6/29/17 Wet and wetter. We arrived in Whittier at 6 AM, a place with World War II history as a harbor for the troop transports and supplies in the Pacific campaign. Then the cold war additions. A tunnel built in 1943-3, drilled through the mountain and under a glacier two and a half miles originally for rail transport of military supplies to Anchorage… more recently added a concrete slab between the rails to allow vehicles through. Every hour on the hour for 15 minutes for cars, alternating on the half hour for trains. A rock chute. The tunnel opens to tall mountains, snow and waterfalls with heavy dark grey clouds hanging low and steady rain. As it is nearly the fourth of July weekend  and there is a marathon happening in Seward… there are lots of road barn campers headed that way…all seeking a place to weather the weather for the night. We found a nice spot on the side of the Glacier Road headed west, down on a stream… and we were alone for a bit but other road campers seeking the free sites have found what we did and have come in to ‘our space’ … first night in the camper in Alaska and it is thankfully just an ‘on the way to someplace else on a wet day’ stop over. A loon swims by and calls. Luann is starting the acclimation to the camper (boat living mentality)… “where is everything and where to go in a shared space”? For me at nearly the two week mark, the space seems adequate but new routines for two. The new, front opening Isotherm refrigerator is a big convenience over the top opening Engel. Though both are very high efficiency (low energy) the Isotherm is much quieter… I have to put my ear to it to know it is running. We had it turned up high (cold) for the day before we put the camper on the ferry where there would be no solar recharging of our batteries. We also had frozen 2 quarts of water. On the sixth day, without sun for solar recharging of battery use, the ice was still solid in both quarts. The energy used was small starting at 13 V and at 12.64 V after 5 days. That is plenty to last while it rains for the next 4 days. I have one bar/4G here so post this as something to do to while away the time with the sound of rain on the camper roof.  

7/2/17 Sitting in the rectory of the Resurrection Cafe once Lutheran church which turns 100 years old this year. It is the home of my nephew’s charming lady who has created a space that is both a snug, warm coffee house surrounding folks with local art and a place to relax in a community hub. Seward is dynamic. Besides the fact that it is surrounded by stunning beauty of twelve kinds keeping one trying to remember to stop head turn gawking on every corner,  the town seems filled with dynamic people, people with purpose with a magnetic warmth and friendliness. The kind of place where busy people stop and chat on their way to what they are doing…busy but seemingly not harried. A healthy, non-anonymous commute of people who know what each is doing … a human bee hive. Luann and I stepped into the middle of it with the ignorance of tourists but fortunate to get the inside skinny on local connections and how things work culturally. We have already hiked up to the (half way) view spot over the Exit Glacier, toured the town’s hot spots, picked up local history and not just the sunny summer snapshot of a place but a “what happens when the cruise ships leave” .... the day to day work that is done in a place that requires real work to live. That is the fun part of going places…. if you are lucky enough to get to see the real fabric of a place.My nephew Michael is a captain of a boat that tours the Kenai Penninsula National Park by boat. He has a wild collection of experience on ships in literally all parts of the globe, in all manners of sea faring work… a graduate of the Maine Marine Academy. It is a marvelous thing to be able to learn so much so quickly from hearing his tales of navigating these waters and those whose jobs/life is bound by the sea. It is a complicated, high intertwined collection of skills. It is also the fourth of July weekend and the town is gearing up for a celebration that only a small, tightly sewn town can produce. The kids are wired. Amongst the festivities run by locals are we tourists…the town explodes with visitors as it is also the famous race up Marathon Mountain that draws them here to watch. Frankly an insane idea. From a bar bet one hundred years ago, the challenge of running up a shale scrabble mountain, two and a half thousand feet up at thirty something degree angle to the top and then (!) down in under an hour. Okay … seems like an idea spawned in an alcohol environment with all the high probability of drawing blood… Incredibly there are those that do this and train for it. If you saw the mountain you would just snort… no way you could do it in ten hours.A leisurely day of roaming the town and The Alaska Sea Life Center. Alaska King crab for dinner tonight. Halibut and Salmon yesterday...whoa.

