Kenai Peninsula

While in Anchorage, we booked ourselves a Kenai Fjords cruise on Wednesdays. We took off down the Kenai (Key-nye) Peninsula on Tuesday to give ourselves some time to explore. We started off by taking the branch to Whittier and stopped at Byron Glacier. There we were able to hike up to what used to be the end of the glacier. Since the trail was built it had retreated a significant ways and we had two cross a rock field to get all the way too it.

 

After our adventure to our first glacier, we continued to Whittier. Whittier lies behind a 2.5 mile, one lane tunnel that is shared by cars and trains. So, after paying a $13 round-trip toll, we had to wait for the next half-hour mark to drive in. Traffic into Whittier is released every half-hour mark, while traffic coming out is release every hour mark, barring any unscheduled trains.

Whittier is a cold-war era military town that is now a fishing town, a port and a tourist destination, mostly for fishing. There are a lot of remnants of its cold war days around. Most notably and old, run down apartment-like building. Most of the 214 residents live in a similar apartment building that was built 1957 and has an underground tunnel to the school so that students can avoid going outside in the winter. 

The surrounding area is beautiful and there are quite a few hikes and boat excursions leaving from town. 

During our brief visit, we stopped by a local park on a stream where salmon were coming in to spawn. Never have we  seen salmon in such numbers, just hanging around, waiting out their final moments. It was pretty clear that a few choice ones were picked over by locals, eagles and we even heard earlier in the day a bear was spotted here.

We left Whittier in the evening with the intent on making it most of the way to Seward. The night came faster than we though and heavy rains made the drive too stressful. We decided to stop at a pullout and start early the next day.

In Seward, we took our fjord tour (see our Kenai Fjords post). After our tour we decided to stay in Seward for the night. Off-season rates for a dry spot were only $10, which was cheaper than heading to the free spot we found online and back. Since we wanted to see the visitor center the next day anyways, it was a good deal.

We hung around Seward for most of the next day, taking it pretty easy. We eventually made our way out and after a short stop by exit glacier, we settled at a campsite just off the road next to a really calm lake.

 

The next day we decided we’d visit Homer as well. It was a good 2 1/2 hours each way, but we heard it was a nice place to visit. The drive was beautiful, but took us through some very recent forest fires. At some pointes smoke got incredibly thick and charred trees on the roadside showed the devastation that came through. There were many places still visibly smoldering, but nothing was on fire anymore.

 

Homer itself was a nice small town. Most notable was the spit: a stretch of narrow land that ran out into the sound. We did some wine tasting at Bear Creek Winery because we had a coupon from a coupon book. We met a lady that lived in Homer at the Oregon watch party in Anchorage and she gave us the coupon book as well as some recommendations. Bear Creek makes their wines with a mix of fruits and berries and grapes or straight from the fruits. They buy many of their fruits from locals who either grow or find them. This lead to them having very delicious and sweet wines that would certainly leave you with a headache if you drank too much.

We spent the night about 10 miles back towards Anchorage at Whiskey Gulch beach in Anchor Point. The road down to the beach claimed to only be maintained for 4-wheel drive vehicles. That may be true in wetter months, but we made it down and back up with no issues.

On Saturday, we drove pretty much straight back to Anchorage with a quick stop in Girdwood. We had heard they were having a fungus fair there at the community center. We only stopped for a little bit, but it was great to see a bunch of people excited to share their knowledge of fungi. We had been wanting a good guide to the mushrooms of the area and picked one up there. 

We ended up back in Anchorage in time to catch the Duck game against Nevada with the Alumni Association. It was a much needed feel-good win after the previous week’s meltdown.

We’ll be spending the night one more time at Kathleen’s old roommate’s place before we’re off down the Glenn Highway and Wrangell-St. Elias!

Kenai Fjords

We took a Fjords boat tour and got to see glaciers and a lot of sea life! We got to Seward around 10 and our boat was scheduled to leave at 11:30. They had a lot for us to park the RV and offered a shuttle, but we opted for the 20 minute walk to the office.

