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.

Delayed Twice

July 22, 2010

Our flight was at 5:09pm. Matt had a swim championship meet in the morning. He did amazingly well in 200M backstroke. Dropped more than 6 seconds from the last time he swam earlier this summer and was seated 6^th going to the final, although he had to scratch the final because of our trip (later we learned that the final was cancelled anyway because the pump at the pool quit working).

Cara took us to the airport around 3:30pm. Our flight was delayed by several hours so we missed our connecting flight in Detroit. We were given choices of either taking the late flight to Detroit and stay in a hotel near the airport for the next available flight or spending the night at home and then take the next available flight in the morning from DCA. We preferred to sleep on our own beds so we took the subway to the Rockville station hoping to catch Cara before she is done with coaching. We could not get hold of her by the time we got to Rockville so I called Jim, our friend and Cara’s coach, to pick us up. We didn’t get home until 8:30pm. Cara was home already. Our flight for the next day was 6:47am arriving at Anchorage at 12:09pm.

July 23, 2010

Believe it or not, our flight was delayed again the second time in a row! The plane didn’t take off until 8:15am (about one and a half hour late). We missed our connecting flight in Minneapolis once again. Meanwhile, Yi’s parents already arrived at Anchorage the previous day and checked into the hotel we had booked.

Delta was generous enough to give us meal vouchers ($6 per person) while we waited for our flight at 3:26pm.

In summary, we were scheduled to arrive at Anchorage on July 22 at 10:26pm; instead we arrived on July 23 at 6:23pm. We had to cancel our RV reservation at Talkeetna and stay at the RV rental company’s parking lot overnight on July 23.

RVs

We'll be renting a 25' RV after arriving at Anchorage. Mattie Gooled internet and found the following types of RVs:

• Class A motor home - a bus shaped RV with the physical characteristics of a typical RV
• Bus conversion - a luxury bus-like RV.
• Class B camper van - an RV with the front resembling a pick-up truck
• Class C motor home - a deluxe Class B campervan with an extra booth
• Truck Camper - a half RV saddled on a pick-up truck
• Pop-up Camper - a coach with a pair of wheels that can make extra booths pop up
• Travel Trailer - a camper with the characteristics of a typical RV but is immobile
• Teardrop Trailer - a tiny camper that resembles a tear
• Hybrid Trailer - the combination of a Travel Trailer and a Pop-up Camper
• Fifth-wheel Trailer - a camper with a fifth-wheel coupling
• Park Model - a house on wheels
• Toterhome - basically a Truck camper with a semi-truck instead of a pick-up
• Toy Hauler - a camper that is used to carry objects such as horses.

This is our rental RV which is the Class B Camper Van. It was our "home" for 13 days.

This is inside of our home.

Alaska Facts (Collected by Matt)

1. Population

• Anchorage : 280,000
• Fairbanks: 35,100
• Juneau: 30,700
• Alaska: 698,500

2. Alaskan Pipeline

• Construction period: March 27, 1975 through May 31, 1977
• Length: 800 miles! Diameter: 4 feet
• Start to Finish: Prudhoe Bay to Valdez
• Volume: 53,053,440 cubic feet!
• Gallons: 396,839,731.2

3. Mt McKinley

• Height: 6,194m
• Death: 550 people!
• Located in Denali National Park!

4. Northern Lights

• Natural light displays in the sky seen in the Polar Regions. It is caused by the magnetic fields
• The Earth is a giant magnet. The magnetic field centers at the North and South Pole
• See them in Fairbanks from October to December

5. Salmon

• King salmon - found in Naknek River (on Peninsula)
• Sockeye and Pink salmon - can be found in Kenai River
• Chum Salmon - found in Kodia Island

6. Polar Bears

• You will not see polar bears in Anchorage, but you can find black and grizzly bears there!
• Polar bears live In or around the Arctic Circle

7. Glaciers

A glacier is a mass of ice that moves over a wide span of land. Its difference from an ice field is that it actually moves, while an ice field is just a wide sheet of ice covering an area and is not moving. For example, Antarctica is an ice field because it doesn’t move. According to glacier progress maps and references, glaciers slowly move downward.

• Aialik Glacier - Kenai Peninsula
• Aurora Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Lamplugh Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Margerie Glacier - Glacier Bay
• McCall Glacier - Brooks Range, Romanzoff Mountains
• McCarty Glacier - Kenai Peninsula/Harding Icefield
• Meares Glacier - Prince William Sound
• Muir Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Princeton Glacier - Kenai Peninsula
• Reid Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Riggs Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Ruth Glacier - Denali
• Sargent Icefield - Kenai Peninsula
• Taku Glacier - Taku River/Juneau Icefield
• Carroll Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Chenega Glacier - Prince William Sound
• Clark Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Columbia Glacier - Prince William Sound
• Davidson Glacier - Lynn Canal
• Exit Glacier - Kenai Peninsula
• Grand Pacific Glacier - Glacier Bay
• Grewingk Glacier - Kenai Peninsula
• Harding Icefield - Kenai Peninsula
• Harvard Glacier - Prince William Sound
• Hubbard Glacier - Disenchantment Bay
• Johns Hopkins Glacier - Glacier Bay

8. Alaska Marine Highway

The Alaska Marine Highway is a ferry that travels throughout the Gulf of Alaska all year. It transports vehicles (such as cars, RVs and campers) and people to different stops on the penninsula, the islands and the edge of Alaska. It is expected to meet the comfort of passengers.The ferries stop at the following places to pickup and drop off passengers and their vehicles.

• Unalaska (what an interesting name!)
• Akutan
• False pass
• Cold bay
• King Cove
• Sand Point
• Chignik
• Port Lions
• Kodiak
• Homer
• Seldovia
• Chenega Bay
• Whittier
• Valdez
• Tatitlek
• Cordova
• Yakutat
• Pelican
• Hoonah
• Juneau
• Haines
• Skagway
• Tenakee
• Angoon
• Sitka
• Kake
• Petersburg
• Wrangell
• Ketchikan
• Hollis
• Metlakatla
• Prince Rupert
• Bellingham