Trip Update # 7 Fairbanks to Whitehorse

We made it to North Pole! We were not even planning on going there, but there it was - Santa Clause House. Apparently, from the toys we found inside, Santa’s Workshop has been moved to China along with his elves. I don’t know why National Geographic makes such a big deal about getting to the North Pole (I guess they are just trying to sell magazines). It was rather easy to get there - just take the main road east out of Fairbanks, and 16 miles later, you are in North Pole, AK.
The last town we visited in Alaska was Chicken. The miners who settled the town wanted to name it after the ptarmigan, a quail size bird, common in this area. It is also the state bird. Unfortunately they could not spell ptarmigan, so they settled for Chicken. The public restroom in Chicken is, of course, called “Chicken Poop”.
After we crossed the border in the middle of nowhere, we were on the” Top of the World Highway”. It was a rough and dusty drive, but the views at 4000 feet were spectacular. In order to get to Dawson City, you had to take a ferry across the Yukon River. The locals sometimes just drive across the river, because it is frozen 7 months of the year. We hit Dawson just in time for their Discovery Days celebration. Gold was discovered here in August, 1896. This resulted in the Klondike Gold Rush. There are still about 60 active gold mines in the area. We toured one of the stern paddle wheelers that brought supplies in from the Lower 48, and a huge dredge that dug up stream beds and recovered 98% of the gold. We visited Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall and saw a Can-Can show there. The town is a National Historic Site and Parks Canada has restored many historic buildings and conducts walking tours of the downtown.
After several days of tours and festivities we headed out to the Dempster Highway. The Dempster Highway crosses the Artic Circle and ends at Inuvik. The famous Porcupine Caribou Herd (120,000 head) cross the Dempster highway twice each year as part of their annual migration. We did camp and hike in Tombstone Territorial Park. A violent storm blew in during the night and made us glad we were not in a tent. It left snow on the peaks above us. There was supposed to be bears, moose and caribou in the area but we did not see them- in fact, we have not seen any large animals in the Yukon. Must be a lot of subsistence hunting going on.
When we went to the Post Office on the Friday before we came up the Dumpster Highway, they told us our mail was not there but it might come in over the weekend so check back on Monday. So this did not leave us enough time to drive to the Artic Circle, but we got to within 100 miles of it. We returned to Dawson City for our final attempt to get mail. While we were in the US (including Alaska) our mail was being forwarded from Rapid City SD and we would receive it at the Post Office in about 4 to 5 days. Canadian mail is a different story. After driving back to Dawson we found out that Monday was a territorial holiday (Discovery Day). Even though it was not a federal holiday the Post Office in Dawson was closed. We had to get to Whitehorse, so we left Dawson City. If and when our mail, from late July, ever arrives in Dawson City (it had been in the mail 11 days from Rapid City), they will hold it for 30 days before sending it back to Rapid City. We should get it by mid October! I hope there was nothing important.
We camped by a series of lakes on our way to Whitehorse, and while preparing dinner we could hear loons yodeling back and forth to each other. We grabbed the binoculars and went on a search to find them. We found one pair on a green lake to the west and three more on the blue lake to the east. You could see them stretch their necks as they pierced the air with their eerie calls.
In the evening in the North Country, you can sit back and look up at the sky and watch the northern storm clouds march across the sky. This saves you from having to stay up late at night waiting to see the elusive Northern Lights. We are still waiting and getting pretty sick of stormy weather. Last night was the first time we saw stars at night. The first month it was too bright, for the last month it has been too cloudy. We discovered our roof leak was caused by a crack in the outer layer of our sky light. A little silicone patch took care of the problem, at lease for now.
Next we are starting a 12 day rafting trip down the Tatshenshini River. It flows from the south west corner of the Yukon, joins the Alsek River and empties into the Gulf of Alaska. It flows through the largest bio-preserve in the world. Pat got a cold last week and now I have it. I guess we will be coughing our way down the river. We will not be on-line again until September 4.

Don & Pat

Trip Update #6

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When the Office of Homeland Security read my last e-mail, they did not like my comment about Big Oil owning Valdez. Here is part of the e-mail I received.

“ Mr. Jacobs, how dare you imply that Big Oil only controls Valdez. All of Alaska is controlled by Big Oil, and the entire economy is centered on Big Oil. We will take the necessary steps to prove this to you.”

The next day BP shutdown the pipeline. In Alaska BP stands for Big Problems. You can bet I will not be making any comments in my e-mails about the Middle East or Korea!

