Sights and sounds of Yellowstone and Grand Teton (nearly all pictures and videos)

August 23-31   Days 69-77

Bull elk sleeping next to building

This guy stepped right out in front of me and would not move.

Ferry trip from Haines, AK to Bellingham, WA

August 15-22   Days 68-75

It's been awhile due to lack of available WiFi, so I am trying to catch up.

After spending a few days in Haines, we boarded the ferry bound for Bellingham on schedule. This is where we entered to drive on the ferry

then we made a left turn inside the ship and drove to the end where we were guided to a parking spot.

Since we were in a rv, we loaded with the first group which also allowed us to be the first group to drive off when we arrived in Bellingham.  Once on the ferry, there was nothing to do but relax, read, eat, sleep, watch for wildlife, and watch movies; all of which I mastered. 

Our cabin was similar to a commercial cruise ship, just not as fancy and no room service.

We only had an hour in Sitka, so we took a brisk walk around the town.  It has a totem pole forest as a national park, and other interesting places.

We had a whole day in Ketchikan, AK so we walked around the town and took a hike through a forest to an overlook.

We also walked over a stream where the salmon were coming in to spawn.  All of the dark squiggly stripes in the water are salmon.

While cruising the inside passage, we saw several pods of orcas, several humpback whales, sea otters, harbor seals, sea lions, and dall porpoises.  I was unable to get pictures of them because they surfaced quickly and disappeared.

OBSERVATIONS (and other unscientific data):
It was interesting to observe the way people relaxed on the ferry.  Most people, including us, would read and watch for wildlife.  But the deck on the stern of the ship was mostly out of the wind, so some of the hearty souls of Alaska and the northwest would sun bathe, while the rest of us wore long pants and sleeves.

Alaska summary (no pictures)

August 17

I was asked by one of our thousands of readers (ok, less than three dozen) how I would classify the people or what was my impression of them.  No doubt, for the most part, they lead a very minimalist lifestyle.  I've got to say, I really admire their pioneer spirit.  They tolerate inconveniences the majority of the people in the lower forty eight would not tolerate.  A couple of things that come to mind are hunting and fishing.  Not just for sport, but for supplementing their food supply.  Often times during adverse weather conditions.  Another example is from a conversation I had with a young lady in the laundromat (if you can believe I would just start talking to a stranger :-) )  Every week or two, she would drive ~90 miles, ONE WAY, to do laundry and make phone calls because where she and her husband live, there is no electric or telephone service.  They only have an outside pit toilet, and naturally, it has no heat.  The ~90 miles is the closest laundry!  They have a generator, but due to the high price of fuel, they only use it when absolutely necessary.  I asked her what she did for the doctor, dentist, etc. and she told me they drive to Fairbanks, about three hundred miles away!  So to put that into perspective for myself, that is like us driving to Cincinnati!

Here are some of our summary thoughts of our whole trip, so far, from when we started:

• DESTINATION WE LIKED THE MOST - Seward on the Kenai Peninsula
• DESTINATION WE LIKED THE LEAST - Fairbanks.  Not that it was terrible, just a bigger city with lots of vagrants and public drunkedness
• MOST SCENIC HIGHWAY - Richardson Highway from Glennallen going south to Valdez
• BIGGEST SURPRISE IN A POSITIVE WAY - Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota
• BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT - Lack of abundant wildlife viewing in Alaska, particularly in Denali National Park.  We saw more wildlife in British Columbia.
• BEST FOOD - apple fritter from The Moose is Loose bakery in Soldotna and fresh caught grilled salmon
• BIGGEST INCONVENIENCE TRAVELING BY RV - no laundry facility
• BIGGEST CONVENIENCE  TRAVELING BY RV - ability to stop and sleep nearly anywhere we wanted
• WHAT WE LIKED THE MOST - the landscapes; mountains, glaciers, rivers, wild flowers, and vast openness.  Wildlife viewing in its native habitat.
• WHAT WE LIKED THE LEAST - paying $5.75 per gallon of gas.  Lots of rain
• WHAT WE MISSED THE MOST - sunshine and warm air; short sleeves and shorts; our own laundry facility.

