My First Blog!

June 2014
Welcome to my blog! My 13 year old grandson, Nick, helped me to set this up.  My husband and I are going on a trip of a lifetime to Alaska and I wanted to be able to share our trip with friends and also  to look back at it ourselves!   Although we aren't leaving for a few months yet, I've been having the time of my life planning this trip. We are fortunate that we will be able to share our experiences with our good friends, Kim and Terry,  who will meet up with us for the second half of the trip!  Hoping we will get to see the beautiful scenery like in this picture and also fearing that my own pictures will not compare!

Alaska Forest Fires : research and connection to Woods Lake

June 2014
As I am into all things "Alaska": there is  a huge Forest Fire  currently burning on the Kenai Peninsula. As of last night it had burned 110, 600 + acres. Further research shows that Forest Fires in Alaska are common yet we hardly hear of them here in the lower states.   April Melvin is one of the many scientist who  are researching and studying forest fires in Alaska.  Her  research focuses on understanding the interactions between human activities and ecosystem nutrient dynamics. She  currently is working in Alaskan boreal forest studying how changes in fire severity driven by climate change influence vegetation, plant-soil-microbial feedbacks, and permafrost stability.  She is  also quantifying how fire management practices influence ecosystem carbon storage. This work is part of a large collaborative project aimed at coupling empirical research with model development to improve our understanding of the interactions among fire, vegetation, carbon cycling, and permafrost across Interior Alaska.
    April and her research have a connection to the Adirondacks and Woods Lake. Her research at Woods  involved  studying how forest liming, used to ameliorate the effects of acid deposition, affects ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycling, and how different tree species influence carbon, nitrogen, and calcium distribution in Northeastern U.S. temperate forests.
I received this e-mail from her this spring : "Thank you again for the opportunity to work at Woods Lake. Your generosity and willingness to let me work there led to a unique dissertation project that I was very excited to undertake. I am now applying the knowledge I gained conducting that research to studies in the boreal forest in Alaska. I was told the mosquitoes in Alaska would be intolerable, but after spending 2 summers there, I still think your black flies are much worse :-) "
 Here is a link to April's website which   better describes her research: www.aprilmmelvin.com
If you look under Research and then Temperate Forest , you will see more of her research at Woods Lake, under Boreal Forest  will be her Alaska research.  (picture of current fire on the Kenai Peninsula and containment efforts.

( We do always hear of the horrible mosquitoes in Alaska....guess they won't bother us too much as we are used to living  and dealing  with the black flies!)

One Month and Counting!

July 2014

Well as you can see I haven't posted in awhile. Since I started this blog so far in advance, I was getting people asking me how our trip was, assuming we had already been!  With only a month till we leave, I thought I might  add a post! Getting pretty excited about it..although I have been excited for quite some time now!
 A friend suggested we post some of the costs in Alaska..what we pay for milk etc. as a comparison to the lower 48.  Sounds like a good idea and will be interesting.
   I guess that now is a good time to say that I think we have saved some money by planning ahead. We got our airline tickets last November and were able to find a good flight from Syracuse with only one stop (in Chicago) for  $525 round trip apiece.   We will leave Syracuse at 7AM and arrive in Anchorage at 2PM ( altho with the time change it will feel like 6PM!)  If we were booking a flight now , it would be in the $870-$900 range for a similar flight.
 

The Adventure Starts!

Well, I got a little behind on the whole blog thing!!  A lot of the trip we were without internet and the rest of the trip I was just too busy enjoying the scenery and new experiences to post!  So even though we are home, I will attempt to catch up and post about each day of our journey! 
                                                        
                                                            Friday 8/22/14
 Left for Syracuse after work. We're staying at the Ramada Inn and using their Park and Fly Package.  They'll keep our car and shuttle us to the airport in the am.  6:30 AM flight ...arriving in Anchorage at 1:20 PM. ( will feel like 5:20 to us) Tomorrow will be a long day but soooo worth it! A while ago I found a website :http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast  which lets you see the Northern Lights prediction a week out....looks like we may get lucky and  be able to see some this coming week! We'll see!  And the weather forecast looks good too!  Time for bed! 

