Note... the days are much shorter and the sun hours are changing quickly. The Land of the Midnight sun is no longer with us. Temps range from the high 30 to the 60, so the weather is just perfect. We have had more rain than usual, but it has not been a big problem.
8/22/2011 - 8/23-/2011
This week starts with us at Tok, AK, the gateway junction into Alaska. Since we are traveling south we will join the Alaskan Highway and drive to Watson Lake and then back track 15 miles to the junction of highway 37, the Cassiar Road.
Barbara spent an hour at Tok gifts shops and we ate at Fast Eddies cafe and hotel. They have good food and free wifi. I sent up the a blog there. Spent the night at the Toroso station, one can wash the rig, dump the tanks, spend the night, and fill with fuel.
We get the rig gassed up and the filled the fresh water and we are heading to Kluane Lake for a nice scenic turnout for the night. It is at Destruction Bay, another one of the historic spots on the Alaskan highway. This is the ceremonial spot on the Alaskan Highway that the north met the south road construction crews and the Alaskan highway (Alcan) was completed.
We pass through Haines Junction and Beaver Creek and we are now in Yukon Canada, always very scenic and great government campground. We rate them as #1
8/24/2011
Travel day to Whitehorse, Yukon Terrority. We don't have much to do here, but we did some shopping downtown and purchased a Hank Karr video. Hank Karr is a Yukon story teller and singer.
We shopped Walmart and spent the night with about 20 others in their parking lot.
8/25/2011 - 8/26/2011
Travel day to Big Creek campground in the Yukon 40 miles north of Watson Lake. A very nice government campground with all the wood furnished. Located next to the Big Creek many of the sites sit just a few feet from the bank.
We spent 2 nights here.
8/27/2011
We leave Watson lake and the Sign Post Forest and back track the 17 miles to the junction of highway 37, the north end of the Cassiar Highway. This travels Beautiful British Colombia north country. This is an alternative route that takes us back to the lower 48. It is more scenic and the road condition is good, so here we go. Our target is Dease Lake Lyons Club campground on the Tanzilla river. We make several photo stops along the way and drive the speed limit of 45. We stop at Jade City for some time and a sandwitch. Read about Jade City here.
There is no need for speed along this scenic highway. We will make the Dease Lake in early evening.
We will spend two nights here.
8/28/2011
It's a special day for us. It's Barbara's birthday. We plan just to hang around the camp, maybe watch some movies and cook out on the camp fire. The day passes fast and we are still watching movies past midnight. From our site the river is running with white water and is noisy. Sure makes for a great stay.
She is getting used to birthdays on the road, as we are always on the road during August.
8/29/2011
Travel day to the junction of highway 37 (the Cassiar) and Meziadin Junction,
At this junction, we will spend 2 nights in the Meziadin Provincial Campground. This is a 5 star campground that even has satellite delivered internet powered by a Honda generator as the park does not have a electric grid connection. I used a file picture from 2 years ago but it looks the same today. After a nice fire we watched more movies including the King's Speech.
Just a note... we see mining operations all along the Cassiar, so the price of gold is opening old mines.
Tomorrow we will travel to Stewart, BC and Hyder Ak. for the day. More beautiful Northern British Columbia to see.
8/30/2011
We traveled to Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK for a full day of adventure. The drive is about 45 miles through some of the most scenic landscape that nature has to offer. Check it out here The combination of the two towns makes for interesting conversation.
I spent the afternoon at the town Museum that showcased mining. The town also has the only Toaster Museum. This showcases early electrical appliances and radio.
Up to 20 glaciers with some of them coming almost to the highway give windshields vistas that are almost unbelievable . The Salmon Glacier is the largest in the world that can be driven to by car. We also spotted bear grazing along the highway. A raging Bear River follows the road for miles.
This town has seen a lot, good and bad. In the early days, mines drove the economy until 1984 and then it was bust time. At the present time mines are beginning to start operation for gold, silver, and copper. Must be making money, because we saw high grade ore being sent slung on slings underneath helicopters to waiting ships in the port. I took pictures of the large bags of ore at the dock.
Several movies have been made in Stewart. A few are Bear Island, The Thing, Iceman, Leaving Normal, and Insomnia.
If you drive about 2 miles past Stewart, you will cross back into Alaska at Hyder. Claims to be the Friendliest ghost town in Alaska. The big attraction just outside of Hyder is the US Forest Service Fish Creek wildlife viewing area as you drive into the Tongass National Forest. Often times bears will be eating salmon as they spawn in the river. This attracts photographers from all over.
