We awoke on Saturday morning anxious to see if our Do-It-Yourself tire repair held… and it appeared that it did!  We only lost one or two psi through the night and the tire still looked round and ready to go.  So… we got the spare back in its place and decided to head back to town to see if we could find ourselves a new tire-iron (aka breaker-bar) for the truck.  We got sidetracked yet again on the way back towards Glenallen, where were hoping would have our tool, by a roadside veggie stand and a “Native Crafts” sign.  We spent the next hour or so shopping and talking to the native lady who ran the place and got some good information on who might have our tool… namely, Wegners General Store just down the road… “If they don’t have it, they will know who does”. 

Wegners General Store is just what you would picture a typical country store to be in a place like this… a rugged, not-so-forgiving, cold-a lot, self-relying place.  Bales of hay and bags of animal feed were stacked out front.  You walk in the front door to the makings of a hardware store, 3 aisles worth, with the typical trimmings.  But look at the next 3 aisles to the right and lo and behold, there’s the grocery store!  All the basics that you might need are right there.  Then, as you are perusing the chips and dips, you look up and see the automotive department, complete with hoses, belts and filters.  And, just to be sure you remember you are in Alaska, in the back aisle is where they have the wolf pelts hanging for your winter craft days. 

We spoke with the owner and asked him about our needed tool.  After a little thought and some checking in with an employee, he decided he didn’t have one.  We walked outside as he made suggestions to us about where else we could look.  As we took notes, a guy approached us from his truck and asked what we were in need of.  We told him about the breaker bar and he said he had a tire-iron in his truck and that we could take one with us if we wanted… with the caveat of “If you guys happen to come back by this way then you can give it back.”  We thanked him for his offer but explained that a typical tire-iron wouldn’t work.  He said he had something that would work at the house and we could follow him there. We thanked Mr. Wegner and told him we were going to follow the other guy back to his place.  Mr. Wegner smiled and just said, “Now that will be an adventure.”  Well, why not, we are always up for an adventure.  About 2 miles down the road we made a right on a dirt road and followed him about a mile back.  We came upon a “typical” Alaskan home… which would fit right in back in Clifton!  Everything around was in some varying state of construction or decomposition.  2 houses in mid-build, cars and trucks either being repaired or dismantled (the latter probably supplying the former), supplies and tools spread around, blue tarps and corrugated steel sheets covering the important stuff.  We introduced ourselves and thanked Jimmy for the help. 

Jimmy is someone I think you all would like.  He used to be a freestyle climber in Boulder, Colorado in the early 80’s and then decided he had survived enough falls and moved to Alaska.   He is about Jim’s build, around 50 with a full, mountain-man style beard, a firm but gentle handshake, wearing worn and torn Carharts and sensible shoes.  He immediately went to one of the resident cars and grabbed two tire-irons off of its trunk.  Even before I could try them out to see if one of them would work, he had gone to his shed and brought out a box of sockets, rods and irons.  We evaluated the situation and decided nothing so far was going to work.  So, as I returned that box back to the shed, Jimmy found a ½” anchor bolt for concrete… you know… the type that has threads on one end and a 90-degree bend at the other so you can set it in new concrete and anchor your new building to it… you know.  Now we have an anchor bolt, I have a 1/2'” deep-well socket for the lugs so all we need is the breaker bar.  Jimmy thought we could grind the anchor bolt down so it would fit into the socket and then we could use another piece of pipe as a leverage bar.  So he grabs his angle grinder and fires up his generator.  I put on my safety glasses and hold the anchor bolt in place.  He grinds away and we finally get the round bolt to fit a square hole and give it a try. 

Round about this time, Jimmy’s wife, Sharon, pulls up with their 4 dogs and Susan introduces herself.  We are all over at the truck anxiously awaiting the results of Jim & Jimmy’s experiment.  Jim puts the socket on the newly grounded bolt and slides an extension bar onto the other end of the bolt.  He puts the socket onto the lug nut and gives it a good crank to get things loose.  Well, let’s just say it didn’t work out like we had hoped as the modified anchor bolt was too soft and just twisted.  It made this really neat design but didn’t do a thing for loosening the lug nut.  Jimmy, being the upbeat kind of guy just happy to be able to be out here helping us out while he drinks his “Hamm’s” beer (I didn’t even know they still made that!), didn’t look fazed by our setback at all.  He just looked around and said, “What can we try next?” About this time Sharon asked us what we needed and Jimmy explained it to her, what we really need is a ½” breaker bar.  She disappeared into her Jeep for a moment and returned with, ready for this, a ½” breaker bar, the EXACT thing we had been looking for in the first place, and asked Jimmy if this is what we were looking for.  We all had a good little laugh at that point and Jim tried out the bar on the lugs.  We had everything we needed now and asked them what we could give them for it all.  Their response was, “Nothing.  This is how we do it here.  Consider it your gift from Alaska.  You look like the kind of  folks that would do the same for someone else”  Then, they gave us their phone numbers in case we ran into any other trouble along the way.  Jimmy said he had seen us camping the night before as it turns out that they were both on the McCarthy Road where we got the flat.  They were in different vehicles but both said they thought about stopping and checking in on us but didn’t.  Now, after putting it all together, they got kind of upset with themselves for not stopping and helping us at that point.  We assured them we were just fine that night and REALLY appreciated what they were doing for us right now. 

