We got up about 7:30 this morning to a pretty dreary day. We decided to have a leisurely morning and look at better repairing the stern leak... Last night we took on about a cup of water, which was nicely collected by a cereal bowl, rather than dripping on my bed. After showers and breakfast, I headed up on the roof to unrig the spare tire and jack stands so we could better diagnose the problem... it was a few small cracks in the silicon near the luggage rack. Joe scraped out the old silicon and gooped it up nicely with new stuff... problem solved... we think... can't tell till it rains again.

Soon we left Gold Rush Campground and headed to the... end of the road... literally. In order to get through town we had to take a ferry across the Yukon river. The Yukon government runs a free fairy across the river during the summer months... in winter you can just drive across the frozen river. (This does make the route impassible for up to two months a year during freeze up and the spring thaw). We waited our turn on the small ferry, and soon we continued on. The road across the river is dubbed "The Top of the World Highway". I'm sure that is named for its scenery, but because of the dreary weather today, it might as well be named Top of the World because its covered in clouds.

After 70 miles or so, we finally made it to the Alaskan border a day ahead of schedule... never needing a tow truck... no repair costing much time or more that $283. Again we breezed through customs... mostly because what custom's official wants to stand in the pouring rain asking us questions. Unfortunately once on the Alaskan side we met with an unexpected occurrence... dirt road. Not just any dirt road... the crappy pot hole ridden washboard kind. I consulted the milepost (a book on driving information for Alaska and vicinity) and sure enough we could expect this for the next 80 miles.

Along this stretch the refrigerator door flew open again, and the Winnebaigis felt like it would rattle off the frame. After about 15 miles Joe got pretty fed up with road and left the drivers seat while the vehicle was in motion... I figured that was my queue to begin driving... apparently the bumps loosened up his bladder... he required the bathroom. I continued driving... the road improved a bit, but we were still rattling apart. Joe fixed the refrigerator problem with some bungy-cords, and we decided that faster (20 MPH instead of 10 MPH) wasn't significantly worse and it got us there faster. Finally we made it to the seal coated surface about 28 miles from Tok... Joe and I were both deaf at this point from listening to the rig rattle for the past 3 hours.

Once in Tok we checked in at the Tok RV Village... they gave us a coupon for a 5 cent discount on gas at their station across the street, and we took advantage of that before heading to the site. The RV village was quite nice, and had a common room equipped with a phone line for internet access. For some reason Tok felt like we were back in civilization... maybe it was the sight of a Texaco Station, or the number of cars passing through, or the non-metric measurements.

For dinner we heated up some pizza pockets. We looked through some of the tourist brochures and discussed our itinerary. We tentatively decided to use our extra day to go whitewater rafting, and talked about skipping the Fairbanks section in lew of more time in the Kenia Peninsula. After that we worked on the website... it had been a few days since we had an update. We went to bed just after 11pm.

This morning Joe got up pretty early to update the website again... I slept in a bit. It was a turning out to be a beautiful day. After showers and breakfast we decided to take care of some items rather than quickly packing up and leaving. Joe did some laundry, and I headed down to the tourist information center to gather some information about the Denali Highway. (The Denali Highway is a dirt road that offers some good mountain biking, and heads toward Denali National Forest. I planned for this in the itinerary and since the Winnebaigis made it down the previous one, we decided that we could survive this one also). After we folded and put away our laundry we disconnected and headed to the RV wash located within the campground. The rig was a mess from the previous day's travels.

After washing about 30 lbs of dirt off, we drove across the street to the quick lube. We left the RV here to get the oil changed and had a nice lunch at the diner across the street. Civilization is good... we had bacon cheeseburgers and milk shakes. After that nice meal we picked up the RV from the quick lube, and started out of town.

About a half our down the road we heard an all to familiar a noise... the alternator belt. Luckily we had just gotten a new one a few days back in Dawson's City. We figured, however, that we should probably go and get a new one... as this was beginning to be too frequent an occurrence. Just up the road we came to a State Park, and pulled in. We surveyed the damage, and this time the belt snapped, and did some minor damage to the compressor belt in the process. We unloaded the motorcycle so Joe could head back to Tok to get some additional belts, while an used up our supply fixing the problem. By the time he got back I had just finished putting the tools away... I think he was impressed. Joe spent the next 10 minutes cleaning the carnage off his helmet... a side effect of driving 100 mph in Alaska, or so it seemed.

The park had a short hike to a nature trail and another to a look out. Since we were already here we decided to hike up to the look out. It was a mildly steep 1.5 mile jaunt up to the top of a ridge... from here we saw a terrific view of the surrounding landscape... well worth the journey. We snapped a quite few pictures and continued back down the ridge to the Winnebaigis.

From there we continued down the Tok cutoff to just before its intersection with the Richardson Highway. There were a number of snow capped mountains along the way... once again we found ourselves taking many pictures... the scenery was awesome. We made camp at Gakona RV Park, just within view of one of the biggest snow capped peaks of the Wrangles Mountain range. This was a pretty basic park, but it did have a phone line. An older gentleman, who was pretty interesting to talk with, and quite computer literate... ran the park. I think he enjoyed what we were trying to accomplish with our website.

Since we had such a great lunch in Tok, we decided to just have sandwiches for dinner. We both continued our work on the website and returned some E-mail. Joe decided to head to bed early to get some footage of the sun rising in the morning. I continued to work on this journal... and called it a night about an hour later.

Joe got up about 6:00 to see the sunrise. I continued to sleep in while he took a shower and updated the webpage. About 8:00 I headed up to the office to make some calls and send E-Mail (from here we were heading to the Denali Highway and away from phone and E-mail for a few days), from there I headed to the shower, and we both had some cereal for breakfast. We disconnected the Winnebaigis and during our air pressure inspection we noticed that the driver's side outer rear tire only had 15 lbs of pressure in it... guess that were going to head to GlennAllen this morning to get our tired repaired.

Joe drove us about 20 miles out of our way down to GlennAllen, we stopped at the first gas station. They were either unwilling or unable to help us, so we continued down the road. The next shop was again reluctant, but after we said that we would pull the tire for them, they were able to accommodate us. So we dug out the lug wrench and pry bar, borrowed their jack and jack stands, and extracted the tire. Once the tire was off we quickly found the problem... we picked up a screw. The mechanic had one hell of a time getting it out of the tire, since the head was sheered off from driving, and it just barely stuck through. After about 15 minutes and Joe's help he finally got it out... we added it to our growing broken parts bag. Soon the tire was patched and once again holding 60 psi. We reinstalled it and headed up the road.

Since we were in GlennAllen anyway we figured that we could get some groceries, so we went shopping. We picked up some items and headed back up the Richardson Highway. This road was our first major experience with frost heaves. Frost heaves are the result of building highway on top of permafrost. They are basically areas of the highway forced up or sunk due to the permafrost... this has the effect of making large gradual speed bumps in the road. Taken at about 60 mph they could get all four of our rigs tires off the ground... so you had to watch for them and slow down.

After about an hour we reached Paxton... our turn off for the Denali Highway. We gassed up here, and started down the first 21 miles... the only part of the 135 miles that was paved. Just after the road turned to gravel we made camp at Tangle Lakes BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Campground. This was a state run dry campground (i.e. no hookups). They did have pit toilets and a pump where you could get water.

Once the rig was settled we geared up for some mountain biking. We headed back out the road, and in the first mile came the to a road house. Most of the information I had for biking along the highway, said you should inquire locally... so we did. A nice woman inside directed us 3 miles up the road to the North Gap trail, which she said headed six miles back to the edge of a glacier field.

We took her suggestion and headed up the Denali Highway to what was basically a ATV trail. It was perfect... fairly rocky, somewhat technical, and extremely wet and muddy double track that was fairly level. We continued back about 2 miles... the best classic mountain biking of my life. We both fell a few times and were covered in mud... it was great. Unfortunately at about the 2 mile mark Joe damaged his seat beyond field repair, so we had to turn back. Probably not too bad a thing, since it was starting to get late, and a bit cold. I offered to ride Joe's bike back since it was nearly to the point that you couldn't sit down. He was amazed at how low my gears were on my Trek... and decided that equipment matters... a fact I did not dispute... but I contested that talent factored in also.

We continued back to camp carrying the extra 3 lbs of mud and water we picked up along the way. We were both a mess. We decided that the best way to clean up was to head to the boat lunch area and wash down... the water was pretty damn cold, but effective. Then we headed back to camp and washed off using our hot water and a water basin. Once we were basically clean we started cleaning up the gear... that was a big job. I fixed Joe's seat... well I think, so I gave him the socket and wrech to carry along incase we had future problems.

Hungry after our expedition I cooked up some spaghetti with sausage. We started up the generator for a while, and worked on the computers. After about 2 hours we headed to bed, hoping to get up and do this all over again in the morning.

