6 Months, 2 Newlyweds, 1 RV

The next day was a longish drive, mainly because the last 60 miles was a dirt road that we could not do more than like 30 miles an hour on. As we were driving along, a black bear cub ran across the road and up the hill on the other side. We also saw some moose on the side of the road. We made it to the dirt road no issues, and knew that ¾ the way along we had to stop as a bridge had been hit a few weeks ago and they had a weight limit on the bridge. The van was able to go over empty with only Brian in it , and we had to unhook and push the trailer. That was fun, the trailer made it over OK and we re-hooked and continued to our campground, the most primitive of the whole trip. We were camping at McCarthy, a very small town near another small town that used to be a mine. The campground consisted of a drop toilet, a lot of rocks, a glacier stream and a view of a glacier. The girls opted to use the trees and rocks for a toilet, over the drop toilet and most of the boys followed our suit. The drop toilet was quite full and disgusting. We set up camp and headed across a few small bridges to McCarthy itself, around a ½ mile walk away. We looked around the town and had a drink at the bar, then headed back to camp as it was our turn to cook dinner again. We cooked pork chops, mashed potato, baked beans and onion gravy. Yummy :)


The next day, Tuesday 24th, the rest of the group went ice climbing, something that Kade and I were not interested in doing, so we caught a lift with them to the small mining town and looked around it, saw a video on its history and had lunch at the pizza bus, reindeer sausage, onion and mushroom pizza. It was awesome pizza. Really good :) We then walked the 5 miles back to the campground, hoping to see some wildlife but all we saw was squirrels, a butterfly and bear poop. The walk took us around 2 hours and we then had a nap as we waited for everyone to get back from ice climbing. Once everyone was back we headed out to dinner, to a little local place, the Potato Shack where I had a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich and Kade had a Pulled Pork sandwich with fries. After dinner we headed to the bar and played pool for a few hours, at one stage the generator to the town cut of so we were playing by torch light. We played girls vs. boys and the girls won 7 – 2 when we stopped playing. We headed back to camp around midnight.

We then headed to Seward for a 3 night stop, the two big things to do was the Kenai Fjords boat trip and hike the Exit Glacier trail. It was a huge day of driving to get to Steward, we had to recross the bridge pushing the trailer and drive quite a few miles. We pulled into camp quite late, 8pm, put up our tents and went out for dinner. We went to a Greek/Italian place and Kade and I both had the beef/lamb gyro, it was really good and filling, with lots of nice tzatziki sauce.

On our first full day in Seward we went on the Kenai Fjords boat tour, which is a full day tour through the Kenai Fjords National Park. The only way to see the park is by boat tour. We got on at 9.30, and the first animals we saw were Sea Otters, they were playing and rolling over in the water, almost waving at us. This boat trip was not that cheap, and one thing that amazed Kade and me was the number of people who slept all day. It was a two story boat, upstairs was full and we were the only people downstairs, so it wasn’t that busy. A few of us spent the whole day outside in the cold wind, looking for animals so we could get the best spots for pictures and sightings. I only went inside to eat the buffet lunch, which was prime rib and salmon, salads, bread and dessert. Very nice :). I really really wanted to see puffins, I have decided they are like my new favorite animal and spent a lot of time watching them dive under the water. We saw a humpback whale, a transient pod of killer whales (meaning that it ate sea animals like seals, as opposed to a non transient pod which only hunt and eat fish), puffins, sea lions and otters. It was a great day, and I managed to get a few good pictures, unfortunately the whales didn’t jump out of the water so I couldn’t get a good shot of them. We also went quite close to a glacier that was calving, meaning bits were breaking off it and falling into the water as it melted. The noise it made as the ice chunks fell off it was really loud. Glaciers are this blue color and look pretty impressive. We had a margarita made on Glacier ice that was at least 200 years old. We were lucky to see the puffins as it was nearly time for them to head to warmer waters for the winter. The trip was good, even though it was cold on the boat in the wind, we are very glad to have done it. Kade and I cooked spaghetti bolognaise for dinner and a few of us (Chris, Sandy, Sarah, Kade and myself) had a quiet night around the campfire as the others went out to a local bar. Joke of the day. Why is the glacier ice blue? Because it was cold. Hehehehehe hahahaha I think it’s funny.

The other activity to do in Seward was to hike Exit Glacier. There were 3 or 4 trails you could do, and we were doing the hardest one to the top. It was 8 miles round trip, and Sandy, Chris and I stayed together and did it at my speed – slow. Kade decided to stay at the campgrounds and spend the day relaxing. It took us 7 hours to get up and back down again, we had to walk through snow at one stage and at another stage it was so foggy we couldn’t see more than around 5 meters in front of us. The others did the hike in around 4 1/2 hours but I’m a slow hiker. We made it to the top, and we wrote our names in the shack at the top of the glacier and came back down again, slowly :). I bought myself a hoodie that was on sale for making it up and back. It’s a Kenai Fjords hoodie that I had seen the previous day and liked, it has a puffin on it. On the way back to the campgrounds, we saw a bear up a tree so stopped and took some pictures of it. It was a big black bear and we were amazed it could climb so high up the tree. That night I had an early night, I was very tired and my legs were a bit sore. The next day they were 100 times worse, I couldn’t bend my knees without them aching. :)

We have reached the halfway point of our trip now and were headed to Anchorage. That night we were staying at the hostel in the city, which worked out quite good as it was raining and would have been too wet to camp. We got to the hostel and hung out for a few hours, showering, using the internet, packing bags, before we went to a local seafood restaurant for dinner. I had the seafood chowder in a bread bowl, and it was great. Thick and creamy, with heaps of seafood in it, and Kade had the reindeer burger. After dinner, Sandy, Kade, Chris and I went for a walk around the town and then met the others at the bar at the designated time. We all had a few drinks (and then maybe a few more) at the bar and it made for an interesting night back at the hostel (the girls were in one room and the boys in another). One of the girls, not mentioning any names, may have been quite happy and talkative so I made sure she got into the room all ok and all her breakables (laptop etc) were packed away (which scared her in the morning as she didn’t know I had moved them so she thought they had been stolen until I got them out of the locker). We also had to convince her that we did not want to talk anymore, it was time for sleep and if she wanted to talk to herself she was to do it in her head. This didn’t work out too well as she talks in her sleep, but it was a fun night.

