Day 7 - Friday, August 21, 2009

We were up very early on Friday morning to catch the 1st flight off the island.  Josh came and picked us up and dropped us off at the airport.  The plane was delayed taking off, but soon we were off and flying over and away from the island for the last time. 

It's only about an hour to/from Anchorage, and before long we had landed, collected our bags, and were on a shuttle van to the RV rental place.  Once we took care of the paperwork, we loaded the RV, familiarized ouresleves with everything, and then we were off . . . to WalMart and Pizza Hut.  We needed to stock up on food supplies and Jeanette wanted lunch.  Jeanette loves Pizza Hut, but I think it is completely sucktastic (no offense Jeanette). 

Soon we were pulling away from Anchorage, heading north toward Denali National Park.  The first hour or so of the trip was disapointingly normal.  There were beautiful mountains and things, but we drove through several small towns that looked a lot like just about any other town you drive through, with the same fast food and strip malls .  Unfortunately, we had to drive through Wasilla - a town permanetly tainted with the stench of the former defeated vice-presidential candidate whose name is not worthy of appearing on our blog.  If given ANY choice at all, I would have driven around this city, even if it had added hours to the trip, just to avoid this town.  But, there was no choice, so I had to be satisfied to refuse to spend a cent in this town. 

After the first hour or so we were finally out in mostly wilderness on a 2 lane highway.  Unfortunately, it was still a little dull - there just wasn't much to see - the topography was pretty flat and there were dense aspen forests up to the road's edge.  At clearings in the road we started to see the top of an enormous mountain.  We quickly realized it was Mt. McKinley, or Denali!  That was pretty impressive because we were still 100 miles and a couple hours away.  We had been told that on perfectly clear days Denali can be seen in Anchorage (150 miles away).  Our incredible luck with the weather has lasted even through today.

I was driving fairly slowly to enjoy the scenery and to get used to driving this behaemoth vehicle.  I was glad I did, because at 1 point, out of the middle of nowhere, this enormous cow (female) moose ran out right in front of us.  I slammed on the breaks and didn't miss it by far.  That was the closest I've ever some to hitting anything bigger than a squirrel.  You don't realize how enormous moose are until you're up close to one.  It was also lucky that no one was standing up in the RV at the time or they would have flown out the windsheild and hit the moose. 

A little farther on and the scenery got much better.  It became hilly, and then we were in some spectacular mountains.  The dense aspen forests gave way to open spruce forests and sometimes tunra.  There were also some man-made scenery.  We drove by this wierd site and just had to stop, turn around, and investigate.  We found out later that it was built years ago as a hotel, but it never met code, so never opened.

Before getting to Denali, the road skirts the edge of Denali State Park, which looks beautiful, and then the southeastern boundary of Denali National Park.  The park is enormous, so you're actually driving parallel to but across the Talkeetna River from the border for quite a while before you actually make a left turn into the park.   We had to stop to get our customary picture at the entrance to the park, and the kept driving west deeper into the park. 

This is the Talkeetna River, the one that you drive along for awhile adjacent to Denali National Park.        Left of the river is the park. 

Jeannette - The Intimidator

We didn't stop by any of the main park buildings because we they had already closed.  There was almost no one else on the road, and by now it was starting to get dark since we were arriving pretty late.  We did see a couple of moose from the road and stoped to take a better look and try to take sme pictures.  If we had known how many moose we would see during the next few days, and how much closer they'd be, we would have just kept driving, but the 1st sighting is always exciting!

Tundra in the eastern part of the park on our way toward our campsite.

More tundra and spruce forest.

Denali at sunset.

We got to our camp ground and I was happy to see that it wasn't very full.  There weren't many RV sites to choose from, but there were lots of tent sites open, so the place didn't feel too crowded.  We circled around once, and the very nice campground host stopped us and told us that we were too late to check in like we were supposed to, but she'd let us stay for the night and we would get properly checked in the next morning.  Man, that's my dream retirment job.  You get to camp in some of the world's most beautiful places all summer long.  She told us that they were expecting a good Northern Lights show that night at about 2am.  None of us had ever seen the Northern Lights, so we were pretty excited about that.  I don't remember what we had for dinner, but I do know that we got there past the time you're allowed to run your generator, so it couldn't have been much. 

The camping area was beautiful and unlike anything I'd been in before.  It was a patch of open spruce forest a couple hundred yards in diameter surrounded by tundra on hilsides.  Perfect moose habitat, as we'd find later!

Sarah and I had the bed at the back of the RV, and Ed & Jeanette had the bunk over the drivers seat.  I kept looking out the back window for signs of an early showing of the northern light, but didn't see any.  We set our alarm clocks to make sure we'd wake up at 2, but when I did it was overcast, so we just went back to sleep.  I didn't want to wait outside because it was pretty cold!

