Anchorage Highlights So Far

Flattop Mountain Trailhead

Life is hard for trees on this mountain

Monday the 6th we hiked the Flattop Mountain Trail with Ralph and Jordon Matukonis.  Even driving to the  parking lot at the trailhead there are great views of Anchorage, but as we ascended the 1300 feet of elevation gain through the stunted trees at the base to above tree line the vistas were worth the effort.

Anchorage from above

Don, Jordon and Ralph

There is still snow on the side of the mountain.  If you look right in the center at the bottom of the snowfield you can see three tiny people...that is us!  It gives you a feel for the scale!






This trail is easy to access from Anchorage so it gets heavily used.   A lot of effort has been put into preserving the fragile vegetation.  Timbers are built into many steep parts to keep hikers from straying and keep erosion to a minimum. 

Stairs built into steep parts of the trail

A little tree growing out of a rock right at treeline

At this point you can see the trail heading higher.  That bump you see is not the summit!

There are no stairs on this part!

You can see the last bit of the trail and the summit ahead

The uphill hike is aerobic, but not difficult until you get to the last bit.  The last part requires scrambling up a steep rock face.  For a person with a huge aversion to “edges” it was just too much to contemplate.  I chickened out and waited at the bottom of that last stretch to the 3525-ft peak, taking photos and soaking in the views as clouds materialized and floated away. 

Victory!

As Don and Ralph and Jordon arrived back to my altitude the sky began to clear and we had some sunshine on the surrounding peaks as we hiked back to the truck.  It was a perfect ~3-mile way to get a taste of hiking in Anchorage.

See those blue skies!

The reason for hiking!

Tuesday night we saw The Whale Fat Follies at the TapRoot

It's hard to "explain" the Whale Fat Follies.  It's part musical cabaret, part Alaska tourism satire, part dinner theater and part political commentary, mostly local, that you might not "get" if you are from away.  My attempt:  "high-energy, irreverent and outrageously funny with very good live music."  There was a piece on "fishing wives" that contained a put-it-on parody of striptease with Alaska spin -- no taking it off, but layering on jacket after coat after boots after hat until the singer was encased and unrecognizable, but undoubtedly warm.  In a great appearance by "Sarah," she explained the last year or so of invisibility in her classic and articulate style!  Mr. Whitekeys, the star and originator, did an unbelievable harmonica solo that involved half of the audience.  We loved it and were glad Diana and John thought of doing something so quintessentially Alaskan!

Diana and John after the Follies

Fish Ladders, Glaciers and Anchorage – July 28 to August 3

When you pass through Watson Lake, Yukon it is obligatory to stop and take a picture of the Signpost Forest.  It’s on the North edge of town and was started in 1942 by a US serviceman building the Alaska Highway.  He posted a sign pointing to his hometown with the mileage to get there.  In the years since then travelers from all over the world have left mementos of their home towns on the posts.  According to the visitor center staff, there are over 72,000 signs now.  We didn’t take time to look for Upton but if we ever come through again we’ll be sure to bring one to be certain we’re represented.

Signpost Forest in Watson Lake

 

At signpost 699 there is a display about the Continental Divide.  We stopped to take a picture and see if we could stand with one foot on each side of it.  We couldn’t find the line but we did notice there was a motor home with Massachusetts license plates.  We waved them down and asked the “where are YOU from in Massachusetts” question.  Unbelievably, they were from Upton!  Our little town has 7,000 people and we meet two of them on the Alaska Highway in Yukon, Canada!   Walter and Evelyn Hopkins from Upton have travelled this road many times and were on their way to meet their daughter and then go on to Dawson City.  What an amazing coincidence and so much fun to talk with them!  They probably won’t see their photo on the blog but when we meet them in Upton we’ll make sure they know that meeting them was a high point of our trip!

 

Walter and Evelyn from Upton, MA

We stopped at a little grassy turnout to get some lunch from the back and found this black bear had already discovered the spot and was having lunch there, too!  We were able to drive really close to him to take a few photos and he hardly looked at us…the wild berry patch he’d found was a lot more interesting.

 

The Yukon Government Campground at Squanga Lake was our home for one night on July 29.  These campgrounds are found all through the territory and are clean, well-maintained and very inexpensive.  We met a woman there who lives with her family three miles from the nearest neighbor and off the grid in BC.  For vacation they were camping…!

Huge Clover Blooms Everywhere

Wild Lupine

Intrepid Long-Distance Bicyclists Even Here!

The Nisutlin Bay Bridge over the Nisutlin River. 
This bridge is the longest water span
on the Alaska Highway -- 1,917 feet.

There is beautiful fireweed growing everywhere.  It gets its name because

it is the first thing to grow after a burn.

