Chapter 56 - Anchorage and the Kenai
14 July 2000
6/23 It's amazing how familiar a place can become in just a few days. We really haven't done much in Anchorage - a few drives around town for shopping and sightseeing - and we've already begun to feel that we know our way around.
Today dawned bright and clear - the first cloudless day since we entered Alaska. We celebrated by driving up the mountain east of us - along the road leading to the local ski area. From an outlook just below the ski area, we finally saw Mt. McKinley. The distance from where we were standing to the mountain is 135 miles! Yet it towered above the horizon, clearly visible. Mt. Foraker, 3000 feet lower, was also visible a bit to the left.
Whenever we try to explore, it seems like most of the roads in the northeastern suburbs of Anchorage lead to a guardhouse on the border of Elmendorf Air Force Base, which extends from the shores of Cook Inlet all the way up into the mountains to the East.
Exploring along the Anchorage waterfront is also frustrating. It's hard to get to the water, since commercial docks line the shoreline for miles, and when we try to head out of town to the east, the roads all dead-end at a chain-link fence. To the west, we were able to drive a few miles on a road which occasionally had a view of the water and which snuck through a narrow gap between the bay and the International Airport out to Point Woronzof. But even this road petered out not far beyond the airport.
Ship Creek, near where it enters Cook Inlet, was a fast flowing stream lined down the center of flow with evenly spaced people fishing for salmon. The tidal range on Cook Inlet is 20 to 30 feet. We were there near low tide, and saw mostly huge expanses of gray mudflats. The mountains across the inlet are handsome white peaks (when they are visible - which isn't very often.)
It's been hard to get used to the fact that Alaska just doesn't have very many roads. There's the main road, leading from city to city, a few streets within the city, and not much else. Side roads quickly deteriorate into mud ruts, and then dead-end at an abandoned mine.
For example, there are only two roads out of Anchorage — State Highway 1 north and State Highway 1 south. All other roads are stopped by mountains or water. Let's hope Anchorage never has to evacuate because of a tidal wave or earthquake or some other crisis. On the other hand, Anchorage has multiple airports. But how many people could get out of town in an emergency on light airplanes?
6/26 Kat and Andy Nagel arrived on schedule from Rochester. After picking them up from the airport, the afternoon was spent grocery shopping and visiting the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Admission to The Native Heritage Center is expensive, so don't go an hour before closing time as we did. The stage presentations and the full-size native village buildings may justify the cost, but deserve more time than we had. Call before you go for the events list and plan accordingly. The Glacier Brewing Company gave us an excellent dinner, in a noisy crowded environment. They make good beer too!
6/27 Hooked up and headed to Seward. The drive is yet more spectacular scenery - along Turnagain Arm (an extension of Cook inlet) and then over a pass among snowcapped mountains, with frequent views of glaciers all along the way.
The city of Seward has converted at least a mile of waterfront into an informal RV Park. This waterfront was covered with commercial buildings — docks, fish processing factories, etc — before the 1964 earthquake and tsunami, which leveled everything, leaving only a few foundations and pilings. Almost this entire area is now either RV overnight parking or parkland. We camped one row back from the waterfront, with a lovely view (when the fog lifted) out across Resurrection Bay to the snow-capped mountains beyond. One small section had RV hookups, but it was full. Sealife is plentiful. We frequently saw whales spouting. One morning, a bald eagle was sitting on an old piling just off shore. Sea otters frequent the entire area, and one hangs out regularly around the entrance to the small boat harbor, just north of the campground.
The SeaLife Center is new - built with reparation money from the Exxon Valdez disaster and opened just two years ago. Although not large, it is very well done, with many interesting exhibits. The news while we were there was that their bird exhibit was about to have its first births - several puffins and guillemonts were sitting on eggs, in an area hidden behind rocks. The public was sharing the event via television monitors, fed by hidden cameras behind the rocks.