                                                        Saturday 8/23/14

Long airplane ride!  Boarding pass for second leg of trip showed us not sitting together. That was the 7 hour trip! (And I had paid extra to sit together.) Alaskan airlines  said  they don’t charge extra for seating other than first class and I should get a hold of American Airlines for a  refund .Then just as we were boarding, they said they were able to rearrange seating once everyone had checked in and we not only sat together but had the row to ourselves. Yeah Alaskan Airlines!  Excluding our layover in Chicago, and the 4 hour time difference, the plane flights were 9 hours total.  Shuttle bus driver picked us up at airport to take us to Wasilla to get the camper van. He was very talkative and personable and gave us lots of hints and tips. He's from Texas, here for the summer helping his nephew. He  worked for the Post office so we had a lot to talk about!  Wasilla ( about 45 minutes from Anchorage) was deceiving to us. I had looked it up and they have a population of app 8400 people but seemed very commercial to us for that population...Walmart, big grocery chains, hospitals and clinics etc...We found that  most people in Alaska live out side a  city and the  "borough"  can cover quite a large area. The Mat Su Borough (Matanuska Susitna Borough) which Wasilla is a part of  has a population of  96,000 so the commercial area is servicing all of those people. We don't have boroughs in NYS except for in NYC so it was very confusing.  I guess they are kind of like counties here...a form of government between local and state.   

We had decided to spend the first night in a  motel and get a fresh start in the morning! We'll  need to go shopping for food and supplies and after the long flight figured we'd be tired.  The camper van came equipped with a queen size bed, Coleman stove, lantern, kitchen utensils, sleeping bags etc...
                                    To be continued! 

The Adventure Continues!

                                                            Saturday 8/23/14

Spent the night at the Roadside Inn just north of Wasilla. Restaurant, Bar and Motel, it wasn't much to look at from the outside but was busy with a lot of locals and there was an amazing garden! Seemed out of character for the rest of the place. We had dinner  and a couple drinks in the bar. It was fun talking with the locals. It seems like everyone we meet is from somewhere  in the lower 48 originally.  The barmaid Kaitlyn was originally from Washington State and came to Talkeetna with her boyfriend, he ditched her and she moved down the Parks Highway to Meadow Lake which is a Census Designated Place (CDP) in the Mat- Su Borough. (Seems like it's a suburb of Wasilla)  So further research shows that  Boroughs are made up of Cities, CDPs and unincorporated communities. Joe was a young man, maybe late 30's, early 40's who was originally from Lockport, NY. He had not heard of  Old Forge but did mention Long Lake and Newcomb.  He pointed out that this place was the first in the area to ban smoking in the bar. Seems one of the waitresses was pregnant with twins a few years back and that's why they made  a nice patio outside by the garden for smoking. 

                                         

Lobby at the Roadside Inn

Day 2 ! Talkeetna and Montana Creek

                                                               Sunday 8/24/14

Shopping for food and camping supplies! Guess here is a good time to report some of the prices.  Gas in Wasilla was $3.92 a gallon.  Some of  groceries at Carr's Food Chain seemed high and others not so....milk was $3.90 a gallon and we got a lb. of packaged ham cold cuts for $5. Not too bad!  The Walmart prices seemed cheaper  and very comparable to upstate NY.  Walmart had a whole aisle filled with freeze dried foods..everything imaginable : 5 gallon bucket of  vegetables, beef stroganoff, butter powder etc.  I'm guessing people who live off grid back in the mountains stock up on this stuff especially for the winter.  Wonder how good it tastes!  Mike bought a fishing license here  and when the sales associate looked at his ID , he handed it back and said "I'm sorry sir , we don't sell licenses to New York State Residents"  Ha Ha, seems he lived in Syracuse for a couple years and his ex wife still does. He was in a bad motorcycle accident on  the corner of S. Salina Street and....yup ! He was a talker! I think we got his whole life story..his estrangement from his father, joining the service, etc etc etc! (And we weren't even in a bar..just the Walmart Sporting Dept.)

View from the Walmart Parking Lot in Wasilla!

The further you get away from Anchorage and Wasilla the  higher the prices get!  Gas in Willow was $4.05 (about an hour up the Parks Highway from Wasilla) It was a rainy day so we took our time, drove in for a bit on the Willow side of  Hatcher Pass , fished a little , checked out other fishing spots along the Parks Highway and ended up in Talkeetna. (The barmaid the night before at the Roadside Inn had suggested we go there... said it was an old hippie town! hmmm..did she think we looked like old hippies? ) The traffic was not heavy and we were surprised when we got to Talkeetna, it was packed!  Lot's of Tour buses and people off the Alaska Railroad just milling around.  Talkeetna, a historic tourist town, is the most convenient location to reach Denali (Mt. McKinley,) making it the staging area for approximately 1,000 climbers each year who attempt to reach the summits (its highest is 20,320') Also,there are  many scenic flightseeing tours to the face of the Mountain that originate from here... Mt. McKinley is 60 air miles from Talkeetna. To drive from Talkeetna to Denali National Park Entrance is 150 miles!