We only drove as far as Whitehorse the 30^th and decided to stay around there for a day exploring and chilling.  When I imagined Whitehorse there were images from Klondike movies and old westerns in my database so I was surprise to find such a sophisticated small city.  The Yukon River flows through it and there’s a sign pointing to a fish ladder, so that’s one of the things that we explored.  That, also, didn’t fit my mental image.  I don’t want to spend my next life as a salmon.  Until 1959 the Yukon River was free-flowing from where it began, near Whitehorse, all the way to the Bering Sea.   Salmon could hatch, find their way downstream to the sea and then back to spawn with just the normal challenges:  bigger fish, bears, and humans.  Once the dam was built there was an even bigger challenge, so the fish ladder was built to give them a little help.  The fast-flowing water attracts the fish to the ladder and there are partitions inside which they leap over leading them up and over the dam.  According to the signs, some of the fish get harvested for a fish breeding farm where salmon are hatched and released upstream to help make up for some of the fish lost to the turbines.  They have varying success from year to year – once only 70-some fish succeeded and the most successful year there were a little over 3000 survivors.  Tough life.

This is the part of the Yukon River that draws them in

 

This is what they need to get around!

The ladder to survival -- looking down from the top

As you drive into Whitehorse one of the first things you see is a huge sternwheeler paddleboat.  It’s on blocks and has been refurbished to allow people to tour it and see it as it was when it was in use hauling freight, as much as 300 tons at a time, between Whitehorse and Dawson City on the Yukon River.  The boiler was heated by burning wood at the rate of a cord an hour!  The ship would go downstream in about 36 hours to Dawson City and only had to stop for wood twice but coming upstream they took four or five days and several stops for wood. 

 

S.S. Klondike 2

Firewood for fuel

This is the boiler where they fed in the logs

 Inside the boiler is lined with refractory brick

At the end of its life as a freighter the owners tried to make it work as a passenger ship and it was luxurious on the upper deck.  There was a dining room with china and white linens, well-appointed cabins, a bathroom with a cast-iron claw foot tub and a solarium at the front with a place to sit in style.  They carried first and second-class passengers and the second-class people were only allowed on the sun deck on the second level and not beyond the sign leading to the front.  If you zoom the photo you can see the sign, “2^nd Class Passengers Not Allowed Forward of This Notice.”  SRD was intrigued with the engines and mechanical parts of the ship and I loved the cargo – everything from cartons of Reindeer Milk to empty ore bags to be filled at the mines.  The galleys were all painted the same green color with details like little edges on the plate cabinets to keep the plates from falling out accidentally.  Passengers travelled in style when they could afford to go first-class!

Reindeer Milk

Upper Deck

Second Class Passengers Stop Here!

Elegant Dining

The Main Galley

I have to give a plug here for the great campground we found outside of Whitehorse.  It was the Caribou RV Park.  It had private shower rooms with hot showers and electricity for my hair dryer, huge sites for each camper with trees for separation, a laundry room, a place to wash your car – and did I mention INTERNET ACCESS?  It was run by a friendly man, Martin, originally from Switzerland.  He’s now a Canadian citizen and has been running this wonderful spot for over six years.  If you ever need a great place to stay on the Alaska Highway in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory you should find this one!

 

 

We had been so impressed with the condition of the road but had read about damage caused by permafrost melting.  As we approached Haines Junction we not only were getting amazing views of the Kluane Mountains but between Kluane Lake and Beaver Creek there were some good illustrations of the kind of damage melting permafrost can do to a highway.  You must travel much slower due to undulations from permafrost melting.  There were also some long gravel stretches.  There is an Alaska Highway Permafrost Research project along the highway just outside of Snag Junction where international teams from Yukon, the U.S. Federal Highways Administration and other public agencies have installed several different test methods of cold-weather highway building and are monitoring them for the next few years to see how effective they are.   One of these sections has ducts built into air convection embankments made of 150-300 mm diameter rock.  The idea is to keep the road cold in winter by using air circulation and in summer by using road surfacing materials that reduce the amount of solar radiation absorbed. Road builders in sub-arctic climates around the world will benefit from this research.

A Little Dust

Kluane Range

Panorama of Kluane Lake

Kluane Lake Marshes

As we got closer to Anchorage our “take-your-time” approach to driving became “we’re-almost-to-Diana-and-John’s-house!”  We scoped out promising fishing spots and wrote notes instead of stopping.  We stayed the last night on the road in a Tent-Hostel campground called “Alaskan Stoves Campground” right next to the airport and ate a quick dinner at Fast Eddie’s Restaurant so we could sleep and get on the way from Tok (pronounced “toke” not “tak” as we learned from several subtle people) to Anchorage the next day.   We weren’t expecting to need quite so many stops between Tok and Anchorage for photos.  The rugged volcanic mountains and glaciers are breathtaking!  I have winnowed down my hundreds of photos to a couple of representative ones that don’t even come close to capturing the scale.

