roadquill1

Dear family and friends,

We made it over the highway from Teton Junction on the Alaska Highway through to Chicken, and then onto its continuation past the Eagle turnoff onto the “Top of the World” highway to Dawson City ferry crossing of the Yukon River.

View from “The Top of the World”.

Parts of this highway were quite brutal with ruts, potholes, washboard, and always – mud! From Chicken to the turnoff to Eagle was the worst, and that was followed by brand-new pavement to the border crossing. From there to Dawson City the road was mostly good gravel, but still very muddy. By the time we arrived at our RV site in town for the night, Truck House had become disguised as a rather boxy mud-pie! Eight dollars later, we had spray washed most of the muck off, and once again looked respectable.

Road paint from “Top of the World”

We are still in that weather system that provides gloom and showers – sometimes heavy. We are sure that some of the viewpoints on the “Top of the World” highway are truly spectacular, but we could only imagine. Fog was also heavy at one point, but we were able to see and experience the vastness of the “Chicken Fire” that occurred in 2004. For miles, and several hours we were within the fire-ravaged territory, and we began to get a shocking concept of the 1.3 million acres that burned!

The “Chicken Burn” of 2004

Trapper cabin near summit at Top of the World

Looking north into Yukon from “Top of the World”

We did stop at Chicken, and were directed to a cafe that featured baked sweets. Unfortunately, a cruise ship tour bus (where did it come from???) beat us there, and we had to join the crowd in line before getting a superb and huge cinnamon bun. This was about 10:30, and became our sustenance until supper time.

The Tour Bus hits “Chicken”

The “Chicken Poop”

Dawson City is an intriguing view into our gold-rush history. Some of the original town has been preserved – in the original – decaying and sinking into the permafrost. Other parts look original but are reconstructions.

Permafrost gradually lets buildings down

Last night, we took in the Diamond Gertie Casino show. It was entertaining, but Sandy and I voted it second best to the Barkerville Revue that we watched several years ago with the Lindsay and Mjaaland families. (The Barkerville performance by brother-in-law Lars was much superior to the “volunteers” at last night’s show!)

Today, hopefully in sunshine, we will stop at the Robert Service cabin, and then begin our trip south. The magnet of home begins to pull, and weather has caused us to shorten our itinerary considerably.

We are continually grateful for all the comments, and the emails. Thanks to all!

Love and best wishes to all!

Tony and Sandy

Sandy catches me with the ideal catch:

The catch of the day

Now I can move on…

Tony

Late evening photos on Homer Spit (near 9:30 pm)

Beached barge and glacier in the east

Zoom of glacier (through one lens of Binoculars)

Early morning on Homer Spit – wind during the night rattled the rigging hanging underneath our kayaks and made a periodic thrumming sound. It was most unsettling, but climbing out on the roof to attend to it would have been more aggravating. So we slept fitfully, and tried to ignore it. At daylight at 5:00 this morning (by the way, the sun set at about 9:45 last night), vehicles started arriving, fishers chatted softly outside our camper, the rain started to patter on the roof, and the bite was on!

By 5:30, the combat zone was marked out as fishers lined the beach casting towards each other from both sides of the creek that drained the small enclosed bay on the spit. As the tide fell in Kamchemak Bay, and the waters receded from the small basin, the fishers on the west side of the outflow creek stepped gradually towards their opposite numbers while the eastern side fishers in equal steps retreated. The only sound was from raucous, excited gulls.

Homer Spit – fishing Combat Zone

Almost everyone is catching 7 to 12 pound cohoes, but I hang back, not anxious to join the fray. There is a rhythm and flow to the movement of the fishers, based on beach etiquette, space, casting directions, cast-timing and so on. When a catch is dragged up on the beach, the gap is quickly filled by returning fishers, or measured side-stepping. I am reluctant to put myself into the mix without a deeper understanding of the dance steps.