We asked if they often went up to McCarthy and Sharon laughingly said, “No.”  What they were doing was one of their favorite activities, dropping really big rocks of the Kushkulana Bridge.  “No Stopping on The Bridge”, we do it anyway, said Sharon.  Jimmy chimed in that there was this one huge boulder sticking out of the river they would try to hit.  Quite a challenge it seems, but the rock you choose to throw makes a big difference, hence their driving back on forth on the road looking for just the right rock!  Jimmy has an older Toyota pickup with a wooden flatbed, perfect for backing into a bank along the road and rolling a rock onto it.  He then pulls close to the edge of the bridge and they roll it off and down into the river (525’) below.  You make your fun where you can in rural Alaska J

We left Jimmy and Sharon with a little Cherry Pie Liquor from The Annex and with a very thankful hearts headed back out their driveway.  This is such a perfect example of how things work out in ways that you never expect if you just let them.  How does that go?... “Sometimes you get shown the Light, in the Strangest of Places, if you look at it Right.”

… And so it goes here in Alaska… there are maybe 5 or 6 major highways… there’s the Alaska Highway, the Denali Highway, the Richardson Highway, the Parks Highway and the Glenn Highway… and they use “highway” loosely… as long as it’s somewhat level and sometimes paved, I think it qualifies as a “highway”.  When you find something called a “road” you really have to be ready for anything.  Definitely larger gravel, sometimes resembling something more like golf-balls, punctuated with small landslides, sinkholes and wash-outs.  Somewhat rare and often randomly placed guardrails along with occasional disabled vehicle make for an exhilarating, albeit often quite slow, drive. 

So now… have you ever wondered what it would be like to turn east on The McCarthy Road and head up the 63 mile old railroad track turned car road (a very simple 3-hour drive as long as you keep on the lookout for spikes that have come loose from the old tracks that might ruin your day… not to mention your tire) to the old mining town of McCarthy and walk around for a while and maybe take a hike across the aged footbridge and up the 4-mile Root Glacier Trail to the Kennicott Glacier and step out onto the glacier and check it out and, say, grab a nice rock and take in the sensation of being there on that huge expanse of ice that has been moving slowly towards the Chitina River for centuries before deciding to head back to Thumper to make another nice dinner and call it a night so you can get up early and head back to the town of Chitina and “cruise” the last 14 miles of pseudo-paved road to where you had  turned off of Alaska Hwy 4 originally to begin this whole adventure and then make another left turn and keep driving south towards Valdez?

Well… we wondered just that not 3 or 4 days ago… and you know what?... it turned out to be an interesting decision.  You see… we were moving right along keeping an eye out for those elusive railroad spikes and the ever warned of Moose when we came upon the single-lane Kuskulana Bridge. It was built in 1909 as a railroad bridge that spans 525’ about 238’ above the river and only on in 1988 did it get guardrails and complete decking (before that, there were boards missing and you could see through the holes down to the river below!).  So… we want to get a picture crossing this amazing bridge.  

I drop Susan off on this side of the bridge with the cameras and drove slowly (No Stopping on The Bridge!) to the other side.  I turn around and drive back over to pick her up.  Now, we both drive over to the other  side and pull into this nice parking area (the first one we’ve seen in 17 miles) so we can walk back to check the bridge out in person.  When I turn off the engine I hear this faint Hhhhssssssnng coming from the back tire… and Yes… it was the beginning of our first flat tire of the trip.  We had heard rumors of these inevitable flat tires… kind of like the never-ending Moose warnings… but had been fortunate enough to drive some pretty bad roads and only suffer a stone chipped windshield and enough mud on the truck we could have chiseled it off.  But there it was… a stone in the tread.  I told Susan to go check out the bridge and I would get the spare on and we could head on down the road.  

Well… to make this long story a bit shorter, I dropped the spare tire from underneath the truck (an achievement of its own… had to get Susan to help before she took off for her walk) and I got Thumper jacked up and ready to go.  Now… all I need is to get the lug nuts off.  This would be a LOT easier if only I could find the tire iron!  It’s an interesting scenario here, as my actual tire iron doesn’t work on the long lugs on the truck so I have a deep-well socket and a breaker-bar to get the nuts off.  I couldn’t find that breaker bar anywhere.  Susan and I took the truck apart and looked for it everywhere… and then looked again.  We could only hypothesize where it went... did it fall out?... slide under Thumper?... get taken out and not put back?... or is it still sitting on the driveway in Clifton?  In any case, I decided that I was going to try to plug the hole with this great kit that The Pragers (of Palisade, Colorado fame) gave us for Christmas last year.  It sounds SO simple doesn’t it?  

