Author: wellsmarsha

Up and out early today to catch a ranger led walk near Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. It was a four hour hike to an overlook of Exit Glacier. We arrived early finding parking and being ready for the hike which left at 9 am. Marsha always enjoys the ranger programs. The hike was a strenuous one and I decided to slow down and spend some time photographing while the group went on ahead. We came to a cool stream (figuratively and literally) so I pulled out my tripod and started setting up as the group press on upwards. As I started attaching my camera to the tripod it got away from me. Camera and good lens took a tumble on the rocks into the stream. The camera was fully immersed in the water for roughly 20 seconds. Upon retrieving the camera I let the water drip away. I headed down the mountain and started working on my camera. Plenty of water got into it and at this point I don’t know if it is toast. Once Marsha finished the walk we headed to town to get a couple of large bags of rice. As I write this the lense and camera are fully covered in a container of rice. Tomorrow I’ll open it up and assess the damage. I have another camera to photograph with, but it’s my good landscape camera that took the dive.

Once back at the campground I was chatting with the owner of the place and asked if there was a place where we could see migrating salmon. A quarter mile up the road was the reply. So we headed there walking along the road. I noticed many of the plants along the road were trampled. Did not think much of it and continued on to see the migrating sockeye salmon. Turns out the trampled vegetation is done by the brown bears as they make their way to and from the stream. Note to self: Keep your eyes peeled!

A travel day – We drove from Anchor Point to Seward. The first part retraced much of our route when we headed to Anchor Point last week. Not much in terms of wildlife today other than plenty of Alaska State Crows, I mean Eagles. At least near the southern coastal area of Alaska there are tons of eagles.

Once arriving in Seward we went to the Seward Visitor Center then checked out the town. It’s a bit more cohesive as a town then Homer and I like the vibe it gives off. We checked out the National Park Visitor Center in Town. After a bit of walking around we headed out to see the National Park Welcome Center outside of town near Exit Glacier. Tomorrow we plan to do a ranger led hike to Exit Glacier. Next it was back to town to a grocery store. I observed a woman call out to her 7-year-old son. I asked her if she had called out to her son and when she said yes I asked what her son’s name is. It’s Wells. Both she and I thought it was neat, but the 7-year-old could not care less. Oh well.

Rained all night and continued for a while once we were up. We headed to Homer to go on a morning Tidal Pool hike with Islands and Ocean Natural Wildlife Refuge. Roughly 30 people took place on the walk which was interesting and fun. I lugged my camera equipment and tripod so I’ll post a few of my photos here.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the moose-quitoes are rather larger here. Take a close look at the head of it.

Friday the 13^th. We started our day with a hike along the beach not far from our campsite. I had the opportunity to photograph more eagles. Watching these powerful birds is exciting. The number of eagles was not high yet several were close. Here are a few of my photos from the beach.

 

On to Homer where to planned to hike (in the rain) on the trails leading onto the slough. The rain was not coming down hard but for some reason I made the decision to leave my camera equipment in the truck. At one observation point along the trail we saw two adult sandhill cranes feeding in the marsh with their two young. Sandhill crane young are called colts. As we stood there the birds ignored us and moved closer and closer to us. They got close enough that I gritted my teeth and pulled out my cell phone camera. It was great observing them close up.  After our walk we of course needed to stop at Two Sisters Bakery again!

The paved road continues past Homer for another 20 miles or so and we decided to follow it to the end. A ways out we found a set of trails which we promptly took. The rain had stopped by this time. Here is a photo from the trail.

Our campsite is roughly 15 miles north of Homer. For the most part we are located off the beaten trail where there’s little traffic and beautiful views across wetlands. Even as I write this I hear the chatter of eagles outside near the trailer.

