The trouble with not having internet
connection very often is that it is easy to put off writing this blog and then
it becomes too late to remember what happened. For those of you who are
interested in our whereabouts and route, you will be surprised to know that we
are back in Montana, USA, having toured Alaska (and Yellowstone). The six weeks journey from
Wyoming up to the far north and back has really been a separate expedition of
nearly 8,000 miles.
By the way, for those of you with limited 'IT' skills (like me), if you click or select one of these photos, it will open in a bigger and more impressive format. If you don't, then it won't and you will moan to me about enormous mountain lions being small domestic pussies. Ample Ksample.
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Alaska Highway – Dawson Creek, British
Columbia, Mile 0 - Truck posing
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Scrawny moose with 2 calves licking
minerals from the road.
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If driving to Alaska, as we obviously were,
there are several routes possible but eventually they boil down to crossing
into Alaska from Canada on the Alaska Highway (sometimes known as the Alcan
Highway) or on the Top of the Word Highway. We chose to go in on the first and
come back on the latter. We had a time constraint of being back in Billings,
Montana on 22nd August to pick-up the very best (and only) daughter
from the airport; she is coming on a short visit to check up on us and to see
if we need to be institutionalised yet or if the Nav needs rescuing. Six weeks
for this trip might sound a long time but it is a very long way and there is a great deal to
see, both there and en route.
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Stone sheep in British Columbia – early
morning ‘game drive’
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| Large buffalo bull |
The Alaska Highway stretches 1422 miles
from Dawson Creek in British Columbia to Delta Junction in Alaska (obviously). It was built during WWII
as a strategic route avoiding the reach of the Yellow Peril bombers and took
more than 30,000 military and civilian contractors less than 8 months to
complete. Many of the Army engineering regiments used were black American
units; this seems a bit unfair to me, why couldn’t they have been used for
tasks in warmer climes and people more acclimatised to freezing conditions sent
to build the road? Today it is tar (or pavement – confusing?) the whole way and
can be driven all year round. Having said that, the winter weather causes
terrible problems, with frost heaves being a particular hazard.
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| Sleek and weary black bear |
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View through the windscreen of the Alaska Highway
by my accurate statistical analysis, there are 2,844,000 trees lining the length of this road
and that's just 1 tree deep.
Imagine how many there are if you go back 1,000 miles either side of the tarmac. |
At the start – Dawson Creek – hundreds
of RV, campervans, lorries, bicyclists, wierdos (and us) gather to get sorted
out before starting and to have their photos taken. The first few miles are
then spent with drivers racing off at high speed and sedate Brit travellers
thinking this is going to be hell. Luckily, after 50 miles or so, everyone is
spread out and one is then often alone on the road for ages. The journey
through British Columbia and the Yukon reminds one how vast Canada is and, in
that region, how lovely it is.
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| Signpost forest - Watson Lake |
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| Bald Eagle |
My notes for the trip north are not much
of a help here; they read – “few Knobs, loads of Beaver Creeks and Gulches. Impressive
site of moose road-kill – half acre of bloodstain. Lots of animals – wolf,
coyote, eagle (bald), caribou, eagle (golden), elk, porcupine, moose (live),
buffalo, 5 Stone sheep, 4 rabbits, 3 black bears, 2 spruce grouse and lots of
ravens”. In fact the first bear was particularly annoying as the Nav saw it
before me and therefore won the 1st-bear-seen prize. In her case it
was a lifetime supply of chocolate. Not much of a problem really as I seem to
provide that anyhow. If I had won I had a much better idea for a prize but I
won’t divulge that here as I may be able to think of another 1st-to-see
competition later – alligator perhaps? – and win it.
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| The tribe, the village, the customer? |
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| Alaska Hwy, camp on the Gerstle River |
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| That's not the EU flag the Navs displaying - it's Alaska's |
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| This was a large and not very friendly bear eating berries on the roadside. |
Another note reminds me that during a
picnic break on a little used and dusty track, 3 very bad looking baddies
turned up in a beaten-up car and approached us in the most menacing way – they
had knives, they smelt of booze, they hadn’t shaved(!!), they were going to
kill us – if we were lucky. As it happened, they were charming local Indians
called Edward, Melvin and Eric and only wanted a chat and to tell us how much
they loved their land and that we should be sure not to miss their local city (Winker)
Watson Lake, pop 4. It would have been hard to miss as the A Hwy went right
through. They urged us to attend the International air show and indeed we did
see a medium sized yellow helicopter formation flying with itself. Melvin’s
father fought in Europe during the 2nd WW and his grandpa in the 1st
– they must have felt a long way from home. Another tribe of Indians in the
area are called the Champagne Indians!
