Alaska Bound – Our RV Trip

Alaska: Reflections from the Road

By Jennie Simpson | October 7, 2015

People call Alaska “The Last Frontier” and boy, they are not kidding. Everything from the locals to the wildlife in Alaska are rugged and wild. Our Alaskan summer is officially over and now that we’ve had time to reflect on everything that happened we thought we would do a review post for y’all. We’ve had several people ask about tips or how we planned our Alaskan summer so we sat down and tried to put it all down for you in a somewhat organized manner.

Before we even started to officially plan the Alaska portion of our RV trip, we knew we wanted to spend at least two months in Alaska and we really wanted to see the Northern Lights while we were there. We had read that the best time to travel to Alaska is between Memorial Day and Labor Day…so that gave us a time frame of June, July, and August. Since we wanted to try and see the Northern Lights we went with July and August…since it has to be dark to see the Northern Lights and summers in Alaska are known to be very…not dark. Once we had our time set, I started planning what exactly we wanted to do while in Alaska. What did we want to see, experience, do? The list was long. Really long. So, I had to narrow it down to the essentials and from there we had our areas within Alaska we would be staying. Most people do the Alaska Loop going from Fairbanks to Denali, Anchorage, Valdez, then up to Tok to head home. We, being the weirdos we are, did it in reverse. Our thinking was that if we saved Fairbanks for last which would be in August, we would have a better chance of seeing those elusive Northern Lights.

Our next step was to get The Milepost. If you only take one piece of advice from us, this needs to be it…get The Milepost! The Milepost was invaluable.
This is what our Milepost looks like. They come out with a new, updated one every year. So, what is The Milepost? Well, it takes the roads to Alaska and in Alaska and breaks it all down for you mile by mile. It tells you what the road conditions were like the last time they were there, any services available, and even goes so far as to educate you along the way about different interesting aspects of the route. I could find pull-offs beforehand and know whether or not it was double-ended, if it had a bathroom, and which side of the road it would be on. I suggest you get The Milepost in advance so you can go through and familiarize yourself with the way it’s laid out. I highlighted throughout mine and then sticky tabbed each drive so I could easily flip right to it. I found most of our RV parks from the Milepost. Speaking of RV parks…make sure you reserve. Seriously. There were so many times we would pull in and the spot we’d reserved was the only spot empty and there were people dry camping in the parking lot hoping for a spot to open. We’d never seen so many RVs in our lives! It really was insane how crowded most parks were. So plan ahead and reserve your spots!!

What I wish I’d known as I was planning is that the speed limit throughout Alaska is usually 55 mph and the distance between cities is often insanely long. We could quite literally drive for hours and not see another person. Alaska has twelve main highways, numbered 1-12. Most streets seemed to be named after mountains or animals…and presidents…with a lot of roads name Hidden this or Lost that. Quite a few parts of Alaska are only reachable via boat or plane, so when you’re planning your Alaskan vacation make sure to pay attention to whether or not there’s an actual road to your destination. Since we’re on the subject of roads…let me dish the dirt on the roads in Alaska. There are some very nice highways and then there are the towns where the main road is paved, but all of the side roads are dirt.

Road construction is a given in Alaska.

Expect it.

Accept it.

And be grateful to those willing to do it. The road crews in Alaska have a horrible time trying to keep up with the destruction the hard winters and permafrost due to the roads. It’s just one of those things. Keep your eyes peeled for frost heaves. They’re very cleverly hidden sometimes…or maybe we were just too busy looking at the amazing scenery or wildlife…whatever the reason, sometimes you’re going to miss seeing the frost heaves until you’re going over them. It can be scary. If they’re grouped just right, they’ll throw you in the air and by the time your back wheels get to the first one you’re bouncing and flailing pretty badly. You know how on a trampoline you can double bounce someone? It’s kind of like that. You get to bouncing along and the back end of the RV is double bouncing the front end. There are some experiments going on trying to help prevent frost heaves. I really hope they pan out.
There are many roads that aren’t paved. The road crew grades them, so what you’re left with is miles of washboards, potholes, and mud because they come through and water the roads. It makes for very slow going, but just slow down and take your time…you’ve made all of your RV park reservations, right?

This was something we saw quite a bit of. Wait for the pace-car…and wait we did…sometimes 20 or more minutes.

Bicyclers were another big road irritation. There were loads of these guys just willy-nilly on the roads. They were usually so laden down with gear they could barely pedal down the strait road in front of them let alone the huge hill coming up. And if the shoulder (when there was one) was unfit for a bike, well, they’d just stay in the lane. I don’t get the bikers. They really were a thorn in my side. Alaska is a wild place filled with animals and plants that want to eat you. Humans aren’t really on the top of the food chain there. I don’t understand why someone would willingly choose to put their lives in danger by biking across Alaska.

Are all roads in Alaska crap? No, not at all. They’re not stellar, you’re going to run into frost heaves, pot holes, and washboards. Just be aware. In the photo above, you can see the road was nicely paved, but there was an accident. People forget to watch where they’re going because the wild beauty of Alaska really is like throwing a squirrel in front of a group of dogs…it’s a huge distraction. And slow down…we heard horror stories of bolts being sheared right off and the insides of RVs breaking apart…I can only imagine it was because those drivers didn’t slow down.

We drove a LOT. Above is a map of exactly where we went in the RV, from the time we crossed into Canada in June, to when we crossed back into the Lower 48 in August. That’s over 5,620 miles in the RV!! This data is taken directly from our GPS unit, and shows all the gritty details. You can find a few places where we had to double back or re-route due to the GPS giving us questionable directions.

The weather in Alaska is a complicated topic. People want to know how to pack, right? Well, it really depends on where and when in Alaska you’re going. At night when we would watch the local weather man (I’m pretty sure all of the news and weather comes out of Anchorage), he would give the weather for all of Alaska. There would be reports of snow in the north to 70s in the south with everything in between. For us, we had to plan for it all. I can only talk about the one summer we spent there. We were told it was a dry hot summer and we didn’t mind at all. Usually, summer is the rainy season for most of Alaska, but we only experienced a handful of rainy days. We heard other travelers complain about being trapped inside for a week in Valdez because of the rain, but when we were there it was sunny and beautiful. Just the luck of the draw? Maybe. While we were in Alaska, we experienced everything from mid 70s during the day to low 40s at night. The best solution to this is layering. When you’re planning your Alaskan trip make sure there are some things you can do indoors on days that it’s rainy. We would save things like museums for those days.

Alaska is also known as “the land of the midnight sun”. We were in Alaska for two months and in that time, we never once had a completely dark night. It would get to about dusk and then the sun would rise again. The photo above was taken about at 10:30 pm. There are easy, cheap things you can do to make sure that you have a dark interior so you can sleep. We bought some blackout material at a fabric store, cut it to the size we needed and then using the 3M adhesive we were able to cover what we needed.

One of my biggest worries was being stuck in Alaska because of snow. If you’ve followed our blog along at all, you’ve seen the umpteen different photos of fireweed that I’ve posted. I might be a tad bit obsessed with it. Well, not only is fireweed pretty, the locals use it to let them know when winter is coming. No lie! And you know what? It totally works! In the photo above you can see fireweed. Notice it blooms from the bottom up.

Here’s a better picture. You can see that there are blooms on the bottom and still buds at the top.

As the season goes along, the fireweed blooms move up. When the last blooms fall off of the stem, you have about six weeks left of summer.

When the fireweed goes to seed…it’s time to get the heck out of Dodge! We had planned on staying two weeks in Fairbanks. It was our last stop before heading back down to the lower 48, but almost overnight the weather turned cold and we noticed that all of the fireweed had gone to seed.

Winter was coming.

We ended up leaving a week early and you know what? The week we would have been leaving…it snowed! Alaska had snow that whole week and it was even down into parts of Canada. No. Thank. You. Driving those mountains and roads on snow and ice…that’ll be a great big nope.