We slept in this morning... not like we had showers to look forward to. About 8:30 we got up... I had some oatmeal and Joe at his Forsted Flakes. After that we took all the clothes (they were still soaked) down from their hanging spots on the yawning, and tried to straighten up a bit. I headed up to the water pump to start filling our water supply... it took 3 trips with our 5-gallon bucket until we were full... the drill pump and cordless drill made filling the tanks from the bucket a snap. We started up the generator to charge the drills battery and download the pictures we had.

About 11:00 we departed the Tangle Lakes BLM Campground. We stopped by the roadhouse to thank them for their excellent Mt Biking info, and inquire about additional trails further down the road. They suggested a few trails but were too sure... they said we check with the other roadhouses along the way for more information. We continued down the Denali Highway. There were a lot of hunters out with their ATV's, most outfitted with gun racks... most of them were scouting along the road... we did see a few successful ones... seemed most of them were trophy hunting, as all that was visible was a bloody bag with the head it in... don't know what they did with the rest of the animal.

Along the way we saw a body of water with a beaver lodge and damn... we couldn't see any beavers tough. A bit further down the road we came to another body of water with some small creatures. Joe got out the video camera to check them out with it's powerful zoom. Zoomed in he was having trouble focusing on them while the Winnebaigis was running so I shut it down for him. They were ducks... nothing too exciting, they were just bobbin for food. Disappointed that we still couldn't find the beavers, we decided to leave.

I turned the key and... nothing... just a slight click. We both looked at each other, and started speculating what could be wrong. Perhaps a dead spot on the starter. Joe grabbed a big wrench and crawled underneath to whack the starter... still just the click. We quickly figured out that the click was the relay for our dual switch which allows us to charge the cabin batteries from the alternator... once we shut that down turning the key had no effect at all. Out comes the voltmeter. We tested the battery... fine, 12.6 volts... we tested the starter relay... no voltage... from there we surmised that it must be in the key switch. Joe attempted to take apart the ignition switch... but had to revert to taking the dash apart. We tested that and sure enough we weren't getting voltage out of the switch. About this time I discovered the problem... I believe that my exact words were "Joe your going to kill me... The RV is still in Drive" Joe put the ignition back together, and I put the RV in park... Vroomm... started right up. Well after about 45 minutes of debugging we have determined that our transmision safety switch is working like a champ.

After about another hour on the road we started to skirt a small set of mountains. Joe found one and decided that we should climb it. We continued down the road to a decent entry point and surveyed the project... I was pretty pessimistic, but thought that it would be a neat feat. We geared up and headed up the side of the road... the first 500 yards was through some pretty thick brush. After that we came to a gravel pit. From here the journey started to really climb. We continued on through low brushy blueberry patches (an unbelievable amount of ripe blueberries were everywhere... probably a bear haven... luckily we didn't run into any), stopping many times along the way to catch our breath... we would pick a point to reach, climb to there, then rest for a bit. By this time I was pretty sure that we would make it... the perspective makes it tough to judge how far along your are... the Winnebaigis on the road was starting to look pretty puny. As seems to always to be the case with most ascents I have ever taken, once you reach the top of one ridge the next one seems even further away... but I finally got to the top ridge. Joe was just behind me. We continued along the ridge a short way to the summit... and took some pictures. Joe came across the remains of a dear or caribou carcass... just a small pile of bones. We started our journey down the mountain (hill) and encouuntered a slight rain... we were rewarded with a pretty spectacular rainbow. Finally at the bottom, content with our days accomplishment we continued down the road.

A few mile later we crossed the Susitna River, and came to Gracious House, the local roadhouse. Here Joe inquired about some Mt. Biking trails, they seemed less helpful than the previous roadhouse, but suggest a trail off the gravel pit just about 2 miles up the road. We drove up to here, and made camp. We planned to overnight here and checkout the trail in the morning.

We made Steak'm and tater-tots for dinner. After we cleaned up the dishes we started the generator for about an hours to download the pictures from the day. We were both pretty tired from our expedition, and headed to bed.

We got up and had a quick breakfast. We geared up for some more Mt. Biking... hoping that it would be as epic as our last trip. We started up the gravel road, which quickly turned into double track. Unfortunately the road continued heading up the ridge, rather than skirting in front of it as we hoped... it was a decent climb. After about 1.4 miles the road crossed a big drainage, and became pretty difficult to see... we opted to stop here, and head back down. Surprisingly the downhill was worth the climb up... pretty fast and technical. Once at the bottom, I hadn't had my fill of riding so I headed out along the Denali Highway for a while... Joe hung with me for a few miles but turned around. After about 5 miles I started back... thought I heard a moose at one point... but never could find it.

When I got back to the Winnebaigis, I found Joe testing our shower facilities for the first time... apparently pretty excellent. I waited for the 6-gallon hot water heater to recover... about 15 minutes. The shower was pretty good... not that I was pretty picky after being hot sweaty and muddy for the past 48 hours. When I told Joe about the moose he informed me that was merely his brake on his bike making that noise.

From here we got the Winnebaigis back to driving mode and Joe continued down the Denali Highway. Looking forward to leaving the rough dirt road Joe expanded on our previous idea the faster wasn't much worse, and took less time, despite the rattling vehicle... so he covered the last 50 miles in under 2 hours.

Finally back on paved road it started rain a bit. We soon discovered a minor side effect of our ignition switch debugging... the windshield wipers didn't work. Luckily rain is fairly transparent, and it didn't last long. We had a heck of a time finding a campground with both a phone line and laundry facilities... both very important for tonight, as we need to wash clothes for our Denali backpacking trip, and we have been offline for the last 2 days.

We ended up at Denali RV Park... they had just painted their laundry facilities, but they would be open later tonight. We rigged up the RV and Joe worked on getting the site up to date. I vacuumed and cleaned up the rig... it was a mess from our dry-camping experience. After that we headed down to the laundry room and did 3 loads. We bullshitted with the teenager working there for a few hours, folded the laundry and called it a night.

We woke up to a nice clear day. The park charged $2.00 for showers, so since taking showers in the Winnebaigis worked well while we were dry camping we figured that would work here also. Since we didn't have plans till 1:30 we decided to head back down to the Denali Highway... there is a Mt. McKinley viewpoint about 4 miles in the road, which was worthless yesterday as it was very overcast. We had some breakfast, unrigged, and headed out. About 50 miles down the road brought us to the stop... after looking around for awhile we found the mountain in the clouds... a good part of it was covered but you could make out a few peaks. We took some pictures and video footage. We waited around for a bit, and had some lunch hoping it would clear out a bit. The clouds did move around a good bit revealing different areas of the mountain, but over all the view didn't really improve.

Once we had our fill, we headed back up the Parks Road. After making a quick pit stop at the RV park for a bathroom break we headed down to Denali Raft Adventures. Here we were rushed through the check-in process... as they hoped to move up the start time. We road with Jen up to the put-in point where we met the rest of the rafters. For the first 2 hours we floated down the tame section of the Nenana River, learning how to handle ourselves in our paddle rafter... this was pretty familiar territory for me, but since Joe had never rafted before I thought it was a good idea to go through this exercise. We did get to see an immature bald eagle along the way... their heads don't turn white for about the first 3-5 years of their life.

At the end of this section we stopped at the raft shop where we had about a 20 minute layover. A few more rafts joined us and we continued down the Nenana to the whitewater section. Here we splashed through 10-12 class 3 and 4 rapids... it was a good time, but nothing like the trip I have taken on the Upper Gully in WV. The Nenana is a glacially fed river that is extremely silty... you can't see more that about 2" into the water... its a mucky gray.

Once we reached the end of the trip a bus ferried us back to the shop... it was a pretty cold ride in wet suits... we were thankful to change into dry clothes. From there we headed into the tourist section of Denali and stopped by a bar for some beers and appetizers. After that we headed back to camp and documented the days experiences... updating our website.

We had a pretty leasurily morning... taking showers in the rig once again. I made pancakes for breakfast, and we spent sometime in the office getting online to get and send E-Mail. Soon we left to head down into Denali National Park. Once in the park we stopped by the Visitor's Center. Here we picked up our campsite reservations and headed over the the backcountry area.

Denali's backcountry is divided into about 50 sections, each one having a nightly quota of about 12 occupants. They use a permit system, which allows you access to a particular section for the evening. You can't only obtain permits 24 hours in advance. This is quite a confusing process, but luckily I was aware of it in advance, and had some idea where we wanted to go. Unfortunately the couple of areas I picked out were full for the next few days. So we took about 20 minutes doing research and decided to spend 2 night in section 32 and then head to section 10 where we could hike down to some glaciers.