You can barely see Mt. Sanford.  It is a dormant volcano and is one of the 10

highest peaks in Alaska at 16,237 feet high

Nelchina Glacier

 

Matunuska Glacier. 

Note all of the dirty-snow at the leading edge.

We’ve arrived at Diana’s and John’s beautiful house and watched the rain for a couple of days.  This morning is a beautiful Friday with blue skies and sunshine!  We will go outside!  Last night we crossed off one of our “Anchorage List” items:  Halibut Burgers at Humpy’s.  They were just as delicious as I remembered!  Let the weekend begin!

We saw this LandRover in the Fast Eddie's parking lot in Tok.

On the side it says:

"You don't travel to see different things.

You travel to see things differently."

Arrived in Anchorage

Thursday, August 2, 2012

We arrived in Anchorage Tuesday the 31^st and are staying with Diana and John and their two dogs in their beautiful new house.   We were on the road for 16 days getting to Anchorage and covered 4800 miles.  I am going to use this down time to write about a couple of items that have been on my mind for the last week.

Resources in Canada

Land Area – driving across really illustrated to me how big Canada is.  Wikipedia says Canada’s land area is about the same as the US’ when you include Alaska.  It is actually bigger than the lower 48 states.  Additionally, the population is only about 35M, and it is concentrated along the US border, so they have a lot of relatively unspoiled land.

Water – This is just a visual impression from going across the TCH (Trans-Canadian Highway).  Lots and lots of lakes and rivers.  Out west in Alberta, BC, and Yukon, the number of really huge rivers is phenomenal.   Looking at the map, the lake and river density appears to be even higher up north.  Coupled with the small population, I would venture a guess that Canada will never have a water shortage, or, if they do, it will be much less severe than the rest of the planet.

Wilderness Forests – Vast – hundreds of miles of forest can be seen from the  TCH and Alaskan Highway, particularly in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon. Lots of logging trucks moving back and forth on the TCH.   Occasionally you see an outfitter/guide business, often with a small aircraft and dirt airstrip.  If hunting, fishing, and the outdoors are your deal, this would be the place to be.  Having said that, you might have trouble convincing your "sun and stars" to join you out there.  Your social life could be very limited.

Coinage – The smallest Canadian bill I have seen is a $5 dollar bill.  Below that, they have a two-dollar coin and one dollar coin, as well as quarters, dimes, pennies.  I was in a conversation with a hotel manager about the coins needed in the Laundromat and was told I needed a looney and two 25-cent pieces to run each machine.  At first I thought I had misunderstood, but then learned the one dollar coin is referred to as a “looney” (left) and the two-dollar coin is a “tooney” (right)(two-ny??).    See the photo of the two coins.

Cost of Beer and Wine in Canada – I had occasion to buy beer and wine in Airdrie, AB and was astounded by the limited selection and the high cost.  I am a bit of a beer snob.  I prefer Sam Adams to Bud Lite.  This liquor store had small quantities of about 4-5 brands of beer, none of which I had ever heard of.   I walked out with a six-pack of local honey-brown brew that cost $15.80.  I drank it and it was ok, but believe me when I say it was not THAT good.  In the US it would have been $8-$9, maybe less.  Didn’t hold a candle to Newcastle Brown.  This really surprised me because Canadians are beer drinkers.  I did some searching around the internet and found that the distribution and sale of booze is very tightly controlled in Canada (similar to how they do it in Utah).  Further, each Province has its own laws and system to manage this.  Some have state-operated liquor stores; others have opened the retail up to privately-run package stores.  However, they all add a significant markup to the wholesale cost as a form of taxation.  This why there are tight limitations on how much beer and wine an individual can bring into the country.  Next time I come to Canada, I plan to take full advantage of the permissible quantity of beer.

Cost of Gasoline - In MA I in have been paying about $3.50/gal for gas (87 octane).  Looking back on what we paid going across Canada and up into Alaska, it is all over the map.   The gas there is priced by the liter, so you have to multiply it by 4 and divide by 1.06 to get $/gallon.  The average price, the high, and the low we paid in Canada were $4.78, $5.28, and $4.52/gal.  When you drive 5000 miles, this can really impact the cost of the trip.  Here is the math.  The Tundra gets about 18 miles per gallon, typically.  At $3.50 per gallon, the gasoline cost per mile is 19 cents.  At $4.78 per gallon, our average in Canada, the cost is 29 cents per mile.  Over 5000 miles, the additional cost is $500!!

Canadian Rockies – Banff and Jasper – Mountains, valleys, rivers, and icefields are just hughnormous. The vistas are awesome.