Travel Journal: (Alaska; Anchorage, Seward, Tok, Chicken)
Travel Journal: (Alaska; Anchorage, Seward, Tok, Chicken) |
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Our visit to Anchorage is actually two visits. We spent two nights there while traveling from Denali to Seward, then three nights after returning from Seward before heading home.
While
in Anchorage the first time, we visited a few places with our
niece, Jamie. She is a college student working for a tour bus
company in Alaska this summer. Fortunately, she was in town with
some days off while we were in town. We checked out Earthquake
Park, which is a walking tour of an area near the bay that sunk
a lot wiping out a bunch of houses in the Good Friday, 1964 tremor.
Later we stopped at the Alaskan Native Heritage Center on the Northwest
part of town. This place was an interesting mixture of dances,
songs, art and displays of living in the different native cultures
of Alaska. We liked this place and visiting with Jamie.
On our return trip to Anchorage we spent some time doing the misc things to get ready to return home. The water pump that was leaking previously finally quit, so it was replaced. There was also some laundry and shopping to do. One place we stopped at was the "Experience Theater" place downtown. They had an omnidome theater to see a short topic on Alaska and another "experience theater" to see another short film on the earthquake. At one point in the earthquake presentation, the floor moved under the seats so you could experience the earthquake. It was the most lame thing any of us had seen, or felt.
On
our very last day in Anchorage, we went on a short (1.5 hour)
trail ride. Sara was most interested in this activity. This ride
wound through a state park land in the southeastern part of Anchorage
which was very pretty. Being all city slickers, we all had saddle
butt after this short ride. According to Sara, this was the best
activity of the whole trip, beating out the gold panning we did
near Fairbanks.
Anchorage is a fairly nice little city of a quarter million and we liked it here. It seems to be fairly well laid out and has the main attractions a small city needs. If only HP had a division located here to transfer to. The RV park (Anchorage RV Park) we stayed at was probably the best one of all the RV parks we visited during the trip.
Seward
is where we met up with a couple we know from our church, Chris
and Laverne Christensen. It was good to visit with and share some
experiences with them. This town is one of the ports for cruise
ships, has a major harbor for fishermen, charters, and tours in
the Kenai Fjords National Park, and has a tourist sea life center.
The Sealife
Center is a fairly good discovery type place, mostly aimed
at kids, but educational for all. They had a touch pool for feeling
starfish, crabs, and other tidal pool type sea creatures. They
also had a sea lion that we saw being fed, some harbor seals,
and various birds and fish.
One of the things Sandi was hoping to get while in Alaska was a good salmon dinner. It was here at a restaurant in the harbor area (Ray's Restaurant) that she got this wish fulfilled. They had a broiled salmon with a mango salsa that was perfect. We had salmon dinners at a couple places in Anchorage (Sea Galley and Downtown Deli), but they didn't compare well to this one.
One
of our highlights of this trip was the cruise we took to the Kenai
Fjords National Park area. This boat had about 100 or so people
on board, but with two decks (inside on the lower deck or outside
on the upper
deck) it didn't feel too crowded. The captain, a lifetime local
fisherman operator and worker of the tour boat operator more recently,
was very knowledgeable of the sights to see, and knew where to
find the wildlife along the way.
The
weather on this day was not optimal. It was sunny the day before
and the day after, but on this day it was cloudy and cool. Fortunately
it didn't rain at all, so it could have been worse. The breeze
from traveling at about 15 to 20 knots with a head wind made it
fairly chilly, if not plain cold, 
and
even colder when we got up near the glaciers. While we were on
the upper deck, we did stay under the canopy area most of the
time when not near something of any interest. Sara enjoyed about
4 cups of coffee during the cruise, partly to stay warm.
About halfway through the cruise was the part that was for observing the glaciers up close. The captain shut off the engines, and we could easily hear the ice creaking and cracking with portions breaking off and crashing into the water. While we were there, all the parts that calved and tumbled down were fairly small. In one area was an ice flow that had many harbor seals lounging on icebergs. They would slip in the water as we approached.