After that was squared away we watched a 40 minute video discuss the bear protocols, river crossings, and other important information about the backcountry. In this video we learned the "Hey Bear" chant used to identify ourselves as humans to the bears, so we won't sneak up on them. Then we had about a 15-minute ranger talk about bears and our conduct in the backcountry. The bear protocol is pretty complicated... the park service goes to great lengths to ensure that the grizzlies don't get a hold of any people food. When you are issued you permit they loan you a Bear-Resistant-Food-Container (BRFC), All food or items with odor must be stored in the BRFC 100 yards from your tent while at camp. They also ask you to camp in an open area, 100 yards away from water, and not in berry patches; to reduce the chances that a bear will wonder through your site. From there we stopped by the store to buy some detailed topo maps of areas 32 and 10. Then we got camper bus tickets for the 8:30 departure tomorrow.

We were all set, so we got back in the Winnebaigis and headed to the Savage River Campground. Along the way we stopped by the McKinley viewpoint... not any better than the one yesterday. We got to our gavel pad... no services here folks. I decided to head down the park road maybe 20 miles... Joe wasn't into that. He decided that he would take the rig back to the visitor's center, since we didn't draw the section boundaries on our topo maps... and possibly go take a helicopter ride if the weather was still clear.

I headed out on the bike. In 2 miles I me to the restricted section of the road... no private vehicles were allowed beyond this point... only park buses. They do allow bikes, and I had to read some background information, then I was on my way. It was a pretty nice day, and I was dressed in shorts and a bike shirt. The next 3 miles were a long gradual up hill... at the top it was pretty cold so I put on the sweatshirt I was carrying. I continued on down, up and down the next ridge... I had just crossed the Telkitna River, when I thought I heard some thunder... Yep… time to start back. Just as I crested the second ridge the skies were really dark, and the wind was kicking up. Pretty much out of nowhere it started to hail... HARD! Nice pea-sized pellets… I ducked into some brush which didn't serve as much cover... luckily I had a helmet. After about 5 minutes I was pretty damn cold and soaked. It didn't appear to be slowing down any so I figured that I better get moving, as sitting here wasn't improving my situation any. I started to walk, and then decided to ride... the hail hurt pretty badly, but I became numb quickly. After about 10 minutes it turned to rain. I passed by the ranger station, and complained that their brochure they had me read, didn't say anything about hailstorms. Two more miles back to the campground... I hope Joe is there, otherwise I may need to take refuse in the bathroom.

When I got there I met Joe walking up the campground road... he was in good spirits... he saw a bear on his way back from the visitor's center. There was a grizzly foraging in the brush about 2 miles down the road from the campground. A number of people stopped to watch it, and apparently a few of them, including a 60 year old lady, climbed on top of the Winnebaigis to get a better view. I told him I had that story beat, and that I got hailed on... he was glad he didn't go biking with me.

I was freezing cold, so I headed to the rig for a hot shower. Then I laid in bed for about 40 minutes trying to get my core body temperature back to normal... didn't need to be sick for the backpacking trip. After that we had some dinner, and started ripping apart all the backpacking gear we had stored throughout the Winnebaigis. Unfortunately it was still quite damp outside, so we had to pack up all our gear in the rig... Uggg! After about 2 hours we basically had everything together. We went to bed about 10:00 since we had to get up by 6:00am to make the 8:30 bus.

The alarm wet off at about 5:30... we got up about 6:00 and took our last showers for the next 4 days. We quickly finished packing and headed down the road to the Riley Creek overflow parking. We called our loved ones to say good bye for the next few days, and took the Riley Creek Shuttle to the Visitor's Center, where we were to pickup the camper bus. Here we took advantage of the last flush toilets we planned to see for a few days, and soon were on the bus heading into the park.

The bus ride itself was pretty interesting. The drivers pointed out the sights along the way, and told of their experiences with the park and its animals. The bus drives about 25 mph, and it took just over 2 hours to get to where we wanted to be dropped off. Along the way we did get to see a grizzly... it walked right along side the bus... pretty awesome! The driver dropped us off at the base of PolyChrome Mountain, just where we asked him to.

We put on the packs and headed over the edge of the road to a small lake. From here our plan was to follow this drainage about 3 miles into the bush then climb over a small pass in the mountains to skirt around the east side of Polychrome mountain. Walking along the drainage was not bad... it was mostly odd-sized gravel... called scree. Scree is the gravel left behind by glaciers when they recede.

After a while we came to the area we wanted to climb over. It was a good bit steeper than we expected looking at the topo map, but it was either that, or continuing to walk down the drainage to the East Fork of the Tolkat about 6 miles out of our way. We decided to head up the ridge... this proved to be a tactical error. Walking away from the drainage there were willows and berry bushes covering the ground... it was tough to tell in the distance how high the brush became, so we often ended up in areas were it reached 6 feet high. It could have been worse though they weren't any briars. The footing under the brush wasn't great either, it consisted of mostly large clumps of grass. So one step you had to climb onto the stump and the next you sank in-between two... it was a very tiring experience.

Finally we reached the top. This was pretty rewarding you could see rugged mountainous terrain in all directions, quite a nice view. We snapped a few pictures and from this high vantage point we plotted our next course. We could see the river off in the distance, so we decided to walk down a nearby drainage to a small tributary. From here would could walk up to, from what we could tell from our map, some fairly level terrain. About halfway down the drainage the skies grew dark and it started to rain... not very hard, but a nice steady soaking rain. This added a new dimension to the brush walking... now the brush acted like a sponge and soaked our pants as we mushed through.

After another hour or so we came to an area that was starting to get more level. We scrambled up the creek bed into a mossy, grassy bog. There was a lot of fire weed and some small willows... I thought that we might find a spot here but Joe wasn't happy with the area. Joe was pretty disgusted, and rather hunger at this point (we hadn't had lunch today and it was getting pretty late, 6:30 I believe) Joe decided that he needed to eat, so he would cook up some food, while I continued scouting for a spot without a pack.

We spotted a small ridge and since the vegetation was less the higher you climb, we thought that it might provide a better spot. I headed off in that direction. In about 15 minutes I spotted another grassy area, so instead of climbing up on the ridge I went to explore this place. It turned out to be short grass growing in soft mossy tundra... better than the last spot, and pretty dry since it stopped raining... good enough for me. I headed back to the spot Joe was preparing dinner and we dined on freezed-dryed beef stroganoff.

After that we packed back up and headed down to the place I found. We had to get moving, since it was getting late, and we wanted to setup camp in the light and before it started to rain again. We pitched the tent, I crawled inside and setup our stuff and got into some dry clothes. Joe gather all the food, garbage, and toiletries and stuffed them into the BRFC's. He placed them 100 yards from the tent site and crawled in to dry off. I hung a line at the top of the tent to dry our sock, but our socks were so soaked there was hardly any point. We crawled into sleeping bags and zonked out after our long first day. Lets hope things improve tomorrow.

Throughout the night it continued to rain off and on. By about 7:00 the rain was pretty continuous. We hoped to wait for a break in the weather to pack up, so we said that we would just wait a few hours. At 10:00 it still was raining, sometimes much harder than others. "Lets give it another hour." I just knew it would have to stop sometime soon... extended periods of rain are unusual from what I read about the park... it does rain often, but it only amounts to 15 in. per year... we must have had 2-3" in the last 24 hours. We discussed just waiting it out at our current site... the tent was keeping us dry but it was starting to get a bit damp inside... don't know if we can make it 24 more hours of continuous rain. By 11:00 Joe decided that we needed to get the hell out of here, and this miserable park... I wasn't quite as adamant, but I did agree.

We pulled out the map... Joe favored backtracking along the route that we should have followed here... along the riverbed... I suggested that we stick to this fairly level ridge and then head to the Tolkat, which we could follow out to the road. After some debate we decided to head for the Tolkat. We got dressed the best we could, and Joe headed out to get the BRFC's. I stayed behind and attempted to keep our stuff dry while packing up. We boiled water and carbbed up on cheddar potatoes and Serria chicken... not exactly breakfast food. Just outside our tent, not 10 feet away, there was a large puddle about a foot deep that wasn't there last night... guess we picked a good spot.

After breakfast we packed up the BRFC's and got our packs ready. We saved the tent for last hoping it might stop raining... no such luck. We did our best to shake most of the water off the tent and pack it up. We wanted it to be as dry as possible incase we didn't make it to the road tonight, and had to use it again. We also weren't interested in carrying the extra water weight. Soon we were back on our way... so much for 4 days, now the goal was just to get out of here this afternoon.