GIVING CREDIT
I must take the time to give credit where outstanding credit is due.  From the time we left Madison, Alabama until we board the ferry tomorrow, we only ate three meals out; two lunches and one dinner.  Bonnie, who is very well organized, very good at planning, and very wise to know the cost of goods would be high in Canada and Alaska, planned all of the food for all of the meals.  That doesn't mean we brought it all with us, she would plan on places to stop at a supermarket to get supplies while we were still in the lower forty eight.  Before we left she even pre-made eight home made lasagna dinners and froze them at home, then packed them in our rv freezer.  I questioned when I saw how much food she was packing in the rv, but she assured me she counted the meals needed for the journey.  Not just meals, but snacks and desserts as well, and those of you who know me well, know I like desserts.  She did leave room to purchase the occasional local treat.  It that wasn't enough, she packed a container with about thirty dollars worth of quarters.  When I asked what all the quarters were for, she told me laundry, so we would not have to try to find a place to get change.  Hats off to Bonnie!

Last leg of our Alaska journey; Tok to Haines

August 10-14   Days 63-67

We have to come back through Tok to get to the Alaska Highway to start our journey home.  Since this was our 2nd visit to Tok, we were a little better informed.  The local friendly independent Tesoro dealer, Tesoro is a brand of petroleum products, had an offer of a free rv wash with a fill up, which we gladly accepted.  While talking with him, he also offered us a free holding tank dump as well as fresh water fill up.  After a further conversation with him, he offered for us to park overnight at no cost.  As hard to believe as it is, Tok has some really nice paved bike paths, so we rode our bikes ~16 miles.  The next morning when we got back on the Alaska Highway, we were treated with sunshine and nice weather, allowing us to see landscape that we had not seen on the trip up.

When we arrived at the Yukon border, we were the only people there.  In contrast, on the way up in early July, it was difficult to find a place to park.

Some blog posting back, I posted information and a picture about the native fireweed that grows wild and is fuchsia colored. It blooms from the bottom up and when it is done blooming it goes to seed (the long, thin pink pods), at which time the locals say there is about six weeks until winter.  Here are the last stages of the fireweed.

Finished blooming

Almost finished blooming

So it looks like our timing to leave is going to be well planned.

We spent the night one last time at the magnificent Kluane Lake

before rolling into Haines Junction, YT where we split off the Alaska Highway and take the Haines Highway on down to Haines, AK where we will catch the ferry for a week long voyage down the inside passage to Bellingham, WA.  Of course I had to stop at the Village Bakery for some cinnamon pecan sweet rolls (I took this picture for the background, not the sign)

The wild flowers are still blooming and grow right up beside the pavement.  With the mountains as a backdrop, it is quite a beautiful sight.

Going down the Haines Highway, I am quite impressed with how smooth and wide the highway is.  Of course this opinion is formed shortly after leaving the Alaska Highway in the Yukon Territory where for about twenty five miles I could drive no more than thirty mph.  We stopped to hike on a rock glacier, the aftermath of a retreating glacier, that gave us a vantage point overlooking Dezadeash (pronounced DEZ-dee-ash) Lake.

We decide to spend the night at Dezadeash Lake Yukon Government campground, where, like many of the Canadian government campgrounds, the campsite was right at the waters edge.

The next morning as we continue our trek to Haines, we were excited to see trumpeter swans and a young  grizzly bear.

When we arrive in Haines, it is cloudy and rainy; SURPRISE!!  But it is a cute little harbor town of ~2,500 people.  Their economy depends on tourism, both commercial with cruise ships and individuals, transportation with the Alaska Marine Highway System, and a little fishing.  But it does appear to be prosperous.  It is also the home to the Disney production movie set 'White Fang'.

OBSERVATIONS (and other unscientific data):
Ok, this is going to seem like a strange observation, but after traveling the vast areas of British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and Alaska there is one thing of which we saw a lot.  Pit toilets.  It is interesting to note that nearly all pit toilets in Canada are constructed of some sort of wood or even miniature log houses.  The insides were almost always impeccably clean with the floors, walls, and ceilings painted with a high gloss paint.  They were well supplied and never had any trash on the floors.  On the other hand, the pit toilets in Alaska were often built with pre-formed concrete that were aesthetically pleasing on the exterior but were poorly maintained and neglected on the interior.  Often very dirty with trash on the floor and almost always in need of supplies. 

Starting the return trek back through Tok, AK

August 7 - 9   Day 60-62

This first picture supports the information I posted a short time ago about how the towns would post a sign welcoming you to their city, but it was posted several miles out. If you zoom in, you can see this is 22 miles out.