7/4/17 Luann and I were treated to an all day cruise to the Kenai Peninsula. It is nearly beyond words. We were treated as VIPs as my nephew Mike is the captain on the boat. Whales, Orcas, dolphins, puffins, rookeries of thousands of birds, sea lions, harbor seals, mountain goats, and then up to a glacier… collected ice from 24,000 year ago with ancient air trapped inside under pressure higher than my truck tires… pops like crazy in whiskey and is so hard it nearly never seems to melt.  A full day of learning the ecology of the remarkable place packed with wildlife. A unique privilege. 

Home to the coffee house for an evening meal…talking not thinking as time slips into the light of Alaska two weeks after solstice …. it’s midnight?! Just doesn’t get dark. The body starts to suffer the lag from the mind convinced it should keep going… sleep requires eye covers or towels over windows. We move on tomorrow… the fourth of July to Mike's cabin up on the plate above Homer for a few days; there we will have the time to regroup as a camper team and start the FWC Eagle life for the next six weeks. For that leg the truck and camper must be  reorganized to be in that mode….not traveling…wandering. Happy Fourth of July!  

7/5/17 The 4th of July in Seward…The Marathon mountain race to the top and down… the drive from Seward to Homer… Halibut fish and chips on the Homer spit and a drive up the mountain to my nephew’s log cabin on the plate overlooking the mountains and glaciers south. Okay we won’t mention the yellow jacket hive in the outhouse or the being caught in the middle of a family feud as to which is better…  Seward or Homer… 

We have bear spray… a marine fog horn and a nautical flare… so we are safe as we can be. 

After our first night at my nephew’s cabin up on the plate above Homer we are settled in to start to explore the area this afternoon. After using a propane weed blow torch to clear the yellow jacket nest…discovered the hard way…. we are snug and safe. Backing up a bit… The 4th of July in Seward was wonderful … a real community special celebration. The Marathon Mountain race must be experienced to be believed… almost a rite of passage for those that live here. There are three groups: mixed youth 8 years (!) to 18 who do to the half way mark and back. There are then the women and men’s races. A figure eight climb and descent of the mountain so steep you can reach out at arms length to touch ground. Needless to say the runners comeback muddy and bloody. Not a race in the park. We stayed for the first two racers and was in awe of the stamina and grit to make this run. Attached photo is of the women winner… 49:19 and the men’s 44:22…. insanely fast…..running down a slope like that. Attached if you can click on it and enlarge to read is the newspaper history and info.

We went on to Homer to escape the road crunch. We were also excited to get to the cabin we have been hearing about for a number of years. It was built in the 1920’s …a log homestead. There is now electricity and cold water well. Overlooking the mountains to the south it is a beautiful setting. We will be here a few days before heading to McCarthy and Valdez… or reverse… there is some heavy rain coming for that area so must take day by day. Distance is the determining factor for routes …back tracking hundreds of miles seems not sensible. 

PS...be sure to zoom in on the mountain photo to see the runners! Also the mileage photo was from Seward to Homer

7/8/17 Here is the trouble of travel. One slowly becomes warped in time… I feel like apologizing as it seems such a luxury and it is…mostly not yet attained by my peers … when days are not named but destinations or tasks are. 

The cabin on the Homer plate was what it should be….a place to sit after what was needed to secure comfort … and relish in the view and surroundings. Moose and yearlings walk by. Mountains and glaciers sit there all day so when you look up they hit you with ….”I’ve been here forever”. Rattles the senses. After a couple days we pumped fresh spring water into our 20 gallon water tank and set sail for ‘north of Anchorage”… not that the city hadn’t  things to offer but it was not for us… getting through the rush hour traffic was a shock to our “delicate senses” … we are not that far from reality….the scary one that says …if what is …what we see… is here then it will be everywhere eventually. 

In my time on earth I have been lucky.  I feel to have traveled to places all over the earth before the ‘crunch’ … we are in that crunch now… Alaska’s ‘final frontier’ is exactly that and it is vanishing as I type. Anyone who impedes saving “Forever Wild” at this point is simply greedy. We need as a species to feel the wild…once gone we will evolve to something else. Before that last step we need to think…. but seeing human nature as it is… I have no real hope of the inevitable… We will be left alone. 