We signed up for a boat tour with Mariah Tours - a division of Kenai Fjords Tours which uses relatively small boats for semi-custom tours. Our trip had nine passengers, and a bright, articulate, young captain who grew up in Seward and knows the area in great detail. Our meandering route took us out among the Chiswell Islands, rocky crags well out into Prince William Sound. We also went several miles further out into the sound, searching unsuccessfully for other kinds of whales (and successfully for a shearwater, which seemed to be one passenger's main reason for taking the trip).
We were lucky to see an unusual number of whales - humpbacks and orcas. Two humpbacks were breaching repeatedly. Another surfaced near the boat with its huge mouth wide open. We were already watching the spot where it surfaced, both our attention and the whale's having been attracted there by a noisy flock of gulls squabbling over a rich supply of food at the surface. We probably saw a dozen humpbacks and about the same number of orcas. On two occasions, a boisterous group of Dall porpoises joined us and surfed on our bow wave for 10 minutes or so. These are rather small porpoises, but very showy, black with bold white belly and white edges on the fins.
We maneuvered in very close to rock faces on isolated islands where thousands of birds were nesting, getting close-up views of comical-looking horned puffins and many other unfamiliar and strange-looking birds - parakeet auklet, marbled murrelet, common murre, and pigeon guillemot.
The boat maneuvered through extensive fields of floating ice to get close to Holgate Glacier, where we watched chunks of ice almost continually cascade down the face of the glacier into the bay. This glacier doesn’t seem to make large icebergs, and our impression is that no chunk of ice was bigger than 10' across.
An excellent dinner at Ray's, on the harbor front. We resolved to go back again.
6/29 Up early to catch the M.V. Tustumena, our ferry to Valdez. The 9:30 A.M. departure initially seemed comfortable, until we discovered that we had to check in two hours before departure. The loading process actually took an hour and a half. Vehicles loaded from the side of the ship, onto a 40' long elevator which lowered two or three cars or one big vehicle at a time down to a turntable on the vehicle deck (the lowest deck). The turntable rotated the entire elevator platform 90 degrees, so that the vehicles could back into the ship. This time-consuming process was reversed for unloading.
After watching another truck-trailer combination loaded, we're glad we didn't try to bring our trailer. If the trailer and tow vehicle won't both fit on the turntable at once (ours won't), an additional tow vehicle must be hired (arranged in advance) at both the loading and unloading point. One tow vehicle is lowered onto the turntable, and is driven off the "wrong" end of the turntable - into a narrow area of the ship's workshop in the stern. Another tow vehicle backs the trailer onto the turntable, unhitches, and leaves. The trailer is lowered on the elevator, rotated, and hooked to the first tow vehicle, which backs into the hold with the trailer. This process must be done in reverse at the other end.
Our truck was among the last vehicles loaded - a long wait. The vehicles were packed very close together - we had to fold our side mirrors in against the side of the truck, and the vehicles were staggered to enable us to partially open our doors into the small gap between two adjacent vehicles in order to get out. It's hard to imagine backing our 35' trailer under these conditions - with just a few inches of clearance on each side and with considerable time pressure.
Fog and low clouds made the trip much less scenic than we had hoped for. Soon after leaving the Seward dock, the outside world disappeared into the fog, and we spent many hours cruising in isolation, seeing absolutely nothing beyond the ship itself, not even a horizon. It's an eerie feeling. I'd have like to spend some time watching the ship's radar and watching our GPS-updated position crawl across the computer map, to help tie us back to the real world. But the bridge is off-limits to passengers on these big ships (unlike the tour boats, where I spent a lot of time looking over the captain's shoulder.) Later, the fog lifted and thinned a bit, and we occasionally saw dark headlands looming out of the mists. It's a good thing that all four of us like to read and brought lots of books. The ship made one brief stop at Chenega - a small native village on an island in the middle of nowhere. All we saw was a bare concrete dock. The village itself was up a little hill in the trees, not visible from the dock, so we didn't get off the ship. We docked in Valdez ahead of schedule, and were among the first vehicles off the ship, enabling us to arrive at our B&B around 11 p.m., almost an hour earlier than expected and still full light.