We headed out in our best gear... gloves, wool hat, rain parkas and fleece liners... remember equipment matters. The rain continued as we walked along the level area. The terrain was extremely wet, nothing drained well... the valleys between grassy stumps held water, sometimes enough to engulf your whole boot. There was small drainages forming all over the terrain... everything was holding water. Both Joe and I were soaked from the thighs down, however, our rain parkas did a good job of keeping our upper bodies dry. Rain pants would certainly have been nice, but there wasn't much you could possibly do to keep your feet dry... even my nice Gortex boots aren't much of a help when the water is deeper than them. (Joe decided to refer to our boots as buckets)

In about a half-hour we reached a ridge. From here we could see the Tolkat off in the distance. To the south a drainage was forming between the hill we were on and the mountains to the south. This seemed like the best path... but it required getting down to it. We scrambled and slid down a muddy rocky slope... a pretty precarious journey but we made it. From here we continued along the drainage having to ford it many times to find a good path along it. Even though our boots were soaked we still tried to not walk through the water, as each time you would lose body heat from the cold water rushing through your boot. Ohh yeah did I mention that it was about 40 degrees outside.

We were trying to keep a good pace so we were assured to make a bus... neither of us relished the idea of spending another soggy night in the backcountry. Joe was leading for a while but our pace got closer to the same by the time we reached the Tolkat. We rested here for a while... it was still a good 4-6 miles to the road... but we were pretty sure that we would easily make it out today.

We walked along the riverbed which is covered with scree. Walking in the scree doesn't exactly provided for the best footing, as its loose gravel... the smaller stuff isn't too bad, but there were areas where the pieces are about 6" in size and very loose. Still this beats soaking wet 3' high brush... and it's level. The Tolkat is a large glacially formed river that drains from the glacial fields of the Alaskan range to our south... the water is extremely silty and cold.

In about an hour we could see some buildings... there was a camp along the Tolkat near the park road... a good sign. A little while later we came across our first people... a couple headed in from the road. There were troopers... they were also out last night and took the shuttle from there first section to here for tonight... they planned to be out for 5 more days. This didn't help our ego's any, but at this point we just didn't care. They also told us that we would have the cross the Tolkat to get up to the road since, the side we were walking down was a cut bank... again not great news.

Both Joe and I were pretty beat from our quick pace earlier in the day. We rested often and soon came to where we were forced to cross the river. The Tolkat is one of the largest fordable rivers in the park. Add to that the rain for the past 24 hours and it was a pretty swift deep body of water. These glacial streams braid into many sections, in between which are scree... these are the best sections to cross. The biggest problem with crossing these streams is that you can't see through the water because it's very silty... so you don't know how deep an area is until you step into it.

We explored an area about a 1/4 mile wide and made our first attempt. We used one of the techniques discussed in the film we saw a few days ago. I led while Joe held my pack to balance me... this would stabilize me and him, and Joe would know how deep the water was as he followed in my tracks. I got about 4 feet in and the water was getting too deep (about 6" above my knee) for how fast it was moving... RETREAT! I started to fall down steam... luckily Joe wasn't in very far yet and pulled my pack off me. I stumbled backward touched down with one hand and made it back to shore... time to find a better place to cross.

We walked back down a ways, and made a second attempt... this time successful. Not bad... now we just have to do that 8 more times across each braid. We were successful each time, once the water was nearly to my hip, but finally we were through... a good 45-minute journey. We were both soaked but we just had a short walk up an access road to the Tolkat parking area. Luckily there was a bus that had room for us waiting... we didn't have time to change into dry clothes so we emptied out our shoes onto the bus floor. A few miles down the road we stopped to pickup some other backpackers, a couple who were only out since the morning... good we weren't to only one bailing out!

Along the 2 hour trip back to our rig we could see how the park visibly changed since we came in 3 days ago. The rivers were much higher, in fact many areas that were dry had large volumes of water flowing through them. Also the lush green willow was starting to turn yellow and brown... the fall colors. Joe and I were pretty cold and damp, but we were entertained by the charismatic bus driver who told of his stories in the park while driving us back. Nearing the entrance we saw the most dramatic change in the park, the brown barren peaks we watched while rafting a few days back were covered in snow. Our driver told us the locals call this "Termination Dust" signifying the end of the season is approach as the snow lines moves down the mountains.

Once back at the rig we got into some dry clothes and temporarily stowed our wet gear. We headed up to the sanctuary of Denali RV Park, officially defeated by the backcountry of Denali. After some hot chocolate and hotdogs for dinner we called it a night. We were never happier to be in the relative comfort of the Winnebaigis, as it continued to rain off and on through the night... I wonder how the couple we ran into is making out?

We got up about 8:00 and took showers for the first time since we were out... Ahhh that felt good. Since we were now ahead of schedule, we figured that we would head up to Fairbanks. We spent the morning tiding up the rig, but until we get some sun we wouldn't be able to dry out our gear. I made an attempt to do some laundry before we left but the facilities were full. So, we decided to unrig and head up the Parks highway to Fairbanks.

The ride up the highway was pretty uneventful, it did finally stop raining about the time we reached Fairbanks. Once in town we decided to drive around a bit to see what the town was like. I was craving some of the fruits of civilization after our back country experience, and wanted some Pizza Hut pizza... Joe reluctantly agreed. From there we stopped by the local Safeway for some supplies, and then called around for an RV park.

We ended up at Norlite campground, an older place, but they had everything we needed, full hookup, laundry and a phone line for Internet access. On top of all that the skies cleared and the sun came out... I think that it may have almost hit 70 degrees. We laid out all our gear to dry, and setup the tent... boy I'm glad that we didn't need that again... it was soaked. We did all our laundry, and cleaned out the rig... things were back to normal from our back country adventure.

After a few hours it looked like it might rain so we hurried and got all our gear stowed away again, and headed inside for the evening. We both downloaded E-Mail and enjoyed the comforts of civilization for the second night. After looking through some tourist brochures we decided to stay in Fairbanks another day and tour the University's museum, and see what else the town had to offer. For the first time in a month we had decent TV reception... I very much enjoyed vegging for the evening and watching TV.

We got up about 9:00 and once again took showers in the rig. After spending sometime sending out E-Mail and updating our site we were ready to head out into Fairbanks for the day. We decided not to make reservations for the next night incase we wanted to stay somewhere else. So, we disconnect the rig and headed out to the University... only had to turn around once.

Here we toured through their Alaskan museum. We saw exhibits about the wildlife in the area, the native culture, the Russian Days, and many others. Some of the more interesting stuff was the role of Alaska in WWII, and the airplane Lend/Lease Program with Russia. Alaska was the channel through which we supplied Russia with planes which they flew across the Siberia and then to the Russian Front. We also saw an informative video about the Aurora Borealis "The Northern Lights"... pretty interesting, unfortunately we didn't have the opportunity to witness this phenomena first hand... at least not yet. And there were displays about the building of the Alaskan Pipeline as well as the Alaskan Highway. All in all a great museum trip.

From here we headed up the Steese Highway a few miles to an Alaskan Pipeline viewing point. We didn't know what to expect... perhaps just an overlook at the pipeline as it crossed the valley. We were surprised to find a little tourist stop where you can get out and walk right underneath it... its quite the engineering marvel. Its also huge. We saw a pig, which is a device they send through the pipeline regularly to maintain and clean it... pretty neat stuff.

From there we headed back into town for lunch. Unfortunately we ended up at McDonalds, since we couldn't agree on something more desirable. At lunch we discussed possibly going back to Denali for a day hike... we still really wanted to reach a glacier. Besides I had reservations for a campground at Denali for tomorrow night.

After lunch we shopped around a bit, mostly looking for some rain pants, in case it rained while we were hiking again. We didn't have any luck with the pants, but Joe found a couple of souvenirs for his nephews. We also picked up some beer and a newspaper. From there we stopped by Alaska Land... the big tourist trap in Fairbanks. Alaska Land wasn't very exciting except for touring an aviation museum. Here they had a ton of WWI & II plane salvage... it was pretty neat. There were a lot of hug propeller engines, that were quite magnificent... one was a 21 cylinder Pratt and Whitney... the largest production engine they ever built... Joe would have loved to see the crankshaft on that thing.

From there we headed back to the NorLite campground... back to our same spot. Joe cooked up some hotdogs and I had some fish sticks for dinner. We spent a long night working on the site content and went to bed about 2:00. Tomorrow was an easy day, just down the Park road back to Denali.

We slept in this morning after our late night. We dallied around in the morning sending out E-Mail and updating the sight. By about noon we left NorLite campground and stopped by the store for a newspaper. Then we left Fairbanks and headed back down the Parks Highway back into Denali. The drive was pretty scenic and relaxing... much better than the dreary weather we had on the way up. Just outside the park we stopped in Healy for gas, propane, firewood, and snacks... and expensive stop.

Once in Denali we went by the Visitors Center to plan our day hike to the glaciers. Looking at the topo maps we had previously purchased we decided to try and reach Polychrome Glacier, just south of the area we camped in a few nights ago. This would require getting a bus to take us down the park road and drop us off. Looking to get an early start to ensure our success we opted for the 6:30am shuttle, and purchased our tickets.