Yes; I’m not joking, their main village is also called Champagne and I think
they must have been given the name by some French trappers with a sense of
humour before the Brits took over and ruled with much more decorum.
Eventually we arrived safely at the US
border post just beyond Beaver Creek. Here we met the most odious, rude and, it
must be said, ugly American we have seen in 12,000miles and 5 months. She was
on duty and her already bad day got much worse when we polled-up. I made the
mistake of driving past the red stop light and this made her cross. Luckily
with much grovelling and telling her how pretty she was, we managed to defuse
the situation and were let in (without a full body search). The question
remains – how can the American authorities allow their border officials be so
awful? Others travellers that we have spoken to have had similar treatment;
these are often the first Americans that outsiders meet and they give a
terrible impression. They are so untypical of all the friendly and polite
people we have met so far. I will tell the president when called in for my post
tour de-brief (who will win? Obama - Mickey Rooney – Marsh Romney?)
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| The Alaska or Alyeska pipeline, sometimes above ground and sometimes below. Earthquake and ice-proof. |
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| Glacier on the Richardson Highway |
Anyhow, Alaska! It is a brilliant state
and definitely worth the long drive; in fact they journey there and back was an
equally great time. Rather than describe
everything, I will include more photos with captions which will hopefully be
less boring. I also try to include a map but I’m not too confident of success.
If anyone is planning an Alaskan trip, then I would be very keen to recommend
places to go and things to do. If any of you are keen on fishing, and I know
you both are, then Alaska is a must.
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| Mt Hayes, Alaska Range, South side from our camp |
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| A happy pixie blogging |
We decided not to go to the Arctic coast
as the road is unreliable, it’s a very long way, you have to stop when you get
to the oilfields and we would see equally fantastic sights further south. Many
people do make this trip and are particularly annoying as they invariably don’t
wash the very thick mud/dust from the back of their cars for ages and wear it
as a sort of badge – posing ponces, I call them. (The Nav has just read this
bit and asks why I don’t wash “my” truck then- that’s not the same thing and
anyway, I’m not in the RAF).
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| Mt McKinley from Denali Hwy |
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| Gold at the end? We couldn't find it. |
Our first leg through Alaska was south
from Delta Junction on the Richardson Highway and then across the Denali
Highway to visit Denali National Park. This was our first drive through serious mountain ranges – the Alaska
Range – with very snowy top, glaciers and ice fields. The Denali Highway runs
along the southern edge of these mountains and is lovely. It’s a 133 mile bumpy
track that has to be taken slowly but is well worth the effort. We stayed a
night in a perfect spot – on a spur overlooking a 20 mile wide valley to the
Sustina and West Fork glaciers coming out of 13,000’ mountains stretching for
about 80 miles across our front. This view alone was worth the 3,000 miles trip
from Wyoming. The next morning Bob and his son Corrie arrived to check out the
state of his meat-rack! It seems the he and his extended family of about 50
relations come and camp there in September for caribou and moose hunting. They
hang the meat for a few days and then share it out and sell the balance to a
dealer. None of the petty regulations that we have to suffer in England. Our
next camp was just short of the Parks Highway and was a useful stopover for our
trip to the tourist infested, rule-bound Denali National Park. We thought that
we should be able to see the famed Mount McKinley from here and there it was.
Only 3% of visitors ever get to see the peak as it is normally covered in
cloud. In fact, the information woman in the Park said no, you can’t see Mt McK
from the Denali Highway – it’s not possible. Well – there it was, rising
majestically from the shimmering plains – no, that’s Kilimanjaro - this was a
big snowy lump.
