A refreshing Alaskan vacation

An Alaskan Vacation

A refreshing break from the norm is a vacation. This particular one, to go to Alaska was Rohini's idea and it was the perfect break and memorable vacation with all 4 of us and Aai included.

Alaska's immensity blew me away, larger than any other in my experience, this Alaskan landscape.

The landscape feels like a living organism, unlike anything i have experienced. The whole landscape goes through a freeze and thaw annually just added to a sense of freshness about everything here.

Summary Trip Report

Period: August 2, 2013 - August 9, 2013

Anchorage

We started our trip in Anchorage with a city trolley tour and checked out a local farmer's/flea market by downtown. It was a center of activity on the weekend.
Visited the place where the formal start of the Iditarod race is at. In the afternoon we picked up our rental Camper - a first  time experience for us. It feels like a Rockstar tour bus (not that i know anything about that either). 

We stocked up on supplies - we were told vegetarian food might be a challenge in this country of caribou and moose meat. 

Anchorage notes

• 11' fall at Earthquake park; 1964. Only 9 dead at a 9.1 mag earthquake. 
• Due to the Good Friday holiday the high school game was canceled and the high school was close to ground zero, so a real Good Friday escape.
• 75 homes totaled, replace with forest. 36 waves rocked the city.
• Largest number of small engine aircraft. Tundra tires to help landings. 
• 1 in 52 alaskans are pilots.
• Chugatch mountains - rain maker mountains.

Denali

Then the camper headed north to Denali National Park. First night experience of daylight until late meant that we were having dinner close to midnight. Helped to have our own kitchen so no time constraints. This was a daily practice for the week we were in this vast land.

Early next morning we got onto a bus tour of the park. This was by a school bus that is the only transport that has permission to enter the park beyond a certain point. The Parks Highway, after a point turns into a 1.5 lane gravel road and  it was best left in the hands of an expert.  The turning point was  Kantishna Road house. The day was a 13 hour bus-ride with a constant supply of beautiful and vast landscape, punctuated by sightings of Grizzlies, Caribou, Reindeer, Moose, Ptarmigan, Eagles, Sheep. 

Denali bus tour notes

Wildlife sitings marked by "+ count"

• 8/4 6:10am Kantishna wilderness tour by Kantishna Roadhouse
• Tour guide : Gitte, originally from Denmark and has lived in Alaska for 29 years; raised 4 boys and dogs with Mike from Ohio living as a nomad. Fishing in the summer, homesteading in the winter. The last 11 years serving school buses in the "real world". has seen more wildlife in the years as a driver.
• Bus left promptly going north from Denali River cabins.
• It's a beautiful morning, wonderful scenery, mountains towering on all sides and tall trees on the p permafrost, boreal forest, starting at 1500'.
• Driving between Alaska range - peak mount McKinley (400 million years old) and Outer range (6 million years old). 
• Dwarf birch with Willows in between at higher elevation; will get to 4000'.
• Learnt from ranger at Eielson station.,
• #til eyes in front, hunt; eyes on side, hide. 
• +2 moose crossed the road @7:06am
• Savage river check post welcomed by ranger.
• Sanctuary river 7 cabins
• Drunken forest due to thermafrost melting makes the boreal trees slanted.
• Eskimos live on the north coast and migrated east to Greenland
• ?All.... Indians live inland in the south.
• +2 golden grizzly bears in the treeless mountain face. @845am
• Polychrome mountain+ many colours.
• East fork river
• +1 Grizzly bear eating berries on the river plains  @900am
• +1 Golden eagle circling the right side hill @912am
• +4 Dall sheep on the ridge
• +1 family of Ptamigens - state bird
• +1 grizzly bear eating berries
• +6 caribou up in the mountain 11:01am
• Mount brook pass to see mount McKinley
• +1 caribou with antler and we got to see him from both sides of the hill
• Stop at Eielson, viewing station for mount McKinley and neighbors, north peak 19470' south peak 20320', Harper glacier, mount Brooks, 11940'.
• Fire smoke up in the hills; Gitte said there's a fire from yesterday and unless it threatens homes/people fires are left to burn out.
• 1pm stop at Kantishna roadhouuse for lunch and a talk about the Iditarod race. Emit Peters his Dad won the reader in 1975; he now trains dogs from a shelter in Anchorage and then they put them up for a adoption. 
• His last set of dogs were adopted by a girl from Wasilla who then won the junior Iditarod:)
• 3pm return on the bus. 
• There was a flying option costing $225/person.#busisbetter
• Clear lake first pause for  pictures.
• +1 reindeer/caribou galloping away; skittish, probably had it's young hunted by a fox/wolf. 
• Domesticated caribou is called reindeer.
• +1 caribou, short antler
• +1 grizzly+1 caribou separated by 100'
• #til a grizzly eats 85% vegetation, berries, grass, trunk; teeth in the front are for meat, in the back for vegetation.
• +1 grizzly uphill of +1 caribou; surprisingly just coexisting/ maybe because Sunday is a day of rest!
• +4 grizzly - one ran across the stream and crossed over the road to get to the other side of the bus. Ranger said the smoke may be bothering the bears, because he saw one running down at 35mph.
• +1 caribou grazing
• +1 moose
• +1 eagle circling the peak
• +3  mama grizzly and her cubs
• +1 grizzly climbing up to the ridge
• +1 caribou crossed the road between 2 buses. Must have come on the road after the previous bus passed. Slowly walked on the road while the buses waited. Then crossed over to stream for a drink and some foraging.
• +4 moose far out in the pasture feeding and someone said, "I see 5!" @800pm
• +1 big bull moose right by the road.

A fulfilled 13-hours!

