A Full-time Life

VIEWS OF WRANGELL-ST ELIAS NATIONAL PARK

 We traveled along the scenic Copper River and its tributaries into Wrangell-Mt St Elias National Park.  When we came back after our stay, the RVs and the fish wheels in the background (below) were cut off from the road because of flooding.  I hope they eventually got out.  We had beautiful weather the first part of our stay, but on the last day we were in the Park, there was drenching rain.  

 

 

While Wrangell-Mt St Elias is the largest National Park in the US, other than about 20 miles of bad road, it is roadless wilderness.  Backpacking wasn't on our agenda, so we didn't do any hiking into the glaciers.  But we had lovely views from our campsite, from the van we took into Kennicott/McCarthy, and as we walked around the  site of the old company town. 

 

 

The Kennicott Glacier is hundreds of feet deep and is covered with a few feet of gravel.  It is retreating and causing some land that was along side to collapse.  

 

 

 

  This is a view of the Glacier from an empty (no glass)  window in one of the top floors of the Copper Mill (this post).  

 Back then, the glacier would have been much closer to the mill town buildings.

But I don't suppose the people working in the mill had  time or the inclination to admire the view.    

In fact, the story is that the company actually built their outhouses high above the glacier, so that the waste dropped right down onto the ice.  That's cold!  

 

Some morning views from where we camped while we were in the Park.  (It was called Root Glacier Base Camp).  The footbridge goes across the river where a van picks you up for the drive to the old town of McCarthy and on into Kennicott.

 We noticed while in camp that the fireweed was bloomed out clear up to the top. 

 

 Alaska folklore says that when this happens it is only six weeks until Winter (this post).  So we decided it must be about time to get ourselves down the Mountain!  

 

SHARED with SCENIC WEEKENDS.  Thank you Gemma. and SKYWATCH FRIDAY , Thanks to Yogi and the SWF team.  (Maybe I will be last on both memes this week ... WiFi where we are now isn't  quite as good as it was supposed to be.)

KENNICOTT WORLD HERITAGE SITE

We took a rough unpaved road through part of Wrangell-St Elias National Park to the Kennicott Copper Mine World Heritage Site.        The mine-site, the Kennicott Company town, and the small old village  of McCarthy lie within the National Park.  Gold was first discovered near here during the Klondike Gold Rush, but it soon became evident that the rich copper deposits were far more valuable.  (The highlighted link here is a good overview of the history.)

 

 

This narrow passage marks the end of the paved road.  From here it is 62 miles to McCarthy.  The road overlies the old railroad built to transport ore from the Copper Mine to a steamship port on the Alaska coast.

The story is that the builder -- in a hurry to get the railroad through to the new mine -- put a case of beer on the far side of these rocky cliffs.  He told the crew they could have it when they blasted through the rocks-- so they cut the minimal amount to clear the train.

 

  

This single lane steel span-wood decked bridge, with low guard rails, replaced the wooden trestle across the Gilahina river.  The train ran from Cordova up the Copper River to Kennicott.

 

 

This is the  copper ore mill building.  At 14 stories it is the tallest all-wood building in this country.

We climbed pretty much the whole thing -- on some very narrow, rickety stairs.  It was kind of amazing to me that people are actually allowed to tour this old mill. (We did have to sign waivers and wear hard hats in parts of this building.)

 

Our guided tour of the entire old company town was excellent. It included the old company store,  several various shops, housing (barracks for the workers, fairly nice old homes for the bosses).   A pretty building that had served as a hotel/temporary housing has been renovated and restored and is again an inn with a nice restaurant. We ate lunch there. 

 

I plan to link this post to next week's  OUR WORLD TUESDAY.  Thank you to the lovely ladies who host this great meme.

 

DENALI NATIONAL PARK

 

 

Catching up on a part of our Alaska summer that I wasn't able to blog much about at the time.  Either because we were too busy, too tired, or there was no Internet.  Or all of the above.

 

We stayed in Denali in mid-July.   Dall sheep were just one of the animals we saw there for the first time.

 

 The scenery all along the road was beautiful, even though we were not among the lucky one-third of Denali visitors who get to see Mt McKinley shining in the sun.   Clouds hung over these lower peaks  ... and  raincoats were the costume of the day.    

 We stayed at Teklanika Campground while we were there.  At 29 miles up the road, it is the furthest place where you can drive a private vehicle.  From there we took the Park Service bus along the rest of the road through the Park.   

It's a hop-on/hop-off, so at any time you can get off to spend some time exploring or hiking.  (Just hailing the next bus when you're ready to go further or go back to camp).

 

The first day,  we took the bus straight through to the end of the trail at Kantishna, the site of a reconstructed miner's cabin from a brief gold rush in the early 1900s. 

  This ride was  an all-day excursion with several planned stops and frequent spontaneous ones for wildlife sightings.

The second day, we rode just part of the way stopping for a while to explore and spend some time at the Visitor Center, which is about half-way up the road.

  All of our drivers were great about waiting for wildlife photo stops as long as they could stop in a safe place.

