Day 39 Haines Junction, YT 5523

A beautiful drive alongside the St Elias Mountains.  The road was rough but the views were superb.

More of todays view.  These mountains are in the Kluane National Park and Preserve.  This is the largest non-polar ice field in North America.  The ice is more than 2200 feet thick.

View from the trailer.  We are at Kluane RV park.  The park is stark but this place has a million dollar view.  Today is the first day in a while that I have felt like sitting outside.  I am enjoying the view while I blog.  No sweater or shoes in spite of being so close to these snowy mountains.

After lunch we took in the Da Ku Cultural Center, First Nations cultural exhibits.  This beading is phenomenal. 

The First Nations people don't let anything go to waste.  This bag is decorated with colored porcupine quills.  They are cut into small pieces and used in the place of beads.

Tok, AK to Beaver Creek, YT

Today our trip was about 150 miles, took about 5 hours.  This is why Gary planned a short mileage day.

I thought we were going to get lost in some of the potholes.  There is a bicycle in the back of the pilot truck.  The bike rider got to ride thru miles of construction, a nice break I am sure.

Lots of dust unless they sprayed with a water truck, then it was mud.  Tomorrow will be more of the same on the way to Haines Junction. 

Tok, Alaska

We had beautiful views of the Wrangell Mountains as we drove today.  This is the Copper River, yes the one with wonderful Copper river salmon but the catching is done miles downstream from here. 

Tonight Garnet and I went to hear a musher talk about his experiences.  It was very
interesting.  Here is Garnet with Walter Payton.  He is a very friendly dog and enjoyed
the attention.  Earlier in the day we got to see 2 puppies that are for sale.  Sadly,
we had to leave them for someone else but they were sure cute.

I am trying to learn to use the panoramic setting on my camera.  The left is Mt Sanford, the right is Mt Drum.  In the center, you have to increase the size of the photo, is Mt Wrangell.  It is 14,163 feet but is the furthest away. 

Valdez to Glennallen 5078

It was starting to cloud up in the evening.  Gary happened to look in the right direction and noticed a rainbow.  As we watched, in amazement, it became a full rainbow, then brighter and brighter and then a double rainbow.  I wish we could have taken a photo of the vibrant color of the whole rainbow but we just couldn't get the color.  It is in our memory forever.  Garnet commented that it was our gift of the day.  Seems we are surprised by what we see or encounter every day.  God is gracious.  The rainbow was followed by rain all night and most of the next day.  Typical Valdez weather. 

View in 1 direction from our trailer.  There are mountains in every direction from Valdez. 

Today we had to leave beautiful Valdez.  Soon after we drove through Keystone Canyon.  There were beautiful waterfalls  Here is Horsetail Falls.  As you see the blue skies returned.

On to Bridal Vail falls.  Lots of water coming down from these mountains.


What is left of an avalanche.  There was ice on both sides of the road.  The river has carved out some of the ice. 

The pipeline near Valdez.  We hadn't seen the pipeline since Fairbanks.  Now it is near the terminal

Pump station 12.  This is the last pump station to get the oil over the last mountain pass and on its final leg to Valdez where it is put on ships to the lower 48.  We are on our way to the lower 48 too.  We will be traveling generally southeast these days, with the exception of a trip to Haines.  We should be back in Washington in about 2 weeks.  We are almost back to Canada where we will turn off our of cell phones and don't expect very good internet connection. 

Valdez

Valdez is a port town as well as fishing center.  These 3 photos show the mountains surrounding the town.  There are mountains with glaciers in every direction.  This is a beautiful place.  We have had blue sky and some clouds which is nice so that we can see the tops of the mountains.  They have rainy summers and much snow in the winter.  The green covered hillsides remind you of a rain forest except that the tops are covered in ice.

 We walked several docks today looking at both small and large boats.  Pleasure craft alongside commercial fishing boats.

At dinner tonight we were talking with our waitress who is a snowboarder.  We asked where she went to snowboard and she told us of 2 roads we had passed on the way here.  I mentioned that I didn't see any ski lifts.  Well, you need a friend with a snow machine who will take you up the mountain.  This truly is the last frontier.  Valdez is known for extreme snowboarding all without developed ski areas with lifts and groomed runs.


The 1964 earthquake decimated the town of Valdez.  The town was moved 4 miles  from the end of the sound.  This is at the old town site.  There isn't much left, but signs pointing to where a few buildings stood.

 

Back to the fish hatchery.  Still no bears but lots of sea lions.  This one has a fish.  It worked the fish around to were it swallowed it whole, head first.

 There were many hungry sea lions.  They eat well and are very big.

The thousands of pink salmon are all trying to get up the fish ladder to the hatchery.  They are swimming on top of each other several fish deep.   

