Hello from Anchorage, the biggest city in Alaska. I am having a great time up here in the Northland, even though I have not seen a star or a dark night in a very long time.
After we left Vancouver, we went rafting with Herbie on the Thompson River. As always, he gave us a good wet ride and we all had fun. The next day we drove north and prepared to celebrate Canada Day. Unfortunately, Burns Lake, British Columbia was not prepared to celebrate Canada Day. Instead, we walked along the train tracks (a first for most of my passengers) and put pennies (Canadian pennies) under the train wheels. Now we all have flat pennies.
For the second of July, we drove to Hyder, Alaska. They are only accessible from Canada and use Canadian money, telephones, and schools. They don't even have a border crossing, you just drive off of the paved road and land in the USA. There are about 90 residents in Hyder and as you would imagine about a town at the end of the road, it attracts some interesting people.
We drove out to bear creek, but were too early. In late July the bears stand all up and down the creek and eat salmon. We just saw mosquitoes instead. The next day we drove up to look at the Salmon Glacier. It is the third biggest Glacier in Alaska and is very impressive.
At Moose Meadows we camped and looked at the meese. We also took some canoes on an all day paddle and saw beavers, meese, eagles and a little bit of rain.
Then we went north even more to the Yukon Territory of Canada. We stopped at the signpost forest at Watson Lake and then went to Whitehorse. Whitehorse it the capital of the territory and home to about 22,000 of the territory's 34,000 people. In Whitehorse we went on a horseback ride above the treeline. We spent many hours crashing through brush and enjoying the scenery.
From Whitehorse we headed up to Dawson City. Dawson is an old gold rush town on the Yukon river. We went to the Gaslight Follies (a silly show about the history of the area), played on some old gold digging dredges and enjoyed the town of 2000 people.
From Dawson, we took the long, unpaved Top of the World Highway to Alaska. (We will take the long, paved Alaska Highway back to Canada in a few days.) At the border, a U.S. customs agent gave us some really cute caribou stamps for our passports. Then we passed through Chicken, Alaska and stayed in a nice lodge on a lake in the middle of nowhere.
From there we blazed west on the unpaved Denali Highway. We were lucky enough to see Mt. McKinley (the highest point in North America) along the way. The next day we hiked in Denali National Park and looked for wildlife. That night we went to a local Bluegrass festival and got to see a bit of real Alaskan culture. It was nice to see people camped all over the hills around town. I didn't even feel out of place for a change, almost all of the men had long hair and a beard.
Last Sunday was the World Cup Finals, so while my group looked for more bears in the park, I watched France demolish the overconfident Brazilian side. Then I drove to the end of the road and took a nap for the rest of the day in an effort to catch up on some sleep.
On Monday, we drove to Talkeetna and took our plane flight. It was truly amazing. The weather was perfect and we flew through the mountains and looked at Mt. McKinley from the air. The plane had skis, so we landed on a glacier and played in the snow. I am told that the Mountain is visible about 30% of the time and the fact that we saw it perfectly clear on two out of four days is truly something special. Many people come and go from the area without ever having seen the mountain.
That night we drove down to Seward and my friend Gillian was there with four of her travelling buddies. I hung out with them for a few hours, then went back to camp and ran into a former Trek leader and caught up with him for a while.
The next day we (Me, my group and Gillian) took an eight and one half hour cruise into the Kenai Fjords National Park. We had a salmon lunch on Fox Island, saw Orca whales, Humpback whales, sea lions, puffins, other birds and dolphins. We also watched the giant Holgate Glacier. It reaches all the way to the water and pieces of it break off and splash into the water and it is all very exciting. After Gillian left, we went back to camp and waited for the drizzle to stop, it never really did.
Today we went to look at the icebergs that fall of of Portage Glacier and then came up here to Anchorage.
Most of my current passengers have been on previous treks before and every thing has been going pretty smoothly. They are a nice group of people and we have been having fun.
Up in Dawson the sun rose at about three am. Then it set at around 11 pm. This was followed by about two hours of dusk, which led into about two hours of dawn, followed immediately by sunrise. This gave us about twenty hours of daylight and four hours of bright twilight.
In the beginning I felt silly going to bed before it was dark, even if it was one in the morning. Now I realize that if I want to sleep, I have to invoke a sunset by tying my t-shirt over my eyes. Apparently, the extra sunlight causes my body to produce more melanin and this reduces my physical need for sleep. I think this may be true because I have been feeling okay while getting what would be way too little sleep down south.
Goodbye for now from the Northland.
