Humpbacks and halibut

On the road to Seward

If Homer is the place to do your fishing, Seward, on the other side of the Kenai Peninsula, is the main destination for cruises on Prince William Sound. The weather was spectacular so we decided to take a cruise in Seward in Resurrection Bay and, no matter that it was a great experience overall, it was way more choppy and not as close to the animals than the one in Valdez. I read a lot of forum chats in regards to where is the best to take a cruise and in the end, if you have to make only one cruise, I would still choose the cruise in Valdez.

Seward Harbor, AK

In the bay there were seals and some otters, puffin and lots of birds and it happened that we bumped into several humpback whales that were feeding by the shore putting an entire show of puffing water through their blow holes. As usual this gathered the entire attention, like we did in Valdez but there the humpbacks were swimming away from us pretty fast. Also, there are several glaciers in the bay close by, some tumbling into the bay and others hanging on top of it. Seward is also the terminal for the large cruises that come in Alaska from Seattle through Juneau terminating here.

Humpback whales and birds in Resurrection Bay

In Seward, the fish stalls in the harbor are always full. After a day on the boat the fishermen come here to clean and pack their catch. The main catch right now was the halibut that may go quite large and it makes for a perfect fishing picture.

Catch of the day, Seward, AK

Right outside of Seward is Exit Glacier, a very accessible glacier that can be visited all the way to its rim. The glacier is in rapid retreat and the path going towards its terminal is marked by labels of where the glacier’s terminal was, starting in 1917.

Exit Glacier, a very accessible glacier right outside of Seward

We drove back to Anchorage, 2.5 beautiful hours, looking back longingly to the Turnagain Mountains and the glaciers across the bay. A world of beauty and of friendly people that we had to leave behind. Our flight to Seattle was sometimes after midnight and for the first time, in Anchorage airport, we saw how night was engulfing everything around us.

A last view of the Alaskan Turnagain range

All about fishing

The small boat harbor, Homer, AK

Homer is all about fishing. Fake fish hang from its entry sign, fish freezing and packaging shops are all around town and fish shipped by FEDEX signs abound. The small boat harbor does not resemble our harbors of the North East; the boats are not fancy, but are made out of strong metal, built to withstand forceful waves and harsh conditions. If tourists go in other places for cruises to see glaciers or marine animals, here in Homer all trips are fishing trips, all day outings where you can fish a huge halibut that would fill your fridge for months. There are specific rules about how many fish you can take with you, that you can clean and packaged after the fact and find them frozen on the conveyor belt of your arrival airport terminal ready for your well deserved dinner.

“The Spit” seen from top of Homer, AK

We arrived late in Homer, after a long ride. On GPS there are about 4.5 hours from Anchorage but the road is one of the most beautiful in the area and deserves lots of stops. We took a reservation in the last moment at “King’s Landing”, a hotel that recently changed its management and it proved a great choice and we were told to go to the Spit. “What is the Spit?”, “Well, you’ll see but there are all the activities in Homer”. The Spit is a 4.5 miles long stretch of land inside the bay on which are the harbors, the trips and all restaurants in town, all surrounded by water on both sides. At its end is the coast guard and the industrial fishing enterprises.

The Salty Dawg Saloon, Homer, AK

One of the cool spots on the Spit is the Salty Dawg Saloon, an old affair of Homer, Alaska, whose interior is covered in dollar bills stuck by customers from all over the world, similar with the one we just recently have seen in Oatman, AZ. Other businesses align the main road where you can park at leisure and stroll leisurely the shore or grab a crepe with a cappuccino like in a any world village. The results of globalization….In Homer the road ends, like many roads in Alaska, and from there you can take a ferry that may bring you to Kodiak and further to all the Aleutian Islands archipelago, a chain of island that go all the way towards Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia.

…and the boat cemetery in Homer just at he beginning of the Spit

Also Homer is the closest point to Katmai National Park, a park full of volcanoes and brown bears standing in the river ready to catch salmon directly in their mouth. You need a little bit more time to get there than what we planned to spend in Homer, thou.

