Back into Canada, eh?

Haines Jct

We're firmly on our way home and now part way through Canada.  We made it through the worst of the Alcan highway which is the 150 miles between Tok, Ak and White River YT.  We stayed at a couple of the same campgrounds so far that we stayed at on the way up.  Our first stop in Canada was White river campground which we enjoyed both times we stayed there.  It is in a beautiful setting and run by some really nice people.  When we left White River we were going to make it a shorter day coming back by staying in Haines Junction.  That was a nice night but learned that when a place advertises "cable TV" you really have no way of knowing what you're going to get.  We had 5 movie channels and one PBS channel out of Alaska.  Still couldn't find anything worth watching so thank goodness for our
collection of DVDs.

Our next stop was going to be in a place called Teslin with a nice looking park on a lake but they had a big caravan** in and the place they wanted us to park was going to take way too much effort to wiggle into, so on we went down the road but the next place we wanted to stop was out of business.  We passed a few spots along the highway that would have been ok to "boondock" in (dry camp) but didn't really get a good look til we were already past the entrance.  So, we ended up in Walkers Resort on the continental divide.  Again, this was a place we stayed at on the way up so we knew what to expect.  It started raining about the time we went to sleep and kept raining all night.  Good for sleepin'

**A caravan is a large organized group of RVs that travel together to a destination.  Most of the Alaska Caravans run about $3500 per RV and that pays for your RV parks and some excursions.  You still have to pay your own fuel and food.  Everything is taken care of as far as reservations, stops, excursions, etc but you have to go where the group goes.  I guess good for some people but too restrictive for us.

All things Jade

Anyhow, after we left Walkers, we had about 85 miles til we turned off the Alcan onto the Cassiar Hwy.  This is just another route that will keep us closer to the coast with a planned stop in Stewart/Hyder to see the grizzly bears fish for salmon.  We knew the Cassiar wasn't as heavily traveled as the Alcan but according to the Milepost Book we should have a better chance of seeing wildlife and some really awesome views.  So far, great view, little wildlife. The first real stop is a little place called Jade City which is an old jade mining area with a free parking lot for RVs to spend the night.  No hookups just a place to park, and they have a Jade gift shop. (nothing is free)  There were jade rock and boulders of all sizes, being cut up, for sale and plenty of jade things.

Well, we made it 50 miles down the Cassiar, not even to Jade city, and pulled into the first rest area we came to to discuss turning around!  THE ROAD SUCKED!!!   Frost heaves, break ups in the asphalt, expansion cracks a foot wide and 6 inches deep.  It was about 2:30 and we were both wiped out and beat up.  So, we set up and poured a beer, with the intent that we would boondock one night and head back to the Alcan in the morning. It was just us in the rest stop, with the new generator, camping like we were in our right minds!  We decided that we would try and find someone who knew the road and get a status report of what is to come.  A guy from British Columbia came by and told us that the road would get better now until we got about 160 km down the road to Dease Lake then it would be a good road the rest of the way.  I'm glad we talked to him because the road has been better and the scenery is beautiful.  We now only have about 400km to go on the Cassiar and we're both happy we stayed the course.  This highway is just about 700km long so the worst is behind us.

Iskut

This highway is not very populated and has fewer camping spots. After leaving the rest area, we bounced along for about another 155 miles and stopped at a place called Iskut and surprisingly a very nice camp spot on a lake. In fact, one of the better ones
we've stopped at.

The Bus

Next stop we left the Cassiar and headed toward the coast to two towns of Stewart, in BC, and Hyder, 6 miles away in AK. They are 41 miles down a narrow canyon, very lush and the walls are running with numerous waterfalls. It was very rainy and the rivers were swollen. In Hyder, a small stream is teeming with spawning salmon and the black bears and grizzlies come to feed on them. There is even a viewing platform set up to observe but not be too close. Our first visit we didn't see any bears, just tons of fish. That by itself is pretty cool. So we went back into "town" and had lunch at The Bus. Fresh seafood dishes cooked by a local woman and her bus. Then we went back to the viewing platform and luck! First, a black bear came below the platform, through the bushes and ate on the berries. We waited a while longer, I was away from the end of the platform and I heard someone say the grizzly was back. I scooted back to the end and was luck to get some photos. He was walking back and forth across the river, not feeding just looking, but it was still very cool.

And with seeing the bears, we saw and did what we wanted to on this trip. With the exception of actually catching any fish. We do have fish from Alaska, but our friends gave them to us! The last of our 4-5 days in Canada will be just driving south to enter back into Washington. Then the big task of thoroughly cleaning the trailer and truck, inside and out, and putting things back together after all the jostling on the not so smooth roads.

