Day 40, Seward, Alaska

The road to Seward is on the Seward Highway.  Now that is a coincidence.  It is also Alaska’s only National Scenic Byway.  Seward is a seaport town of about 2600 population.  It is beautiful but again would be more so if the weather would cooperate.  It isn’t raining but the clouds are really low and sometime obstruct the view of the mountains but these aren’t too shabby.

Friday we are scheduled to take a wildlife cruise that is 120 miles long and includes parts of the Kenai Fjords National Park only accessible by water.  Tomorrow we plan on driving to the Exit Glacier which is about 7 or 8 miles outside of town.

Day 39, Chugach/Williwaw Campground

We drove over to Whittier, Alaska today.  To get to Whittier you have to drive through a 2 1/2 mile railroad tunnel.  They have traffic lights and it is only one way traffic going or coming back.  The trip over to Whittier is on the half hour and trip back from Whittier is on the hour.  That is if the train isn’t using the tunnel.  If the train is there it has the right away.  We were in the 10:30am crossing going into Whittier and the 12:00pm crossing coming back.  Whittier is a very different town.  It is a port town and appears to move a lot of freight.  I assume most of it goes to Anchorage but don’t know that for a fact.  The tunnel was built to move war supplies for the armed forces during WWII and has only been opened to auto traffic since 2000.  Before that all cars and trucks had to be loaded on a railroad car and go through the tunnel that way.  Most of the people in Whittier live in one building.  It is 17 stories tall.  The reason appears to be that there isn’t room for housing in the small area around the harbor.  The entire area is surrounded by mountains which is the reason there are no roads going to Whittier except through the tunnel.  There isn’t  much in Whittier and it wasn’t overly interesting but it probably would have been a lot prettier if the sun had been shining.  It costs $12 to use the tunnel to go into Whittier but nothing to come back.  This is a picture of the tunnel entrance.

This is coming out of the tunnel at Whittier.

There are several waterfalls on the mountains surrounding the city.

Mattie is making soup tonight and Twila is making a bread pudding.  Tomorrow we head for Seward, Alaska.  Seward is another port city.  We have now driven 4283 miles since leaving home.

Day 38, Chugach/Williwaw Campground

We left the Fred Meyers in Wasilla about 10am and drove to the Fred Meyers in Eagle River, Alaska to fuel up the vehicles.  I had driven 346 miles since leaving Fairbanks.  I put in 47.4 gallons at $3.529 a gallon but with a discount of 10 cents a gallon on the first 36.138 gallons the total was $164.75.  The discount came from having a Fred Meyers Card and spending a minimum of $100 in their stores.  I got 7.3 mpg this fill up and that includes running the motor home generator several hours.

The trip down the Cook Inlet south of Anchorage was really pretty and would have been even prettier if it hadn’t been so rainy and foggy.  Twila took several pictures through the front windshield.

The Chugach/Williwaw Campground is in the Chugach National Forest.  With our Golden Age Passport we were able to camp for half price which is really good since it is normally $18 a night with no water, no electric, and no sewer but what it is is beautiful.  This is the view from the motor home.

After we had settled in we drove down the road about a mile to the Portage Glacier Visitor Center.  There are several glaciers that drain into a lake at the center.

We then came back to camp and had a cookout.  Salmon and sausages cooked over a wood fire.  I know it’s roughing it but we’re tough and we can do it.

After supper we just had to make some “S’mores” using some strawberry flavored marshmallows we found at Fred Meyers.  Life is good.  We then played cards till bedtime.

We haven’t found the name of this flower but thought you might enjoy it.

Day 37, Still in Wasilla

We woke up this morning to steady rain.

It isn’t a hard rain but it doesn’t let up much.  We talked about driving on to Anchorage or just staying where we are.  We decided to stay here and then just by pass Anchorage and catch it when we come back up from the Kenai Peninsula.  Unless our plans change again we will camp tomorrow night at the Chugach/Williwaw State Park which is on the road to Whittier, Alaska.

Twila’s sister Alice ask us to show a schedule of where we are headed.  This is our tentative schedule and as you have no doubt noticed is subject to change.

