Alaska and Canadian Rockies 2004 Travel Diary
Alaska - an adventure
24 August 2004 - I arrived in Alaska and it rocks! You may not believe it, but it's hot out here (about 27C), so I finally get my summer... Arrived in Anchorage yesterday, after a short visit to Vancouver to catch up with my friend. First thing I saw here was a seaplane (or floatplane) airport, apparently the largest (or busiest) floatplane airport in the world. So spent about 2 hours watching planes landing and taking off on/from the water – truly amazing! Decided to see a bit of Anchorage today and rented a bike and did a 26 miles (about 40km) bike ride along the coast in the sun... My bum hurts... They told me there are mooses around that area and I may be spotting one - guess what? I didn't see one... I start to think mooses are just great myths to get people going to places like Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia... Also went to watch the salmon fishers near the port. Downtown Anchorage is pretty small (well, Anchorage has about 260,000 inhabitants - I think it's the largest town in Alaska, but I may be wrong). My tour starts tomorrow, so we'll head off to Denali national park first and then on to Fairbanks before it goes down south.
26 August 2007 - I met my Contiki group yesterday and we headed off north. We are 12 people plus the driver and drive around in a people van which is pretty cosy. Good job so far we all seem to be getting on well: a few Australians. Japanese, Taiwanese, German (only one!), English, American, Brazilian - I think that's it... They all make fun of my German/British English accent, but hey they'd better get used to it... We went to the Denali National Park where usually you can see North America's tallest mountain: Mt McKinley; however due to forest fire is the Fairbanks area we can't see anything but smoke, so the mountain such as the moose remains a myth... The fire apparently is pretty bad, on of the worst ever, so we will be seeing more smoke when we get closer to Fairbanks tomorrow. Today we hiked through some parts of the Denali National Park, missed the moose and the mountain but had a great time hiking anyway. It looks a little bit like the Peak District though (especially as you can't see the mountains...). We also passed the Iditarod dog sleigh race place, which in the heat and with sun and blue sky was missing the snow a little. It got colder today, but that's probably because the sun couldn't get through to the smoke. The sky seemed blue again. Some curiousities I observed: Alaskans are not very inventive when it comes to street names: E Street. F Street, G Street,... 2nd Ave, 3rd Ave, 4th Ave, 5th Ave... West Street East Street... Alaskans drive large cars only and when I say large cars I am talking pickups, SUV, 4x4, RV, etc. Pavements/Sidewalks are not everywhere in town, but curiously there is one along a Highway which connects Anchorage and Fairbanks, who is going to walk there? However, if you like you can cycle Alaska this way...
31 August 2004 - A few days have passed and we a have travelled another 700 miles or so (probably more). Never got the chance to see Mt McKinley as the smoke only got worse. We did some nice leisurely hikes in the Denali National Park, but were again cheated of far away views. It was great anyway. We stopped over in the Ester Gold Camp and saw an Alaskan show which was hilarious; we now know all about Alaskans... Didn't find any gold though... I did a trip above the Arctic Circle and visited an Eskimo village. It was amazing. The Arctic Circle pretty much was a let down, I expected ice and snow, but it was all dry though a little chilly. Apparently the area we drove through (a 6 hour drive north from Fairbanks) is like a cold desert with hardly any rainfall. There is however permafrost (permanent ice) below the active soil and we saw the TransAlaskan oil pipeline which runs over 800 miles above and below ground. As the oil gets too hot to run underground and would melt the permafrost the pipeline runs overground a lot. From up north we took a little plane to the Eskimo village which was pretty interesting. It is a normal settlement which can only be reached by plane as it is pretty much in the sticks (about 200 miles from the Arctic Sea). About 300 people live there dressed in jeans and sweatshirts and living in regular wood houses (however, the tree line is 45 miles south of the settlement). They leave their village about 4 times a year to meet up with other villagers or to go to town. For entertainment they have satellite TV, satellite internet, Xbox and playstation... From there it was back down south via Anchorage. We are now in Homer, experiencing the wildlife and sealife. It is still pretty smoky so the views are not that good (need to buy more postcards). Oh, we passed some of the forest fires on our way up north. We are now in search of glaciers, but because of the smoke that's another challenge... Wildlife: So far we have seen 5 moose (1 baby moose, 4 adults - all without antlers), 1 whale, 1 sea lion, plenty of sea otter, puffins and wild salmon - pretty amazing. Anchorage nightlife (yes, this is part of wildlife...) Observations: Though there are allegedly 18 men for each woman in Alaska, I wouldn't recommend for dating... (well, if you like facial hair and lots of it and tattoos you have a chance)... "Outhouses" - here you pretty much have to get used to drop toilets in the woods, also Alaskans don't seem to believe in doors for toilets... Alaskan men dance as if they learned dancing from floatplanes... (arms wide spread and do the plane...)