We get asked a lot what our favorites are so we made a few summary lists for you. I’m a lister…it’s what I do.

Animals Seen In The Wild:
Puffin, jelly fish, Dall porpoise, harbor seals, humpback whale.
Orca whale, fin whale, Dall sheep, caribou, grizzly bear, black bear, wolf.
Chipmunk, salmon, sea lion, Bald Eagle, moose, elk, ptarmigan.

Top Five Experiences:
Denali National Park bus ride
Kenai Fjords day cruise
Worthington Glacier
Gold Dredge No.8
Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center

Damage Report:
A flat on the trailer
A chip in the front window
Our smoker was totally destroyed

Places We Want To Go Back To:
Valdez
Denali
Palmer

Expenses. Alaska is not cheap. Everything there, and I do mean everything, is at least triple the cost you’re used to paying down here in the lower 48. Produce in most places is pretty horrible, which is weird considering the fact that Alaska grows some monster veggies. One of the biggest expenses for us during our visit was the price of the RV parks. They were extremely high compared to what we pay in the lower 48. In some cases, it was as much as two to three hundred dollars more for one week. But when you want to stay in that city…

Let’s talk about border crossings. We crossed the US/Canadian border six times on this trip. We were so nervous that they were going to have to search us (even though we had nothing to hide) or take our stockpiled food, but that just wasn’t our experience. We had no troubles at all. We found the Border Guards to be efficient and very professional. My advice…don’t try to take something across that you’re not supposed to. Don’t hide something…these guys have seen it all and know all of the hiding spots. On two crossings we had to drive through some kind of sensor. We could never get them to tell us what it was, but I’m guessing they were looking for hidden passengers.

We had the best summer. There are places we would go back to and places we wouldn’t. Now, having said that, I would do the entire trip again if it was my first time. There are just some places you only need to see once. Yes, Alaska is gorgeous. It is, for us, the Postcard State because we couldn’t find a bad view. We were surprised by how Hawaiian it felt in parts of Alaska…huge mountains with waterfalls all over the place…lush and green. Would we do anything differently? Maybe. I’d try to stay longer so we could have taken our time and enjoyed some of the other cities that we could only drive through. I would definitely have taken into consideration how long it takes to drive anywhere…maybe broken up the distances a little. If y’all decide to make the Ultimate Roadtrip and head up to “the final frontier” make sure you have a plan A and a plan B and then make a plan C. But most of all, slow down and be in the moment.

See y’all down the road!

Fairbanks, AK Part Two

By Jennie Simpson | September 17, 2015

Fairbanks is different from all of the other Alaskan towns we’ve been to. It’s not so tourist, there aren’t gift shops on every corner and there’s really not much to do. We did everything “touristy” in Fairbanks in one day. It was a full, long day, but not the longest we’ve had in Alaska.

One of the coolest things we’ve done in Alaska is The Gold Dredge No. 8!

You start off with a train ride where they stop every so often to explain the different types of or equipment used in gold mining.

The train would stop and they would actually demonstrate the old equipment.

In the photo above you’ll see pipes strewn across the ground and rods stuck into the ground. One guy would be in charge of driving 20 to 30 of those rods into the frozen ground each day. Then, water would be pumped through the pipes into the rods and in the ground to try and thaw the ground enough to dredge for gold. I always here the term “get rich quick” associated with the Gold Rush…but there really isn’t anything quick or easy about finding gold.

At the end of the train ride, we ended up at Gold Dredge No. 8

where they gave us a gold panning demonstration

and then let us try panning for gold on our own. We all got a bag of dirt, a pan, and a little container to put our findings in.

There were big water troughs set up with benches so that we could pan for gold. We all found gold! All of us! When you’re done panning, you can take your findings into the main building and they’ll weigh if for you and tell you how much your gold is worth. Yup…your gold…you get to keep everything you find. Alex was the luckiest and found $38 worth. In all we found a combined $116 in gold. Not bad, right? After you get your gold weighed, they have a gift shop to roam around. The prices weren’t bad and the selection was good. If you need to do some last minute gift shopping in Fairbanks, this is about the only place in town worth checking out.

On top of all the other awesome at Gold Dredge No. 8, you can actually go into the dredge and look around.

It was old, dirty, and smelly. But it was really neat to look through. With very little imagination, you could picture what it must have been like when the dredge was running.

There were informational signs near each of the dredge stations explaining what you were looking at. Things are always more interesting when you know what it is you’re looking at.

At the end of your short two hour tour, the whole crew of Gold Dredge No 8 lines up outside as you ride the train back to your car. Gold Dredge No 8 is one of our top ten experiences in Alaska.

Just down the road from the dredge, is the Felix Pedro Memorial. Felix Pedro is the guy who first found gold in the Fairbanks area. You’ll learn all about him during the Gold Dredge No 8 tour.

Y’all know we’re foodies. Alaska has been…well…it doesn’t have the best selection of restaurants. We found Bad 2 Da Bone BBQ in Fairbanks and we were skeptical. First of all, it’s in a gas station…and secondly, it’s smoked meat. We walked into one of the cleanest gas station restaurants we’ve ever seen.

It was expensive, but everything in Alaska is. The portions were bigger though.

I got the loaded fries. You can see them in the photo above. We liked Bad 2 Da Bone so much we went there twice! We were all pleasantly surprised, but when a restaurant’s slogan is “Sauce on the side cause the meat don’t hide”…well, we were hopeful.

There’s a place just outside Fairbanks that you can see the Alaskan Pipeline. You can see it in quite a few places in Alaska running near the road, but this place has informational signs and is designed for people to actually come close and touch it.

We all had to touch it.

One of the locals told us about a place to go that had good views. It’s called SkiLand and it’s just down the road from Gold Dredge No 8. We drove up to it and found, not only great views of the area,

we also found blueberries! There was a couple there when we got there and they told us about the blueberries. They also mentioned that the bears don’t usually visit the area, but the moose do. We didn’t see any wildlife, but we got to taste some wild Alaskan blueberries!

We weren’t the only ones picking berries so we felt pretty safe to wander around.

SkiLand was in pretty bad disrepair. Apparently, they don’t do much business with the ski-lift, but they do really well with the aurora tours during the winter months.

Our first Sunday in Fairbanks we spent an afternoon hitting a couple of “touristy” things just outside of the city. We went to The Knotty Shop because we’d heard it’s one of those places you have to go to. We went (it’s 45 miles from Fairbanks). We looked.

The statues were neat. The inside was a gift shop. I’d already finished all of my souvenir buying so we didn’t buy anything here.

On that same Sunday, we drove through North Pole, Alaska. The street lights looked like candy canes and all the street names had something to do with Christmas.

We stopped at the Santa Clause House where all things Christmas have a home all year. It was a huge gift shop for all things Alaskan Christmas.

It’s pretty easy to find with the 50 ft. Santa out front.

The two little boys took turns sitting in Santa’s chair.

We bought the obligatory Christmas tree ornament.

Fairbanks was the last stop on our Alaskan Summer tour. We found some really cool things here and some really…not so cool things, but Fairbanks should definitely be on everyone’s must visit Alaskan list.

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

Fairbanks, AK – The Good, The Bad, & The…Weird

By Jennie Simpson | September 14, 2015

We started our Fairbanks visit off on…well, not the best foot. Y’all know I’m a planner. When we decided to do Alaska this summer, I mapped out and plotted the entire trip. I researched each place we were going to stay and then we made reservations. When I planned the Fairbanks portion of our trip (the last place we would stay in Alaska), I found an RV park called Northern Moosed. I couldn’t really find anything about it other than it was in The Milepost…so we took a chance on it. According to The Milepost, Northern Moosed its the northern most full-service RV park in Alaska.

We were really excited to stay here and had hoped to see some of the moose that supposedly roam through the camp daily.

