My Alaska Trip - Part 4: More Denali NP and Healy

The rain came Sunday night. It rained for less than an hour and only at some places. We were our for dinner and enjoyed our pizza in Bury St. Edmunds. On the way home we found one road flooded to a degree that we had to go a detour. That was Sunday, since yesterday (Monday) the weather is beautiful again. It is amazing how beautiful our last summer here is. I hope the nice weather will last for all of our summer guest. The first ones will arrive in three weeks from now.
Talking about the weather....



... the longer I stayed in Healy the better was the weather. I went on a short trip to Fairbanks to visit Evalyn's friend Teresa. Well, she is my friend, too, but I met her through Evalyn. It was ca. 80F and we had lunch on her deck under the trees. We had a very good time talking, laughing, eating. I didn't spent a lot of time in the town itself. The only place I stopped was the gas station (gas is so much cheaper here than in Healy) and Creamer's Field, an old dairy farm. This is where you can watch cranes and geese during the summer. Since I decided to buy another bus ticket into the park I had to go back to Healy on that night.

"Did you ride the bus with me before?" Yes, Jeremy, I thing so. My tour into the park to Wonder Lake started with a 30 minutes delay. The weather was good, some clouds, but we were even able to see the mountains through them. And the bus driver was talking about the shrubs of Denali. And when he started doing that I knew for sure I went on a tour with him before. I think it was in 2005. The really amazing thing was that he remembered me. On all my trips into the park I may have had 5 bus drivers, but how many tourists did he meet on all his trips? And it wasn't that I got extremely motion sick and he had to stop or anything like that. He just remembered me. Wow.
It was a great trip again and we saw a lot of animals. Unfortunately most of them were too far away for any photo. At Sable Pass we stopped for a short tailed weazle. A few meters further on we saw some caribou at the hillside, right next to a bear mother with two cubs. On the ponds between Eilson Visitor Center and Wonder Lake was a long tailed duck swimming and Jeremy was more than excited about that. Guess it was something special.
The mosquitos at the lake were not as bad as expected. And the mountain was visible and we had a great time there. A short, great time, since we had to work on the delay from the beginning of the trip. But that was ok. Here are some pictures of the day:


















On the way home, at mile 6, I finally found my moose with a calf. Too bad I was still on the bus and couldn't get out to take better photos. But anyway, I saw the calf.











As always the 11 hours on the bus just flew by.

And then, all the sudden, my last day in Denali and Healy arrived. One more day before I had to go back south. Everytime I started my car it told me to "change engine oil soon", but that had to wait for one more week.
My last day was very sunny again and the park was getting more crowded. It was almost impossible to find a parking spot at the Savage River turnaround area. After driving by 5 times I had luck and parked my car for a three hours hike along the river. I wanted a photo of the nice marmot on the rocks. And this is what I found:




















I really enjoyed the last day here. And I was a little bit sad that the time was over. Vic, the moose biologist, already left a day before and more and more cars and especially RVs arrived at the park. I drove the oppite direction, back to Healy. At the intersection Otto Lake Rd - Parks Highway I hesitated for a little while, then signalled and turned into Otto Lake Rd.
For 8 years I spent all the nights I've been in that area at Evalyn's little red house on Otto Lake and I couldn't leave without going there for one more time. I passed the park hotel and the very busy Otto Lake (it was hot and a lot of people went swimming there), drove by the 9 hole golf course and stopped at the house before I turned around and decided that too many things changed and the time there now is history. And that is okay.
The evening I spent at Ann's house with dinner, talking and watching the little puppies.


The last part of the journey brought me back to Talkeetna (for a short stopp and a Geocache) and to Seward on the Kenai peninsular. But that is a different story. Now I will go and enjoy the beautiful english weather.

My Alaska Trip - Part 3: Denali NP and Healy

I am waiting for the rain. Again, the day was warm and sunny, but now there are big grey clouds in the sky. When Dave left Lakenheath it was raining there already, but here in Thetford it is still very, very dry. Too dry, we really need some rain. But I guess you don't want to read about the current weather in England. Let me take you back to Alaska again. Now that you all had a look at our lot I would like to take you a little bit further north...

North of Talkeetna the landscape changes. Very slowly, but you can tell that the trees are not as tall, the mountains look higher, there are fewer towns and people. You are approaching the Alaska range and with some luck you can see "the mountain", Denali. But as I said, you need luck. Most of the days it is hidden behind clouds.
It is a two hours drive to the nationalpark entrance and then another 30 minutes to Healy. I passed the Otto Lake Road turn off. For the first time in 8 years I didn't stay at Evalyn's little red house at Otto Lake. She moved to Montana over a year ago and I didn't expect it being that difficult for me being here in Healy without her... I miss her! Well, I had to drive a little bit further until I came to the Motel NordHaven. A very nice place, even with not very comfortable pillows. Healy welcomed me with a typical storm. Not just a high wind, no, a real Healy storm. It almost blew me away. Well, and if it was strong enough to almost blowing me away it definitely took care of all the little mosquitos. Therefore I was able to unload my car without having hundreds of them in my room.
Did I tell you already that I was travelling with some caribou antlers? No? Well, I travelled with some caribou antlers. Al gave the to me and they needed to go to Ann and Terry's place. Terry is making these wonderful Ulu knives and wanted these antlers for the handles.
I met Ann at their house. Terry was in Fairbanks and they didn't have very many guests that night. That was very nice for me since we had pizza and a lot of time to talk before I drove back to my motel room.