Well, it would be simple, if only I could get the $%#@& stone out of the tire!  I never thought a stone could be so embedded in a tire and so determined to stay there.  I tried prying it out with a screwdriver… then with 2 screwdrivers… then I tried to pound it into the tire…and after I almost knocked myself out with a rebounding, 3-pound hammer, I got the screwdriver back out.  After breaking one screwdriver, drinking one beer, talking strategies with another couple from Colorado who stopped, putting the hammer away, trying to invent a new type of tool to turn a deep-well socket and putting another beer on ice for later, I finally got the stone out!  We are keeping that stone as a souvenir by the way.  Susan and I rejoiced over this little victory in the face of defeat and I proceeded to read the instructions on the tire plug kit… ream the hole, thread the plug material into the big needle-like thingy, apply rubber cement, put it in and pull it out… NO twisting!  Done… And there was another little celebratory moment in the parking area.  Now all we have to do is fill it with air.  I KNEW I should have bought that $30 electric air pump at Canadian Tire (the Canadian version of Super-Target) but it seemed so frivolous at the time.  So… the new tool-of-the-hour becomes our bike tire pump!  

Not one to turn away from a challenge, I connect it up to the tire and start pumping.  I manage to get to 10psi before my arms go numb and Susan steps in and takes over with a comment on how similar this is to churning ice-cream.  I had to agree with her in some odd, kinda-sorta way.  We keep taking turns pumping away and trying to hide the whole circus act when someone else drives by.  Slowly, but surely we approach our goal… 80psi… each pump putting a solid 1/16^th psi into the tire.  At 72psi we decided we were good (as that’s all the other tires had in them) and there was much rejoicing.  By now it’s almost dark and we are hungry and that other beer is almost cold.  With everything in kind of a holding pattern till morning, we headed out for a quick walk before we called it a night and went into Thumper to discuss our next move… keep going forward to the unknown or retreat back towards the somewhat familiar.  Let’s sleep on it…

Denali Exodus…

Now we had a goal. To get back to JC’s in time for their end of year party that night.  Since it took over 9 hours to drive in, we figured we’d better get an early start, which we did (earlier than usual anyways!).  But dang if the mountains and wildlife didn’t conspire to slow us down.  First we had to go by Wonder Lake and of course had to stop for a couple shots as it was another glorious day!  Then there are all the other amazing mountains, river valleys and vistas which capture the eye (and imagination).  Seems like every time we got moving again there was something else that stopped us in our tracks because between all the physical beauty there were also the majestic Dall sheep feeding on the mountainside, then the huge Mama Grizzly and her two rolly-polly cubs loping up the mountainside and the occasional Bald or Golden eagle soaring above it all.We even ran into some new friends from Kantishna who were heading back in and told us where the caribou and the wolves had been that morning... just about 2 hours further down the road (like 20 miles). 

Shortly after that meeting came the coolest moment of all those many cool moments, when Jim had a psychic wolf experience.  We were just driving along through a seemingly endless expanse of gold and red tundra when he slowed the truck and asked me to hand him his camera.  When I asked what he saw, he said nothing but he wanted to be ready in case we see… “THAT!”…. and pointed straight ahead.  Literally, in mid-sentence, we came around the corner and Mr. Wolf was standing there looking at us.  He turned and started trotting up the middle of the road all casual and confident.  Not the least bit concerned about the humans and their big old Thumper (speaking of which, it appeared he’d just finished off his own thumper as we drove by what looked very much like the remains of a snow hare).  We followed him slowly for what seemed like many minutes (though you know how time slows down…) trying like crazy to get a good photo through the window when the wolf shot out into the tundra.  When we got up to the spot where he went in, there he was looking back at us, then looking around where he was standing and giving us several more opportunities to get a photo.  Then he was gone.  We were simply amazed at what just happened!  We decided to back up and check out his kill.  We found a very clean rabbit skin and a couple of feet in the middle of road.  It was pretty neat how basically everything but the fur was gone.  We were still kind of marveling when we looked up and there was wolf again, standing in the middle of the road checking us out one last time before he disappeared.  Wow!

This was, by the way, Jim’s second psychic animal experience.  The first was on the Alaska Highway, just a couple miles after we had rejoined it from our little side trip over the Top of the World highway and Chicken.  We were moving right along at about 65 mph and enjoying that pace after being on gravel or dirt roads for more than a week.  We came around a small bend in the road and, speaking 1st person here, I thought, "There's a Moose up here."... not the typical, "We are in Moose country, I had better be careful" type of thought, but an actual thought that there IS a Moose up here!  So I take my foot off the gas and put it on the brake and a moment later a huge moose came out from the woods and crossed the road, oblivious to the big camper heading straight for him.  Had Jim (back to 3rd person) not slowed down when he did we certainly would not have been able to avoid hitting that Moose and none of us would have come out OK from that encounter.  People had been telling us to “watch out for the moose” for  well over 1500 miles at this point, though we had never seen even one.  Jim joked this must have been the moose we were supposed to look out for!