6/28  Chugach/Williwaw State Park

6/30  Seward, Alaska

7/3  Fred Meyers, Soldotna, Alaska

7/5  Beehive, South of Happy Valley, Alaska

7/9  Back to Soldotna, Alaska

7/11  Fred Meyers, Anchorage, Alaska

7/13  Palmer, Alaska

7/14  Glennallen, Alaska

7/15  Valdez, Alaska

7/18  Gakona, Alaska

7/19  Rest Stop we used 6/

7/20  Rest Stop we used 6/

7/21  Haines, Alaska

Haines is where we get on the Alaska Ferry System.  We will load our RV on the ferry and unload at our next stop and stay for a few days.  This is not a tentative schedule since we had to book this towards the end of January.

7/25  Juneau, Alaska

7/29  Sitka, Alaska

8/2  Petersburg, Alaska

8/6  Wrangell, Alaska

8/9  Ketchikan, Alaska

8/14  Prince Rupert, BC, Canada

Day 36, Wasilla, Alaska

Today was a moving day.  We left Cantwell about 10:30am heading south on Highway 3.  We planned on going into Anchorage and spending the night in the parking lot of a Fred Meyers Store but decided to stop in Wasilla instead.  Wasilla is the home town of Sarah Palin.  We haven’t seen her yet.  Ha Ha I doubt she is even in Alaska right now with all her speeches at the Tea Party Rally's.  We did stop at Talkeetna, Alaska on the way down.  This is the staging town for people that attempt to climb Mt McKinley.  It’s just a tourist town with tours to fly over the mountain and rides up river on air boats.  We didn’t do either.  The trip down should have been beautiful but it was rainy with very low clouds and we couldn’t even see the mountains that were on both sides of the road.  Luckily we got to see some of it yesterday when we went gold panning.

As we drove into Wasilla, Twila noticed a chain saw carving store on the west side of the road.  After we got parked at Fred Meyers, Gary unhooked his trailer and we went back to the store in his truck.  These were some of the best chain saw carving I have seen.

There was also a pet wolf that liked women but was afraid of men.  They said a man scared it when it was a pup.

It let Twila pet it.

Tomorrow we will go on into Anchorage which is about 40 miles further.

Day 35, Cantwell, Alaska

Today was a sad day.  Not from anything that happened here in Alaska, but I will get into that at the end of the blog.

Today was another lazy day.  We didn’t plan anything for today.  We stayed in bed until we wanted to get up and then set around the motor home drinking coffee.  Later Gary wanted to go to a stream he remembered from when he and Mattie were in Alaska about 15 years ago.  We never did find that stream but we did see one we could get off the road and park next to.  We got out our gold pans and decided to see if we could find a little color.  I know everyone has heard of fool’s gold.  Well guess what?  I found out why they call it fool’s gold.  The first shovel full I started cleaning with the water from the stream was alive with shiny glittering gold.  I really thought it was the real stuff.  My first clue should have been that the stream was right next to the highway and we didn’t have to get in line to get to the stream.  The clincher was that it stayed on top of the sand and mud instead of going to the bottom.  The last thing was it would break up under your finger but it made a fool of me for a little while.  No money but fun anyway.

Gary made his Salmon chowder this evening.  Really good.  We brought some cherry pies we got at Sam’s in Fairbanks with some vanilla ice cream.  After supper we played “George” until about 10:30pm and then went to bed.

Now for the sad part.  We got word that a really good friend, a member of our Good Sam Chapter in Oklahoma had passed away.  We knew he was in the hospital and not doing well.  John Sexton was his name.  John had been fighting cancer for several years and his heart was only operating at about 15% of normal function.  John and his wife Mary were one of several members of our chapter that spent the winter in Aransas Pass, Texas.  All of us had come to love John and Mary.  John kept us laughing most of the time with his dry wit and humor.  We’re going to miss you buddy.  John, when you get everything organized up there be sure and save me a parking place for my RV.

This is a picture of John and Mary at a cook out that we had last winter in Aransas Pass, Texas.

Day 34, Denali National Park

I won’t have a lot to say tonight, most will just be pictures.  That is the only way to show Denali.  Today was not a good day to see the mountain.  It was covered with clouds most of the day, however when I got home and looked at the pictures on the larger screen of the computer I got a wonderful surprise.  One picture I took that I thought was just clouds wasn’t.  I am going to start off with the pictures of the mountain even though we were the closest to it just before we turned around and started back.  The first picture is a picture of a picture.  I just wanted you to see what the mountain would look like on a clear day.