This is a special edition of our blog. In this entry, we take some lesser known side roads well off the normal routes in Alaska. Much of the next 10 days will be in an area with no cell or wifi service, therefore we will be dark during that time. Much of this entry is devoted to old towns and mining old, either gold or copper. We get a touch of gold fever while camped at the Little Nelchina. I detail our adventures along the McCarthy road leading us to the Kennecott Copper Mine in the southern Wrangell-St. Elias national Park. After leaving there, we travel the west and north park boundary to the Nabesna Road that takes us to the old Nabesna Gold mine, still in the Wrangell-St. Elias national park.
08/14/2011
Today is a travel day east and north along what is called the Glenn Highway (Alaska route 1) and is the most direct way from Anchorage to the Tok Junction and the Alaska highway (Alcan) . It connects Anchorage to Glennallen where there is the Richardson Highway to either the north or south. The south will take you to Valdez or Tok to the north.
We traveled to the 137.6 mile post on the Glenn and stopped for the night in the Little Nelchina State Recreation area (abandoned for 10 years) and found it to be just right for us. Description is 9 campsites, 15 day limit, no fee, no drinking water, with fire pits, and grayling fishing. Enough camping wood was stacked at the fire pit for a few days. I even hooked up the electric water pump to pump water from the river to the RV
We liked our site and decided to extend a few days.
08/15/2011
We found that it had gold in the river and this is a mini gold rush era in Alaska. Two longtime local guys , Alan and Dennis, from up the road came to do a little panning for gold. They came back the next day and brought the equipment to do mining using a gasoline lake pump with a special suction device along with a sleuth type separator box that they had constructed. Of course they knew how this all works and within 2 hours they had vacuumed up and separated a few flakes of gold. They plan to take this equipment up the river about 20 miles where there is a larger concentration. Both of them have studied prospecting for gold in this area and I believe they will have good success. Good luck to them. Alan is the owner of the Slide RV and lodge and Dennis is and retired engineer that worked in power generation field.
08/16/2011 - 08/17/2011
I checked the wheel bearings and adjusted the brakes on the trailer. I changed the oil on the Honda generator. I have an hour meter and the recommended 50 hour change intervals come more quickly than I would have ever thought. I have all the water I want, therefore the car and trailer gets a good wash job. It is nice to see them clean for a day or two. We spend a lot of time in and around the park. There are some hiking trails along the Little Nilchina, so I hiked a few of them. This place is packed with mining history. At the turn of the century, there was a mule pack train that moved along this river delivering supplies to the town of Nelchina, now just a ghost town with little trace of the past.
We meet more Bob and his wife, Kahren, who were out cutting wood for the winter. They are nice and give us some salmon nicely vacuumed packed. We gave them some of Jack Reed's good Lubbock grown pecans.
The day light hours are giving way to the season change and we have dark nights and much shorter days. A few leaves are starting to fall.
08/18/2011
The time has come again, and it’s time to travel. We are heading east into Glennallen with plans to turn south and head to Chitna, AK. This will take us to the end of the pavement and a campsite where we will leave the RV for a long day trip to towns of McCarthy and Kennecott.
We find a Dept of Transportation campground called the Copper River DOT campground that will work just perfect. We meet up with Alan and his wife Liz that are traveling with Dick and Nancy. We had met Alan and Liz earlier near the Yak ranch on the Edgerton Highway. Be sure to check the Yak picture, because you may not know yak crap.
08/19/2011
We all have the same travel plans to McCarthy and Kennecott so we caravan together. The distance is 59 miles one way and it will be nice to travel with someone on this really bad gravel stretch of road. Described by the Milepost editor as
“The McCarthy road is a gravel road built along the old Copper River & Northwestern railway bed. Watch for old rails and railroad ties embedded in the road or lying along the roadside. The McCarthy road ends at the Kennicott River, 59.3 miles west of the town of Chitna, AK. There is no gas or diesel available on the McCarthy road.”
To make matters worse, it looks as if it will rain all day. We are eager to get there, so at 8AM we are off to a long day of adventure. The 60 miles takes us 4 hours to complete and we had no problems, just a few scenic stop along the way.
At the end of the road we get to walk a ¼ mile gravel road and a bridge to the town of McCarthy where we will catch a local shuttle into Kennecott and the Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark located in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This is the largest of the US national parks, it is larger than 11 Yellowstone parks. It is larger than some of the states in the lower 48.
