North to Alaska 2010

Valdez to Delta Junction, AK

When you go south in Alaska and you then want to go north, you wind up traveling the same road in both directions. So . . . today we are seeing the same things we saw on the way to Valdez, only now we are heading north. It is worth the return trip as the views are so beautiful. We have seen so many mountains, rivers and creeks on this trip it is hard to believe that one state has so many. It seems every few miles we are crossing over another body of water, all of it rushing somewhere beyond where we can see.

There are several lily ponds along the highway and each one has a "watch for moose" sign - but no moose at any of them. We keep watching for them though.

We are staying tonight at the Sourdough Creek BLM Campground on the Gulkana River. There is a trail the creek but we opted not to take it. The Gulkana River is part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System managed by the BLM - Bureau of Land Management. Both the river and the creek have good fishing in

them.

New day and we are still heading for Fairbanks, but we will only get to Delta Junction tonight. Along the way at Meier's Lake we saw 8 Trumpeter swans, a bald eagle and the Black Rapids Glacier. This glacier was nicknamed the Galloping Glacier when it advanced more than 3 miles during the winter of 1936-37. It is currently a retreating glacier with little ice visible.

We again were able to access the Alaska Pipeline at the Denali Fault/Pipeline Visitor Viewing Area. The signs give the pipeline history and detail design solutions used to make the pipeline earthquake-proof. The zigzag pattern often seen in the above-ground sections allows for pipe expansion or contraction due to temperature changes or movement caused by other forces, such as earthquakes. The pipeline has an earthquake detection system. Ground accelerometers at pump stations measure earth movement and computers identify critical supports, valves and other items to check after a quake. The pipeline's design was tested in November 2002 by a 7.9 earthquake.

Delta Junction - population 984. Named after the nearby Delta River, Delta Junction began as a construction camp on the Richardson Highway in 1919 (it was first known as Buffalo Center because of the American bison that were transplanted here in the 1920s.) This is a pretty good size farming community and the farms range in size from 20 acres to 3,000 acres. The average farm is about 500 acres. Barley is the major feed grain grown in Delta. Other crops include oats, wheat, forage, pasture, grass seed, canola, potatoes and field peas. There are also small-scale vegetable farms, dairies, beef producers, swine producers, bison, elk, reindeer, yak and musk-ox ranches. Fort Greeley also contributes to the economy as it is located 5 miles south of the junction. It was deactivated in 2000, and reactivated in 2002 as a national missile defense site.

Delta River at the campground

We ate at the Clearwater Lodge - just a hop, skip and jump from our campsite at the Clearwater State Recreation Site and this place was straight out of "Men in Trees", a TV show a couple of years back that was set in "Elmo, AK" a fictitious town. It was great - and the food was delicious.

Tomorrow we hope to make it to Fairbanks where we will meet up with John and Fran for the solstice festivities.

North to Alaska 2010

Worthington Glacier, Thompson Pass & Valdez, AK

We left Billy Mitchell Rest area only to be greeted once again with some magnificent scenery. The mountains are incredible and the snow fall still on the mountain tops magnify their beauty. We didn't expect to see snow this time of year - thank goodness it is up high and not on the low ground where we are traveling.

We stopped along the way to see the Worthington Glacier. This is the most visited site in the Copper River Basin and it is a site to behold. The glacier starts or "heads" on Girls Mountain at an elevation of 6,134 feet. There are walking trails - guided and unguided - to the glaciers edge but we chose only to go to the viewing area where there are great viewpoints and interpretive signs. Besides, we weren't prepared for climbing on crevasses - with or without our ice shoes!

The woman that runs the information center was very talkative and gave us some good information about where to go in Valdez. She showed us a sign she made for winter use and said this sign was because of the snowfall the glacier area got last year - 40 feet. She was just a small thing and in her 60's and said she couldn't shovel all of that snow herself, so she enlisted help. The best part she said, was she got all the help she needed!

Leaving the glacier area we traveled through Thompson's Pass which is one big gorge along the Copper River. Because of the amount of snowfall, the walls of the canyon were plentiful with waterfalls. One in particular was Horsetail Falls, and we also stopped to look at Bridal Veil Falls, both beautiful.