Once we had our morning coffee and a bit of food we headed south into Homer. I find Homer very interesting. For me Homer breaks into various categories. The two that just about every visitor notices would be “Old Town” and “The Homer Spit.” After a stop at the Visitor Center getting oriented to the area we explored Old Town. This is the old downtown section of Homer where there are a few places to eat and the various older type buildings. We checked out Two Sisters Bakery and it’s a hit. Great food and great price (considering the area). Along the Homer bypass many of the new business have come, the gas stations, Safeway (grocery store chain), a bit of fast food, and other services. Along this stretch includes The Oceans and Islands National Wildlife Visitor Center. It is a beautifully designed building on the commercial strip yet out their backdoor are a couple of miles of trails within a slough or tidal estuary.

On to the Homer Spit. This is where many people go when they head to Homer. It’s a 5 mile long spit that sticks way out into the Cook Inlet. It’s where the harbor for the city rests along with marine service type business. Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention there are plenty of shops and restaurants for the tourists. There are plenty of tourists on the Spit. Too many for my taste. Parking was an issue yet we found a place at the end of the spit to park and checked out the many shops. Here there are many places to book excursion trips to see glaciers, birds, bears, whales and more. I was interested in some of the bear tours to photograph the brown bears. For roughly $750 per person you can be flown to a great bear observing location for the day. There are a few openings for the tour next week so we are thinking about it. In the meantime we would like it to be decent weather if we are to spend that amount of money for a day. Many of the shops are interesting yet I don’t do well in crowds so after an hour there we were ready to move on.

 

I’ll talk more about the different components of Homer in a future post.

Next stop was back to Two Sisters Bakery for a late lunch then back to the campsite. We then went to the water about ¼ miles from our campsite to check out the eagles again. Tide was high so there was not much action. Back to camp and did a few tasks that were waiting to be done.

It was a steady rain all night and we awoke to more of it. We went for a short walk to stretch our legs then headed south. Our destination for today is Anchor Point which is the western most point you can drive via road to in the continental US. You can get further west in many parts of Alaska and Hawaii but good luck driving there from New York State.

As we drove south the weather cleared and we ended up with a beautiful yet cool day. For lunch we met up with our friend Nancy. She once lived in Alaska but now comes up each summer with her family. We had not seen her for maybe ten year or so and it was great catching up with her.

After a great lunch in Kenai we continued south to Anchor Point. After a nice barbeque supper, we went for a walk to the beach to find it alive with Alaskan crows (read eagles). I enjoyed photographing them for maybe an hour then we headed back to the trailer for the night.

Today our destination is a campground in the Kenai on our way to Homer. The road south of Talkeetna had major construction so it took a while as we headed towards Anchorage. To get to the Kenai one must travel through the middle of Anchorage. Once south of Anchorage the road travels along the Cook Inlet with mountain on both sides. From my view the only thing that is good about the city of Anchorage is that it’s easy to get out into beauty once leaving the city. I’m not speaking from knowledge rather from impression but Anchorage could be an excellent city to study for urban planning, what not to do! My apologies to anybody from Anchorage.

While driving along the edge of Cook Inlet the cell phone rings and it’s Scott and Dawn who we had met while on the Lu Lu Belle cruise back in Valdez. We met along the highway not far from Cooper River and they followed up to our campsite where we enjoyed catching up. They are staying in Seward and knew we were headed to the Kenai and tracked us down. It was sweet. We enjoyed swapping Alaskan travel stories and catching up. Not sure if we will see them again on this trip based on our travel plans and theirs but we hope to see them again in the future!

We slept well and felt rested in the morning. We headed south on the Parks Highway towards Denali. Our destination for the day is Talkeetna. We ran into intermittent rain as we traveled through the mountains arriving in Talkeetna in the late afternoon.

Talkeetna is one of the Alaskan towns that inspired the television show, Northern Exposure, back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I have not mentioned this yet but our Airstream has a TV and DVD player. We brought along the complete collection of Northern Exposure to watch on the trip. We’ve about half way though the series and enjoying the Alaskaness of the show.

Marsha elected to go for a walk through town while I stayed in the camper catching up with my blog. It was quiet and I was making progress when somebody shook the trailer. I figured that I had neglected to put the stabilizer feet down. When they are not down it’s easy to shake the trailer just by moving around in it. The trailer shook again. Somebody was playing with me by shaking the trailer from the outside. Out of the trailer I flew but there was nobody around. The stabilizers were down. It was an earthquake. A 5.0 earthquake to be more precise. No damage to anything. When Marsha returned she didn’t know about the quake. While walking it was not noticeable.

