2013 - Alaska or bust!

And let me tell you about last eve. Someone told Mike that at the end of the road the other way (the road is maybe 25 miles from end to end with Ketchikan in the middle) he saw some bears. Well we rode out there about 6pm and found the most intriguing sight. A bridge over a small stream was loaded with lookers. One side facing away from the water had people looking for bears and the other side was full of people watching bald eagles and salmon. The stream emptied right into the bay at that spot and King Salmon were being caught right and left. Looked to be 20-30 lb or so. But the best part were the Bald Eagles. About 20 of them swooping down around the fishermen grabbing up the salmon parts as the fish were cleaned! One very big boy staked out the biggest piece and tore into it as people stood maybe 15 feet away. Amazing!
Mike has pictures when we get a chance to post them.
BTW, I did eventually see 2 black bears!
Carol

 

FLMikeandCarol great story keep them coming. Enjoy the adventure we can all learn from your experience.

 

Sorry I am behind with my blogs--part of the problem is trying and getting the pics up here too.

(Carol patiently waiting for ferry)

(Poor lil Crab Pot on big ole ferry)


We are about finished with the inside passage and it has been an awesome trip. I am so glad we decided to do it. When we first arrived in Ketchikan, I thought what have we done because downtown is like every other Cruise Port but what I have found out is that by having our car we could get to all the great things that the cruisers never get to see.

(Immature bald eagle at Herring Creek)



In Ketchikan, my favorite spot was Herring Creek where we got to see the Salmon fishing, the bald eagles swooping down and the bears in the distance. It was fun talking with the locals and understanding their way of life. We learned about the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Indians at Totem Bight park and watched for whales at Settlers Cove. We did not see any whales but we did have a black bear walk in front of the car driving out there.

Everything in Ketchikan closes at 3 o'clock when the cruise ships pull out. We found that was the best time to go downtown and walk around. Creekside is an old community which was the red light district--it was interesting to walk around and read all the plaques. From there we took the funicular up to the lodge where you could see for miles. The fish hatchery was right there with the fish ladder. We did not get into the fish hatchery but it was interesting to see the fish ladder and understand how the salmon went up stream using the ladder.





We took a tour of the Misty Fjords which was very interesting. Some beautiful scenery along the way.

(Mike and Carol at Misty Fjords)

Next we went to Wrangell which is a small blue collar community. The people here are very friendly. The highlight of our trip here was the boat ride up the Stikene River. It was so beautiful and serene up the river. The mountains were majestic with the snow on the top with the sun glistening on them.


(Downtown Wrangell at sunset)

Petersburg was our next stop. The people in Petersburg seemed more elite and there is great competition between the town on Wrangell and Petersburg. You could see and feel it everywhere you went. Petersburg is like little Norway. Cute little colorful houses with flowers stenciled on the shutters. It, like Wrangell, is a fishing village. The harbors are beautiful with all the ships in. We found the tide changes to be quite amazing--26 feet. We saw a lot of salmon jumping in Petersburg. This is the first for that--we are a little early for the big salmon runs.



(house and harbor at Petersburg)

Next we stopped at Sitka which is a Russian influenced town. Sitka was the Russian American capital. Here we saw the bears at the Fortress of Bears, saw the Archangel dancers and the Raptor Exhibition. We also went to Totem National Park and St. Michael's Russian Cathedral.

(Inside St. Michaels)

(Sitka - Fortress of the bear)


Arrived in Juneau on the 3rd. They celebrated the 4th at 12 am--we tried to make it but it was raining really hard here and we were exhausted so at 10:30 we gave up and went back to the campground.

Today we visited a modern fish cannery--amazing how many fish they were processing at a time. We went up to Mendenhall Glacier yesterday but it was so crowded being the 4th that we decided we would go back at a later time. It is only 4 miles from our campground.

Here is the first place that I have truly been afraid of bears. They apparently see one here in the campground quite frequently. The owner said we should keep pans near us at all times so we can bang them and scare them off--ugh!!

We have some great pics and as soon as Mike can get them up he will do that--he is struggling a bit getting them up since we have a Mac.