Valdez is not a particularly beautiful coastal town of ~2,600 people.  The Alaskan pipeline, fishing and a little bit of tourism makes its economy.  Present day Valdez is about 4 miles from original Valdez but was relocated after the earthquake of 1964 destroyed the town.  When they laid out the street plan for new Valdez, they really spread it out and made the streets real wide, allowing for growth.  A good plan in theory, but even with the pipeline, businesses came and went only to leave several vacant buildings remaining.  On the way out of Valdez, we stopped at Blueberry Lake State Recreation park for the night.  This is a popular destination for the locals, and bears, to pick wild blueberries.  However, they are not quite ripe due to a lack of sunshine.  It was cold, rainy, and windy, but the views of the mountains with the clouds clinging to the slopes were very pretty.  If you look closely at the second picture, you can see snow capped mountains above the clouds.

Below is a picture of the Wrangell/St. Elias mountain range inside the Wrangell/St. Elias National Park (a little hard to see due to the clouds). This is about 70 miles south/southeast of Tok where we spent the night.  The size of the glaciers in the park are larger than Rhode Island, and the size of the park is larger than Connecticut.

Then the big mountain in the park is Mt. Sanford.

As we continued on to Tok on the Tok Cutoff Highway, the mountain views were stunning.

We passed several places that looked like they should be moose habitats.  After viewing several small ponds with no moose, Bonnie said "I would just like to see a moose standing out in the water."  Less than ten seconds after saying that, I rounded a corner and there it was; a moose standing in the pond eating.

Then, about two miles farther down the road, another one.  This one is in a little deeper water and seemed as interested in us as we were of her.

OBSERVATIONS (and other unscientific data):
This observation was quite easy and obvious.  This has never happened to me before, but we were driving through an area that is well known for viewing bears eating salmon.  As I was driving along the bay in Valdez, Bonnie was watching one side of the road and I the other.  All of a sudden there was this loud explosion sound, and when we looked forward, a very large sea gull had flown into our windshield.  Fortunately, the windshield did not break, but the sea gull looked like something you would see on a cartoon where a bird flies into a window then slides down.  The observation was that a sea gull is no match for a 40mph rv.  The sea gull lost.

Leaving Anchorage (again and for the last time) and the road to Valdez

August 4-6   Days 57-59

Another rainy day in Anchorage so we did laundry, got groceries, got a haircut, and now for the highlight of the day, went to Cabela's that just opened a couple of months ago.  And, to make it even better, they have overnight parking spaces marked off for rvs as well as a dump station to empty the holding tanks.  With the sun shining brightly early in the morning, we leave Anchorage for the last time and work our way toward Valdez on the Richardson Highway.  The scenery along the Richardson Highway was phenomenal with lakes, streams, mountains and glaciers.  A camera simply cannot capture what the eye sees, but have a look anyway.

Matanuska Glacier

Worthington Glacier

In the next picture, the bent metal poles you see on both sides of the road are not street lights.  They are guides for the snow plows because they get a serious amount of snow in this area.  The record in one day was 62", for one month was 298", and for the season was 974.5".  The poles are ~20 feet tall.

Now that the spawning season for salmon is here, there are lots of opportunities to see thousands of salmon trying to swim back upstream to spawn.

It is not easy for the salmon for a myriad of reasons; commercial fishermen are trying to net them, they are swimming upstream, fishermen/women/children are trying to catch them, other fish are trying to eat them, bears are trying to eat them, then it really gets violent with sea gulls.
WARNING - GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION FOLLOWS - WARNING
Now keep in mind when the salmon return to spawn, they are swimming upstream and burning a lot of energy in the process.  They do not eat while migrating.  Therefore, they are in a very weakened state.  When the salmon are in very shallow water trying to spawn, the sea gulls will wade into the shallow water, grab the salmon, pull it to the bank and peck its eyes out.  Then the sea gull punctures the salmon's underbelly right at the egg sack to eat the fresh salmon eggs.  While it is part of the natural life cycle, it seems like a brutal life for the salmon.

OBSERVATIONS (and other unscientific data)
There are an incredible number of German tourists here.  Many fly into Canada, rent a rv, then drive to Alaska.  But, there are surprising numbers who ship their own vehicles over so they can drive their vehicles, mostly rvs, once they get here.