Back to Yukon and British Columbia

It is an incredible ride from Tok, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. For about 100 miles the road is often deformed by frost heaves, forcing especially trailers to a speed of sometimes no more than 20 mph, definitely making for an interesting ride otherwise ;-) .
 
Claudia and I love Yukon, lots of  space, nice people should you happen to meet some, magnificent landscapes! As the road via Chicken and Dawson City is closed near the Alaska-Canada border due to  a washed out road since spring, we return the same way we went up to Alaska.

Wildfire smoke at Highway 37 near Boya Lake

When we entered British Columbia shortly after visiting Whitehorse again, we just made it onto Highway 37 South to Prince George and later Whistler and Vancouver. Shortly after we passed the junction onto HW 37 wildfires closed that junction and it remained closed for the next 3 days. We saw the huge smoke clouds from quite a distance in the evening, an amazing sight. Initially I thought it was a thunderstorm brewing but it became clear not much later that this must be a wildfire... and actually an early end to our trip through British Columbia.

Salmon near Hyder, Alaska

We stayed for 2 nights at this beautiful provincial park on Boya Lake before returning to the road. On our trip South it became more and more obvious that there must be a lot more wildfires because the sky got hazy first and then smoke was clearly visible against the mountain tops and later like fog down to ground level. We decided that it can't be healthy to stay in that smoke for a prolonged time and rather rushed through to get out of it.

 Marshland near Stewart, British Columbia

A short relief from the smoke came in form of  a little side trip to Stewart and Hyder in Alaska again, at the Southern end of Highway 37. Stewart is a nice little township on the Canadian side of the border with Hyder being in Alaska. In Hyder, there is another Salmon spawning creek where grizzlies are supposed to wait for them and .... You get the picture! Again, there were of course no grizzlies, at least we saw some 30 or so salmon swimming around and preparing their nest, whatever they do in those creeks. However, some really good thing came of our trip to Hyder: unbeknown to us there is a glacier, called Salmon Glacier, where you can drive a gravel road up to a peak high in the mountains with a beautiful vista over the glacier and the surrounding mountains. So that's what we did and boy, was it worth the drive and even more the cleanup required on Shorty afterward. All that dust.....
If I have never mentioned it before: Alaska offers some incredible landscapes!

That's the road up the peak at Salmon Glacier, the glacier below

 IT was also very interesting to drive through Hyder. We spoke to a local running a kind of visitors information 'office' and he told us that there is actually no law enforcement in that part of Alaska, nobody pays tax, no police, no nothing, just a couple of ramshackle huts and some tourists indulging themselves on cheap booze.

Some 50 kilometers on that road got some dust on good old Shorty

After this side trip it still took us a couple of days to get out of the increasingly dense smoke as it only cleared out when we approached Squamish and Vancouver. This was a real shame as we missed out on the views on a beautiful stretch of road on Highway 99 from Lilloeet  to Whistler.

 Salmon Glacier, it definitely was worth the effort!

We had stayed in Vancouver for a week last year so this time we only did some shopping for groceries before continuing to the Canada-USA border.

Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula

Oh dear, I'm running behind 2 or 3 weeks now with my blog... Well, anyhow: 

On our arrival in Anchorage is was raining again. This may have influenced our view of the town but it seemed pretty bland, boring. The funniest thing is actually the main visitor center. It is guarded like Fort Knox, x-ray for Claudia's backpack and metal detector for us humans, all that supervised by 2 officers. Maybe that's the way they welcome visitors in Anchorage ;-) ?

 Cook Inlet on our way back to Anchorage

We had to wait out the weekend to have some tires replaced. The previous owner had put on new tires before selling the RV and apparently had gone for some rel cheapies. One of these had a blow out at Denali so we decided to replace them all with a more trustworthy brand.

 Same location, 2 monkeys in the image

Once this business was finished we headed off to Seward, around 125 miles along Cook Inlet and through the mountains of Kenai Peninsula. This is supposed to be an impressive drive, but on this day the weather was what we learned at the Seward Visitor information: overcast with a few showers. That's obvious their summer weather! When I asked the lady about the photos of a boat trip we wanted to do the next day, all showing blue skies, she just smiled and said:' These people select their photos very, very carefully'. Well , there you go!