But I digress......

At one point during the exodus, Jim apologized to Susan for stopping so much and taking so much time photographing.  Susan just responded that she knew what she was getting herself into when she bought Jim a camera and waited patiently looking over the vista in front of her.  But finally, despite all the beauty and animals we finally made it out of the park and down to Denali Education Center (only 6 hours this time J). It was great to see JC again-he just smiled knowingly when we explained about the flying and the wildlife and not being able to leave Kantishna until we absolutely had to.  He was still working hard to get things wrapped up around campus, but made sure we knew when the kegs got tapped.  Being the final shindig for all the employees, this was a great opportunity to really get to talk with folks and hear more about their lives at Denali and beyond. The more we got to know Jodie and Jill, who pretty much run the DEC programs, the more impressive they are. Both of them winter in Denali so they can work on all the details that keep things running smoothly in the summer. They are wonderful and dedicated women, whose work to get elders and youth into this incredible wilderness has been a gift in many lives. It was another great evening connecting with some of Alaska’s finest people and we were again struck by how Blessed we have been through out this journey.

We had been planning to head the Kenai Pennisula at this point, but JC and several others strongly advising we take the Denali highway along the south side of the Alaska range and drive into the old town of McCarthy and check out the Kinnecot mine and Glacier. Kind of a rough road, they said, but we were getting used to that sort of thing.  And it was on the way to Valdez, which had come most highly recommended.  So off we went… after all what’s the use of asking the locals for their suggestions if you aren’t going to listen?

Kantishna... OH, Kantishna.

Ahhh, Kantishna….where to begin?

This sweet little valley is tucked below a line of hills just to the northeast of Denali and the Alaska Range, so though you can’t see the peaks from where we stayed, a short, exhilarating hike (or do I mean exhausting?  Remember Jim’s comment about the lack of switchbacks in this realm?) gets you high enough to see the whole lineup in all their glory. The Kantishna River is fed by Wonder Lake and springs coming down from the mountains so it runs clear, not milky like the many glacially fed rivers in the area. Tons of wildlife, in fact we watched a mama moose and her yearlings feed along the river for quite a while one morning. There is also a VERY active beaver pond, footage of which we’ll try to post.  It is late autumn here and the hills are covered in color, much of which turns out to be blueberries and cranberries.  SO yummy and seemingly endlessJ    

Upon our arrival at Kantishna, we first met Matt, a very welcoming and wonderful man, who seems to keep everything moving in the right direction for the Kantishna Air Taxi (KAT) and their charming Skyline Lodge, perched California-style on a very steep hillside above the river.  He greeted us warmly, showed us the way to our camping spot on the little dirt road leading back to his cabin and invited us to make ourselves at home.  As Matt was heading back to the lodge to finish out his day he says “By the way, we’re having a party here tonight to honor two of the locals who have made this place possible.”  When we asked if there was anything we could do to help, it turned out there was, so the four of us got busy and by the time he made it back we were pleased to surprise him with a stack of firewood, Jim’s solar Christmas lights strung around and a couple plates of hors d’orves ready for the guests.  It was really a treat for us to be able to use our well honed “party on wheels” skills to contribute to the event.  And what a fun party it was!  This is a small, tight knit community of maybe 30 people, living far from any one else in a very amazing and special place.  We felt honored to be there to begin with, then to have the opportunity to get to know everyone in such a relaxed, celebratory fashion was just incredible.  Amazing places draw amazing people.

Greg, who owns KAT and the lodge, has been flying around this area for 14 years.  Through luck (and being a genuinely good person) he was able to buy enough land from one of the original homesteading families to build a modest, really beautiful lodge (6 guest rooms) which also houses the office for the air taxi.  They fly folks all over the place (not just sightseeing) and will get your sled dogs and materials where you need them, too.  His girlfriend, Elise, has been a wilderness guide in Alaska for about the same number of years and was an incredible source of information about regional geology, history and wildlife.  The guests of honor, Mike and Carol (originally from Broomfield, Colorado)  first moved out here in the 70s and lived in a cabin with their five kids, hauling water from the river, trying to grow food and mining the property for gold, at which they were apparently fairly successful. (Kanitishna was originally established as a mining camp in 1900 or so with a population of almost 3000 people at it’s height.)  Then there’s Aine, Connie and Jered the bush pilots for KAT and Jeff and Kristy who cook delicious meals for the staff and guests.  All of them amazing people.  Oh yeah, and Matt, in addition to being an extraordinarily kind and magical person, is also a truly skilled artist whose work will be gracing our home, once we get one again.