Along the way to and from the glaciers, the boat came close to some humpback whales. While it was neat to see these large animals, we didn't see a whole lot of them, usually just the back, a fin, or the tail. The waters were fairly deep right up to the shore and it looked like they were working on eating the fish in those areas.
The next biggest highlight was see the bald eagles in the area. While they were mostly just sitting in the trees watching various things, we did see them attempt to do some fishing. We never saw them catch anything though.
Other animals seen along the way included various sea birds, sea otters, dolphins, and sea lions.
Overall, this cruise was probably the biggest highlight of the trip for Jerry and Sandi. (Sara thinks the horseback riding was much better, even though she could still feel the pains from it days later.)
Homer was an interesting place in some ways, and it won our hearts. It is a town that has separated the tourist portion from the town people part. The main tourist part is out on the Homer Spit. That road is a narrow piece of land that goes out a ways into the bay. Out there, in the middle of nowhere, there are a bunch of tourist places, gift shops, small restaurants, kayaking places, and so forth. The town itself has very little in the way of tourist items besides a visitor's center along the main road. We drove through the town portion, had some dessert, and liked what we saw. It has a view that is second to very few places. The mountains across the bay are extremely beautiful and most of the town has a view of the mountains. Homer is a more moderate climate on the coast then central Alaska, but has a lot more moisture. It also has a little more sunshine in the winter and more darkness in the summer than other places farther north. While it is a small community, it is much larger than it looks like on the map or at first glance. When we start deciding on retirement years and where to live, this community might be one of our top candidates.
Traveling from Anchorage to Tok
along the Glenn Highway was good and bad. There was some good
scenery, some winding roads, some straight roads, and a large
amount of construction or road with patches in it.
There is not a lot in Tok (pop ~1000).
It is just a place in the road to buy gas, gifts, food, and stay
a night. Since it is conveniently located at a couple crossroads,
we stayed here twice on our travels, one night going into Alaska
and one night before leaving. When we stayed there the first night,
the place was just the first RV place in town, which was ok. When
we saw that another campground (Sourdough Campground) had a pancake breakfast
with reindeer sausage, we ate there and liked it. Sara liked that
they had free wifi. 
This
caused us to plan to return here when passing back through a couple
weeks later.
On the return visit to Tok, we found
that Sourdough
Campground also had evening meals and entertainment which
consisted of some local entertainment that pretty good, being
both talented musically and somewhat funny. 
After
dinner and music, there was a pancake toss to try to earn a free
breakfast which was a lot of fun. The object was to toss a rubbery
pancake about 15 feet into a 5 gallon bucket. Since the pancakes
were more difficult to control than frisbees, there were only
about 5 winners out of maybe 25 or 30 tossers. Jerry tried his
luck/skill on a couple tosses, but only got close. This campground
has lots of trees and is much better than ones that are basically
parking lots with hookups.
Chicken (pop 27) is a dusty stop on the
"Top of the World Highway". Actually it is about 3 tiny
stops for each of the gift shop areas. 
The
one pictured considers itself to be "Beautiful Downtown Chicken".
The cafe on the right had good soup (chicken noodle) and pies.
They had other chicken dishes as well.
Chicken got it's name when the founding miners wanted to call it Ptarmigan (very common bird in the area and later the state bird), but couldn't agree on the spelling. Since these birds were also called "tundra chickens", they went with Chicken. Another story says that since ptarmigan tastes like chicken, it was named Chicken. From the other picture, you can see that the current nearby land owners are quite friendly. A lady pulled up in a large SUV about the time Jerry took to the picture to let him know that this road didn't go anywhere and turn around would be difficult down the way. She seemed fairly normal and didn't look like she was sizing him up as a target.
As for roads today, they were dirt from Chicken to the Canadian border, then they were paved with many patched areas. It also rained quite a bit near Chicken, so it was muddy and slippery. Later it was just dusty which stuck well to wet vehicles.