Russian Orthodox Church, Ninilchik, AK

Not far outside of Homer is the small village of Ninilchik where is the headquarter of the Russian Orthodox Church of Alaska, the head church for the one we saw in Anchorage. The tiny church with its discreet golden onions on top in the unassuming cemetery brings the perfume of the discreet charm of the orthodox churches of an old Russian tradition that somehow got meshed into the more pragmatical Anglo culture. But if you happen to be there do not miss the spectacular view over the Ninilchik bay, just steps away from the front of the church.

Ninilchik Bay

Kenai

Anchorage-Seward Road, AK

Anchorage-Seward road has by far the most traffic we encountered in Alaska. Cars are zipping under the spectacular scenery of the snow capped peaks of Turnagain Mountains, the road and the railroad being just a sliver of flat land between the mountain and the Turnagain Arm Bay. We were told that the highway is prone to accidents and right when we pulled over to admire the view the traffic stalled for miles, just to find out of another head-on collision, similar with another that happened several days ago.

A black bear on the ridge right on top of a packed parking place off the highway

The parking was full with lots of people milling around and the highway was stalled, bumper to bumper but just on the ridge, on top of the road, a black bear was pacing peacefully oblivious to the commotion underneath. It paced, appearing and disappearing behind rocks and bushes, for about 30 minutes to the delight of the onlookers who all wanted to take his picture as long as was keeping his distance.

Byron Glacier by Portage Glacier Road

On the way there are lots of hiking places, with some waterfalls and beautiful views and we stopped close to Portage Glacier in a spectacular place from where you have a amazing view over Byron Glacier and several other peaks covered in snow. If you cross the tunnel going to Whittier, right after it is a short hike to the Portage Glacier that cannot be seen from where we stopped.

Hope, AK

A side road takes you for 16 miles to Hope, AK, an old mining town established around the end of the 19th century that preserves a whole lot of traditional houses from the beginning of the 20th century. It has a social hall and an old post office that started to operate also in the 19th century. Its museum collects all sort of old artifacts stored in several barns, on which door a sign of caution stated that a local was mauled recently by a bear on one of the town’s streets.

Fishing with Dad in Homer, AK

Rain

Thompson Pass, Valdez, AK

Rain. Actually it does not rain continuously but is a sort of a drizzle that gains momentum for a while and subsides. When it rains in Alaska is not the rain that is bothersome but the clouds that fall upon the earth and ours souls and cover everything. We drove under these clouds from Valdez all the way to Anchorage, a 5-6 hour drive that even in this rain took us way longer.

On the Valdez-Anchorage Highway

On the way we stopped at Mt Wrangell – St Elias National Park, close to Glennallen, AK, a park that is 25% larger than the entire Switzerland. It fits inside it two Denali or six Yellowstone parks. The park has only two access roads to its interior, the main one reaching Kennicott Mines and the Ghost town, right in its middle. The entire preserved area is actually double in size if you take in consideration the park that is adjacent across the border in Canada, Kluane National Park and Preserve. However when we wanted to walk a little, just 50 yards off the visitor center the paths were closed because of “bear activity”.

Trails closed because of the bears

After the spill

Valdez Harbor, AK

I remember hearing almost 20 years ago for the first of the city of Valdez. The tanker Exxon-Valdez just ran aground spilling in the bay a scar of dark oil. The images were majestic, with the beautiful Prince William Sound surrounded by snow capped peaks in a paradise like scenery. The story ran in the news for many days showing the destruction of pristine nature and the terrible effect on the wildlife. While I drove the Richardson Highway I kept remembering those images and I was not surprised to find Valdez the way that the images were playing in my mind.

