Exploring Our nation’s Largest National Park (07-02-14)

  Have any idea which national park is the largest one in the United States?  I, for one, had no idea.




It turns out that Wrangell- St. Elias National Park, at 13 million acres, is 6 times larger than Yellowstone. I had never even heard of it until we arrived here in Alaska.

There are only two roads into this remote park, and we explored one of them- Nabesna Rd.- on the way down to Valdez. Both roads are gravel, but Nabesna is the easier of the two roads to travel on, even though it did require us to cross several streams with the truck.

Once we had traveled most of the 40 miles of this road, we stopped to hike the Skookum Volcano Trail. This is a 6 mile trail that starts in mosquito filled woods. We wore our net hats on this trail. 

We are in Grizzly country and this is the first time I felt nervous about that.  This is prime habitat, and there were signs of recent bear activity on the trail.

The key to hiking in Grizzly habitat is to make noise, and we ran out of conversation, so I started singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.  By the time I got to 86, the lyrics had morphed into “86 Grizzly bears on the trail, 86 Grizzly bears- I push one down, onto the ground, 85 Grizzly bears on the trail.”  Paul didn’t join in.

Once we were out of the woods, so to speak, we came upon a creek.  The trail follows the creek, which is usually just a trickle of water, but the recent rains turned it into something that required some strategy for crossing.  Unfortunately we had to cross it about 24 times. A rough path is marked with cairns- piles of rocks that show you the trail- but they are hard to see, and I don’t think they were put in place when the water was so high.  There are cairns on both sides of the creek in this picture.

We had gotten a late start on the trail and actually gave up before we found the path to the volcano, but we still had great views from the top of the hill.

McCarthy Road

On the way back north from Valdez, we drove McCarthy Rd. into the park.  The decision to drive this road isn’t one to be made lightly.  It’s 60 miles long and  isn’t in very good condition. It takes at least 3 hours to drive it. Only the first mile or so is paved.  The rest is gravel and dirt, with deep ruts.

 

  The rewards made the drive worth it though.  Within the first mile, we came upon this family.

   

The twins were adorable and we were able to watch them for quite a while, with mom glancing over at us once in a while to make sure we didn't approach.

Soon enough we were on to the rough stuff.  We took our time, and in fact, we spent two days exploring this area, just pulling off the road to spend the night.

At the end of the road is a parking lot with a footbridge next to it that spans a river. Before the existence of the footbridge, people pulled themselves across the river on this contraption, which hung from a cable. It reminds me of the seats that can be found on a swing set.

Two small towns- McCarthy, and Kennecott, are across the footbridge (apparently there is another, larger bridge, but it costs a lot of money to cross it).


Kennecott is an old mining town that was funded by the JP Morgan and Guggenheim families. The copper ore found here is the richest in the world, with 85% copper content instead of the usual 10%.




After $100,000,000 in profits, the vein was played out and the town was essentially abandoned, as is. The national park service is slowly restoring the buildings.

Very close by the mine there are two glaciers.  The mounds of dirt in this picture are actually part of the glaciers that have been coated with enough dirt that you can’t see the ice anymore.

A couple of miles down the trail the dirt disappeared and ice took its place.  This is where we headed. We took a half day guided glacier hike on Root Glacier.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the people on the glacier.









Before we hit the ice, we put crampons on our hiking boots.  They are similar to old fashioned roller skates, but with spikes instead of wheels.













Paul and I were the only two on this trip, other than our guides.  4 would be the maximum allowed, per guide.  Killian showed us how to walk with the crampons and sure enough, we could even walk straight uphill!
Killian is a recent college grad with degree in environmental science and a passion for the outdoors, and he has tons of knowledge to share.

There is more to see on  a glacier than I thought. Small blue puddles….

and meandering rivers, with multiple waterfalls and tunnels.  It reminded me of a Disney World ride.

It’s definitely not as flat as I would think.

In fact, there were all kinds of hills and nooks and crannies to explore. We hiked on the ice for about an hour and a half, which made our hiking day about 6 miles long. We were really tired by the end of the day. 
Using  crampons added a new element to the hike.
You can rent crampons to hike glaciers by yourself, but I really felt that we wouldn’t have found all the neat features we saw if we hadn’t had a guide, so it was worth the money to me.

On the way back down McCarthy Road, headed up to Anchorage, we stopped along the river at a popular fishing spot.  These people are using fishing wheels to scoop the salmon out of the river.  There were dozens of sea gulls and Bald Eagles feasting on the leftovers.