 

Nice pics...
Yah, bears would be my concern too and those didn't look too friendly eh??heheh, so did you actually use the tent on the deck or get a room for the trip. And the campsites at each stop, any problems getting into them?? not full??
Just wondering.. love the pics, Sitka has always been my "Happy Place" I'd want to go when the world is bearing down.. heheh..
fun...

Oh, and PS... your TD is much, much too clean and shiny...heheh run it thru the mud a little... joking

 

Frank,

All our trips have been pretty short so far so we just slept in the recliners. Our next one to Whittier is two nights so we are getting a room but quite honestly the deck didn't look too bad. They have a solarium where they have pool deck chairs and people were sleeping on those with sleeping bags. We could have done that.

Supposedly, we are on the shoulder as they say for the season so campgrounds were not a problem. For example, we were the only one in the Wrangell campground for four days, Ketchikan had several open spots as well as the rest of them.

The teardrop has performed great. Easy to get on the ferries, easy to do u-turns when you make a mistake and comfortable. It has been down in the 40s at night and we are toasty warm without any type of heat--just two blankets.

The neat thing about traveling the Inside Passage on the Ferry is that you can get back into spots that you wouldn't see if you were on a Cruise Ship. We try to travel all the roads of each place--great scenery that way and some interesting wild life.

Carol

 

Interesting... will put the Ferry ride back on the list... with the short stops in mind. And booking a room while on the trip? They had some vacancies?? I figure 100% booked so what you start with is all the way through... and bugs?? heheh, fun...

 

Mike&Carol wonderful pictures and story, and plenty of useful information. Thanks for sharing.

 

Well we have completed the Inside Passage. It was a wonderful experience and the Teardrop is the perfect camper to do it in. Mike will put in a separate section tips on what we learned by going on the Inside Passage. See our cute little Raindrop nestled in between the trucks. He had to back it into this spot so he has had a lot of practice backing up on this trip. To think he couldn't even back it in our driveway before we left. Haha!!


We arrived at Whittier early in the morning. We were suppose to move on to Portage for three days but the weather was so beautiful we decided to take the boat tour of Prince William Sound while we were there. The picture below is Whittier. There is not much here except boat ramps and train station.

The boat tour was 5 1/2 hours long and was well worth it. We saw lots of wildlife, glaciers and glaciers calving. They had a Salmon and Prime Beef buffet on board that you could pay extra for. It was well worth the money.
We saw three humpback whales on our tour. They were pretty hard to photograph but here is the best shot Mike got.

We saw at least 15 to 20 glaciers. There are 100,000 glaciers in Alaska, 12 are still getting bigger, several are staying the same and the rest are all receding. Every single one is beautiful in its own way. We saw Tiding glaciers (glaciers that meet the water), Alpine Glaciers (glaciers that are in the valleys), and Hanging Glaciers (Glaciers that stop before they get to the water). Below you can see three glaciers together.


Below is a picture of Surprise Glacier which was the highlight of the boat tour. We sat there for a long time watching the glacier calve several times. They scooped up glacier ice from the water and made Margaritas from the ice.


Below is a picture of Surprise Glacier calving


Here's Mike drinking his Glacier Margarita.


We saw 100s of sea otters. They call them sea otter rafts. They were pretty amazing to watch. They float on their backs. They have 880,000 hairs per square inch. Their fur is so soft.


We also saw sea lions and the stellar sea lion before who owned the rock. We saw Bald Eagles and thousands of Kittiwakes. There was a rock ledge and it was covered with these Kittiwakes (Alaskan Birds).

The interesting thing about Whittier is that they have a one way tunnel to get out of Whittier that is 2 1/2 miles long. They time leaving Whittier based on the tour boats coming back in. At six o'clock they open it up to cars, trucks and RVs. After they go through, then the train goes through to Anchorage. So if you don't get right off the tour boats and get in line you could have to wait up to 2 to 2 1/2 hours to get through.

We decided to go on to Seward because of my eye appointment that stop was being cut short. The first day here was another beautiful day so we walked downtown which is a really cute little town with lots of restaurants. Food is very expensive here. For example, a regular breakfast was $30 for the two of us.

