Trip log: RV Trip to Alaska 2014 |
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6/4/2014 Day 28 sightseeing in Denali National Park Up at 5 AM, out on the Denali Road by 5:30 at 15 MPH. It was a bright, absolutely cloudless day so we could actually see Mt McKinley at the 9-mile turnout. It really stands out; a brilliant totally white lump flanked by blue, craggy peaks on either side. Because it’s so high it remains completely snow covered when the other lower peaks have lost most of their snow. From this distance, 75 miles, it appears to be the same height as the nearer mountains, so it’s a startling contrast. On a cloudy day the white of Denali is indistinguishable from the clouds.
The other objective of the early start was to see animals and it worked. First off we found a bull moose who posed nicely for us, then two cow caribou on a distant slope, too far away for pictures even with the zoom. A little further we found two bull caribou that paid for the entire trip. We first saw them down by the river several hundred yards away. We watched them for about 45 minutes as they crossed the river, grazed their way up toward the road and then crossed the road about 10 feet behind where we were parked. These were relatively young caribou, I think, as their racks were not fully developed with points like you see on older ones, but still pretty impressive.
We came back about 9, had breakfast and did some internet stuff then went back out once again around noon. This was the fourth trip up to the turnaround for private cars, 15 miles up from the campground. The first three had been at 15 MPH; this was more of a kamikaze run to the end in order to walk the Savage Loop trail and to see any incidental animals along the way. We needed no more pictures of caribou or moose. We were always hoping for a grizzly, but didn’t really expect one. So what did we find at the end of the road? Yep, a grizzly, grazing along the edge of the river where we had seen the caribou the day before. A long way away and I didn’t have my tripod so the pictures are not great, but we watched him for about half an hour and got some that are worth saving. Then, at the turnaround, two more bull caribou. Likely the same pair we saw here yesterday. This is called the Denali Herd, we discovered.
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6/6/2014 day 30 trip out Petersville Road; Willow & Nancy Lakes Campground; RV miles 50
Breakfast was cinnamon rolls at the Roadhouse in Talkeetna (fair), followed by a Jeep trip out Petersville Road. It’s 15 miles south from Talkeetna to the junction, 15 miles north back up the Parks Highway to Trapper Lakes, then out east on Petersville Road. The first 10 miles are paved; the next 10 is a steadily depreciating gravel and dirt road. The road then forks and the left fork dead-ends in about a quarter mile. The right fork becomes a real Jeep road and continues another 20 miles but about a mile beyond the fork it became impassible even for four wheel drive because of mud. We thought we might see animals out here, but didn’t. One bufflehead duck, if that counts. We saw a lot of other campers with off-road-vehicles, and quite a lot of road maintenance activity which seemed like a good idea but without much visible result. |
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6/5/2014 Day 29 Denali to Talkeetna, Alaska; 150 miles We got a late start this morning after waiting for the Visitor’s Center cafeteria to open at 8 AM for bagels, then dumping the tanks and filling with water. We had another day left on the tanks by our estimation, and had not felt deprived in showers or general water use. The remaining problem was propane. We had used a lot of propane running the furnace and hot water heater. It showed still 3 lights on the inside panel, but that lies. The tank gauge shows about 1/8 left. The large gas station at Talkeetna Junction had propane and it took 8.2 gallons. This is the second propane fill of the trip. Temperature should be more moderate from now on and the usage less.
The Parks Highway from Denali south toward Anchorage is level, wide and has a fairly good (for Alaska) surface, with much more traffic than we’ve seen up to now. There are two turnouts listed in the guidebooks where you can see Mt McKinley. The north one is just a turnout with no amenities, the sign has fallen down and the trees have grown so high you can’t see anything but trees. The south one is fully developed with a large pavilion, parking, trail to a lookout, descriptive signs and a panoramic photo showing where to look for The Mountain, about 40 miles northwest. Of course, you can’t actually see The Mountain most of the time because of the perpetual cloud cover, but you have a clear view of the surrounding peaks and the hole in the middle is where it would be if you could see it. You have, in fact, as good a view here as from inside the park. We feel very fortunate to have had a bright clear day yesterday to see it. We’re members of the 30% club—you can see Denali about 30% of the days. Most visitors never see it. |
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6/7/2014 Day 31 jeep Trip out Hatcher Pass Road from willow, then on to Eagle River Campground; rv miles 56
We left in the Jeep about 9, drove 5 miles back north on Parks Highway to the Hacker Pass Road turnoff, then east on Hacker Pass. The road is paved for the first 10 miles, then wide, smooth dirt and gravel for another 20 with diminishing quality toward the end. There’s a sign at the beginning that the road is closed over Hacker Pass, which leads to Palmer if it’s open, and indeed it is closed, just 2 miles short of the summit. It is clear and in relatively good shape to that point, however, and looks clear on the other side of the gate as well, though it is a steep switchback climb and may be snow covered or a mud bog beyond where we can see. It’s an amazing road with stunningly beautiful vistas of lush meadows, beaver ponds, rapidly flowing river, towering snow covered peaks—and no animals except some marmots scurrying about near the top. |
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There’s lots of gold mining activity up here, both professional large scale operations and small scale operators and hobbyists who come up in campers. It also has a lot of private residences and some would-have-been businesses, mostly boarded up, and at least half of the properties seem to have for sale signs on them.
We got back to the campground just after noon and drove down to Eagle River, just 11 miles north of Anchorage. The campground here is $15, no hookups, in the forest and is mostly full. This is, after all, Saturday night and there are lots of locals in the campgrounds. We took one of maybe two available slots.