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| A charming German couple on the magic bus. |
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| Dall sheep ram in Denali National Park |
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| Green Bus route - Denali NP |
Denali Park was the only disappointment
of our trip. It is a true wilderness and they try their best to keep it that
way. This means that visitors can only enter the park on expensive shuttle/tour
buses. If one wants to see any animals close-up one needs to book seats in
advance for one of the early busses. For reasons best known to himself, our
driver was a Mexican called Manuel Ramos (wasn’t he the boss in the
Philippines?) and had quite a broad accent (aye-yai-yai-caramba!). He
encouraged our fellow passengers to shriek stop if we saw anything and he would
then do his best to park with a view. There were some of the normal gits on
board including a know-all who described “ a herd of ptarmigan”, “caribou work
in groups” and “that sheep is a full-coiler” describing a Dall sheep’s horns.
(When the Nav dug me in my ribs, I refrained from saying that I had spotted a
3-coiler earlier in the morning on a shovel recce). We did see the previously mentioned animals
and a couple of grizzly bears but there was such a crush to photograph them
from the magic bus windows that it was hardly worth it. There were a couple of
very german Germans who squashed the Nav flat and bashed me on my head in their
attempts to get the perfect snap. I got my own back by taking a picture of them
– they smelt and I suspect she had hairy armpits.
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The Nav at Exit Glacier, Kenai Peninsular
It's much bigger than it looks - she is some distance from it |
On our way further south, we stopped off
at the switched-on Nissan garage in Anchorage for a full service. This included
the fitting of oil filters that we had to have UPSed from our garage in
Dorchester thanks to the efficient and helpful Eric Moore of their parts dept.
Fighting-fit again we headed down the Kenai peninsula to Seward where we spent 3
nights in the area and made our base in a deserted car park looking out at Exit
glacier. There is a trail which leads to the top of the glacier and onto the
ice-field but, as a young and fit – in the ‘fit’ sense – girl I spoke to said
it was an 8 to 9 hour strenuous hike, we decided to join the trippers and
stroll to the foot of the ice. We also had a rather nervous walk for 3 or 4
miles up the Resurrection river. We were nervous due to the fact that the path
featured four very large and fresh bear dumps. An Alaskan teenage girl called
Valerie had disappeared 10 days earlier from a near-by campground and there
were sad signs up asking for info about her. I think it was a bear! (or she
eloped). People here take the threat of bears very seriously and many carry
industrial sized canisters of anti-bear pepper spray.
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| One of these was true |
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| Seward Harbour, Kenai Peninsular |
Seward is a nice little town and is the
centre of the Kenai game fishing industry. It manages to retain a small-town
charm despite the influx of thousands of grim ‘explorers’ paying day visits on
huge ocean liners. Having said that, they have cottoned onto the fact that they
should charge an arm and a leg for everything including fish. We thought we
would treat ourselves to some nice fresh fish from the quay and could only
afford a minute piece of rather dull hot-smoked salmon for about 6 quid.
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| Matanuska glacier from Glenn Hwy |
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camped on top of pipeline, mile 27 glacier -
7 barrels a second |
On our way back through Anchorage, we
had arranged to have the tracking and alignment etc checked on the truck. This is not as simple a procedure as it
should be. Not many places can fit a pickup with a camper on the back onto their
machines. The other problem is the old one of not understanding small
European-made vehicles. They couldn’t find out the settings needed for us so
had to “adjust it by eye”. Well, better than nothing I suppose.
We wanted to go down to Valdez which is
about a long day’s drive from the capital and is, like most roads in Alaska,
through stunning scenery. We climbed the Matanuska valley and passed it’s
impressive glacier on the Glenn Highway before turning south on the Richardson.
We camped 27 miles north of Valdez at the foot of the imaginatively named 27
Mile glacier at the top of the Thompson Pass. We thought we were just on an
isolated and quiet, if surprisingly straight, gravel track but we later learnt
that it was the course of the Alaska pipeline and we had 7 barrels a second
throbbing beneath our bed on their way to the terminal a Valdez. One isn’t
really meant to be anywhere near this strategic resource but no one told us to
clear-orf.
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| I will have this salmon |
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| Well - I would have had it if you lot buggered off |
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| Valdez Harbour |
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| Pinks queuing to spawn |
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| Sea otters salmon fishing |
Like Seward, Valdez is another nice
small town and is even more isolated. It started life as the setting off point
for all the many misguided fools on the Alaskan gold rush. Here we saw a very
obliging black bear trying to catch spawning salmon in a stream on the edge of
town. His style was slightly cramped by the clicking of camera shutters
(including mine) of 7 or 8 spectators. The local ranger, whose office was next
door, said that bears were cleaning out the salmon from this small stream.
