We’re back in Sunnyvale! We returned the rental car to Anchorage International Airport this morning and boarded a flight for Seattle/Tacoma International Airport. After a quick layover, we were on our way to San Jose. We took an Uber ride back to the apartment and are resting after our long journey from Iowa to Alaska.

Before leaving Girdwood, we headed to the Winner Creek Trail near Crow Creek Mine. Part of this trail consists of a hand tram across a river. Valerie was excited to try the hand tram since we missed the one in Homer. Unlike the hand tram in “Out of the Wild”, this tram was very well maintained and looked quite safe. We took turns pulling ourselves across and then walked about a quarter mile to the Winner Creek Gorge before making the return trip.

On our way out of town, we stopped by Indian Valley Meats, a shop famous for their caribou sausages. We ate some of the spicy caribou sausage for lunch before heading to Anchorage. We have been avoiding staying in Anchorage for the past few weeks because hotel prices in the city are much higher than pretty much higher than anywhere else we’ve been in Alaska. However, since our flight leaves at 07:00 tomorrow morning, there was little choice for our final night.

Tonight, we’re staying at the Anchorage Walkabout Town B&B. This B&B has bikes available for free checkout, so we took a ride along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. After our ride, we were hungry so we drove to the nearby Bear Tooth TheatrePub and Grill, which as its name suggests, is a theatre and a pub and a grill. Sadly, we had no time for a movie and only were able to experience the grill portion.

The families from Wasilla that we met yesterday suggested that we visit Hatcher Pass and the old Independence Mine. Much of Hatcher Pass was still closed for the winter, but we were able to drive up from Palmer to the mine. Along the way, we saw signs indicating that recreational gold mining was allowed. Intrigued, we stopped at a pullout and walked down to the stream and picked out some golden flakes that we thought might be gold dust. Once at the mine, we learned that what we had collected was actually biotite. Valerie was excited to look for more gold, so we borrowed some rudimentary panning equipment from the Alaska State Parks rangers and went down to another stream. We failed to find any gold, but had fun trying.

Because the hostel in Girdwood was full last time we visited, we decided to head back to Girdwood to try our luck again. Along the way, we stopped at several turnouts along Turnagain Arm on the Seward Highway. At Bird Point, a sign noted that a bore tide was going to occur just about an hour after we arrived. Valerie was excited, so we stayed to watch. The bore tide was a relatively small wave and relatively boring. However, up on the nearby hill, some people spotted a grizzly bear that had killed a cub and several bears fighting for the carcass. While we couldn’t see anything without binoculars, other tourists gave us a blow-by-blow of the events on the hill.

We’re staying at the Glacier View B&B in Girdwood. The owner recommended a restaurant called Jack Sprat for dinner where Valerie ordered some king salmon that was cooked perfectly.

Originally, we planned to stay 2 nights in Talkeetna before heading back to Anchorage. However, Valerie’s research suggested that there isn’t enough stuff to do in Talkeetna to fill two days, so we amended our plans to just stop by the town for lunch. We ate some delicious pasties at the Talkeetna Roadhouse where we met two families from Wasilla who drove all the way over just for the pie. After lunch, we weren’t quite ready for pie, so we hiked a few minutes along the Talkeetna River and then to the remains of an old barn in town. I’m not sure why there was a historical trail to the barn remains, but the hike was a nice way to pass the time. Afterward, we stopped by Naglee’s General Store to see feline mayor Mr. Stubbs, but he was nowhere to be seen. To cheer ourselves up, we headed back for some tasty pie at the Roadhouse. On our way out of town, we stopped by the Flying Squirrel Bakery and bought some cookies and a vegan brownie (all of which was delicious).

Tonight, we’re staying at the same cabin in the same B&B in Wasilla and luckily had much more success lighting the wood stove than last time.

This morning, we stopped by Denali Visitor Center to watch the video (which isn’t that great) and view the exhibits. Afterward, we ate an early lunch at the nearby cafeteria and headed to the Murie Science Center for a ranger talk. Unfortunately, there was no ranger talk today. Instead, they showed a video about raptors (the birds, not the dinosaurs) that was interesting, but not interesting enough for us to stay 50 minutes to watch it.