 In Resurrection Bay, off Seward

It promptly had started to rain on the way to Seward and kept doing so for the rest of the day. We went to see a creek  where salmon was supposed to be spawning, the place being fitted with a underwater camera. The only fish we saw were some smaller salmons swimming lazily around that camera. Ok....
We found a nice place on a smaller road to stay for the night, close to riverbed. There, the highlight of the day showed up in form of a bald eagle landing on a tree stump in the middle of the river and sitting there for an hour or so, not bothered by our interest.

 Bear Glacier at Resurrection Bay

As the forecast was for more of the same weather we decided to sit out the rain because we definitely wanted to go on a 9 hour boat trip  into Prince William Sound to see glaciers calving into the sea, sea otters and maybe a whale. The next morning, however, against the weather forecast, we woke up to an almost clear blue sky. So we hurried to the ticket office for that boat trip and organized the tickets. After getting rid of Shorty at the public campground in Seward we walked to the boat and the tour would start soon after.

 The coastline at Resurrection Bay

This was absolutely the best boat tour we have ever done, even Milford Sound in New Zealand can't compare to the beauty of Kenai on a clear day. The landscape is just amazing, wildlife all over the place. First we were 'greeted' by a couple of sea otters swimming lazily on their backs in the bay. We also saw huge glaciers , smaller ones calving small icebergs into the sea, a couple of humpback whales, porpoises, sea lions by the dozens, puffins, several kinds of seagulls, more birds than I can remember, some mountain goats on the seashore, it was unbelievable. One of the best days of our whole trip!

 approaching a calving glacier at Aialik Bay

Next morning it was back to rain, so there was no point in staying at Seward. The next destination was Russian River, famous for salmon returning from the sea at this time of the year and grizzlies waiting there for them to eat them. To keep it short: we saw the river, didn't see any salmon and no grizzlies as well. It didn't bother us too much, though, we were still relishing the day on the boat.

 I knew that beanie would come handy

After one night there we decided to call it quits and try our luck at Valdez.After a beautiful drive with wet tundra, mountains and glaciers we stayed for the night at some state park along the road. The weather had cleared  and we hoped to make Thompson Pass in sunny skies  the next morning as there are supposedly some amazing views onto glaciers and the mountains.

Humpback whale going for a dive



On our approach to the pass it started raining again, the pass itself covered in  thick fog, only to revert to proper rain at Valdez.  Apparently it rains a lot in Valdez, the forecast was for a lot more rain, so the next day we were back on the road to Tok to leave Alaska for good.

A puffin

Alaska seems to be very beautiful in  parts, however most of the beautiful parts are accessible only by plane or boat. This makes things slightly expensive. We had considered visiting Katmai National Park, but at a cost of $ 1.500 per person for a 2 night trip this simply was outside our budget. Nevertheless we saw some impressive landscapes, a lot of wildlife, the changes caused to permafrost grounds by rising temperatures.... it was definitely worth the drive!

Denali National Park

On our way from Fairbanks to Denali the weather was still fine, providing us with some good views onto Mount Denali from around 120 miles distance. Even that far away this is a huge bugger! Apparently it's the highest mountain on earth if the actual elevation from the base is measured , some 16.000 feet.

 Mount Denali

We reached the National Park in pouring rain, however and the forecast for the next day wasn't much better. As you can't travel through the park in your own vehicle and the trips in the shuttle buses are usually fully booked at this time of the year, we jumped on a bus for an 11 hour return trip the next morning. Forecast was for clouds with a 30% chance of rain. This turned out to be rain all day. Anyway, as the bus driver mentioned, at least if we saw some wildlife on this trip, it would be close :-). In the end the trip was quite enjoyable despite the rain. We saw some grizzly bears, moose, marmots, golden eagle, lots of mozzies, but not Mt. Denali.

 Two huge moose antlers hooked together after head-butting. They couldn't separate so both died 

After sitting out the rain for one day at the camp ground we tried again the day after. And boy, did we get lucky! Forecast was again for a 20% chance of rain, but no rain was to be seen that day. We did a shorter trip of about 9 hours and were just spoiled by wildlife sightings. 16 grizzlies, sometimes a sow with cubs,  caribou, moose, a wolf, mountain goats, the eagles, marmot, you name it, all were there to be seen. Claudia and I did a 2 hour hike up a mountain with amazing views onto Mt.Denali and the surrounding landscape.
This was Denali as good as it gets! What a day.....

So, the next day we were happy to leave for Anchorage.