Further round Prince William Sound, opposite the town there is a salmon
hatchery at Solomon Gulch which harvests the roe and then rears and releases in
an effort to maintain quality. When a ‘run’ is on, the numbers have to be seen
to be believed. Alaskans, bears, sea otters and sealions are just some of those
who prey upon this easy catch. Some charming US marines, on leave very kindly
gave us a whole filleted fish for our bbq; if a Marine can catch them, anyone
can.
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| Top of the World Highway going over the top of the world |
As the weather was becoming a little
unsettled we decided that we would start our long trip back south without
staying in Wrangle – St Elias National Park. It is very spectacular and has the
largest non-polar ice-field in the world but that is not much cop if the cloud
level is low and one can only see.... cloud. The road out of Alaska is much
feared as having a rough reputation but in fact the Taylor/Top of the World
Highway to Dawson City was great. The mainly un-paved road is in reasonable
condition and if one does not need to race everywhere at 60 mph, almost any
vehicle should manage it. The road takes a lot of hammering and therefore needs
continuous repair. These are the bits where one needs to be careful. It is a
lovely stretch of country through high rolling hills at, or just above the
tree-line. One will remember that I said that there are only two roads into
Alaska but even so, they are not busy; during one camp on the Top of the World
Hwy we only had two cars pass us in 9 hours.
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| Nav sitting on top of the world |
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| What a grizzly bear produces when it eats berries |
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| and this, when it eats valeries |
Dawson City is a great little town built
for the gold rush and hasn’t changed much since. It feels like it would like to
be a theme park but fails; it’s nicer. From here we followed the North
Klondike, Stewart-Cassiar and Yellowhead
Highways. Despite having been overloaded with spectacular, snow-capped
mountain ranges in Alaska, we still loved this beautiful drive.
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The old Alaska Highway - not much used, we camped in the road.
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| Heli logging - it's a doddle |
Some highlights included watching the
very skilful pilots ‘heli-logging’. I know from some friends who have flown
choppers before that flying in mountains, carrying under-slung loads, intermittent
visibility and working near tall trees are all hard to do without the odd
hiccup and falling out of the sky. These boys were doing all of the above at
the same time. They were clearing enormous
trees by winching them up and then piling them into giant pyramids so that they
could dry out prior to burning. Another less dangerous highlight was listening
to a Japanese girl in a small Canadian library trying to pronounce the word didgeridoo
on Skype! Annoyingly she wouldn’t talk louder for us to put it in context. I suspect that I might find it equally
difficult to pronounce one or two Japanese words. We saw a very obliging bear
walking on Bear Glacier (possibly put there by the Canadian Tourist Board?)
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| I'm amazed it works - they've stuck the tail rotor on top |
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| This is what they buid - these are big trees |
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| A very obliging black bear on Bear Glacier, Stewart, British Columbia |
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| Stewart - logging operations on a wet and misty day |
Perhaps the most dramatic part of the drive
south was the part through Jasper and Banff National Parks. There were heaps of
seriously spectacular scenery and perfect weather. It was only spoilt by the
huge crowds and comparatively heavy traffic. We tried to look at a waterfall
but were elbowed out of the way by hoards of camera wielding members of the
former axis – Germans and friends of the ‘didgeridoo-girl’. And so back to the
welcoming arms of America. We had driven about 8,000 miles on this side trip
and we loved it. An interesting observation is that Canadian drivers are
generally rude and aggressive. Lorries are particularly lethal and for us to
drive at or below the speed limit is dangerously slow as far as they are
concerned.
Here are a few more snaps which I couldn't fit into the right bits of text.
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| Spot the Nav - Ancient Cedar Forest, Yellowhead Hwy, British Columbia |
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| Rearguard Falls, Fraser River |
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| Mt Robson named after numerous famous Geordies - highest in Canadian Rockies |
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| Jasper Banff Nat Pk - Maligne Lake |
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| Jasper Banff Nat Pk - Athabaska river from Kerkeslin Camp |
.jpg) |
Now that's what I call a full-coiler
Big Horn Ram, Jasper National Park
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That's all for now - my little fingers are worn to stubs and you will all (both) be asleep.I'm getting seriously behind with this and may have to miss a chunk. We will see.
Toodle-pip
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