A Wilderness Access Center (WAC) employee recommended the Horseshoe Lake trail to us because it is short and easy. We walked along it to its terminus near the lake, stopping briefly to admire a moose near the trail. The lake was pretty, but nothing spectacular. Since the hike was so short, we had time to drive to the Park Headquarters for a demonstration of dog sleds. The dogs were cute and friendly and seemed very excited to take part in the demonstration in which they pulled a sled around a short gravel road (very similar to the Iditarod demonstration). Afterward, we took another short hike along the Meadow View trail.

Since we failed yesterday, we headed back to 49th State Brewery. Valerie got the all-you-can-eat roasted pig (only offered on Fridays).

Tomorrow, we’re planning to head to Talkeetna, but we’re not sure what we’ll do there.

We decided to take the 11-hour shuttle bus ride through Denali National Park to Wonder Lake. We woke up early to board the 07:15 shuttle. While the shuttle was technically not a tour bus, the driver told us about the park during the drive. He also stopped the bus whenever something interesting came into view (e.g. Mt. McKinley, animals) to let passengers take photos. The park service says that only about 30% of visitors to the park get to see Mt. McKinley as it is often obscured by clouds. Luckily, we were in that 30% and got a mostly unobstructed view in the morning and only a small amount of cloud cover later in the day. During the drive, we saw a great deal of wildlife, including some caribou, lots of ground squirrels, a golden eagle, two red foxes, a mama grizzly and two cubs, and a lone grizzly bear. Wonder Lake wasn’t that wonderful (lots of mosquitos) and, in retrospect, I’d say that Eielson Visitor Center was the last worthwhile stop.

After our shuttle ride, we headed to Healy to pick up dinner. Our first choice, 49th State Brewery, was full, so we headed to Rose’s Cafe, which serves some really delicious breakfast food and sandwiches. Tonight, we’re staying in an Iceworm room, which seems much nicer and quieter than Yanert, but lacks WiFi.

After a lovely breakfast, we headed to the Wal-Mart in Wasilla.  We picked up some essentials (more ice, beef jerky, plastic utensils) and bought some food at McDonald’s for lunch even though we were still full from breakfast.

Valerie consulted the gigantic Milepost we have been lugging around and found Iditarod HQ was only a few miles away so we decided to make a stop there. The puppies were fantastically cute! Valerie held one and Bryon enjoyed petting them and distracting them from their naps. We also watched some people ride around on a wheeled sled pulled by a full team of dogs and were able to pet the dogs. After quickly browsing the gift shop we headed back toward the freeway.

Even though we were still full from breakfast and still had the McDonald’s food we’d bought, we also decided to pick up some food from Arby’s due to Valerie’s fear of running out of food in Denali. We are planning to take an 11 hour bus ride tomorrow into the park where there’s no food available at all for purchase (contrast this with Canadian national parks like Banff and Jasper which have entire towns in them). We ended up purchasing 6 Jr. Roast Beef sandwiches for the upcoming tour.

Despite stopping by a Mt. McKinley viewpoint on our drive to the park, we failed to see its famed peak due to the cloud cover. Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow. We eventually arrived at the hostel and checked into our Yanert room which is typically a girls dormitory but since we have rented out the whole thing Bryon can stay there too. Tomorrow we will change to one of the Iceworm rooms.

After checking in we drove the 13 miles to the Wilderness Access Center to pick up our bus tickets for tomorrow. We watched an interesting short video on the history of the park, and stopped by 229 Park, the most highly rated restaurant in the Denali area on TripAdvisor. We had a quick dinner at the bar (since the earliest time we could get a table was 8:45pm), and went back to the hostel.

Tonight will be an early night since our tour begins bright and early tomorrow at 7:15am.

Today marks our departure from Homer and the Kenai Peninsula. As we headed out, we finally saw our first wild moose waltzing his way across downtown Homer! While we stared all agog, the locals just continued on their way not even giving the moose a second glance.

