Travels with Shelby

26 July - 7 August - Denali  National Park to Seward, AK

One last picture of Denali NP- Mountains at sunset, looking south up the Teklanika River toward Cathedral Mountain.

26-29 July – Wasilla/Palmer, AK

The drive from Denali to Wasilla was uneventful, with mostly good roads. The Palmer/Wasilla Elks Lodge has a number of 30-amp electrical hookups, but water available only at one faucet. The Lodge is on the north shore of Finger Lake, with views toward the Chugach Mountains, which are quite beautiful.

View from the parking lot at the Palmer-Wasilla Elks Lodge. Finger Lake with Chugach Mountains

We drove back to Houston to visit with Tom’s cousin Steven Aldrich and his wife Hazel. Hazel has a large garden that needed some serious harvesting and clean up, as she has been preoccupied with caring for Steven, who has advanced lung cancer. On our last day there, we returned to help harvest peas, and Tom did a fair amount of weeding and removing spent plants – it was fun for Barbara to get a garden fix, and Hazel rewarded us by fixing us a nice grilled steak meal, with veggies from the garden.

We visited the Musk Ox farm in Palmer, where a young woman took us on a guided group tour of the facility, explaining its history and the place of the musk oxen in Alaska history. The extremely soft and warm underfur from these animals, called quivut, is provided to native Alaskan women, who knit caps, scarves, hoods, and tunics from it. The wool is lighter, warmer, and stronger than even pashmina. The lovely items are for sale at the farm, but are extremely expensive.

Female musk ox

Female and her calf

Adult male musk oxen

We also visited the Iditarod Trail Race Headquarters and viewed an interesting film giving the history of the Iditarod race. Much of the film was a defense against those who say it’s cruel to “make” the animals participate – from what we have seen in Fairbanks and here, these dogs want nothing more than to run in harness. Outside the center, we were able to hold some sled dog puppies who seemed to be about 3 or 4 weeks old. They were very sleepy, probably from being handled so much, but very cute and soft.

30 July-2 August – Eagle River Campground, Chugach State Park, Anchorage, AK

We arrived at the Eagle River Campground after a short, 43-mile drive from Wasilla. The drive would have been even shorter had we not missed the unmarked new turn into the park, twice! The road has recently been realigned and lengthened, but Google maps has not caught up, nor has a sign been posted. We can’t make a u-turn just anywhere, so ended up driving back to the previous freeway entrance then back around.

As with most state and provincial parks, the Eagle River Campground is dry camping. The sites are nice, and some are long and level enough for us. As has been the case since we arrived in Alaska, we had mostly cloudy conditions with periods of rain. We walked a nice trail along the Eagle River, until it narrowed so much and had so many bushes that seemed attractive to bears that we turned back.

Big log jam in the Eagle River

Our good friend from histotechnology days, Sue Rajek and her husband John live in Eagle River, and we enjoyed dinner at their home, then a hike and two lunches with Sue – she is in much better shape than Barbara is! The dinner she made for us was the first time we’d ever had moose – she made “moose birds” – strips of round steak wrapped around bacon and onions and braised. It was really good! After dinner John built a fire in their back yard fire pit and we visited into the evening.

On Sue’s suggestion, we visited the Alaska Museum in downtown Anchorage, which has numerous displays of artifacts from the various Alaska native groups on loan from the Smithsonian in DC. Unfortunately, the Alaska history portion of the museum was closed for renovation. We wandered a bit around the downtown area, searching for t-shirts with embroidered, rather than printed, Alaska logos. There’s so much junk out there for tourists to buy! We finally ended up with polo shirts with small embroidered logos.

Sunny Aldrich, the wife of Steven's son Jay, came over one night to talk genealogy with Tom - Sunny has done quite as bit of research into the Aldrich line, as has Tom, so they had a great deal to discuss. Sunny's daughter came with her, and Barbara enjoyed a walk over to the river with her while the genealogists talked on!

On our last day at Eagle River, Sue came over to see the motorhome, then drove us north to the Thunderbird Falls trail head. It’s only a mile back to the falls, but portions of the trail are quite steep. The falls were quite pretty, very full from all the recent rain. We went down the steep trail to the creek, but were unable to get to the base of the falls without wading in the high water.

After the hike we were rewarded by Sue with lunch at the Eagle River Ale House; Barbara’s bacon mac and cheese was such a large portion it fed us for lunch the next day too!

Thunderbird Falls from the viewpoint across the creek

Barbara and Sue Rajek at the creek, with the base of Thunderbird Falls in the back right

3-7 Aug – Seward, AK

We awoke on 3 Aug, our 14^th wedding anniversary, to bright sunny skies, an unusual occurrence of late. The drive from Eagle River to Seward was as spectacular as advertised, with sheer mountains, rushing water, and pretty lakes.

Mountains across Turnagain Arm

Mountains and wild flowers along Kenai Peninsula

Hanging glacier along the Seward Highway

 We arrived at the City of Seward Waterfront RV park at about 1:00 pm – early enough to get a 50-amp electric and water site facing Resurrection Bay and the Chugach Mountains. The view from the motorhome was stunning. A nice paved walking trail follows the bay into downtown. We stopped by the visitor center and made reservations for a Kenai Fjords boat tour the next day - more about that in the next post.

The view straight across Resurrection Bay from our motorhome at Waterfront Park on Aug 3.

The same view from our motorhome on Aug 4.

Friday the 5th was another overcast, sometimes foggy, sometimes rainy day. We spent some time at the library checking e-mails, etc., and in the afternoon visited the Alaska SeaLife Center. Lots of fish, and displays about the marine ecosystems of Alaska. We were there at feeding time for the Stellar sea lions, who put on quite a show in return for their fish – it wasn’t a staged show (a la Sea World) with rows of seating, just two workers tossing fish and giving hand signals as we watched from the railing above while the sea lions jumped on and off the rocks and waved their flippers. Some of the tufted puffins in the sea bird section put on a funny show, flapping, twirling, and splashing water all over as they bathed. One pair of the red-legged kittiwakes was quite raucous as they fed a noisy chick; we kept ducking our heads as the kittiwakes flew close overhead, often dropping stuff we really didn’t want in our hair.

We had a nice visit with a new member of the Newmar Kountry Klub Fulltimer’s chapter, Bo Sharp and her visiting friend Pat – we talked our way all through dinner hour nibbling on appetizers and sharing our experiences. We look forward to seeing Bo again at the International Rally in Pueblo. As we were visiting, we saw that the large cruise ship that had been at the Seward dock was backing out into the bay, then turning 180 degrees to head out to sea. Watching this huge ship turn under its own power was fascinating:

Backing out from the dock, which was to the left

At mid-turn, with the bow of the ship facing us at Waterfront Park

On its way, being followed by a small fishing boat

We had planned to drive out to the Kenai National Park visitor center at Exit Glacier, and walk the mile out to the foot of the glacier, but with persistent rain and a fairly stiff wind, we stayed in and read our books instead! We felt sorry for the soggy tent campers:

Camping in the rain at Seward Waterfront Park