A seal colony in Prince William Sound, Valdez, AK

I found the busy harbor surrounded by the same snow capped peaks, an iconic image of Alaska in a way. The wild life is back, apparently unscathed, but many animals and birds were killed in the aftermath of the spill. Now otters were swimming playfully in the middle of the bay and funny seals were following our ship in an impromptu marine show while the bay is still traversed by huge oil tankers that were filled in less than a full day across the sound at the pipeline terminal. The Alaskan used the oil reserve revenue to create a fund that saves money for future generations and offer a yearly dividend for each Alaskan resident. Birds of all sizes are on shores or in the middle of the bay, from all sort of gulls and puffins to bald eagles.

Swimming seals around the boat

Salmon is caught in the bay; gigantic nets are thrown in water on the path the salmon moves. The fishermen hit the water with some long poles making noises that direct the fish toward the nets. At the end of the day they will raise the nets and would see if the day brought them anything or they go home empty handed.

Salmon fishing, Prince William Sound, Valdez, AK

But the spill was not the only catastrophe that hit Valdez. In 1964 the 9.2 earthquake that happened right 40 miles away from the city triggered a tsunami that wiped the entire city away. Following its devastating aftermath the entire city was rebuilt in the current location, 4 miles away from its original location, on a an area that is somehow further from the water. The old location it remains just as a remember for the ones lost in the tragedy.

Columbia Glacier Bay

There are several bay and glacier tours that depart from the Valdez harbor that reach the Columbia Glacier, the second largest glacier in Alaska. We took the Stan Stephens one that proved to be very good but I also heard very good reviews about Lu-Lu Bell. The glacier is in rapid retreat and its terminal is now tucked in its branch bay. What is interesting is that on the same massif, just close by, another glacier, Meares is in expansion and another one is stationary. It’s a prediction from U Colorado that the Columbia Glacier would stop its retreat in 2020. It remains to be seen…

Columbia Glacier Terminus, Prince William Sound, AK

Richardson Highway

Alaska Pipeline

What is spectacular about Alaska are its roads. You drive between snow capped peaks and immense bodies of water, cascading rivers, or green valleys tucked under tall mountains. The roads are good and with sparse traffic, sometimes giving you the feeling that you are on the road by yourself. Most of the cars on the roads are RVs or pick up trucks, caring bikes or kayaks, giving a sense of adventure like in no other place. You have the feeling that the entire wilderness is yours that you somehow forcefully share with the bears and the moose.

Richardson Highway

Everywhere you go in Alaska, including when you drive on the highway, you feel that you are in a National Park and you are not far from it, no matter that technically only eight parks are located in Alaska. Somehow everywhere you go you’d meet a ranger that would tell you that Alaska is meant to be left as wilderness and you are the occasional intruder and the wildlife is meant to feel undisturbed and at home there. The mountains that these parks contain encircle the top 10 of the highest peaks in the entire USA while Alaska’s size is as large as 1/5 of the lower 48 states and its coast is longer than the entire lower 48 coast combined.

Richardson Highway

These large spaces and distances give you a feeling of freedom that I was able to experience only in the South-West USA desert. Richardson Highway connects Fairbanks to the city of Valdez. On Google Maps it shows about 6 hours of driving but as previously noted it’s no way that you can drive it in what the GPS says but most probably in about 9 hours. The spectacular scenery makes you continuously stop on the way, the weather changes from bright sun, to clouds, drizzle and again sun and all peaks around glitter in this whimsical weather and scintillating light.The road reaches passes where glaciers are inching down to huge lakes and occasional human settlements that you feel that were thrown there by mistake, in a complete wilderness, in the middle of nowhere.

Richardson Highway

Close to Valdez, the road surges to Thomson Pass that has on its top the Worthington Glacier, a highly accessible glacier. From there  you are descending into the city that is also the terminal point of the Alaskan pipeline, the artery that carries the oil from Prudhoe Bay, a resource that is able to bring self sufficiency to the state.

