day has come!  Having a toke in Tok may well become an advertising slogan there.

So after a short stay and an excellent dinner at Fast Eddy’s it was time to head up to the “Top of the World Highway” and visit the gold mining mecca of Chicken, Alaska.  At one time this was quite the gold mining area (in the summer anyway) and the road to it from Tok is a bit of an adventure all its own.  Our little rental made it up there and we made sure we picked up Linda’s geocache there as we wandered around looking at all the old mining equipment that has been left behind.

 

 

Chicken got its name in 1902 when the name Ptarmigan was suggested. (Because all the miners ate these little cousins of the quail).  The only problem was that nobody could agree on the correct spelling and didn’t want their town to be the laughing stock of Alaska.  So they named it Chicken! 

If you like Chicken jokes this is the place for you.

This is an old mining dredge that is actually four stories tall and a little over 100 feet long – it was just left here after it did its job.

Below is an assortment of old mining equipment with dozers, drills and my favorite, the water nozzles used for hydraulic mining.

 

 

We know quite a number of folks that have lived in Alaska and quite a few more that have visited.  They all have encouraged us to go and visit.  It took quite a few years before we took their advice but we are glad we did – enjoying the scenery!

 

 

 

 

So after Chicken we headed down the road once again on our Alaska adventure towards Fairbanks and all the sights awaiting us there.  One of the Alaskan natives along our route – she snorted at Linda as her picture was being taken.  She probably heard us talking about moose head soup.  What a cow!

 

The days are filled with things to see, things to do, and are flying by way too quickly.  It’s time to explore Fairbanks……… but we hope you have enjoyed our latest small sample of this place called Alaska.

Stay tuned for the further adventures of:

Lee & Linda in Alaska

Glaciers and Critters and Fjords – Oh My!

 

 

It figures!  The day we were scheduled to leave Homer was the nicest day we’ve had.  It was clear, blue, and calm.

This pair of eagles greeted me early in the morning as I stepped outside with my cup of coffee – no more than fifty feet away.  Gotta love sights like this.

 

 

 

Homer was fun, a bit on the touristy side, but fun.  A couple of the man-made sights you can see driving around town (besides all of the dead boats) include these over to the left.  The one with all the buoys is actually the front of a café converted house with these spilling out the door – a form of art I suppose.  It does catch the eye though.

 

 

 

 

 

From the Inn, the below was our view looking down Bishop Beach towards the Homer Spit and the mountains across the bay.

 

As we made it up the road a ways, Mt. Redoubt came into view again - and was looking so good I just had to take its picture and show it to all of you.

 

 

We made it up to the City of Kenai after a short drive from Homer.  Kenai is one of the original early Russian towns built on the Kenai Peninsula and still has a fairly strong Russian heritage.

 

One of the reasons we wanted to visit Kenai was to see the Russian Orthodox church there that we had read about.  The onion domes of these old Russian buildings fascinate me.

 

 

 

 

The Holy Assumption of Saint Mary Russian Orthodox Church was originally established in 1791 and the current building was built in 1894.  It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970 (one of 49 in Alaska) and is one of the oldest Orthodox Churches on mainland Alaska.  They are still active and provide weekly services.

As a whole, this church is considered among the top and most lasting icons of Russian Alaska in Alaska today.  Pretty awesome little bit of history. 

 

A short distance away from the church is the Chapel of St. Nicholas – this little chapel was built as a tribute to Igumen (Abbot) Nikolai, the first missionary in the Kenai area and was built over his grave.

 

 

 

 

 

While we were in Kenai we took the time to go out on the beach for a short walk.  One of the things that caught our attention is that this area has one of the biggest tides in the United States and when we looked over towards the harbor a lot of the boats were sitting on the sand. (It was low tide.)  Most were moored to buoys further out though.  Cute little sign on the beach with Mt. Redoubt in the background – what a sight!

As we headed towards Seward we were greeted with some of the most amazing scenery this country has to offer – I am so glad this day was sunny and mostly clear.  Below is a view near Moose Junction, almost to Seward.