Sounds dismal but that is the truth of it. I am SO fortunate to be here and see what is left. 

We drove from our boondock camp site (big hint here… use google earth before the drive to see the old road… before the new one you are on. They have straightened it over time and left behind a number of curves still sort of paved that one can find that wiggle around the new… find them and drive off to a quiet pop up and free sleep as we did last night on or way from Palmer AK on the Glen highway. Free and easy. The Glen highway was insanely big and crazy drop offs to immense glaciers and mountain terrain. This morning we drove on to Valdez.

How can I keep typing about this … running out of superlatives…….. driving on a road that requires the driver to focus on the pavement…yahoo .... the 65 mph frost heaves… rivers and glaciers…mountains so big …fuh-get-about-it…. big.. yeah big….crazy big.

We came across the river gorges and such to Valdez… both natural and man made marvels … god’s engineering and man's…. to boggle the mind … I kept asking "how did they make this” on every turn of the road… then I look at what nature did and fuh-get-about-it…. too much. The pipe line ends here… google it and imagine yourself in a cloud of bugs welding that together?! I have no problem with what we build it is what is left behind after the money goes to the wealthy. Look into the copper mine of Kennicott. A marvel of man’s ingenuity … when the metal was gone …they walked away…leaving everything they made and destroyed… money made and exit. Seen this in many places … it is not ‘freedom of regulations’ it is rape. All this can be done …though with less profit… and still maintain the spirit of the land and people. 

Okay …it is not a diatribe … we sit in Valdez surrounded and overwhelmed by beauty.  

Tomorrow it rains big time and we will hunker down for the morning … then go back to the boondocks hunt for a place more quiet… thereafter to McCarthy on the Copper River … 50 miles of gravel road into Wrangle-St Elias National Park… incredible beauty. (The beauty saved by out forefathers …. we still need our present ones to do the same…not take it away).Photos soon... 

7/10/17 We popped down and split. Sayonara Valdez. The rain was steady and hid the mountain tops, valleys, waterfalls, and snow we had luckily seen yesterday. Back up through Thompson pass past the Worthington glacier and on out to the Richardson Highway, north again and east up the Copper River on the Edgerton and McCarthy Road going through Chitna, beer stop at the Hotel. Moose in the parking lot (like the show “Northern Exposure”) the moose's name was ‘Patches’ to the hotel bar staff. 

It was foggy and luckily it had rained making the potholes shine with evening light. Now driving is fun to navigate a route in a purposeful direction …. like skiing down a hillside around obstacles. Is that a guy thing?… sometimes I drive my motorcycle on a windy hill town road and all I’m thinking about is the road coming up and how the bike would best go into it. Feels good going into a curve to the sweet spot and accelerating out to a straightaway though when asked could not tell what went by for the view. 

After about 65 miles ‘in’ we decided to search for a place to boondock camp… after we got 75 miles in we decided to turn around and take a site we saw on Moose lake of a small spur. We were in a low cloud area and a lot of mist…was okay though, as we would see all we missed in haze, on the way out. On the way back we encountered a smaller ‘road barn’ broken down on the side of the road. There was a guy stopped from the other direction to help, towing a trailer. I stopped and asked if help was needed and all said “yes”. Stopped to fix loose roof top cargo, they could not restart the camper…not even a click of the starter solenoid…. ah…the solenoid… to be bypassed but how….. I agreed it was the best idea to go from the battery to starter ….I wasn’t going to say something bad couldn't happen in the process…no guarantees … upon which I got a conscientious nodding…. a kitchen fork was produced and bent in a “C” with lashed and frapping attached to a slender piece of firewood….into the battery compartment it went  to the back making proper contact with a satisfying spark!…. I think Elon Musk would approve. 

