Circling Back - On the Way Home

Well folks, here we are again in Tok Alaska. You might remember, we have been here before. It is a town on both highway entrances into interior Alaska from Canada.

We have had an incredible two weeks since the last posting. We spent two nights in a Fred Meyer parking lot in Wasilla. We did maintenance on truck and motor home. We traveled to Anchorage for restocking as we headed to the coast. A night in Portage allowed us to closely inspect a glacial iceberg, albeit in a lake. It is a wondrous sight. We hiked up to see a glacier in the raw. It, too, is impressive.

The Exit Glacier - Close up and Personal

Seward

We moved on to Seward, a coastal town known for its fishing and tourism. Both nearly got us, as they were having a fishing derby and tourists on the last weekend before school started in a lot of systems. We did manage to get rv sites near the water, but we got two out of the last three. We did the touristy thing and got on a tour boat to view wildlife and hopefully see a glacier from the water, but it was rough sailing, so the bay’s wildlife was our limit. Fortunately, we got to see a very cute sea otter at length (several commented that it looked like he was enjoying looking at us!), many puffins, kittiwakes and the endangered Stellar sea lion. The highlight of Seward was the Sealife Center. It had several aquariums; in one we could see diving birds “catch” their dinner 30 feet below the surface. It is an amazing sight.

Stellar Sea Lions in Resurrection Bay near Seward

Juvenile Puffin at Sealife Center in Seward

Downtown Seward

Homer

The next port of call for us was Homer. It is a quaint village best known for its sport fishing. We parked the rig facing the water, so our view out of the windshield was the bay. We took another tour boat out to an island city called Seldovia. On the way we stopped to view a small island called Gull Island to view, you guessed it, gulls. But there were many other seabirds nesting on the island, including Puffins with their colorful mating beaks. Another extra was a sighting of five black oystercatchers.

View from our campsite on the Homer Spit

Seldovia Harbor

The Gulls, Kittiwakes and Murres on Gull Island

Four Sand Cranes Flying at Sunrise in Homer

We traveled back for another stop at Portage to go to the Wildlife Conservation Center. It has fenced animals, including bears (black and grizzly), wood bison, sitka black tail deer, and others. They have two main missions: to increase the size of the wood bison population in Alaska and rehabilitate injured animals back into the wild.

Anchorage & the Fair

We spent two days in the Anchorage area. One day we went to the Alaska State Fair which is famous for the VERY large vegetable contest. The day we were there they weighed in a world record kale (106 POUNDS!). And we saw the Kenai Racing Pigs (they race for oreo cookies!)

The Alaska State Fair

World Record Kale - 106 pounds

We also “toured” Earthquake Park, a small park dedicated to the devastation caused by the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. The epicenter was near the port of Valdez, which was our next stop.

Valdez

We viewed a film in Valdez on that earthquake; the documentary was filmed in 1964 at the time of the quake. Some of the footage was shot by sailors on a ship that had just that morning docked and was being unloaded. The ship apparently bounced off the bottom of the bay 3 times, surged into the downtown area and ended up back in the bay – floating! It is an impressive and moving film. The effects on the southcoastal part of Alaska was tremendous. Even today, you will hear “it was different before the earthquake” about lots of natural and manmade features – Valdez was moved four miles to be safer should there be another quake, the Home “spit” where we camped is 6 feet lower than before, the industries of all the towns in the affected areas changed significantly. Before they were big ports and industrial areas; today they survive mainly on fishing and tourism.

More Glaciers - Worthington (near Valdez)

Valdez, like Homer, is a fishing village. It is also the terminus for the Alaskan Pipeline. We stayed in a city RV park close to the terminal where ships are loaded. The area was crowded with fisherpersons trying for the heaviest fish which carries a $15,000 prize. The salmon are spawning, so many of them die at the stream and river feeds into the inlet. There was discussion of trying to find a large dead one to see if we could win the prize. That idea was nipped in the bud. We also took another cruise, this time getting to see the Columbia Glacier from about a mile away. We could not get any closer because of the ice that had calved off the glacier blocked the water route. It is wild going through such large ice remnants in a boat.

Glacial Ice near Valdez

"Campsite" in Valdez

We stopped for two days at a crossroads town called Glennallen, visiting the Wrangler-St Elias National Park and Preserve. This brings to mind, we have seen at least 7 active volcanic mountains (a couple of times we thought we saw steam, but who knows with the clouds in the area.)

Now we are at Tok, planning our trip through Canada. There are stops in Haines, Stewart/Hyder, Whitehorse and Watson Lake planned. Sometimes we will park off the side of the road for a night. This has been an exciting trip so far, with more excitement to come.