Category: AK Road Trip

AK Road Trip: Anchorage, Denali and the Wrangels

11/23/2014

After our day in Seward we headed back up to Anchorage to enjoy some big city living for a few days. We decided to treat ourselves to a hotel room for one night and they were kind enough to let us check in at 10am, so we spent an entire day lounging in bed, watching TV and just enjoying being out of the truck. The next day we did some shopping at a few outdoor stores and had lunch at a great little Himalayan restaurant called The Yak and Yeti. We also got to spend some more time with Steve's family at the RV park and tame some of the spring ponies at the playground with the kids. The highlight of our time in Anchorage was dinner and a movie at the Bear Tooth Theater Pub where we say Expedition to the End of the Earth, a really funny documentary about a ships voyage to the Northern reaches of Greenland

After our big city adventure we headed up to Knick to visit Ryan and Erin Redington, some friends from work, and say hello to their brand new baby. Ryan's grandfather started the Iditarod in 1973 and their family has some incredible accomplishments in the sport of dog mushing. Ryan's grandfather even drove a team all the way to the top of Denali! The next morning we drove north to see Denali in person, and the weather didn't disappoint. We stopped at the Southern viewing point and were treated to spectacular blue skies and an unobscured view of the top of the mountain. We had originally planned to drive all the way to the park entrance and into the park, but since we wouldn't be able to drive past the visitor center due to weather we decided to save gas and start making our way back south.

Our only way out of the interior was back through Tok, but rather than go back up towards Fairbanks we decided to head East from Anchorage and drive past the Wrangell mountain range. Just before Glenallen it started to snow, and by the time we reached Gulkana the roads were pretty slick. We camped out for the night behind a gas station, and made the rest of the trek to the border the next morning, stopping in Tok for one more meal at Fast Eddy's. The drive down through Canada took three more days, and the only major stop we made was at Liard Hot Springs. We arrived in Tulare 17 days after we left Skagway, with 6,774 new miles on the truck.

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AK Road Trip: Family Time in Seward

11/13/2014

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After our adventure in the Arctic Circle we drove down to Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula, to meet up with Steve's family and take a day-cruise on Resurrection Bay (thanks Dad!). We enjoyed a few drinks at the HooDoo Brewery in Fairbanks and dinner at Silver Gulch Brewing in Fox before driving most of the way to Anchorage overnight. In the morning we woke up and did the more scenic portion of the drive through the Chugach State Forest, enjoying the countless views of mountains, inlets, lakes and glaciers before arriving in Seward at noon.

The cruise wasn't scheduled to depart until 1pm, so we enjoyed a picnic lunch out of the rain on the boat ramp and watched the jellyfish drifting lazily through the harbor. The sky began to clear shortly before the boat left the harbor, and we sailed away from Seward under blue skies with a brisk wind. The majority of the passengers on the cruise seemed to be from some sort of historical society, and there was a guest-narrator who focused mostly on the military history of Resurrection Bay. We sailed past huge mountains with hanging glaciers, along rugged coastline, and past islands both large and small that had been used as lookout posts during WWII.

The weather seemed unable to make up its mind, and the mix of sun and rain provided us with some beautiful rainbows as we headed South, but the clouds in the distance began to take on a darker more sinister hue. Soon enough we spotted lightning in the distance, and as we rounded the corner toward Bear Glacier and Kenai Fjords National Park the seas grew rough and we were pelted with pea-sized hail. After a brief view of the glacier the boat turned North again and headed back toward fair weather. We passed a colony of stellar sea lions relaxing on the rocks at Cape Resurrection, and enjoyed an escort of porpoises surfing our bow-wake as we got closer to the harbor. The boat docked around 4pm, and as we walked back towards town we passed a beautiful sea otter relaxing on his back and enjoying his dinner of mussels from under the dock.

For dinner we went to a nice seafood restaurant right next to the bay and only a short walk from the hotel everyone was staying in. The next morning we ended our time in Seward with a brief walk around downtown before meeting up with the family again for a short hike out to Exit Glacier. The drive back to Anchorage was just as beautiful as the drive out, and we made several stops for photos before arriving in town that afternoon.

For more pictures, see the Photo post.

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Ak road trip: Skagway to Arctic Circle

10/28/2014

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When we finished the season in Skagway we decided to spend some time exploring the interior of Alaska before heading back down to the Lower 48. After a few days of packing and prepping we said goodbye to the town we've called home for the last few months and headed over the White Pass and into Canada. Our plan was to drive North to Dawson City in the Yukon and then West to cross the border back into the US and head for Tok. Of course, as typically happens on our travels through Canada, things didn't go at all according to plan. We arrived in Dawson City the next morning, spent about 20 minutes looking around the three stores (including the grocery store) that were still open, and then tried to get back on the road. We drove up and down the tiny town looking for the road to the border, finally stopping at the visitor center where we learned the road was on the other side of the river, but the ferry was no longer running because that border crossing was closed for the season. No information about the border closure had been posted on the internet...there was no signage along the road warning of a dead end ahead... no clue at all to tell us we were wasting our time (and precious gas money!) driving north. So we had no choice but to turn around and drive 8 hours South, to just two hours North of Skagway, to take the alternate road to Tok via the only border crossing open year round.

