Trip to Alaska

What a time I would have with Joe B and PA12DRVR on a full summer swing through Alaska!
The stories, the history, the joy of one story leading to another story, oh my. What a summer! Throw in some good food and maybe a libation or two and you have " on the road series" worthy of Charles Kuralt.
And throw in some pictures from Sue T, wow!
Thank you, thank you, keep it going!

And a lot of it will be true. LOL. While I have never met PA12DRVR personally, I knew his father in Alaska. The family owned a prominent business in Anchorage. His father, like PA12 and myself , spent a lot of time wandering around the sky of Alaska in his Airplanes. PA12 grew up in his dad's Cessna 180, which his brother still owns, from my understanding. I think I still have a photo of that 180 somewhere in my closet or among the thousands on my computer.

:) Between Joe and I, we can tell you the real story about anything in AK. :B

It's not just outsiders who can give out false info. I have relatives who moved there in the 50s (my uncle is now 90) and who will tell you stuff that's just not true. It depends on the person's interests and memory. My cousin age 66 grew up in FB and was a trucker at the age of 18 on the Haul Road and yet knows very little about Alaskan oil history because he's not that interested in it, he prefers to spend his time flying around in his bush plane. I've asked him questions where I knew he was just winging it with the answer. This is of course true of any place.

MORSNOW wrote:
^^^^So True^^^^

x2

In my-industry-for-the-next-35+ days, a consultant is someone who charges a high rate of pay to borrow your watch and then tell you the time. :)

^^^^So True^^^^

In dealing with any employees in Northern Canada or Alaska, that are working in the seasonal tourist businesses, that they may have been in the north country less time than you have. LOL Most folks living and working full year around in either northern Canada or Alaska, normally can't afford to quit their jobs to take a lower paying job within the tourist industry. There are some exceptions to this of course.

Most of the employees you will deal with in the north tourists businesses, last week may have been in college in Badwater Texas, Mountain Side Tennessee or southern Alberta or BC. A couple of years back, we were taking a tour of the restored paddle wheeler in Whitehorse, YT, run by Parks Canada. The uniformed tour guide, probably 20 years old tops, charming, smart, etc. but was giving out some very questionable info on the tour. She was telling the group that this was the only remaining river boat that ran in the days gone past. So afterwards, I talked to her privately and asked her how long had she lived in Whitehorse, she finally told me she lived in Edmonton and was attending college there and this was her first trip to the Yukon. She had been there about a week. I told her about the river boats in Dawson Town and Fairbanks and she was somewhat surprised.

Every once in a while one of the first or second time visitors to the north country will post something here on the forum and then state, that a park ranger told them it was true. Very few park rangers in Alaske live there year around and are seasonal employees. So they only know what they have read or heard, just like the rest of us at times. They really don't know if it is a dry summer or a wet summer, hot summer or cool summer, because they only know what they have read of someone's opinion.

Like all posts on this or other forums, try to decide if the person making the statement is really qualified to make the statement or not. A couple of years back on one of our visits to the north country. we were somewhere around Denali State Park and we parked next to a tour bus. The driver was standing out side and we struck up a conversation. He noticed my Florida tags on my RV and stated telling me all about Alaska. After 15 or 20 minutes of this, I told him he didn't sound like a man that had actually lived a winter in Alaska. After a bit of huming and hawing, he admitted he lived in Arkansas in the winter and had just come to Alaska that summer to drive the bus for the tour company. He had been in state about a month.

The years I was working in rural Alaska, 25+, we used to joke that a consultant on a matter was someone that had flown over the area in an airplane and an expert consultant was someone that had flown over it in the day light hours. LOL

Gjac wrote:
The trip to Alaska was just as enjoyable as Alaska itself. . . I would skip the bus tour to Denali, after the trip everyone wanted to take a nap, I went back on my bike and saw a lot more animals close up.

I agree with you about seeing as many national and provincial parks in Canada as possible on the trip because they are often spectacular. And the Stewart-Hyder area glacier and wildlife alone are well-worth a trip over the Cassiar Highway in one direction.

I'm sorry but I couldn't ride my bike past the Teklanika campground when I was younger, much less up Polychrome Pass to the Eielson Visitors Center or Wonder Lake over 150 RT miles of gravel road. So, if you are not a bike aficionado, take the Denali NP bus tour. I have taken it 3 times--1992, 2000, and 2013--and have never been bored, even if the bus itself can be tiring. And keep in mind that, because summer days in the park are long, even a bus trip that seemingly starts late in the day will generally get you "home" before dark.

On one Denali bus trip, the driver was a Ph.D. wildlife biologist from a university in the Lower 48 who spent his days off studying the park's Dall sheep. He spent our entire trip essentially teaching a class on the park wildlife for all of us. Having never had college biology, I learned more than I ever could have from a guidebook. It was, without doubt, the best "guided tour" I have ever been a part of. IMHO, the bus is worth every dollar of the cost, regardless of how many people are in your family/group.

The trip to Alaska was just as enjoyable as Alaska itself. I would stop at the NP's in the US on the way up and back. Banff NP and Jasper NP was nice, BC parks, Muncho lake was nice caught some lake trout, Kulane NP in the Yukon was nice also caught a 7 lb lake trout there. I would skip the bus tour to Denali, after the trip everyone wanted to take a nap, I went back on my bike and saw a lot more animals close up. Camp at Riley Creek if you can't get reservations for Teklanika and put your name on the list, chances are you will get a site after a few days. There are a lot of places like Homer spit, Valdez, McCarthy, Hyder for bears, that are just as nice as Denali depending on your interest's. Don't over pack food or supplies they have Walmart's and other stores there also.

We spent 6 nights in Denali (Riley Campground) in mid-Aug. The grizzlies are out in the park (not the campgrounds) packing in the food for winter. We saw lots of then along with a wide variety of critters. We did not see wolves which I understand are scarce in Denali but just about everything else.