Talkeetna

Next morning we headed south from Denali to Talkeetna - to take a flightseeing trip into Mount Mckinley. There was an optional landing on the glacier that was subject to weather conditions. The aircraft doesn't go into the clouds and it was raining in the mountains. Still the views were spectacular and the pilot's description of the ice fields and learnt that a contiguous ice sheet is a glacier; perhaps an over-simplification, but simply put a contiguous river of ice = glacier.

Talkeetna notes

• 8/5 5pm McKinley K2 flight seeing
• Pilot: Rich, recently transplanted from Oregon to Alaska.
• Flight started from Talkeetna following Ruth glacier in the rain
• Merging of 2 glaciers, Silver Throne Glacer into Ruth Glacier.
• There's a lot of ponds and rivers, confluence of 3 at Talkeetna
• The crevasse can be covered by show and have a 100' fall
• Possible to do day hikes to the Star Wars Water falls - get air lifted into the glacier sounds like a great outing.
• Blue water in the cracks due to the rest of the spectrum absorbed by the glacier
• A fancy formation called the Royal gorge, another Moose's tooth root canal, along the Silver Throne Glacier.
• Don Sheldon an early glacier explorer has a cabin that was grandfathered into the Denali park; It can be rented but it has a 2 year wait list.
• Now at 6 million acres of which 1 million is glacier
• Approaching Espresso pass formed from the Coffee glacier.
• Frederick Cook's claim of reaching Mckinley was disproven on Fake glacier -  15 miles South of McKinley
• A few other landmarks along the way, Buck skin glacier, Speak lake

Pallmer

From Talkeetna we went to see the Musk Ox Farm at Pallmer. These ice age beasts are domesticated here for conservation; didn't seem like the domestication served the purpose of re-population in the wild. Didn't get a good sense from the guides of the larger goals that this was meant for. One of the few times in this state that I felt a lack of genuine connection with the land. I can't put my finger on it, perhaps 

Pallmer notes

• http://muskoxfarm.org/
• The Musk Ox Farm - Visit: 12850 E Archie Road, Palmer, Alaska
• email: info@muskoxfarm.org
• Open 7 days a week from 10:00am-6:00pm.
• Tours begin every 45 minutes. The last tour departs at 6:00pm.
• Adult $11/ senior $9 / child 5-17 $5
• Spiral nasal cavity
• From the Ice age - 600,000 years in Alaska. By 1865 there were no musk oxen due to being hunted down.
• 34 were transported from Greenland to create the conservation program
• There are 5300 wild musk oxen.
• Nurse only for 2 months
• Named by themes - this year it is trees
• Last year it was spice kids - basil, paprika
• At 3 years old their horn tip is cut and separated by sex.
• Costs $1323/ox/year 
• Quiviut is the guard hair that is harvested from the ox; about 3-5 pounds per ox per year.

Seward

The drive from Pallmer to Seward was via Wasilla made famous by Sarah Palin. A stop for gas, and restocking of supplies and we were on our way. A beautiful drive along the water's edge from Anchorage for about 40 miles. Then in through rolling hills 110 miles to Seward. Rainy day visit to Exit Glacier - the hike up it reminded me of Yosemite falls just 100 times more jazzed by the sight of the glacier!

Seward notes

• 8/6 - Exit Glacier
• By Car: To get to Exit Glacier, head north from Seward to mile 3.7. The turnoff is nine miles long (half of it's gravel). If you don't have a car in Seward, you can get to Exit Glacier by cab or take a guided tour through Seward Windsong Lodge. A small fee is required for access to Exit Glacier.
• 8/7 1230 pm Alaska Sea life center 

• Count and save the Beluga Whales project: http://www.cookinletbelugas.com/
•  Only 300 left as of 2008; 1300 in the late 1970s got them added to the endangered species list.
• Stellar Sea lions divide life between land and Sea. In may they come to give birth. It is on the endangered species list.
• Harbor seals stay close to shore.
• Glacial melt at millers landing, hose pipe and at mile 76 on the way to Anchorage.
• 8/8 kenai fjords
• Godwin glacier used to extend to water's edge about 250 years ago.
• Entering the Gulf of Alaska from Seward
• Another glacier.. Alpine glacier before the gulf
• We see the bear glacier (extension of the Harding ice fields ) as we come out of the resurrection bay. A major sheet of ice that is merges with exit glacier in the back
• Spirus cove
• +1 horned puffin - flies very well under water; Comes here for nesting
• +1 comoran

Free and spectacular 1 mile hike; similar to lower Yosemite falls hike, the glacier coming up in view in 10x more spectacular.

Highlights

Person: Meeting Gitte, an Alaskan pioneer  - was a personal highlight of the trip for me.

Bio: Originally from Denmark, now has lived in Alaska for 29 years; raised 4 boys and dogs with "Mike from Ohio" living as a nomad. Fishing in the summer, homesteading in the winter. The last 11 years serving school buses in the "real world". She said she has seen more wildlife in the years as a drive compared to her 18 years living off the land!

She had a calm and peace about her in that was just enchanting. Unperturbed by the small delays, changes in schedules, truant passengers and constant attention to the wildlife around were what made her be the highlight for me. She was our driver and guide on the road-trip into Denali. And I believe over the course of the day she managed to bring a higher sense of tolerance amongst the 40 odd passengers in the bus. Her singular focus  was on the wildlife and she wove descriptions of her experiences living out away from populated cities, villages.

Wildlife: Denali National Park : We encountered over 25 different animals on the trip through Denali,  made this the wildlife highlight of the trip.

Stellar Seals at Aquatic SeaLife center in their graceful agility were simply marvelous.

Scenery: From the Alaskan mountain range our journey took us to the coast on the Kenai Penisula. All along the landscape goes through from swamps to glaciers. The greenery is a constant with an abundance of water in the form of streams, lakes and ponds.