Alaska-Homer Day Two

June 29 Friday Up early-4:30am to get the guys to the fishing pier on the spit. Boat took off at 6am. They got back about 10am with 24 lbs of halibut. We are sending 16 lbs home to Angela for the freezer and holding back 8 lbs for us. Halibut for dinner tonight! Everyone had a good time on the boat, but were tired when they got back. Gage and Reid headed back to the spit though to arrange a hike for tomorrow. They will leave at 8am tomorrow in a water taxi to Tutka Bay for an 8 hour hike up a mountain, elevation about 3,200 ft. We spent the afternoon watching a movie and relaxing. The guys went to get our 8lbs of halibut which had been vacuumed packed in 1lb packages. We cooked 3 lbs for dinner-- absolutely delicious! 

Getting ready to leave the dock

One of the piers on Homer Spit

Headed out!

The fisherman

A good catch!

Scraps for the seagulls

Sea otters floating

Feasting on the catch of the day!

Alaska-Sterling Highway-Sterling

June 27 Wednesday Left Denali and drove down the Parks Highway towards Anchorage. Our next big stop is Homer, but this is quite a long drive so we planned to stop in Sterling for the night. The drive to Anchorage was a repeat path for all of us since this is where we had picked the boys up on the 23^rd. We made a stop at Walmart in Wasilla to pick up some necessities. Still didn't see any Palins. Once we got past Anchorage to Turnagain Arm we saw some new landscape. This is a beautiful drive with new views around every corner. We had been used to driving through and around mountains, now we were driving at sea level. It was a long drive before we stopped for the evening, but we all agreed we were much more comfortable riding in the RV than in that old bus in Denali! 

And another rock in our path!

Gage relaxing on the ride

Driving on the Turnagain Arm

Odd sight on our drive...helicopter transporting a plane

Alaska-Sterling Highway-Homer

June 28 Thursday Only had about a 3 hour drive to Homer today. When we reached Soldotna we made a stop at Sportsman's Warehouse to pick up new hiking boots for Gage & Reid. They are really looking forward to doing some hiking. Had a quick lunch at McDonald's and were on our way again. We planned a short stop in Ninilchik to see a Russian Orthodox Church that is 110 years old. It is still active. It has beautiful views of Cook Inlet. This view includes the “ring of fire”, the Aleutian Range volcanoes: Mt. Iliamna, Mt. Redoubt, Mt. Augustine (last erupted in 2006) and Mt. Spurr which last erupted March 22, 2009. 

Russian Orthodox Church at Ninilchik

View of volcanoes from church

  

View from our RV

We got to Homer about 3pm and checked into the Oceanview RV park just inside of the town. What a beautiful view we have from our RV. It is located on Kachemak Bay off the Pacific Ocean. It is a short walk to the beach, but it is much cooler than the Atlantic Ocean beaches we are used to. Temperatures are in the 50's here. 

In the Salty Dawg

We walked around the Homer Spit ...checked out the Salty Dawg and a few of the shops along the spit. We went to Inlet Charters to schedule a fishing charter for tomorrow. Gary, Gage and Reid will be leaving at 6am for a half day of halibut fishing. We had dinner at Captain Pattie's (not the Krusty Krab, Brooklyn!) Then back to the RV.... alarm set for 4:30am! Good night!

On the Homer Spit

Another view of Homer Spit

 

Alaska- Parks Highway - Denali

June 25 Monday Drove to Denali today. We decided to stop on the way at the North View which is at Denali State park. Gary & I had spent a night here on the way to Anchorage to pickup the boys. We had such beautiful weather that night and were able to take pictures of Mt. McKinley. However, this day was so overcast you could barely see the mountains. Made us realize how lucky we had been to see it the night we were here. And, so glad the boys had seen in on the plane tour.

We stopped at the visitor's center at Denali National Park to look over their displays and see if any ranger programs were being conducted. Luckily, we made it just in time to catch the last sled dog demonstration of the day. These are working sled dogs, not the racing ones. These dogs are in the park all winter working the rangers patrolling the park when it is full of snow. It was a short demo, but very informative and we were able to interact with some of the dogs at the end. Most were just out in the open and we could pet them. There were also some puppies but they were in a fenced area with the mother and weren't quite as accessible. 

 

We looked around the gift shop area which is outside of the park. There are many shops, condos, tour buses, etc. right on the Parks Highway just a ½ mile or so from the entrance to the park, It was very commercialized and we all felt that it was a very unnatural setting in the otherwise natural beauty of the area.

We decided to make this a short day and headed back to the RV.