Valdez - pronounced Val-DEEZ - was established in 1897-98 as a port of entry for gold seekers bound for the Klondike goldfields. They followed the Valdez trail which was an especially dangerous route, the first part of it leading over Valdez Glacier, where the early stampeders faced dangerous crevasses, snow blindness and exhaustion. Seems everywhere in Alaska where there is a port of entry, it was used by stampeders. They got where they wanted to go, however they could get there.

Until 1964 Valdez was located about 4 miles east of its present location, closer to Valdez Glacier. The 1964 Good Friday earthquake, the most destructive earthquake ever to hit southcentral Alaska, virtually destroyed Valdez. The quake measured 9.2 on the Richter scale and was did damage as far as Anchorage and the surrounding areas. After the quake, the Army Corps of Engineers determined the town should be relocated so if another quake of that magnitude hit, the town wouldn't be destroyed again. I fail to see what difference 4 miles would make but then I'm not an engineer either!

The Alaska pipeline begins at Prudhoe Bay on the Artic Ocean and ends at the marine terminal at Port Valdez where it is fed by gravity into tanks or directly into waiting oil tankers. National attention was focused on Valdez and the pipeline when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef - some 30 miles from Valdez - in March 1989, causing an 11-million-gallon oil spill.

We opted to stay at Allison Point across the Port Valdez Bay from the town of Port Valdez. The campground is situated at the end of the road, just north of the marine terminal. The tanks sit up on the hill and it is a busy place, as is the bay. We sat in our RV at night watching the harbor seals dive and eat the mussels - or whatever they were catching. We explored the little harbor town which is situated next to the Small Boat Harbor. There is a paved bike/hike path from the outer limits of town to this point. It comes past the Crooked Creek Salmon Spawning Viewing area and bears are reported to be active here so bikers and hikers have to be very aware of their surroundings.

We visited the Original Valdez Townsite, which is now just a series of plaques, graveled non-maintained roads with lots of potholes and a nice view of the bay. We also took a ride a little bit out of town to view the Valdez Glacier. The glacier itself isn't visible but the ice flows that have broken off are visible.

Some of you have already heard our bear encounter story but for those of you that haven't I will retell it. On the second night in Valdez, we were as usual watching the harbor seals, when Ken said "look, there is a bear". I thought he was kidding until I saw this huge black bear walk in front of our big picture window that was facing the water. He stood up on the rock in front of us and looked around then ambled to the fire pit directly behind us and looked at that for a minute, then walked over to our spare tire on the back of the RV, put his front paws on it and raised himself up and looked in the window - at me! I was sitting in the chair facing out and was only about 12 inches from this huge bear. Needless to say I was startled but not that much I didn't get a couple of pictures. He then dropped down and I could hear his paw start to hit the side of the RV where the door is located and said to Ken that he was looking for a way in. With that I noticed the door wasn't locked, so quick locked it. Ken jumped up and said this wasn't good and knocked on the window which startled the bear and he walked away. After this episode we asked about his behavior and we were told, the bears are hungry and looking for salmon which is over a week late coming in. I had fried up bacon that evening so guess that was the reason for the visit. Bears have an incredible sense of smell and can smell food from 2 miles away. I like to see the bears but that was just a little too close for comfort. It would have been nothing if he wanted to come in for his paw to break the window or for him to claw through the door. Scary!

One other fact about Valdez is the snow. The average snowfall annually is 329.7 inches which equates to 27.5 feet. All of the houses have a steep pitch on the roof so the snow slides off, but when it reaches the second story they just walk out the upstairs balconies or windows.

From here our destination will be Fairbanks for the Summer Solstice on June 21st. It will be interesting to experience 24 hours of daylight.