We went to the spot to camp only to find it had been taken!…. but wait ….they are leaving!!!! Just a couple locals out for evening look see. So we backed in to the lake watching scores of ducks in the water. All set up and happy… we decided to watch a pre-recorded iPad movie (lousy) as the rain was coming down. An hour later 11?… I went out to ‘see a man about a horse’  and was hit with an almost clear sky and sun at the perfect evening light… the lake was still, mirroring the mountains I hadn’t even seen before….. right up beside us. We both came out of the camper and spent a half hour wandering around to a beautiful site…. a mink swan right by too.

Next morning up and off, the last 30 miles to the River. A Town called McCarthy on the other side connected by a foot bridge ( though locals have a vehicle bridge down stream to haul in essentials …not open to folks from ‘away’)

The town of McCarthy and also the derelict, Kennicott Copper Mine, now a part of the US National Historical site. One of the richest strikes of nearly pure copper in the world. When the copper ran out so did the profiteers… leaving all behind as undoing what was built was not for profit… walked away rich. All abandoned …. as if they simply stood up and left town. Because that is what they did. It is a marvel of human proportions… the history of the WORK done here is mind blowing, under severe conditions… $5 a day with $1.50 a day taken back by the company store for food and lodging)…. a good read about those tougher than we. when we were in the Info center the ranger, a young woman told us she had lived in Goshen…next town near ours. She said if it weren’t for Alaska thats where she would settle …tall praise. 

So I type again in the camper hearing the very loud ‘white noise’ of the glacial till swollen river sweep by 10 feet away carrying hunks of ice off the glacier…..back to raining… good to clean off the 1/4” thick cemented mud off the truck/camper and sleep on a cushion of sound. 

Tomorrow we no doubt will pull up stakes and go north again once ‘out’ to take Denali Road  in the westerly direction. The weather dictates the pace, more then likely leisurely, so to not drive through what should be seen, in rain. We will camp somewhere and putter for a day.  

7/12/17 And indeed we did. We woke to rain in the night and were cloud covered in the morning.  lucky to have had the dry day to explore McCarthy/Kennicott with a short hike thrown in. Knowing the weather was not good for a couple more days it would be silly to sit in the camper… so we drove out (of course encountering another break down …who after pushing their vehicle off the road, I found their battery had been loose in the tray …bouncing on the washboard and had thrown off both leads… just hanging there… fast fix and off they went) the 94 miles to the Richardson Highway… a road needing serious attention in this section north. We fueled up and had Tok Thai food takeout from a roadside hut at the gas station…go figure …understand everything is a tad rough on the edges here…(though getting too smooth daily) not too bad.I found a truck stop high pressure hose to blast the cemented mud off the back of the camper and truck doors… now we can get in and out without getting filthy. 

The Denali Highway: paved for 20 miles to The Tangle River inn… a place that was homesteaded by a man and his wife 56 years ago(Nadine…who we met over a beer and talked a good Irish roll) … a mountain nearby named after her…. We went on further onto the remaining 110 miles of dirt road (closed in winter)… it looks like Scotland highlands in the mountains… but different.. lots of glacier kettle ponds and bugs…. many many bugs… then there are more bugs. We popped up in a short spar off the road along a stream. Boondocking again just off the paved starting section of the road. Here is where we took out the small piece of smoked Halibut, Irish Kerry butter and black bread for dinner… with a half bottle of white wine from a good friend carried all the way here from New England. We tried a hike…did I mention the bugs? Retreated to the camper and pulled out the head nets. Tomorrow ..as it is raining now… will be a slow day… up late ..coffee and breakfast … and a leisurely departure as this road is packed with sights… and we will probably only go 20-30 miles and then camp again (Tuesday). It will be Wednesday..…the sun hopefully out and the views opened up… for the next 80 miles we will slowly explore maybe a day or two more. 

On a side note of being bear safe… our Black Bears of the Northeast seem like fluffy toys… seeing the photos on the walls of hunts or the skins on the wall and floors of a truly huge bear with claws 4-5” long…you have to respect that… a 1000 lb. bear who is hungry. I am or have food…bottom line. We took a good pointer from my nephew and it makes real sense: flares. We have bear spray with holsters that we wear anytime out of the truck and I have a marine air horn that is deafening as a first stage. But the flare… that is a great defense. A flare that has an instant pull cord ignition… point and pull. It is compact, bright and hot. I got two. 

