Alaska week 2

Oops, it took a little while (I’m a great procrastinator when it come to writing), but the second week of our Alaska trip was a whole different Alaska experience.  This week was more about wildlife, both up close and far away.  When we disembarked the ship, we took a bus from Seward to Anchorage.  It was a beautiful route up the Kenai Peninsula and the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet.  We made one stop at a wildlife conservation center where we could see some local animals up close.  Then we went on to the Anchorage airport where we picked up our rental car for the week.  We drove around Anchorage a little, out to Earthquake Park, an area on the inlet that had been at the epicenter of the devastating 1964 earthquake.  It is nicely wooded, but we didn’t walk around for too long before the mosquitoes found us.

After spending the night in Anchorage, we headed up to Denali.  We got rained on hard for a short while, but the rest of the drive was very nice.  Although you are surrounded by mountains, the drive is not mountainous, nor are you ever at a very high altitude.  We stopped at a lookout to see Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America, but it was mostly cloudy.  The mountain has its own weather system that makes it hard to see, in fact it is only visible about 30% of the time.  At the end of the four or five hour drive, we checked in to our motel just past the national park.  The next day we went in Denali National Park.  Cars are only allowed 15 miles into the park, so we took one of the busses that take you in farther.  We did the seven hour tour that goes 53 miles in.  That may seem like a long time for a little over 100 mile round trip, but that’s because you make frequent stops to observe the wildlife along the way.  Although most of it is at a distance, it was really cool to see animals in their natural habitat.  We saw several mama bears with their cubs, moose, elk, Dall sheep, and a big red fox that cut right in front of the bus.  The binoculars we’d bought came in very handy, but it was on this part of the trip that I wished I’d bought a camera with a longer telephoto lens.  I usually don’t like the bulk of a big camera, but I really couldn’t get the shots I wanted with a smaller one.

The next day we drove up to Fairbanks.  There we went to an excellent auto museum (Chuck’s hobby) that had many cars from the early days of automobile development.  It was one of the best car museums we’ve been to.  We also went to Pioneer Park that had a nice mix of old buildings and museums.  Other than that, Fairbanks isn’t exactly the nicest city we’ve visited; kind of old and run down.

On our last day at Denali we went back into the park and visited the sled dog kennels.  They are beautiful dogs that are used in winter for the park patrols.  We also managed to join the 30% club – that’s the percentage of people that actually get a good view of Mt. McKinley.  Then we headed back to Anchorage.  We got stopped for road repair along the way, and the woman holding the “stop” sign recommended to us that we visit the town of Talkeetna, a short side trip along the way.  It is a cute town of shops and restaurants.  As we almost got back to “civilization”, the highway suddenly stopped up.  We thought there must be an accident, but it turned out to be a couple large moose crossing the highway.  The next day in Anchorage we did some souvenir shopping and then went to the Alaska Zoo.  They have many animals there that are not in other zoos because they need the colder climate.  We finished up the week with dinner (food and restaurants are expensive in Alaska), and flew home the next morning.

Musk Ox

Bears at wildlife center

Caribou

caribou in the wild

the vast expanses of Alaska are awesome

bear with cub in the wild

at car museum

Fairbanks pioneer park

Denali sled dogs

Mount McKinley

Moose crossing highway

Alaskan Cruise!

I finally talked Chuck into taking a cruise since I wanted to see Alaska and that is one of the best ways to do that.  So we started our trip by flying to Vancouver, BC.  We got there a day early so we could see the city.  It was every bit as beautiful as we’d heard.  Since we only had one day, we did a “hop-on hop-off” trolley.  It toured the city as well as Stanley Park which is a gorgeous urban park on a peninsula.  We also made a stop at Granville Island to see the shops there.

The next day we boarded the Holland America Zaandam and sailed out to sea that afternoon.  We quickly fell in love with cruising; what’s not to like?  So many food choices from breakfast delivered to your stateroom, buffets at almost any hour, or fine dining with an excellent menu.  During the day there was an assortment of activities, from computer classes to cooking classes, an excellent library and gym, and outstanding scenery at every turn.  The evenings had great entertainment in the showroom which we followed up with relaxing to live music of several varieties in the various lounges, and we even did a little dancing.

Did I mention that we were headed to Alaska?  Our first port was Ketchikan.  There we went to one of the Saxman Totem Pole Park, the largest one in the area.  The rest of the day we spent browsing in the many shops and making a few purchases too.  We found that the shops had lots of reasonably priced stuff, so I was happy about that.  As we sailed out of Ketchikan that evening we passed through a strait that had lots of whales.  Mostly we saw fins and blowing, but it was fun to watch for them.

Vancouver's cruise port (Canada Place)

Saxman Totem Park

Creek Street, Ketchikan

As we slept, the ship took us to the port of Juneau, the state capital.  It is the third biggest city in the state (about 32,000), but is only accessible by plane or boat.  The surroundings are steep mountains, the Tongass National Forest and the Juneau Icefield.  We took a city tour that also went to the Mendenhall Glacier.  This glacier is in retreat (as are about 95% of Alaska’s glaciers), forming Mendenhall Lake at its base, which didn’t exist 100 years ago, at the base of the glacier.  Although the glacier has lost about two miles of length, it is still 12 miles long. 