So the party is great, so great in fact that Jim is nursing a pretty significant hang over Monday morning and Susan is only slightly less wounded.  But then comes the best news we could imagine: JC and Tim, who both need to be out by today for work, have managed to arrange flights out with one of the pilots. Matt, because he is who he is, requested a three day pass for Thumper (rather than the one day we had thought we would have) and has extended the invitation for us to stay until it runs out.  Unbelievable! We are in a place so few people even get to see and now we get to stay!  Somehow that eases the headaches (along with a couple Tylenol and an Emergen-C) and we manage to hike up the back hill to a wonderful spot where the mountains can be seen and the blueberries are especially sweet.  

Turns out to be a great place to nap in the sunshine as well.   J   Elise came through as she was out “walking off her hangover” on a ten-mile hike on the ridgeline of the mountains in her back yard.  And when we finally made it back to the lodge, we ran into Greg who looked at us, made the sign of the cross with his fingers and said “Oh No!  It’s the whiskey people!”  Guess we were not the only ones wounded last night.

Meanwhile, back at KAT, Matt is working hard and has a couple of folks that want to do a flight-seeing trip that evening, but not enough to fill up the plane.  He runs down the hill to our camp and says “I have room for 2!”  Well, we had been thinking about doing some sort of flight somewhere, but not really knowing how that would play out (or if it was really in the budget). It does seem like a no brainer, doesn’t it?  So we get to fly in a 6-seater plane for an hour, in a mostly clear blue sky, around the highest mountain on our continent-20,240 feet above sea level and with the valley floor below checking in around 3000’ that’s a lot of mountain to see. 

Then there are the glaciers and the cornices and the snow covered peaks of 14,000++ heading off in either direction from ‘The Great One’ and the oh-so-lovely clouds and the rivers shining far below.  At one point Aine (who I am so happy to say is a woman pilot) took us up the valley of one glacier and did a long sweeping turn in the bowl of the mountains surrounding it.  I was just completely blown away .  Even sitting here now thinking about what we saw up there brings tears to my eyes (just like it did then).  I hope Jim’s pictures can relay a fraction of this experience… But really, I wish you all could be there and see it for yourself.

The next day Matt lent us his truck and we headed down the road to Wonder Lake-site of many of the famous pictures with Denali reflected on the water.  We wandered around there for a good while, had a great picnic lunch and headed back to check out the previously mentioned beaver pond.  Those guys are serious workers!  And really could care so not-at-all about humans.  We watched them for a long time and when a busload of camera toting folks came along, the beavers slowed down for a minute, one did a tail slap on the water (a sound that is kind of startling) and back to work they went.  So cool to get this glimpse of life as a beaver when usually they are so shy you don’t get to see them at all!

We did go back to Wonder Lake that evening for photographs and to revel again in the beauty of these mountains against a clear blue sky.  Oh, we are so Blessed!!  It was going to be hard to leave in the morning, it always is, but made harder this time by saying goodbye to our new friends.  And just to make sure we didn’t forget them (or was it to get even for all the Pendleton induced hangovers on Monday?), there was a bit of a party that night involving a ping pong tournament and several bottles of bourbon.  Fortunately, we made it back to Thumper mostly unscathed ;-)

The next level...

For those who thought we’d forgotten about the lower 48 now that we’re in the Great North, no, no!  Just so busy enjoying it there has been no time to write!;-)

We were heading into Fairbanks, with plans of just stopping on the way through to check out their renowned museum (at U of A-it was REALLY cool!) and botanical garden, when Jim called JC Barber, a friend through String Cheese who we heard was up here for the summer. (Skaryd/Schurrs will be interested to know he hails from Keene, NH.)  It turns out JC is working near Denali park, but even better he owns land north of Fairbanks and was headed up there that day to work on his place.  Lucky timing and fun for us!  

JC set us up in a nice level camping spot among the beautiful trees at the bottom of his driveway, which goes STRAIGHT up the hill to his cabin.  There is a theme in Alaska that we are discovering… basically, the switchback idea never seemed to catch on up here.  Like when we were hiking on a trail off the Dempster Highway and passed a couple hikers from Switzerland as we were heading down.  We commented how these hills are probably nothing compared to what they are used to and they responded with, “yeah, but in Switzerland, we cut back and forth up the mountain, we don’t go straight up.”  Well, you’re in Alaska now…

So… now set up at JC’s we went to work.  For the next couple days we cut and stacked wood, cleared and piled up debris and worked on two “cabin-improvement” projects. In the process, we met more cool Alaskans. Andy, who flew up to Fairbanks for the day from his place somewhere down on the coast, to help JC with the cabin and Lindsey, JC’s former landlord and all around very cool guy, who let us use his tools, power and driveway to build JC a solid door for the cabin. We also finally got that seat JC has been dreaming about put in the outhouse. Most fun of all, we wandered around the absolutely gorgeous forest in which his place is situated.  So sweet!  It was great hanging out with JC and throwing sticks for his awesome 4-legged buddy, Chowder.  