"Hello, excuse me. Anke?" Who's calling my name? It was the next day when I drove into the park and stopped at the Savage River turnaround area. I really needed a bathroom when I heard the above question. It was Russ, a filmmaker I first met maybe 6 years ago. I didn't expect him there and neither did he. And he immediately started telling me what happened during the last week or two. Things like an abondoned moose calve at the river, hunting lynx and three bears. bin. Well, we will see what I will see ;o)
At the afternoon, after solving the problem of filling up gas without a credit card they accept, I drove back into the park. And here I met Vic, the moose biologist, talking to Russ. Both told me that I just missed the three bears (a sow and 2 older cubs) playing. Well, I was able to see them from the Savage overlook and watched them for some days. Nothing else exciting happened on that first day in the park. I saw two more moose, but no calves.










2 foxes, 2 bears, 1 wolf, moose, golden eagle. That's what I saw on my shuttle bus trip to the Eilson Visitor Center the next day. The whole trip took 8 hours and went 66 miles into the nationalpark. You can leave the bus whenever you want and go hiking until you want to stop another bus and take a ride again. But today that wasn't really an option for me. First of all I don't like hiking for a long time all by myself. I just don't feel comfortable doing that. Further more the weather was really nasty. Even with the rain stopped it was windy and the temperatures were in the mid 40s, really not nice. That changed and further east and later that day it was nice again. After the shuttle bus tour Ann and I went to the bookstore and had some ice cream together. It was a nice day and especially nice evening.

The other thing to do in the evening is going on a short hike along the Savage river. This is especially a good thing to do after having a very good Seafood Chowder for dinner, as it happened to me the next day. And so I decided I need some excersise and went on a fast 2.5 miles walk on that round trail. It is very nice there. The path goes along the river into a narrow valley, comes to a wooden bridge, crosses the river and goes back on the other side. Since I only wanted to go there for excercise all I brought was my little video camera and no photo equipment. Which was a mistake, because I met "him" at the bridge. "Him" was a very cute an tame marmot. Well, actually there were at least three of them, but this special on posed in the sun and on the rock for me. I took some video, but no photos. Sorry.

That was my travel report for today. I also went on a short visit to Fairbanks and another shuttle bus trip to wonder lake, but that is another story for another day.


And by the way. Are you interested in how much it is to ship a car (lets say a VW Jetta) to Baltimore? Well, so am I! I looks like the cheapest way to do so costs 1200 british pounds. I jsut tried to book it and therefore scanned all available papers that we have for the car and sent it to the shipping company. Let's see what happens. We will ship Dave's car, the Mustang, via a company here in Brandon, but from their quotation they were more expensive than the one I found. Since we don't have to pay for shipping his car I don't care, but we have to pay the shipping of a second car and therefore I tried to find a cheaper way of doing it. Anyway, even being cheaper than the one in Brandon it is more expensive than flying Amber in a new kennel to Minneapolis ;o)

My Alaska Trip - Part 2: Our little wilderness

It is warm and sunny in England. The third day in a row. Nevertheless I decided to spend some time at the computer and write the second part of my little Alaska travel journal. But it will be a short one.

Tigger Lake. On Thursday, June 4th, I started my trip north. The destination for today and the next week was Healy, 12 miles north of the entrance to the Denali Nationalpark. But on the way there I had to stop at "our little wilderness" at Tigger Lake in Talkeetna. Approximately 2 hours north of Anchorage (by car) on the George Parks Highway you'll come to a juction. Turning right here will bring you to Talkeetna. After ca. 10 Miles on that Talkeetna spur road you need to turn right into the non-paved Whigmi Rd which will make another right turn into S Tigger Lake Rod. And here you are, the corner lot is our wilderness.



Our plan is to build our B&B and some little cabins for further guests there. Yes, we have visions and we need them ;o) If you look the address up on google earth or google maps you won't be able to find neither Tigger Lake Road nor the lake itself. Whigmi is a path without name. By the way, do you know what Whigmi stands for? What Have I Got Myself Into!
The gravel pit on google earth is starting to overgrow with trees and bushes. If you want a closer look just click on the pictures below.



5 out of the 8 lots are already sold. But non of the other owners started to build a house there. These are difficult times, also here in Alaska.
It was very quite there at the lake. I saw a lot of moose droppings and mosquitos. Two families stopped by and used the puplic access for there day trip to the lake. It is stocked with rainbow trout and they went fishing there. And there is also a very nice and unusual geocache hidden somewhere.