Floatplanes abound in Juneau

and glacier ice

so do shops

Mendenhall Glacier

Juneau

leaving Juneau

 Our third port was Skagway.  The town has only about 900 permanent residents, but an interesting history.  It was the beginning point for the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896-98.  We rode on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, which was built along the route the gold seekers traveled but not completed until 1900, after the short-lived rush ended.  It is a beautiful three hour round trip to the summit and passes briefly across the Canadian border.  At the top we were in snowy surroundings with the bluest ponds of melted snow.

Climbing the mountains

the Canadian border

At the top of the pass

coming down from the pass

the other train along the cliffs

crossing one of the bridges

town of Skagway

railroad station

The day after Skagway we sailed into Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Two USFS Park Rangers boarded the ship to narrate the day’s travels.  Not all cruise ships get permits to enter the park, that was an advantage of sailing with Holland America since it is one of the cruise lines that has been sailing Alaska for many years.  There are fifteen tidewater glaciers in the park, which is only accessible by ship or plane.  The most exciting part of the visit was stopping by the Margerie Glacier for about an hour.  This glacier is about a mile wide and 21 miles long, and is one of the few glaciers that is not in retreat.  The ship’s captain had told us that if we watched it, we would probably see some calving (when chucks of ice break off).  Well we hit a spectacular day of calving; the best the crew and rangers said they’d ever seen.  We saw and heard (they make a loud crash) many large chunks break off, one that was enormous.  They bay is full of ice chunks, but they are not big enough to be considered icebergs that could endanger ships. 

entering Glacier Bay National Park

approaching Margerie Glacier

splash from calving

calving ice

inside the bay

passengers obsering from the bow

From Glacier Bay National Park we headed out of the inside passage and across the Pacific for a day at sea.  We ended the day with dining on filet minion and lobster, a “Dancing With the Stars” competition of passengers that had taken the offered dance classes, and some music and dancing in the Crow’s Nest.  We arrived in Seward the next morning where we disembarked from the cruise ship to finish week one of our Alaska trip. Next week I’ll write about our land travels into the mainland.

Canadian Rockies and Montana

First a couple notes about Canada for those who haven’t traveled there.  Chuck called it “international lite” because it isn’t very different than being in the US except for a few things.  First: the metric system, speed signs in kilometers.  Also gas prices in liters and Canadian money, making it hard to know what the actual cost is.  But we think gas came out to about $5.50 TO $6 a gallon.  Everything in Canada is more expensive by about 25 to 30%.  Even at the Dollar Tree everything cost $1.25. They don’t have pennies, everything is rounded to the nearest nickel.  Dollar and two dollar coins are called loonies and toonies, there are no paper dollar bills.  Also, all packaging is in English and French even though western Canada doesn’t seem to have many French speakers.  But it does have lots of beautiful scenery. 

When we left Calgary, we headed into the Canadian Rockies which are a couple hours west.  At our first stop, the town of Canmore, we ran into some friends that live a couple blocks from us who recommended a good restaurant.  Later in the week we went there, and Chuck had a bison burger, I had an elk burger, both excellent.  We stayed in a condo just outside of Banff National Park.  The mountains there are indescribably spectacular!  We bought a pass for four activities that we did over the next couple days.  The first day we drove up the Icefields Parkway that goes along the continental divide and into Jasper National Park.  At one point they built the Glacier Skywalk that just opened in May, and is a glass floored observation platform that arches out high above the river.  We also took the Ice Explorer, which is like a bus on steroids, with huge tires to drive out onto the glacier.  There were lots of mountain goats along the way to the glacier.  We were able to walk around a bit and even get some fresh glacial water to drink.  On the drive back we stopped to photograph a large grey wolf that was standing on the side of the road.  He eyed us suspiciously but did not move until after I got his picture.  We also stopped at Lake Louise and saw the beautiful hotel there.  The lake was still mostly frozen over from the very cold winter they had, so we didn’t get to see its turquoise color that it is famous for. 

The next day we went on a lake cruise on Lake Minnewanka, the largest lake in the Canadian Rockies.  After that we went on the Banff Gondola.  The views from the top were spectacular.  We also walked around the town of Banff, a very cute touristy place. 

We concluded our time in Canada by driving west into British Columbia and through the western side of the Rockies.  We stayed a couple days in a cabin in the woods outside of Whitefish, Montana.  The deer outside the cabin were beautiful, the mosquitoes not so much fun.  We went to Glacier National Park where we drove the Road to the Sun.  It was only open half way up the mountains because of snow, it opens all the way sometime in July.  We took a short hike through the wood there.  Leaving Whitefish we drove along Flathead Lake which is about 30 miles long, the largest freshwater lake in the western US.  Then we joined the I-90 at Missoula and made a stop in Deer Lodge.  There we visited a nice car museum and the old territorial prison.  We spent the night in Butte, then finished the drive home.  

along Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park

Canadian Rockies at Banff National Park

Glacier Explorer

us on the Athabasca Glacier

Mountain goat

Athabasca Glacier

who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?

Saskatchewan River

Lake Minnewanka

Longhorn sheep by lake

view from Banff tram

hiking in Glacier National Park, Montana