Worthington Glacier

Moon rising in Valdez, AK

Close to the Arctic Circle

Chena River Boat, Fairbanks, AK

When you get to Fairbanks you are at just one degree latitude off the Arctic Circle. Just a little bit to the north of the town the pavement ends on the long haul road that goes to Prudhoe Bay and if you want to get north of town you will be rattled in a van that carries tourist to the Circle. We settled for a more sedate tour of the Chena River, a very touristy affair but organized so well and with so much information that it makes the entire experience absolutely charming. From dog sledding, to Caribou farming, to Salmon drying, hydro plane flying, all the Alaskan and natives skills were packaged in a fast but a highly rewarding tour.

Dog sledding

A little bit more than a hour from the city a paved road goes to Chena Hot Sprigs where the road ends inside the resort. this is one of the cool things about Alaska, driving on roads that end in front of you. Inside the resort it’s located the Aurora Ice Museum where a master ice sculptor creates a frozen world of statues and forms.

Aurora Ice Museum Bar, Chena Hot Springs, AK

Inside the museum it’s a bar that serves drinks in ice glasses that would melt outside and an ice hotel that can be booked for the night. Obviously with no heat and no bathroom inside the hotel….A little less tempting…

Aurora Ice Museum Hotel, Chena Hot Spring, AK

In Fairbanks you feel that you are far away. The city looks so remote and sort of deserted when you walk in its center in the evening flooded by the midnight sun. A little bit to the north of town it’s the top Alaskan University whose new museum building is spectacular.

Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK

Denali

Toklat River, Denali National Park, AK

The access to the interior of the Denali National Park is done for the entire season by buses. The park opens sometimes in the middle of May when the snow melts and it closes at the beginning of September when is expected the first snow. Cars are banned for the entire season except the last three days before the September closing when about 100 vehicles selected by a lottery organized in May can enter the park. After that the barrier goes down and the wildlife is spared of the human contact till the following summer.

Sleeping grizzly very close to the park access road

Besides the shuttle bus there are several organized bus trips inside the park. Per Mitch’s advice all are a waste of money doing the same thing as the shuttle. “Reserve a seat for the shuttle to Wonder Lake and stay in the bus on the left side. All other trips are a waste of money” he told us when we booked his room. However this was not so easy if you want to book more seats but somehow we were able to get 4 seats together at 6:30 AM on July 4, when we did the reservation several weeks in advance. “Go one day before and get your tickets and with them in your hand go to the shuttle the next day” Mitch advised us. He woke up at 5:00 AM and cooked us a hearty breakfast: “Mitch, how about the bears?”, “The bears don’t so anything if you don’t startle them. I don’t know what happen with those people who got attacked. They may have done something stupid. One of them stayed here, a lady, but I don’t know what happen to her. But this is reason I sleep with the gun.”

Eielson visitor center, Denali National Park, AK

Travel inside the park, either by bus or by other trips, is very long. To get to Wonder Lake takes about 11 hours RT and to go for another 4 miles to Kantishna, where the road stops, it’s a total of 13 hours RT. If you want to hike a little bit you have to add another 2-4 hours so is advisable to get on the bus as early as possible.

In Denali

There are separate shuttles for the different points inside the park and if you want to extend the trip it can be done by paying an additional fee at the Eielson Visitor Center. The shuttles are running all day till 10PM and the light is always there so you can keep hiking late in the day. It is better to stay on your initial bus till your destination and stop, hike and change the bus on the way back in the places where the bus stops. The dispatcher on that location will put you in the next shuttle to the park exit. If all the buses are already full, apparently the park will send a sweeper bus to collect all late visitors.

A grizzly taking it easy

The park protected in this way gives a feeling, for the first time visitor, of a terra incognita. You see buses and ranger cars on the way but you are mainly on your bus all day surrounded by heard of caribou that are roaming the surrounding hills. In the first part of the road, the moose is a common occurrence, unfortunately not to close to the road. Bald eagles hover on top and occasionally you spot bears, grizzly or black bears with cubs in the bushes. Dall sheep peppering the mountain slopes and the occasional mountain goats are moving specks of white between the stripes of snow. The bear is the highlight seen from the bus but there are signs that warn the visitor on hike location that bears with cubs were seen recently in the area.