From the Denali Park Visitor Center we headed up to the post office. Here Joe mailed out the souvenirs that he got his nephews. After that we headed to Riley Creek Campground... the place we had reservations... this was the night we were supposed to be done with our backcountry trip... boy I'm glad that we weren't out that long.

Riley Creek was the typical National Park campsite... nice forest, with a gravel parking pad, and a fire ring and picnic table... no hookups. This was the first true camping site we have seen thus far, so we thought that we would take advantage of it and have a fire and cook out. We grilled steaks over the open flames, and I made mashed potatoes and corn, while Joe cut up stuff for a cucumber and tomato salad... a nice dinner.

After we cleaned up from dinner we both made some calls... unfortunately the cell phone service sucked so we had to use the payphones. It was quite a beautiful night out, so we decided to take one of the trails near the visitors center to Horse Shoe Lake. This was a nice hike, and along the way we heard rumors that a moose was feeding down by the lake. Once at the lake we searched around for the moose... Joe finally found it... a female. She didn't seemed to be too disturbed by the people watching her... unfortunately we didn't have a camera... but we did finally get to see a moose.

From there I headed back to the rig and Joe went to make another call. At the rig I started the generator to charge the batteries for the cameras... needed to get that done before 10:00 quite hours (no generators). I stayed up for a while longer working on the journal... Soon Joe came in and we headed to bed so we could get up for our 6:30am shuttle.

Unfortunately our propane heat was acting up and Joe had to continuously get up and reset the heat to get it to work. It got down to 20 degrees that night, so heat was a big necessity.

The alarm went off at 5:30am, and in about 15 minutes we reluctantly crawled out of bed. We quickly ate some breakfast and headed to the visitor's center to catch our shuttle. After gathering our gear for the day we headed up to the center... surprisingly the center was opened... we didn't think it would be this early in the morning. We used the bathrooms and then got in line for the bus.

Once in line we overheard some people talking about catching the shuttle at 8:45... Why were these people in line already? I checked my watch only to find out that it was 8:20... Uggg the clock in the Winnebaigis must have gotten reset when we shutdown the generator last night. So much for our 6:30am bus tickets. We went back inside to see what was the earliest bus we could get tickets for... Ellison Visitor's Center at 10:30... that would be a stretch, but we thought we could still make it out and back.

Since we now had some time to kill Joe suggested that we drive down the park road to mile 9... the Mt. McKinely viewpoint. We did and were rewarded with a near 100% clear view... awesome. After taking some pictures and video footage we headed back to the visitor's center, and killed the rest of the time in the rig.

About 10:00 we headed up to the bus loading area, and caught our 10:30 bus into the park. The bus trip was much the same as our previous one... we saw some wildlife along the way, and the driver told us of his experiences in the park. About 12:45 we reached the Polychrome rest stop. Joe and I surveyed the glacier fields to the south and decided to take off from there. We talked with the driver who seemed pretty sure that it was unlikely that we could reach them and make it back by 6:00pm to catch a bus back. We had to prove him wrong.

With our daypacks we scrambled down the steep ridge to the scree bed of the East Fork of the Tolkat. Within the first mile we came across two caribou drinking in the riverbed. They didn't seem to be disturbed by our presence at all. We took some pictures and continued on, walking as close to a direct path back to the drainage of the closet glacier as we could. Unfortunately this took us through some pretty heavy brush. Hoping the get to the right drainage we pushed on often finding reasonable openings in the brush to walk through. Shortly after the bush got pretty thick we heard a loud snarling grunt. Joe, hoping it was me coughing, queried "Greg?" I was sure what it was and responded with "Hey Bear... Hey Bear!!"... the phrase the video taught us to use in case of a bear encounter. This certainly got our attention. We heard a loud rustling of brush, which probably was the bear charging us. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your point of view, the brush was too thick to tell what it was doing. Then it got fairly quite and you could hear the creature pant. All during this time Joe and I stood our ground and kept up our "Hey Bear" chant, waving our arms over our heads. We backed away slowly in the opposite direction and within 100 yards came to an opening, which turned out to be the scree bed of our glacial destination. The bear, content with its victory, continued to forage for berries. It was the textbook bear encounter.

Invigorated with our new rush of adrenaline we continued on to our destination. After about another 40 minutes it became apparent that the bus driver was right, and we didn't have a change to actually reach the glacier. We picked a spot up a ways that appeared to be a good vantage point, and hiked to it. Here we took some footage of the surrounding area and had a quick bite to eat.

We started our journey back... this time sticking to the scree bed, as to not kick up any bears. The walk back was going to be a bit longer since we wouldn't be able to climb back up the ridge we scrambled down. Even so we had plenty of time to make the last bus at 7:00pm.

Nearing the end it looked like we were going to have to cross the East Fork. Having been dry all day, neither one of us wanted to make a similar crossing to what we did on Tuesday. Luckily the river wasn't very high and it was clear enough that you could see the bottom in some areas. We search along about a 300-yard section for the best area. Finally we came to a pretty deep but narrow passage. There was a rock about 7 feet from the bank... Joe thought that he could make the jump. He gave me the pack with the cameras, and made his attempt. I figured he would make a pretty big splash since the take off point was loose rock and the rock he was going for was anything but level. Surprisingly he made it. From there he jump the remaining 3 feet to the opposite bank. I tossed the gear across (Luckily he caught the one with the cameras). I made my attempt and surprised myself... I was about 3" shorter than Joe but stayed dry... a much better crossing than Tuesday.

We continued down the scree bed... the plan was to meet the road at the bridge. Joe favored trying to crawl up the ridge... something that I didn't think was a good idea. We continued along the bed waiting for the bridge... it was nowhere in sight. Finally the ridge didn't seem as steep, and we scrambled up it to the road. Here we waited about 20 minutes for the next bus to go by... luckily they had just enough room for us.

The bus took us back to the Winnebaigis. When we went to start the engine we had found our battery didn't have enough juice to turn it over... Luckily these RVs have a "Momentary" switch which allows you to bridge the auxiliary batteries for starting... that worked like a champ. Perhaps the alternator troubles have taken their toll on our battery... we'll see for now.

Unfortunately our time problem kept us form making it to a glacier. But, with the wildlife sightings, our run-in with a bear, and the McKinley view is was still an awesome day. Finally through with Denali Park we headed down the Parks Highway towards Anchorage... our next destination. The plan was to drive till we got tired... needless to say Joe got us into downtown Anchorage at about 1:30am. We free-camped in the Fred Meyer parking lot (they let you do this) since there wasn't much point in paying for a site when all we wanted to do was get some sleep.

We got up the next morning a bit late... you could hear the activity in parking lot. We quickly took showers and had some breakfast. After a quick stop in Fred Meyer for the paper, we headed to CompUSA to see if we could get a battery for Joe's laptop... no luck. Anchorage was quite the retail mecca... I guess because its the only one in the state... you name it every big chain had a store in the area. Anchorage is quite a livable town, and unlike everywhere else we went, they didn't thrive on the tourist trade... we were just part of the crowd.

After that we went to the tourist area of Anchorage… near all the big hotels. There we visited the visitor information center and just basically checked out the area. It was turning out the be an awesome day so we thought we might try and do some flight-seeing. We headed back to the Winnebaigis to make some calls.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts we finally found Ketchum Air, who said that they couldn't get us out to Portage Glacier today (our preference) but, we could checkout some glaciers to the east. We told them to pick us up in 25 minutes in front of the Hilton, about a block from where we were parked. We had a quick lunch and headed to the Hilton entrance. From there we were taxied to Lake Hood Airport... the busiest sea plane airport in the world.

At the Ketchum facility we watched a few floatplanes take off and land. Captain TJ showed us on a huge map where we would be headed today. He also mentioned that another couple would be joining us and stopping over at a lodge. After a while our plane landed... it was out with a different load of tourists. Ketchum was a pretty nice establishment... they served as a full service way to get people and their gear out into the bush for hunting, fishing, backpacking, local delivery of goods, and tourists like us.

Soon we met Captain Crystal (our pilot for the day), and the 5 of us climbed on board the plane. Taking off in a seaplane wasn't really any different than any other plane. We all had headsets so you could hear that the airport was a pretty busy place... its right next to the Anchorage International Airport, and controlled by the same tower, but a different controller. Lake Hood also is used in the winter... they just equip the planes with skies instead of pontoons. They do have to shutdown for 1.5-2 months during freeze-up and the spring thaw each year.

On the way out to the glacier we saw a moose and her calf... we got some video footage, but it was too far away for our cameras. The pilot did a nice swooping figure 8 so both sides of the place got a good view... this didn't agree with Joe. From there we continued on to the glacier. Crystal passed over it several times and we got an excellent view if the ice and rock.