We had discovered (two weeks in advance) that practically everything in Valdez was booked full for the days we'd be there. We made reservations at Lake House B&B on the recommendation of another B&B owner, who said it was quite new, relatively unknown, and might have space available. It turned out to be very pleasant, an large isolated old house a few miles out of town, recently remodeled, with views from our rooms over a beautiful freshwater lake about a mile wide. We got occasional glimpses of a pair of trumpeter swans who were nesting on the lake. Dave and Helen were in the "owner's room" - the only room with a telephone and television set. The tv never got turned on, but we used the phone daily to retrieve our Email.
6/30 In the morning, we enjoyed a bus tour of the Alyeska Pipeline terminal - the southern terminus of the 800-mile oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. It is a large and complex facility, capable of loading several oil tankers at once, and able to handle the largest super-tankers. The hillside is covered with huge storage tanks, enabling local storage of several days' flow from the pipeline. The current pipeline flow is around one million barrels per day - roughly one average shipload per day, about one quarter of the flow when the oil fields were first developed.
The original safety precautions built in to the facility are impressive - but weren't able to deal with a drunk officer driving the Exxon Valdez onto a reef several miles away from his assigned course in calm seas and excellent weather.
After that disaster, they added additional layers of safety. Each tanker is now escorted all the way out to open ocean by two boats - a tugboat and an emergency oil recovery vessel. Oil recovery equipment and empty oil storage barges are anchored at several points around the bay. This has greatly added to the cost of shipping oil.
A large facility processes the ballast water which is pumped out of the arriving tankers. It closely resembles the sewage processing plant for a small city - with storage for several ships full of water, settling tanks for separating residual oil from water, and tanks of bacteria which digest any remaining trace amounts of oil before the water is drained into the bay.
The Valdez city museum is small and spartan, but a "must-see". It contains artifacts and interesting interpretive exhibit from the various periods of the town's history, and had a gorgeous collection of quilts on display. Quilting is one way to fill long dark days of winter. We particularly remember an exhibit of early native clothing, including a delicate transparent raincoat made from seal stomachs.
This is one of several places where a film of the 1964 tsunami can be seen - footage shot with an amateur 8 mm movie camera by a crewman on a ship in port, who just happened to have camera in hand when the wave hit, and had the presence of mind to hang on tight and keep the film rolling. That ship was bounced off the bottom of the harbor, parked briefly on dry land in the middle of town, and then successfully backed out into the harbor by an alert crew who got the engines running quickly. The town was totally destroyed. Everyone on the docks, and nearly everyone in town, was drowned. The ship, and the crew who were aboard, survived. The current town of Valdez is built several miles from the site of the old town, where only a few streets and foundations are visible today.
In the afternoon, the four of us arranged a one-hour helicopter tour through the surrounding area and up a narrow canyon to skim over the glaciers in the high mountains. Helen and I had never been in a helicopter before, so this was a unique flying experience us as well a way to see more spectacular scenery. We landed high on a glacier, where we got out and walked around for about 15 minutes. The pilot picked a "smooth" and presumably safe portion of the glacier, but the surface was still quite uneven, and we could hear many little streams of melt water tinkling along the surface, often invisible under the remains of the winter's snow, occasionally disappearing down holes or narrow cracks in the ice. Helen stepped on what looked like firm snow and slid down into a pool of melt water, with visions of disappearing into a bottomless crevasse. It wasn't bottomless, and we hauled her out, wet to the waist, a bit bruised, with a sore knee and a somewhat wounded ego.
We went exploring and found a narrow dirt road leading up Mineral Creek Canyon behind town. After just a few miles, we were stopped by the remains of an avalanche which had buried the road under many feet of dense snow. But just before the avalanche, we stopped to enjoy a noisy waterfall beside the road. While we were stopped, a Texas couple who were camped at the roadside nearby saw our Texas plates and came over to talk to us. When they found we weren't "real" Texans, they hid their disappointment well, and we had an interesting conversation about their travels and ours.