Alaska – Denali Day Two

Removing a rock on the road before our bus passes

June 26 Tuesday Rainy day, but we had a bus tour of Denali scheduled for 9am. This is supposed to be a great chance to see a lot of the wildlife in the park. You ride on old buses 66 miles into the park. In your own private vehicle you can only go in 13 miles. We kept hoping the rain would stop and the skies would clear....no such luck! This is an 8 hour round trip ( 4 in, 4 out) on a dirt road similar to an Andes mountain pass. Our bus windows kept getting all muddy; we could barely see out. We had about 3 or 4 scheduled bathroom stops on the way in and the way out and each time our bus driver would clean the windows as best he could with a squeegee, but as soon as we started driving again it would cloud over. 

The boys making the best of the trip!

Mama and babies

We began to think we would never see any wildlife, but, finally about 3 ½ hours in we did see a mama grizzly and her two cubs! And, it was on our side of the bus!! She was leading her cubs down a path to cross a bridge right behind the bus so we got some good pictures. When we finally got to the Eileson Visitor Center – the end of the ride in, there was also another grizzly bear. But, that was it...a very long, disappointing day. If the weather had been nice I'm sure it would have been a completely different experience. It would have been possible to get off the bus, do some hiking and catch a different bus back, but the rain was miserable. At one point, it was even snowing! The boys did manage to quickly climb a hill at one stop though. They were such good sports.  

Still smiling!

At the end of the ride, we all were hungry and so we headed to the 49^th State Brewery, a restaurant Gary and I had visited when we were at Denali before the boys came. We all enjoyed a good dinner and had a good laugh over our ordeal of the day! 

Alaska- Talkeetna Day Two

"Climbing" Mt. McKinley

June 24 Sunday Overcast, drizzly day....thank goodness we did our Denali flight on Saturday which was an absolutely beautiful day! We are still talking about that adventure! We decided to spend the day checking out downtown Talkeetna. First on our agenda was a ranger interpretive talk. She lead us through a climb to Mt. McKinley. It always surprises us how informative and entertaining these talks are. We gathered around a relief map of Denali and a climber's rope was passed along the edge of the display for each of us to hang onto, simulating the tethering of climbers. We were divided into two teams and then led through an imaginary hike to see which side reached the summit first. We then went to another ranger station to watch a 17 minute film about the climb. After flying to the mountains, learning more about the details and preparation for the climb and watching the film, we realize what an incredible challenge it is.

We had lunch at the best pizza place in Talkeetna. Of course, it was the only pizza place in Talkeetna, but it was good. Gage and Reid had smoked salmon on theirs.  We shared pizza with Mr. Skunk and  I saw on Facebook that Brooklyn "shared" her Caboose ice cream with one of her chickens! 

For dessert we walked up the street to have a piece of the rhubarb, blueberry crisp topped with fresh whip cream. This is sold out of an Airstream trailer in town.  We had heard about it at the visitor's center the day before.  It was really delicious!

We shopped around the little gift shops that are in Talkeetna and then headed for the RV to have spiedies for dinner and settle in for the night. A rather calm day after our plane flight adventure the day before.  Driving to Denali tomorrow!

Alaska-Parks Highway- Talkeetna

June 23 Sunday continued: Woke up to a beautiful sunny morning! Gary called Sheldon Air to confirm our reservations on a flight over Denali. Our reservations were for Sunday, however, Sheldon Air said if we could be there today the weather would be perfect for the flight as rain was in the forecast for Sunday. So we gathered up everything and headed for Talkeetna. On the way, we saw a moose and it's calf!! 

Reid enjoying the view and snapping pictures

We arrived about 2:30 which was just in time to catch a 3pm flight. Our pilot, Jok, wearing an Hawaiian shirt, met us and helped us into a Cessna 185 with skis as we would be landing on a glacier. I was a little fearful, but my desire to take the flight won out and all four of us boarded, put on our headsets and took off. The 2 hour flight was amazing! We easily saw the top of McKinley and considering only about 20% of tourists to the park ever get to see it because of the weather we were so lucky! We entered the mountains through The Great Gorge of Ruth Glacier and flew to a height of 12,000 ft. viewing many mountains such as Mt. McKinley, Hunter, Broken Tooth, Moose's Tooth, Huntington, S. Buttress, E. Buttress Mt. Deception, and Mt. Eldridge.

Great Gorge of Ruth Glacier & view of Mt. McKinley

We landed on Eldridge Glacier. We snapped so many pictures with our camera and Reid's cell phone that we had a hard time choosing just a few for the blog.  Once on the glacier we saw several small avalanches and a base camp for hikers.

On Eldridge Glacier

Base camp of climbers on Eldridge glacier

Gage being dwarfed by mountains on Eldridge glacier

Jok, our pilot in his Hawaiian shirt

Gage enjoying the view

Leaving Eldridge

Landing at Talkeetna Airport

After our flight we went into Talkeetna,this is the town which the show Northern Exposure” was supposedly based on. We stopped at the visitor's center and Vito gave us lots of good information including a great restaurant to have dinner, Wildflower. The chef there was President Bush's (George W.) personal chef. The guys had the best clam chowder ever!