We left there with plans to hook up with them again in Denali.

But first, we had to check out Chena Hot Springs. Located back in the hills about 60 miles east of Fairbanks, this place has gone through several incarnations since the late 1890s and now has come into the hands of some pretty ecologically mindful people.  They have been developing the use of geothermal energy in several ways on the property including warming greenhouses to grow food for their restaurant, generating power for the whole complex and, believe it or not, cooling a VERY large building that houses an ice sculpture museum and carving studio as well as several “Ice Hotel” rooms (kept at 20*F… brrr!!!!) and a bar that serves Appletinis in carved ice glasses.  

In honor of Uncle Karl we had to go! We managed to preserve the glass long enough to make a few espressotinis of our own in Thumper J.  It was a pretty amazing place, despite it’s full-on resort status and the busses of Japanese tourists who arrived in the afternoons.  Rock Lake, which is the main soaking pond on the site, is pretty big.  The water comes into it at about 165*F and then cools as it flows through the pond so you can find your sweet spot and hang out there.  And even the wildlife like it - a moose came down to the creek running behind the main pool while Susan was in there soaking J.  One of the best parts of this side trip was the perfect little camping spot Jim found off the road on the way out there.  Right beside the crystal clear river, surrounded by woods and only a couple mosquitoes!   It was hard to leave… (Believe us… it is always hard to leave)… but we did.

Because, it turns out, that on Friday, September 4, Keller Williams was playing at a tiny bar in the village just outside Denali Park.  Who would believe it?  What a crazy-fun coincidence and better still because our friend Boogie was working this tour with him.  So we stayed up late and danced away our first night in Denali.  And though we had thought that JC styled us before, we had not seen anything yet!  

JC works for the Denali Education Center, which is a wonderful not-for-profit that does Elderhostel and youth programs on private property just across the river from Denali National Park.  He set us up in a great spot right next to the river with indoor plumbing, hot showers AND wireless internet!  Then he sent us on a great cranberry picking hike one day and a fun mountain bike/blueberry picking ride the next day.  Thanks to Janet, Susan came prepared for the possibility of making jam while we were in Alaska and in fact did make almost a dozen jars of yummy berry jam right here in Thumper.  It was a total mess but they came out great! 

But JC wasn’t done… It turns out he had another friend coming in to check out the D.E.C. for a student trip next year.  He had already been talking to some friends, who live way up in a small valley of private land surrounded by the park, about bringing Tim in, so he went ahead and asked them about getting a pass to drive Thumper up there.

A bit of background here, Denali Park is about 6 MILLION acres of wilderness.  The mountain, formerly known as McKinley ;-), cannot even be seen from the entrance area. In a very wise move, they have disallowed private vehicles more than 30 miles into the park, but provide shuttle busses for the 55 miles of road beyond that.  Many people go for day trips (that can last 8-10 hours!).  People who want to camp further in than their car can go take the bus with their gear.  It’s a pretty good system for balancing preservation of the wilderness and access for people who want to check it out.  So for JC to arrange a pass for our vehicle was a pretty major deal and gave us an opportunity few people have.  And though we knew it was special going in, looking back now we are overwhelmed by the gift we received.

Sunday morning JC brought Tim over to get acquainted, we loaded up their gear and all headed up to the park office early to get the pass.  There was a minute or two of “will this really happen?” (most of you know how the whole ‘List’ thing goes sometimes) but it all went smoothly.  We received the window pass and were informed of the rules-of-the-road inside the park, agreed that we wouldn’t chase any sheep and off we went.  We didn’t drive but a couple miles when there was a cluster of cars and line of cameras mounted on tripods along the road. It turned out a huge bull moose was lounging in the woods less than 100 feet from the road. Amazing!  There was a ranger on site directing traffic and ensuring that no random tourist was going to try and put his 3 year old on the moose’s back to get a picture (yeah… sounds stupid, but…).  

We hung out for a bit and got some great, mostly in-focus pictures of this beautiful animal and then decided to move on down the road.  We pulled away all giddy from this first sighting and got back up to cruising speed (25mph) just in time to see some more cars pulled over and a guy waving at us to stop… so we did.  It took a moment to see what he was looking at but then a Mama Moose and her 2 year old calf (he was MUCH bigger than that sounds!) came ambling across the road about 50 feet in front of us.

I say ‘ambling’ because moose don’t seem to be the most graceful of creatures here and just look as if they are heading a particular direction because the ground happens to be sloped that way.   So we were off to a great start!  Oh and did I mention the weather was perfect?  It had been for 3 or 4 days (we actually saw Denali on the drive from Fairbanks at about 120 miles away).  But this day we got to see it again and again as we would come over a pass or around a bend on the mountain.

