2023 - A Trip to Alaska
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The Hendersons 2023 - A Trip to Alaska - Talkeetna |
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2023 - A Trip to Alaska |
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August
3rd, Thursday
Back to the rail station, this time for a trip to Talkeetna, a
small town near the tallest peak in north America, Denali, formerly known as Mt.
McKinley. We had breakfast on the train, this time sharing a table with a couple
from Wisconsin. Along the way there were a couple of glaciers visible but
generally the scenery was small trees, lakes and fields. We saw a couple pairs
of Trumpeter Swans from a distance and I was reminded of the book by E. B.
White, “The Trumpet of the Swan” which we recently read to Cassidy and Rowan. We were transferred to the Talkeetna Lodge and were lucky that
our room was ready even though it was only 11:00 am. Our room was very spacious
and we had a view of Denali although it was somewhat obscured by clouds. The
grounds of the lodge are beautiful and there are hiking trails around the lodge
but there has been a moose on the grounds lately so there are warning signs
posted as moose can be aggressive. Another animal to be careful of is bear. In the lobby of the
lodge is a stuffed bear that had been killed in this area. It weighed in excess
of 2000 lbs. And probably stood at 8’.
We had lunch at the lodge. Tom ordered fish and chips and the
serving size was enormous. I had an excellent seafood chowder. I suspect that
folks who don’t do seafood would be challenged to find much to eat in Alaska as
seafood is on all the menus. We have learned that the cost of living here is high as almost
everything except seafood must be imported. I checked out the weekly sale flyer
for Safeway and chicken breast was about 75% higher than in Frisco. Gasoline is
at least $1.00 a gallon more. Alaska weather is certainly challenging which
likely makes the cost of importing goods high. There also seems to be a labor
shortage, which is a problem in many other parts of the country but it takes a
hardy soul to live in Alaska. We were picked up at the lodge in the
late afternoon (still broad daylight as this time of year it never is fully
dark) and taken to Talkeetna for our flightseeing trip around Denali and the
Alaska Range. We
boarded the single engine 4 seat aircraft, were
given headsets so we could communicate with our pilot, Josh, who grew up in
beautiful Port Townsend, Washington, a town Tom and I had visited several times
and quite liked.
The flight was amazing! The mountain range is huge and there
are at least three peaks higher than our beloved Mount Rainier. There is a lower
level range called Little Switzerland which is very rugged and named so because
of its similarity to the Alps. There are several glaciers and ice fields and
Josh pointed out the base camp where climbers begin their long trek to the
summit of Mt Denali.
It was really interesting listening to the radio chatter. I
kept hearing reference to 7 4 7 and wondered what that was about. Turns out
there is a gap between some of the peaks that would be large enough to fly a 747
through. The mountain range is not volcanic but was formed by the
Pacific plate heaving. There are volcanoes in Alaska, in fact one in the
Aleutian Islands is showing signs of a pending eruption, but volcanoes are not
part of this range. There have been terrific forest fires in Canada this season
and the resulting smoke has impacted air quality to some extent in Alaska
although not nearly as badly as in the east where Toronto, Chicago and New York
have experienced the worst air quality in the world. I suspect the Canadian
equivalent of the US Forest Service does not clear logged sites of debris,
therefore making for extreme fire hazards. Tom and I agreed that our flightseeing trip was the highlight.
What a memorable experience. We were taken back to the lodge by coach, had dinner in the
restaurant, this time scallops for an appetizer, crab cacio e pipe for a main
and crème Brule for dessert. That sounds like a big meal but we had one serving
of each which we shared. August
4th, Friday Our last day. We shared fruit and a breakfast burrito then
were picked up for a jet boat tour with Mahay’s Jet Boat on the Chulitna River.
Once again we were reminded of how hardy the folks have to be to live here.
Alaska had a homesteading program from the early 1970s until the mid 1980s. Free
land if you build a home and live in it for five years. Problem is there were no
roads to the site, nor any utilities. Electricity had to be produced with
generators, water from hand dug wells or the river except during the winter it
froze at least four feet thick. No bathroom, toilets were outhouses. To get
supplies residents had to flag stop the train for a journey to Anchorage, round
trip took two days and in the winter it ran one day a month. I think our guide,
Alice, said the flag stop system was one of only two still operating in the US. Our captain was a young man named Griffin and he claims to be
a champion moose caller and is training for the Iditarod. We tied up near a spot where there were replicas of an
indigenous camp and a trappers hut. One of the biggest challenges these folks
had was making sure their food supply was safe as bear have a very keen sense of
smell. One way the trappers kept their food was building a tower and wrapping
parts of the log stilts with stove pipe. Alice told us that in Alaska people eat road kill. Apparently
moose is plentiful and tasty and people sign up for alerts about road kill near
them. If the person at the top of the list can’t make it out to harvest the
State Patrol notifies the next person on the list until they find someone who
can go to the site and field dress the animal. After the jet boat excursion, we were taken to the village of
Talkeetna where we had lunch, then strolled to the rail station for our trip
back to Anchorage. We had dinner on the train, this time sharing a table with a
73 year old woman and her 14 year old grandson, both from Kansas, where the
family raises cattle. In most cases we enjoyed meeting people but we had an
interesting but negative experience with a group of mainland Chinese tourists,
two adult women, a teenage girl and three teenage boys. The boys were rude, loud
and obnoxious. While we were waiting for the shuttle to take us to our hotel the
boys were acting up and one of the women walked over to the worst behaved,
grabbed his hair and gave him a tongue lashing. I was so disgusted with the boys
that I applauded her. Tom resurrected some of his Chinese and told the woman
that the boy is a bad person. I suspect she had no idea that a round eye in
Alaska spoke Chinese! Needless to say
we saw many beautiful things, learned a lot about our 49th state and
ate a lot of seafood. Will we come back? We’d quite like to but likely would do
a driving trip. While Alaska is our largest state it us largely undeveloped so
there is only a central core where tourism is practical .
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