North to Alaska 2010

Deadman Lake to Valdez

Again we are headed further west to Tok (rhymes with joke), then south to Valdez - pronounced Val-Deez. We had spent some time in Tok a couple of days ago to check out the Visitors Center - which was jam packed full of brochures and pamphlets on Alaska - and to do our wash and get some groceries. Tok isn't very big, population 1,435 and only about 3 miles long but it sure is busy. This is the first town you come to after traveling some distance where you can actually buy groceries, do your laundry, get mechanical repairs to your vehicles and camp in fairly nice campgrounds - if you want to pay the price - dump your tanks and take on water. We had done all of that so this day we were just passing through.

We got a late start and then stopped at one of the campgrounds to visit with a young family we had met at Deadman Lake and drop their food we bought for them off. They had blown their transmission and had no way to get food, so when we went in we took care of that and when we got back to the campground, they had left. As we found out later, his father in Montana made arrangements to have their VW van towed back to Tok and then to Delta Junction where the young man would put a new transmission in and then continue on their way to Montana. They had lived in the "bush" in the town of Galena - only way in was by plane - and with a 10 week old daughter, Mom didn't want any further adventures, so they were moving back "home". Anyway, we spotted them in the campground and got their food to them and then continued on our way down the Tok Cutoff.

We didn't get very far due to the delays and there weren't any good stops that we saw so we pulled over into a rest stop and spent a miserable night. This stop was in a higher elevation and it was windy and rained all night. One time when I got up I checked the thermometer and it read 36 degrees. I was expecting snow in the morning. The following morning we decided we needed to find another place that was a little more sheltered and at a lower elevation.

We stopped at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Preserve. This is the largest unit in the national park system, encompassing 13.2 million acres of wild lands and 9.7 million acres of designated wilderness. Formed by the Wrangell, St. Elias and Chugach mountain ranges, the park contains the greatest collection of peaks over 16,000 feet on the continent, including Mount St. Eliza - 18,029 feet - the second tallest peak in the United States. The park also contains the largest concentration of glaciers on the continent. One of these is the Malaspina Glacier which is North America's largest piedmont glacier - a type formed when 2 or more glaciers flow from confined valleys to form a broad fan. This glacier covers an area of ab out 1,500 square miles, larger than the state of Rhode Island. The most active glacier in North America is the Hubbard Glacier which flows out of the St. Elias Mountains into Disenchantment Bay. It is presently advancing in spite of global climate change.

Most of the travel into the park is by plane or on foot. If hiking, most of the trails into the park are unimproved trails that were once mining routes. The rangers stress wilderness and survival skills are essential.

The Alaska Oil Pipe Line - this is really impressive!!

The pipeline is 48" in diameter and is 800 miles in length - from Prudhoe Bay on the Artic Ocean to Valdez. Quite an undertaking. Some of it is above ground - where the hot oil traveling through the pipeline would melt the Permafrost - and a lot of it is buried below ground. We could see it quite frequently as we traveled on the Richardson Highway.

After our visit to the park, we proceeded to find a place to stay for the night. We found an excellent one with a view of Billy Mitchell mountain and glacier.He was a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps which in 1903 was completing the trans-Alaska telegraph line to connect all the military posts in Alaska.

Billy Mitchell Mountain at sunset

The Billy Mitchell rest stop not only has a beautiful view, there are several wildflowers there. This is one of my favorites and they are everywhere - in fields, along the streams and alongside the road beds. The Artic Lupine.

Another abundant wildflower is the Horned Dandelion. This looks similar to the ones in the lower 48 states but it has a blunt end on the petals and underneath the bloom are green leaves that look like horns on the stems.

Tomorrow we expect to get to Valdez where we will spend a couple of days exploring. We have been told it is a very interesting little town.

North to Alaska 2010

Deadman Lake - more pictures!

There are more pictures of Deadman Lake that I would like to share with you.

This was sunset at 10:38 pm over the lake - beautiful!

Tall Wort - Bluebells - the flowers are about 1/2" long. Its leaves are edible and can be added to salads.

These reeds grow all along the lake shore. We thought the black things on the plant were snails - but they are flower buds.