On the way back, we stopped to enjoy a flower-filled meadow - acres and acres of dense flowers - chocolate lilies and iris as well as the ubiquitous jacobs ladder, lupine and fireweed. The day ended with a good dinner at Mike's Palace.
7/1 Another tour boat trip, this time without Andy, who stayed at the B&B nursing a bad back. The Lu-Lu Belle is a private operation, - a beautiful boat owned by its captain, more yacht than tour boat, with lots of meticulously maintained varnished wood. The captain and his wife take the boat south every winter, spending the off-season in Puget Sound. The weather was not cooperative, with low clouds obscuring most of the mountains and occasional light rain. But at least the fog had dissipated, giving good visibility near the surface and good wildlife viewing conditions. The trip was labeled as "half-day", but in fact lasted about seven hours. There were 37 passengers on this trip - almost a full load for this boat.
On this trip, we saw fewer whales than last time, but did encounter a large number of sea otters - whole flotillas of them, floating lazily on their backs and staring curiously at us as we motored slowly past.
The captain was remarkably skilled at maneuvering his big boat in close quarters. On two occasions, he stuck the front several feet of the boat into a cave in the cliffs, with only a few feet of clearance on each side, to show us birds nesting in crevices on the cave walls. This would have been impressive enough in calm water, but we were in open water, with a substantial swell tossing the boat around. It took constant jockeying of the throttles, rapidly throwing one or the other of the twin diesels back and forth between forward and reverse, to maintain the precise position required.
For us, the highlight of the trip was the ice fields in the fjord in front of the Columbia Glacier. We never saw the glacier itself, since the fjord is densely clogged with ice for several miles. But this glacier calves fairly large icebergs, and we followed open leads for some distance in, until we were entirely surrounded by ice, sometimes gently nudging substantial ice flows out of the way to open a path. Some of the icebergs were a rich blue color and so transparent that we could see waves breaking against the opposite side of the berg, through many feet of ice. Other bergs were a brilliant white. Some were dirty, almost black. Several bergs rolled over while we watched - having become unstable due to melting and/or pieces breaking off.
In this region of much colder air and water, patches of fog swirled over the water, closing in the view until all we could see was the forest of large and small icebergs immediately around us, merging into solid icepack not far in front. It was easy to imagine that we were exploring the permanent ice of the Arctic Ocean, a thousand miles further north. The wind cut through multiple layers of clothing, the mist and rain fogged glasses, camera lenses, and binoculars, we quickly got chilled, and we loved it, sitting out on the bow for long periods. We could, of course, retreat to a comfortably heated cabin to warm up whenever we wanted. We got back to the dock late in the evening and tired, grabbed a big take-out pizza, and headed back to the B&B to share it with Andy.
If time allows only one boat trip, we'd recommend the one from Seward, because of the greater quantity and diversity of wildlife. But this one was wonderful too, in a different way. We'll be tempted to do yet another boat trip from a different coastal town.
7/2 Drove up the Richardson Highway leaving Valdez. Wonderful views - particularly in Keystone Canyon, which has many high waterfalls dropping down the cliffs on each side of the highway for several miles. Thompson Pass is an easy climb, only 2600 feet high but well above the tree line and having a very alpine feeling. One reason for the alpine environment is that this area has one of the highest annual snowfalls on the continent, holding a record of 81 feet of snow in one season. Just north of the pass, a short paved spur road leads to the face of Worthington Glacier, where we stopped to enjoy the view. Further north, there were numerous pullouts with views of the rugged Wrangell Mountains to the east. In Copper Center, we stopped at the small Visitor's Center of Wrangell-Elias National Park.
We had called ahead for reservations for two nights at the Point Lodge on Lake Louise, based on published information about the beauty of the Lake and on the impressive photos and verbiage in the Lodge's own web site. The reality didn't live up to the advertising. The rooms were small, plain, cells, without even a chair, overlooking a parking lot rather than the lake. The one small common area with comfortable and cozy seating didn't have much of a view and was dominated by a blaring television set. The fireplace didn't have a fire on this cool overcast day. A large attractive outdoor deck overlooked the lake, but lacked comfortable seating. The drone of a big diesel generator was always present. This place is 20 miles from the nearest power or telephone lines. They have an expensive, low-bandwidth satellite telephone, so I didn't even try to retrieve Email.
