Campsites – Page 2 – The Destinators

Paxson/Isabel Pass

The window is early September. That’s when it’s usually safe to head out of Alaska – see some fall foliage colors yet before snow in the mountains of Canada create challenges for those headed to the lower 48. So, we’re watching the calendar a bit more closely than we have. And we’ve got one more corner of Alaska to explore.

The plan: spend 2 days in greater Anchorage on major provisioning, scheduled maintenance for the truck, no blog posts (who wants to hear about doing laundry?), no pix, head north. Plans never work out.

Hope

When I first looked at a map of the Kenai Peninsula, there was a small dot on the northern edge labelled Hope. I looked a bit more closely and, sure enough, there was a road to it. Ok, we have to go there. Hope there’s something to see…

A few weeks ago at Salmonfest, we of course saw a lot of people wearing T-shirts. About 50% of the festival-goers understandably were wearing their t-shirts from prior Salmonfests, but the next largest group had shirts from the Seaview Cafe & Bar and Campground in Hope, AK. Hmm… We asked around and yes, downtown Hope has a cafe and bar with live music daily, there’s a campground, and yes, we should check it out. Then Duncan highly encouraged a visit to Hope. Good advice!

Seward – Kenai Fjords National Park

The Harding Icefield, Kenai Fjords National Park

Seward is a small, picturesque city on Resurrection Bay at the base of Marathon Mountain at yet another Alaskan road’s end. It’s totally surrounded by tall, steep mountains wearing a shawl of glaciers that make up Kenai Fjords National Park. Seward is predominantly a commercial fishing town, also a destination and embarkation point for tourists in the summer. It’s the northern terminus of many cruise ship lines as well as the southern terminus (aka Mile 0) of the Seward Highway to Anchorage, the Alaska Railroad to Fairbanks, and the original Iditarod dog sled trail to Nome. Heavily damaged by the 1964 earthquake, the rail yards and fish processing plants directly on the bay were not rebuilt where they’d stood; the land was instead converted to parks with hundreds of campsites, enabling travelers to soak in the views and get to the mountains.

Ready for more? First, a rendezvous…

Homer

D’oh! No, not that Homer – Homer, AK. It’s a small town in a stunning location at the road’s end on the west side of the Kenai Peninsula. It’s situated where the Kachemak Bay empties into Cook Inlet, feeling cozy and protected by the Kenai Mountains interspersed with glaciers to the south and east, and the Alaska Range with its four towering volcanoes to the west. A key geological feature of the town is the Homer Spit, a terminal moraine left by the glacier that filled and carved out the Kachemak Bay 15,000 years ago. The Spit is a long, narrow, natural gravel bar that sticks out 4.5 miles into bay, now dotted with campsites and shops and people fishing.

We loved Homer! And that was all Duncan’s fault.

Chugach State Park

Chugach State Park is the third largest State Park in the country. It features 6000-foot peaks within sight of sea level. And it’s right outside Anchorage, where the population is 300,000 fortunate souls. Although there are access points to hiking trails and other recreation opportunities all around the park perimeter, including within the Anchorage city limits, there are three main access areas to explore – Eklutna Lake, Eagle River and Girdwood and we’d been given suggestions for great hikes in all three.

Denali State Park

We made some good decisions, and we were lucky. What remained for us to explore in Alaska was the the Kenai Peninsula and Chugach Mountains south and east of Anchorage and a small area north of there that includes Denali State Park. The forecast for north of Anchorage was slightly better, so we headed that way.

Denali National Park protects the wilderness area around Denali, at 20,308 feet, the tallest mountain in North America. The smaller Denali State Park is just south of the National Park. There are three major attractions within the State Park – the Parks Highway with strategically situated view points, campgrounds and trailheads, the wide, braided, glacial Chulitna River, and the 37-mile long, open K’esugi Ridge – boasting views of Denali* from all three.

*But only on rare, clear days. We had two of them!

Valdez

Valdez is a commercial fishing and shipping port with a history that is both colorful and tragic. It’s also a fun town to visit in a stunning location.

Recall that Mount Saint Elias, at 18,009 feet the second highest peak in the US, is only 10 miles from the ocean’s edge as the eagle flies (yes, we confirmed that this is the expression to use in Alaska). That means our relatively short drive to Valdez would cross yet another mountain range – the Chugach Mountains, the tallest, steepest mountains we’ve seen yet – before dropping into the city. Valdez is near the end of a narrow arm of the Prince William Sound where glacial rivers dropping down from tall, steep, glaciated mountains on 3-1/2 sides of the city turn the water a distinctive aquamarine color.

Wrangell-St Elias National Park

Regal Mountain and the Stairway Icefield

Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve is the most superlative and unique-est we’ve ever visited. It’s the largest National Park in the US. At 13 million acres, it’s roughly 6 times the size of Yellowstone. It is surrounded on 3 sides by other parks including Glacier Bay National Park (US), as well as Canada’s Kluane National Park and Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, creating an enormous international wilderness area. Mount St Elias is the tallest peak in the park at 18,008 ft and the second highest peak in the US (Denali is 20,308 ft). Mount St Elias is also 10 miles as the eagle or raven flies (we’ve not seen many crows in Alaska!) from the ocean, providing one of the highest reliefs in the world as well as a uniquely preserved ecosystem in its entirety. Established in 1980, Wrangell-St Elias is one of the most recent additions to the National Park Service.

Like most National Parks, WSE’s mission is to preserve and protect natural scenic beauty, wildlife populations and their habitats all while providing and balancing access and recreational opportunities by visitors. WSE also celebrates the region’s 20th century mining history. Unlike most National Parks, WSE also provides continued opportunities for the few small communities and the subsistence lifestyles of the people who live there – yes, people live deep in this wilderness, surrounded by the National Park.

Steese Highway

Our Arctic Ocean excursion took 4 long days of intense driving (there’re no public spaces or sightseeing spots in Deadhorse other than the shuttle, so we didn’t spend a whole day there), and we needed a brief respite before our re-provisioning stop back in Fairbanks.

Outstanding items on Nick’s list included a drive on the Steese Highway and a hike there. The Steese is an older road north of Fairbanks originally build to connect the city to the Yukon River where goods were shipped in. After the construction of the Alaska Highway, the port on the Yukon was less busy, though it is still in use today. There are also some mining operations along the way. Recreationally, the Steese is a beautiful drive to and through the tallest of the White Mountains. Since the road begins between the end of the Dalton Highway and the city of Fairbanks, it was a perfect opportunity for us.

The Dalton Highway, aka The Haul Road

OK! Who wants to hear about our 1000-mile excursion out and back on a (mostly) great, (mostly) gravel road? It totally rocked!

The James W. Dalton Highway, originally known as the North Slope Haul Road and now also known as Alaska Route 11, is the northernmost road in all of North America. It is one of the most remote roads in the US. We did some research before deciding to drive it. Guide books, including the Dalton Highway Visitor Guide, all mention the challenges of the drive and warn about rough gravel, no shoulders, steep grades, trucks, flat tires, broken windshields, breakdowns (and waiting for days for a tow truck), lack of services, no cell coverage, and that you could die. The Wikipedia entry: ‘Anyone embarking on a journey on the Dalton is encouraged to bring survival gear.’ We checked in again with Ed and A-J who drove the highway last year: ‘Yeah, you’ll love it!’