Wildlife Alaska style.

Every time we drive the 30 miles north to Soldotna to shop we spot moose along the road. As a matter of fact a moose hangs out in or close to our RV camp (we will try to take a picture).

Trips to the beach have resulted in many sightings of bald eagles, and a sea otter floating on its back. Jannich also noted puffins bopping close to the charter boat.

Clamming

Razor clams are a delicacy. Last week during the Minus Tide which is an extremely low tide that happens twice a month, the three of us went clamming. Winston and Ruth stayed on the beach as we did not want our black dog to be a muddy brown. Jannich worked hard and walked quite a distance from shore, digging approximately two doz. clams. Cleaning them turned out to be the worst part of the job. This took at least twice as long as compared to digging them.

Ruth made fried clams and clam chowder. The owners of the RV camp gave us several recipes for cooking clams. The clam chowder was so good that Ruth suggested that Jannich go out the next day to dig more and he really was not too keen on that idea! In the picture below Jannich is to the right of center in the yellow shirt, on his knees digging with his hand.

(Note Mount Redoubt in the background. it is fifty miles away across Cook Inlet and it is 10.197ft high).

Ninilchik, Charter Fishing.

We are staying at the Alaskan Angler RV Resort. Here four fishing boats go out on twice daily charters in the Cook Inlet. Jannich had the opportunity to go along one day and his fish are displayed here 2nd and 3rd from the left He is also pictured here being shown how to fillet halibut.

The water was very choppy and a couple of the other people on the boat got sea sick. The fishing expedition is at least 6 hours in length and when people return they look like they have had a full day.

Ninilchik is a well known area for salt water king salmon fishing and record halibut catches. A record sport-caught 466 lb. halibut was pulled from Cook Inlet at Ninilchik. Jannich was happy with his catch. After filleting them they weighed 53 lb. Ruth is planning to go fishing with one of the boats on a salmon charter out of Seward and a halibut trip from Ninilchik. (After she picks up a supply of gravol).
Many people leaving on charters use the motion sickness patch plaster behind the ear.

Ninilchik AK

186 miles south of Anchorage: This is a fishing community that lives up to its Russian name, "peaceful settlement by a river".
The old Russion Orthodox Church, built in 1900, and the historic cemetery overlook the entire rustic village, and share the sunset skyline with Mount Redoubt and Mount Iliamna which are situated across Cook Inlet.

Beaches, rivers and boat launches provide access to Cook Inlet for world-class salmon and halibut fishing.

Ninilchik lies on the east coast of the Cook Inlet.
We arrived at Alaskan Angler RV Resort at the beginning of July and will be staying here till the beginning of September. At this point we are awed by the beauty of our surroundings.

Anchorage, Alaska

Anchorage has sometimes been described as "Half an Hour from Alaska". An half-hour trip in any direction from the city offers diverse wilderness experiences, but this is a modern metropolis with features that make it uniquely Alaska.
It is a melting pot culture: Eskimos and Indians who first entered the area 6000 years ago, Russians who came for the abundant fur found in the area, prospectors who searched for gold and adventurers who established a city of tents. The name Anchorage was adopted because this is where the boats anchored for inland expeditions. It is located at the top of Cook Inlet.
We went for a walk along one of the many walking/bike trails and enjoyed a great view of the MUD FLATS as the tide was out. These mud flats are potentionally dangerous. There are warning signs along the edge to tell tourists not to walk out on them. A tidal bore here is second only to the one in Nova Scotia Canada.
We read in the Anchorage daily newspaper this week that a morning jogger had encountered an aggressive black bear on the same trail. All ended well as the jogger continued to jog. Grizzly bears are less aggressive than black bears we have been told. This is a picture of the Mud Flats at the top of Cook Inlet.

Mt. McKinley range.

Our travels from Fairbanks to Anchorage took us through Denali State Park and past the spectacular Mt. McKinley Range. In this area there were numerous places where one could hike, canoe, kayak or raft in the back country.

Denali National Park is one of Alaska's major tourist destinations. We have been told that tourism is the number one industry in Alaska. Buses are ready to drive people into the back country and a wide variety of flight seeing tours are available.

Denali, "The Great One", is the name Athabascan people gave the massive peak that crowns this 600 mile long Alaska Range. This park is one of the world's last great frontiers for wilderness adventure.

