This morning we went to the free car wash in Tok at the Tesoro station and spent an hour or so scrubbing off the 1000 miles of Dalton Highway dust. It’s nice to have our white truck back:
We drove just a bit South of town to the Tetlin National Wildlife Preserve headquarters:
The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks:
We then drove about 60 miles East to Tetlin NWR’s free campground on Deadman Lake. Thankfully, the only spot that would fit our monster RV was available:
While Trish made Shabbos dinner, I replaced the RV’s two manual thermostats with digital ones:
Good Shabbos from Deadman Lake, near the Alaska/Canada border! See the trip map for today’s drive.
This morning we drove to the end of the Glenn Highway and about 6 miles South on the Richardson Highway to the visitor center for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This park is the largest in the park system, is larger than Switzerland, and contains 7 of the 10 tallest mountains in North America.
The kids worked on their Junior Ranger workbooks. Here I think there looking at what I hope is simulated bear and moose scat:
The visitor center had pelts and skulls of area animals on display:
The kids received their badges:
Outside there’s a fish wheel on display, a kind of water wheel that scoops up salmon as they swim upstream to spawn:
It was too cloudy to see the Wrangell Mountains from the visitor center. We did a brief hike out to an overlook of the Copper River:
We only saw one colony of these mushrooms, each one the size of a ping pong ball:
The mosquitoes in the forest were plentiful and aggressive. We walked very fast to stop them from landing on us. Despite this, M walked behind Trish and swatted them when they landed on her. These are just the ones that stuck to her shirt. Yummy!
After leaving the visitor center, we drove North to the Tok Cutoff to overnight at the Chevron in Tok as we did the first time we came through three weeks ago. See the trip map for driving details.
This morning I tried to straighten out the rear staircase damaged by the wheel departure last week by lashing it to a tree and then stepping down on it. I did get it straighter, but it still won’t fold out:
On the way up the Seward Highway we passed some beautiful views:
We turned off the highway and headed up to the Alyeska Resort in Girdwood. While Trish was making lunch, I spotted a pair of free flight paragliders come in for a landing, so I rode my bike over to talk to them. They take the tram up to the top of the mountain, then fly down. Some day I’ll have to try unpowered paragliding.
After lunch, we headed out on our hike. The goal was to hike three miles in on the Winner Creek trail to a hand tram that’s used to cross an otherwise impassable river gorge. The hike starts by walking around the main resort building:
The trail starts off as a boardwalk:
After a couple miles we reached the junction for the hand tram:
We crossed a creek via a bridge:
Finally we reached the hand tram. The tram hangs from a steel cable and is moved along by pulling on a rope loop that runs through the tram cage, then around a wheel on each side and attaches the the tram on top. This design allows both the tram occupants and others on “shore” to help move the tram along:
After riding the tram across and back, we stopped at the bridge over the creek:
At last we returned to the resort:
Unfortunately, I forgot to turn off the tracking when we drove away, so only the first half of the track is of the hike:
Since it was getting late, we decided to overnight at a pullout on the Seward Highway just outside of Girdwood. The bottom of the RV is protected from road spray in places by tarp material, and this tarp was torn in spots as a result of the tire departure. Before dinner, I repaired holes in the tarp by gluing on tarp scraps over the holes:
The winds were gusty and the field ends in a 150 foot drop to the ocean below, so I wasn’t comfortable flying, but I figured I could at least get in some kiting practice:
The winds got to be pretty strong, so we put away the wing and continued North to Soldotna. M checked out a rod again, but the Red Salmon run still hasn’t picked up, so we again left empty handed:
They did have a cute bench out front at the visitor center:
We’re overnighting again at the Fred Meyer here. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
We were startled out of bed this morning at 3:45AM by Fred Meyer staff. They needed us to move our truck so that they could bring a semi into the parking lot. Thankfully, we had unhitched from the RV, and they didn’t ask me to move the RV.
After getting up the second time at a more reasonable hour, we drove South to Homer, at the Southern terminus of the Sterling Highway. This is literally the end of the road. We found a spot at the city campground which is located at the beginning of the Homer Spit. $15 a night gets you parking lot-style camping with no hookups:
Our neighbor is using his boat as an RV:
Down of the beach, we could see a couple guys setting up to do some kitesurfing in the distance:
We dropped off Trish at the Laundromat and I took the kids to the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center, operated by staff from the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge:
The visitor center was very well done, and the Junior Ranger workbook was quite challenging as well:
The kids received their badges. Because it’s a wildlife refuge, the patch is for “Junior Biologist”, not Junior Ranger:
Homer humor:
In Homer you can stand on the beach and see glaciers across the bay:
I went for a bike ride out to the end of the spit, where the harbor is:
I then rode up to Skyline Road where I could look down on the spit and the mountains across the bay:
Homer is a wonderful little town, in the summer anyway. Good Shabbos from Homer, Alaska! See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
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