We tour the Kennecott Copper Mine and see the remains of the Mill house and most of the infrastructure building still standing. The mine closed in 1938 after mining and concentrating at least $200 million worth of ore. It had the best grade of copper ever found and supplied the copper for the world for many years
After visiting the mine we took the shuttle back to McCarty and spent some time at the Museum, store, and the historic Golden Saloon. McCarthy has no electricity, paved streets, and nothing except a foot bridge to cross the Kennecott river. There are a few generators running behind the stories. Supplies are brought in when the river is frozen or carried across the footbridge.
We were able to make the 60 miles in less time, but it still took about 3 hours to get back to the campground. Alan made a big fire and we had a good time around the fire telling stories. A little later we had smores using mints, that worked really good.
A little about Alan and Liz Johnson… Alan and Liz work for Honeywell Avionics as software engineers in the “fly by wire” control systems of the new age airplanes. They write programs that control and then furnish feedback to the computers onboard. They work for a while and then go home to a 38’ catamaran sailboat anchored on the eastern coast of Panama. This is their home. There blog at http://svkopelli.blogspot.com
A little about Dick and Nancy Maynard… Dick is a retired mechanical engineer with professional license and sometimes does church construction. He spent his working career as a field superintendent at job sites around the US. Nancy is a retired office manager.
08/20/2011
We say goodbye to our friends at the Copper River DOT campground and turn north to Glennallen and than toward Tok Junction. However, as I said early in this post, we got a touch of gold fever. On the north side of Wrangell-St. Elias NP we decide to take the Nebesna road that takes us some 42 miles into the park to the Nebesna Gold Mine that was abandoned in the late ‘40s. It is also the road to the Rambler Gold mine that I will hike up to. We set up camp at mile 16.6 in a site with a view to the southwest over Kettle Lake toward Mount Wrangell. Tomorrow we will drive to the end of the Nebesna road.
We did the dump station thing at Glennallen as we traveled through.
08/21/2011
Our Nebesna road adventure started about 10AM with us driving about 44 miles into the very scenic Wrangell St.Elias NP. The 55 degree weather was clearing with a lot of open blue sky giving us a perfect view of the mountains. The road for the first 20 miles is fair, but the next 20 are potholed and sometimes very rocky. There are a few areas that still have the corduroy road that used wooden timbers for the surface. We will ford several water crossings along the way, but these are not a problem as they are gravel and the water was not over a foot deep. In all directions the views are very scenic with some of the most impressive mountains in the world. To each side of the road the wild flowers grace the landscape.
This is hunting season in Alaska and this is a favorite for subsistence hunter and sport hunters. They hunt moose, dall sheep, and caribou. This is a national park that in 1983 opened it to land grants that brought people in to get free land. They are still a few private owners along the Nebesna road. Most of these folks have left and headed for warmer areas.
We drove to the end of the road and I walked another few miles to the trailhead to the abandoned Rambler Gold Mine. The trail was 1 mile each way, but the trail to the mine was up a steep mountain side. I made the mile, but had to stop for many rest stops along the way. The effort was rewarding as the views were great and I got to the mine to take pictures. It is somewhat scary walking into an abandoned mine, what if there is a bear in there. I took a few pics with flash. The return hike was easy as it was downhill all the way. I estimate that I walked about 7 miles today.
On the way back to the camp, we meet Alan and Liz as they were traveling toward the end of the road. We talked for a while and then we drove on to a water crossing to wash the truck of the mud we got on the McCarthy road. That worked out nicely. I use the Honda generator to power the small pump so Barbara can rinse as I used the soap and brush. On the way back, we got a few pictures of the mountains as the sun set in the west. A very good day
8/22/2011
We are leaving today and heading for Tok or Haines Junction , but are not sure because of the weather.
Therefore, this is house cleaning and blog writing. We are getting some rain and I have some concern about the road condition because of the rain falling.
We spent 2 nights at Williwah on the Whittier/Portage Glacier highway and then a night in Anchorage. Went to Alaskan Wildlife Conservation and saw the wood bison.
We spent the day visiting downtown Anchorage and a few museums and got a stamp for Barbara. Did the Alaskan Experience Theater in downtown. Worth the admission of $6 for the two of us.
Made it to Palmer on the 10th and expect to be here 5 nights. Spent the the 11th at the Independence Gold Mine on Hatcher Pass. Closed in the early 50s and has been transformed into a state park. Google it, very nice
Plan to spend some time in the old town of Palmer and we have a great camp site at 10 buck and the wood is furnished. It is perfect weather about 70 clear blue sky.
