Alaska Week 4

To start of this week, we picked up our salmon Sunday and loaded it into the freezer that already had our 92 pounds of halibut. The salmon completely filled up the freezer and we had to give up on our plan of extra ice cream storage until we eat enough fish to make room. I'm glad we didn't find a smaller 3 cubic foot freezer like we originally thought we wanted.

There wasn't room for another fillet. We had to shake them around and smooth out the top to be able to shut the freezer lid.

Even through it was rainy, we went to the beach in Kenai to see the carnage from all the dip net fishermen. While there weren't as many people as I had seen there Saturday, it was obvious a whole lot of people were still into fishing when we pulled up. There was a hearse in the parking lot with fishing gear and a Dracula mask in the back. I guess you go in whatever you have.

Can you see the Dracula face in the back window?

Down at the beach, the scene was pretty brutal. People were lined up out in the water with their nets and fish carcasses were lined up all along the beach. We walked to the edge and watched a family catching a couple of fish. They offered to give us one, but we were out of room in the freezer, so we had to decline.

See the line of people and the nets in the water? There were almost twice as many people there the day before.

This net isn't the largest we have seen. Some have wheels built in to help roll them down into the water and they are bigger than the roof of a compact car. See the fish whacking club the woman on the left is using?

The fish parts are everywhere.

I got more black sand while Maui ran around and around through the tall grass at the top of the beach area. We had to keep him up at the top to stay out of the salmon parts everywhere. He chased birds that were WAY out of his reach, but he seemed to enjoy every minute of it. I guess he thinks he is keeping them in their place way up there.After running through the sand and mud, Maui needed a bath. We took him to a dog wash that worked out pretty well.

Working at the dog wash.

Monday we still had quite a bit of rain, but there were breaks that worked for Michael and John to get out the shovel and build bike ramps along with the 9 year old son of the owners. They had been clearing some land and had piles of dirt that were just right for making ramps. After the mini BMX park was built, the owner said he sure was glad he had dumped the dirt there.

These are some of the bmx ramps we made, they were awesome. (John)

We rode on these for hours with Toad. We used shovels and rakes and made these from some of the dirt that the owners had just dumped here. (Michael)

The weather really cleared Monday night and the campground had a bonfire and smores with huge marshmallows. Even though it was around 9:30 pm, the sun was really nice so we decided to go to the beach and walk along in the sunshine. Michael and John climbed up and jumped off the side of the cliff over and over. They were jumping over the edge and landing on the dirt spill-over area at least 9 feet below them. Michael took clay and made war paint marks on his face. Unfortunately, we didn't have the camera for that.

Tuesday we drove up the Sterling Highway to go look up river and see crowds at the Russian River fishing. The river gets skinnier and more clear the farther away from the mouth where it dumps into the bay, so the scenery is a bit more interesting, but the fish are not as good quality for eating after so much exposure to the fresh water. We saw a lot of people fishing, but no bears.

We went to a creek listed as a good site for gold panning. The gold search was pretty much a bust, but we found a LOT of mosquitoes and saw some river otter. As we were about to leave, we saw our first upstream spawning salmon that had turned the bright red color. The sockeye salmon that are the subject of the big fishing furry are the ones that go farther up stream and turn red. By the time they fight the current, dodge the commercial nets, the dip nets, the fishermen's lines, and the bears, they are tired. The one we saw tried going upstream and then ended up being pushed backwards. I guess it will take a break and try again and again until it makes it.

(John- I had a great time at Diamond M Ranch - mostly because of the farm. The farm owner, Mary let me ride Lightning because of all the work I had helped her out with during our visit. We rode down the trail to the river, then we rode back throughout the entire farm and park. Feeding the animals, cleaning their cages, and brushing Lightning was fun for me and didn't seem like work. Getting to ride  Lightning was 'icing on the cake'. Mary has so many ideas to enlarge the resort like a paintball court, or even setting up a Man Tracker course. I hope I get to come back next summer to be a work camper and to see what they have added.)

This is Lightning, he is very nice and gentle. (John)

Yeeha!!!!!!!!!!!!! (John)

Because we were scheduled to leave and drive up to Anchorage on Michael's birthday on the 28th, we took him to the movies the afternoon of the 27th. We went to see Captain America in 3D, and like the other times we had gone to the Orca Theater just two miles from the campground, there were only about 12 other people in the place and we parked right in front of the entrance. It's hard to beat parking 10 feet from the ticket counter and having no line to get in to buy our popcorn. There was no threat of anyone sitting in front of us and blocking our view either. We rounded the night out by getting a pizza from Big Daddy's Pizza for the third time in two and a half weeks.

The next morning, Michael opened his presents and had the cookies he had requested instead of a cake. After that, we loaded up the RV and drove away. We were sad to leave the Diamond M Ranch. As we drove off, one of the owner's sons ran alongside the RV, waving the whole time. We drove along the Sterling Highway and up the Seward Highway back to Anchorage. We pulled over for lunch and surprised Michael with a cake and ice cream in spite of the cookies earlier.

(Michael) - On my birthday I woke up at Diamond M Ranch. I got to open....I mean take my gifts out of their Wal-mart bags (Mom didn't have any wrapping paper). I was very happy! I got a lot of sweets and a ton of money from my family, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. After we left Diamond M Ranch, we drove to Anchorage and ate dinner at Golden Corral (I really like their yeast rolls and honey butter). I had been thinking about what I wanted to do with all my money. I finally decided to Invest it...... BAHAHAHA! (Sigh) Whoo....that was a funny one. I really decided to buy myself my first phone. So with 10 minutes until Best Buy closed, we looked and tried to get the new iPhone 4. It was to late and their system wouldn't process the account. I was sad because the number they had given me was just two numbers different from my mom's cell number. The next day we got on at the AT&T store and Dad changed our family plan to unlimited texting. I also found a cheaper case. My birthday in Alaska was great!