Before we set sail, Andreas got coffee but made the mistake of not getting the $9 travel mug. The mug was refillable with coffee, hot cocoa or tea throughout the 6 hour cruise. When you’re cruising at 25 knots, standing on the outer deck for a while will definitely make you want something warm to drink when you step back inside. 

Right as we left, we were almost greeted by a bald eagle perching on a pillar until he was scared off by the sound of a train horn.

As we went, we saw other sea birds: mostly puffins and murres. Puffins are only around the coastline during the summer months to nest. The rest of their time is spent way off shore. Murres dive up to 600 feet deep to catch food but are more likely to spending time near the coastline. 

We saw plenty of sea lions hanging out on the shore, sunning themselves.

 

And a few sea otters lounging around on the water.

The most impressive of the fauna were certainly the orcas. We came across a large group, including multiple pods who were all moving away from shore in close proximity to each other, The captain even managed to get a little bit ahead if a group in such a way that one of the whales swam right under the bow of the ship.

 

The highlight, and main attraction was Aialik Glacier, a tidewater glacier. Seeing a wall of ice slowly dumping ice into the water because It is moving about 7 feet per day and hearing the loud echos of even the smallest chuck is truly something to behold. It’s easy to see when you’re up close and personal how, given time, these glaciers shape the landscape they’re on. 

 

After the cruise, we wanted to get our stamp but the visitor center was already closed! Luckily a lady with the same goal spotted a ranger heading into the center and asked if he would be willing to bring the stamp out. He was happy to oblige! 

On our way out of Seward the next day, we made a stop by Exit Glacier, the part of the park you can actually drive to. The center there closed for the season two days before we arrived, but luckily there were still some hikes to do. The easiest of these was closed off due to bear activity! We went up to the glacier overlook. It was pretty apparent that this trail had been named some time ago because the glacier was still quite a ways uphill from the overlook.

The park had signs marking where the glacier extended to all the way back to 1815., which was quite a way up the road. While the glacier has been in retreat since then, the pace it has been moving recently was quite staggering. To read more about the retreating exit glacier, check out this article.

Anchorage

After leaving Denali we wanted to take our time getting down to Anchorage. We had planned on spending some time in the Denali state park and doing some nice hikes that we could take Aiden on. As we got further and further south, air quality kept getting worse from the smoke from the 70+ wildfires Alaska has seen this year. Some of them were still burning strong. That, plus the day use fees of the state parks dissuaded us from doing more than a short stop at the Denali viewpoints (you couldn’t see Denali through the clouds and smoke).

We did stop in the town of Talkeetna. It was a clear tourist trap of a town. It once served as the starting point for Denali climbers. Now everyone who wants to climb Denali still has to come to the ranger station here for an orientation before flying to a ‘base camp’ about 7,000 feet up the mountain.  We ate dinner here, half from a ‘Off the Waffle’ style food truck and half from a pub. We also stopped in a cute little quilt store and had a fun chat with the lady running it. And yes, Kathleen did leave with a scrap bag of fabrics that she really liked.

On our way back out of town, we stopped by Denali Brewing. The lady working at the brewery was really chatty. She showed us some a facebook video of the fires on the peninsula and told us to check 511 before deciding whether or not to go to Homer. She also recommended a place to park our RV for the night. It was clearly a spot known by locals, down a side street and next to a creek. Not something we could have found by ourselves or on Allstays. We took both kids for a decent walk around the woods before calling it a night.

  

In the morning we moved on to Anchorage. Anchorage is the biggest city in Alaska with almost 300,000 people. The architecture in the city is interesting because most of it was leveled in an earthquake in 1964 so almost all of the building have been build since then. 