Today met a man and his wife who used to live in Alaska 50 years ago and it is their first time back. He is more shocked than she as she liked having the amenities nearby but he did not. I could see in his expression as he spoke the sense of loss. The wildness tamed, the cell phone and the internet wifi in a place he held a gun and a backpack. He just kept shaking his head. Being in the moment folks always think it will be as it is. Almost never is. Forever wild is essential for some places. No roads, no planes on lakes, no nothing but foot travel. No exceptions. We need to save some corners. I am here and that means everyone else can be too. I would be glad to give it all back but that won’t happen either. 

Needless to say this trip has been on my compass for over forty years… I do not remember and am too lazy to check if I said before: I had a choice at 25 years of age. I had graduated from college and was working in the paper mill section of a newspaper… just factory work, long days of doing the same thing for 10 hour shifts. I did some research and found that Alaska was looking for teachers to fly in to villages and teach. The requiement wa at the time that you pay for the six months of food. The flight was free and the return as well if you lasted the contract. It was in the Brooks Range. I had done all the paperwork and had absolutely no idea what I was going to… typical youth. Then a phone call came in the middle of the night from a friend of a friend teaching in Paraguay, South America. This was in 1979. I was offered a job at the American School, American Embassy Asuncion. For no other reason than I had no idea what, where or how …  I said sure. My life’s direction changed in a word. Where would I be today if I had taken the Brooks Range position…. probably not in a camper here now. But why Alaska? Sky King. I dreamed daily of being a bush pilot in Alaska as a boy. 

Immense… The Denali road from Paxson off the Richardson is best west toward the mountain. The road was pretty much empty …perhaps a car once every half hour either direction ..surprising as the road by Maine standards was great. There had been grading and new gravel repairs in the first 40 miles… the next were as we expected … teeth chattering washboard or stretches of boxed out potholes again lucky to have rained the night before and were water filled to make them visible easily in time to swerve around. The truck is getting high marks… settled into the load it bears and manurers well. By the end of the day today it had explored many rock crawl side roads with mud holes and boulders… did great…in 4WD and staying in 1st gear. We must have discussed five different possibilities to camp the night… and each time went on until a fluke high elevation (back in the trees again on the mountain) little side road… roller coaster rock crawl through some deep mud to an insanely beautiful overlook (mile post 71 from Paxson on left... there is an easier one also  at MP 73). Mountains straight up behind us and a 60 mile 180º view 750 feet off valley floor that is covered in ponds, lakes and rivers. Hands down in the top 3  places I have ever truck camped.

This today is why I came here. I dream of places like this. Absolute quiet except for the bugs and breeze. I am looking out at nothing man has done. It is drop dead beautiful. Last night, our first on the Denali road, was by a stream 100 ft off the road and it was still quiet. Today though tops it all. The expanse gives one an idea of what the first people experienced all over our continent … endless wide open splendor so big it seems it could never be anything else then what it was at that moment. 

We are now just over half way to the end of the Denali road “T”-ing at Cantwell on the road to Denali Park where we might stay depending on the crunch of being back in the ‘road barn’ packs. A shower is needed as we have not been able to use the solar shower due to rainy days. Thereafter north to Fairbanks (passing through) to a stay at ?????

7/15/17 Never give a gabby Irishman a stage. I have much to say. Many decisions were made only after seeing where we landed. Coming out of the Denali road back to the epicenter of the tourist “fast see…bagged it”…AK trip… we stopped into the Denali National park. It was packed like Yellowstone mid summer…maybe worse. We drove up he road to the Savage River and then returned out. So glad to have driven the Denali Highway road… quiet and beautiful… so we went immediately north. As I type this I have been on the road four weeks, though because of the ferry have only clocked 5200 miles, (Luann with me 2000). This, by date, is the middle of the trip…not by mileage…. we have a long way to go. 

