Alaska 1

When my grandmother was in grade school, she learned about and dreamed of going to Alaska some day.  In Grandma and Grandpa's retirement years, my aunt took them on a trip/tour of Alaska.  Ever since they went, I had the desire to travel there also.  Back in 1982 when I was young and single, I planned a trip to Alaska.  Max, Doug. and I drove my pickup (with camper on it) up the Alaskan Highway for the trip of a lifetime.  We were gone six weeks.  After that amazing trip, I knew I wanted to go back some day.

Life intervened.  

Last year, my sister suggested a sibling trip to Alaska.  Since I no longer am raising hogs, I decided that now was the time to go back.  I planned a 12 day cruise/tour for the sibling group.  But if we were going all the way to Alaska, I wanted to spend more time than 12 days.  The others couldn't.  So the wife and I decided (actually I decided for her) to go a full week early and rent a camper and travel around independently first.  There were a couple things that I didn't get to see 42 years ago plus some things I wanted to do again.  So, in mid July we headed up to O'hare Airport.  We flew Chicago to Seattle to Fairbanks.

Our second flight was delayed, so we didn't get into Fairbanks until 1:00 in the morning.  It was still light out!  It doesn't get completely dark up there in mid summer.

Fairbanks Airport at 1:30 in the morning.

  Kathy's cousin and wife, Jim and Kitty picked us up at our motel in the morning and gave us a tour of the town.  We had an early lunch with them, and then they took us to the camper rental place.  We rented a 4 wheel drive pickup with camper because we were planning on traveling on some remote gravel roads.

We headed Southeast out of Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway.  We drove through the Alaska Range and into the Wrangell Mountains.  In much of Alaska you can boon-dock; camp in pullouts, rest areas, parking lots, viewpoints, etc.  Our camper was self contained, so we only stayed in campgrounds about half the time.  Mostly when we wanted showers and laundry.  We drove 1600 miles in the week and saw amazing scenery, lots of mountains, glaciers, and historical remote Alaska.  Sometimes we would drive for hours without passing anyone, or finding gas or food.  And we ate at some very interesting restaurants, and met some nice people.  Ernesto had already closed for the day when we got there (8:00), but he said he would feed us anyway.  Great food!

We had reindeer dogs at Chitina Grubstake.

We got to eat fresh Halibut on the Homer Spit.

I had never been to McCarthy/Kennicott in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park before, so that area was a favorite.  There is a 60 mile gravel road that you have to travel on to get there, which took us 2 1/2 hours to drive.  Much of the road is actually the old railroad bed that led to the mines, and you can still see rails occasionally, and you need to watch for spikes!  At the end of the road is a gravel parking lot and a primitive campground.  To get into town ( where cars are not allowed) you park and walk across a pedestrian bridge over the Kennicott River.  Then you can walk or catch the one erratic shuttle that is available into town.  The scenery in the Park is beautiful, but I especially wanted to tour the old towns, the copper mine, and hike to and out onto the Root Glacier.  After a half hour hike to the glacier, I was able to spend about an hour hiking on the glacier using crampons borrowed from Jake.

  

We left Wrangell-St. Elias and headed Southeast.  We spent most of a day on the Glen Highway.  We were treated with beautiful views of the Chugach Mountains as we headed for Palmer.

We camped at a city campground in Palmer and took our first showers.  In the morning I emptied the black and gray water tanks, and then filled the fresh water tank.  We headed through Anchorage, along the Turnagain Arm, and into the Kenai Peninsula on the Seward and Sterling Highways. We camped on the Homer spit, a long strip of land that juts out into the bay.  Homer is known for its Halibut fishing and views of the Aleutian Range.  We ate fresh Halibut that evening. 

We left Homer in a fog and retraced our path back towards Anchorage.  We stopped at an old Russian Orthodox Church that had a wild flower cemetery and beautiful mountain views across the bay.  

As we headed North from Anchorage on the Parks Highway, the weather was clear and beautiful.  Around Willow we first saw Mt. Denali.  Usually covered with clouds, we saw it in the clear for two days straight from three angles!  We felt very fortunate!

 

We camped at a Denali State Park viewpoint, and then drove into Denali National Park.  We stopped at the visitors center, did some hiking and sightseeing, and had a picnic lunch.  We stopped in the village of Nenana, which had a neat little ice cream shop, then we continued North back to Fairbanks.

  We had a day to spend around Fairbanks, so we visited the pipeline, took the Discovery Riverboat tour, and visited Gold Dredge No. 8.  On the riverboat tour, we stopped and had a sled dog demonstration at Susan Butcher's kennel, watched a float plane take off and land, and visited a recreated native village.

At our campground in Fairbanks, we had showers again, and we did laundry.  We found the UPS store and shipped a suitcase full of souvenirs home. We also washed the pickup camper so we could turn it in clean.

We cleaned out the camper, emptied the black and gray water, filled the gas and LP tanks, and turned the truck back in at noon the last day.  Jim and Kitty picked us up (along with our luggage) and we went out to eat for lunch.  We had a great 2 1/2 hour visit with them, then they took us to our Fairbanks Hotel for the start of the tour/cruise part of our vacation.  We were thankful and blessed by our first week.

Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; 

thy judgments are a great deep: O Lord, thou preservest man and beast.           Psalm 36:6