Month: July 2018

What an amazing month! We have had an amazing time in Alaska with unbelievable adventures and scenery. We are very blessed. This month we visited Talkeetna, Wasilla, Anchorage, Palmer, Portage, Soldotna, Kenai, Homer, Cooper Valley, Glennallen, Wrangell/St Elias National Park, Valdez, and Tok. Along the way we landed on a Glacier 7000ft up on Denali, saw wildlife, caught amazing King Salmon, walked with wild Grizzlies, and have seen the most amazing scenery. It is hard to imagine a more fun filled month. It is the last day of July and our last day in Alaska. I hope you have enjoyed our first hand accounts of our trip. I hope it also inspires you to pursue your own dreams, whatever they may be. We guess that we have about 6 weeks left in this awesome road trip. Stay tuned, there are still some really amazing places to visit before we get home.

Here is our July route map.

Leaving Alaska behind! It is bittersweet, but its finally time. We have had an amazing time in Alaska with unbelievable adventures and scenery. Today we retraced our steps to the Discovery Yukon lodge near Beaver Creek. We stayed here on the way up and like it pretty well. Like before the roads are pretty bad. Not quite as bad as the Richardson Highway between Valdez and Tok, but still bad. There isn’t much to choose from between Tok Alaska and Whitehorse YT. We ate lunch at Buckshot Betty’s in Beaver Creek about 20 miles before the RV Park. The food was very good and it was definitely local color. The park is nearly deserted and we got a very spacious pull through. We debated for a while about continuing further down the road. Whitehorse is another 6 hours and seemed too far and we couldn’t find a good RV park in between so we chose to stay here again. Tomorrow we will go to Whitehorse. We enjoyed the spacious grass runway to exercise Maverick….no there weren’t any planes. We decided to cook salmon for dinner and tried grilled with and without barbecue sauce. Both ways were pretty tasty.

Just like the previous 2 mornings, we were woke up at 5am by the fishermen next to us in the RV park. The made this park absolutely miserable for us. They would stay up to 1130pm drinking and carrying on and then get up at 5am and spend over an hour making more noise than your could imagine packing the boat and yelling at each other. We’ve never been so glad to leave an RV park.
The weather today was much clearer and made the drive very scenic all the way from Valdez to Tok. The road, however was pretty terrible for at least half the distance on and off. We could only travel at 35 mph on long stretches and even then the road beat us up pretty bad. It wouldn’t be nearly as bad in a soft suspension car, but in a big rig it was very unpleasant. Tomorrow we start retracing our steps from Tok back toward Dawson Creek for about 8 days. Unfortunately we know the road for the next two days will be pretty bad as well. We decided yesterday against driving the 7 hour round trip into the Kennicott Visitor Center in the Wrangell National Park. The drive just didn’t look like it would have enough payoff to make 7 hours on the gravel roads worth it.
We arrived at the Tundra RV Resort in Tok about 3pm and I filled with diesel as we entered town. The park is nicely wooded with pretty decent space between sites. We also have full hookups which is really nice. In Valdez we didn’t have sewer so we couldn’t run our clothes washer. After getting setup Donna took all of our laundry to the RV park Laundry and got us all caught up. We don’t do that often and it is nice to have all of the laundry caught up at once. Like last time in Tok, we ate at Fast Eddy’s. We had to wait quite a while to get seated but it was good after that. There isn’t much in Tok and after dinner we headed back to the coach. Once again I cleaned the enormous windshield and the front of the coach, it was past due.

Today we took a glacier cruise in Prince William Sound. The tour was on a fairly large catamaran. The boat was very new and nice. We cruised to the Columbia Glacier. The last 2 or 3 miles traversed lots of ice and icebergs. The temperature dropped 15 degrees or so from the 65 deg F of Valdez so you really needed your heavy coat. The Columbia Glacier has retreated since 1980 and now is actually three separate glaciers. The largest face is ½ mile wide. The ice at the face is 200 feet high above the water and 900 feet below the surface of the water. It is pretty amazing. On the way to and from the glacier we cruised near the coast to spot wildlife. We saw Bald Eagles, Tufted Puffins, and Horn Bill Puffins. We also saw many Stellar Sea Lions and quite a few Sea Otters lounging on icebergs. Maverick did great by himself as usual and was excited to see us return. After a walk to stretch his legs we went back to town and ate at the Wheelhouse restaurant that is part of the Best Western. It was quite good and had a lovely view of the marina. We had a great time today and would highly recommend the cruise.