We ate at the Mountain High Pizza Pie. Enjoyed a  thin crust pizza and an Agave Gold draft beer made at the Denali Brewing Company next door. Our bill came to $30. A few days later I was looking in my Mom and Dad's journal from their Alaska trip in 1986 and surprise!  They also  had pizza on 8/24 and it was raining! Their bill was  $17, they were in Valdez)

More wildflowers in Talkeetna!

 Still raining! After lunch in Talkeetna, we headed back to Montana Creek Campground, $20 a night ...you put your money in an envelope .  There were pit toilets and no showers.  Only 2 others spending the night ..others parking for the day ( $10 fee) The sign said if you are caught not paying, you will have to pay the fee and a $5 fine....I thought  that was not a very good incentive to pay ☺! We did pay and someone did drive through and check later that evening. We hiked down to the confluence of the Susitna River and  Montana Creek to check out the fishing. Being a weekend, people were lined up "Combat Fishing" .  

 Was fun to watch and pick up a few pointers!  To get to the fishing spot we  hiked about 1/4 mile from the campground and through a culvert under the Alaska Railroad. (They actually install these huge culverts to give people access rather than have them walking  across the railroad tracks. 

• Back at the campsite, the rain had let up a little and we scrounged for wood for a campfire.  We watched 3  birds who were making quite a racket...2 of them flew off and we watched them  knock a squirrel out of a tree. Now out of sight, Mike attempted to cross a bridge to a trail to see what had happened. The third bird flew to the bridge to blocked his attempt...was squawking at him and  hopping  towards him as he approached. 

It did not get dark till after 10pm. Thinking that back home, it would have been  dark about 8:30 to 9pm.  

Rained all night...

Day 3 Fishing!

                                                              Monday 8/25/14

Silver Salmon (Cohoe)

Still raining! Hiked back down to confluence of Susitna River and Montana Creek to fish. Not as crowded since it wasn't a weekend. Mike caught silver salmon and chum salmon. (The Alaska Fishing Regulations are so confusing , reading the syllabus and understanding it is the equivalent of passing the Bar Exam to be a lawyer. The regs are different in different areas...and different if you are fishing on one side of the Parks Highway than on the other side on the same river or creek... and certain times of the year it's catch and release and others not..and different tackle at different times, and some places you can only fish on weekends or Mondays if its a holiday. )

Chum Salmon (Dog Salmon)

Fish on!

The salmon are headed upstream at this point from the ocean to their  spawning  grounds to  lay eggs at the same  place they were born (hatched).  After they spawn, they die.  When they are in their spawning stage, they turn color (usually red)  There were loads of dead fish everywhere (king salmon from an earlier run..the different salmon species "run" or head upstream at different times)   The silvers that Mike caught had not changed color so are still feeding (biting) and would be still good to eat. Once they have changed color, they will be hard to catch as they are not feeding, and they would not be good eating either. The chum salmon was a little farther ahead in the spawning stage as you can see by the colors.  They are sometimes called a dog salmon as they are used for feeding sled dogs.

Mike "walking on water"

 You did need waders to fish...it was shallow in many places with deep holes and channels that the fish were navigating and you needed to get out far  enough to cast into those spots!

Later that afternoon, we hiked on the opposite side of the Parks Highway  further up the Montana Creek to the the salmon spawning grounds...we saw lot's of fish "stacked up" . The fish are swimming upstream and are fighting a heavy current..they stop to rest in large groups.  There was a sign at the beginning of the trail that said bears had been sighted in the area. There are usually bears around salmon spawning grounds as the fish are plentiful and  easy picking for them.  We didn't see any bears but I did whistle and sing the whole way to make our presence known ! :)

Susitina Landing

      We decided to head down the line about 30 miles to try our luck at fishing at Susitna Landing Campground and Boat Launch.   We had a beautiful campsite right on the Kashwitna River where it flows into the Susitna River  ( a confluence..the fishing is usually good in this type area because you have fish who are headed upstream to  both rivers!)  Definitely getting towards the off season..we were the only ones in the campground!  It is a state owned campground with a private concessionaire running it.  There were trailers parked in some sites who probably rent for the season but maybe come in on the weekends from Wasilla (app 35 miles away) or Anchorage  (app 75 miles away) or points in between!  There were also a lot of jet boats parked...people who live or have second homes in the surrounding areas use the boat launch.  The rivers are  so shallow and rocky in spots and at certain times of the year that you need a jet boat to navigate rather than regular boats at least in this area.   Campsite was $12. and $5 for a shower.