So we went on up to Fairbanks and got provisions needed. Not sure we saw the nice side of town but did have a nice halibut fish and chips at the Pump House brewery on the river…seeing the rear paddle steamer cruise by. Camping after a couple false leads north node Fox… on the Eliot Highway, a state park. Pop up…sleep and gone. Eliot Highway to The Dalton. A long day getting into the new driving conditions of paved, not paved good, not paved real bad… then paved worse. There are fort those who will nod their head a way to hit a 2 foot depression in the road at 45 mph… not a pot hole as those are there to see if the driver never lifts an eye away from 100 feet forward… but the ‘Dips’ as posted, are either single or multiple that drops your load then compresses the springs in a split second. Yahoo! A big frigging bounce! the multiple ones are interesting… The best thing to do on the big ones is to hit the break hard for a split second entering, dropping the nose of the truck, then accelerating to lift the front and drop the back…. what else is there to do but parse the problem and think of something to keep the stuff in the camper from being shaken up like a cement mixer. One learns to open the fridge door slowly.

We stopped at the Yukon River crossing and had a great visit with a local lady who was a homesteader who now does craft from birch bark, animal fur, skulls, …whatever was nearby to make things… one tough lady who with het husband had gone up the Yukon found a spot and with a chainsaw cleared the land for a cabin they built from the trees before October snows. The Interagency volunteer cabin was there to warn of the wildfires burning presently out of control…explaining the foggy haze obscuring the mountain views. Clear weather but no long vistas. She explained where to get artesian water on the way and a recommendation to take a spur road to Wiseman, AK… an occupied 110 year old gold miner village. 

A great walk around with very friendly property owners who go out of their way to explain their history living there for generations and still prospecting. We spent time with the man who moved there when he was five and his mom did the preaching in at the log cabin in-which we talked… her twenty years of hand written sermons still on the front table. Also a man there all his life prospecting named “Clutch” who has his own one room log cabin ’museum’  of his life's stuff… lots of dozers, pumps, pans books and old photos… he could talk forever.  He has been making a “white man’s totem pole” for some time (photos)… a lot of unique up here.

We came to the Coldfoot, AK, a truck stop all in one ‘town’….last stop fuel before starting the long haul over the Brooks Mountain Range through Atigun Pass. The place is expensive…has a huge buffet of one meal daily…a bottle only bar and shipping container hotel. A has to stop.

It had been a long day getting adjusted to driving the Dalton road so was tired. I t is still sunny at 10:45 and the sun barely sets then rises again… We camped at a Marion Creek Camp sites (National)…bear boxes, super clean pit toilets, a hand pump spring water and a site to camp with a fire ring. Perfect, quiet and clean for 26 sites of which maybe 10 were used.

Up and out this morning to head over the Atigun pass. yea-ooooh… crazy big, jagged straight up cliffs, massive… 100% mountains. The road was a mix of very reasonable dirt and actual pavement… still potholes and dips but speed could increase. The pass was as expected: a stunning road engineering job, open all year, a wild climb and descent to a completely different biome. On the ascent were black and white spruce trees and the descent to open tundra… going on another 30 miles to and stopped after the Toolik Lake pass and were in open Tundra. A caribou laying down by the road….. hundred mile view to ….another 100 mile view. If we were to drive across this space it would be another 250 miles straight to Deadhorse, population 4 permanent…. 3000-6000 part time oil production workers in temp housing.  One needs to pre arrange to go to Prudhoe on the Bering sea. We never meant to do this last 500 mile trip as it ends at an oil camp and there is sea water… done. 

We returned to Marion camp sites this evening to fill the solar shower and wait … had a burger on the grill with charcoal brought with us. Gray Jays seek out your site and I had to convince on that the scrappy sponge he held in his peak was not tasty. He dropped it eventually from the tree. 

Four weeks and I am beyond full. Yet tomorrow we set out for Fairbanks again, passing through and south to Tok, and then Delta Junction where we go northeast again to Chicken, AK. A town named by folks who could not agree on the spelling of Ptarmigan… so instead settled on Chicken. From this place starts the “Top of the World Highway” on up to the Yukon border. On a map you can follow us to A side road…. 360 miles of dirt road (The Campbell Highway) to Watson River. From there later. Though I could have fished a thousand places I have not taken the time. From here that is the goal for me.