When we pulled in I had a feeling we should just turn around and get out of there. It was…rustic, but hey…it’s Alaska, right? Camping is supposed to be rustic? I thought it would get better when we went inside to register, but as the Camp Host kept telling us about the place, that little feeling of unease kept growing. We’d been told it was full service…that we would have full hookups. But, as it turned out, we wouldn’t want to use the water there….it was full of rust. Sigh. Well shoot. We went ahead and pulled in and found a place. You can see in the picture above, that there were random items strewn about. FYI…rustic does not mean trashy.

The site we settled on was the best of the lot. We had our pick. That was another red flag…but it was late in the season…maybe the main season was over? After we got set up and Jerl saw just how bad the water was we decided we would have to get some extra filters or just move. We spent our first afternoon in Fairbanks trying to figure out what the best course of action would be. After hitting the Lowes and Home Depot and talking with some locals (who told us all the water in the area was unusable due to arsenic) we decided to move to a different park. One that was on city water that had been cleaned and was totally drinkable.

The next morning, we started packing up. Jerl had talked to the owner of Northern Moosed and told her we would have to move due to lack of phone service (which happened to be true) and they gave us a full refund (which was super nice and we weren’t really expecting). While we were packing up and trying to get the heck out of Camp Weirdo, the goat you see in the photo above decided to terrorize us all. He was extremely, aggressively charging at the boys. He was trying to get into the RV. What’s sad is we could tell this place had once been someplace very cool to stay.

There were signs that someone actually put some time and effort into making Northern Moosed a good place. It’s been with the current owners for six years and it’s obvious to us that they’ve done nothing to it. The Camp Host was pretty sure the goat was from her neighbor (who she’s convinced is a crack addict). The RV park we moved to was wonderful! It was very clean and kept. We could use the water. And most importantly…there weren’t any crazy goats trying to kill us!! The whole Northern Moosed experience was just…bad.

We went to two museums while in Fairbanks. The first one we went to was actually free. It was at the Fairbanks Visitor & Cultural Center.

The museum inside was great. It had some great displays all about the Alaskan’s heritage and history.

The bead work was my favorite.

Here’s another shot of the amazing bead work. The beads they use are called seed beads and are tiny.

While the inside of the museum was really interesting, I preferred all the stuff outside. There were five different murals around the grounds all based on Native art techniques. This one was based on a basket weave.

There was a small garden to demonstrate how ridiculously big the veggies get in Alaska. The cabbages above were absolutely huge!

And, of course, the flowers…

With all the Alaskan sunshine, the flowers were out of control.

I took more pictures of flowers than I did the displays inside the museum. I won’t post all of them up…there are too many.

There was an arch made of moose and caribou sheds. I have a friend back in Texas (you know who you are) who needs to do this on her ranch!

The boys earned another badge at this museum. In the photo above, you can see them getting sworn in. Alex got to wear an actual Ranger hat. He was really excited about that.

The second museum we went to was at the University of Alaska.

The Museum of the North was one of the best museums we’ve been to.

This is the first museum we’ve been to that had hands on things for the boys to do (that wasn’t a kids museum).

The main exhibit was sectioned off into the sections of Alaska and had items specific to the section of Alaska it dealt with.

The weaving techniques were quite impressive.

There was even equipment out for the kids to use. At this station, you could use a microscope to check out some fossils.

Some of the interaction stations allowed the boys to feel actual bones and fur or what a mastodon tooth feels like. My only issue with this museum is that the lighting was really dim. It was hard to see some things and taking pictures was a challenge for a newb like me.

Pioneer Park was a big disappointment for us. We had heard about it from several people and we’d seen advertisements for it in several places so we had high hopes for it. Admission is free, but anything you want to do inside you have to pay for. That’s fine. Gotta pay the bills somehow, right? But, the park is very rundown.

There were some neat displays. No rides.

A small portion of the park looks like a small pioneer village with shops in a few of the buildings. The shops were…odd. Mostly handmade items or things that looked like leftovers from the year before. We didn’t stay long. It was…weird.

I’m going to do Fairbanks in two parts so stay tuned for Fairbanks part two!!

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

#keepingitreal

Denali

By Jennie Simpson | September 9, 2015

This post is picture heavy and long. I tried to weed out some of the pics, but when I’m talking about Denali National Park…it’s hard to choose which photos should be left out. I’ve been looking forward to Denali ever since we decided we were coming to Alaska.

On the way to the Denali area from Talkeetna we stopped back by the South Denali Viewpoint because it was a gloriously clear day.

Everyone keeps saying how only 30% of the visitors ever actually get to lay eyes on Denali (Mt. McKinley). We’ve been fortunate enough to see her on several days.

Denali Viewpoint South is laid out kind of weird. There is the main viewing area which has a pretty good view, but with a few trees that are starting to grow big enough to hinder your view. But, then there is this unmarked side path that leads to an even better view. You can see it at the top of this post. It was odd that the trail wasn’t marked. Seventy-five percent of the people there never went up the path, which is sad because the view was so much better.

There were also some great informational boards that talked about how the Alaska Range makes its own weather. While we were in Denali NP, our shuttle bus driver actually told us there was a funnel cloud spotted in the park three days before we got there. I would never have considered Alaska to be a tornado state.

There’s also a big debate as to what the mountain should be called. All of the locals call it Denali, but most of the NP staff call it Mt. McKinley. The argument is that the mountain has been called Denali for thousands of years by the Athabaskan Tribes and it should never have been renamed…especially after someone who isn’t even from Alaska. I can kind of see their point.

We finally made it to the park! Denali means the “High One” in the Athabascan language. In 1897 Denali was renamed Mt. McKinley in honor of President William McKinley, but the renaming has always been a topic of controversy. Denali tops the scale at 20,320 feet as of this year, but the mountain is still growing almost an inch a year! There are four Visitor Centers in the Park, but you have to shuttle into the park to get to two of them. What you might be surprised to know is that there really aren’t many hiking trails within the park. There are a few in the first 15 miles but after that there are very few actual trails because they (the park officials) want you to get out and explore your park. Safely. There is a process to being allowed to roam the back of the park. If you’re interested, head over to the NPS website and check it out.

We got to the Denali area on a Friday afternoon and quickly got the RV set up and rushed to the park to reserve our shuttle bus tickets for the next morning. We lucked out on our shuttle tickets and then went to the Visitor Center to explore.

The Visitor Center has a great museum in it. There was this display about moose parts.

All three boys took time with this exhibit.

Y’all know I love to bake, so this caught my eye. At this exhibit they explain what it took to make a pie back in the good ole’ days (actually, with so many Alaskan’s living off the grid, I would imagine this is still the process for a good percentage of the population) in Alaska. That’s a lot of work for some pie…

We then made our way over to the Murie Science and Learning Center. Check out that quilt on the wall!

There was some amazing detail work done on it!

This was a great place for boys who love science. They had computers set up that told all about different aspects of the park along with the different experiments going on throughout the park.

There was also the obligatory bone collection that we seem to find in all Visitor Centers.

The dog kennels were next! We were all ready for some more sled dog action and these sled dogs did not disappoint. There are demonstrations three times a day (10, 2, & 4). We barely made it to the last one of the day. They harnessed up a few of the dogs and ran them around a small track for everyone to see. These sled dogs are different from the sled dogs we saw in Wasilla. The dogs here are bred for working while the dogs in Wasilla are bred for running. Big and stout versus small and fast.

After they raced around the track they were given a treat (I think it was an antler) to gnaw on while an intern talked to all of us about the importance of sled dogs and what their routines are like summer vs. winter. In the winter these guys get close to five thousand calories a day!

There were six puppies, but we didn’t get to hold them or handle them in any way. We were a little bummed about that.

We were there at the end of the day so we got to see the puppies run for their dinner. As part of their training they run around the same track the older dogs ran around during the demonstration. There’s nothing much cuter than a bunch of puppies running as fast as they can to get back and eat.