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From Anchorage we drove up to Denali Park (the town outside Denali NP) and had lunch. On the trip up I made camping and shuttle reservations for Denali NP. After lunch we notice the RV was running very rough and the breaks were not working. Fortunately we were in a town and did have cell phone service, which is rare out side the big cities. We drifted into a campground and called our road service. Being a Sunday afternoon, we were told to sit tight until tomorrow and then they would see who could respond. There were no auto mechanics in the area. It seemed that the two choices would be to tow the RV to Fairbanks, 150 mile away, or tow back to Anchorage, where the closest VW dealer was, 250 miles away. Neither choice was appealing, but we were afraid if we went to Fairbanks, we would have to wait for parts from Anchorage. I cancelled our reservations at Denali NP. On Monday morning we started making calls and finally got in touch with a former VW mechanic in Fairbanks. After describing the problem to him he determined the problem was with the vacuum line. We were able to fix the problem and we were on our way.

We did spend the next 4 nights in Denali NP. We took the shuttle bus into the park and did some hiking, constantly looking over our shoulder for Mr. Griz. Luckily, Mr. Griz was preoccupied trying to collect his 15 gallons of berries that he needs each day. We did see several grizzlies from the bus. A female and her cub were feeding near the road. See attached photo. We also saw lots of caribou. We went to the park’s kennel for sled dogs. The rangers hooked up the dogs and took them for a short run. Seven pups were born just 3 days before we arrived. The 30 sled dogs (3 teams) are used to patrol the park and carry supplies to remote ranger stations in the winter.

It’s rare to actually see Mt McKinley, but we saw it on the way up from Anchorage and on our second day in the park. After that it was covered in clouds. We headed into Fairbanks and went to the State Fair to see those 500 pound pumpkins and 100 pound cabbages. Maybe this was not a good growing year, but the largest cabbage was only 36 lbs.- well short of the fair record of 65 lbs. I guess it was too early in the year to see giant pumpkins. We did go to the farmer’s market to get some “Alaska Grown” produce. A trip to Chena Hot Springs, Museum of the North, some hiking and a Salmon Bake rounded out our Fairbanks experience We also enjoyed a solid day of rain. Our roof leak returned. Life goes on.

Trip Update #5

Our trip to Valdez started out rainy so we visited some museums in town and learned about the earthquake of ’64 and the Exxon Valdez spill in ’89. The 8.6 earthquake destroyed the old town of Valdez which was built on glacier deposits. The town was later rebuilt nearby on a bedrock foundation. The town of Valdez gets 20-30 feet a snow a year. The town is surrounded by snow covered mountains that receive several times more snowfall than that.
The history of the spill is somewhat whitewashed in Valdez. This is definitely an “oil town”. The oil companies pay them well to keep it that way. The town has so much extra money they built a container handling facility and a port with 8 grain silos. Although more than a decade old, both are still waiting for their first shipment. “Build it and they will come” has it limits. They are still trying to figure out what to do with the extra school they built.
If you didn’t know there was a spill, you couldn’t tell by visiting the town or by going out in a boat. Although the visible signs are gone, the long term effect on the wildlife is still being evaluated. Changes have been made to make a similar spill much less likely. There are pilot boats for each tanker and the tankers are smaller and double hulled. During the cleanup, many pristine beaches that were covered with oil were cleaned with hot water and pressure washed. Some believe that this actually was more damaging to the beach than the oil, because all of the natural growth was destroyed and the oil was pushed deeper into the beach. To give you an idea of the size of this spill, if 10.8 millions barrels of oil were spilled on the Atlantic coast, the beaches from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod would be covered in oil.
Despite all this, Valdez is a pleasant place to visit. We took a cruise to the Columbia Glacier and along the way we saw sea otters, sea lions, horned puffins, eagles, Dall porpoise, a humpback whale and a herd of mountain goats.
I was asked if there were any glaciers left in Alaska. The good news is that there are 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and one is the size of Rhode Island. The bad news is that 90% are retreating, some up to 9 miles in the last 100 years.
From Valdez we headed over to Homer, the most beautiful town in Alaska. We knew this from a previous visit - good thing, because clouds covered the mountains that surround Homer while we were there. A canoeing trip on the Moose River gave us a good dose of Alaska liquid sunshine. A local told us “It never rains THAT hard”. We took a boat trip to Portage Glacier which we noted had receded considerably since our last visit 20 years ago.
Back in Anchorage, we finally got our refrigerator replaced. Next stop Denali National Park.