Wonder Lake, Denali National Park, AK

In spite of the long haul the park proved to be exciting. The scenery is spectacular till you get to Eielson Visitor Center where there are also many beautiful hikes, apparently unhindered by “bear activity”. Of course none of the hikes are challenging but it’s hard to do something like that if you do not camp inside the park. The scenery after Eielson I found to be less interesting in a cloudy day when you cannot see Mount McKinley. But Wonder Lake is beautiful and worth the trip and there are many hikes around to the passes surrounding it or at least to the Reflection Pond, from where you might see Mt. McKinley in a clear day. However here I noticed for the first time the voracious mosquitoes that I heard about. People who were hiking inside the forest had masques on their faces and for good reason because we felt being lunch for mosquitoes just by walking a little bit outside the bus. After some hikes at the Eieslon, we were shuttled out of the park. Even if the mountain was covered and the rain was forecast in Eielson for several days, the rest of the park was spectacularly sunny. We had dinner and drove all the way to Fairbanks under the midnight sun arriving after midnight at the hotel.

Moose and bears

Moose and calf right near the parking lot of the visitor center of Denali National Park, AK

The latest news from Alaska were bleak. Four people were killed or mauled by bears in the last 2 weeks right before we arrived. Either if they were running, hiking or biking, somehow it happened. Euphemistically the rangers told us that the bears proved to be quite “active” recently and we have to be careful. Banging on pots and pans, singing loudly or having huge bells would help otherwise, in the worst case scenario if we came way too intimate with the bears, we have to use bear pepper spray that is so common in Alaska that you’d think that is a spice used for food seasoning. But in all drama about the bears nobody was mentioning the moose that is such a menace on the Alaska’s roads that a current resident just stated that is totally unconcerned about the North Korea nuclear missile threat comparing with the moose threat that is a daily occurrence.

Horse Shoe Lake, Denali National Park, AK

And it was to no surprise to see panels on the road announcing that in the first week of July, 278 moose were killed on the Alaska’s roads that, by the way, may be long but quite few otherwise. And if you think that the deer is a large animal you have to see an aggressive moose in front of you to understand the problem. And it happened that we did it. One of the first tours we did in Denali was at Horseshoe Lake, a two hour surrounding of the lake, a very popular tour that we figured out that would be bear-safe in numbers and noise created by all the groups that were hiking.

Moose in action, Denali National Park, AK

But after that we took a tour with a ranger right near the visitor center. On the path was a moose and its calf feeding and we carefully were guided through the woods to avoid an encounter, just to startle another moose who was feeding on the other side of the forest who jumped on the path in front of our entire 25 people group, confused by our attention, just about 50 feet away. To make the encounter more dramatic the moose separated a two year old from his parents, the kid, having way more common sense, ran into the woods where the moose could not follow. The ranger had to go and collect the cool kid from behind the trees and hand it back to his way more startled parents. And all of this happening just 20 feet away of the huge moose that was overlooking us from his lofty position.

Moose, Denali National Park, AK

No more drama happened latter because the ranger had to stop her tour and announce on the radio that it was some kind of “moose activity” on the path around the visitor center who “was disturbing the visitors”. Actually somehow we felt that we were disturbing the moose and not the other way around.

Moose, Denali National Park, AK

But we kept seeing moose on the Denali access road, some of the huge ones crossing calmly the road in front of an army of photographers cushioned preventive inside their cars.

Just crossing the road, Denali National Park, AK

The road deep into Denali is closed for personal vehicles but a segment of 14 miles is open and you can drive your car all the way to Savage River. There are no marked trails in Denali National Park, this being one of the way to keep the park as wilderness. But around Savage River there are some kind of markings that point either to the top of the mountain for a spectacular view of the river or along the river on a 4 mile loop that passes nice valleys full of flowers. The long day could keep us on trails till midnight if we did not have to get to a dinner place that closes around 10pm.