A couple of the dogs were available for visitors to pet.

I’m not sure who enjoyed it more…the boys or the dog.

There are only a few ways you can gain access to Denali NP beyond mile 15…you can do what 98% of the people do and take a shuttle bus, you can apply to camp at one of the three campgrounds that are past the mile 15 mark, you can be a Park Ranger, or you can get permission to conduct an experiment within the park. We went with the shuttle bus. Now, interesting fact…there are two different shuttle bus options for taking trips back into the park. There is the green shuttle bus and the tan shuttle bus. The green shuttle bus has different options (or miles) you can choose from, We chose to go to the Eielson Visitor Center which is around the 66 mile marker, but there are a few other options. For our trip we paid $35/ for the two adults and all three boys were free. You will want to take any food you’ll want for the day and you can get off at any time, explore, then catch any other green shuttle bus to continue. For the tan shuttle bus, you have the same options of where to go within the park, but they will serve you a boxed lunch. The prices for adults were around $130 for adults and $50 or so for kids. You can’t get off, they stop at fewer places, and let me point out…you’re traveling the same road and seeing the same things that the people on the green shuttle buses are seeing. Hmmm…we can’t figure out why anyone would choose the tan shuttle bus. Our bus driver stopped every single time anyone saw an animal. Every. Single. Time! It was great! And he was a wealth of knowledge on the park! He narrated the whole trip so we actually knew what it was that we were looking at. You can see him in the photo above in the blue shirt.

We started the tour off right with the Alaskan State Bird…the Ptarmigan.

Did you know, you won’t even see the original National Park unless you take a shuttle bus tour? All you’ll see is the expansion of the park that happened in 1980.

We started spotting the bears once we got to around the thirty mile mark.

And boy were the bears out and about!

These two were chasing each other up the mountain and let me tell you…bears might look big and fat, but boy howdy…those beasties can move!!

The bears in Denali are all on the blond side. This one is Littlest’s favorite because it’s half blond, half brown. I think we ended up spotting ten grizzlies throughout the day!

The park road past mile 15 is a dirt road. I’d read you could bike it, but it’s kind of a dangerous thing to do because of the condition of the road and all of the shuttle buses…not to mention all of the wild animals.

We saw several people willing to bike the road anyway. All of them looked miserable. The guy in the photo above just about had a run in with a caribou.

Here’s a picture in the Colorful Rocks Area. Yup, it’s really called that. Denali NP is broken up into sections. You can also see the narrow winding dirt road…with no shoulder…that the bus took.

The views were stellar! Really, they were just spectacular. So, when Ryan (our bus driver) told us that the views were getting ready to knock our socks off starting around the next turn…well, pictures don’t do it justice. Y’all really need to go see it for yourself.

I would forget to look for the wildlife because I would get so wrapped up looking at all the mountain views.

We got a ten minute rest stop at the Toklat Visitor Center at mile 53 in the park. There was a small store and restrooms for anyone in need.

They also had some caribou antlers you could pick up and handle.

The little boys had to have help getting them all the way up to the top of their heads!

They also had a set of moose antlers. They were so incredibly heavy that Littlest couldn’t even begin to get his lifted up so a guy held it up for him and Alex was struggling to get his up as high as he did.

Mr. Man probably could have muscled it to the top of his head, but it was kind of awkward so we settled for the shoulder.

Right after the Toklat we started seeing all of the caribou. There were tons of them! The one in the photo above has a tracking collar on it. He jumped into the road and just sauntered down it for a bit.

All of the buses have rules about what they can and can’t do near an animal. The rules are pretty strict. Basically, if it’s going to bother the animal in any way, don’t do it. If an animal is in the road you can’t shoo it away, you just have to stop and wait. These rules apply to all of the animals…even the small alpine ground squirrels.

It’s amazing how different mountains that are right next to each other can look. I love the colors of the mountain in the photo above.

This was all we saw of Mt. McKinley. She peaked out at us in the morning, but was completely clouded over by the afternoon.

The Eielson Visitor Center at mile 65.9 in the park was our destination. You can go farther…all the way to the end of the road at mile 92.4, but be ready for at least a 12 hour ride (round trip). We went to Eielson because I’m collecting the passport stamps. Denali has seven passport stamps and two of them (Eielson and Toklat) are only available if you take a shuttle into the park. It was worth it. I really wish we’d done the Kantishna (92.4 mile) shuttle. When we come back, we will definitely do that one.

This painting was in the Eielson Visitor Center. I wish they had it on a postcard…I love it, but I don’t think it will fit in the RV…

Here are some views from the visitor center.

In the photo above, you can see a weather tracker thing-a-ma-bob from one of the ongoing science experiments.

One more view from Eielson. It was at this point that I realized we should have gone all the way to Kantishna.

After Eielson we headed back to the front of the park and I took the opportunity to get pictures of the other side of the road. I kept seeing all of this great landscape on the left side of the bus heading to our destination…so I made sure to sit on the same side of the bus going back so I could get photos of everything! I sat on the right side of the bus in the front and Mr. Man sat on the left side with his new camera so we would have both sides covered! But, when it comes to landscapes, our tastes differ and I wanted to get my own photos.

You can see the narrow, winding, dirt road over on the left side of the photo above. I’m so glad we didn’t have to drive it ourselves. Some of the switchbacks and mountain passes were…well…Ryan would warn us when we came to one that was bad so people afraid of heights could switch sides of the bus if they needed to.

I shot the photo above out the front window of the bus to give you an idea of just how windy and narrow the road really is. Two shuttle buses wouldn’t fit side by side. one of them would have to pull over and let the other one pass.

I might be a little obsessed with mountainous landscapes. The colors and shapes…love them…

Sometimes the mountains look so perfect they look fake. I have so many landscape shots from this one bus trip…it took me forever to decide on which ones to include.

Ok, do you see all of the little ponds? Those were created when the glacier was moving through this valley and chunks of it would fall off and melt and voila! A pond!

So, I told myself I was putting this one in because it’s another example of the ponds…but really I just love the mountains.

This mountain is called Polychrome and is my favorite mountain in the park. Look at all the colors! The picture just doesn’t even begin to do it justice…

This is something else I thought was really cool. This is a braided river. Cool name, right?!

This is a better shot of the river. This braided river has many different water sources which make many different paths that all wind around each other.

There are a few…maybe four…cabins throughout the park that were all built in the 1920s and are still being used today by the rangers, scientist, or resident artists.

One of the hardest animals to see in the park is the wolf. There are 52 wolves in the park that have tracking collars, a new pack of 4 that haven’t been collared yet, and 3 new cubs. We actually got to see one wolf…well, let me rephrase that…Jerl and I along with the bus driver got to see one wolf. There are advantages to sitting in the front!

In Denali National Park there is a group of animals called The Big Five. The group consists of the grizzly bear, wolf, dall sheep, caribou, and moose. It is extremely rare to see all five in one day. We did. Now…the dall sheep all looked like fluffy rocks way, way up high on the mountains, and…

this is the best view of a moose we got, but I’m counting it! There are over 2,000 moose in the park and we only see this one. Oh well, we got to finally see some bears!!! Big, big grizzly bears!!

We spent two full days in Denali National Park and we had the absolute best time!

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

#myalaska

Talkeetna, AK

By Jennie Simpson | September 4, 2015

Talkeetna is a tiny touristy town. We spent the first week in August there and enjoyed a relaxing week off from zipping all over the place to get everything done in the small amount of time we have. You see, there’s not a lot to do in Talkeetna. It reminds me of Eureka Springs, AR but smaller…if you can imagine that.

In the photo above, you can see Main St. All of it. Everyone in Talkeetna walks because the town is so small and there’s not very many parking spaces.

There was a general store that wasn’t really a general store. It didn’t have anything useful in it. Maybe I looked in the wrong section?