First thing this morning we checked out a kennel for possibly leaving Maverick while we go on a glacier cruise tomorrow for 6 hours. We chose not to leave him there and decided he would be happier in the coach. We drove back to the Worthington Glacier to check it out. We stopped along the way in the Keystone Canyon again to enjoy the waterfalls. The glacier face is very close to the highway so is a pretty short hike up the mountain. Being a state park we were able to take Maverick. First on leash, then off-leash. Maverick had an amazingly good time. We were able to climb right up to the ice and very cool river coming out from underneath the glacier. Maverick, of course, had to play in the water and dig in the powdered granite. In short time he looked liked a chocolate-dipped dog. Maverick could not have had more fun.
Once back in Valdez, we ate lunch at Nat Shack food truck. We had really good steak quesadillas though the service was slow. Nat Shack is right on the marina and we enjoyed eating outside. When we returned to the coach we had to wash Maverick immediately.

The drive today is just over 2 hours. The Richardson Highway has speed limits of 65 MPH but we couldn’t go more than 55 due to the rough roads with the dreaded frost heaves. The last hour of the drive was amazingly beautiful One of the prettiest drives anywhere. You drive close by the Worthington Glacier and we plan on going back to check it out while in Valdez. As you get close to Valdez you drive through the Keystone Canyon with Bridal Veil and Horsetail Falls. The canyon is amazing the falls are right on the road and really beautiful. We had booked the Valdez KOA because the parks closer to town were all booked weeks ago. I didn’t realize this park doesn’t offer sewer. Oh well, we can’t run the clothes washer for the next three days. We didn’t even setup before we headed into town for lunch. We chose the Old Fashion Diner for lunch. We each ordered our own burger and fries but quickly wished we had shared just one as usual. The food was very good and portions large. It didn’t take too long to check out downtown. On the way back to the RV park we stopped at the Chugach National Forest Information Center. We stopped because there was a cool waterfall just behind the building. Maverick and I enjoyed a short rock climb 20 or so feet up the waterfall. The waterfall is very pretty and like many in the area starts as a creek many hundreds of feet up very sheer mountains. Valdez sits beautifully between very sheer mountains and is one of the the more picturesque settings of any town we’ve seen in Alaska. Unfortunately the town is a little small and so doesn’t have quite as much to offer as some of the other towns. This afternoon Donna booked us a Glacier Cruise for Sunday.

Our target today is the town of Glennallen. There really isn’t anything at Glennallen but it is halfway to Valdez. The drive was very beautiful and it took us about 3 hours to get here. We booked the Northern Nights RV Park. Only a small number of sites have full hookups but since we reserved ahead we got a super nice back-in with the works. Once settled in we took off for the Wrangell, St Elias National Park Visitor Center. The visitor center is about 10 miles out of Glennallen. We checked out the roadmaps and checked with the rangers. The main road in the park is to the Kennicott Visitor center down a 60 mile rough gravel road that takes about 3 ½ hours one way. We definitely didn’t have time for that now, but will consider if we want to try that on the way back from Valdez. We did try out the short trails around the visitor center with Maverick. They were nice short trails with no one else on them. Maverick enjoyed running off leash for a while after being in the coach all day. On the way back we stopped at a scenic overlook that had a beautiful, elevated view of the Wrangell mountains that form the centerpiece of the National Park. Temperatures are about 70 deg F with intermittent very light rain.

Today we went to see an early movie. We saw Ant Man and the Wasp. Not high-brow but entertaining none-the-less. We took Maverick to what I thought was a Dog Park on Google Maps but realized when we got there it was Bog Park! Oh well, the park was in an average neighborhood but had trails through wet lands and trees. Maverick really loved exploring the trails. We ate dinner at Texas Roadhouse again to try to hold us until we were back in the lower 48. We also stocked up a Walmart since we would be in the boonies again for quite some time. By the way, most of the time in Anchorage we had high temperatures in the mid-60’s. We did have intermittent light rain some time most days here in Anchorage.

Yay, today is mail day. We have the kids send our mail to us about once a month and we received our mail at the RV park office. It always surprises us how little of one month’s mail means anything. The mail did generate a few minor actions and we took care of those this morning. We saw a Bass Pro Shop near the RV park and decided to drop in. Cabela’s and Bass Pro are both dog friendly so we us it as a chance to walk Maverick. We ate fast food and drove out to see a nice neighborhood of houses on the mountain overlooking Anchorage. The houses were neat and had a spectacular view of the Anchorage area. We stopped at a ski area that doubles as a park during the summer. Maverick got lots of time exploring trails off leash. In the evening Donna got a massage while I camped out in Starbucks for some high-speed internet.

The plan for today was to check out the Alaska Zoo. The zoo was a pretty nice but small zoo. About 80% of the animals were native to Alaska. After the zoo we ate at Chili’s, another favorite of ours. It is nice being in a little bigger town with some of our favorite stores and restaurants. After lunch we walked the Dimond Mall but didn’t buy anything. We took Maverick back to the dog park with the lake. Because it is Monday, Maverick didn’t have any friends to play with but still had a great time.