We had a blast.

Denali and Fairbanks

This leg we continued north toward Denali and Fairbanks with  one night stops in Portage Valley and Willow, halfway to Denali. We cruised into Denali park town, which is just a strip of a town with hotels on one side of the highway and food and souvenirs on the other. Our camp is 6 miles north of the town and is typical of all the camps we've found in Alaska. It's pretty small, crowded with caravaners and mostly gravel. Not much you can do to spruce things up up here.

We planned a hike in the park, so went down to the visitor center and found free shuttles to get around. It took us 13 miles into the park, which is all the farther you can drive your car. There are bus tours in farther, the end of the road is 92 miles and a 13 hour tour. No guarantee you will see the mountain or wildlife. Kinda like fishing. We have seen the mountain before and all of our time here it has been cloudy. Even though the hike was fairly easy and short, only 2 miles, it was along the Savage river and a nice day. The terrain up here is pretty stark, few trees, scrubby bushes and rocky mountains. You can really see the effect of permafrost on plants, everything seems stunted.

Denali in the clouds

With a tour saver book we picked up, we took in a dinner theater at the Princess lodges chalet. Big salmon and rib dinner, family style and entertainment afterwards. Even hit some of the souvenir stores. The weather was not conducive to many outdoor activities but we did pick some wild blueberries just back of the campground. Their fate is probably a cobbler.  "And it was tasty" said Bill!

Big pots everywhere

We continued on to Fairbanks and stopped for a week. Fairbanks is a smallish town, but has the necessities. Everyone seems to live in clearing in the trees. You don't see subdivisions, just lots of trees. We found a couple of brew pubs, HooDoo and Silver Gulch. The food at Silver Gulch was good, we enjoyed a club sandwich with a cheese pizza as the crust.. There are roads north of Fairbanks one can take, the Dalton highway (Ice Road truckers) to Prudhoe bay, but it's almost 500 miles of dirt, no thanks, to Circle, but it's almost closed, and to Manley hot springs, again all dirt and a ways. We opted for the paved road to Chena hot springs and it was a good day trip. The hot springs was very hot and very nice. The drive was scenic, except for all the smoke and we spotted 3 moose. We almost took a river dinner cruise, but the last thing we felt like eating was another big salmon bake dinner. Time to cut back on eating.

AHHH

Our campground was actually in North Pole and of course we visited town cuz that's where Santa is. Got pictures of reindeer, a sleigh and the house for the little granddaughter.

And along one of the highways is a pull out to see the pipeline. Pretty interesting and not all is above ground.

The time here in Fairbanks has been nice as we've prepared for the trip back to the lower 48.  Restock the larder and get the equipment ready for the road back.  Plus having a week of down time has been good for the body.  I think we're ready for the days of driving now.   This will be our last blog from Alaska.  Depending on what we have for phone signals or wifi at the Canadian RV parks will determine what we can send on the way back.

Kasilof and Kenai

Low tide marina

When we left Homer we headed a few miles back north to the town of Ninilchik.  Not really much of a town but famous for charter trips to catch huge (up to 300 lb) Halibut.  Dave and Ellen Smith, whom we met at Escalante this spring, have a summer home there and invited us to fish with them on their little boat.  We stayed closer to shore and fished in 40' of water.  We had to launch and recover the boat, down a river during high tide so were only able to fish for about 2 hrs.  When we got back empty handed, Dave said that was the first time he'd ever been skunked.  Hmmmm, could it have been us?  Ellen did have some freshly canned salmon that she turned into salmon patties that were delicious!

Homer, the peninsula and Ninilchik have a strong Russian influence. There are other Russian named towns and churches still remain, and are still "working" churches. Besides fishing, there isn't much else to see in Ninilchik.

Next, we moved north again to Kasilof which is about 12 miles south of Kenai and Soldotna. Across Cook Inlet, that part of Alaska is roadless. Four volcanoes mark the shoreline and are the start of the Aleutian island. We had beautiful views of Mt Iliamna and Mt Redoubt. Both have erupted in the last 10 hears.

