Helllo my friends:
Here is another set of pictures plus commentary of the most recent stage of our “Great North America Trip.”
I am posting this in Anchorage, Alaska, where we arrived earlier today and spent time replenishing our supplies at my favorite store (Costco, of course; it’s like the Makro in Holland). Plus, we bought new blades for the windshield wipers which had deteriorated rapidly during all the driving on dirt roads in the north of Canada. And I had my first haircut during this trip, long overdue.
We are about at the half-way point time-wise and over half distance-wise. We have left Canada and the far north behind us and are back in the US, be it in its northwestern outpost: Alaska. We’ll re-enter Canada in a week and a half or so, as we are working our way south along the Pacific. We spent two lovely days in Fairbanks, thanks to the kind hospitality of Hans Pulpan. Hans is an Austrian scientist (a seismologist) who worked for the University of Alaska at Fairbanks for many years. He is retired now. We know each other through our mutual Austrian friend Hans Schulz. The latter Hans and I became friends in Washington, DC almost 40 years ago. Hans S was an economist, working for the IMF while I was at the Bank. The Hans in Alaska, I had met only a couple of times during his visits to DC. In any event, we connected through email, and Betsie and I ended up staying in his guest house, behind his lovely home - he designed it himself - just outside Fairbanks. It was great for us to sleep in a normal bed after so many weeks in somewhat cramped quarters in our camper. What’s more, Hans cooked twice a delicious meal for us; the second night a group of his friends joined in. It was fun to meet them. We had a great time.
In the meantime, we have continued our voyage in southerly direction and spent a couple of days in Denali Nat. Park, home to the highest mountain of North America, Mount McKinley (i.e., the highest of both the US and Canada); it’s almost 6,200m. We also hiked (in the rain) around Byers Lake in Denali State Park; the reward was seeing a beaver and his lodge as well as a loon with two babies. See below for my account in pictures of all of this…..
Here one more photo which I didn’t share before, taken by Betsie while driving on the Demster in the Northwest Territory of Canada. It’s a great shot of a caribou plus calf running full speed, in front of our camper. (Just to clarify, we didn’t chase them; we just followed.)
Here we are leaving Dawson City in the YukonTerritory, Canada. It’s the gold-miners town which I reported on before. We are crossing the Yukon River by ferry before getting onto the Top of the World Highway, another well-known, long unpaved road in Canada, following the mountain ridge towards Alaska.
Some views from the Top of the World Highway; it is about 1200 to 1400m above sea level.
The beautiful purple hue on the hills is thanks to fireweed, which right now is in full bloom everywhere in this region
Fireweed closer up
The least bureaucratic border crossing into the US and the northernmost……
And here we are, back in the US: Alaska!
Both on the Canadian and the US side, this area is well-known for various gold rushes in the late 19th and early 20th century. Gold is still being found. For example, in the town of Chicken, Alaska…
An amateur gold “digger,” washing out the sand and rocks from his gold pan in hope of seeing some tiny yellow slivers (if not nuggets)
This man is serious about finding gold; he comes every year for a few weeks to Chicken. The gold mine operator brings in a truck load of “pay dirt” from his “claim” at a creek close by; and for $10 a day, these would-be miners can sift thru it, using their pans and these basins to find gold. As you will see below, he has had some success. (Because gold is heavy, it stays at the bottom of the pan while sand and small rocks are washed out by repeatedly filling the pan with water, swirling it around and letting it run out by tipping the pan sideways. The gold in the second picture is the result of more than one panning session.)
We were back again on the Alaska highway and soon reached its official end in the town of Delta Junction. You may recall from one of my earlier blogs that this road was constructed during WWII in record time, all 1422 miles of it, for fear of a Japanese invasion of Alaska. Because earlier we deviated to the far north at Whitehorse, we skipped part of the Alaska Highway, but we have driven most of its 1400+ miles, starting in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, several weeks ago.
You can’t miss the famous Alaska pipeline as it’s crossing the Tanana River, just north of Delta Junction. It’s 800 miles long, was constructed in the 1970s and it’s running from Prudhoe Bay in the north on the Arctic Ocean to Valdez in the south of Alaska, Below the facts in more detail.
Thanks to our TomTom, we had little trouble finding Hans Pulpan’s beautiful home a few miles outside Fairbanks. Some pictures below, taken during the two days we were there. The weather was great, so we spent nearly all our time on Hans’s terrace. Happy faces all around….
Below the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. We spent many hours there to learn more about the history of Alaska which was in Russian hands until 1867 when the US bought it from Russia for about 7 million dollars. One of the better bargains in human history, although it was quite controversial in the US at the time.
Mammoth and mastodonts roamed around Alaska during the last ice age; remains have been found in many places; you can even buy ivory jewelry made out of mammoth tusks.
About 130 miles south of Fairbanks, we entered Denali Nat. Park
We participated in a Discovery Hike with ranger Jen, a hardy woman who is not only a hiker and climber but also a “musher” (someone who operates dog sleds). She will participate in a 1,000 mile long race, next winter. Impressive! Several pictures of our hike below, which involved quite a bit of bush whacking and climbing.
In the distance, in the clouds, is Mount McKinley
Betsie’s close-up of pretty red flowers that lie dormant under the snow for 6-7 months out of the year
A lucky find, except I was not allowed to keep it: a golden eagle feather. It still lying somewhere in the fields by Sable Mountain….
A moose observed our group as we were hiking back to the road…
Below some views from the Park Road, the only one that leads into Denali NP (89 miles long). You are not allowed to drive there yourself, except for the first 15 miles, but have to make use of one of the frequent shuttle buses.
A very good shot by Betsie: a mature bald eagle (young ones don’t have the white feathers) is flying next to the bus while we are driving on a narrow road, well above the valley.
A female caribou blocking the traffic
A male caribou….
A grizzly (a blond one) in the distance 
The Eielson visitors center at mile 66 offers a good view of McKinley, but not when we were there. The mountain was in the clouds again…..
Two sets of moose antlers that were found locked together. These males stuck to each other after one pierced the eye socket of the other. And so they died; the skulls and antlers were found after all the flesh had been eaten by grizzlies, wolves, foxes, ravens and some other small critters.
Another caribou seen from the Park road
And another blond grizzly….
And a male caribou, crossing the riverbed
Enough grizzlies?
Well here is a moose for a change, photographed right from the bus. It’s wearing a collar with transmitter for research about its movements
Baby moose was not far off as you can see.
We attended a sled dog demonstration, again with ranger Jen. Below some photos of fixing the dogs to the leads and of Jen riding the sled around a track
Betsie and Jen
Not far from the entrance of Denali NP, you can hike up Healy mountain, a climb of about 500m for a view of the valley. Here is Betsie at the look-out point, where the wind was blowing
View from the top at 1066m above sea level
On our way down, looking back at the mountain we had just climbed
Another hike in Denali NP: along Savage River; the weather cooperated except that the wind was blowing hard. As the trail got more and more challenging, we turned around, thereby avoiding being blown off the mountain.
We’ll pick up our story again in a couple of days once we have explored the Kenai peninsula which starts here in Anchorage. Did you know, by the way, that Anchorage is as far west as Hawaii and as far north at Helsinki? I thought you might like to know that.
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