2 September 2004 - So here is my last day in Alaska. Have I seen what I expected to see? Yes and even more. Many of my expectations were a little off - like I expected to see snow and ice everywhere or at least at most places, but pretty much only saw it a couple of times at the top of some mountains and yesterday when we did the Fjord tour. We saw a few amazing glaciers and just as the boat left a huge chunk fell with a big splash into the water. The glaciers make funny noises (as it is "working"), I would say it sounds like a busy motorway with quite a few trucks passing, but that's only me... The wildlife has been pretty amazing too. Obviously, finally seeing moose was truly fascinating, also the sealife. We had a few dolphins swimming with the boat yesterday and saw stellar sea lions (have to find out what that really means, but if you know, please tell me) and we had a sea otter hat was posing for us - they have cute faces... Again we missed the spectacular Aleutian mountain range and the volcanoes due to poor sight, we dubbed the mountain range "Illusion" range... The group was pretty good too. As we were only 12 people we pretty much got to know everyone and had a few romances happening, actually only one and that included our tour manager, so the bus was dubbed the "love bus" and a few girls had a crush on our hot Brazilian fellow traveller..., but nothing spectacular happened really. Am off to Canada tomorrow and hope that the smoke has not come as far down (though we have been told it may be). Maybe one day I'll come back when there is no smoke and see all the mountains that I was supposed to see – it must be a truly awesome view!
Canadian Rockies - a road trip
8 September 2004 - Just returned from my Canadian marathon road trip with Karin. We clogged up about 1800km (over 1000 miles) in 4 days... We came across 2 waterfalls, stopped at 5 lakes and passed many others AND I finally saw mountains and glaciers!!! BC is amazing, the ever changing countryside is fantastic (with the ever changing countryside you get the ever changing weather, but that's another story...) and I'll only mention a few places we stopped at: Glacier National Park: We drove through it and saw many glaciers and mountains with snow on top as it just snowed a day before we arrived – this was the kind of scenery I expected to see in Alaska. Banff National Park / Canadian Rockies: amazing views of mountains and lakes! We took the gondola up the Sulphur Mountain and got a superb view of the Rockies! We stopped at Lake Louise with its stunning glacier background, however I wasn't too impressed as it was too busy with tourists. Far better was Lake Emerald with its emerald coloured glacier water. The Canadian Rockies look like a good stop for the next skiing trip! Okanogan Valley: absolutely beautiful with its massive Okanogan Lake and many vineyards. We went up (OK, drove up) Giant's Head Mountain and got a stunning view of Lake Okanogan. I can see why many people retire there... Apparently, it gets over 600 hours of sunshine in July and August alone! Canadian observations: "Subway" billboard announcing next Subway shop in 135km!! We crossed a time zone (strange to me as I never crossed a land time zone). More radio station signs than road signs... Not much wildlife with the exception of bullhorn sheep and chipmunks – where are all the bears? THE PICKUP WITH THE PLANE IN ITS BACK!!!! (beats Marty's pickup truck - for those of you who know!)