The most exciting thing about Anchorage was that we got to visit our first friend on our trip. Kathleen's old roommate from Eugene is from Anchorage and has moved back up here. She let us stay in her driveway (free parking!) and use her showers and laundry. When she got some time off work, she drove us all around town, pointing out the “must-do”s, the “unique and quirky”s and the “you have those at home”s. It's much more fun to get to see a city with someone who lives there and knows it well. 

On Saturday, we found the Oregon Alumni Association watch party to watch the Oregon vs Auburn game. It was a very active association with probably a couple dozen of members who really seemed to know each other. It made the meltdown of the team a bit more bearable. There was one really loud and obnoxious Auburn fan at the place who was clearly looking for some sort of reaction from the ducks fans there, taunting and filming his actions on his phone when Auburn went ahead at the end of the game, running through the bar. Guess that’s SEC pride for ya. And it's ok, we know we're a Women's Basketball school anyway. 

 

After the game, we got amazing ice-cream at Wild Scoops to make ourselves feel a little better. They had lots of fun local flavors and a line out the door, so clearly we chose right. They also gave Aiden a small bowl of whipped cream, making it a nice treat for all three of us.

 

On Sunday, we took it pretty slow. We woke up late and slept through our Raptor Center fantasy football league’s draft, leaving us with decent enough auto-picked teams. We got brunch at Uncle Leeroy’s Coffee, who has the Crepe Crew there every Sunday. The Crepe Crew is at a different place every day of the week and has some unique and delicious crepes. We got a new bike off Craigslist, since we really only had one functioning one. In the evening, we decided to go look if we could spot some northern lights. The duck fan we met in Fairbanks, that Kathleen is now facebook friends with, shared some really great posts of the lights up there. We figured if we got out of town a bit, we might be able to see something. While we waited for it to get dark we struggled through a few, zero civilian, games of Codenames Duet. We stepped out of the RV for a while after it got dark and convinced ourselves that we could see a faint green glow to the north. 

On Labor Day, Kathleen’s old roommate drove us around the area a bit. The really nice thing about Anchorage is that there are amazing hikes and views in area the areas just outside city. There are several state parks and national forests. They also have some really nice trails in the city itself. All of them offer nice summer hiking and supposedly lovely cross-country skiing in the winter. 

Overall we spent a nice couple of days in Anchorage before heading south. We'll have to pass back through on the way North because there is only one way in and one way out, so maybe we'll check out a few more of the area hikes. We probably shouldn't check out any more of the great restaurants because have already blown through our restaurant budget... 

Expense Report: August

Some of you showed some interest in how much it costs to live traveling around the country, so we’re going to write a monthly recap of how much we spent and provide a little bit of info on how we feel we did in terms of spending. These will include things like how many times we payed for a campsite, if we had any unnecessarily spendy meals, etc. We are trying to find a good balance of living cheaply while still doing a some fun things because this is our honeymoon. We’ve broken it down into a few major categories. 

The RV and upgrades - since this is the first expense report, we’ll include the cost of the RV and some early maintenance we had to do. 

We bought our 21 foot RV used from an individual, not a dealer. We found it through Craigslist while shopping around almost a year ago. After that we needed to do a few modernization upgrades.

Cost of RV: $14,000

Solar panels: $340

Stereo $438

Insurance - We got comprehensive coverage on the RV through National General, as well as a Full-Timer coverage which is like a homeowner's insurance for non-motor accidents. We also opted for a GoodSam membership, as well as a roadside assistance plan from them. The membership itself will save us money on gas and propane at Flying Js and on merchandise from Camping World. The roadside assistance will give us some peace of mind (that we already needed for the tire!) if something happens on the road. The reason we chose GoodSam over AAA is that they are very much an RV club. They tow unlimited miles if something happens and include things like medical airlift if we get hurt while out exploring nature (how neat is that?).

Insurance: $348 for a 1 year policy. RV insurance is surprisingly cheap!

GoodSam: $50 for 2 years.

Roadside: $379 for 2 years. 