 

 

We got into Seward and was overwhelmed with this view of the harbor with all the mountains and glaciers in the background.  Seward was named after Secretary of State William Seward who arranged for its purchase from the Russians for $7,200,000 (about two cents per acre).  If you compare it with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo where the U.S. took control of half of New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California and parts of Wyoming and Colorado the price worked out about the same – except the U.S. had to take Texas in the bargain (just pulling your strings David).  Even with all the oil in Texas and gold in California, Alaska has provided three times the oil, gold and minerals of all these states combined.  Pretty amazing place.

The historic Iditarod Trail started in Seward at Mile 0 of the Seward Highway or downtown – yes, Seward does have a downtown.  There are tourist trips with the sled dogs but during this time of year most of the sleds have wheels.

 

 

When we made our reservations for all of our stops in Alaska you just can’t guarantee that all the accommodations will be adequate or even nice.  We had booked a place in Seward called the Nauti Otter, not fancy at all, just a creaky old house with a few little “unique cabins” outside.  But it did have its own special Alaska charm.  We won’t be staying there again – ever! (Luckily it was only for two days.)

 

As we were walking along the harbor walk we ran into this little Sea Otter just floating along and munching on snacks that he gleaned off the bottom of the harbor.  Did you know that the Sea Otter can live its entire life without leaving the water.

Did you know that the Sea Otter is one of the few mammal species on earth to use a tool to help it hunt and feed.  It wedges a rock between its chest and the “armpit” of a foreleg and pounds shells against it to open them up. The Sea Otter also hammers rocks against strongly gripping Abalone shells to pry them off of rocks and feed on their tasty insides.  I can honestly say that I have seen them do this and it is pretty cool!

Did you know that to keep from drifting apart while they snooze, Sea Otters often sleep holding paws.  Cute!

  

 

 

The main reason we decided to come to Seward was the Kenai Fjords National Park.  Of those who have not heard of Kenai Fjords National Park it is a hard to get to park.  It has a dramatic landscape of ice, tidewater glaciers and deep sided fjords with stunning islands. The park is capped by the Harding Ice Field which feeds all of the glaciers (38 of them) and streams in the area.  We were able to see Grey Whales, Humpback Whales, Sea Otters, Puffins, Orcas, Dall Porpoises, Sea Lions, as well as many others – and that was in addition to the glaciers.  It was an extremely well run tour even though the seas were rough and the weather down right crappy.  There were quite a number of people hanging over the rail “chumming” or sitting in their chairs with a slightly green tint and their face in a bag.  We didn’t have any problems though.

 

 

These little guys are known as a Murre.  They look something like a penguin but can still fly – although their landings are really comical.  They are the deepest diving sea bird that can still fly and have been caught in crab pots down as far as 640 feet.  I said they could fly – I didn’t say they were smart.

 

 

  

 

These guys are Stellar Sea Lions and are the largest member of the “eared seal” family.  They can grow up to 11 feet long and weigh up to 2400 pounds.  From what we saw they like to fight and bite at each other – they have really big teeth!

 

 

 

 

We saw a lot of whales on the tour but only caught this one giving us a “fluke” shot as it dived towards the bottom.  Although we didn’t get many pics of the whales we did see ten to fifteen of them over the day but none of them gave us the full up out of the water breech we were hoping for. 

This guy was a Humpback but we also saw Grey Whales, Dall Porpoises and Orcas.

 

   

Here are a couple of Horned Puffins just hanging around the cliff sides.  More about them later.  The tour boat captain would bring the boat right next to the island cliff sides so we could take pictures.

 

 

 

It took us about an hour and a half to get to the glacier and as we got closer and closer the temps dropped, the wind picked up and the rain increased.  The last time I looked at the info screen on the boat it was 38 degrees near the face of the glacier – on the 4th of August!

When we got a bit closer to the glacier we started running into these little, but cool icebergs – this one was kind of eerie.

 

The main Glacier we went to see was the Aialik Glacier.

Aialik Glacier is the largest glacier on the Harding Ice Field and is known for its vivid blue coloration.  The size of this thing, as our captain maneuvered the boat in close, was almost intimidating as it popped and cracked and the air turned colder and colder.

 

 

Cows have calves - glaciers calve icebergs, which are chunks of ice that break off glaciers and fall into the water.  Ice breaks because of the forward motion of a glacier, which makes the end of the glacier unstable as it moves out over the water.  We were lucky enough to be right up close when this one decided to give birth to a bunch of little icebergs.