The lake was just a lake, continually buzzing with fishing boats. The shoreline was flat and uninteresting, and the mountains in the distance were so far away as to be nearly invisible in the haze. The food was good, but plain and simple nothing special to justify the relatively high cost. Fishing seemed to be the only activity. Andy would have enjoyed some fishing - but there was no provision for casual fishing (hourly rental of small boats and fishing gear would have been nice). So we canceled our second night and left after breakfast the next morning.
7/3 Unusually fine weather (the sun was out occasionally) for the drive from Lake Louise back to where we left the trailer at Seward. Every turn of the road opened up a new mountain vista, so we traveled slowly, stopping at nearly every pullout to take pictures.
We toured the Musk Ox Farm, about 40 miles east of Palmer. These strange animals are living fossils - not closely related to any other modern animal, and pretty much unchanged since back when they shared the world with sabre-tooth tigers and wooly mammoths. They are adapted to cold in a rather extreme way - with only a nose and huge snowshoe like hooves visible sticking out from a uniform dark blanket of long fur which hangs almost to the ground.
The musk ox is misnamed, having no musk gland and not an ox. It is well adapted to the arctic, and defends itself effectively against bears and wolf packs (its only serious wild predators). Its defense method is not to scatter and run, but rather to form a dense stationary herd, babies in the middle and a solid wall of horns and hooves facing outward. This is no defense at all against humans with guns, and the musk ox was hunted almost to extinction before protective laws were established. They have now been successfully re-established in arctic regions all the way around the world.
This farm is one of the few places in the world where these animals are being domesticated. It is a non-profit demonstration project staffed mostly by volunteers, and raises the animals purely to harvest their fine inner fur, called qiviut. This long, fine, silky hair is shed annually. The farm doesn't wait for it to fall off, but carefully combs it from each animal in the spring, leaving the long coarse guard hairs which last for several years. The fiber is turned over to a native cooperative, which has it processed into yarn by a commercial company, and then delivers the yarn to several native villages where women have been taught to knit scarves and blankets and other expensive tourist items ($200 for the softest, silkiest, warmest, finest scarf imaginable). Although knitting is not part of these native cultures, this has become a major contributor to the cash economy of these villages, who are clamoring for more yarn.
But although the women have adapted to knitting for a living, the men have refused to adapt to animal husbandry, and are unwilling to care for their own musk ox herds. So the villages remain dependent on the charity of non-native volunteers for their yarn supply.
Other guests at Lake Louise told us we should detour to take the road over Hatcher Pass, so we turned northwest at Palmer, and soon found ourselves on a twisty gravel mountain road. Unfortunately, we soon came to signs warning us that the road was closed before the summit. We drove on up anyway, and got about 18 miles before being stopped by closed gates. The road apparently had not yet opened for the season. We don't know whether it is still snow-covered or is washed out or what. The drive up and back was very worthwhile - giving us yet another set of spectacular mountain vistas and alpine meadows full of spring flowers.
While driving along Turnagain Arm, southeast of Anchorage, we saw a strange wave pattern and then realized we were seeing the tidal bore - a wall of whitewater extending nearly all the way across the wide bay and appearing to be several feet high in the middle. We drove slowly along, keeping pace with it and pulling into each turnout to watch it pass. A surfboarder rode the wave for several miles. Partway along the bay, two kayakers paddled madly out to intercept the wave, but seemed to be having trouble staying on the face. We saw no belugas at Beluga point - and doubt if the water was deep enough for them anyway.
We had intended to spend another night in a B&B or motel, but found the scenery so good in the clearing skies that we decided to keep going, on the assumption that tomorrow was almost certain to be worse (it was). So we got back to Seward about 9 p.m. and settled into the trailer. Fortunately, we had paid for the campsite for the entire period we were gone and left the trailer in the site. The campground was jammed full for the extended holiday weekend, partly because of the race and festival in Seward on the 4th.