After several hours of watching the process in some astonishment, we retreated to Truck House for breakfast and coffee as the rain began again. As I look out the window at a very low receded tide, there are still a half-dozen die-hard casters out on the shoreline. This is less than a third of the number that were there an hour ago. I feel somewhat intimidated, and unsure – much like a teenager at a high school dance wondering about the risks of asking a pretty girl across the room for a dance – but the music has ended…and the rain is steady. And the last fisher has now finally left the dance floor.

Moving on…!

Tony, the Quill, and Sandy, the Quilter

A lunchtime stop in Kenai – in the rain:

Russian Church in Kenai

These are marine life that we have seen in the past 24 hours. The rainbow  was a rainbow trout – caught yesterday at Upper Summit Lake in the Kenai Peninsula (Chugach National Forest) on a fly created by my friend Mike Harris. (Thanks Mike!) I was going to take a pic of the fish and then release it, but my camera battery had died, and so did the fish, so I had to eat the fish! (I took the picture after paddling back to campsite, and THEN I ate the fish!) Given that my 2 week Alaska fishing licence cost $80, I am hoping that I can average down the cost per pound of fish over the next two weeks. Otherwise, that first meal was a doozy!

Rainbow and Merrell

Today, we started out with a run to Seward where the town is hosting a cruise ship, and a Silver Salmon Fishing derby. (In Alaska, a King is a Chinook, a Red is a sockeye, a Pink is a Humpback, and a Silver is a Coho.) The place is quite busy. I was quite surprised to find campers parked all along the waterfront and no one fishing. Coho were jumping all along the shore, and dall porpoises seemed to be taking advantage of the good supply of food. Several sea otters (not river otters) floated along the shore and dove for shell fish. I finally asked a local who told me that everyone was waiting for the bite at high tide.

Waterfront monument in Seward

Highway from Seward

The weather was spectacular, with a few clouds over the high snow-covered peaks, but otherwise, perfect! I was catching up on mail at Zudy’s Cafe, and planned on sending a new blog note, but Sandy returned from her latest quilt shop stop and it was time to meander down the waterfront walkway, where hundreds of campers are parked and waiting to get in on the bite time. Apparently, there are prizes for the most fish, the biggest fish, and one prize for a previously tagged salmon. (This latter is worth about $20,000. Last year, the tagged fish was caught some time after the derby – in Prince William Sound – some distance from Resurrection Bay.)

Seward – Iditarod Mile 0

After a bit of a walk-about (past Mile 0 of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race), we headed off for Homer, and the spit that reaches out into the Kachemak Bay. En route, we watched the river boats floating down the Kenai River near the mouth of the Russian River…probably one of the most productive salmon fishing areas on the planet! Because this is the last weekend before school begins in Anchorage, we have decided to forego stopping in this area until after this very busy weekend is over, and the camping crowds thin out. We will make it a priority stop on our way out of Kenai Peninsula – hopefully with some equally fine weather. (Today’s temperatures got up to 19C, and the skies were blue with some cloud around, but the weather report suggests that the good weather is about to end with rain coming in tomorrow.)

We were able to see the volcanoes across Cook Inlet today on our way south to Homer. The distance across the Inlet is about 40 miles, so they were a bit hazy. The most recent activity was in 2009, but 4 of them are on active status, and monitored closely.

Tonight we are camped at the end of the Kenai highway in Homer, on Homer Spit (4.5 mi. long) in a “dry camping” area (for $15) with many, many folks fishing the shoreline beside and around us. The fish cleaning tables are very busy, and the gulls are raucously enjoying the castaways! We walked up to the end of the spit past some very funky and beautiful shops and camping rigs, and then stopped into a boardwalk cafe on the way back for fish and chip dinner. (Ironic, perhaps, but I couldn’t wait to catch my own…fish dinner, that is.) Coho are jumping, and I intend to get in on the action tomorrow.

Barge on Homer Spit

Love, joy and best wishes to all!

