Extra: Two videos of bears at Katmai

Here are two videos of bears at Katmai - one was chasing fish around the river; the other was watching to see if anyone else had a fish that he could steal.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

It's a long ride from Columbia to Anchorage, but after the trip to Australia, this seemed like a short hop. The flight was fine and we arrived in Anchorage about 6:30 PM local time (4 hours earlier than Eastern Time). We came in with a great view of an unnamed glacier.

Our lodging for the next two nights is Susitna Place, a bed and breakfast in a quiet neighborhood on a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet, which stretches 180 miles from Anchorage to the Gulf of Alaska. At its northern end, the inlet branches into two "arms" which almost surround the city of Anchorage; these arms were gouged out by Ice Age glaciers. From the B&B, there's a nice view of Mount Susitna across the water and a short walk to downtown.

We figured our biological clocks would send us to bed early, but it was broad daylight here and we were wide awake. So off we went to have a short look at the city. Anchorage is Alaska's largest city - almost half of the state's population lives here. It is the only place in Alaska with all the modern fixtures of American life, such as a modern performing arts center, shopping malls, fast food restaurants, traffic lights, traffic jams and urban sprawl. Still – the city is home to nearly 3000 moose, and bears are sometimes seen in city parks and on local trails. The city is surrounded six mountain ranges: the Alaska Range, Talkeetna Mountains, Chucagh Mountains, Tordrillo Mountains, Kenai Mountains, and the Aleutian Range. This protective mountain barrier and the nearness of the ocean give Anchorage a relatively moderate climate. It's also known as the 'hanging basket capital of the world,' with flowers decorating every inch of public space in the city - over 100,000 hanging baskets is a lot of flowers.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Sleeping in broad daylight wasn't so hard after all - the sun went down about 11:30PM and was back again by 2:30AM. We were up early for breakfast and then the short walk to the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. This is a paved and very scenic trail, winding along Cook Inlet from downtown Anchorage for about 10 miles south. We saw all sorts of folks out on the trail - dog walkers, bikers, skaters, some sort of military group running with heavy backpacks, and some just plain walkers. We even met somebody who used to live in South Carolina - a woman who worked with Margaret at the local health department in Columbia. Small world it is.

The trail is a pretty place to walk. a freshwater lagoon had lots of birds, including a couple of loons. Another pond was full of duck bottoms. Across the mudflats, we saw a bald eagle. We stared into a stream for a while looking for salmon, but didn't spot any. We also did not see any moose - there are supposed to be a lot of them living around Anchorage - we'll keep looking.

Not sure how far we walked, but we got tired enough that we turned around and headed back to town. After a drink and a little rest, we headed off on a walking tour of the city. The Log Cabin Visitor Center is an interesting spot. It's an old "sourdough cabin," the type of dwelling built by early settlers who made it through the winter here. It has a nice fireplace inside, which felt pretty good today ... 60 degrees outside. In front of the building is a sign showing the distance to various cities and against the wall is a 5000+ pound jade boulder. No danger of anyone stealing that jewel.

 Other than the visitor center, downtown Anchorage is unremarkable - except for the flowers - they are everywhere and they are super-colorful. Most street lights are adorned with hanging baskets, all public spaces are planted to the max, and most everybody gets into the act. One of these shots is along 4th Avenue, where the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race starts every year in March. Hard to imagine that much snow instead of so many flowers.

One option for lunch was a sidewalk vendor selling reindeer sausage dogs - we decided to save that delicacy for a little later in the trip.











We ended up having lunch at a neighborhood tavern called Humpy's - their specialty is halibut tacos. Pretty good introduction to the local cuisine.

There are a couple of nice totem poles outside the courthouse. They are carved of red cedar by a Tlingit native from Ketchikan. This one represents an eagle, holding a giant clam shell.

This is one of the earlier versions of an engine from the Alaska Railroad - this one worked in the switch yards at the busy Anchorage train station. This type of engine was known as a "moose gooser" - its job was to clear the moose off the tracks before the big trains came barreling through.

Friday, July 16, 2010

This morning we joined our tour group - five other travelers and a guide. The travelers included a retired married couple from Pennsylvania, two female teachers from New York, and a male teacher from California. Our guide (and driver) is Patrick, a Frenchman who has lived in Alaska for the past 14 years.


We headed out of Anchorage on the George Parks Highway, which links the state's two largest cities - Anchorage and Fairbanks - with Denali National Park and Preserve. This highway travels through the kind of scenery that defines the Alaskan interior: tundra and boggy muskeg, the continent's highest peaks, glaciers, forests, wild rivers, and lonely expanses inhabited only by moose, grizzlies, foxes, wolves and a wealth of birds.

Our first stop was the Athabascan Indian village of Eklutna - to have a look at St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church and cemetery. The church was attractive, but the cemetery was really interesting.