Glennallen to Valdez

We had a wonderful day full of surprises.  Now that we are in the RV park I wanted to show you some of what we saw.  The internet is really slow and my photos didn't upload in order.  Since it took so long to upload, I don't want to start over so bare with me.
This photo is actually the last photo.  We went to the Solomon Gulch fish hatchery last evening.  Hundreds of pink salmon have returned there.  The draw was that people told us they saw bears there eating the fish.  We didn't see any bears, Ken was told the hatchery personnel shew them away.  We did see hundreds of salmon, sea gulls and some sea lions and sea otters.  The sea gulls would collect around the sea lions and sea otters to pick up any bits of leftover fish.

Here is the start of the day.  Well not actually, Amber, Lilly, Caleb and Grace face timed with us.  Cant get better than that.  After gassing up the truck, we started down the road.  Here is what I saw when I looked up.  Mt Drum in the Wrangell Mountains.  At the next pull over for a photo without the store in the photo the mountain was nearly covered in clouds.

Once we turned the corner we spent the rest of the day driving through the Chugach Mountains.  A view out our windshield.  It looked like this all day.

Here was the next surprise.  We expected to see glaciers but here is Worthington Glacier.  We decided to stop at the state recreation site.  Once there we saw people walking up to the toe of the left side of the glacier.  As you can guess, I was getting really excited.  I might actually get to touch the glacier.

Glaciers make really new dirt and so there isn't anything growing near them.  Here is a dwarf fireweed working to get a hold in the silt the glacier grinds up. 

Once again, out of order.  This is Valdez small boat harbor.   Look at the beautiful color water, thanks to those glaciers.

 I got to walk on the ice.

 Wanted to see what the silt felt and looked like.  Interesting stuff.  It is sticky, I still have some under my fingernails.

We made it to the glacier. 

 Here is what we saw when we turned around and looked the other way.  More magnificent mountains.

The Lowe river in the valley below  Something to be in awe of at every turn.  Today we are going back up the road we came in on to see the waterfalls and scenery we didn't stop for yesterday.  After the glacier walk we decided to keep moving to the RV park and drive back today for a closer look  Stay tuned for more photos of beautiful scenery. 

At checking the desk personnel told us to plan on a salmon fry for dinner.  The park owner had gotten pink salmon from a fishing boat in the morning.  His crew were filleting them as we parked.  We really enjoyed the perfectly cooked blackened salmon.  It was  a potluck dinner so I made a big potato salad for the 4 of us to share.  Had a great dinner.  People in their RV kitchens are very creative.

Back to the salmon hatchery.  The seagulls had built nests under the road bridge.  There were wires there to try to discourage the birds but they built their nests on top of the wires 

Another photo of the huge glacier.  One of the items on my bucket list, to finally touch a glacier.  Now to see a bull moose with his big, huge rack.  Then I can go home, or not. 

Anchorage to Glennallen 4760

We had a beautiful drive today.  Here is Matanuska Glacier with the Matanuska River below in the Chugash mountains.  We followed the river for most of the morning.  This view was from a 1 mile nature path.  A good time to stretch our legs.  Saw the mushroom along the way.   

Nelchina Glacier in the Chugach mountains.   This is from Eureka Summit, 3322 feet.  Highest point on the Glenn Highway.  We were driving in the river valleys that separate the Talkeetna mtns and the Chugach mtns.  Lots of ups and downs today.

Sheep Mountain. It is colored by gypsum and iron oxide.  The sheep eat the gypsum to replenish calcium in their diet, so the name of the mountain.  We hoped to see the sheep but they were not to be seen today.

Native Alaskan Cultural Center

Since we are in Alaska we decided we should learn about the native Alaskan culture.  This center is really well done. 

We had a tour guide who explained what we were looking at.  She had taken classes while in High School that are meant to teach the students about their heritage. 

We learned a bit about several different people groups.  Each color on the map was for a different group of people.

The group here shared songs and dancing.  They are eager for us to learn about their culture.  We spent most of the day looking at the displays and talking with the staff.  I finally got the courage to ask where the word eskimo fits in and if it is derogatory.  Most people don't object to it but some do.  They prefer to be referred to as native Alaskan.   Eskimo is a term given the people above the Arctic Circle who eat raw whale blubber by the Russians many years ago.

After our look around the center we, Garnet and I, took a dog sled ride.  Here we are loving 1 month old puppies.  They will grow up to be sled dogs.

Here we are with the 16 dog team and the cart we rode on.  No snow so we rode on tires.  The dogs don't care, they just love to run.  Once they recognize that the musher is going to give a ride they get really excited.  It gets quite noisy and they get rather rambunctious. 

 Here are the lead dogs once the ride and photographs are over.

Here is the mother of the puppies we were loving.  She has  5 puppies and doesn't like it when a stranger approaches her pen.  While we were loving her puppies she was very aware of where we were.  Our musher Phillip, is a musher in training.  His goal is to run the Iditarod.  He does shorter winter races.  We will have to watch for him in the future.