  This was the cause of one of those stops -- and I was proud to be the first person on the bus to spot this grizzly guy and shout out.    

It's kind of  funny to hear the shouts "bear on the left", "moose on the right", etc.  Sometimes you hear "oops, rock bear".  Once somebody yelled "mosquito in the bus".  

More wild Denali animals in a future post.

This weekend,  I am linking to SCENIC WEEKENDS (thank you to Gemma) and to SATURDAY CRITTERS (thanks to Eileen).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BACK IN ALASKA (for the second time)

 

 

 

Yesterday, we arrived in Haines on Alaska's Panhandle.  To get here, we had to travel through part of Canada -- driving along the Kluane River in the Yukon Territory and then through a tiny bit of BC before re-entering the US just a few miles outside of Haines.

 

(This sign made me laugh.  Tok is this tiny little Alaska village --  the area has just over 1000 people.  Canada, on the other hand, is a slightly larger village!)

 

  

It was really a beautiful drive and -- because it was 445 miles from Tok to Haines and we don't travel long days -- we had the fun of staying overnight in another country (at Haines Junction, Yukon Territory) -- on our way back to the USA.  

 

It has been many years since we've been in Canada -- and certainly we've never been in the Yukon before.  It was a beautiful drive and we look forward to driving through more of beautiful BC when we decide that our Alaska adventure is over.

 (But there is a whole lot more to see in this area and the weather is still beautiful -- so it will be a while before we leave the Haines and Skagway area.   Plus we have WiFi in our RV Park.)  

 

 

SHARING these beautiful Canadian skies (and this touch of early Fall color  -- already) with SKYWATCH FRIDAY.  Thank you to the hosts.

 

(Last time I posted we were leaving Valdez and heading to Wrangell-Mt St Elias National Park and the Kennicott Copper Mine World Heritage Site.  We did  go there and it was amazing.     I have so many pictures from that beautiful and interesting area that I don't even know where to start ... so I'll save that post for later (did I already mention that we have WiFi here?).   

 

 

 

LEAVING VALDEZ

 

 

We are leaving Valdez today --

 

 

 

Valdez  ... with its lovely harbor, its lovely flowers, its lovely scenery .... and its lovely WiFi connection!

We expect to be 'off the grid' for a while --  no phone or wi-fi.   Thank you for your visits and comments on the last couple of posts -- will catch up with everyone when I can.

 

 

 

HATCHER PASS

 

We drove beautiful Hatcher Pass -- between  Wasilla and Palmer -- early in July.

 The pass had only opened two days earlier --  there was still a lot of snow along  the roads.    

 

It was a technicolor day -- blue skies, green trees, rushing water, white snow  in the background and, probably because the road had only been open for a couple of days, relatively little traffic.  

 

 
 

Bill first read about the pass while we were staying in Wasilla, so it wasn't something we'd actually planned on in advance.     That, plus the fact that we didn't see a lot of people, made this side-trip even more special.    It almost seemed as if we were the first to discover this lovely area.

(You can't really pretend that in Denali or any of the other places you've read about all your life -- even when it is your first time!)

About mid-way up the pass we came to the Independence Mine, once a highly productive gold mine and  now a State Historical Park.

 

  

My grandfather was a mining engineer and worked at gold mines his entire career.  He was retired by the time I was old enough to understand anything.  We heard stories of course, but I had never quite been able to imagine what it was actually like.  Although not one where he worked, this mine gave us a better idea of what it would have been like for him at the ones in Canada where he mostly worked (I think).    And what it would have been like for my grandmother, my dad and his siblings when they lived in these camps during the summers.  (My grandmother stayed at home in Spokane  during the school years.)

 

We enjoyed hiking around the old mine and mining camp, but especially loved the parts where we learned more about what the mining engineer did.

 

 I'm linking this post to SKYWATCH FRIDAY and SCENIC WEEKENDS.    Thank you to the hosts.

PTARMIGANS ... and Chicken (?)

The Willow Ptarmigan is Alaska's State Bird.  This bird is really good at camouflage -- in the winter they  turn completely white (in all the snow) while this time of year, their dappled brown feathers  blend in really well in Alaska's summer landscape.  We spotted this family out for a stroll on the outskirts of Denali National Park.

 

 

Of course this was a new bird for us because it doesn't migrate into the lower 48.  

 

 

 Ptarmigans are members of the grouse family.  They are protective parents as we could tell watching them shepherd their babies.

 

 

 

Sometime after our visit to Denali, we spent a night in the old mining town of Chicken.  The legend is that the settlers spotted a whole lot of these birds around the area and wanted to name their new town after them, but they couldn't agree on how to spell it.    So they settled on Chicken.  (I don't blame them.)

 

 

 

 Sharing these birds (not the chicken) with WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY.  Thank you to Stewart for hosting.

BOATING IN ICE

We took a full-day boat tour of Prince William Sound up to Columbia Glacier.    Lots of beautiful scenery and wildlife along the way but the highlight was arriving at the Glacier ice field.   We were amazed.    

All of the pictures in this post are straight-out-of-the camera and were taken without using a zoom lens.  We were this close!  