The Athabascan Indians believe that spirit houses are needed at gravesites to provide shelter for the souls of the departed. The Russian invaders worked hard to convert the Indians to Christianity, but the Indians didn't quite give up the idea of spirit houses. As a result, the cemetery is a wonderful mixture of cultures: some graves with spirit houses, some with Russian crosses, and some with both!

Next stop was Wasilla, located about 45 miles north of Anchorage, on the main line of the Alaska Railroad. The town, named after a local Athabascan chief, has history in gold mining and the Alaska pipeline. Its vintage buildings testify to the isolation and self-sufficiency of this area's old-time bush communities in the days before the highway was built. This cabin contains an exhibit that explains that Alaskans voted in the 1970's to move the state capital from Juneau to Willow, a little cross-roads village near Wasilla. In case you're wondering, Juneau is still the capital - with no access by road (only by air or by water) and they're still trying to find the funding for the move.

The town of Wasilla also gained some notoriety when its former mayor was nominated as the vice-presidential candidate on the 2008 Republican ticket. We looked all around, hoping to see Russia, but this little town is nearly enveloped by the mountains of the Talkeetna and Chugach mountain ranges.

Nearby is the headquarters of the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which covers the 1,150 miles between Anchorage and Nome. The Iditarod Trail links Seward on the southwestern coast with Nome, on the Bering Sea. Historically, the Trail was important as a highway, transporting mail, food, medicine and gold. Today it is best known as the home of the long-distance sled dog race known as the "last great race on earth."

We enjoyed a great video about the race and four-time winner (2007-2010) and cancer survivor Lance Mackey. We also met some real race dogs in summer training.

Leaving Wasilla, the highway picks up the Susitna River, which leads us into the town of Talkeetna. Talkeetna is about 115 miles north of Anchorage, at the confluence of three rivers - the Talkeetna, Susitna and Chulitna (... we have three rivers in Columbia, SC, but somehow it's not quite the same). Talkeetna is said to be the inspiration for the TV show Northern Exposure, and this village of 500 is a quaint spot with historic buildings and all sorts of mom-and-pop operations selling giant pancakes, sidewalk-served lattes and caribou sausages.

The old Fairview Inn is the place where President Warren G. Harding stayed during a visit to celebrate the completion of the Alaska Railroad; two days later Harding was dead and rumor is that he got food poisoning while staying here. We were glad we had reservations further down the road.

Talkeetna today is known for world-class salmon fishing and as the principal staging area for expeditions to Mount McKinley. We visited the ranger station to learn a bit about climbing North America's tallest mountain. So far this year, 661 climbers have reached the summit and 5 have died in the attempt. Nearby Mount Foraker is almost as tall as Mount McKinley, but has far fewer climbers.

Leaving Talkeetna, the highway travels through a boggy region favored by harvesters of edible fiddlehead ferns. The trees here are spindly black and white spruce, growing on top of permafrost. The ground is frozen solid only 8 inches below the surface - that doesn't leave much room for roots and the trees here are a bit stunted. This moist coniferous forest is known as taiga - a Russian word that means "land of little sticks."

Some areas have turned into "ghost forests" as a result of the 1964 Alaska earthquake. The land here dropped 10-12 feet during the earthquake, sinking the tree roots into salty water from nearby Cook Inlet. Alaska averages 1,000 earthquakes per year measuring 3.5 or more on the Richter scale. The 1964 earthquake, which occurred at 5:36 PM on Good Friday, March 27, was the strongest (9.2) earthquake ever recorded in North America.

The other noticeable plant here is the fireweed, a bright pink flower that serves as Alaska's calendar. According to the locals, the fireweed bloom starts at the bottom of flower at the beginning of summer. By the time the bloom reaches the top, summer is over. This year, folks are worried that summer is moving too fast.

We were hoping for a view of Mt. McKinley, but there were just too many clouds. From the viewpoint in Denali State Park, we could barely make out Ruth Glacier, miles west of the road, with hints of great things hidden in the distance. Maybe tomorrow ...

The Denali Highway intersects the Richardson Highway at the sleepy town of Cantwell. There isn't much to say here, except that this small town (200 residents) is a flag stop on the Alaska Railroad - if you want to take the train, just flag it down. Just north of Cantwell is the entrance to Denali National Park, but we pressed on to the coal mining town of Healy, where we had dinner at the 'world famous' Salmon Bake and spent the night at the 'rustic' White Moose Inn.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Patrick prepared a picnic breakfast for us, we said a little prayer for clear skies, and headed to Denali National Park and Preserve. Two-hundred and fifty miles south of the Arctic Circle, the park covers nearly 10,000 square miles (6 million acres) of wild and primitive Alaska: quiet lakes, snow-capped peaks, flowing glaciers, varicolored tundra, and an abundance of animal and plant life. It is our nation's third-largest national park, best known as the home of the highest peak in North America, the 20,320-foot Mount McKinley. Mount McKinley was known to the early Athabascan Indians as Denali, "the High One," and that's still the name used by most Alaskans. Mount McKinley actually has two peaks: South Peak, which is the true summit, and two miles away, North Peak at 19,740 feet. This monster mountain isn't all alone out here in the wilderness - it is part of the Alaska Range, and the park includes 17,400-foot Mount Foraker, 13,220-foot Silverthorne, and 11,670-foot Mount Russell. Other North American parks have wildlife, but none has animals as visible or diverse as Denali. Other parks have their mountains, but none with a stature so stunning, a summit so towering as Denali.