Talkeetna is geared for three main things…mountain climbing, river rafting, and plane tours. We really weren’t interested in doing any of those things so we spent our evenings walking down by the river or at a park…just relaxing.

This was our view from the river. Nice view, right? Mt. McKinley is the tallest one on the right.

We had a few days where the views were just spectacular with no clouds!

There’s a railroad right next to town. We found a path to it one evening and walked out on the foot path next to it. There was a sign there that said the residents of Crow, AK use the bridge as a way to get to and from their homes on the other side of the river. There are no streets there.

There was a fantastic park!

It had a wooden xylophone!

All of the parks in Alaska that we’ve seen have been decorated with a tribal theme. Alaskan’s seem to be very proud of their heritage…it’s woven into every aspect of their life.

At this park there was a climbing wall. I’ve noticed that the parks here also start prepping the kids for what it takes to survive in Alaska. Rock climbing is very big in Talkeetna…they start them young building the coordination and muscles that will allow them to excel at this.

At the elementary school playground there were more xylophones and drums right on the playground! What a great way to develop a love of music while scaring away any bears in the area!

So, this place is my favorite place in Talkeetna. We went one afternoon and took a tour of the facilities and learned how they make birch syrup.

Birch syrup is made from the sap of birch trees, which are in abundance in this part of Alaska.

Birch sap can only be collected for three weeks out of the whole year. They have just three weeks to harvest enough sap to make the syrup for the entire next year. They run these tubes between the trees to collect the sap faster. It takes 110 gallons of birch sap to make 1 gallon of birch syrup. The sap looks and tastes much like water when it comes from the tree.

They then send the sap through a reverse-osmosis energy efficient machine to concentrate the sugars to 67% which gives the syrup its fine color and flavor.

From the reverse-osmosis machine they put the syrup into this cooker. It boils the syrup and has to have constant attention to stay at the right heat. The syrup is stirred almost constantly to prevent any hot spots.

Once the syrup has reached the right temp/color/thickness, it’s poured into buckets and is ready for packaging. They bring the sap to the kitchen and it’s turned into syrup within 24 hours and they start all over with the next day’s collections.

During the tour we got to taste the syrup. If you look at the picture above, you’ll notice that the bottles in the front have colored stickers on them. Each bottle represents one day during the three weeks of the syrup season. The yellow bottle is batch one, the pink bottles right after that represent the early runs. The green bottles are the mid run, while the red bottles after the greens were the final run. Amazingly, each run has a very different color and taste and is good for different uses. While the early batches are very sweet and better for things like candies and pancakes or even ice cream, the middle batch is not as sweet, but still very tasty on pancakes. The final batches were less sweet…almost bitter…and would be best used for cooking or in sauces.

In the gift shop you could buy the syrup, but they also offered some tea and candies and jams that had all been made with the birch syrup. I bought some caramel creams that are my new favorite candy. It’s soft, mild, not too sweet…it’s delightful, and lucky you…you can order it online if you want!! It’s called Alaska Gold Nuggets.

The 2015 year was their 26th harvest. They tapped eleven thousand trees and purchased sap from a few families to get a combined harvest of 120,000 gallons of sap. This produced 1100 gallons of syrup. This year, with the colder weather, the trees produced a sweeter, lighter syrup. Each of their trees ended up producing about 13 ounces of syrup a piece.

One morning we drove out to Denali State Park. There wasn’t much there. We did get a map of the state park that the boys both loved to look at.

We stopped at the Denali State Park South View Point for this view. Mt. McKinley is there…behind the clouds. It’s still a great view!

See y’all on the road!

#alaskabound

Seward, AK

By Jennie Simpson | September 1, 2015

We spent two weeks in the Seward area, using it as our basecamp for all the other places we wanted to visit on the Kenai Peninsula.

We really enjoyed Seward! It was pretty small and definitely had plenty of touristy stuff, but it had a nice balance of non-touristy stuff too.

There was a cute little boardwalk along the harbor consisting of all the tours and gift shops.

Out of all of the small-town coastal harbors we’ve seen in Alaska, Seward is my favorite. It was super clean, the views were amazing, and there were boats of all sizes.

Seward is located on the shore of Resurrection Bay.

We went on a scenic drive and ended up on the other side of the bay from Seward. You can see it in the photo above. There were a ton of people fishing right along the coast there…right by the waste water factory…there was a sign that warned against eating the fish raw…we didn’t fish there.

Seward is also the starting point (one of them) for the Iditarod. We found the Mile 0 marker for it.

There were over 20 murals all over town.

The mural above was across the street from the Alaska SeaLife Center. We spent an afternoon there getting up close with some of the animals found in the local waters.

At the Alaska SeaLife Center, the habitats were large enough to keep the animals happy, the animals looked healthy and well cared for, and we could get really close to all of them, safely.

The Center was crowded, but it was big enough that you didn’t feel like you were tripping over people all the time. The Harbor Seals were so cute and playful!

Right across from the seals were the Sea Lions…who had a very different idea of how to spend the day.

There was a whole room for birds that you could walk into. The birds were free to fly about the room…we could have reached out and touched them they were so close! There were several different species in the room, but my favorite was the Horned Puffin. These little birds are amazing! Did you know, puffins can dive down to 300 feet in the water?

Here’s one in action! Sorry about the blur…they’re wicked fast!

There was a touch pool. We were encouraged to touch several different types of sealife while learning all about what we were touching.

Mr. Man had no trouble with reaching in and touching everything. The two little boys needed some persuasion.

I think the favorite was the sea anemone that would hug your finger if you put in near it the right way.

There was a great view of Resurrection Bay.

We didn’t get to touch this one, but I thought it was so pretty.

Can you spot the fish in the photo above? I would not want to pull one of those out of the water on my fishing line! I would suggest going to the Alaska SeaLife Center and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and skipping the Alaska Zoo. I really hate to say that…but it’s so true.

The only place we ate at in Seward was Red’s Burgers. We ate there twice. You place your order in the building and then go sit in the school bus to eat.

The owners had converted the inside of the bus to booths.

It was different and fun. The boys thought it was so cool to be sitting on a school bus eating.

I got the garlic burger with fires. The chef wasn’t playing around with the garlic. I thought there would be some garlic worked into the burger patty, but there was about a quarter cup of minced garlic on top of that patty! That’s a lot of garlic. I wish I’d known that before I ordered the garlic fries too. It’s a good thing everyone else had garlic fries with their burgers…

The first time we went there, the owner was working the window and it was near closing time. We scored two free mystery cups. What are mystery cups? They are magical mixtures of the ice cream flavors Red’s made through the day. At the end of each batch of ice cream they empty the containers into cups and just layer it up until the cup is full. We had pineapple and strawberry in the cup above. The second time we went we ended up with banana, strawberry, and cookies & cream! So good and only $3!

This is the Reds #1 Burger. It has caramelized maple bacon, grilled ham, onions and mushrooms, jalapenos, cheddar and swiss on it. And it was huge. Mr. Man got this one and ate it all plus his fries.

These are the chili cheese fries! Super good! Now, I mentioned we ate there twice…the first time we ate there it was so amazingly good we couldn’t’ stop talking about it and decided we had to eat there again before we left. We didn’t even contemplate eating anywhere else. It was that tasty. But, the second time…I don’t know…something was off. Maybe they were having an off night? The burgers tasted freezer burnt. It was weird.

We did a very short, very steep hike on the Jeep Trail in Seward. We didn’t go all the way up the trail because we were still recovering from the Harding Icefield fiasco.

It’s hard to tell in the pictures…but you’re looking at a 40 to 50 percent grade there.

The Seward area is considered to be in the rainforest section of the Kenai Peninsula. The plants are huge and there’s moss everywhere. Everything is so…green.

Pretty flower, right?