Since it was so beautiful we hiked up to Exit Glacier. You can get pretty close to it but not as close as we at Athbacus Glacier. We got spoiled there.

Yesterday was on the cool side so we went to the Sealife Museum which was pretty cool. They had an Octopus that had just had babies. It looked like little specs floating around.

The Stellar seal below was there putting on a show for everyone. Actually Mike put this picture in. It's a bull steller out in Pr. William Sound. He was preparing for his harem!



They also had a bird section with a lot of Puffins. We are hoping to these in their natural habitat.





We are off to Anchorage today for three days and then on to Cooper Landing.

 

WOWWY!!!! Are you ever coming back to central Florida??? Thank you both SO MUCH for putting in ALL that effort of keeping us updated and with so many nice photos! That's wonderful and truly APPRECIATED!!!

Love it all!!

 

FLMikeandCarol great pictures and story again,your attention to detail is also great.

 

Susan and Alan, we'll be back in mid Sept. That'll be about 100 or so teardrop nights.
Jenn what's that in td years?
Mike

 

Jenn, did Craig write this note for you? (new folks - inside joke, ask Betsey when you see her).
Speaking of mileage, we're getting about 17.7 overall according to the Honda computer. I got much better mileage on the ferry.
Carol will do the Village backing in. That way I have someone to blame if things don't go well. Actually, the ferry didn't worry me. I knew that if I ran into trouble I could just unhitch and push it back manually. When you have a Plan B, Plan A is much easier!
Mike

 

Jenn...heheh, funny...

 

Jenn,

That's funny!!

Carol

 

Now Bear, can we factor in having a 5 year old traveling with you, asking every 3-5 minutes "are we there yet?" or "when are we going to be there?" That must surely add years. Or maybe it is just taking them off my life. No telling. I have more than one new grey hair from this trip, that is for sure!

 

Well here we are at the turn around point in our trip (7360 miles to this point). We arrived at Homer, AK yesterday and went right to Land's End. That way we can say we drove as far as we could before turning for home. We'll stay her 4 days and then drive to Palmer and then Denali. We'll poke around there for a few days and then go to Fairbanks. After that it will be time to head south. Not sure yet if we'll go to Haines. Have to be back to the Mayo Clinic at the end of Aug.

Here we are at Land's End. Our picture was taken by a young (maybe 24) lady from Germany who had spent the last 2 1/2 years biking from Argentina!


Check out the glaciers behind Carol.

How we got to Homer. I think we left you with our blog from Seward. We left there for my eye appointment in Anchorage. On the way we stopped at an animal rehab center and we saw lots of eagles, moose , bears, reindeer, etc. We also saw Dall sheep right on the outskirts of Anchorage.

Here is one of the moose (meese??) we saw there.

There must have been a dozen of them walking the cliffs right above the highway!

The visit to Anchorage was 2 plus days and more business than pleasure. We stayed in a hotel for the first time (Jenn, it had carpets!!) However the city tour was interesting and it dealt a lot with the 1964 earthquake. The city park had some nice flowers.


After Anchorage, we spent a night in Coopers Landing. 2 great events here. First we went to check out the bar at the Princess Cruise Lines Lodge and ran into one of my Tuesday golf foursome. Small small world. Also the 2 hour raft trip down the upper Kenai River was great. Saw our first brown bear in the wild!


Carol and Hazel, Village golf partners.

Here's Carol on the raft. Can't find the brown bear photo. Save it for a later post. Just found it.


On to Soldotna where we concentrated on watching the Combat Fishermen. Mike said it was too intimidating for him.






Then on to Ninilchik where we saw the most amazing way to launch boats. At $55 a pop, they were really moving them out.




And that brings us to Homer. More to come when we reach Danali.

 

Heheh, fun.
geesh, you're all over the place...
How's the weather and Bugs??? bothersome??

How far north are you going to go...
I've always wanted to "Fly" up to Barrows?? for 2 nights... dip the ole Toe in the water...

fun...