The next day we woke up (the girls were up and ready before the boys), had breakfast and checked out of the hotel, packed up our things and put them back into the trailer and van before setting out again. Everyone was ok after the night before which was surprising due to the alcohol consumed. We were headed for Denali National Park and would be staying at a campsite close by. That same morning 2 members of our group had opted to do white water rafting on a river that was on the way. As it was a level 5 rafting trip and you definitely had to know how to swim properly, Kade chose not to do it. As we are now in Alaska, its mighty cold for us Australians and the idea of getting wet in these temperatures didn’t hold any appeal for me. We dropped off the two members who were going white water rafting and the rest of the group went and had breakfast at a nearby local restaurant. I got sourdough toast with a variety of jams to choose from as well as coffee and Kade got a ham and egg muffin burger thing (similar to a McMuffin). We all got our food and made a morning of eating our breakfast, chatting and being nice and warm inside the restaurant . We all then got back in the van and the others went for a nature trail walk thing, to see the puddle of hope. I stayed in the van and lied in the back and read. It was raining and my legs were still very sore from the hike a few days earlier. We then went back to pick up the other two that had done the rafting, they had dry suits on which had kept their clothes dry and their bodies warm (supposedly) but apparently the parts of their bodies that were exposed (face and hands) were frozen.

Once we were all back together we headed for our campsite with nothing else eventful happening, we arrived, set up our tents and got everything organized and then some people in our group went on a scenic plane flight over Mt McKinley (I think it was three people) while the rest of us had a look around the campground and made use of the laundry facilities. A couple of hours later the rest of the group returned from their scenic flights, the next order of business was dinner and Kade and I were on dinner duty, so we made sausages and mashed potato with tinned spaghetti and everybody seemed to enjoy it.

The next day we had a bus tour of Denali National Park organized that the whole group hopped onto at 8:30am. The bus driver told us about the history of the park and what animals we might see so I’ll just give a brief overview, the park was originally 2 million acres in area and then it got extended a few years later to 6 million acres. That is a lot of land, and the bus tour is only a 130 mile round trip and that doesn’t cover much of the vast wilderness at all, and that’s why they say on the bus tour that you are not guaranteed to see any wildlife at all. But we were lucky and we saw (in no particular order) moose, elk, caribou, bald and golden eagles, bears, arctic ground squirrels, arctic foxes, dall sheep and wolves and possibly some other animals that I can’t remember. We saw these animals over our two days of bus touring in the Denali National Park, some of the highlights were a mother bear and her two cubs eating blueberries and a fox the slinked right past us as we were all taking pictures of Mt McKinley, a big fat arctic ground squirrel that came up to look at the bus as it went past. But one exciting bit happened at the end of the first day as we were almost back at the bus depot, and that was a wolf that came up was running on the side of a big hill and he (I presume) came down and ran along the road keeping pace with the bus for about a kilometer before sensing something and pouncing near a clump of bushes. The wolf came out with an arctic ground squirrel in his mouth which he promptly killed and ate right next to the bus, although he did keep an nervous eye on the bus as if we might steal his dinner, but he made short work of the squirrel and then went on his way and disappeared back into the surrounding tundra. After the tour was over we all got off and went to a local pizza parlor for dinner. We got four pizza’s between nine people which we finished but we were stuffed, we then went back to the campsite, built a fire, had smores and went to bed.

On our second day we took the same bus tour and did the whole tour again, we saw the mother bear and her cubs again (we presume the ones from the day before) and some more animals that were mentioned above. Some of our group got out to do a hike for an hour or so, and another group got out to do what was to be a long hike, but as both groups found out, the scrub that looks quite small while on the bus is actually very big, up to 5 foot tall, and walking through it is not that easy. Kade and I stayed on the bus. It was warm and dry. After the bus trip we went to see the dogsled demonstration, which was cut short due to the onset of rain. The dogs were all excited and barking, and they didn’t want to behave as well as they could of. But it was still interesting to watch. After the demonstration we made it back to the designated pickup point and went back to camp via some gift shops where we got a pair of thick socks with bears on them.

The next day we had to pack up our tents and move on, this time to Tangle Lakes, a stop in the middle of nowhere like many stops in Alaska. We got in early to the campground but couldn’t set up our tents as there was a boat where we were to be. We had lunch and 5 of us played poker – Brian, Danni, Sandy, Kade and I. Sandy had not played before and had great beginners luck, winning a fair few of the hands. After poker, some people went off for a hike, and the rest of us went inside to play pool. When everyone was back from the hike we set up our tents and then we had dinner, vegetable soup. After dinner we went inside and played pool again, this time the boys won but not as convincingly as what the girls did in McCarthy. That night it was cold. Real cold. We woke up with frost on the tents, which made for cold hands taking them down.