I spent some time there walking around, looking at the lake and the lot and imagined our future home. In my mind I already made plans for the house, the driveway and a path to the public lake access. As I said: it is a challenge, but also a great opportunity for our visions.

After three more miles you'll come to beautiful downtown Talkeetna.


Talkeetna is a very small, charming and busy little town. In the summer it is a real tourist attraction. This is where all the Mt. McKinley expeditions start. The normal tourist can go on a boot tour on the three rivers there or take a flightseeing trip around the mountain. What we really like about it is that most people living there during the summer also stay during the winter. All the little stores are open, there is a very active artist community which organises exhibitions and festivals. Further there is enough snow in the winter, but the temperatures are not as extreme as north of the Alaska range. And if we want to go shopping: Wasilla with all necessary stores is only a little bit more than 1 hour away.
So, hopefully one day we will live there, too. Until then we will visit as often as possible.

My Alaska Trip - Part 1: Flight and Anchorage

Actually I am back in England. The sun is shining, Amber is back from the kennel and watching me typing this and I decided to spend this afternoon writing at least the first part of my travel report. So here it is:

The whole trip started on Monday, June 1st. I decided to drive my car to Harwich, take the ferry from there to Hook-of-Holland and spend one night in Essen. And it was a very short night. At 4:30am on Tuesday morning the airport taxi was already waiting for me. For "just" 70 Euros it gave me a ride to Duesseldorf airport from where I had a connecting flight to Frankfurt/Main. After arriving there it felt like it was my first trip. Seriously, it took me at least 1.5 hours to figure out where to go. No Condor transfer counter, too early for the flight being posted on the departure board and no working information terminal. But finally I held my boarding pass in my hand and was on my way to gate B60. But wait a minute! B60 is not where I usually flew from. No second security check, but even more important: no McDonald's for breakfast or any shopping possibilities. So the only thing to do was watching my co-travellers.
Many years ago when I first took the Condor to Alaska, 80% of the passengers were men in their maybe late 40s, early 50s. They were hunter, wanted to go fishing or on a canoe trip or maybe spend some a couple of weeks in a remote cabin. Adventure-Men. This changed a lot. There are always some Americans on board. Maybe coming home from a trip to Europe, maybe living in Germany and going on vacation to Alaska. Of course there are the above mentioned men. You can easily identify them by two things: First of all they are already dressed for their adventure and second they don't wait at the same areas as all the other passengers do, they want to be different, going to the wilderness, they know all this very well and pretend that they are not excited anymore. They are not like the young couples with their kids in Spiderman dresses, or the excited older couples on the way to their RV adventure driving the "8" (the most popular roadtrip through the Yukon and Alaska). Well, as mentioned above, it was a very mixture.
I was very lucky finding the guy sitting next to me neither being one of the above mentioned adventurer nor a young dad with a screaming and crying baby. No, it was a biologist on his way to Barrow to do some research on birds, especially sandpiper.


When flying on Tuesdays there is always a stop over in Whitehorse, YT, Canada. The majority of the RV tourists usually leave the plane here. For them it doesn't really matter where to start the "8" and usually, if you book the RV from Germany it is cheaper to start the trip in Canada. For maybe one hour we all had to get off the plane and wait in a designated area. After a 9 hours flight it felt very good standing or sitting there in the sun. It was warm, in the 70s already and nice outside. It was really good to spend that time there before going on another 1.5 hours flight to the final destination, Anchorage.
The immigration process was much shorter than expected. I was a little bit nervous waiting in line with my big, sealed envelope in my hands. At the usual passport control point everything was done withing a few minutes, nothing special here. After that I had to follow another officer to a separate room. Here she opened the envelope, showed me my photo and waited for me to tell her that it is really me. After that all I had to do is give two finger prints and signatures. That's it. Now my green card will be on the way to Dave's parents in Kansas and in the meantime a stamp on my visa in my passport will do the job.

Jane waited for me in her house in Anchorage. And shortly after my arrival Al came home from work. The sun was shining, we were sitting outside on the deck, had wine and steak and I felt at home. At 7pm, 25 hours after I got up that morning in Essen, I was too tired for any further conversation and went to be.


The next morning was warm and sunny again. I drove down to Potter's Marsh, a bird nesting area south of Anchorage, to meet with Marcus and Eva. They arrived in Alaska a few days ago and were on a big RV trip. We wanted to spend that day together. First we watched a joung moose at Potter's Marsh, after that I showed them a spot from where we had a good view into a bald eagle's next. Too bad I didn't bring my 400mm lenses. But that would have been way to much for me to carry.

From the eagle's nest we started our 2 hours trip north to the Matanuska glacier. With three guides from Mica tours we started our 3 hours glacier hike. And that was really fascinating. We saw lakes with ice beaches, little streams and holes where a grown man could disappear. Our main guide was very knowledgeable and gave us a lot of new and detailed informatino about glaciers in general.

At 5:30pm I said good bye to Marcus and Eva. I drove back to Anchorage to start my trip to Talkeetna and Healy the next morning while they wanted to go to Valdez and then further on to the Yukon Territory.