Maui was thinking about trying to snatch my loot. (Michael)

Surprise! Birthday cake for lunch.

John came out from the back of the RV at lunch time to surprise me with a cake. (Michael)

Michael's big birthday purchase.

The drive was really very beautiful. There were sections with huge mountains nearby, that looked even bigger when there was an RV ahead of us that was dwarfed by the immense hills. The weather was sunny and very nice as we drove along.

This view with the reflection of the mountains in the water was right where the Sterling Hwy joins the Seward Hwy.

After driving around the point of the Turnagain Arm and looking at the very low tide, we stopped at Crow Creek Mine to try the cold panning there. After taking a bucket, shovel, sluice, and a big wagon with fat tires down to the creek, we tried our hand at digging up some gold. Just like most gold rush prospectors, we did not strike it rich. The bags of sand we were given to pan through produced a few flakes of gold for us, but the time at the creek ended up with just a tiny speck in Shelli's pan. We brought back a bucket of concentrates we collected from the sluice to go through later, but I'm not expecting much from it. We stopped by the little stream where most people pan their sample dirt because I thought a bunch of them probably wash some of their gold over when they try panning for the first time. Within just a few tries, I found a couple of small flakes. I should have just been working the tiny stream instead of dragging all that gear back and forth to the creek. I know there was a bunch more gold in the stream, but we needed to press on for dinner in Anchorage.

The water was cold and we didn't find that much gold here - Michael

Sifting our the bigger rocks before loading the stuff from the bucket into the sluice.  Adjusting the sluice in the creek to get the right amount of water flow and the right angle takes some work and experience. We never really got it dialed in right.

We drove from Anchorage to Cantwell, just South of Denali National Park. The drive was really nice with BIG expanses of trees and mountain views. The roads were pretty good and the traffic was light once we got past Wasilla, where red light after red light got really old.

Eleven years ago Shelli and I had planned a trip to Denali National Park with back country lodging reservations and everything. Right after completing the plans and buying some gear for the trip, we learned Shelli was pregnant with John. We cancelled our plans because the wilderness didn't seem like the place for us to be with her pregnant. This week, we finally made it to Denali.

Because cars are not allowed very much access, we took the eight hour bus tour of Denali National Park from the Wilderness Center.  The weather was cold and rainy and the bus was basically a no frills equipped school bus. The windows fogged up quickly,  and the solution was to open every other window, letting in plenty of cold air. The temperature was below 50 degrees, so the wet wind chill was pretty chilling. The wet unpaved roads splattered up a lot of mud, so the windows got smeared up pretty bad on the outside. In spite of the mud, we saw a mother and baby moose not too long after getting on the road. The driver would stop each time anyone saw something and he would give us plenty of time to see it, so it was actually a pretty good set-up. Soon we saw a bunch of Dall sheep on a mountainside as we drove along through the vast wilderness. We saw a single caribou, then a mother brown bear and cub playing on a distant ridge. As we neared the turnaround point, we saw a red fox cross the road and walk by our bus. We stopped at the Eielson Visitor's center where there can be a good view of Mount McKinley. Can be - for the 5% of park visitors that actually get to see it. Most days it is covered with clouds. If it isn't raining like it was when we were there, it is so big, it creates it's own weather and remains covered in clouds most of the time.

Moose cow. The calf is just off to the right behind the tree.

Sow and cub.

The vast expanse of Denali keeps going and going on. I bought this red jacket 11 years ago to wear to Denali, so it finally got used for it's original purpose.

After about 30 minutes at the visitor center, we headed back out on the same, and only, road.  Soon we saw about seven caribou, then another group of caribou a few miles later, then some more caribou up on the very top of a ridge farther down the road. Next we saw three brown bears not far off the road, down by a creek. One was a cub, another was a small female, and the other was a large male. Not far past that we saw another large male on the side of a hill eating berries. We saw several other caribou, but stopped calling them out and stopping to look at them. We also spotted a bunch more sheep in the distance. In total we saw over 20 sheep, over 20 caribou, two moose, 6 brown bear, a red fox, a falcon, and several ground squirrels. The park is known as a place to see wildlife for good reason. We didn't scratch the surface of the park and still saw this much in one day. The scenery isn't as dramatic as some places we have seen on the trip, but it is very interesting for it's large scale.

There were a few places where the hills were colored really neat like this. There were also some really black mountains.

Mount McKinley is somewhere in the these clouds.

Caribou on the move.

This caribou has a GPS tracker around it's neck.

A caribou on the top of a high ridge. There are no hunters in Denali - or else this guy would learn a hard lesson about silhouettes.

See the white sheep way up on the loose rocks of this cliff?

These sheep must have been standing on the edge of their hoofs.

This picture is worth clicking on to zoom in some. Check out his teeth and claws.

A different brown bear on the hill side. (That's a fat bear - Michael)

This one was eating berries. It must take a lot to get fat on berries. This bears don't have it as easy as the Kenai ones that easily fill up on salmon. 

That's it for this week. We will be going back into Denali one more day and then heading to Fairbanks next week.