It has been an incredible day and we just can't get over our luck with the weather.  We found out later that there are only a handful of days during the summer (really the year) that it is clear enough to see all of Denali like we could today.  The mountain is incredible, humbling, and awe inspring, and we never really got that close to it.

Day 6 - Thursday, August 20, 2009

We got up early this morning because it was the lowest tide during the period we were in Kodiak. Each visit during the lowest tide, we always go to Fort Abercrombie State Park to go tide pooling. I had a bit of a time finding the tide pools, but it wasn't long and we were in the tide pools. Usually this is a wonderful place to go when the tides are low. There is a huge variety of amazing animals on and among the rocks - Christmas anemones, blood stars, sun stars, chitons, sometimes octopi, and many, many others. I was enormously disappointed, however, to find that almost the entire area was covered in kelp. We saw a few starfish and anemones, but there wasn't a single pool that wasn't choked with kelp. Oh well - we couldn't complain too much: this was the 1st thing we'd done all week that didn't turn out fantastically.

Christmas Anemone

Blood Star

On the way out we stopped by the ranger station to see pictures of what we could have seen, and Josh showed up with the day off again. So, from the ranger station we drove around to some of the best sites in the park. The best is this overlook above a high cliff where there are some old guns remaining, some interpretive signs, and some trail heads. During the war they had a spot light here that could illuminate objects 18 miles away. This is also a great spot to look out for whales. It is a beautiful spot.

Another beautiful sight: a homemade truck-crane, or 'trane', or 'cruck'. This is my next big project!

We went back to the house for a late breakfast, then headed back out to go into town and the docks. Ed and Jeanette went back to the the Kodiak Island National Wildlife Refuge headquarters a couple of blocks away, and took pictures of the old St. Herman Russian Orthodox Seminary. I've always wanted to go it, and wish I had. It's beautiful in there.

Josh, Sarah, and I went to walk around the boats on the city docks. These are mostly small personal fishing boats, but there are some beautiful sailboats in there as well. We were admiring one when the owner popped his head out and started talking to us. He and his wife were from Norway and were retired, and had been sailing around the world for years. We were talking for a while and they invited us on their boat. Josh took a tour of the galley while the rest of us sat in the back talking to the wife. Eventually, Josh finagled a potential invitation to join them on the next leg of their journey - for the past several months they had a girl from California (?) helping them with the sailing, but she was nearing the end of her trip and were looking to find a new shipmate. Hopefully it will work out.

To our right is the sailboat from Norway. Ed & Jeanette had caught up with us by this time.

Some cool anemones on the pier pilings.

We finished with the city docks and then walked over to the commercial fishing docks. This is where the big fishing bats are, including a few enormous commercial boats, like a couple from 'The Deadliest Catch", like this one: the Cornelia Marie.

After lunch, we drove back out to White Sands Beach and Josh lead us on a hike. It turned out to be a pretty long hike, with some steep parts and parts over uneven loose rocks, so I was worried about Sarah, but she did fine, and it was a beautiful hike. We started out going up a steep hill and coming out above a cliff overlooking White Sands Beach and the bay, then following the coastline for quite a while, ending up on a cliff on a grassy spit of land overlooking the ocean and the narrow waterway between Kodiak and Spruce Island. It was a gorgeous spot and I could have stayed there for a long time.

The hike back was along a slightly different trail through the forest. The forests here are amazing - so incredibly green. Not a great amount of floral diversity, but still green and beautiful and with lots of edible plants. We saw lots of salmon berries still around, but also currants and blueberries. We walked by a pretty pond created by a beaver dam, when we saw the beaver swimming back toward his dam. He got pretty close to us several times, and we tried to be quiet and still so that it would get closer (it was just out of good picture range), but every time it slapped it's tail on the water and swam a little farther off.

Before going back to the house, we drive up to the top of the mountain above Kodiak. It used to be a fairly hairy drive - narrow dirt road with lots of sharp turns and switchbacks and nearly vertical drops for hundreds of feet off the sides with nothing there to keep you from rolling off. But, the road was wider and more straight than before - improvements made to accommodate the enormous trucks and equipment that had to be shipped up there to construct the wind turbines. We stayed up there admiring the views of the city and water in 1 direction, the sunset over the mountains and wild interior of the island in the other direction, and the graceful enormity of the wind turbines above us. We stayed up there for as long as we could, but it was pretty cold with the wind howling. This was a great day and a great way to end a wonderful trip to Kodiak. I can't wait to come back. Hopefully Jackson will be able to come with us next time.

Soon we were back at the house eating dinner and packing up. I hate this part of any trip.

Before we get away from Kodiak, I just remembered that 1 night (I don't remember which night) Josh made us some Halibut chowder with sweet potatoes. It was really good. Josh, please send me that recipe!