Once we got back on the good side of the border, things improved. We made it to Tok around 11pm and since it was snowing we decided to stay the night in a parking lot and continue on in the morning. We woke up around 11am to a few inches of new snow and after filling up the truck we headed to the only restaurant in town, Fast Eddies, for our first real meal since Skagway. All fueled up, we continued on towards Chena Hot Springs and the prospect of a warm soak and a good shower. We made it to Fairbanks around dinner time, picked up a few Papa Johns pizzas to tide us over for the next few days and drove the 45 minutes out of town to the hot springs. We soaked and stretched in the warm water until midnight and then drove down to one of the many trailheads on the side of the road and camped out for the night.

The next morning we woke up early to drive back to Fairbanks, and enjoyed a race with a big bull moose running along the side of the road as well as several more moose sightings along the way. Our plan for the next few days was to go as far north towards the Arctic Ocean as we could, so we stocked up on wager and fuel and headed up towards the Dalton Highway.

We followed the course of the Alaska pipeline as we wound over and around mountains and through forests on the narrow dirt road. We reached the Arctic Circle a little after noon, and several hours later we pulled into Coldfoot for gas, just as it began to snow. Coldfoot, the only services available between Fairbanks and Deadhorse, is little more than two gas pumps, a truckstop/restaurant, an airstrip and a "hotel." There wasn't much to see so we decided to keep heading North and try to reach Deadhorse by the next day, but little more than an hour into the drive the snow intensified and low visibility and slick roads forced us to slow to a crawl.

We soon pulled up to a line of semi-trucks waiting in a turnoff before a hill, and found out that another large truck was stuck on the mountain pass ahead and blocking the road. Luckily we only waited several minutes before the road was cleared and we were able to head up the mountain, past avalanche signs warning us not to stop on the road. The road hugged the side of the mountain to the left and a small guardrail stood between us and the sheer cliff to the right, but the storm had settled in and there was little visible beyond the swirling snow. We continued driving well into the night, since the view would have been the same no matter what time of day it was.

A little after midnight in Happy Valley, about two hours from Deadhorse, we were again stopped by a long line of trucks and this time the news was not so good. A truck had tried to make it over the next pass without chains, spun out, and was completely blocking the road. It was the same truck that had tailgated us for about 20 minutes before finally passing us and the three trucks in front of us, and the other drivers were not too happy that his reckless driving was going to cost them an entire night. We stayed and talked to the trucker in front of us for about an hour, and since it was going to be at least 4 hours before the road was clear we went back to a pullout to spend the night. The storm was predicted to blow for the next few days without stopping so Steve did some preemptive shoveling to hopefully make it easier for us to get out in the morning and then we settled in for the night.

When our alarms went off at 6am visibility was still only about 10 feet, so we tucked back in and got a few more hours of sleep and woke up again at 10. It had snowed more than a foot overnight and the thick cloud of white still stretched all the way to the ground, so we decided to play it safe and head back south... no point in wasting gas and risking getting stuck on the road if we couldn't even enjoy the scenery. Several southbound trucks were lined up next to our turnout, apparently waiting for another truck that needed to chain up before continuing down the road, so we ate the last of our leftover pizza for breakfast and chatted with a DOT maintenance guy until traffic was moving again.

Despite the heavy snowfall we didn't have any trouble getting moving, although the same couldn't be said for the maintenance truck, whose tires just kept spinning and digging themselves a deeper icy hole. Fortunately all it took was a tow strap and a little tug from my truck to get him going, and we all had a laugh about my little mid-size 4 cylinder saving the day. We didn't make it very far before we were once again forced to wait for a vehicle that had spun out, this time it was the grader that was supposed to be clearing the road and it took 40 minutes and several heavy machines to haul it out of the ditch. Despite the treacherous conditions, we didn't have much trouble with the road, and staying behind the big trucks and letting them blow the deep snow out of our way we made it out of the storm without much trouble.

When we got back to the base of the mountain pass we had crossed the night before, the storm had cleared and the sun revealed the most stunning 360 degree views of the mountains we had missed the night before. We pulled over and spent at least half an hour taking it in before starting the climb up and over the pass. The next several hours were spent driving through the Alaska of everyone's imagination... tall snow-capped mountains stretching as far as the eye could see, broken only by the narrow road winding through them and that big metal pipeline pumping oil down South. We made it back to Coldfoot late in the afternoon and shared a hard-earned cheeseburger before continuing on towards Fairbanks.

After a few more hours in the car we stopped to stretch our legs and enjoy the strange rock formations around "finger mountain," a 40ft tall rock shaped roughly like a finger, conveniently pointing towards Fairbanks making it a great landmark for bush pilots. We also took some time to climb around and explore the oil pipeline a little closer. We pulled off for the night several hours outside of Fairbanks, and made the rest of the journey back to civilization (and cell phone service) the next day

For more pictures, see the photo post.

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AK Road Trip: Anchorage, Denali and the Wrangels

AK Road Trip: Family Time in Seward

Ak road trip: Skagway to Arctic Circle

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