Watch out, it’ll bite you! What is it with Alaska? If the wildlife doesn’t get you, the plant life will!!

We only hiked maybe a quarter of a mile to this waterfall and then headed back down.

So, there you have it! This completes our time on the Kenai Peninsula! We enjoyed every minute of it and had the most amazing weather while we were there.

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

#keepingitreal

Portage Valley, AK

By Jennie Simpson | August 28, 2015

Y’all know I’ve got my list of what is available to do in each place we will be going. On the way to Seward is the very small hamlet of Portage Valley. We didn’t think we were going to be able to do any of the activities I’d found in the Portage area because of time and the distance it ended up being from our base camp, but on a whim on the last afternoon we were in the Seward area we loaded up and went. We didn’t get to go to Whittier (which is also in that area), but we did get to go to the Portage Lake and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (which are the two things I really wanted to do anyway!).

Thought y’all might like to see what traffic can be like even here in Alaska. It’s always for road work. We sat here for maybe 15 minutes waiting. Not a bad view though!

We went to Portage Lake and the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center first. In the picture above you can see two of the six glaciers in the area. Five of those glaciers are hanging glaciers, but the Portage Glacier is a valley glacier that comes all the way down to the water. In the picture above you’ll see the Burns Glacier and the Shakespeare Glacier.

We saw several big chunks of ice floating in the lake. We didn’t get to see the Portage Glacier up close. You have to take a boat to get there.

The boys had to see how cold the water in the lake was. It was cold and someone may or may not have been splashed…

We were a little disappointed with the visitor center. It was a little…lacking. There was a small museum you could pay to go through which we thought was kind of odd. So far, we haven’t had to pay to go through a visitor center. We passed on it and headed outside for a hike to the Byron Glacier.

Byron Glacier was beautiful. We stopped at the end of the trail, but you could venture closer. We thought about it, but The Harding Icefield Trail was still too fresh in our minds (and muscles) for anyone to really want to try and climb closer.

So, we sat on the bench and enjoyed the view and watched as other ~~suckers~~ people tried to scramble up the moraines to get as close to the ice as they could.

We turned to leave and got another beautiful view. It’s funny how on a hike you can be so single minded….you’re only thinking about getting to the end of the trail and seeing what’s in front of you. I don’t know how many times we turn around and are just as amazed at what’s behind us too. We’ve gotten into the habit of hiking for a bit then stopping and turning around to really take in the surroundings before moving on.

We stopped at a little turn out along the road to our next stop and found this little gem of a pond. You’ll see Explorer Glacier in the picture above. The water was that wonderful turquoise color and was as smooth as glass.

Our next stop was the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center! I had been looking forward to this stop for awhile. The AWCC takes in injured and orphaned animals and works to rehabilitate them so they can be released back into the wild. It’s never their intention to keep the animals for the expanse of the animals life. For those animals that can’t be released back into the wild, the AWCC works closely with several facilities in the lower 48 to find homes.

All of the enclosures were huge and not crowded. I feel like the animals here are well cared for. The moose in the picture above is scheduled to be released next year.

On all of the enclosures there was the story of the animal. Why it was there, if it would be released… This porcupine was munching on his dinner.

This big elk was cracking us up! He was snoring! All of the females were awake and watching while this lazy guy was just sawing logs.

We walked back by later and the whole herd was up munching. Mr. Snoring Guy watched us walk by like he knew we’d been laughing at him earlier.

These two baby elk were having some fun.

There were a few orphaned, Sitka black-tailed fawns. They were pretty skittish and stayed away from the front of the enclosure.

This black bear was huge! He’d just had dinner was out prowling around. The bear enclosure was the biggest there…almost 19 acres. There is a boardwalk that takes you up and over a part of it so you can see the whole enclosure. There was a brown bear enclosure too, but she was hiding. It was a hot day for the animals so I’m pretty sure she was in the shade somewhere.

This guy wasn’t part of the AWCC, but I thought he was too pretty not to include in the post. He was scavenging in the black bear enclosure.

The elk herds were kept in separate enclosures. The AWCC rotate the enclosures for the grazing animals. There was a field that was empty that is worked into the mix.

At the back of the park is a boardwalk that lets you see the Turnagain Arm. We were there at low tide so we got to see the mud flats. The mud flats are very dangerous. The mixture of the glacier silt and water makes for quick sand. People go out and get stuck and when the tide comes back in…well…it’s not good. Starting in Anchorage, we were warned against going out on the mud flats. The tide here is a 20 to 30 foot tide and many people every year foolishly think they won’t get stuck.

We had no desire to set foot on the mud flats. They were really cool to see though!

There were four huge enclosures for the wood bison. All scheduled for release later this year. We saw quite a few of these big beasts out in the wild on our way to Alaska.

Meet Chena the Lynx! Isn’t he gorgeous!! He and his brother Venetie have been at the AWCC since they were young kittens and won’t be released because they don’t have the hunting skills to survive.

There was also a small caribou herd. We’ve been looking for caribou out in the wild, but so far we haven’t seen them. There have been a few places a herd was rumored to graze, but they weren’t there when we were.

We enjoyed the AWCC more than the Alaska Zoo. If you have to choose just one…I would suggest the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

Day Trip To Homer

By Jennie Simpson | August 25, 2015

While we were in the Seward area we decided to take a day trip over to Homer. We had no plans of actually staying over on that side of the peninsula, but we did want to see it.

I thought a map might help you visualize where we went. We started in Seward and went all the way around to Homer. It doesn’t really look that far, does it? We left around eight in the morning and got back just after midnight. It was a very long day, but we feel like it was worth the drive.

The first city we stopped in was Kenai.

And, the first thing we did was get lunch. We were starving!

We asked at the Visitor Center where a good place to eat would be and was pointed over to the Burger Bus which was within walking distance.

The portions were big and the food was hot!

Once we were certain no one would wilt away from hunger, we set off to see Kenai.

Kenai was the first European settlement on mainland Alaska when it was colonized by Russian fur traders.

You can see the Russian influence in some of the buildings. The church and the chapel above were the prettiest and best preserved.

Welcome to the Cook Inlet. That big peak you see in the photo above is a volcano.

The entire beach around the Cook Inlet was covered with fishermen.

Alaskan’s take their fishing seriously and the birds are always near to try and steal a catch.

We found this huge patch of fireweed in a park in Kenai. I wanted to show y’all how big this stuff can get!!

From Kenai we went back to Soldotna. Alaskan’s are serious about their fishing, but they’re also very serious about preserving their land. All around Soldotna and several of the other towns we passed through, there are fishwalks on the banks. The fishwalks are to ensure that the river banks don’t get ruined which would cause the fish to stop going there to spawn. You can see a fishwalk in the picture above. Notice there are even stairs that lead right down into the river. The fishwalk above is right behind the Soldotna Visitor Center.

The Kenai River! It doesn’t really show up that great in the photo, but the water is turquoise! If you look closely, you’ll see all of the fishing docks along the right side of the river. Every available space was crammed with fishermen trying to get their daily limit.

And, of course, there were amazing flowers!

Tell me I’m not the only one who takes pictures of flowers everywhere! Alaska is overflowing with amazing flowers. All of that sunlight does amazing things for plants!

Right in the middle of Soldotna is one of the busiest places…

The Moose is Loose Bakery!

We stopped in and got a few goodies to have the next morning! They were tasty…and big! The chocolate covered donut you see there…it was the size of a plate.

On our way out of Soldotna we stopped by the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters. Above, you’ll see a life size statue of a moose. They get big! Everything in Alaska is big!!

The little boys worked for their first Fish & Game badge. We walked down a short trail to a lake near the Headquarters as part of their Junior Ranger requirements.

The lake was calm and beautiful. I snuck out on the dock to get the picture above. Shhh…don’t tell anyone.

We spent about an hour there and the boys completed all of the requirements for the badge.