Valerie realized that the Islands & Oceans Visitor Center was open after all so we decided to stop in.  This is the first visitor’s center we’ve seen that was run by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and we could immediately tell this was different from a typical visitor’s center (and much better funded!).  They had elaborate displays on fish, oceans, birds, and wildlife. I wish we had known and stopped in earlier, but I’m glad we did go in before we left. They even advertised free tide pooling, but unfortunately it was for Wednesday, the day we had to be at Denali. We did take the time to hike a short path from the visitor’s center and realized that it went right be our favorite bakery in Homer (Two Sisters Bakery) and took the opportunity to go for the 3rd time in 4 days.  We finally managed to get one of the famous sticky buns, and augmented it with a cinnamon bun and scone. Yum! Afterwards we started our long journey north.

When we got to Soldotna, Valerie discovered that the town has erected “fish walks” alongside the river for observing fish, so we decided to stop by the visitor’s center for a look.  Though it was a little drizzly, we did see 2 fisherman trying to catch salmon.  Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like they were having any better luck than we were trying to see fish.  Even though we didn’t see fish, the fish walk was still an excellent way to get up close to see the world famous Kenai river.  In addition, when we went into the visitor center, we actually got to see the stuffed skin of the largest king salmon ever caught!  It was rather large and impressive, and it was caught in the Kenai river.  We saw a few other fish models and a stuffed wolverine and continued on our journey.

When we got to Cooper Landing we decided to break for a hike.  A couple we had met at the B&B had said that they did the Cooper Landing waterfall hike and actually saw a mother bear fishing for salmon with her cub.  We asked the employee there if there were any fish to view and he encourage us to take the 3 hour hike with the promise that the fish were there and jumping.

We ended up doing the hike even though we were pretty behind schedule due to our slow start in the morning.  At the end of the hike we were rewarded with an excellent view of the waterfall and countless salmon trying (futilely, it seemed) to jump up it!  It seemed like 99% of the salmon were not able to get up the waterfall, so I’m unsure if it was even possible, or how their forefathers (fore-salmon?) had actually made it to the spawning area.  It was still a great experience since we did finally see salmon in the river. Unfortunately, no bear this time. Maybe next time we’ll bring some chairs and just park there for the day. We hiked back to the car and continued on our journey toward Girdwood, where we’d decided to stay for the night at the Alyeska hostel.  Unfortunately we found out when we got there that there weren’t any rooms left.  In addition, the Alyeska tram we had planned to take wasn’t in operation! That’s a double Alyeska fail for us. It was the first time we hadn’t made any reservations and tried to wing it. Fortunately for us, when Valerie called a B&B in Wasilla (our other choice of lodging), they actually answered the phone and were able to take us in with very short notice.

Around 20:30, we arrived in Wasilla at the Pioneer Ridge B&B and were shown to the rustic cabin we had booked. The cabin had electricity, but no running water and no heater. There was a wood stove which we were shown how to use, and we attempted to get the wood to light. After many fits and starts, we did finally get a good fire going and then went into the main house to use the restroom and shower facilities. Normally this isn’t a big deal, but it happened to be pouring rain that night so it became kind of a pain going back and forth. The facilities were very nice and clean though, and the cabin was very cute and fun to stay in so it was still worthwhile.

Today, we took a water taxi to the other side of the bay so we could hike to Grewingk Glacier Lake in Kachemak Bay State Park. We hiked the 2.2 mile Glacier Lake Trail from Rusty’s Beach to the lake. The glacier flows right into the lake and you can see chunks of ice floating around. It’s an impressive sight, but we couldn’t help but compare it to the much more spectacular glacial lagoon in Iceland. After a quick lunch, we hiked back to the saddle trail to meet our water taxi for the return trip. Valerie was cold after the hike, so we stopped by Two Sisters Bakery for some hearty soup.

Tomorrow, we’re headed north toward Denali National Park. Since it’s a long drive to Denali, we’ll probably break the drive into two segments and spend the night in Portage or Wasilla.

Today, we went on an all-day hike of Peterson Bay organized by the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. Our guides Caitlin and Rebecca were incredibly knowledgable about the area and the local flora and fauna. After a brief lunch stop at China Poot Beach, Valerie was excited to visit some tide pools, which are teeming with an almost unbelievable amount of life. On our way back from the tide pools, Valerie saw a black bear running away from us. This was our first (and hopefully last) on-foot encounter with a wild bear.

For dinner, we ate at AJ’s Steakhouse in Old Town. It was nice to take a break from seafood and the food and service were excellent.