We went into Anchorage to do some shopping and ate dinner at Olive Garden. To complete a previous story: We found a Best Buy store in Anchorage and bought another Garmin 2557 to replace the 2555 that failed a couple weeks ago. I had tried everything to resuscitate it—swapped cables, tried different plugs, tried wiggling the power connector—to no avail. So when we got back to the RV with the new one, I took the old one out of the drawer for one last try. Sure enough, it works fine. So now we have two good ones and we can retire the one we hate.
Eagle River just to the north a few miles is itself a pretty good sized town with lots of stores, restaurants and amenities. I got my prescription filled in 5 minutes at the Walgreens. |
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6/3/2014 Day 27 sightseeing and dogsled demo in Denali National Park After breakfast of hotcakes, eggs and bacon, we did some trip planning for a couple of hours then went out to Park headquarters where the rangers put on a dog sled demonstration three times a day. Dog sleds are used in the park during the winter instead of sno-gos to haul people and equipment for winter projects. They have a no-machinery policy in Denali, so this is the only park in the system that uses dog sleds and has a full time staff of dog mushers, groomers and trainers. There are about 15 dogs available for work and 2 that they are currently breeding. All of the dogs are bred for temperament and ability, not breed purity and are of widely varying colors from white, blonde, gray to black. The dogs begin training at 6 months and retire when they are about 7, give or take, or whenever they lose interest in the job. The older dogs largely train the younger ones. |
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So here’s our developed wisdom about Denali: everyone says you won’t see anything if you just drive to the 15 mile turnaround; take the bus, you’ll see much more. That may be true, but even though the bus stops for a few minutes when they spot an animal, everyone has to stay in the bus so they are all taking pictures through the tiny bus windows and over the heads of other passengers. The busses run to the end of the road, 60 miles, so they do see more of the open country but we spent several days here, made four very slow trips down the road and spent much more time watching the actual animals we saw. So the idea that you can’t see anything unless you take the bus just isn’t true. If you give it enough time, you will. And we made use of the busses by stopping behind them when they stopped because we knew they had seen something. The only animals we didn’t see that we might have seen on the bus were wolves and Dall sheep, but we had seen sheep before in Yukon.
So having started off thinking we wouldn’t even go to Denali, we’ve now spent three days here and could do even more, but it’s time to move on. Besides, now it’s raining again. |
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We’re in Talkeeta Alaska RV Park & Boat Launch, a set of indeterminate gravel spaces among large trees, some overlooking the river, with a fire pit and picnic table, no hookups, for $20 per night. It’s between the river and the railroad tracks, and across the road from the airport. This is a fairly major airport with lots of small to medium sized planes tied down. A second dirt and grass runway in the middle of town has half dozen small planes on it as well. It is used primarily for ski plane landings in the winter.
Talkeetna itself is small, dusty, crowded and purely tourist oriented with the usual jewelry and gift shops, interspersed with burger joints. The Anchorage to Fairbanks railroad runs through the middle of town. It caters to the younger set who are into hiking, climbing and partying, as well as being a stop on the bus itinerary from the cruise ships. It’s a primary base for climbing Mt McKinley. Helicopters will take you to the mountain, drop you off and pick you up again if you survive and they can find you. |
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The mud bog on Petersville Road where we turned around |
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Three times a day the rangers hook up the dogs to a sled and pull it around a track of gravel (no snow this time of year) to show visitors how it’s done. The dogs love it; they have to be exercised anyway, so this is as good a way as any to do it. After the demo, visitors get to socialize with the dogs, who are very friendly and love the attention. In between times, and for the dogs that didn’t get to pull, the dog walkers, some volunteers, some rangers, take the dogs out for runs by themselves.
After the dog sled demo, we continued down the Park road once again to the turnaround point at mile 13, really slow, looking for animals. Right at the end we saw a bunch of cars and busses stopped on the road, a sure sign that there’s something to see. Donna asked one of them what it was and he said, “moose, down there.” Well, one look and I could tell it weren’t no moose! It was a bull caribou, lying down in the grass. They are similar in color to the pronghorn that we find in Arizona, with the really tall rack of horns. Moose are dark brown with a smaller paddle shaped horn. So this was great! Caribou: √. On the way back, a similar event, people ahead of us stopped and they had spotted a bull moose down by a pond. He was really hard to find peering through dense trees, and he would disappear and re-appear. |
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Mt Mckinley from Mile 9 of the Denali Road |
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This was fun. It is certainly a scenic road, with occasional glimpses of Denali, mostly cloud covered but still impressive. The top of it was visible, but is the same color as the clouds, so you have to stare at it for a while before you see the detail of the mountainside. Since all the other peaks top out below the clouds, you don’t expect to see one sticking above them, but there it is. Lunch was at one of the communal tables back at the Roadhouse, mushroom soup for Donna and reindeer chili for me, with two really generous glasses of house plonk, and a salad which all came to $28.
We decided, since it was still early in the day and we were pretty much done with Talkeetna, to check out of the Talkeetna Campground and drive 50 miles down to Nancy Lakes. Saw two moose just out of Talkeetna. We missed the turnoff the first try and were on our way out to South Raleigh Campground, which is also part of Nancy Lakes State Rec Area. The Nancy Lakes Campground is 0.2 miles further south on the Parks Highway. It’s tight. There are three loops, each with about 8 short back-in sites, no hookups, pretty un-level, but in the trees and nobody else here. $10 a night. We are now 67 miles from Anchorage. |
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Bufflehead duck |
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In Denali National Park |