Glacier and Wildlife

July 30, 2010

We took the 10-hour cruise from 10am to 8pm with Stan Stephens Glacier and Wildlife

and saw 2 glaciers, Columbia Glacier and Meares Glacier, in close range.

The above 3 pictures were taken at the foot of the Columbia Glacier. The Columbia Glacier was about 3 miles wide and had miles long of floating “icebergs”. Some of the icebergs were bright blue. We couldn't see the glacier from our ship. All the icebergs and large chunks of ice were broken off from the Columbia Glacier and scatter several miles long.

The following pictures and video clip were taken near the Meares Glacier.

Our boat approached the glacier...

The width of the Meares Glacier was only about ¾ mile wide. Our boat stopped at a place about ¼ mile from the glacier wall. We waited there to see chunks of snow falling off the glacier and generated loud sound and waves.

This video clip of glacier calving might not seem that impressive, but it was really incredible when we watched it live.

We saw many sea animals including humpback whales, staller sea lions, sea otters, seals, and various sea birds. The whales were pretty far from our ship, and it was difficult to take a good picture of the whales when they briefly broke out of water surface. The cruise was expensive but it was well worth it.

After we came back, auntie Amy went to the harbor and got some salmon and halibut heads and belly meat from some local fishermen. The fish were very fresh and tasty when it was fresh out of the pot, but it smelled fishy the next day.

Valdez

July 29, 2010

Valdez is a beautiful city with mountains around and a harbor.

The clouds were very low so the top of the mountain was invisible. We were told that July and August were rainy season. May and June would generally be sunny. The average winter snow fall was about 20 feet. The winter temperature was mild, rarely got down to a single digit.

We walked along the harbor and talked to some fishermen. They were cleaning the red sockeye salmon they caught in nearby Copper River with fishing net. The quota for this year was 40 salmons per month. Auntie Amy, Matt, and I also went to a small museum and walked around town.
In the afternoon, we drove to Valdez Glacier to see some floating ice chunks in the water. The pipeline terminal was off limit for visitors.

We stopped at a pond to watch salmons. The pond was filled with salmon, many were dead. They seemed to have lined up trying to swim upstream. Lots of seagulls were picking on the dead fish.

Everything was expensive here. Gas cost $3.79/gallon. The only grocery store was Eagle (newly acquired by Safeway).

I took Matt to swim at Valdez high school in the evening. The pool was very nice and it was free! Matt had a very good workout. He swam over 4,000 yard with some fast intervals.

Richardson Highway

July 28, 2010

We left Fairbanks after Matt had his second practice with Midnight Sun from 8 to 10am. On our way to Valdez, we stopped at North Pole and visited Santa’s house. This was the place where all the mails addressed to Santa would have mailed to.

It was a big gift shop with nothing but Christmas related stuff.

There was a Santa available for taking pictures with in the store and 4 real reindeer outside of the store. The neat thing was that we could write postcards or Christmas cards and ask the store to mail them out at Christmas time so it would appear to be a mail from Santa from North Pole.

At Delta Junction, we stopped by at a local farmer’s market and bought a reindeer sausage to try. It was mixed with beef and chicken but it still tasted drier than normal hotdog.

The scenery near Valdez on Richardson Highway was breathtaking with majestic glaciers and waterfalls.


We drove through Thompson pass which was very foggy with visibility of about two car length.


We also went really close to Wellington Glacier. There were a lot of large mosquitoes there. Matt got a big bite on his forehead. We arrived Valdez around 9:30pm. We stayed at Bear Paw RV Park which was right next to the harbor.

Fairbanks

July 26, 2010

We left Denali National Park around 7:30am and headed for Fairbanks. We first stopped at University of Alaska Museum of North and watched 3 movies. One was about Aurora, the second one was about winter in Fairbanks, and the third one was about the museum itself. People in Fairbanks seemed to be fascinated with outhouses. They have annual outhouse race.

There was a fancy outhouse on display at the museum. There are still people, especially college students. still use outhouses even in the winter with temperature well below minus 20 (-20) degrees. After spending about 3 and a half hour in the museum, I took Matt to the pool to practice with Midnight Sun Swim Club.

This was the pool where Cara’s University of Illinois roommate Annie trained. After the practice, we met with Annie and her mom. Annie’s mom took us to to a Chinese restaurant then to their house. We had local blueberry and chocolate ice cream made by Hot Licks. They were really good ice creams.