The glacier was huge and jagged. It was pretty awesome. You wouldn't think that it was soo rough from farther away. There were huge crevices in the ice and jagged pointy peaks. I didn't really know the definition of a glacier prior to coming to Alaska, but it's just an area where the snow accumulations exceed the amount that it melts. The ice forms as the weight of the snow compacts the lower layers. In some cases it gets so dense that it will reflect just a single color of the spectrum, a deep blue. We could see that at the edge. Here there was about a 20' shear wall of ice, and some pieces has fallen off onto the scree below, revealing this deep blue color.

From there we flew over to a small lake, where we landed and docked at a wilderness lodge. Joe and I weren't really expecting this but I guess it was just more efficient to take us all there. Here we met a really nice Alaskan Family that lives here year around. This was really cool. We had some lemonade, looked through pictures, and walked around the area. It was really neat... they were very self-sufficient. Their only accessibility was by plane, or snow machine in the winter (a 38 mile journey to the road where they had a truck parked... from there it was still another 25 miles to a small town).

The couple was really nice. They had 4 children, which were all home-schooled. In addition to running a small rustic lodge, they helped maintain trails for hunting access and a 60 mile stretch of the Iditerad. They were just preparing for their 2 month period of isolation, when the lake starts to freeze over, but before it gets thick enough to land a plane on it. The wife and kids were going into Anchorage for 10 days to get supplies.

We took off from Eagle Song lodge and headed back to the Lake Hood airport. Joe and I would have liked to spend a little more time over the glacier, but after a few hours in a small bouncy plane we were ready to land. The bonus of seeing the wilderness lodge was excellent. Once back at Lake Hood we were again taxied back to the Winnebaigis.

Since we were already downtown, we figured we would head out to a restaurant for dinner. We made some reservations at Club Paris... a nice steak house. Dinner was nice and tasty. From there we shopped around in giftshops for a few hours, picking up some souvenirs. Finally we left the area and headed to Hillside RV park, where we had previously made reservations for the evening.

Hillside RV park was nothing to special, but they had a phone line available 24 hours a day, and full hookups. On the downside the sites were nearly on top of each other, and the sewage really stank. We gathered our E-Mail and put up some site updates. After today's activities we decided that we would just veg tomorrow, and hang out in Anchorage.

We slept in a little this morning... the weather called for rain... it looked a bit overcast, but dry at the moment. We unloaded the Suzuki, and Joe head off to the store for some milk and a newspaper. After that we had some breakfast and discussed our day. Joe planned to head out on the motorcycle, and I decided to explore some of the nice paved bike paths around town, and then head downtown to see a movie in the Imax theater.

Joe headed out, while I tidied up the RV a bit. I got my bike together, geared up, packed my backpack and was off. The trial system in Anchorage ran right near the RV Park, and I took that down to the Coastal Trail... A nice paved path running along the Anchorage coastline. I really enjoyed being out on the bike for the day... the weather wasn't great but the freedom of riding around with all I needed for the day on my back was very relaxing.

I decided to head into town first to check out when the movie was playing. I also realized that I forgot my lock at the Winnebaigis, so I looked around to buy a decent U lock... I have wanted one for awhile. I stopped by the mall, but no luck, I then found an Army Navy who didn't have one, but directed me a few blocks down the road to The Bicycle Exchange... they had exactly what I was looking for. It just so happened that leaving there I was just in time to make the 3:00 showing of "Alaska" at the Imax Theater... a pretty cool movie.

After that I started heading back to the Coastal Trail when Joe called. We discussed our plans, and I decided that I would ride down the trail about 10 miles then back to the Winnebaigis. The Coastal trail was pretty nice... alot of people were out despite the dreary weather. I stopped on top of a bluff at the port of Anchorage... it was a nice viewpoint. I turned around here and stopped by the Earthquake monument which had a number of facts about the earthquake on Good Friday, 1964. From there I headed back to the Winnebaigis... a really nice bicycle journey.

For dinner Joe suggested that we try this Thai food place he saw on his motorcycle journey. Since it was just a mile or so down the road, we figured that we would just walk. Unfortunately when we got there we were greeted by a sign saying "Closed due to family illness in Thailand"... soo much for Thai food. We walked back a bit to a small Italian restaurant and had some hearty pasta dishes for dinner.

Once back at the RV we worked on the computers a bit and discussed our plans for tomorrow. We planned to head down to Seward to see if we could take a cruise in the Kenai Fjords Peninsula. After spending sometime online we headed to bed for the night.

We got up and the weather was very overcast and raining slightly. No point in hurrying down to Seward, so we just relaxed for a bit in the morning. After taking showers in the rig and cleaning up we disconnected and headed out to the Post Office. We wanted to mail some of the junk that we purchased along the way back home... the Winnebaigis doesn't exactly have an abundance of storage space. From there we stopped by Fred Meyer, and bought a battery, since we continued to have problems starting the Winnebaigis. That was the easiest repair so far. After a stop for gas we started down the Seward National Scenic Byway.

It wasn't a very nice day out, but still the drive was very scenic. Leaving Anchorage it followed the coastline. Along the side there were huge mud flats. We heard of stories where people ventured out on the mud, sunk in like quicksand, and died hypothermically before they could be rescued. We also heard about one rescue attempt went awry, where they attempted to extract a person from the mud using a helicopter, but only succeeded in retrieve half of her. This seemed odd, as it didn't appear all that difficult to take a few sheets of plywood to walk on, then dig around the person and pull them onto the plywood... perhaps they just don't have any engineers on their rescue teams... go figure.

Continuing down the road we drove through an area of steep mountainous terrain with glaciers between the ridges. This was pretty neat. Normally you would think of a peninsula as a flat, but this was anything but. Geologist aren't sure if volcanic activity or the glaciers alone are responsible for the terrain in this area. We also happened upon a few lakes and glacial streams that had a nice green color for the silt... reminded us of Muncho Lake. Also, there were a ton of trails along the route... you could easily spend a month exploring them all, some went over passes, and other lead back to glaciers... excellent hiking I'm sure.

A bit further down the road we came to Seward. Seward was pretty disappointing considering it is the second largest port town in Alaska. The industry here mostly revolved around the Kenai Fjords Cruises and fishing charters for halibut and salmon. We made camp at Millers Landing RV park... a mistake. They only had an outlet for electric, and no water hookup. Needless to say they didn't have a phone line for Internet access. Still it was a level pad, and it was right along the water where we could see salmon jumping.

Once we registered we decided to head back into town to check things out. We found the state run campground... we should have stayed here they had both water and electric in some sights and were nearly half the price of our current campground... Ohh well... live and learn. We stopped by the local store for some supplies, then headed back to camp.

When we got back we were very surprised to see another 1984 Winnebago Chieftain 22... just like ours... color and everything... pretty eerie. We grilled up some hamburgers for dinner. I considered wetting a line, but the $10 for the license and the pain of sorting through the fishing stuff just didn't seem worth while. Instead we relaxed and called it a night fairly early. We hoped to take a cruise departing at 9:00am, which would make for an early morning.

Today is my birthday... unfortunately that didn't stop it from being a pretty ugly day. It was raining, and the visibility was awful... we could barely see the mountains across the bay. Thinking that this wasn't the opportune time for a sight seeing cruise we decided to pack up and drive to Valdez where we would also be able to take a cruise in the Prince William Sound. This would make for a long day of driving, but it would keep us slightly ahead of schedule.

We packed up, and got an early start on the road... the plan was to be in Anchorage by noon... a reasonable goal. We just about had enough gas to make it there. Along the way back we again enjoyed the beauty of the drive despite the weather. Just outside Anchorage we saw a huge school of Baluga Whales feeding in the channel. It was tough to see them... just a dorsal fin would crest the surface of the water now and again.

Once in Anchorage we gassed up made some sandwiches for lunch and started down the Glenn Highway toward Glennallen. Along the way we noticed a glacier... it seemed that the road would lead us right to it. We stopped to take some pictures and saw an area leading down to the glacier... finally an opportunity to touch a glacier. We searched around, found the road entrance, and headed down. At the bottom there was a roadhouse with a gate... we paid our $6.50 admission and continued down the access route. This brought us to a parking area about 1000 yards from the ice.

This was an excellent birthday present, we strolled down the path to the glacier. It was great. The ice was extremely hard. I was expecting the surface to be soft, as it would melt being hit by the sun, but it was anything but. It was somewhat difficult to walk on since it was soo hard but we continued out a ways. We found a hug hole in the glacier. Let just say that if you were to fall in this, generations from now people would be discovering an iceman from ages ago. You could see about 50' into it, and I'm sure it went much further than that. We crawled around here and took a ton of pictures and video footage... it was awesome.

We had to get going, as it was still a long way to Valdez, so we headed out onto the Glenn Highway. A few more miles down the road you could really see the bright fall colors of the changing willow on the mountains. This is a much different kind of fall scene that what we are used to in say the Shenandoah Valley. The color is much the same, but since the vegetation is mostly 3' high brush it creates a very different dynamic.