Spent the afternoon of the 13th at the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center. Interesting place.
That is about it for today. We are sitting around a camp fire listing to the radio after cooking a bratwurst. No bear stories just a black and white cat came through the campground. We are camped next to the Matanuska river, the river you follow after leaving Palmer.
This campground is at the end of the Palmer Muni airport and lots of light planes take of and land here during the day.
We are leaving the Palmer are traveling toward Glenallen.
Our last blog was sent up from Seward, AK. Jay and Rahel were leaving for the airport in Anchorage for their trip to Dallas and back to work. It was a great 10 day visit with a lot of adventures and excitement for all.
Monday, July 25-26th
We took Jay and Rahel to the bus for their trip to Anchorage. We then went back to the campground and got ready to leave for Soldotna, on the west side of the Kenai. Therefore, we will call this a travel day.
You can not travel the Seward-Sterling highway without finding new adventure. It is only about 80 miles, but the Kenai is full of surprises such as wildlife and fishermen. At this time of the year the fish are running and fishers are here from all around the world. As we drove across the Kenai and Russian rivers, we could see them standing "shoulder to shoulder" while fishing the rivers.
We overnighted for 2 nights at the Fred Meyers store at Soldotna and stocked up on supplies as we are heading up to Captain Cook State Park for 3 nights.
Wednesday the 27th - 29th
We are at Captain Cook State Park. This is north along the west coast near the original oil patch in the Cook Inlet. Barbara and I liked this park in 2009 and wanted Brad and Bev to see it.
At this park we did some beach combing for agate rocks, walking the nature trails, and wildlife watching. This park has designated and "social" trails. This was a good time of the year to see the many wild flowers along the trail. We even had a very close encounter with a mother moose on our way back to our site. The moose let us pass without any problem.
Our next site neighbors, Larry and Diana from Eagle River near Anchorage. They showed us some very strange rocks that they had collected on the beach to the north. They have come here for several years and have collected many of these strange rocks. This link reflects some of their work. The rocks are referred to as Sprint Rocks and they have many in their collection. They gave us a rock of our choice. Very interesting rocks.
Saturday July 30th
Travel day back to Soldotna on our way to Homer. We found a brand new Super Walmart at the town of Kenai and that meant that we would spend a few hours in Kenai before returning to Fred Meyers for another overnite.
Sunday August 1 - 6th
Homer is full of adventure. First we find a couple of side by side camp sites in the town campground on the Homer Spit. This is backed up against Kachemak Bay, the bay with a beautiful view of the mountains across Cook inlet.
Homer is a must visit town on the Kenia. Here are a few links, be sure to click on them and then travel to the "End of the Road" along with us. Homer wiki link Homer link 2
We enjoyed Homer very much. We did the usual tourist such as the Homer CoC visitor center and the Islands and Oceans Visitor center. We enjoyed the campfires on the beach, the late evening story telling around the fire, the tides that go out and come in, watching the bald eagles watch us and the fish cleaning area and the company of Brad and Beverly, our friends from Santa Fe.
On Monday the 1st a strange happening occurred on the beach just 50 feet from our camp site. A 178 foot beach landing craft sailed to the waters edge, placed an anchor down and just let the tide go out. About 6 hours we found out why. The owner of the Helenka B needed to re-couple the port side propeller shaft that had slipped out of the coupling. The ship, built in 1942, was a mine sweeper that served in 3 wars. It has since been shortened by 40 feet and made into a utility beach landing craft. See my pictures of the ship and the repair.
Brad and Beverly, our travel buddies, Our campsite on the Homer Spit would be the location that Brad and Bev turn back north toward Anchorage to start their return to lower 48 and then on to Santa Fe. They have to be back on Sept 1st, so this will give them about 25 days to find their way back to New Mexico. This was planned in the beginning, but we are already missing their presence as we were together every mile for the last 2 months. Sometimes we blazed the trail and sometimes they did, together we logged nearly 5500 miles. We have worked together and played together and experienced many adventures in the Land of the Midnight Sun and the Last Frontier. We drove the ALCAN, camped at the 30 mile Tec campground in Denali, drove to the Arctic circle, experienced nature at it best, shopped every store along the way, and had lots of meals together around a campfire. There was never a dull moment. Brad is a ham radio operator as I am, therefore we had good communications along the way. This helped out a great deal. Along the way, Brad and I would work together and complete many useful modifications to our rigs. We both like to tinker with electronics and mechanical project, so we came prepared and with a list of things to do. Happy trails John and Barbara