We filled up gas the first time. The gas mileage of this RV was only about 8 miles/gallon. The tank capacity of the gas tank was 55 gallons. I had to use two separate credit cards to add 50 gallons. The gas price was $3.49/gallon comparing to$2.65/gallon in Maryland.

July 27, 2010

Our plan for the day was to go to the El Dorado Gold Mine and the Chena Hop Spring. On the way to see the gold mine,

we stopped by the Trans-Alaska pipeline viewing area and took a close look at the pipeline. It was interesting to learn that the oil was heated up to 100 degrees and pumped along the way through 11 pump stations.

This is a picture of a pig. Every month a pig is dropped in from one end of the pipeline at Prudhoe Bay and picked up at the end of the other end at Valdez to clean and inspect the pipeline. The pig travels at speed of 3-4 miles/hr and would take about 15 days to complete the 820 mile journey.

We arrived at the gold mine place around 11am. The next tour wouldn't start until 3pm and it would cost $34.95 per person for the 2 hour tour including a train ride to the mine, watch a demonstration of operation, and hands-on gold panning. It didn’t sound very interesting and we didn’t want to wait for so long so we decided to visit Pioneer Park back in Fairbanks. We spent 3-4 hours there then headed to Chena Hot Spring which was about 1 and a half hour drive from Fairbanks. The hot spring was nice and relaxing, the water temperature was comfortable. Afterward, I took Matt to see the ice museum which was a giant freezer with amazing ice sculptures. Inside the museum, it had ice beds, an ice toilet, an ice bar, an ice music chamber, and an ice altar for ice weddings. It was also available for overnight accommodation at the cost of $600 per night. There had been 11 ice hotel guests in 2010.

The ice bar (with and without flash)...

The ice toilet...

There was no running water in the ice museum. This was not a working outhouse.

This is the bear bed. It's cool to look at it, but it didn't seem to be comfortable to sleep on it.

Denali National Park

July 25, 2010

Auntie Amy, Matt, and I took the 12-hour Kantishna Experience tour while Julie and her parents took the 8 hour Eielson Visitor Center tour. The trip was long but worth it. Along the way, we saw 18 grizzly bears (6 groups of bears, each group had one mom bear with 2 cubs, some cubs were pretty big), caribou, moose, wolves, Dall sheep, and gold eagles. Mt. McKinley was magnificent. According to our bus driver, this was the first sunny day in about 3 weeks. Most of the places we stopped were windy and cold (50’s) except at Wonder Lake where it was warm with lots of bugs and mosquitoes.

We took this green bus for our tour. It was the same as the yellow school bus our kids take to school. Our bus driver was from Ohio. She has been coming to Denali to drive bus every summer for the last 10 year. The summer job for bus drivers ends in mid-September every year.

The picture doesn't show the mountain (people referred Mt. McKinley as "the mountain" in the park) in the background, but it showed clearly when zoomed in... We didn't fully appreciate seeing the mountain until later in our trip. We talked to at least 4 - 5 groups of tourists who had been to Denali NP (one couple had spent 5 days in the park), none of them saw the mountain because of the bad weather!

Visiting Denali National Park once was enough for me. The extra 4 hours of bus ride from Eielson to Kantishna was really a waste of time - the Wonder Lake was just a lake with lots of bugs and mosquitos; nothing interesting in Kantishna - it had a few privately owned cabins.

Into the "wild"

July 24, 2010

We did our paper work for RV rental then went to COSTCO and Walmart for supply before left Anchorage short after noon. The RV was easy to drive except it was not accelerate well and felt like driving a big house.

We made a stop at Talkeetna, a small town where mountain climbers gather before attempting climbing Mt. McKinley. On clear days, this would be a great place to see Mt. McKinley, but it was a rainy day and there was no sign of any mountains.

I took this picture of Matt standing next to piles of rocks on the Talkeetna beach. The formation symbolized some native American ritual, we had seen it before somewhere, maybe in Canadian Rocky Mountains.

We arrived Riley Creek RV Park after 8pm, checked in, took our first shower in 2 days. The best part of vacationing in Alaska in the summer was the extra long day light. We didn't need to worry about driving in the dark. At 11pm, the sun still hadn't set yet. I took this picture in front of the Riley Creek RV Park office around 11pm.