Blog 10 Homer to Skagway

We left Homer in the pouring rain, much of which lasted until we reached Eagle River.  We sure picked the best days in Homer to do our fishing.  We were happy campers:  Kim won the ‘pool’ for the 1st caught Halibut and Dave won the ‘pool’ for the biggest fish (we even had a chap on board that wanted to be part of our ‘pool’).

We stopped in Eagle River long enough to fuel up and headed on towards Palmer.  We are travelling on the Glenn Highway which winds its way alongside the Matanuska River.  This road passes through parts of the Mat-Su-Valley into Palmer.  The sun had come out by now and the scenery was spectacular.  We now have glimpse of the Wrangell Mountain Range. 

Two vehicles saw a bit more of Palmer than we’d have liked, having taken a highway detour which took us several miles out of our way (the smart one continued through the detour sign).  Our first sighting of the Matanuska Glacier, north of Palmer, was amazing.

The glacier’s extends some 23 miles with an average width of  2 miles and at its terminus, 4 miles wide.  We continued onto our evening’s destination which was at Grand View RV Park, not far from the Glacier.  The owners offered an evening meal in addition to breakfast.  After a long drive, we opted for homemade brick oven pizza.  Girls played cards and the boys were playing cribbage when we had a ‘guest’….along came Norm (from Eagle River), with a bag full of fish!!  A big surprise.  Seems he’d been down to Chitina working on a friend’s fish wheel and saw our trailers.  He left us a real treat of fish. 

Sunny and bright the following morning, we were off to Glennallen hoping to have questions answered about flights into the Kennicott Mine which is further on from Chitina.  Phil has wanted to fly into to the mine for years.  It is now part of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and is only accessible by plane or a road one must be taken in.  The mine operated from 1911 to 1938.  While the mine itself is still privately owned, the Parks Service runs tours through the mine.  Alas, Phil had not done his homework on the flight availability in addition to RV parking.  The Copper River area is now open for ‘dip netting’ (catching the famous Copper River salmon with a dip net) and everyone and his uncle is there right now.  Additionally, both Phil and Linda have had head colds for a couple of days, so Phil decided he’d stay put in Glennallen and the others went on to Tok.  The Drapers had lunch, a nap and then headed down the Richardson Hwy towards Chitina, stopping at the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountain National Park, a new addition since Draper’s trip in the mid 90’s.  A beautiful facility with several exhibit buildings and a very informative movie.  The Park is North America’s most spectacular mountain wilderness and home to nine of the sixteen highest peaks in North America, some the highest in the world.  After the stop there we continued onto Chitina….seeing a Tibetan Yak Herd en route.

‘Dip netting’ season was open in Chitina and it is always a fun experience to watch.  Alaskans are permitted to fish with dip nets, in the Copper River, for what is referred to as ‘subsistence fishing’.  They ‘dip net’ on one section of the river and ‘fish wheels’ are set up on another section.

 We returned to our trailer and discovered this was the worst invasion of mosquitoes we’ve encountered on our trip. 

The following morning we continued on to Tok to meet the rest of the group, still driving alongside the Wrangell-St.Elias Mountain range.  Ayres had decided to continue over The Top of the World Highway that day, after driving up to Chicken AK (weather was good and rain was forecast for the following day).  Odegaards went as far as Chicken AK (a fun stop) and returned to Tok.  A decision was made by the remaining four that we would not go over The TOW Hwy with the rain coming.  This highway is a challenge at best.  Someone in the Tok RV park reported that a large RV and tow car had gone off the highway the day before and this didn’t instill confidence about pulling trailers over the highway.  So we will miss Dawson City YT.  We started off towards Haines Junction back down the Alaska highway we’d come up on.  We suspect this is the worst section of the Alcan route, due to the perma frost that exists in this area.  There are certainly ongoing studies as to how to fix the problem, but the highway continues to be poor.  We never knew what would be broken, in the trailer, when the ride finished.  The drive is quite beautiful through the Kluane Mountain range.  We stayed in Destruction Bay, on the shores of Kluane Lake in a Territory Park.  It would have been great fun to see a bear walk through the park….they had closed the park the previous year due to the presence of bears….we didn’t see one.  The boys cooked our dinner on an open fire.

On to Skagway the following day….crossing two borders en route.  We saw two grizzly bears on the highway and several trumpeter swans in addition to a moose.  We came down the highway to Skagway, following much of the ‘gold rush’ route.  The highway into Skagway is spectacular, following the route of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad.  Tomorrow we will ride the White Pass and Yukon narrow gauge railroad.  Lots of changes in Skagway since any of us were here. The city caters to the many Cruise Ships that come into Port where there  are lots of shops for the passengers can spend money.  The weather has been very cloudy and cool during our stay.  Tomorrow we will start our trek south.

Look forward to Ayres account of their visit to Dawson City.