I would like to find words to describe the vastness and extraordinary beauty of this place, all decked out in color for autumn and with a fresh coat of snow on the high peaks, but I know there is NO WAY to give you an imagine that can come close.  And pictures… you will see some great ones, but they are still just a glimpse and a pale one at that.  It is hard to believe the wonder of it all even when you are standing right there.

So the 90 mile drive took us about 9 hours, though 3 of that was a wild bush whacking hike along and above the Toklat River looking for bears.  For better or worse, we didn’t see any, but we did find 2 half snow hares and a couple random rabbit feet.  Guess it was a good day to be a predator.  And there were many stops for photos, caribou and Dall sheep on the hilltop, eagles and a falcon.  By the time we rolled into Kantishna Valley we were pretty tired but so excited at the same time.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Chicken

SO what does one do to follow up such an incredible experience? Well, go to the Top of the World, of course! Conveniently located just a ferry ride to the other side of the Yukon river from Dawson City and leading west toward Alaska, the Top of the World highway winds it’s way toward the border for 60 miles or so. Just as we were climbing up to the first ridge, a BIG cat crossed the road and then casually looked back at us as we slowly passed the spot where he went into the brush. Turns out it was a lynx. Soooo beautiful and majestic! If only I’d had the camera ready!   Lesson learned!   Again the drive was so colorful but this time the road was following the tops of the mountains and along ridges.  In the distance there were numerous cloud shrouded mountain ranges visible in every direction.  You could peer deep down canyons with cold blue-green rivers flowing through black spruce forest and follow the change to smaller shrubs and finally tundra as your eye moved up the mountainside.  It really did feel so much like the very top of the world! But then we checked our map and found out the highest point was around 4,500’. Geeze, our place in Clifton is higher than that! Shows you it’s all really perspective…..

We spent the night pulled off on a dirt side road surrounded by gorgeous colors once again. It was like being in another world….Next morning we crossed the border in a truly remote and beautiful spot. The agent we spoke with there described the scene of watching 100,000 caribou migrate over the pass where he works. It sounded so amazing!  But what was even more amazing to us was that we were actually, finally in ALASKA! Yup, only 3 weeks to get through Canada (who knew it would be so big and full of interesting places?) and finally we arrived, greeted by a couple Inushucks high on Davis Dome.

From there we coasted (almost) down along a lovely creek to the little town of Chicken.   Really.  Chicken, Alaska, pop. 130 summer, 2 winter.  It was founded by a couple of miners (they wanted to call it ptarmigan, but couldn’t spell that) who eventually pulled over a ton of gold out of the creek and surrounding area. These days there are still folks mining around here in fact Jim successfully tried his hand at gold panning and in the process met some very interesting people.  Several residents have restored some of the old buildings and one couple created a wonderfully landscaped campground and store/restaurant on an old tailings site.  We had stopped just to check it out, take a few photos and of course acquire a few Chicken mementos for the chicken lovers we know back home, but the place was so sweet and the people so kind we wound up spending the rest of the day and camping out there, too.  While Jim was panning, I took a ride out around “town” (there are maybe 6 buildings and an old, giant dredge spread out over a half mile or so).  Some one had advised me to head out to the airstrip to look for moose (really?) so I did and in fact about 3 minutes after arriving found a young bull feeding in a pond off to the side of the runway. He SO did not care about me being there, just went on munching very contentedly. It was way beyond cool to be able to stand and watch this guy for quite a long time.

We were warned that people often have a hard time leaving Chicken and so it was for us. In the morning we were packed and pretty much ready and the next thing I knew, Jim was over at the panning site with another load of gravel in Dave’s rusty old pan! Guess there really isn’t any blaming him. It’s a pretty cool thing to watch those shiny little flecks of gold appear as the sand washes away.  We did finally manage to get going and make our way back to the pavement of the Alaska Highway a couple hours later.  Turned out to be a week long detour but worth every mile!!!

Arctic Adventuring

Whirlpool Canyon. Wow!  Just a small dirt track off the highway to a set of rapids on the Liard River.  You can’t even see it from the road, but when you walk down though the woods to where the trail opens up an UNBELIEVABLE site greets your eyes. Thousands of logs, full grown trees stripped and throw up onto land by the power of the river, are jammed like giant pickup sticks for 150 yards up an old creek bed and along the jagged rocks that frame this bend of the river. When spring runoff hits the river probably quadruples in size and creates this huge whirlpool that everything gets sucked into.  Humans are completely dwarfed by the scale of this natural sculpture.  Adding an over-the-top component to the scene is the mineralized, vividly colored and layered rock upon which we walked to explore the area. And once again, love was all around as evidenced by the loverocks Jim was able to find.  Hopefully his pictures can give you a hint of what this incredible corner of the Liard River holds.