              No fish but the scenery
               was pretty darn  nice!




              The sun came out and we were
                      treated to a rainbow!

 

(Mom and Dad's journal from 1986 shows " Still raining" as an entry for  8/25 also)

Day 4 Hope Alaska

                                                 Tuesday 8/26/14

Rained in the night (again!) Still overcast and rainy in the am.  Heading down below Anchorage to the little town of Hope. It's quite aways away but since it's raining..why not! And the fishing?...we'll see! 
         I guess I should say here that this first part of our trip was planned to be  very unstructured..no reservations so we could just go wherever  we wanted to. And this week was mostly about fishing!  And off grid bank fishing as well...no guides, no boat, just feeling our way around. We'll get to the other more touristy stuff when our good friends Kim and Terry fly in and we meet up with them. (Apologies to my brother Paul for posting more information on Salmon than he needed to know!) But....
        "Alaska is the ninth biggest seafood-producing region in the world, with 80 percent of high-value wild salmon species originating from its waters. The state of Alaska's commercial fishery management harvest more than 29 million fish each year. Serious anglers will have their pick from pink, chum, sockeye, silver and king salmon, if they know which months to arrive." (and those months vary from year to year, depending on many things: snowfall and spring runoff  etc...so if you are planning a trip a year in advance..it's just the luck of the draw!)

Turnagain Arm

        To get to Hope we needed to go through Anchorage and around the Turnagain Arm (a portion of the Cook Inlet) app. a 4 hour trip. The scenery was beautiful. The road and railroad follows the shore quite closely. There are many pull offs which are needed. This is the only road to get to the Kenai Peninsula and the traffic is heavy. We saw 2 beluga whales but were unable to get a picture because of the traffic!


          Hope has a population of app 190 year round residents although there are seasonal homes.

Commercial District in Hope! The SeaView Cafe

Hope Community Library

We met a woman and her husband who are year round residents and they told us a lot about the history of the area as well as what it's like living there. She is a cook at one of the  few local restaurants as well as the librarian and makes and sells jewelry as a fund raiser for the Library. (Her husband is retired from the Highway Department and now works for FEMA on a contractual basis.  He was in NY (Oneonta) a few years ago for FEMA.  The school in Hope has app 50 students K-12.  When her children were in school, an option was  to send them to High School in Soldotna (about 90 miles away) She would drive them to Cooper Landing about a hour away where they would pick up a school bus to take them the rest of the way. They would stay for the week in dormitories provided by the local school district. (Reminded me of Uncle Willie, age 92, who spent some years as a child in Sabattis,NY when his father worked for the Railroad. He would take the train to Old Forge for school on a Sunday night , stay the week with his grandparents and then back to Sabattis on the train on Friday after school. That was 80 some years ago...)

Hope Airport

            

Drove around the side roads and came across a  moose just munching away on the side of the road. She was not fazed by us at all, looked at us once and just kept right on munching.

View from our campsite

  We camped right by the SeaView Cafe ...parking lot camping, which is quite common in Alaska. The scenery was beautiful, the campsite not so much. We had missed one of the salmon runs by a few days ....more dead fish littering the bank of the Resurrection Creek where it empties into the Turnagain Arm. Talked with a couple from Fort Collins, Colorado in a truck camper aslo camping here.
                                               And it poured all night long. 




   

Day 5 Russian River

                                                 Wednesday 8/27/14

Sockeye Salmon headed upstream

The drive to Cooper Landing on the Sterling Highway

                                  
 Still raining. What to do, where to go? The locals that we met in Hope  said we should head down to  Cooper Landing to fish.  It's about an hour south of Hope and puts us farther away  from  Wasilla which is where we need to end up on Saturday (Day 8 ) to return the camper van but seems like a good idea.  Cooper Landing is a CDP (census designated place) in the Kenai Peninsula Borough with a year round population of  289.  Cooper Landing is a group of stores, outfitters, and lodging establishments that run along the Kenai River west of Kenai Lake, with beautiful  turquoise waters . ..and is a premier, world class, salmon fishing area as well as Rainbow Trout and Dolly Varden area  as they follow returning salmon, first feeding on the salmon roe that float downstream, and then on pieces of salmon as they fall apart after spawning. Not one, but two great rivers to fish… the Kenai and Russian Rivers. The Historic Resurrection Trail from Hope to Seward passes through it. They are serious about protecting the fishery here. Rainbow Trout is mostly catch and release and boardwalks and walkways are in use in Cooper Landing to protect riverbanks and waterfronts. There is a Princess Wilderness Lodge that is part of the Princess Cruise Line and caters to the cruise/ land package tours. Very beautiful scenery and high end place. (Cheapest room for 2 is in the $250 range) We opted for (at the advise given in the local  coffee shop) to check out the Russian River Campground. Was $11 to go in for the day and $18 for a campsite. They said we could go in and check things out, and if we decided to stay, pick out a site, come back and pay...I knew we would at least stay and fish, so we payed the $11day rate and went in...didn't take us long to decide we would spend the night, picked out a nice campsite, and went back to register, they credited us back the $11 dollars we had already paid. We passed the truck camper from Fort Collins also checking out the park! The campsites were more what we were used to in the Adirondacks, some privacy, and was not parking lot camping! Each of the sites had a fire pit as well as a bear proof food locker. And the rain finally let up!
 
