Quack Pack 2

We decided to take a slight detour down to Skagway because there was so much history around the town. There is a National Historic Park that has lots of information about the gold rush, which is the entire reason that Skagway is a town. One of the cheapest ways to make it to Dawson City to try to get a claim was to take a boat into Skagway and then try to forge your way over the white pass. One of the most interesting facts about the gold rush is that it only lasted one season in Skagway. By the time anyone made it up to Dawson City all of the claims were gone, so not only did no one strike it rich off gold, very few even got the chance to look. Everyone who managed to get rich in the gold rush did so off of money spent by other people there to look. There were lots of hotels, restaurants, brothels and scams.  While the history was very interesting we were struck by how much tourist traffic they get! The summer population is double the winter population, and while they have one of ...

We were staying in Yukon for our first night, the day after blowing out our first tire. Whitehorse didn’t have any open tire shops on a Sunday and camping around there was expensive. So we left and found a spot a good distance out of town near a small stream called Marshall Creek. While we were eating breakfast, we were greeted by an older gentleman and his grandson who was visiting on school vacation. His name was John - big John. He lived right down the road to the right. Turns out he has a son in Eugene and saw our Oregon plates and Ducks tire cover. He said we should swing by when we were on our way out of Alaska in a few weeks time. He’d make us some coffee, he said. Three weeks later, that’s all we had to go on. All I could remember, anyways. We contemplated going through Dawson City, a route that would have made visiting Big John impossible, but I really wanted to take this man up on his offer. By the time we got back to the creek on that Monday , it was already 4:30. A bit la...

We took off to Wrangell - St.Elias National Park from Anchorage on the Glenn Highway. This highway was absolutely stunning. The drive is a little bit tough at first because it can be a little narrow and winding, but the views and lakes are absolutely worth it.  When you get towards the end near Glennallen, the Wrangell mountains come into view for a spectacular finish to the road as well.   After spending some time in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park (see our park post), it was time to start thinking about heading back down to the lower 48 but we were just 80 miles from Valdez and heard that the trip was well worth it. So we took the detour. The trip was truly spectacular. The mountains were so young and jagged that you could still see the sheering of rock from when the plates pushed that piece of rock up out of the ground. There are also a whole variety of different waterfalls.     Just as we were about to get into Valdez, our second tire blew. This time it was ...

Wrangell - St. Elias is the biggest National Park and it butts up against Canada's Kluane National Park.  At 20,587 square miles, it is larger than Switzerland and has taller mountains. At the center of the park is the Bagley Icefield, which is nearly the size of the state of Delaware at 1,900 square miles.  Despite its size, the park only has 2 roads into it: the McCarthy Road and the Nabesna Road. Both roads are almost entirely gravel. The McCarthy road is the more traveled of the two and the one we took on this trip. It is about 60 miles into the park to the town of McCarthy. Vehicles have to stop at a river about a mile short of the town and people can walk in over a foot bridge. There is a car bridge that residents of McCarthy, and the National Park Service (NPS), can use but it isn’t open to the public.  We took two days to drive in, partially because we had to take it very slow on the road (averaging about 10 mph). Most of the road was severely washboarded. Wh...

While in Anchorage, we booked ourselves a Kenai Fjords cruise on Wednesdays. We took off down the Kenai (Key-nye) Peninsula on Tuesday to give ourselves some time to explore. We started off by taking the branch to Whittier and stopped at Byron Glacier. There we were able to hike up to what used to be the end of the glacier. Since the trail was built it had retreated a significant ways and we had two cross a rock field to get all the way too it.   After our adventure to our first glacier, we continued to Whittier. Whittier lies behind a 2.5 mile, one lane tunnel that is shared by cars and trains. So, after paying a $13 round-trip toll, we had to wait for the next half-hour mark to drive in. Traffic into Whittier is released every half-hour mark, while traffic coming out is release every hour mark, barring any unscheduled trains. Whittier is a cold-war era military town that is now a fishing town, a port and a tourist destination, mostly for fishing. There are a lot of remnants of i...

We took a Fjords boat tour and got to see glaciers and a lot of sea life! We got to Seward around 10 and our boat was scheduled to leave at 11:30. They had a lot for us to park the RV and offered a shuttle, but we opted for the 20 minute walk to the office. Before we set sail, Andreas got coffee but made the mistake of not getting the $9 travel mug. The mug was refillable with coffee, hot cocoa or tea throughout the 6 hour cruise. When you’re cruising at 25 knots, standing on the outer deck for a while will definitely make you want something warm to drink when you step back inside.  Right as we left, we were almost greeted by a bald eagle perching on a pillar until he was scared off by the sound of a train horn. As we went, we saw other sea birds: mostly puffins and murres. Puffins are only around the coastline during the summer months to nest. The rest of their time is spent way off shore. Murres dive up to 600 feet deep to catch food but are more likely to spending time near the ...