The explosive sound they make as they calve is a cross between a very close thunder clap and a cannon shot, then the wall of ice fell off the face of the glacier rumbling as it went – you could actually feel the vibrations through the air and the boat as the ice hit the water below and created a 4 to 6 foot wave that came toward the boat.  This was awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!  It was one of those experiences that made me say “Let’s do that again.”  But the glacier didn’t listen – it does its entirely own thing.

 

 

We happened on to a pod of Orcas (or Killer Whales) in what looks like they were having dinner on some poor victim.  These guys were another bunch that I just couldn’t get the camera up for fast enough.

 The tour ended with a stop at Fox Island and a full blown Prime Rib and Alaskan King Crab (legs only) dinner – damn the bad luck!  I was so looking forward to hot dogs and beans.

The next day we headed to the Alaska Sealife Center in Seward.  This is Alaska’s Public Aquarium and gave us the opportunity to get up close to some of these awesome animals. 

 

 

Close up of a male Stellar Seal – this one was a bit of a bully as he swam around and harassed all the smaller ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the many Sea Anemone at the Center.  They get a bit dramatic with the lighting at times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tufted Puffin – you can see the tufted part and how they got their names.  They only come to land when it’s time to nest and have one baby – then back out to sea.

The Horned Puffin – can dive down to 250 feet and again only comes to land when it’s time to nest.

The visit at the Alaska Sealife Center seemed to fly by but we still had another stop this day.

 

 

Exit Glacier - another glacier that comes from the Harding Ice Field in the Kenai Mountains.  It is one of Kenai Fjords National Park's major attractions and is accessible by car and a short walk.

It received its name because it served as the exit for the first recorded crossing of the Harding Ice Field in 1968 (by foot). 

 

 

 

All around the glacier there are streams like these rushing down the mountain sides.  There are hundreds of them and as you drive down the Alaskan roads we have covered so far they seem to be a constant companion.

The second two days of our stay at Seward we moved over to the Seward Military Resort. (Unfortunately we were not able to book all four days there when we made reservations so we could only get two.)  We will know better next time and plan further ahead.  Compared to our previous accommodations, this place was nice with a capital Nice and even had their own charter service for fishing and tours.  We watched the groups come in one evening with fish big enough to hang over all the sides of wheelbarrows as they brought them in for cleaning.  I couldn’t help but think that the fish I had caught in Homer were nothing but bait!

 

As with any place you visit, there comes a time to leave and it was time once again.  This time it was back up through Anchorage and over to an area called Glacier View – Yup! - another glacier.  (There does seem to be a few of those things around here.)

 

 

We moved on to our next stop - Majestic Valley Wilderness Lodge.  It is quite the place and after two days here I would recommend it to anyone traveling in this part of the country.  The lodge does double duty - in that in the winter time they use it as a heli-ski lodge and transport snow people up to unused slopes and snowboarding spots by helicopter.  The grounds are filled with flowers and the surrounding trails filled with blueberries ready for the picking – we did get a few of those.  Besides all that, the views were outstanding.

Just down the road is Matanuska Glacier.  It is one of Alaska's most accessible glaciers, a 27-mile long river of ice poking out of the Chugach Mountains that is visible for miles along the Glenn Highway. It creeps along at about one foot a day and when it melts it feeds the Matanuska River. 

The reason I mentioned that it was Alaska’s most accessible glacier is because we drove up to the trail head – paid our access fee and went hiking on a glacier.  I can’t honestly say that doing this was ever on my mind or one of my desires, but the opportunity presented itself and I have to admit it was really cool – literally – really cool!

 

 

 

As we were hiking around and watching every step we took we ran into a woman and child who were checking it out also.  All of a sudden there was a very low pitched crack and a small jolt under our feet.  You should have seen her eyes!  They were as big as dinner plates!  I told her it was the glacier cracking and settling and she seemed fine with that. (I really had no idea.)

So we wandered about for a while avoiding the crevasses, mud, and water taking pictures as we went. 

With this bit of our trip complete and a number of “firsts” for us out of the way, it’s on to Valdez - and perhaps other unknown adventures.

Since we haven’t seen a lot of sun these last few weeks (therefore no sunsets) I’ll have to leave you with a view of our current back yard – but that’s not bad, not bad at all.

 

Stay tuned for the further adventures of

Lee & Linda in Alaska