This is one of my favorite badges so far. I really like that’s it’s blue and not just the standard gold that all the other badges are.

This is called Devil’s Club. We see it all over the place. It’s not a nice plant. Pretty, but not nice.

Look at all of those thorns! And the berries are poisonous. There was an abundance of Devil’s Club on the trail to the lake.

Our next stop was Homer!

We pulled off at Bay Crest Hill to get a view of the area.

Not a bad view, right?

I got a picture of the Homer Spit from our vantage point.

We drove all the way out to the tip of the Homer Spit to get a good look at Kachemak Bay. It was gorgeous!

We haven’t found a bad view of coastal Alaska anywhere.

We headed back up the Spit to check out what else it offered. Now, we had heard from a few people about The Salty Dawg Saloon. Y’all know saloons are not really our thing, but we went to check it out. The boys stayed outside while we stuck our heads inside.

There’s a story about The Salty Dawg…I don’t know how true it is…but a long time ago someone went in and left a dollar for his friend who was coming in later. Ever since then, it’s a tradition to leave a dollar. It was neat to see all of those dollar bills posted up on all of the walls and ceiling. We didn’t leave a dollar…we didn’t get anything to eat or drink there so we didn’t really feel like we should.

There’s also a small boardwalk with shops along the Spit. They are, as you would imagine…for the tourists. We saw the highest prices yet while in Homer.

The Spit looks flat from above, so I was surprised to see actual houses right in the middle of the Spit. I love the bright colors of the houses in front of the mountains.

The last thing we did on The Spit was walk by the Boat Graveyard…which ended up being someone’s privately owned property. So, we didn’t get to walk through it, but we got to see some neat boats.

The owner of the Boat Graveyard actually lived in a huge, ancient boat right there on the Spit. I didn’t get a picture of it…I felt weird taking a picture of someone’s house.

On the way back to Seward, we stopped at Anchor Point to snap a picture at North America’s most westerly highway point.

We stopped at a pull off not too far from Anchor Point to get this shot. It was around 10PM and the sun was finally starting to make it’s way to the horizon. There was a small rainbow above the peak on the left.

We even saw a few moose! This shot was taken just after 11PM. Dusk for this area.

We had a very long, very memorable day driving to Homer. We missed some of the things we wanted to stop and see, but there are only so many hours in the day.

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

#myalaska

Kenai Fjords National Park

By Jennie Simpson | August 22, 2015

Kenai Fjords National park is 607,805 acres of unspoiled wilderness on the southeast coast of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. There are three ways you can visit the park in Seward: 1. Take a cruise, 2. Go to the visitor center in downtown Seward and do a Ranger Walk (the Ranger Walk isn’t technically in the NP), and 3. Go to the Exit Glacier portion of the park (this is the only part of the park you can drive to). We did all three of these things! I posted about the cruise in a separate post because it would have made this post too long.

We did our Ranger Walk on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

The Ranger Walk is only offered on Sunday afternoon and is geared toward kids. Our ranger was a college student working on her Master’s degree in Zoology. It was at this point, our 15 year old decided maybe rangers weren’t all that bad. ;-P

The boys had a great time walking along the shore line learning about glaciers and fjords and what kinds of things Rangers do. They also earned their Fjords Ranger Patch!

We went to the Exit Glacier portion of the park twice.

The first time we went we did the easy one mile hike to the Exit Glacier viewing area.

The boys did the Explorer Packs on this visit. The NP lets you check out a backpack that has all kinds of activities you can choose from. Alex kept track of water temperature in different places during the hike and Nicholas identified several plants and trees. This got them the Glacier Patch!

The trail was a great path with stairs. This was our first glimpse of the glacier while on the hike.

This is as close to Exit Glacier that you can get. They’ve got it all roped off.

We saw this little guy on the way back down. He’s a red backed vole. He was amazingly not afraid of us. I walked right by him on the path.

Here’s a picture of the glacier washout. All of the water running off the glacier runs through there. People camp out there too. I wouldn’t. It’s all rocky and prone to high water. That just doesn’t sound like a good time to me.

Now, I like to keep it real for you so I’m going to tell you about the hardest hike we’ve made on this trip so far. And boy is it a doozy.

The second time we went to the Exit Glacier area we decided to do the Harding Icefield Trail. We planned ahead and brought our hike packs with water and snacks…we even brought a couple of jackets because on prior hikes we’d run into rain and cold on top of the mountain. Remember Whistler Mountain in the Oh Canada post? This hike is an eight and a half mile (round trip) hike. It gains 1,000 feet of height per mile on the way up.

It started off great!! A gentle upward hike through the forest to the trail board where you’re supposed to check in and out so the park can keep track of everyone. The up started right after the trail board. It was still pretty gentle. We’ve decided the NP was trying to lull us into a false sense of security.

We would hike a while then stop and rest a few minutes. The little boys decided to do the Explorers workbook (which is meant for 13+ years) this time so they could get all four of the available badges offered at this NP. They would work on it during our breaks.

Everyone was still feeling pretty good about the hike here. We’d gone maybe a mile…but we thought we’d gone farther than that.

The views were amazing. We would huff and puff up to a flat-ish place and look up and see things like what’s in the photo above. When they said the trail gains 1,000 feet every mile, they weren’t joking. Right around here we got to a place in the hike that had a trail marker that told us we still had over two miles left in the hike. We were really feeling it. We were hot, our legs were wobbly, and the trail was more advanced than what we had ever hiked before.

We talked to some people coming down the trail and they assured us that the hard part was almost over. If we could just make it up the switchbacks, we’d be home free…the trail would flatten out. So, we pushed on after taking in the great view.

The views during this entire hike were breathtaking. It’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’re surrounded by the wild beauty of Alaska. It was during the switchbacks that Jerl’s legs started cramping up and we all started to really feel the burn. If you work out, think about a leg day that you pushed yourself way too hard…that’s where we were and we still had about 2 more miles of up to go. Any normal family would have called it quits and gone back down while they could still move. Not us though. Oh, no…we kept getting told how we were soooo close and how if we made it up to this certain point it all flattens out. We didn’t’ want to wimp out so close to the finish.

We met up with this marmot. He chirped and chattered at us the whole time we shuffled by him. He was super cute!

We finally made it past the switchbacks and all of the huge rocks you have to get up and over. They put them cleverly on the path to act as steps…I’m sure giants have no trouble with them. By this point I was really ready to just head down. The boys were miserable, I was beyond done, and Jerl was having issues with his legs. But…we thought maybe we’d finally reached the promised “flattened out” area. We couldn’t stop now! Right?

This is also where the landscape changed. We’d hiked up past all of the trees and shrubbery to where it’s just rock and snow. I love the way the melting snow made little waterfalls. It was so nice to be able to reach into a stream of cold water and wipe off your face. The boys loved seeing all of the snow.

The change in the trail gave us a second wind. It never flattened out…I don’t know why those crackpots told us the trail flattened out, but it never did. Not even a little! I think they felt bad for us and were trying to encourage us to go on. Anyway, we got a second wind and the trail wasn’t quite as hard as it had been and the views…well…look at the photo above. That was the view. Jerl had to sit for a while here and told us to go on. We really were so very close to the prize.

The boys and I went on. We all had fun slipping and sliding over the snow. The boys were amazed with all the snow and kept saying, “There’s snow in the summer!”

We hiked up and turned a corner and came face to face with this. We were eye level with a mountain top! We marveled and guessed at just how high we really were as we hiked on.

As soon as we started seeing snow, the boys wanted to make snow angels. They asked every time we came to a snowy patch, but it wasn’t until this patch that I felt like it would be safe enough. They took off their packs and had a good time playing for a few minutes.

We rounded another corner and saw this. We really were surrounded by beauty! It felt kind of like we’d been zapped to another world.

There’s a storm shelter near the top. We had maybe half a mile left at this point. We took a small breather to explore the cabin and then pushed on.