Savage River loop hike, Denali National Park, ASK

Alaska’s Parks Highway

In Alaska is hard to get lost on the roads. There are only two roads leaving Anchorage, one going North toward Denali and Fairbanks and one going South towards the Kenai peninsula. Anchorage, the largest city in the state, preserves an atmosphere of small town. City tours, paid or public, were in full swing and we joined a park ranger who gave us a perfect introduction of the entire Alaska walking us throughout Anchorage small downtown. But as we were told by many, nobody comes in Alaska to stay in Anchorage but they leave right away to the wilderness. We followed the cue but not before stopping at the Russian Orthodox Church close to the downtown. The Christian Orthodox tradition is still strong in Alaska, a heritage from the time when the Russian Alexander Baranov was the Chief Manager of the Russian-American fur trading company. The forced assimilation of the native families can be traced even today by their Russian family names. In a couple of places close to the Kenai peninsula Russian language is still spoken. The Russian sold Alaska to the Americans in 1867 needing the money to cover the debt caused by Crimean war. But also their main concern was that one of their Crimean war enemy, the Brits, were making forays toward the territory through Canada that made the Russian prone to lose Alaska no matter what. The Anchorage church is filled with Russian icons and its beautiful altar was carved in Romania, mounted on top of a an old VW van and drove from there to Rotterdam where it was loaded on a boat and shipped to Anchorage.

The Russian Orthodox Church in Anchorage, AK

We drove out of town towards Denali, 4 hours on the map, among trucks moving lumber or gear going to the Arctic Circle. But in this wilderness a good cappuccino is always available from a network of stands mounted on the dirt pull outs of the roads that are way more sophisticated than most of the places of the East Coast with coffee served on 8, 12, 16 or 20 oz with 1, 2 or 3 shots of espresso that can be combined with caf and decaf and soy milk, or skim, or anything else that you may imagine. Right behind the shack is pure wilderness….

Espresso stands on the Parks Highway, Alaska

The Alaskan roads are interesting even in rain. Somehow we should have driven to Healy, just 20 minutes from Denali Park Entrance, in about 4 hours but we ran late and finally we got at Mitch’s door of the Faith Hill Lodge around 8:15 PM. Mitch is a musician from New Orleans, transmuted into a cabin in the woods of Alaska. He sleep with a gun at his head and talk with the animals and is slurring the words that sometimes is hard to understand him. We chatted with him after dinner and he told us the story of his life, quite disruptive otherwise, that somehow made him land in the wilderness of Alaska. The web reviews for his B&B, Faith Hill Lodge, are mixed but Mitch proved a very interesting Alaskan character.

Finally Alaska

We pondered for a while upon going to Alaska. We wanted to stay away of the packages cruises and be able to go, as we always do, independently and be able to shoot at leisure. But as usually our schedule kept changing and we found ourselves buying tickets in the last moment. We also did a little bit of homework but somehow we did not get an exact grip of what we would encounter in this far away American land. This is always fun and make the travel more interesting.
First of all when we flew we realized how far it is. It takes more than 3 hours to fly from Seattle to Anchorage. We could not find a decent direct flight and somehow all flights we were able to find were arriving late evening, so we got a two stops flight, Charlotte and Phoenix, that brought us to the clean air of Anchorage around 10PM but it took us to get there almost the same time as flying from New York to Tokyo.
So if you want to save time, book way in advance, to get a direct flight after all.

Charlotte International Airport, NC

The same situation was with the car. The prices jumped astronomically and no matter that we booked about one month in advance the car rental cost with taxes was about $100/day increasing with 50-100% if you book closer to the date of arrival. Advice #2 : Make several bookings in advance if you don’t know when you’ll get there exactly.
From the tarmac we could see a perfect image of the snow covered Denali under the Alaskan sun because we were just several days of the summer solstice and you get light 24 hours a day. The sun sets after midnight and rises around 2-3 AM but the light is always there. White nights… A little weird and pointless to go to sleep.