June 11 - 19 -- Alaska, Part Two -- Water on Land

This was our "land package" and four of its nine days were exclusively land events. One full day included the six hour round trip bus ride in the national park (larger than Vermont) to the observation station 30 miles from Mount Denali, which we were lucky enough to see. And we were among the 30 percent of pilgrims able to see it at all. Everest is considerably taller but is surrounded by other giant mountains and seen from a high base camp. We were only 3000 feet up and Denali stands alone!

We saw bear, elk, caribou,

Dall sheep,

ptarmigans (state bird of Alaska), eagles, magpies and countless squirrels. I'm hoping that Mike, one of our new friends will send me a few of his great wildlife shots; I'll add them to this post.














We also saw many "braided" river bottoms.

took an ATV ride,

a dog sled ride,

a visit to a musk ox farm (these guys are a type of goat, and not related to buffalo)

to a Russian orthodox cemetary and to a Native American cultural center (including this crouch- on-one-hand-and-kick-the-suspended-target game)

as well as shopping, of course.











We visited a birch syrup factory, similar to maple syrup, tasted there and bought a couple of bottles. Interestingly, they use a reverse omsosis machine, similar to ILENE's watermaker but much larger, to extract much of the water from the sap, before boiling it down the rest of the way. 120 gallons of sap make one gallon of syrup. But on ILENE, the product of the reverse osmosis is pure fresh water, extracted from sea water that we drink. In this factory, the fresh water is the waste product, after its extraction from the sap.

We were in a group of thirteen with a driver, a nice guy who took us everywhere but was not very informative about Alaska. We were spoiled by our two tours with Globus who provided excellent informative guides as well as drivers. This trip was more expensive than Globus and we had expected more information and better food and accomodations. We enjoyed our companions though. I had thought that we would not -- that they would be a clique -- because eight of them were four couples from non-coastal South Carolina. Never prejudge people, roger! They accepted us Yankees right away and we invited them to visit us in New York.

                           Here are Gayle, Mike Dwayne, Mimi, Tim, Pam, Rhonda and Terry.

Five of the nine days of the land package involved water adventures.

White water (actually brown water) rafting in inflatables, controlled, somewhat, by our guide rower, who directed us to paddle in the rough spots, was exciting. We were enclosed in helmets and complete drysuits. except for our hands and faces, and a good thing because the rushing muddy icewater of Class 4 rapids swept through the "self bailing" rafts extensively. The waves blew me off my port side tube into the raft several times. They blew Lene out of the raft into the water, except for her feet which were wedged inside the raft. Her head was underwater, but she held onto the OS (outside safety) line and was pulled back in by our rower and Mike. It was so quick, maybe ten seconds total, and provided the day's exctement. And they had a spare paddle aboard for the one she lost. We saw a grizley bear on the bank as we zipped down the river as well as elk, which are remarkably agile for such large clumsy looking critters.
We took a walk on a different glacier. We were aided by spikes imbedded in rubber that we slipped over our shoes and by walking sticks. It felt like a moonscape.

We took a jetboat on the rivers by the town of Talkeetna. The fifty foot aluminum boat was 20 feet wide and drew four feet at the dock (and passing under the nearby bridge) but then only two feet when it came up to speed on plane.

Captain Eli

"stopped" the boat several times to point out ice damage to riverbank trees






and off-the-grid modern homes, supplied by the Railroad which passed a few hundred yards inland and stopped on request to let the residents and their stuff get on or off. He stopped the boat by slowing it from 20 knots to only ten against the river's current.

He had no charts, GPS, or depth meter, but "read" the rivers which cut different channels at different times, to keep us in the deep part.








Our only real stop was for walking visits to a replica Native American fishing camp and a trappers camp, led by Zena,

our Native American naturalist guide who packed a shotgun to protect us against bears.












Another day we visited the Knic River glacier. We drove to a base camp and then transferred from our van to two large jeep-like vehicles

with huge high wheels needed when we drove across some of the braids of the river during the five miles, at perhaps 5 mph









to a propeller driven boat (think Everglades).

 We boarded and were given noise prevention earmuffs for the five minute ride, at perhaps 20 knots, upstream in the main river to a spot where we walked to a hut in a shallow depression that provided wind protection, for a cup of cocoa, before the return trip.

The rock is black. the glacier was several miles away and not very impressive compared to the others we saw. It was rainy and cold; Lene thought and felt we were at the North Pole.

Another day we toured the docks at Seward, with a Holland American across the bay.





But perhaps our best glacier experience was the five hour fast boat trip out of Seward aboard "Callisto Voyager", to the Kenai Fjords. She is

an aluminum trimaran fastboat 76 feet long, 29 wide and 8 deep. Our captain invited me to the bridge after I asked one of the crew to take my HYC Fleet Captain card to him and to ask him if he would speak with me. He was very experienced including tugboats on Staten Island.





He took the boat up to the shore but is this Alaska or Maine: strata of salt water, granite and conifers. Out in the open Pacific the swells were running and at 25 knots several of the passengers lost their lunch.

We saw seals,

and both whales

and orcas.

But he also took us to within a quarter mile of the glacier in the Kenai Fjords.  Pieces of this 600 foot pillar of ice "calved' into the sea, from its sides, several times during the half hour we stopped there.

But when I look at a map of Alaska, I realize how tiny was the part of it we saw. From the southern tip near Vancouver to the end of the Aleutian Islands is over 3000 miles!  Our land drive north was not even half way into ther interior. When we got to Mt. Denali, we were at latitude 63.1 north, further north than I have ever been, or will likely ever be again. This is 180 miles further north than we were in Helsinki, and 250 further north than Stockholm or St. Petersberg. We did not see the Aurora Borealis because that is a winter phenomenon. But in mid June, when the days are longest, while we did not see the midnight "sun", we saw that it never got dark either.

Now back to sailboating!