And this…this is the reason we hiked all the way up there. This is the Harding Icefield! This icefield spawns off more than forty glaciers! It stretched on so far we couldn’t’ tell where it ended and the clouds started. It really looked like it just went on forever.

Another family at the top offered to take a picture of us. We finally made it to the top!

We turned around to head back down and to find Jerl when we noticed the mountain goats! There were two different herds of them just hanging out on the slopes.

We started back down and found Jerl had made his way up to almost the top! He’d stopped again just before the last climb. When he found out just how close he was he made it up to the top too! I’m so glad we all got to see the Icefield! We didn’t stick around long. It had taken us five hours to get up to the top. Yup, you read that right…Five. Hours. Five hours for just over four miles and now we had to trek back down those same four-ish miles to get to the bottom. Thank goodness it doesn’t really get dark here.

We made better time going down. Gravity was in our favor.

The trail changes abruptly form rocks to this. It looks lovely, but if you brush against most of those plants, they’ll try to eat you. There was a ton of the wild celery which you want to avoid at all costs. There were also a ton of wild raspberry and rumors of a bear in the area. We never saw the bear.

This was on our last rest when we still had two and a half miles to go. We didn’t stop after this until we got to the car. I don’t think Jerl and I could have gotten up and going again if we’d sat down. We made it to the car just before 9PM. It took us nine hours, but we did it! The boys were troopers. They were just as miserable as we were, but they didn’t whine or complain. We’re so incredibly proud of how they handled the whole hike.

So there you have it…the hardest thing we’ve done so far on this trip. We really should have turned back. I guess what they say is true, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Lesson learned.

We now know our limit. We gave the boys the day off after our hike. We didn’t do much of anything…mainly because none of us could move.

We did go back to the visitor center the next day so the boys could turn in the workbook they’d completed.

The boys earned all four patches/badges available at the Kenai Fjords National Park!

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound

#keepingitreal

Kenai Fjords Cruise

By Jennie Simpson | August 18, 2015

The Orca Voyager and her crew took us out on an eight and a half hour cruise around the Kenai Fjords Peninsula. We’d been looking forward to this cruise for a long time and it did not disappoint! I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how much commentary you’ll get on this post…the pictures kind of speak for themselves, but I’ll do my best to point out what I can.

The majority of this cruise was actually in the Kenai Fjords National Park which is about the only way you can actually visit this part of this particular NP. In this post I’m going to concentrate on the cruise, but I’ll do another post specifically about Kenai Fjords National Park.

Before we even got out of the bay, we had our first wildlife encounter. Sea Otters! They spent most of their time diving down to get food then floating on their backs to eat it.

The landscape along the waterline was really impressive. In this little cove we found a bunch of Seals.

Our boat Captain was an expert at getting us up close to the wildlife. The seals lifted their heads to check us out then went back to snoozing in the sun.

Something you should know about these day cruises… There are plenty of seats for everyone inside, but only a few seats outside. Now, if I’m going to invest in one of these cruises, I want to be outside where I can get a really good view of everything. We made sure to get to the boat early then claimed a row of seats (there were only four) outside near this back corner of the boat.

I couldn’t get over the color of the water and how the shoreline felt so dramatic. In most of the coves we went into closer to Seward there were small fishing boats. I thought the picture above would help give you a sense of just how massive some of these islands in the coves really were. I call them small fishing boats…but they were the size of an RV.

Now, because I’m going to keep it real for y’all, I’ll admit to you…when the pod of orcas showed themselves…I was stuck in the bathroom. I could hear the Captain telling everyone where to look and talking about them, but I couldn’t for the life of me get out the door. So, I missed most of it. I was super bummed about that.

Luckily, Charles was there with his brand new camera and snapped several great shots! Both of the shots I’m posting are ones he took.

This is what Mr. Man looked like most of the day. I think at the end of the day he had somewhere around 200 to 300 pictures. He likes to combine them and make new landscapes for stories he’s working on.

I lost count of all the glaciers we saw. This one was pretty spectacular the way it just went on forever.

And then there are the waterfalls! I’ve never seen so many waterfalls. They were in every nook and cranny.

The day started off overcast, but the farther out to sea we got, it became more of a cloud dappled sky. We would get these moments of brilliant sunlight that would make us say “oh wow!” I’m not sure how many times we found ourselves saying that. It seemed to be the theme of the day.

This group of sea lions started calling out to us as we passed by. It was like they were telling us to go away so they could enjoy their sunny rock in peace. Apparently, sea lions are very territorial and some actually jumped into the water to try and chase us off.

It was right around noon-ish in the trip and the crew passed around a light lunch. It was nothing spectacular, but it was very appreciated and tasted really good. The lunch consisted of a chicken Cesar wrap, a bag of sun chips and a granola bar. They did a modified wrap for Charles since he’s allergic to dairy…we thought that was really great.

This was probably the highlight of our day. We got to sit close to this glacier for a while. We heard it moan and groan and then crack.

We got to see it calve several times! It was really amazing!

There was ice floating in the water. The crew scooped some out for everyone to touch and feel.

I was informed by the two Little Boys that glacier ice out of the sea is way cooler than regular ice. These two monkeys grabbed a chunk of ice that had fallen off the big one the crew brought around. The glacier ice had tons of air bubbles in it.

If you look to the left of the picture above, you’ll see a boat that was about the same size as the boat we were on. This picture really gives you a feel for how massive this glacier is.

This glacier was the farthest out our cruise would go so after we left there, we started back toward Seward.

We stopped by an island covered in puffins. Two different kinds of puffins! The one in the picture above is the horned puffin (I think). The other one is called a tufted puffin. These little guys are probably some of my favorites. Puffins can actually dive 300 feet into the water to catch fish. Their bones are denser than most bird bones so they’re heavier and can travel farther down into the water at a faster rate.

See the group of birds in the picture above? Now look right in the middle of them at the dark blob in the water. That blob is called a bait ball. Groups of different kinds of birds will work together to gather fish into a tight ball to eat. Puffins will dive down and scare the fish upward while other birds will start bringing them in from a shallower depth around the sides and then the birds feast. We saw several of these and they are kind of amazing to see!

We saw a few humpback whales. They never came all the way up out of the water…just up for a breath then back down. I did catch the tail of a momma and the hump of the calf. We stopped in this area for several minutes hoping to see more of them, but the Captain had a schedule to keep and was trying to get us to Fox Island for our dinner. He apologized for not being able to stay longer but he was afraid the Chef would get after him for making us late for dinner. We didn’t mind. Fresh, hot food sounded so good by this time! Honestly, anything hot sounded good by this point!

This is Fox Island. We docked here and unloaded for a steak and salmon dinner!

The dinner was buffet style. Sorry for the blurry picture, but…well…food. I was lucky to get this one shot off before grabbing a plate. We only had an hour to eat and do any exploring we wanted to do. There were some cabins on the island that you could rent.

Here’s a picture of the dining hall. The food was great. The service was spot on. And there was a Park Ranger there who gave a presentation about Kenai Fjords NP while we ate.

Any guesses as to what animal this skull belongs to? It’s an orca skull! Look at those teeth!

The crew passed around freshly baked chocolate chip cookies as we were leaving Fox Island. They were still warm…

The boys wanted to get their picture taken with Captain Eric. He was a great Captain! He really was amazing at getting us right up close into the tight spaces so we could experience Kenai Fjords better. See those cups the boys are holding? Those are $7 souvenir cups that you can buy and get free refills in all day.

Here’s a picture of the boys with the First Mate and the Crew! I really feel like we lucked out with the Captain and Crew that we got. They were stellar! They made the day fun and entertaining and made sure everyone had everything they needed. If y’all ever find yourselves in Seward make sure you go to Kenai Fjords Cruise and ask for Captain Eric! You won’t regret it!

See y’all down the road!

#alaskabound