Our journey begins at the Main Visitor Center, surrounded by the spruce forest, or taiga. The forest was mostly black and white spruce, with a sprinkling of balsam, poplar, white birch and aspen. The forest floor is carpeted with lichens and mosses, along with shrubs such as currant, blueberry, and willows.

We boarded one of the park shuttle buses for the 66-mile ride to the Eielson Visitor Center, in the shadow of "the mountain." Only the first 15 miles of road are paved and that's as far as private vehicles can travel. After that, it's a narrow gravel road with lots of curves and limited to the park buses. The road soon climbs out of the taiga and into the treeless expanse of the tundra. Tundra is a treeless plain that consists of moisture-retaining soils and permanently frozen subsoil. Here the climate approaches that of Siberia and other Arctic regions - only hardy, specialized plant species can survive the frozen, windswept winter of the alpine tundra.

Magnificent vistas open up, wildlife was out and about, and what a grand ride it was. We saw moose, caribou, bears, dall sheep, golden eagle, even a ground squirrel.

The idea for Denali Park began as a way to protect the Dall sheep from over-hunting, and today there are about 2,500 sheep in and around the park. They eat low-growing alpine plants year-round.

About 2,000 moose roam around Denali. They like water vegetation as well as willow leaves. In winter, they leat leafless twigs and branches.

There are about 70 breeding pairs of golden eagles in Denali. They nest and summer here, but spend the winter in (slightly) warmer climates, in the lower 48.

The park's 2,000 caribou roam in small groups. They graze in open fields and tundra, sometimes moving to higher elevations to escape the bugs that torment them. Bulls weigh up to 400 pounds. Both male and female caribou have horns (the only member of the deer family in which this occurs).

In the Park, there are about 350 Grizzly bears, weighing up to 600 pounds. They eat roots, berries, bulbs, and fresh vegetation. Bear cubs stay with their mother for two years; for the females, it's usually three years between litters.

Sadly for us, the Eielson Visitor Center was the end of the road. Happily for us, the clouds parted and we had a pretty nice view of Mount McKinley - Denali. Look hard - you can see the North and South Peaks high up in the clouds - nearly four miles UP.  This slope has been a favorite viewpoint for years, but this is a relatively new visitor center - built into the tundra slopes, with the roof serving as observation deck.

Leaving the park, we checked out a beaver pond before heading east on the Denali Highway. This rough, dusty, gravel road is open only in summer; it used to be the only access road to Denali Park before the opening of the Parks Highway. The Denali Highway follows along the south side of the Alasaka Range, following a traditional migration route of early peoples in Alaska.

Just outside Denali Park, the highway begins at Cantwell and travels east for about 135 miles through high tundra country. It offers views of the high tundra and the Alaska Range to the north. We stopped for a hike to see glacial lakes and rivers fed by Susitna Glacier, far up in the Alaska Range.






Further out, there are views of the Nenana River valley, where the steel-blue river, its banks and islands edged with spruce, wanders among green fields. About 35 miles west of Paxson, the road crosses MacLaren Summit (4086 feet), the highest pass for cars anywhere in Alaska. Here the land almost meets the sky, interrupted only by the low profile of the Alaska Range to the north.

Here, too, at Mile Marker 82, is Gracious House, the home of Butch and Carol - proprietors of a gas station, air taxi service, and the Sluice Box Bar - a little taste of "real" Alaska. We had an interesting visit with natives Butch and Carol - over a cold drink, they entertained and amazed us with tales of their 40 years living here - 260 miles from the nearest grocery store.

Near the middle of nowhere, the Tangle Lakes Archaeological District was set aside to protect more than 600 archaeological sites with artifacts ranging from pit-houses to handmade stone tools. Trails in the area have been used by people since the Ice Age. Athabascan hunters traveled these paths seeking caribou and miners later used the same trails to explore gold claims. The area has been inhabited for over 10,000 years and contains some of the earliest and most continuous evidence of human occupation in North America.

A common plant of the tundra is Arctic Cotton, which - as you can see - looks at lot like cotton,  The native peoples used it for insulation to help keep warm in the long winters.

Finally, we made it to our destination - the Tangle River Inn, a unique and very Alaskan lodge, said to be the finest rooms available along this highway. Pretty scary thought - our cabin was the Mallard's Nest (pretty basic accommodations, at best).