7/4 Spent a quiet day in Seward. Dave watched a portion of the Mount Marathon Race - a run starting in the middle of Seward and going to the summit of Mt. Marathon, which forms the backdrop to the town, and then returns, finishing back in town. It's only about 3.5 miles round trip - but the summit is 3000 feet above the starting line, and the climb involves scrambling up steep (up to 60-degree) rock slopes and running down through steep loose shale scree slopes. The record time is about 41 minutes! I generally plan on about 6 hours when I go up and down a 3000-foot mountain. Many of the runners returned scratched up and smeared with mud.
Helen and Kat went out and explored the town in the truck. The laundromat is closed for the holiday, and the entire middle of town is closed off for the race, parade, and other festivities, but all the gift shops are open.
While walking along the beach, I notice a whale spouting, a few hundred yards offshore from the campground.
We had wondered about a fireworks display in a place that never gets dark - but the fireworks were bright enough to show up well. The show went on as scheduled, at midnight, with dark clouds a few thousand feet over head providing an excellent backdrop, and a light rain trying unsuccessfully to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd. The waterfront was lined with people, and many boats had motored out from the harbor and anchored in the bay to watch.
7/5 A lazy day, with a short outing to Exit Glacier - a part of Kenai Fjords National Park. This particular glacier is small - only three miles long and a few hundred yards wide. It is one of 35 glaciers flowing down from the huge Harding Ice Field, which covers several hundred thousand acres in the middle of the mountain range. The ice field is several thousand feet thick in places - covering all but all but a small portion of the peaks of the mountains. An easy walk of about a half-mile leads from the parking lot to a viewing point fairly close to the face of the glacier. An additional, slightly more strenuous, half-mile loop goes directly to the edge of the ice. A return path goes from the glacier to the parking lot along the meltwater stream and through the woods. The woods along this trail were full of short spires of pink pyrola and shy maidens, wildflowers not often seen. There is also a steep several-mile trail which goes up and over the first mountain, providing a view across the Ice Field. Dave hopes to hike this one when we visit here with our kids.
It would be easy for RVers who camp along the shoreline near the small boat harbor in Seward to ignore the south part of town. Don’t! The harbor-front restaurant we had chosen for dinner had a long waiting line and an unacceptable waiting time, so we headed to this quiet end of town away from the tourist stuff, hoping for a less crowded place. We settled on the Apollo Restaurant - Greek and Italian cuisine. It didn't look impressive from the outside, but the food was excellent. Among the 4 of us we ordered both Greek and Italian dishes, and all were very good.
We also walked through an area of small shops in this older part of town, a few blocks inland from the Sea Life Center. One of the shops has Russian crafted gifts with brightly colored nested boxes, intricate jewelry, rich fabrics, elaborate china, etc. Another had carved wood burls that deserved a second look. A neighboring gift shop advertises unusual ice cream. The Fireweed Honey flavored ice cream was delicious, but the Birch Walnut flavor was superb. We don't know just how the birch flavor is extracted from the trees, but it was a richer version of maple walnut flavored ice cream.
Later in the evening, we drove to the end of the road, southwest of Seward along the coast. Just outside Seward, an impressive waterfall drops right beside the road, with the spray shooting out over the road, soaking every car that drives by. A mile further on, the road ends at a small ramshackle community, on a flat spot at the mouth of a valley, with a state recreation area part way up the hill behind.
7/6 After a lazy morning, we towed the trailer 50 miles up to Cooper Landing for a visit with Dave and Sally Davis. As we headed up the side road to the Kenai Princess RV Park, we passed Dave and Sally, on their way home from Sally's afternoon of working at the library. They flagged us down and followed us to the RV Park. After we unhooked the trailer, they led us on a narrated tour of the Cooper Landing area - a two-truck tour since we wouldn't all fit in one, with Sally narrating over the CB radio.
The public library where Sally spends an afternoon a week is unique - a one-room log cabin staffed and funded entirely by volunteers. It's attractive, neat, and well organized, and even has two Internet-connected computers for public use - a great resource for this small and remote community.