Sandy, the Quilter (on leave from her machines, but not the shops), and Tony, the Quill

Sandy leaving me for Cooper Landing Quilt Shop

p.s. If this note seems to focus rather extensively on fishing, it is because the whole of south Alaska is fish crazy at this time of year, and I caught the infection, if not the fish.

Since it was early on Monday morning when we de-camped and headed into Haines, nothing was open – except the Tourist Information. The library and its wifi didn’t open until 10:00 a.m. so once again, we are on the road without sending blog notes. They are really beginning to pile up and I wonder if they will be left unread as too time-consuming.

The highway out of Haines follows the Chilkat river estuary for a number of miles until the “Eagle Nest Park” where the road begins a long climb to a summit above the tree line. (Wrong time of year to see eagles, apparently.) Near the top of the climb, we were also very near to the base of the clouds, and suddenly we were in dense fog. This lasted only a short while until we dropped a bit into a fabulous valley that was the “Chilkat Trail” – an alternative to the Chilkoot Pass on the Skagway side. At 3 separate small lakes we saw pairs of beautiful swans – as advertised in brochures.

This highway, once again, is almost deserted, and we had an almost great run all the way to “Discover Yukon RV Park”, an hour or two south of Haines Junction.

Kluane Lake

We stopped at an information centre just before Kluane Lake. There, we were able to spot a herd of Dall Mountain sheep high on the slopes above us.

The good highway suddenly ended, and frost heaves and potholes began to occur way too frequently. Finally the pavement gave out, and we found ourselves on VERY dusty gravel. I fought my way to the head of the line, and then led the convoy through a series of flag-car stops and starts. Watering trucks put down a spray to reduce the dust, and the resultant was that Truck House ended up being the same colour as the road.  Finally, we were somewhat relieved to find “Discover Yukon RV”.

The proprietor of this RV site hails from Manitoba, and comes out each year to run the place. It is a museum for old abandoned equipment – mostly from the US military – equipment that was used in the building of the Alaska Highway in the early days of World War 2. The next day, at the museum in Tok, Alaska (that is pronounced like the pot-smokers’ “toke”.) we read about this project which took 8 months to complete. What a horrendous experience this must have been to young troops out of south-eastern US with no warm clothing, improper equipment, no bug protection, and no experience in muskeg country.

The military machine bone-yard

Tuesday, August 11 – Stoned in Alaska

Okay…I hope that this entry will be a short one since the day was NOT! We left Discover Yukon RV at 9:00 a.m. (PDT) = 8:00 a.m. Alaska Daylight Time, and didn’t arrive at our next campsite (King Mountain State Recreation Park) 69 miles northeast of Anchorage until 5:00 p.m. ADT.

King Mountain

This was by far the longest day of travel that we have encountered so far. Once again, this was a mix of paved road followed by construction stops and following pilot cars. The temperatures floated around 7C all day (getting to 13C as we got nearer to Anchorage) and rain was heavy at times. About two hours before stopping, a rocketing camper truck tossed a very large rock at us which almost burst through the windshield. The windshield will require replacement, but I don’t think that it leaks. My partner was showered with windshield glass! The rain finally ended and by the time we encamped, we were under blue skies and sunshine. We will probably try to keep the windshield until we are back on full paved roads.

Moral – You shouldn’t throw stones!

So today, Wednesday, August 12, we plan to head into Anchorage, get an RV site with wifi and hookups, and explore the city (Pop. of 200,000!)

A couple of hours later… we have found an RV Park – Anchorage’s “Ship Creek”. (“Roada”, our Garmin GPS, makes this sound crude!) We have paid for the site and are happy to announce that this is the second closest that we have ever been to a busy railway…the closest being “Whistle Stop” campground out of Hope, BC. Aren’t we excited! Today, we will explore a bit. 

Much love to all and a note: all photos show sunshine. This is not reflective of the daily weather, but only of my desire to take pics!

Tony, The Quill, and Sandy, The Quilter

p.s. We will hit about 3 quilt shops today in Anchorage.