Glacier Bay National Park

 On Thursday, we got into this airplane in Haines, AK....

 ...and flew over these mountains on a beautiful summer day...

 ...to get to this very out of the way national park in Gustavus, where we.....

 ....took lots of walks in the forest and along the beach (Thurs)....

 ...and braved the very cold rain that came in on Friday to take lots of pictures of...

 ....Harbor seals...

 ....fat mountain goats....

 ...scraggly wolves and....

...lots and lots of glaciers.  We then flew back to Haines in less than perfect weather in time to watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony.  Just a perfect side trip. We are headed to Skagway via the 20 minute ferry ride rather than back track 350 miles.  Hope the motorhome fits.

 We are heading south now and sharing the wilderness with a few new friends.

 Bears, both black and brown, have been very plentiful on this trip.

 We stopped at Destruction Bay, YT and camped on the shore of Kluane Lake.  

We headed West on the Haines highway and got back into the mountains.  This is one of the most beautiful scenic roads we have ever seen with hardly anyone else on the road.  We stopped for lunch and in a half hour only one vehicle came by.  We are now in Haines, AK and will take a bush plane out to Gustavus, AK to visit Glacier Bay National Park then onto a ferry to Skagway, AK.

Fairbanks, Alaska

 We visited Fairbanks and ran around to a few of the museums including this Ice Museum that displays various ice sculptures highlighted by colored lights.  It gave a hint of what the winter ice carving competition that is held every year.  The museum we toured was kept a temp of 20 degrees.  We are not interested in visiting for the actual winter event when it is 50 below.

 We took a drive out the the Alaska pipeline.  Millie is posing with a "Pig" which is used to clean the gunk from inside of the pipe.  

The pipeline runs above ground in many areas because of the permafrost just below the surface which makes the ground to unstable to support a buried pipe.  The posts that support the pipe have a passive cooling system that super cools the ground so the permafrost will not melt no matter how warm the pipe gets from the moving oil.  Fascinating stuff!

 It took a month to get here, but it was well worth the trip.

 Denali park is huge.  It is very primitive with very little developed area that allows ready access.  There is no trail system....you just wonder off into the wild and hope you can find your way back.  Having left our compass in the other car we took a 12 hour bus ride on 92 miles of winding, gravel road into the interior of the park.

 Along the way we were treated to partial views of Mt. McKinley and the entire Alaska Range.

 The weather finally cooperated with our plans and we had a wonderful day.

 Everywhere you look, there is another memorable sight.

 Not very dramatic but gets the message across.  

We saw moose, grizzly bear, Dall  sheep, caribou, fox and a mouse. 

 Today we ran around the Visitor's Center including the sled dog demonstration.

Denali is the only park that still uses dog teams to perform winter patrols...more reliable and more warm and cuddly than a snowmobile.

Kenai Fjords National Park

We had planned on taking a float plane trip out to Katmai NP and see the Grizzly Bears feeding at Brooks Falls.  We showed up fully prepared for the rainy weather and were told that the winds were too strong for us to go.  Very disappointing but probably the right decision by our pilot as another plane flipped on landing in Homer and one person was killed.  We probably don't need to add a plane crash to  our list of adventures.

 So, on to Seward and Kenai Fjords NP.  We started off with a two mile walk up to the edge of Exit Glacier.

 We spent today on a tour boat cruising the coast of the park looking for things like these Humpback whales.

 And whale tails.

We came close enough to the face of two glaciers to hear the cracks and booms inside as gravity pulls it into the sea.

One of our favorite animals, the Sea Otter was in abundance.

 Lots of seals to entertain us....

and, of course, millions of sea birds like these beautiful Puffins.

It was a wonderful, rainy day cruising miles of beautiful coastline.

Homer, Alaska

Last night our stop was directly under a glacier in a beautiful forest service park.

The Sterling Highway as it drops into Homer.

View from inside the motor home at our stop in Homer.

Homer is a chaotic mixture of fish shacks,  fishing charters and gift shops running down both sides of the Homer spit which juts out into Cook Inlet.  Setting is beautiful but way too crowded.

 Yesterday, we visited our first Alaska National Park - Wrangell-St Elias

 The park is over 1 million acres of beautiful wilderness that is only accessible by canoe, float plane or rugged hiking.  None of those options appealed to us considering the cold and wet weather we had (not to mention our lack of wilderness skills) so we settled for a long drive along one edge of the park.

 The Richardson highway runs along the Park's northern each as it winds it way out to Valdez, AK.

 Valdez is nothing that we imagined it to be.  It reminded us of the fjords of Norway and Sweden.

With moutains all around it really resembles a large lake rather than a bay except for all the of the fishing boats in the harbor.  Even with the weather it was a wonderful drive.  Today we decided to take the day off.

Top of the World Highway and....Chicken, Alaska

This morning we headed up The Top of the World Highway which is a dirt or gravel road that winds along the top of a ridge for about 90 miles.  Very slow going......

 but amazing views all the way to theAlaska border.

 Surprisingly, they let us back into the US, although I don't think the agent was too amused when I asked what he did wrong to get posted to this crossing.

We are now "camped" in beautiful downtown Chicken, AK.  Chicken got its name from the early gold rushers who founded the town.  The wanted to name it after the Alaska state bird...the Ptarmigan...but nobody knew how to spell it so they named it Chicken.  Lots of active gold mining going on with the price so high.  

Klondike Highway

 We left the Alcan Highway for now to take the historical gold rush route to the Klondike.  These are called 5 Finger Rapids and represented a significant obstacle to the riverboats going down river from Whitehorse to Dawson City.  

 We arrived in Dawson City and started our sightseeing at the old Dredge #4.  This  is the largest wooded dredge in the world and it was in continuous operation until 1959.

 View of Dawson City from the top  of Dome Mountain

 Dawson City is like a living, working Knot's Berry Farm. 

 Most of the building on the main street have been restored and now they are working on the side street buildings.  A very dry climate has helped preserve these 100 year old structures.

 After we finished with Dawson City we waited 4 hours to catch this ferry across the Yukon River that leads us to our next road - The Top of the World Highway which will take us to Chicken, Alaska.

Tonight we are stopped at a wonderful Yukon Government camp right on the Yukon river.