We saw the tiny log cabin in which the Davises spent their first Alaska winter, nearly as small as their fifth wheel trailer — with a gorgeous view of the mountains from its front window.
The Davis house is lovely - in the woods on a hillside above Kenai Lake, with a natural wood exterior and many custom details in the construction - including a small greenhouse. In the evening, they took us to dinner at the Kenai Grill - a small rustic conglomeration of sheds and decks with uneven floors. The owner/chef is a gourmet cook and we had a wonderful meal and several hours of fascinating conversation, until we got politely kicked out half an hour after closing time. Nathan, Dave and Sally's singer/guitarist son, has a new CD out. We didn't get time to hear it.
7/7 Drove through the area, enjoying the scenery. We stopped at a state park at the junction of the Russian and Kenai Rivers and walked the boardwalk along the Russian, watching the many fishermen. Fishing seems to be a family affair with mostly everyone over about six years old rigged with waders and full equipment. The main salmon run had ended and nobody seemed to be catching anything. Drove further west to the mostly gravel Skilak loop road - not very interesting, mostly in the woods with rare views of mountains and lake. In the evening, we went back to Kenai Grill for another excellent meal.
7/8 Hooked up and left early for a long drive all the way up to Denali National Park. Shortly after arriving, we begin to smell smoke, and then noticed the view disappearing. The wind had shifted, and smoke from several of the 33 forest fires far to the northwest is now blanketing the entire Denali area. These fires were all started by the estimated 3000 thousand lightning strikes from a single large storm system which passed through the area west of Fairbanks about a week ago.
Andy & Helen drove to the Visitor's center to exchange shuttle tickets for an earlier morning departure (hoping for more wildlife) postponed to the day after tomorrow (hoping for better weather), and then drove the 17 miles of park highway. They saw a fox trotting down the yellow center line of the highway (the same one we saw several weeks ago?)
7/9 A lazy rainy day. Lots of reading and picture puzzle fitting. Nagels went to the dog sled demonstration program at the National Park. Andy cooked a big pot of goulash.
7/10 Delivered Nagels to the Visitor's Center for the 5:30 AM park shuttle bus. It's a good thing we were early, since the bus had been overbooked and the last several people in line didn't get seats, and were left on the sidewalk hoping that the next bus (an hour later) would have some no-shows and therefore some empty seats. It was a dismal day, with low clouds and occasional rain - but they still enjoyed the 8-hour trip, with good wildlife sightings and impressive scenery. While they were on the trip, we packed up, hooked up, and moved the trailer down to the Visitor's Center parking lot. When they returned at 1:30 p.m. we began the drive back to Anchorage.
7/11 Helen, Kat, and Andy drove to the AK Museum of Natural History at Eklutna. Interesting fossils, stuffed birds, preserved plants, native artifacts, and mineral samples filled every corner. The Nagel's found a particularly nice item in the gift shop to remind them of Alaska. Lunch at the Thai restaurant in the small shopping center across the road from the museum was disappointing.
The Anchorage Museum of History and Art was the most polished museum we have found in Alaska, a delightful find, starting with the plantings and sculptures on the front sidewalk. Inside, the display on early Russian explorations and the paintings of the earliest westerners to see Alaska were very interesting. This is the best place to see Mt McKinley if the weather prevents direct viewing. It was the subject of a dozen or more paintings, one that was at least 10'x15' seemed impossibly bigger than life.
Dave Davis had strongly recommended Aladdin's Restaurant, so we went there for dinner. The food was indeed excellent, and we'll look for opportunities to go back and try other dishes. The menu is nominally Moroccan, but actually is a diverse blend of Mediterranean cuisine. The owner/chef is originally from Algiers, but is a world traveler and has university degrees from London and Los Angeles. Our waitress was his nine-year-old daughter, poised and professional. The daughter is home-schooled, which led to a long after-dinner conversation with the father about education in general.