We elected to head next door to a bar/restaurant for supper. We shared a pitcher of local beer and the meal. It’s probably 30 years since we had shared a pitcher of beer! Back to the camper for some cards and bed.

We awoke to rain so we packed up threw the very wet tent (only on the outside) in the back of the cab of the truck and drove the 6 miles to Cold Foot where we filled up with gas and enjoyed a breakfast buffet. Again we headed south in the rain. Although we needed to drive close to Stan and Kathe’s where our Airstream rested we elected to drive the 6 or so more miles into Fairbanks and wash the truck. Mud covered the truck from the door handles down. We could not imagine doing any loading and rearranging without getting covered with mud ourselves. It took a bit to find a car wash between not really knowing our way around the city plus dealing with road construction. The truck got the decent cleaning and we were off to pick up our trailer and head out to another nearby campground. It was nice seeing our friends once again and to meet their friend John who offered some suggestions about the Kenai where we are headed next. I did get to see some of Stan and Kathe’s pre-yard sale items and left there a bit happier yet poorer. It was time to move along as we bid goodbye. It was special seeing Kathe after maybe 15 years and to meet her partner, Stan. I enjoyed the mental jousting with him. We hope to see both of them again!

Back at the campground we set up for the night and hit the hay.

This was the big day where we would see the Arctic Ocean. Starting out I did catch and photograph the sun peeking out from behind a mountain.

We had only 100 miles to go to reach Deadhorse and the plan was to travel slowing looking for wildlife then catch the 3:30 shuttle tour to the ocean. Afterwards we would head south and camp somewhere. Here’s a partial view of our campsite before taking off. The netting covers our picnic table and gives us a fighting chance of managing with the mosquitoes.

We still had hopes of seeing some caribou having given up expecting to see musk oxen. As you head north trees disappear and the vegetation gets shorter and shorter. We started climbing through a cut in the hill when Marsha spotted a musk oxen not far away but mostly hidden by bushes!!!!  We drove ahead, turned around and I got some photos. It made the entire trip! We continued northward and soon we spotted 4 more male musk oxen following the Alaskan Pipeline marching along in a row. More photos!

The pipeline is at the top of the photo

We started joking that we came all this way knowing we would not see musk oxen but just about assured we would see caribou. Now there were no caribou to be found. Finally we stumbled upon a few not far from the road. More photos! Next we noticed many greater while fronted geese. More photos!

 

Within 10 miles of Deadhorse we came across a small caribou herd of at least 500 and very likely 1000. I say small herd since it can be tens of thousands. More photos!

We arrived in Deadhorse which is hardly a town and it is unlike any town either of us had ever been in before. We managed to find some unattended gas pumps were we could refuel. Our last gas was in Coldfoot more than 200 miles south. That gas was a bargain at $4.60 a gallon. In Deadhorse it was $4.99 a gallon. Still a great deal since we could not make it to the next place to refuel without it.

As we waited for the tour we drove around then decided to drive south to look for the caribou herd again. We were hardly out of Deadhorse when we spotted yet another musk oxen up close. More good photos! Next we looked for the herd of caribou but then were not to be found. Did did see some jaegers, an arctic bird, but no photos.

The tour was interesting. It was a bus holding about 16 of us. Everybody was in their 20’s or 30’s and then there was us. The tour was a drive through the Prudhoe Bay oilfields to a spit of land out into the Arctic Ocean. Marsha and I both stuck our hands into the ocean while all the others on the bus went in to a quick dip or swim. It was quick since there was ice visible in the water!

After the tour we headed south making it to Marion Lake where we had camped the first night. After leaving Deadhorse we saw one moose. Rolled into the campground after 10 pm, set up the tent and crashed. We had driven 399 miles that day. I have not talked about driving the road but I should. I’ll leave it for now but let’s just say it is interesting.