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.