7/12 The Alaska Zoo is small and rustic. As with any zoo, many of the animals were sleeping - uninteresting motionless blobs of fur if visible at all. But each time we visit a zoo, we find a few special things that make it worthwhile. This time was no exception. We saw Matilda, the zoo's single elephant, running around in her pond lashing the water to a frenzy with trunk and feet, trumpeting loudly (perhaps frustrated by a persistent horsefly). She then left the pond and sucked up many trunkfulls of dust and dirt, blowing it carefully all over her wet back and shoulders, making a mosquito- and fly-proof mud coating. A young man who described himself as Matilda's butler talked amusingly of his duties and the challenges involved in taking care of an animal this big. Matilda is not fond of peanuts. Her favorite fruit is watermelon - eaten whole, rind and all.
The zoo's Alaskan Brown Bear is by far the biggest bear we've ever seen. We stared at a wolverine while it stared at us, pacing its cage looking menacing. A mink dashed incredibly rapidly through a maze of plastic pipe, popping unexpectedly out of random openings. A keeper exercised the baby caribou by enticing them to chase bright strings she dangled as she ran about the pen. Twin baby moose grazed casually nearby.
We particularly enjoyed a fierce but good-natured mock battle between two half-grown bears - a polar bear and a grizzly bear. They kept at it for the 15 minutes that we watched, and were still going strong when we left. It all took place in the water - lunging at each other, wrapping front paws around each other and biting vigorously, then diving to maneuver for advantageous position. These unlikely friends were raised together from small cubs. The grizzly seemed almost as comfortable in the water as the naturally aquatic polar bear.
Drove by the Anchorage Public Library, an impressive modern building. We haven't yet investigated the inside, although we've heard rumors that so much money was spent on the building that little was left for books.
A half-hour at the Alaska Botanic Garden allowed walking the wild flower path and a loop thru the tiny but well planted perennial gardens. Their 6 foot blue Himalayan Poppies were superb — they are native to a cold climate. It is interesting to see which of our common temperate garden plants are hardy here. The peonies were flourishing, as were several showy campanulas and catmints.
The spring wildflowers are waning now as the prolific pink fireweed spires, white plates of achillea, and the yellow solidago and goldenrod begin their shows. We have especially enjoyed the blue flowering plants: Chiming Bells (a mertensia), lupines, and Jacob's Ladders. The bright tufts of last year's cotton grass often looks like white flowers in roadside meadows.
Something is perfuming the trailer - but I don't know which of the dozen different wildflowers in our bouquet it is. All the flowers were picked from roadside ditches.
I laughed when I heard of a local farmer's market. After all, what could they grow to sell besides the rhubarb we see in pies on every menu? Well, I was wrong. The cool summer with long days pushes cabbages and leafy vegetables to uncommon sizes. But I haven't seen any plants that rely on daylength for timing — no onions, no chrysanthemums. Plant survival is a lot more complex than just temperature extremes.
We see huge hanging baskets and lush planting beds many places. Downtown Anchorage has lots of spots of color. Helen spent an hour photographing the flowerbeds at the entrance to our campground. Fuchsias and Tuberous Begonias, along with other 'shade loving' plants from our more temperate climes, thrive in full sun here and are twice as big. The last frost in Anchorage was June 21st this year, so most of this growth had to be after that! The long hours of moderate intensity daylight really do something for some plants.
The Snowgoose restaurant (which includes Sleeping Lady Brewing Company) has a nice view across Cook Inlet from most of the tables. But their micro-brewed beer, the wine list, and our dinners were all mediocre and over-priced. We recommend stopping here to enjoy the view from their second-floor deck. But stick to a snack and to the extensive list of bottled Belgian ales or their home-brewed root beer.
After dinner, we delivered the Nagels to the airport, ending their delightful and busy 16-day visit. Now we've got a week to relax before our next visitors arrive (a niece & her husband, then our son and daughter.) Relaxation is relative, however - there is still preparation to do for these visits, reservations to make, laundry to do, six rolls of photographs to label and index, two batches of mail to process, haircuts to get, housecleaning to do, etc.