It was one of those times where I wish I had a better camera (an enough knowledge to make a better camera worth the price!).

It was fascinating watching the every day lives of these birds for an hour or so.

 




 

Haines, Alaska (06-24-14)

Haines was our last stop in Southeastern Alaska for this trip.  We sort of wanted to check out Sitka and Ketchikan, but decided not to attempt it this year. Ketchikan is significantly south of where we were-in the wrong direction. Once we left Haines, we were going north through Canada again to get to the other parts of Alaska.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  We did spend two full days in Haines. After checking in at the RV park we took a drive along Chilkoot River.  With the rain and the fog, it was really eerie looking.  I didn’t get great pictures of it for some reason though.  Haines also has a lot of Totem Poles around town, and this was one of them.

The next day we hit the ground running so we’d have time to visit all three museums in town. The Sheldon Museum details the history of the town- the movie White Fang was filmed here- this is the sled from that movie.

More of interest to Paul is the Hammer Museum.

There are a couple of thousand hammers on display at this place. 

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This was my favorite one, although I think it would have been cool if he signed it “Tim, the tool man, Taylor”.

After all that learning we had to take a lunch break.  We chose a restaurant with a view.

By the way, my initial intent was that we would stay outside of town at the state park that only charges $10 a night instead of the going rate of $40, but it turns out that the town of Haines is very walkable, so we were able to park the truck and leave it there by staying in town.  Plus, we met fellow Escapees Pam and Red and got to spend some time with them.

After lunch we headed to the the Bald Eagle Foundation museum.  Obviously they have other birds there besides Bald Eagles.  They have 11 birds that have lost their ability to fly for a variety of reasons.

This Horned Owl looked like he wanted to bite my nose off.

This owl looked like she was playing coy with me.

The hawk was very nervous  and easily startled. 

At 2:30 every day they do a presentation about Bald Eagles, which includes feeding one.  This is a female, about 4 years old.  The feathers on her head are not completely white, but are getting close- that’s how they estimate the age.  The volunteer shared some interesting information.  Raptors are named for their feet-(rapt is Latin for “to grab”). Their talons use a ratchet system, so once a raptor grabs it’s prey, basically there is no way to force the talon open to release it. The talons exert 500 lbs of pressure per square inch.







The volunteer also made it clear that if he wasn't offering her food, she would not want anything to do with him.  In fact, she tried to stay as far away as possible and still get the food. I could joke and say I guess they don’t make good pets, but it’s illegal to even own the feather of an eagle (unless you are Native American). Actually, the presentation was very good, but then, I am an eagle enthusiast.


After a quick two day visit, we headed out of town…..

Juneau, Alaska (06-21-14)

Who knew that Juneau is in a rain forest?? Tongass National Forest, situated in southeast Alaska,  is the largest national forest in the U.S. and most of it is a rain forest.  I suppose we could have guessed by looking at the forecast.

As a state capital, Juneau probably ranks as one of the more difficult ones to get to. The only way to get there is by boat or by plane.  We took the ferry from Skagway.

The day we arrived was beautiful and the two and a half hour ferry ride was easy and uneventful.   This is the Juneau area.







Having seen the weather forecast we elected to take advantage of the nice weather to push on and go check out Mendenhall Glacier. The information about that will be in another post.

In our research of  things to do in Juneau, we found out about a small mining museum and decided that should be on our list of things to do on our second day- we figured if it was going to rain, we might as well be in a museum.  Except, much of this museum is outside.

Next on our agenda was a trip to the Red Dog Saloon, home to the Duck Fart- a shot that has Crown Royal, Baileys, and Kahlua.  Trying to get to the Red Dog was how we discovered that there are actually very few parking spots in Juneau that will fit us.  The only open one we found was a mile away, which meant….yup- a mile walk in the rain. 

We sure did feel like we deserved that drink, to warm us up! It was pretty good, and we enjoyed the live piano music while we ate our lunch.  These guys are good at getting people involved with the songs they are playing.

One of our adventures took us to Eagle Harbor, which is known for it’s concentration of Bald Eagles.  The salmon were jumping out of the water all over the place- plenty of Eagle food around!

We saw tons of Eagles- sometimes as many as a dozen in one tree! There were a lot of juveniles around as well, and for the first time, we got to see some courting, where a pair of eagles fly together, swooping apart and then together again.