Maintenance - We’ve had some bad luck on this early part of the trip, but we also put a ton of miles on the RV. We blew a tire, had some work on the steering, and had to replace a pulley, fan clutch and a different pulley bracket in the engine. We really hope this month won’t be representative of what’s to come. A lot of the problems seem to be an age of the engine problem. With over 200,000 miles on the RV, it’s bound to have some aging problems. Considering that a brand new RV about this size would have cost us over $30,000, we’re still doing quite well. 

Home Depot Spending: $135

Fan pulley bracket: $850

2 new tires: $180

Steering / alignment: $217

Fan clutch and crank pulley : $675

Transmission + steering fluid flushes: $305

Wipers: $30

All totaled, our RV + bigger maintenance has cost us $17,694

We have also done 2 High Milage oil changes: $170.

Our trip really started on the 12th of August, so for the remaining expenses we will just summing up since then. 

Fuel - This is going to be our biggest expense when driving a lot (like to Alaska). We’re keeping a Fuel log in a google sheet that we’ll have viewable to anyone. It has locations and gas prices as well so if you’re curious what gas costs in different places definitely check it out: Fuel Log. We converted the Canadian gas prices to their rough USD/gallon equivalent.

This month we drove 3174 miles and used 257.9 gallons of gas, for a fuel economy of 12.3 MPG. 

Gas: $911 - A lot of driving.

Propane: $7 - We only filled up once on propane in Bellingham (on the 12th) and as of writing this we are sitting just under 1/4 tank. We’re only using propane for cooking and the refrigerator. We haven’t needed the hot water heater (bucket showers / laundromats) and we tried turning on the furnace once but it made a scary wailing sound. Looks like we’ll be bundling up if it gets really cold. So far 4 bodies have kept the RV relatively comfortable, even through the Alaskan summer nights

Food: $405 - We did really well not eating out in the first part of our trip. We went to a few coffee shops and only ate out 2 to 3 times. The rest of it is groceries.

Pets: $95  - We had to refill pet food containers and get Aiden a new rabies shot to get through Canada. Both kids are up to date on their vaccinations.

Lodging: $20 - We only paid for a place to stay once since the 12th. That was at Chena Hot Springs

Entertainment: $115.50 - $85.50 of this came from our Denali bus trip into the park, the rest was Chena Hot Springs. 

Overall we think August and September will be two of our more expensive months, mostly because we are driving a lot, but also because all of the national parks here and harder to get into. But we are pretty pleased with how we have been doing so far. 

Denali Day 3

We had a few more things we wanted to do in the park, so we stayed for another full day. First, we heard that the dogs were extra friendly in the mornings before the first demo because they hadn't had to deal with people all day long. So we went in right as they opened at 9 to give some more pets and get the kennel's stamp, which we didn't get last time because we had forgotten our passport.

 

We purchased our National Parks Passport when we went to Haleakala in July and are looking for stamps whenever we are in a national park. We thought there would be a specific spot for stamps from each park. Instead, there are just several pages for the stamps from each region. We also didn’t realize that a lot of parks have multiple stamps, so that leaves us the fun of trying to find all the stamps and figure out where they all are. 

There were 7 total stamps for Denali. One was down in Talkeetna, and when we went to the visitor center there we forgot to bring the passport with us. Another other one was for the backcountry center, which was closed for the season. We did get the other 5 though from the main visitor center, the science center, the kennels, the Toklat bus stop and the Eielson visitor center.  

 

The second thing we wanted to check out was the science and learning center. It turns out it’s really heavily geared towards young children but there was some cool stuff, like a microscope with a variety of samples from around the park. 

After that the only thing on our schedule was to hang out and use the internet so that Andreas could draft for his fantasy football league. With a few hours to kill, we went on a great short hike through the park near the visitor center.

 

We ended the day by driving into the park again a little further with our own RV. We had a few more amazing moose encounters and the park at dusk was amazing. 