Alaska – Anchorage Day 3

June 22 Friday Woke up to the sound of gurgling water and discovered that a ten cent clip that secures the hose to our water pump had broken and all of our fresh water had drained from the fresh water tank into the compartments under the motor home and the parking lot! Great! It's always something! Fortunately, we looked in our Anchorage travel guide and found an RV service center who gave us the number of a RV parts supplier so Gary called them and they had the small part we needed to make the repair. Not only that, when he went to pick it up they gave it to him for free! Not that it was expensive, but, still, very nice of them! Within a couple of hours the pump was repaired, the compartments were vacuumed out with the little wet/dry vac we carry and the sun was drying the parking lot. So, we could get on with the day.

We didn't have a lot to do, just find some fresh bagels, mail a couple of things, make a quick stop at a grocery store and anxiously await the arrival of Gage & Reid. Their flight was scheduled to land at 12:33am Saturday morning. We heard from them when they left Ithaca and then again when they were in Phoenix so we knew all was still on schedule. Since I know they really like my sloppy joe's, I cooked a batch up while we waiting to head to the airport about 11:15pm.

Alaska- Anchorage Day 4

Arriving in Alaska 16 hours after leaving Ithaca

June 24 Satuday early morning We got to the airport about 11:40pm and saw that their plane was scheduled to arrive earlier than expected, 12:05am. Reid texted us that they had arrived about that time and were still on the plane waiting, but about 20 minutes later they arrived! So good to see them!

They couldn't get over how light it still was at 1am and the mountains as we headed back to the RV. After some conversation and sloppy joe's we all settled in for some much needed rest.

Alaska – Anchorage Day Two

June 21 Thursday Decided to do a little exploring around Anchorage. We headed downtown to the visitor's center. We had stopped at the sod roof visitor center the night before, but across the street from it is a big building which is also a visitor information center and houses displays of Alaskan history. It also shows films of Alaska and rangers provide interpretative tours. Surprisingly, this is a federal building so we had to show ID and go through a metal detector before being allowed in. We watched a film about the earthquake that hit Anchorage and the surrounding areas in 1964, This was the largest earthquake to ever hit North America, 9.2 on the Richter scale. It was very interesting, lots of eyewitness accounts, and the devastation was unimaginable especially seeing the city today.

We had lunch downtown, our first reindeer hot dog! Really didn't taste much different than the hot dogs we are used to eating, just spicier.

We also wanted to visit the Ulu factory in Anchorage. For those of you who don't know , it is a curved steel blade with a wooden handle on the top which is used for cutting and chopping food. Very sharp! We have been seeing these wooden-handled blades all over since we hit the Yukon, but some are definitely not  made as well as others. I think we got a good one at the factory and at a better price than I have seen elsewhere. I really know very little about it, but I bought a set that included the blade, block, bowl and a CD so I can learn how to use it.

Pilot from Elmira

We thought we had better search out the airport as we will be picking the boys up tomorrow, so we drove there to check that out. While there Gary spotted the aviation museum, so we had to stop and take a tour.  It was pretty interesting...aviation has such a history in Alaska as it was one of the first ways to get around and remains one of the main means of transportation today. Many, many pilots here!  Lake Hood next to the airport is the world's busiest float plane lake. There were also displays of historic aviators and one of theme was from Elmira, NY.   I have included a picture of the write-up that was on display.

Float plane from Lake Hood

PBY being restored

We ended our day with a trip to the Fred Meyers store to pick up supplies for the boys' visit. I am still in search of some fresh bagels, but that is on tomorrow's agenda.

Alaska – Parks Highway - Anchorage

Sunrise 4:21am Sunset 11:42pm

June 20 Had to take a few morning pictures of our RV with Mt. McKinley in the background before we left Denali North View State campground today.

We had about a three hour drive to our next stop, Anchorage. Along the way, right before Wasilla, a moose crossed the road in front of us.. We have seen a few moose, but I haven't be able to get a picture of one until now.

We did drive through Wasilla, but no Palins were in sight. Wasilla is a bigger place than I thought at least on the Glenn Highway. Lots of familiar stores and eating places along the left side of the road as we traveled south.

We got to Anchorage at approximately 2pm and lo and behold found another sod roofed visitor center downtown. Anchorage is a big city.. population of 256,000+. Probably the biggest city we have been in since we drove through Calgary, CA. Seemed funny to have so many vehicles and lanes of traffic! Population is fairly sparse on the drive through the Yukon Territory to Fairbanks.

Still beautiful scenery in Anchorage

We decided to have dinner in downtown Anchorage and were directed to Humpy's. This is advertised as a place with pub style food and although it doesn't look it from the outside, this place was packed inside- about 200 people, hardly any seats left. It seems to be a popular local restaurant. We had the grilled plank salmon and it was very good.