Great Hikes

Ok, not all Alaska State Parks are crummy, this one was very nice. The thing that bothered us about the State Parks when we first arrived was:

Dear Alaska, this is NOT a campground. This is a parking lot. There IS a difference. Not all the campgrounds try to make you camp in a parking lot, some have really nice sites like state parks normally do. But some call these parking spots campsites. I don’t get it.

A cool bridge on one of the hiking trails in Denali State Park.

The best thing was one more glimpse of the mountains before the clouds rolled back in.

There are the most beautiful wild irises up here!

After all that time in the National Park and no mountain views, Denali finally came out for us the day we left the National Park and went into Denali State Park.

There it is. If you like to call it Denali or Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America!!!

I hope someday I will get closer than this to the mountain.

We were lucky to get these views. The next day Denali was socked in again, preventing us from seeing the mountain and taking one of those small planes that lands you on the glacier. Well, the planes were still flying but we talked to some people who’d just been and asked them how it was. They said ‘OK’. The flight was about $200 bucks a person. I’ve heard in clear weather it’s incredible but for us to spend $400 I expect more than OK, so we didn’t do it.

Denali was really cool, as you probably expect. We saw 4 bear, 4 moose, a wolf, a billion caribou, a billion dahl sheep, two golden eages and probably some other stuff I’ve forgotten about. Unfortunately I didn’t get pictures of any of them so you’ll just have to take my word on it, although I think Dave got some with his film camera. I did take lots of other pictures, though. We never did see Denali (Mt. McKinley) while we were in the national park, but we were lucky and it came out for us when we drove south to Denali State Park.

Here’s Dave pretending to be a musher. They have a really cool sled dog program at Denali. After we saw those dogs we though maybe we could train up Molly but then we learned sled dogs usually retire around 8 years old. She’s too old. Also it turns out the Alaskan Husky is not an actual breed of dog. It is any dog in Alaska that can be coerced into pulling a sled!

Dave and I hiking in the rain on top of Mt. Healy.

I don’t know if you can see it, but one of the Dahl sheep is on that mountian.

Beautiful views of the Alaska range, but not the big one.

Dave climbing around on some rocks.

We hiked along this river for a while, the views are just amazing.

The ptarmigan, state bird of Alaska. There is a town in Alaska called ‘Chicken’. They wanted to name it Ptarmigan but no one in town could spell it!

The best way to see Denali is by bike. They don’t allow private cars on the park road (90 miles long). You can take a shuttle bus which is fun, but on a bike you see so much more! Unfortunately it’s a lot scarier when you see bear and you are on a bike. Do bears like meals on wheels? We were a little worried, especially as close as they were!

I don’t know if you can see very well in the photo, but that grass covered mound is actually a glacier, and the grey hole is where the ice has melted and formed a sink hole.

Just wanted to post this photo from a little town we stopped in called Nenana. The structure I’m standing beside is put on the ice every winter. Everyone in town and from miles around then pays $1 and picks a date and time. Who ever has the time the ice breaks up and the structure goes down river wins the pot. Last year it was $200,000! Worth playing. We were in this town on the 4th of July. They had a parade and all kinds of crazy games. It looked like the whole town participated, it was really cool.

We thought about driving the Dalton Highway all the way to Deadhorse, the northernmost point you can drive to. But it is a 414 mile drive (1 way) on a dirt road that is notorious for causing flat tires. It’s recommended to take 2 spares. Since we only had 1 spare and weren’t sure we wanted to commit to the drive (once you arrive at Deadhorse you can’t even go look at the ocean, that is owned by the oil companies) we just drove to the Arctic Circle instead. It was a fun drive, we saw some interesting things, and didn’t get any flat tires! We also took our gas cans so we avoided having to pay $3.70 at one of the few gas stations along the way.

There were fields and fields of these wildflowers. They are called fireweed and are the first thing to start growing after the forest burns. In 2004 they had a really bad year for wildfires up here.

It looked like we were on another planet.

A cute grizzly we saw along the way.

The landscape is really weird. The permafrost shoves these huge rocks up out of the ground through freeze/thaw action.

There we are, at the Circle! Amazingly, there was someone else there to take our photo.

This is a view of the Brooks Range from our turnaround point.

Bridge over the mighty Yukon river. This picture was taken at 10:30 at night. See how it looks like maybe 6:30 by the amount of light? It is crazy!

Well, we made it! We had a lot of fun in BC and the Yukon but we wanted to make sure we didn’t spend too much time down there and not make it into Alaska. So far it’s been great. After we got over how crummy Alaska State Parks are (we’ll show you later) we had a great first full day in the state by going hiking and seeing 5 moose! I havn’t gotten any pictures of moose, though, somehow they are camera shy. Here are some of our first views of the state. OK, some of the state parks are nice, but really, my complaints are justified.

A beautiful view of the Kluane range on the Canada/Alaska border. This is the range that contains Canada’s highest mountain. The valley below in the photo is where we saw 4 moose!

Here’s the Alaska pipeline! OK, I wasn’t sure it was photo worthy but up here everyone thinks it’s a tourist attraction. Being in the oil industry I felt obligated to photograph it!

So we’d seen several bears along the trip, one in Oregon but the rest since we entered Canada. Dave and I even made a bet on how many bears we’d see before we hit the Alaka border. I went low, and Dave went high with 12 bears. So far, I was winning and we were only about 40 kilometers from the Alaska border when we spotted a black bear on the side of the road which put us at a tie. About a mile down the road Dave saw something near a lake and thought it was a moose. We stopped the RV in the nearest pullout and Dave walked back with the binoculars. I started to go with him and for some reason turned back, thinking I’d give Molly a walk but when I got back to the RV I changed my mind about that, too, and just sat in the doorway waiting to see if Dave waved me down in case it was a moose. He turned towards me but instead of yelling ‘yes, come down’ or ‘no, stay there’ he yelled ‘get in the RV there is a bear right there!’ I didn’t see any bear but hopped in and shut the door. This young grizzly walked right up to the door of the RV. I thought I might have to drive up the road if he tried to get in! He had the look of a juvenile delinquent bear and was looking for some easy food (he’d probably been fed by tourists before). Throughout the whole thing Molly didn’t even notice he was there! Dave was stuck out with a bear between him and the RV for a long time but when other people started to stop and look he was able to walk back unnoticed.

Yes, he was really that close. And Dave ended up winning the bet! It wasn’t a moose, though, it was a horse.

The Yukon is a cool place, literally. 🙂 It has an interesting history and rugged attitude. The town of Whitehorse with around 25,000 people has 2/3 of the population of the province. Makes the Ozarks sound crowded. 🙂

A lot of the history here revolves around gold mining. Here I am with the world’s largest gold pan.

Here’s Dave with a monument about the building of the Alaska Highway. These civil engineers like to build monuments about their accomplishments! 🙂