  

All in all it was a pretty chill day. Checked a few things off the list before heading back to our pullout to head south in the morning. 

Denali Day 2

The first 15 miles of the park are paved and are accessible in private vehicles. After that you need to get a bus ticket to get further into the park. There is only one road into a park about the size of the state of Massachusetts. There are two types of buses going into the park and they each have various stopping and turn around points. We elected to take the non-narrated bus to the Eielson Visitor center at mile 66 on the park road, which is about a four hour trip each way. Even though it wasn't actually a tour bus, our driver, Anna, was super informative and talked a bit about the different animals and answered questions people had throughout the trip. 

 

You can choose to get on and off the bus whenever you want if you want to hike around for a bit in the middle of the wilderness. In order to get back on, you just need to flag down any other bus going in the right direction. We didn’t end up doing that this time but we want to come back sometime and do a multi-day back country backpacking trip. We’ll just need to come back without the kids. The scenery was absolutely stunning the whole time. 

 

 

The buses are a great way to see wildlife. Everyone on the bus is supposed to call out if you see anything worth stopping for and the driver will stop. And boy did we see wildlife! 

We saw two groups of moose: 

  

Moose are the biggest animal in Denali, with an adult bull moose weighing up to 1,600 pounds. Moose eat mostly willow and survive the winter by slowing down their metabolism to a crawl. Willow are much shorter here and quite easily accessible to the moose. 

We saw 15 different bears! Several alone, but several mothers with their cubs: 

The coolest bear encounter we had was the last one. As we were leaving one of the rest stops there was a mother bear and her cub hanging out right next to the bridge that we were driving over. They were incredibly close to the bus so we got a really great view. 

Grizzly bears are pretty amazing because they will just about anything from berries and roots to moose. The key to meeting a grizzly bear in the park is not to run! Running will kick in their predator instincts for a chase. Instead, hold your ground. Most of the time that a wild bear charges, it is bluffing to size you up, and if you run, it will run you down.

We saw quite a few caribou on our trip. Including several with some really big racks. 

   

Both male and female caribou have antlers and they loose them every winter. The males generally loose them after they finish fighting for the females in the fall, but the pregnant female will keep them all winter until her calves are born. She will use her antlers to fend off the males who might try to take the her food from them. Caribou eat a lichen almost exclusively and they are big enough that they need about two garbage backs worth of the that lichen every day in the spring, summer, and fall. 

When the new antlers are coming in they are covered in a furry skin called velvet while they harden. We were lucky enough to be here in the season that they shed their velvet and got to see one caribou as the velvet was shedding. 

We also saw a few packs of Dall Sheep. These guys were always far away, up on a hillside, so it was hard to get a great picture. 

 

Dall sheep are actually the reason Denali National Park exists. The sheep are a nice white color and stand out amazingly well against the rocks in the summer. Overhunting of these sheep lead people to petition Washington D.C. to protect the wildlife of the area, which led to the initial declaration of the park as a protected area. 

Possibly our most exciting animal sighting was a lynx. On our way back she ran across the road right in front of the bus. Usually lynx and skittish and stay away from the road but this one was curious and stood in the bushes next to the road checking us out for quite a while. We didn’t get very good pictures of her, just enough to prove we saw her. 

 

Kathleen also saw two foxes but was two slow calling them out for the driver to stop. He was already driving on for a bear spotting ahead so we’re not sure that he would have stopped anyway. The two foxes were in a stream bed and only about 40 feet away from the bus but there were only visible for about 5 seconds because of the way the banks hid them in either direction. 

Eielson is know for its great views of the mountain itself, however the weather around the mountain is really hard to predict. Unfortunately we didn’t get a great view, but the landscape was amazing none the less. 

 

Including the time we spent at the Eielson visitor center we were gone for about 10 hours and were exhausted from all of the excitement. But it was a very very successful day. Well worth the cost of the bus. Needless to say, Aiden was super excited to have us back after a long day alone with Declan.