Fancy German tour bus.

We first noticed this tour bus in Dawson City, we saw it again in Fairbanks and took this picture in Anchorage as these German tourists just completing a 3 week vacation were preparing to catch a flight back home the next day. They traveled seated in the coach part at the front and slept in the compartments with the windows at night. As you can see the storage compartments are opened up and the stove is lit with the driver being the cook and chief bottle washer. He also did the mechanical work on the bus if needed. Click on the picture to enlarge it and note the bus driver behind the woman.

This kind of a unit certainly attracted the attention of everybody in the the RV park. When we saw it in Dawson City we noted that they arrived at 7PM, cooked and ate dinner, had a little time to sightsee, and were gone the next morning at 7AM. It certainly is a long way for them to drive for a 12 hour visit. These people were on a tight schedule and we feel certain that they slept well when they got home. In Anchorage a second bus arrived at our park with more German tourists who had been on the road for a month having boarded the bus in Toronto, Ontario.

A picture of a sidewalk cafe, Anchorage.

Alaska Highway to Fairbanks AK

We stayed over for two nights in Tok to rest before traveling northwest toward Fairbanks along the Alaska/Alcan Highway. The Alaska Highway ends at Delta Junction ( the people of Fairbanks proclaim that the Alaska/Alcan Highway ends at Fairbanks at mile 1523).

Just outside Fairbanks is a small town by the name of North Pole. We visited a mega Christmas store which was complete with a cappuccino bar and every type of ornament you could imagine.

When we got to Fairbanks we did the tourist thing as you can see by the picture in front of the statue in the city square. We bought sweat shirts and hats as it is fairly cool here with the temperature being in the mid sixties.

We found a Pioneer Village with replicas of gold mining establishments.
Starting in Whitehorse and continuing through Dawson City to Fairbanks we noticed that many of the stores and houses were painted pastel colours and were trimmed with other pastel shades. We thought that this was to cheer them up throughout the long winter however by reading a tourist book we discovered something different.

The story goes that during the gold rush, house paint was in such demand in the booming town of Dawson that people took anything they could get-including "reject" colours that were not popular elsewhere. Almost every historic Dawson building is pastel.

Goodbye Dawson City.

After spending 3 nights in Dawson City it was time for us to leave. We caught the ferry across the Yukon river before 8 AM. We didn't know that we were in for a tough 186 miles to Tok Alaska.
The only stops we made were at the US border, Poker Creek and at Chicken AK. Total driving time to Tok was 61/2 hours. We stopped at Chicken (Chicken was named by the original inhabitants because they could not agree on the spelling of the Alaska State Bird which is PTARMIGAN) to refresh ourselves as most of the highway was gravel with soft shoulders and wash-outs. This entire highway is closed from September to March. This highway winds along the tops of the mountains. The population goes from 6 in the winter to 26 in the summer.
I guess you would call the village people of Chicken..... "Chicken burgers"!

We arrived in Tok AK with the truck and trailer covered in mud, but we were happy to have the trip over.

Dredge #4

After the original hand mining tools such as pick-axe, hand shovel and gold pan were abandoned on Bonanza Creek in favour of gold dredges, large "dredge tailings" that resembled huge stone caterpillars started to appear. Gold dredgers were half boat and half tractor.
They roamed the gold rich country like dinosaurs, tearing up the ground and hauling dirt into the machine with rows of iron buckets. Inside, the rocks and dirt were tumbled, in a deathly roar, and the gold was separated out. No grease was used on the bearings as it attracted the gold into a sticky mess.

While in Dawson City we took 1/2 a day to drive up Bonanza Creek and to tour Dredge #4 which has been declared a National Historic Site. The gold dredges operated until the early 1960s. We found it interesting that this "modern technology" still relied on an old timer SOURDOUGH on every dredge. He stood on the front platform and took samples of the gravel and dirt being dug up by the buckets. Using his gold pan he panned samples every few feet. When the SOURDOUGH held up 3 fingers it meant LOTS OF GOLD KEEP ON DIGGING, when he held up 2 fingers it meant enough gold but not much and when he held up 1 it meant NO GOLD SWING TO THE LEFT OR RIGHT.

Mining in all its forms remains the number one industry in the Yukon Territory.