Wrangell St-Elias

Wrangell - St. Elias is the biggest National Park and it butts up against Canada's Kluane National Park. At 20,587 square miles, it is larger than Switzerland and has taller mountains. At the center of the park is the Bagley Icefield, which is nearly the size of the state of Delaware at 1,900 square miles. 

Despite its size, the park only has 2 roads into it: the McCarthy Road and the Nabesna Road. Both roads are almost entirely gravel. The McCarthy road is the more traveled of the two and the one we took on this trip. It is about 60 miles into the park to the town of McCarthy. Vehicles have to stop at a river about a mile short of the town and people can walk in over a foot bridge. There is a car bridge that residents of McCarthy, and the National Park Service (NPS), can use but it isn’t open to the public. 

We took two days to drive in, partially because we had to take it very slow on the road (averaging about 10 mph). Most of the road was severely washboarded. While our truck had no problem with it, the house on the back wasn’t a big fan. At some point we lost the hose clamps on our black water tank and had to tie it up with bungee cords. Good thing we didn’t use our black water system anyway… 

We also wanted to take it slow because there was so much to see along the road. The visitor center in Copper Center gave us a guided audio tour CD for the road in. It has about 10 tracks to play at various mile posts that tell you a bit about the history of the railroad that originally ran along this route, as well the natural environment. It was very interesting. 

We also stopped to walk around in a couple of places. The longest excursion we took was the old Kuskulana Bridge around mile 17. The old railroad bridge runs across a steep gorge, 238 feet above the bottom. It also has a terrifying catwalk underneath it, which offers some amazing views. 

 

On Tuesday afternoon we made it to the end of the road and decided to walk in and check out McCarthy. McCarthy has several restaurants, hotels and wilderness guide companies. However we were at the very end of the season so a lot of the businesses were closed. It didn’t take us very long to walk around the town but it was quite cute. There were several very friendly dogs that followed us on our walk, and Aiden was a little unsure how to react to them. 

 

After walking around McCarthy we still had a little time for a short hike back on the other side of the river. It was gorgeous. 

 

Wednesday we wanted to use the full day to get a little deeper into the park. Five miles up a road from McCarthy is the abandoned Kennecott mine. NPS runs a shuttle up to Kennecott for $15 a person, each way. We elected to walk it. There is an old wagon road next to the road which is a great walk up. 

Kennecott is primarily a National Historic Site run by the NPS, but there are a few tour companies and a hotel that operate there as well. NPS has renovated and maintains several of the old buildings from the mine with lots of information about what it was like to live at the mine. The whole town was run by the mining company including a school and a hospital. However the mine had very strict rules, so the “lawless” town of McCarthy popped up down the road to give the miners an outlet. All of the information was really interesting. 

 

     

From Kennecott we also did a short hike up to Root Glacier.  It was beautiful and the first glacier we got to walk on. 

 

We walked on the glacier where the Root Glacier met the Kennicott glacier. The Kennicott glacier was covered with layers of rock and silt, but Root Glacier was exposed ice. It was interesting to see the difference. It is also interesting to note that the Kennicott glacier, named after the explorer Robert Kennicott, flows next to the town of Kennecott which had a clerical error in the original naming of the town. 

Aiden got super excited as we got close, and it took us a while to figure out why. But she got on the glacier and tried to dig and eat and play in it the way she plays in snow, which she loves. She was a little confused by how hard it was but she enjoyed herself none the less. 

By the time we made it back to the RV we had gone about 15 miles and were all three pretty worn out, but it was one of our best days yet. There are definitely lots of options in this park for different guided, or unguided, ways to explore.

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...