Yes folks those are pretty big mountains in the front but they “ain’t nothin” compared to what is behind them.  This picture shows the heights of the mountains.

Now for the surprise I got.

If you look close you will see this isn’t all clouds, the mountain is peeking through.  I just wish we could have seen it in all it’s glory.  Oh well, maybe another day.  The second thing the Park is about is wildlife and we got to see quite a bit.  Our bus driver said we had an exceptional day and not to tell everyone to expect the same.  Oh, I hadn’t told you yet but you can only drive a car into the park 13 miles.  You have to buy a ticket to ride a bus into the rest of the park.  The road goes in a total of 90 miles and they have different priced tickets depending on how far you go in.  We went in 66 miles to the Eielson Visitor Center.  This was an eight hour tour and cost $30.75 each.  The first 1 1/2 hours I was very disappointed.  It wasn’t exceptionally pretty, but of course you get spoiled in a hurry up here, and there wasn’t any wildlife, but before the day was over that changed.  We saw lot of beautiful country.

Lots of Dall Sheep.

Should I put this one under sheep or beautiful scenery?

Oh, did I mention the bears and the moose.  I didn’t even take pictures of the caribou after our trip north.

That last picture is of 3 bears sleeping on a section of snow that hasn’t melted.

There is one more thing and then I will quit.  At the Eielson Visitor Center they had a quilt on display that beats anything I have ever seen in a quilt.  Each piece started out as white cloth and was painted, dyed, or drawn to make a picture of the mountain.

Day 33, Cantwell, Alaska

We are now parked for 3 days at Cantwell RV Park with 30 amp electric and water.  No sewer hookup, just a dump station.  Price?  $27.45 per night including tax and our Good Sam Discount.  It has real narrow parking places and they are not very level.

Now the good part, it is really pretty scenery.

We stopped at Denali National Park on the way over here and bought our tickets for a tour into the park.  You can only drive a short way into the park in your own vehicle.  If you go further you have to ride their buses.  We decided to take a 8 hour roundtrip tomorrow morning which was $30.75 each.  The tour starts at 8:30am and it is about 30 minutes back to the park from here so we will be getting up earlier than usual.

Day 32, Rest Stop 5

We thought you might get a kick out of seeing the electrical plugin that they have in the employee parking lot here at Fred Meyers.

In the Winter they have to plug their vehicles in to keep them warm enough to start after they have been working all day.

We left the parking lot at Fred Meyers in Fairbanks and leisurely headed towards Denali National Park.  Our intent was to find a place to pull off and park for the night close to the town of Healy, Alaska.  We ended up in a pull out next to Panguingue Creek on Highway 3.  We are only about 17 miles from the entrance to Denali.  We plan on stopping at the park visitor’s center tomorrow to schedule when we can get on their bus to go into the park and then we will drive on down to Cantwell RV Park at Cantwell, Alaska and set up camp for 3 days.

On the way down here we stopped at the town of Nenana and had lunch at the Roughwood Cafe.  Not the best but still good food.

Nenana has one claim to fame.  They have what is called the Ice Classic every spring.  The Ice Classic is guessing when the ice will break on the river.  It is $2.50 a guess and whoever gets the closest wins 48% of the pot.  The rest goes to the town.  They put a tripod on the ice with a line attached to a clock.  When the ice breaks, the tripod falls into the river and the line stops the clock.  The next picture shows how much was won this spring.

This an actual tripod that was used in the past.

This is where the clock stays.  It overlooks the river.

It is a neat little town.  I hope Twila got some luck rubbing this Sourdough’s head.

Day 31, Fairbanks, Fred Meyers Store

Twila and Mattie did laundry this morning and we left about 11am heading for Fairbanks.  It is only about 7 miles to the Fred Meyers Store on Old Steese Highway.  We filled up with Diesel when we got here so we will be good to go in the morning.  The plans are to head for Denali National Park.  I put in 95.8 gallons of diesel and we’ve driven 713 miles since we left Skagway which means we got 7.44 mpg.  The price was $3.549 per gallon or a total of $340.  Sometimes it’s good to have a 150 gallon tank.

As porkie Pig says, TTThat all FFFolks.