The Russian word taiga (land of little sticks) best describes this boggy landscape of bottle brush trees. Black Spruce grow so slowly that a tree 2 inches in diameter may be 100 years old. Where black spruce thrive, few other plants can survive. They spread their roots in the boggy, shallow soil above permanently frozen ground. Permafrost blocks water drainage and limits root growth and soil fertility. Black spruce invite fire. Drooping branches make a stepladder for flames to climb to the cone-laden crowns. The fire's heat opens the resin-sealed cones, spreading seeds of new life. We have heard them described as looking like "used pipe cleaners".

Labrador Tea - and it is actually used for tea

Trumpeter Swan - notice the discoloration on its neck from the tannin in the water. This swan is named for the loud trumpeting "koo-hoo" call, which can be heard for a mile or more.

Prickly Rose - these flowers/plants are abundant in the Yukon and Alaska and grow at low to medium elevations.

Storm coming in over Deadman Lake

Hope you enjoyed these pictures - our next destination will be Valdez - remember the oil spill?

North to Alaska 2010

Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge - Deadman Lake

When I said I thought we would be here more than one night, I didn't think it would wind up being 8 nights but it did and it was absolutely a wonderful, relaxing time.

The refuge encompasses 730,000 acres with rolling hills, hundreds of small lakes and 2 glacial rivers - the Nabesna and Chisana - which combine to form the Tanana River. The combination of lakes, ponds, marshes, streams and rivers provide for a variety of habitat, mostly waterfowl, and has gained international recognition as an Important Bird Area because of its habitat for migrating Sandhill crane and nesting Trumpeter swans. The refuge provides habitat for 143 nesting species and 47 migrating species. other wildlife includes moose, black and grizzly bear, wolf, coyote, beaver, red fox, lynx and caribou.

Trumpeter swans are nesting here in growing numbers, attracted by the refuge's many secluded ponds. They demand privacy for raising their young - cygnets - and can chase away other nearby birds. However, they do allow ducks to frequent their same territory. We watched two pair of swans on the lake the entire time we were there. They are huge at 65" from tip of beak to tip of their tail. We noticed that their body was white but their necks and heads were a reddish color. This is because they feed by plunging its head and neck underwater, or tipping body bottom-up, like a duck, so that it can reach plants on the bottom. The discoloration comes from the tannin in the water - the same thing that gives tea its brown color.

Every day around 4:00 pm, the beavers and muskrats would get busy. We watched a beaver swim past the dock until he was out of sight, then about 20 minutes later back he would come bearing sticks between his teeth headed for his lodge. There were three beaver lodges on the lake that we could see - large, medium and small. We thought maybe the size was determined on how long they had been living in it with the large one being the original - grandma and grandpa's!! The muskrats were also busy - not working - but playing hide and seek with each other. There were several types of ducks always in the lake, several we hadn't seen before and it was always exciting to discover a "new" duck.

We did see a moose a couple of times at the end of the lake, but that is the only large animal we saw the entire time we were there.

There was a boardwalk trail through the area with signposts depicting the different wildflowers and trees and a viewing platform at the end of it. While out there one day we spotted two eagles flying overhead and eventually landing at the end of the lake where the beaver huts were. They sure are magnificent birds. One was a bald eagle and the other was a golden eagle.

This lake is known to the Native Americans as "Pike Lake". We were told that is the only fish in the lake and there aren't very many of them. We only saw one party - man and woman - that fished the lake while we were there. They were Native American, and they did not use a rod and reel. He had some kind of a trolling line that they dragged behind them in the canoe. They came three days in a row, then we didn't see them again. There were a couple of other parties that went out on the lake, a kayaker and the host couple in the canoe that was provided to them by the refuge. Ken and I considered borrowing the canoe while they were not working but the weather wasn't suitable - cold, rainy and windy.

When we got to the lake the first day after traveling over the gravel roads, Ken decided to wash the truck - and maybe the trailer. With their being no hook-ups in the park and the water supply still frozen, he went down to the lake and carried water back to the site and proceeded to wash the truck. He said he would wait another day to wash the trailer as the water was very cold. It wasn't that cold that it stopped him from washing his feet in it one day!! Br-r-r-r

We had a great time at Deadman Lake and after traveling since May 3, when we left York, PA - it was a much needed time to rest and relax without having to be on the move every day.