 

In the picture above the boat was a mile and a half from the face of the Glacier.  Those giant "snowballs" are actually chunks of ice that flew on top of icebergs when the glacier calved.   (Calving is the word used to describe the process of ice breaking free from the face of the glacier.)

 

 

Here (above) we were one mile from the face of the Glacier.  The ice was getting thick and the Captain was having to pick his way carefully through the ice-field.

 

 

And here we are only one-half mile from the face of Columbia Glacier.  Most of this floating ice calved during the night as the Captain said the waterway had been much more open the day before.    The large cracks in the face of the glacier are where more calving will soon take place.

The Captain stopped the boat at this point for over an hour, so that we could watch for calving and take lots and lots of pictures.   When we were ready to leave, he had some difficulty maneuvering the boat to free it from the ice that had packed in around us.   

I tried to relax and remind myself that he had done this many times before.

 

Sharing this memorable experience with OUR WORLD ON TUESDAY.  Thank you to the hosts.

MUSK OX

On our trip to Prudhoe Bay we saw three different herds of musk ox (I never heard anyone say musk 'oxen' although it seems like the plural should be that). 

These huge animals are more closely related to goats and sheep than they are to oxen, but they are a species of ther own (genus Ovibos 'sheep-goat').     They are the last survivor of a line that eons ago adapted to cold tundra environments.    

 

 

 

 

 The one in the picture below was part of a herd that was bedding down for the evening.   He looked so goofy and happy to be chewing on a flower while he was falling asleep.

I'm sure I had a big goofy grin on my face too while I was taking his picture ... he was so fun to watch.

 

 

 They do look like prehistoric survivors  ...  as I guess they are.    And they all look ancient -- even when they're babies like the two below. (Their mother was just out of photo range and in a few minutes she curled up around them.  But that picture just looked like three brown rocks on the tundra.)

 

 

 

Once spotted, the animals were easy to see  with the naked eye but  you could only see the expressions on their faces through binoculars or the camera.   

Adult musk ox(en?) weigh 500 t0 800 pounds and they are four to five feet tall at the shoulder.    You would not want to get real close to them -- they are said to have a bad temper -- and those horns look lethal.

  

 

 

There were  20 to 30 animals in each of the herds we saw. 

 

 

 

 

I don't think there is such a thing as a 'life-animal' list, the way there is for new birds.  But if there were, the Musk Ox would definitely be a 'lifer' for us.

 

Linking to SATURDAY CRITTERS.  Thanks to Eileen.

THE ROAD TO VALDEZ

 

This is Alaska's  Richardson Highway near Thompson Pass heading toward Valdez.  Those are snow posts along both sides.  (The average snowfall on the pass is 50 feet.)   The bend in the post is to show where the lanes actually are when everything is covered with snow. 
 

 

We drove it earlier this week and road conditions were fine.     I can only imagine what it will be like when the snow covers all that green clear up to the top of those posts ... (and have no desire whatsoever to experience it in reality).  

  

 This glacier, easily seen from the road, is only one of the nineteen or so that surround Valdez.  We'll see more of them while we're here.

Below is the view of Prince William Sound from where we're staying  in Valdez.  The fireboat was practicing this morning.

 It looked like the boat had spouted water wings.    Water poured down over the boat as well -- that must be to keep it from catching fire itself when it gets close to the flames.

Below is another view from our temporary front yard.     There is  so much to see in the beautiful Valdez area that we can't stay here in the RV all day -- but with this view it is  tempting!  

 

 

 

Sharing with the SKYWATCH FRIDAY community.  Thank you to the hosts.

DALTON DRIVE-BYS

 

 

We drove the Dalton Highway to the end of the earth!  (As far North in the US as you can drive by car -- and then we took a tour bus even further.)  Here are just a few quick pictures of the journey (there will be more someday I'm sure.  It was quite a trip.).  

 

 

 The road is rough -- it is really a haul road (built for truckers and equipment used to install the pipeline from the Prudhoe Bay  oil fields).  It has only been open to the public since 1995.     

 

 

The pipeline is close to the road in some places -- in others it is buried.  Beautiful mountain views all along (when you can take your eyes off the road). 

 

On the way, we slept at the Arctic Circle (one night in a BLM campground) . 

 

Ancient rock formations  on the tundra:  

 

  

Coldfoot camp (below) is  the only place on the Highway where you can get fuel and fill the RV water tank.    Look at that dirty camper van   -- and we weren't  nearly at the end of the road yet.

 

 

The actual end of the road is Prudhoe Bay --  the industrial area for the Alyeska Pipeline.  I'll do another post about it later.   Because of the oil fields,  private vehicles aren't allowed to go the Ocean.  You have to reserve a spot on a security bus.   

 We did that -- and here we are enjoying the lovely summer ocean breezes:

 

 By the time you reach Prudhoe Bay it really does feel like you're at the end of the world -- and then you have to go back again:   

 

 

 

 Hoping to link this post to next week's OUR WORLD on TUESDAY.  Thank you to the hosts.