Day 30, Back at the Motor Home

Well we made it back.  We saw a black bear today.  He or she was about half grown.  I managed to get one quick picture of it but it was about 100 feet away and I didn’t have time to zoom in closer.

 

  We left Wiseman a little after 9am and drove and drove and drove.  We were all a little tired and cranky by the time we got back around 7 pm.  After unloading the truck Gary and I washed it.  It was really dirty after 4 days on the haul road.  They were having a Summer Solstice party in Fairbanks this evening and we intended to participate, but we called that off and just stayed in and rested.

We will spend the night here and then plan on moving back to the Fred Meyers Store in Fairbanks in the morning.  We will just loaf and try to rest up before we head out for Denali National Park.

Day 29, Back at Wiseman

We left Deadhorse about 11am heading back down the same road we came up on.  We stopped by the local general store in Deadhorse before we left.  It had a NAPA/Hardware store downstairs with the post office and the general store upstairs.

 

  We all got a Tee shirt of course and then we went back to see the Musk Oxen again.  Unfortunately they weren’t as close to the road as they were yesterday.

That’s a baby in the front of the picture.

The weather was nice and sunny until we got to Atigun Pass again and then we ran into rain and fog again.  I don’t know if this is the way it always is or if it was just like this the 2 days we went through.  We got to see the Caribou again.  They are slowly moving further North.  The only other wildlife we saw was one female Moose and she was really deep in the willows so we couldn’t get a picture of her either.

We just had a sandwich in the kitchen at the motel in Wiseman since we didn’t want to drive down to Coldfoot and then just have to drive back.

Day 28, Deadhorse, Alaska

We left Wiseman a little after 7am since we weren’t sure how long the last part of the trip would take and we were scheduled to take a tour of the oilfields at 5pm.  We hadn’t gone more than 5 to 10 miles when we saw a large Grizzly Bear but we didn’t see a whole lot of him or for very long.  He was about 2 blocks away when we first saw him and he immediately ran away from the road into the brush on the side of the road.  No Picture.  The drive up was uneventful for the most part.  Pretty country but lots of driving.  We passed by the last Spruce Tree going North on the highway and wouldn’t you know it, someone had killed it by trying to chop it down.

We went through Atigun Pass which is the highest mountain pass in Alaska and one of the places that they talk about a lot on TV on the Ice Road Truckers.

 

The weather changed after we went over Atigun Pass.  It started raining and got really foggy in a lot of the areas.  This reduced the speed to about 35 mph most of the time.  The terrain also changed from small trees to tundra.  It looked a lot like Montana but the green was scrub brush instead of grass.  We followed a motorcycle for a while in the fog.  We were sure we were more comfortable than he was. 

Again no wildlife until we were about 50 miles from Deadhorse and then all of a sudden Caribou everywhere.  We saw somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 within 1/4 of a mile from the road.  This went on for about 20 miles and then there weren’t any.  We never tired of seeing them.

 

We got to Deadhorse and checked into the Hotel before 3pm.

The room wasn’t much different than the one at Wiseman but it did have a bathroom with the room and a TV and guess what??  AT&T had a cell signal.  One night, $190 and the tour of the oil fields was $45 each.  The tour was interesting.  The guide was an Alaska Native and he talked a lot about the land and the birds we saw.  It was a good thing we didn’t see a polar bear, as the guide told us it it was illegal to take a picture of the polar bears.  (its on the endangered species list and supposedly Congress has determined it can be harmed by taking its picture.) We went to the Arctic Ocean and Twila and Mattie put their hands in the water.  I couldn’t get Twila to look up as she was trying to keep from falling in the Ocean and freezing to death.

I took pictures.  It was 32F with a wind chill of 17F.  It didn’t take us long to see what we wanted to see.  On the way back we went by the small herd of Musk Oxen that were right in Deadhorse.  The guide said a Grizzly Bear killed a mother Musk Ox last week and we heard the baby had been flown to Anchorage to the Zoo.

We got back to the Hotel at 7pm and had supper.  It was a buffet.  It was good but not as good as Coldfoot.

We were surprised that in Deadhorse the employees have all the conveniences of home.  Lots of good food, electricity, running water, flush toilets, TV, cell service,etc. that a lot of areas south of there don’t have.