When we finally pulled ourselves away from Whirlpool Canyon the next morning we headed  to Watson Lake, a SMALL town on the AK Hwy that had the distinction of being a location of one of the military camps supporting the construction of the highway in 1942/43. Apparently one afternoon a homesick soldier added a board to the local sign post indicating the name of, and mileage to, his far away hometown. The idea took hold and the sign post grew to include other distant, longed for places. When the highway was opened to civilian traffic several years later, folks started making and posting signs to their hometowns as they passed through. This “sign post forest” has grown to include over 65,000 signs from all over the world. REALLY.  It’s not like anything you could imagine until you see it!  Of course we stopped only to check it out, but got inspired, made our own little ‘Yobp’ sign with a pie pan and a sharpie, adding it along with our beloved Glacier Brewing Company sign (Susan was really sad to see that pulled off of Thumper) to the crazy forest of other signs. If you ever get up to Watson Lake be sure to look for them….

After all that fun we just rolled along for quite some time (i.e. a few hundred miles) before turning north off the Alaska Highway at Whitehorse to take the side-route through Dawson City (hint, hint for those of you playing “guess the miles” ;-).   Dawson City is on the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers which was the crux of the Klondike gold rush in the late 1890s and prior to that a long standing fish camp of the Native people. It’s a pretty cool, well preserved little town with a wild history.  Jack London was there for a year or so trying his hand at getting rich.  He failed, like so many others, but did get good material for a couple of his well known books.

While hanging out in DC for a couple days we learned that the road up to the Arctic Circle from there is  actually pretty good (for a rain washed, permafrost heaved, dirt and gravel ‘highway’) and so we decided to head up to 66*33’ and check it out. The Dempster highway actually did turn out to be an extraordinary experience. The journey ran through grey, black and red stone mountains, along clear, deep rivers and through autumn colored boreal forest and tundra following a route established by the nomadic First Nations(who followed the caribou migrations for many centuries before anyone else showed up here).  Every couple minutes one or the other of us was pulling out the camera trying to capture the miracle of this place. But forget about it! There is no way to do any of it justice-blazing reds, oranges, golds and yellows sweeping up mountainsides and across the valleys literally hundreds of miles in every direction! All you can really do is thank the universe for the privilege of being witness to it. 

A mere 252 miles of this glory and we arrived at the Arctic Circle, delightfully enough situated on the crest of a rolling hilltop with mind blowing 360’ views of the just described color.  We pulled off the road into a sweet little spot where we could enjoy the scenery. The sun was still not ready to set at 10:00pm so  Jim spent some time taking photos while Susan made a celebratory dinner (local wild harvest morel mushrooms J).  We were just ear to ear smiles, reveling in the amazing beauty and awesome day, not expecting anything else too extraordinary would happen….  Then Jim went out the back door to grab something from the cab of the truck and about ran into a grizzly bear that had come up to explore our camp!  Needless to say, Jim backed in pretty quickly, grabbed the camera and we spent the next several minutes trying to get a good look at Mr. Bear while the light faded from the sky.

We had been hoping to spend the night outside watching   for the aurora borealis, which starts getting visible again this time of year, but between the bear and a light rain that started falling, we just finished the wine and went to bed. In the morning Jim went out to see if he could find bear tracks in the mud. And boy, did he! Not the biggest bear tracks ever, but lots of them all around behind the camper and on down the road. It looked as if our friend came back around later, too. And to answer the often asked question “Does a bear poop in the woods?” the answer is “No. He poops in the middle of the road” and having first observed a very clear example on this misty morning, we have now seen supporting evidence on several other occasions. Pretty clear what bears think of humans driving through their territory!

But Bear was not our only visitor. VERY big, clear paw prints in front of the truck reveled a wolf had also checked out our camp during the wee hours. Just a short distance up the road we found deep hoof prints indicating a large caribou came through as well.  Never have I been so appreciative of Thumper’s indoor plumbing than I was that morning realizing all the critters I might have met in a middle of the night trip outside!

One other cool find on this part of the journey was the existence of Inushucks. These stacked rock sculptures are rather human shaped and are traditional “greeters” to travelers in these ancient lands.   On the dome above the highest pass on the Dempster we found several such guardians who lent a very sacred feel to their windswept mountain top. We were, again, overwhelmed by the gratitude we feel in being able to experience such rare and amazing beauty.  On the way out we channeled our dear friend Dave and created an Inushuck lower down, next to a pull out, to greet other lucky travelers- it got a nice set of loverocks to go with it, too!

And just because the universe is so kind, coming down a hill in the last couple miles before the turnoff back to Dawson, we found two fox kits playing in the middle of the road. They ran and hid as we went by but then jumped right back out and went to investigate the car that came after us. We watched them play and wrestle for a bit before running off into the brush again. This time, we actually got a picture!