 We did not see any bears but they usually do hang around this type of area...there were fish everywhere ..as far as you could see. The bear can just scoop them out of the water. Their reputation in this area  proceeded them.  We saw people fishing with rifles slung over their shoulders!

This is an area that you would see combat fishing but being towards the end of the season and mid week we did not have that.  This fly fisherman  walked by us as he fished his way down stream.

                           We paid $4.40 a gallon for gas!! The highest on the whole trip.   
                                                                  

(Mom and Dad's entry for this day say "Raining hard".they were on the Kenai Peninsula and headed for Homer. A few days later, on their return from Homer, they camped at a Park just down the road )

Day 6 : "Into the Wild"

                                                     Thursday 8/28/14

Woke up to rain.  (Again.)  Time to head back further north! Although we decided to stick to the South Central area of Alaska , it still is a big area and lot's of time spent getting from one place to another. (Alaska is 12 times bigger than New York State) And we did do a bit of backtracking, some because there were certain things we wanted to do and share  with our friends Kim and Terry when they got here and some just because that's just the way it is in Alaska... there are only 4 interstate highways in all of Alaska. Drove back up through Anchorage and  stopped in Wasilla for lunch at Red Robin. Our first time at one and it definitely was not "Yummmmm" as the commercials lead you to believe!  We had decided to drive to Petersville (off the main road and  about 100 miles north,  )  to spend the night. Petersville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Matanuska-Susitna Borough.The population was four at the 2010 Census! The CDP has a total area of 355.4 square miles. (with a year round  population of 4? wow!) "Petersville Road is the "other" road to Denali, the southern gateway and certainly the road less traveled. It's a rugged mining road that was built in the 1920s and designed for true explorers of Alaska who wish to discover the backcountry on their own terms."

The Milepost Book showed  there was a Forks Roadhouse about 20 miles in and a "beautiful" primitive campsite  spot just past it on the banks of Peters Creek. Sounds like it will be right up our alley! It had already been a long day in the van  when we turned off the Parks Highway at Trapper Creek. Petersville Road becomes a dirt road about 10 miles in. At about 20 miles in, there was a fork in the road but no Roadhouse , just a junk yard 

Forks Roadhouse? What we thought we'd see!

Forks Roadhouse ! What we saw!

So we continued on. The road was getting narrower and we were climbing higher. At about mile 25 we decided to turn around, as we weren't sure if there would be another place  wide enoughto turn around up ahead. We went back and took the other fork in the road and sure enough just around the bend was the Peters Creek , maybe it was because of all the rain, but one could hardly call it a beautiful spot with scenic views. (When we got back into civilization and some internet service, I googled the "Forks Roadhouse" and found that it had burned to the ground 2 years ago)

Beautiful Campsite?

Kroto Creek

 Regardless, having been on the road for over 8 hours (including stops) we decided it was a good place to camp for the night. After cooking dinner and retiring for the night, a car came screeching by in the dark. It  appeared to drive right into the creek. And then nothing, no car lights, nothing...Mike thought he should go check that they weren't  stuck in the creek and in trouble. I thought we should lock the camper van doors. About 5 minutes later, headlights appeared as if coming out of the creek, and they went screeching by us again. I felt like I was in a Stephen King movie!

This was the  day we tried  to touch base with  Ruth Rudd Decker (She lived in Inlet and her dad was my Mail-Boat driver at the Post Office, her husband Bob's parents live in Old Forge and his mom, Dalejean, worked at the school when Mike did) by phone and meet up with her and her husband as we would be traveling close by where they live in the outskirts of Willow on our way to Petersville. We ended up with torrential rain and the cell phone service was  non existence in many areas, played phone tag with her for a bit but never where able to meet up.