We stopped in GlennAllen, at the same Chevon that repaired our tire a few weeks earlier. Here we gassed up and made our right onto the Richardson Highway toward Valdez. This highway had a good number of frost heaves, but we still managed to make good time, even if we bounced around a bit... I never got the tires off the ground.

About 40 minutes outside Valdez we came to a state recreation area at another glacier. I quickly ventured out to a vantage point to take a few pictures. This one was also awesome. There was a beautiful cascading waterfall just to the right if it. Continuing down the road we headed into a huge gorge, with shear walls on each side. Again not what you might expect heading toward the ocean. This area was quite picturesque. There were a number of tall (80') waterfalls right along the road. The area reminded me a little of Colorado.

Soon we came to Valdez, again pretty small for the largest port town in Alaska. Here we made camp at Bear Paw RV Park... right downtown. After rigging up and heading to the office for some quick online time before they closed at 9:00, we headed out to the Pipeline Club for a couple beers for my birthday. Turned out to be a great day, even if it didn't go quite as planned... and look I turned 30 in Alaska! We headed back from the bar early hoping that the rain might break and we could get on a cruise tomorrow. That looked pretty doubtful from the forecast however.

As expected the rain continued. Joe and I decided to wait one more day, tomorrow we would head out into the Sound no matter what the weather was like. Besides we had a ton of pictures and content add to the website from our glacier experience. Joe worked on that for a few hours while I made some breakfast and took a shower.

About 2:00 we ventured out into town to check out the local museum. Here they had some historic information about Valdez. Some of the more interesting stuff revolved around the mines in the area, and the Exxon Valdez Oil spill. A decent exhibit hall, but not better than the University's in Fairbanks. After that we did a bit of shopping and then headed back to the Winnebaigis.

We did all our laundry and cooked up some hamburger helper for dinner. Joe headed back to the bar we were at last night, while I continued work on the journal. After a few hours Joe returned and we headed to bed. We had 8:30 tickets for our Prince William Sound Cruise tomorrow... lets hope the weather clears up, its been a steady rain all day, and I think its actually raining harder at the moment.

We got up about 6:45 this morning and headed to the showers. After some breakfast we prepared our gear for our cruise. The weather was still very dreary and it looked like it was going to continue to rain. At this point it really didn't matter, so we gathered our rain gear and some warm clothes and headed across the street to the dock. Here we exchanged our receipt for boarding passes and waited in line to board the boat.

The Nunatak, our ship, was a very impressive vessel. It was a 3 year old 95 footer, seating about 250, powered by two V10 diesel engines capable of 30 knots... price tag 3.5 million. Unfortunately as we started heading out into the port, the captain came over the loud speaker with some grim news. He told us that after a report from their earlier sailing of heavy fog and 7' seas they decided to cancel the cruise. Instead they would take us around the port, tour the oil terminal, then over to a small glacier called Shoup, and refund our fee. After about 1.5 hours we returned to the dock and the outfit said that there would probably be a 3:00pm sailing to Columbia glacier, or we could take the same cruise tomorrow. In either case they gave us a complete refund and left the decision up to us. We talked with the captain he indicated that we should wait for tomorrow's cruise, as they were only offering the 3:00pm cruise since that had a few tour groups that didn't have the option of staying an extra day. Joe and I decided that one more day wouldn't kill us and opted for tomorrow's cruise.

Back at the RV Park we checked into other activities for the day. We decided to head over the Valdez tours and take a bus tour of the terminus of the 800-mile Alaskan pipeline... the Valdez oil terminal. While we were waiting for the bus we saw a portion of a video about the 1964 earthquake. To get on the bus we had to go through an airport type security scanner, then we were on our way.

After a brief drive to the terminal, we saw then floating berth (1), and heard about the other berths 3,4,5. Then we headed up to the ballast water treatment area. Here we learned that the empty tankers must carry seawater in their oil storage tanks for stability while travelling to the terminal. This water, contaminated by the oil residue from the tanker's holding tanks, must be cleaned before it can be put back in the ocean... and that's what occurs in this area. From there we saw the control building where they can control the flow of oil through the 800 miles of pipeline and operations at the 10 pump stations along the way. After that we drove by the power plant (the terminal produces all its own power), and up past the tank farm. The tank farm consists of 14 fixed roof oil storage tanks, which provides a buffer between the constant flow of oil, and the incoming oil tankers. From there we headed up to a vantage point, where they let us get out of the bus. Here we could see the whole terminal from above, including a tanker getting ready for departure from berth 4. After some pictures we got back into the bus which carried us back into Valdez.

Back at Valdez Tours we finished watching the 1964 earthquake video, and saw another one about the construction of the pipeline. From there we stopped by the drug store, post office, and a few other shops along our path. For the first time in 3 days there were small spots of blue sky.

We headed back to the RV, and took advantage of this brief spot of dry weather to grill out. After cleaning up the mess from our big dinner we relaxed. After an hour we headed back over to the Pipeline Club for some brew. Joe shot some pool, and after a few hours we called it a night. Hopefully the weather will improve for our cruise in the morning... its still raining for now.

Again we got up about 6:45 and went through the morning routine. Joe ran into the captain having a cup of coffee in the RV office, and he indicated that we were definitely going. The weather still wasn't great but at least it was dry for the moment. We walked over to the dock and once again boarded the Nunatak.

This time things were looking pretty good. On our way out we saw some sea otters in the bay... pretty odd little creatures. From there we did a quick tour of the oil terminal yet again, and headed down into Prince William Sound. In the sound we heard the events of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and how it ran aground on Bligh Reef... much different than what is commonly portrayed by the media. Then we stopped by Bullhead Island where we saw some large groups of sea loins barking and hanging out on the rocks.

From there we went over the Mears glaciers, one of the largest advancing tide water glaciers in the world. Here we learned about the cycle these glaciers go through. The flowing ice advances pushing with it a huge undersea pile of rock called the terminal moraine. Once the glacier reaches far enough out into the sea, it can no longer advance, as the sea starts wining the battle... melting the ice faster than it can replace it. Once the sea melts enough ice the glacier no longer has its moraine to protect it and the ocean will continue to melt the glacier until it recedes into the mountains and starts flowing again… developing a new terminal moraine.

Mears was an awesome site. The ship got within about a 1/4 mile of this shear wall of ice. Its amazing how much sound is generated by the glacier cracking and popping while tearing new fissures in the ice. The ice towered about 150 feet above the surface... nothing compared with the nearly 800 feet below the water. You could really see the blue color where the new ice was exposed from falling pieces. As we watch small chucks kept falling while it continued to crack and pop. Then we were reward with a hug section calving into the sea... it was totally awesome. Unfortunately I couldn't get the camera to focus, and the only shot I got was of the wave that was created by the fall. The wave was probably about 8', and our experienced captain turned the boat into it and rode it out with ease. Later he indicated that was in the top 20 calvings for the season.

That experience itself was well worth our wait, but the cruise continued on. We left Mears and headed for Columbia glacier, a much, much larger one. Columbia was much different. Its in a state of catastrophic retreat. The ice going into the fjord was much larger than what we encountered Mears. The captain navigated through, but soon we came to huge icebergs blocking our path. This was the destination... about 6 miles from the glacier itself. The calving ice being trapped along the glaciers previous terminal moraine created the wall of ice blocking our path. Here the ice would collect until the sea melted it enough for it the pass. Columbia was huge... the icebergs were quite tremendous... but the glacier continued up into the valley between the mountains for as far as you could see. Just jagged, fissured, pointy ice continuing on for over 20 miles... quite an awesome site.

From there we headed to Growler island for an all you can eat buffet of salmon, halibut, chicken and BBQ Beef... pretty excellent. I was just happy to have had some salmon and halibut... would have been a shame to have made it all this time in Alaska without some of the local sea food. The weather by this point had finally cleared up and the sun was actually shining bright and warm. After about an hour we departed Growler Island and headed back to port. Overall the cruise was top notch... and well worth the wait. It turned out to be by far the thing I would most recommend for anyone coming to Alaska.

Back at the RV we downloaded all the pictures from the day and had a bite to eat. After that we headed out to a new bar in town... the Saloon. After a few beers we returned and crawled in bed. Tomorrow we would finally depart the town of Valdez... not a bad 4 days considering the weather. Unfortunately we didn't get out on sea kayaks here... they did offer a few trips, one to Shoup glacier, but with the foggy, rainy weather we didn't make it... maybe next time.

We got up this morning, it still was pretty dreary. After showers, some time online, and a bit to eat we disconnected the Winnebaigis and finally left the Valdez area. This was the start of our departure from Alaska, after 3 weeks of awesome adventures in Alaska it was time to begin our journey back home. We headed up the Richardson highway back to Glennallen where we gassed up our thirsty vehicle. We continued up along the Richardson highway to the Tok cutoff.