The scenery itself was worth the drive out there- very dramatic and gorgeous.

The Alaskan Brewing Co. is located in Juneau and although I don’t feel compelled to visit every brewery I come across, I wanted to check this one out. I like their Alaskan White, which is similar to Blue Moon. 

They don’t give tours of the brewery itself but they do have a tasting tour where they talk about the history of the brewery and some of their beers. They are fairly unique in that they don’t have one master brewer, they have 7 brewers.  They also allow their employees to try their hand at making small batches of beer-called Rough Drafts.  If visitors like it, they make bigger and bigger batches.





There was plenty to keep us busy during our 5 days in Juneau.  We probably could have stayed longer but we wanted to book our return ferry when we booked the ferry to get there, so we guessed at how long we'd want to be there.

Bras d’Or Lake (07-21-13)

Pronounced B’Door Lake, the lake is really an inland sea, with part fresh water and part salt water.  We moved over to the lake, and the town of Baddeck (Ba-DECK) to explore the other half of the Cabot Trail.

We took one day and drove around the island until we pretty much reached the point where we had left off while exploring from the other side.  There are quite a few small fishing villages along the way, but not much else.  A few restaurants, I guess,  and of course some gift shops. 




We were originally going to stop and hike, but decided that it would be a long ride to get to the tip of the island and we might run out of time- so we decided to leave the hike till another day- bad idea, I guess, since it never happened.


We stopped at one of the several beachy areas, and while Paul wandered around looking for sea glass, I set the camera on burst mode and tried to get pictures of the Northern Gannet.

This white bird with black tipped wings, nests on nearby islands, and is a lot of fun to watch.  They soar above the water, and when they see a fish below the surface, they literally dive bomb down into the water.

They fold their wings completely back when they dive. It’s really hard to get a picture because a) they don’t soar too close to the shore, and b) I can’t actually see them through the viewfinder, so I just point the camera where they might be headed, and hope for the best.  I didn’t do too well getting pictures, but it was fun to watch them. You’d have to click on this picture to really see the bird.

“A Dead Man Tells No Tales” – Alexander Graham Bell

Baddeck was also home to Alexander Graham Bell, so we visited the Bell Museum.  Quite handy that it’s a National Historic Place, so our National Park pass got us in for free. By the way, the quote refers to the fact that while testing airplanes, Bell wanted planes that could land on water, so that when/if they crashed, the pilot would survive.  I thought there was some interesting information in the museum, but it was presented in a very dry and uninteresting way.  Although he is obviously known for inventing the telephone, (he gave all but 10 of his shares of Bell Telephone stock to his wife as a wedding present), he had numerous other inventions, and was a founding member of The National Geographic Society.


With the temperatures soaring yet again, hiking came off the “to do” list.  We headed instead to the Highland Village Museum.  With only 3 cars in the parking lot, we were a little skeptical, but went ahead anyway.
 

This is a Living History Museum detailing the lives of Scottish immigrants, from before they left Scotland, until the early 1900s.  Most of the buildings are original. This interpreter did a fabulous job of describing the conditions in Scotland that led whole families to leave the country.  I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with her, even the fact that she sometimes said things in Gaelic, then translated to English.

The afternoon temperature reached 90+ degrees so we elected to take a sail on the Amoeba, a small sailboat that does a 1.5 hour tour of the harbor area.  It was a little cooler on the water, which was very nice indeed!

The captain had a great sense of humor, even pulling out a Sailing for Dummies book to “look something up”, as we got underway.  He had great local knowledge and pointed out things like Alexander Graham Bell’s estate. 

 

   My favorite part, though, was the eagles!
He had fish to toss overboard for the eagles to get, so we got close up views of the birds swooping down and grabbing their treat.  Once again, it was practically impossible to get pictures of them grabbing the fish, with the boat moving and the sun shining, but I did the best I could.

He said that of course, the eagles recognize the boat, and watch for him to toss something for them.  One day, on his first day back from the Caribbean, he didn't have any fish to throw, but they circled the boat, waiting, so he tossed them a piece of pizza.  They seemed happy with it.

I did get a few decent pictures of the birds soaring directly over our head.


















We've now moved on to Sydney, Nova Scotia. where we’ll spend only one night.  Tomorrow we board the ferry to Newfoundland, and you’d think we were headed to a different planet.  We went to the liquor store, Wal-Mart , two grocery stores, the auto parts store and fueled up the truck.  We could probably live for 3 months with the amount of food we have!