Fishing the Kenai

Russian Orthodox church

We spent 6 nights there and were able to catch up with Bill and Peggy Deal, whom we met when we wintered in Texas, and  they have their summer home just north of Soldotna.  We were able to spend some time with them and  they even took us to their cabin along the Kenai River.  Now the Kenai river, for all of us non fisherman, is the primo spot to catch salmon when they're running up stream to spawn.  They provided us with their fishing gear and expertise and turned us loose.  A few  fish were actually hooked but nothing landed.  They said they had never been skunked before, so now, we're pretty sure it's us.  Don't ever take Bill and Gail fishing unless you want to get skunked!!  It was still a great afternoon and they grilled some fresh frozen salmon for us for dinner.  The only down side to Kasilof was that we had our 2 gas cans stolen off the truck.  Thieves have been hitting the State Park down the road and I guess it was just the time for them to expand their crime spree.  It could have been worse.

We visited a couple of breweries, Kassik, very good and St. Elias, ok. We walked the beach agate hunting at Captain Cook state park but it was more fun plopping rocks in the mud flats at low tide. All of the Cook inlet and Turnagain arm have mud flats and very low tides. It is very dangerous to walk out on them at low tide as it is like quicksand. Quickmud and you will disappear. Tossing rocks in is like watching mud pots burble at Yellowstone. 

Plopping

Mt Iliamna

Mt Redoubt

Camping on the peninsula is different and not to our liking. Everything revolves around fishing and those people just want to pretty much step out the camper and fish. Consequently, most campgrounds are just gravel parking lots, RVs stacked side by side and in the middle of town. Not inviting. At Kasilof we found a quiet, wooded campground, but 15 miles from Kenai/Soldotna town. We got quiet a surprise when we went to the Kenai Walmart on a Saturday. Pretty empty parking lot and inside practically all the food shelves were empty! I mean completely empty. Everything was bought up by the tourist the last weekend of the season.

Kenai Peninsula/Homer

We've spent the last couple of weeks on the Kenai Peninsula and have had a wonderful time.  Our first stop was the town of Homer for 5 days.  We were in a nice park on the north edge of town.  Because we're a bit on the long side we were put into one of their 10 pull through sites with full hookups.  Pretty nice except that the pull throughs didn't have cable TV and it was British Open weekend so my golf fix was relegated to what I could read on the internet.  Fortunately I did find the final round on ABC on Sunday afternoon so even though I knew who the winner was, we still enjoyed watching.  Homer is a really nice little town just about straight south of Anchorage with great views of the Cook inlet.  There is a spit that runs out into the bay with lots of RV parks we could have stayed at but because we wanted to stay near out friends Ron and Carolyn we opted for Oceanview Park.  It's probably a good thing because every time we went to the spit the wind was howling!

Kachemak park

We did have an all day kayaking trip scheduled for Friday but as we were headed to the water taxi, the owner called and said the trip was cancelled because of the wind.  Good thing too!!  We did reschedule for Saturday and this time we were treated to a great day of kayaking.  We took a water taxi across the main bay to Peterson Bay which is where St. Augustine Kayak Adventures is located.  Our guide Kenny was a wonderful young man with a Masters degree in Environmental Science.  Very knowledgeable and accommodating.  The Cook Inlet has some of the greatest tide fluctuations on earth, 20+ feet per day between low and high tide.  We launched in our double kayak off of a floating dock at just after low tide.  As we were paddling we were stopped near a small island waiting for the tide to rise a few inches so we could cross between the island and the shore and not have to go around the island.  As we were sitting there we saw a little harbor seal pop his head up a pretty good ways away from us.  He just bobbed there watching us for a while then went under.  A bit later he popped up behind us, but closer to the kayak.  This up and down and getting closer just kept going on for a while and as the tide got in enough for us to continue our trip he came up only about 5 feet behind us and followed us across the little gravel bar that was now deep enough to paddle over.  I wonder how close he would have gotten if we'd have just sat still for a bit longer?  Oh well, it was still cool and Kenny said he'd never seen that behavior before.

On our adventure we saw lots more seals and lots of sea otters.  The otters are really fun to watch.  They just float along on the surface grooming, eating or sleeping.  Some of the older ones we saw were used to the kayaks and we could get closer to them than the younger ones.  In addition to the mammals we saw lots of seabirds and even some Bald Eagles.  Very Cool!!  Our paddle ended with a float through an arch in the rocks, so a good day was had by all.  We ate lunch at a small beach as the tide came rushing back in. Our trip back to the spit was not nearly as fast as out trip over because the wind had come up and things got a bit choppier and huge swells.  Everyone on the boat survived and no one "chummed" over the side:)  After that long day we treated ourselves to dinner out at the Cosmic Cafe, whose marquee offers "Breakfast, Lunch, and Mexican".  We had HUGE Mexican burritos!  Good Times

Tide out

Tide in