Along the way we stopped by Wrangles St. Ellias National Park. We consulted with the ranger and decided to take the gravel road 19 miles into the park to an ATV trail. Here we walked back in about 4 miles to a small hunting cabin. The hike was nothing too spectacular... well compared to some of our journeys. The surrounding scenery was still awesome... you would think that by now we would be sick of it... NOT. In any case it felt good to get some exercise... we were pretty stagnate during the wet weather in Valdez.

We could have spent a lot more time in this tremendous National Park mountain biking or hiking... perhaps something else to do on my next trip. From there we continued on up to Tok... and made camp at the same place we stayed during our first night in Alaska... TOK RV Village. Here we sorted through all the pictures and updated the website. I cooked up some Steak'ms for dinner and after a bit of relaxation we called it a night.

This morning we slept in. By the time we got up over half the rigs that were there the night before had already left. Being the Labor Day weekend, we noticed a lot of Alaskans out in their rigs the past few days. In Valdez we saw quite a number of people from Fairbanks coming down to fish and stock up on salmon. This made the RV parks a pretty busy place the night before... but it was starting to look more like a ghost town now. After taking showers and having some breakfast, we made a few calls back home. I talked with the park owner who indicated that they were shutting the water at the sights off this afternoon. All around you could feel the tourist season ending... it seemed like it was happening so fast. About noon we left the RV Park, made a gas stop and continued along our path.

We continued down the Alaskan Highway along a part that we had not seen yet, since we detoured up the Klondike, and down Top of the World highway on the way into the state. The scenery was pretty nice along the way, but not as mountainous as most of the roads in the interior. Along the route we noticed a number of RV Parks that had already closed for the season. We temporarily left the state of Alaska and crossed back into the Yukon. About 6:00pm we pulled into Haines Junction, and made camp at Kluane RV Campground. Kulane was pretty nice, and had a view of snow covered peaks in the background. Unfortunately they didn't have a phone line for us, but suggested that we could try the library in the morning.

In an effort to use some of the food in the freezer before the ferry trip (we had to shutdown the refrigerator while onboard), I had the remaining fish sticks. Joe heated up some soup. After dinner I made a trip to the store to purchase some dessert... an ice cream sandwich for Joe, and a drumstick for myself. As it turned out we were too full for them, and saved them for breakfast in the morning. Having no cell phone service or internet access, we played on the computers for a bit and went to bed early.

We got up about 8:30 this morning and headed up to the showers. Showers were 25 cents (CAD) a minute... the first time in awhile we opted to pay for showers rather than use the one in the RV... it just seemed easier. We both enjoyed our ice cream for breakfast. Then we spent about an hour working on our web updates... we planned to head to the library when we left the campground. Joe disconnected the RV while I continued to proof read the journal. (I do proof read this you know). Much to our disappointment the library was closed for some obscure reason.

We continued down the Haines highway. The scenery here was pretty nice... we skirted along a few lakes and rivers with views of the Chilkat mountains in the background. We crossed from the Yukon into British Columbia, then at another customs stop back into Alaska. We were pretty used to this by now but for the record it turned dreary and was raining steadily. As we continued down to Haines the road turned steeply downhill. Proceeding downhill we traveled through a thickening forest... the first time we saw trees of substance in Alaska.

At the end of the hill we came to a flat area that followed the Chilkat River through an area known as the Alaskan Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. This area is known to serve as a feeding ground to over 4,000 American Bald Eagles during the winter months. We didn't see any eagles as we quickly passed through. We did se a large Red Hawk perched on a dead tree overlooking the river, as we awaited a pilot car to take us through a construction area. A few mile later we were in Haines.

Haines was a pretty nice little town. We made camp at Haines hitch-up RV park. Here we got a nice overview of the area and some things to do from the informative lady at the office. This was by far the most picturesque campground we stayed at, with very nicely manicured grass sites. The only draw back was the Internet connection line was outside the office, sheltered by a small roof... this wouldn't have been much of an issue, but with the perpetual rain it was not exactly comfortable.

For dinner we cooked up the remaining steak'ms... nearly emptying the freezer of all food. After that Joe spent about an hour online sending out updates to the website. I cleaned up the rig a bit, and rolled out the awing to provide a dry area outside the RV. We would be here 2 nights till the ferry allowed us to continue along our journey.

We got up late this morning, as the weather didn't really improve. After showers and some breakfast, I headed down to get on the Internet for a while. About noon the weather didn't appear to be improving, so we headed out anyway. We had a few errands to run like getting gas, and some provisions for the ferry trip.

Last night we were told to drive down past the ferry port where we might see some grizzlies catching salmon. This was our first stop. There were a ton of salmon in the water... you could see them jumping everywhere. There was a trail leading up river from where I parked the RV. Joe wasn't interested, but I headed out to see if I might find some bears. After about a half-hour hike... getting soaking wet from the sponge-like brush, I returned... Didn't see any bears, but there were a ton more salmon, many signs of bear and the remaining salmon carcasses from previous meals. I also noticed that I could have just driven to where I walked, so to show Joe the fish wall, I drove back down that road... still no bear. We were later told that they have mostly been coming out around 7:00pm... that didn't meet with our plans.

From there we headed back into town. After filling our gas tank, we parked and shopped for some supplies at the local grocery store. We then headed down to the Bald Eagle foundation where they had a wonderful wild life display. After a bit of souvenir shopping we stopped in at the Fogcutter Bar. They have a pool table, and we ordered a bite to eat from Grizzly Greg's pizza next door. After about an hour we walked back to the rig and drove back to the RV Park.

Having just eaten, we skipped making anything for dinner. Joe updated the website with today's activities, and I prepared some items for the ferry ride. Since it was going to be an early morning (We had to get up about 3:00am to take showers and get stuff together to be at the ferry by 5:00am, 2 hours before our departure) we headed to bed about 8:30pm.

About 12:50am Joe wakes me out of a sound sleep, telling me that my computer said it was nearly 5:00am, and that the clock must be wrong. I jumped out of bed, but soon gather my wits and explained that "Of course my computer says its 5:00am... its on East Coast Time" Joe responded with "Ohh... Nevermind then" Ugggg.

Buzzz... Ugggg 3:00am time to get up. Joe crawled out of bed about 3:20, and I followed at about 3:40. We took showers… that didn't really help wake me up. After packing up some additional things for the ferry ride we disconnected and headed down the road to the terminal. Here we were directed to park in lane 4 and go inside to get tickets, which I did without a problem. Both Joe and I napped for about another hour till a worker tapped on the window and told us to shut off the propane.

After that we drove onboard and parked. This ferry was pretty odd. Unlike every other ferry I have ever been on, this one wasn't a drive through. You entered through the side... the floor was a huge oval, and we parked near the front of the ship where directed. Gathering our stuff we headed up to the solarium... where I had read was a good place to crash if you didn't opt for a stateroom...which we didn't. Here I was a bit surprised to find a partially open deck with a fairly wet floor from the rain. Not what I was hoping for... luckily there were some vinyl deck chairs which we through our sleeping bags on, and some open space in the covered part of the back deck. They did have large space heaters so it was pretty livable.

After hanging there for a little while, I went to explore the ship. It was a huge vessel with a cafeteria, theater room, lounge and two huge enclosed observation decks. The observation decks probably would have been more comfortable than the solarium. But the huddle mass of people in sleeping bags, and the closeness to the outside of the ship had somewhat of a strange appeal.

Joe and I crashed there for a few hours, till we arrived at Jueanu. Here we got off the ferry and attempted to take a bus downtown... but we were told that we wouldn't have enough time to do anything and make it back. That being the case we headed back to the ferry for some lunch. Juneau is the capitol of Alaska, and believe it or not, there are no roads that connect it to anything... that's right its completely land locked. The only way in or out is either by ferry or plane. Joe had soup and fried chicken for lunch, and I had some soup and a chicken salad. Food wasn't great but it wasn't too expensive either.

Soon the ferry departed Juneau and continued down the Inside Passage. Travelling along we saw both humpback and killer whales jumping in the sea... pretty awesome. To pass the time I read my Charles Lindbergh biography while Joe took in some movies in the theater. About 6:30 we headed down to dinner... unlike lunch dinner was very expensive. I had a small plate of lasagna for $9.00 and Joe had 4 ribs for $10... luckily we had other supplies with us.

Since there wasn't much doing Joe and I crawled into our sleeping bags about 8:30. At 10:00 we had a port call, so I went down to get a few things from the Winnebaigis. After that we went back to sleep on our deck chairs. About 3:00am we had another port call. It was rather annoying listening to the safety message over the intercom while your trying to sleep. Surprisingly I slept pretty good. I think that Joe didn't sleep any worse than usual either.