Alaska Trip 2017' - Larson's Epic Adventure TR - (Part 4)
July 17
We stayed at Eagle River State Park Campground last night, it was a nice little campground. We stopped in Eagle River for breakfast and headed for Glennallen. We're driving on Hwy 1 when we hit this hard expansion joint in the road and a "Throttle Control" light comes on and stays on and I can feel a loss of power and luckily our turnoff to Glennallen is close and after I turn off I start losing throttle power and I pull over on the first turnout. I decide to turn it off for about 10 minutes and start it back up and the light is no longer on and it ran just fine after that, weird!! We stopped in Palmer to get Peanut our dog groomed and picked up some groceries while we were waiting. We discovered our coat cabinet door in our camper had completely broke in half and part of it was laying on the bed, wow, how did that happen?? We stopped along Hwy 1 to photograph Matanuska Glacier and then eat lunch and take a nap.
On Highway 1, headed to Glennallen
Scenic views on Highway 1
Roadside stop on Highway 1 for lunch and a nap
View of Matanuska Glacier from Highway 1
Telephoto view of Matanuska Glacier from Highway 1
Coming into Glennallen we saw a True Value Hardware store, so we stopped and bought some clamps and wood glue to fix the cabinet door. We drove on to Copper Center to our campground there. We had seen a really cool old church in Copper Center to photograph, so we did that the next morning on our way to Valdez.
An old rustic country church near Copper Center
The road to Valdez was really rough and we stopped for construction along the way. We also stopped to photograph Worthington Glacier and some waterfalls along the way.
View of Worthington Glacier from Highway 4
Horsetail Falls from Highway 4
Bridalveil Falls right across the highway from Horsetail Falls
We get to Valdez and check into our campground and I proceed to clamp our cabinet door back together while Sue goes to do a little shopping. We decided to sign up for an 8 hour cruise to Meares Glacier. The next day we walk to a couple different museums in Valdez and learned how the 1964 earthquake affected Valdez and how they had to relocate the town 4 miles away from the original location, really interesting! Sue met with the dog walker that was going to check on Peanut in our camper while we went on our glacier cruise tomorrow. I installed our cabinet door back on the camper, almost as good as new!
The next day we're up early, eat breakfast and I call my daughter to wish her a happy birthday. We walk over to where the our boat is docked and get ready for departure. It was a beautiful scenic boat ride and we saw so much sea life; puffins, porpoises, whale, sea otters and seals! We got to see Meares Glacier calve a couple times, pretty spectacular!! We had a great lunch on the boat and they also served soup on the return ride back to Valdez.
View of Port Valdez from our boat
Two bald eagles watching over their nest
View of Port Valdez from our boat
Fishing boats with a view of an unknown glacier
Fishing boat in action in Port Valdez
Ms. Jennifer reeling in her catch
Beautiful glacier falls
Beautiful sculptures of glacier ice floes
Beautiful sculptures of glacier ice floes
Playful sea otter
Overly cute sea otter
View of Valdez Arm from our boat
View of Meares Glacier
Seals lounging on the glacial ice floes
A little calving action on Meares Glacier
Puffin on take off
Puffin, these are such cool birds
Puffins, I wished we could have gotten closer, but they spooked easy
Seals on a siesta, although there are a couple watching for trouble
Fishing boat in Prince William Sound
Unknown glacier near Valdez
The next morning we leave Valdez stopping at a little river on the edge of town so Sue can do a little gold panning. After a hour of no luck we walk back to the camper and while I am in back of the camper putting things away I hear Sue yell Bear! I jump out and run to the front where Sue and Peanut are in the front seat. She saw a bear after hearing Peanut growl about 20-30 feet away from them, but the bear turned tail and ran away after hearing her yell, I never saw it and kidded her it was probably a black lab dog. A minute later a hiker came by with her dog and said she had also saw a bear.
Funning with Sue, read the text on the picture
Highway 4 driving through Keystone Canyon
Highway 4 driving through Keystone Canyon
Highway 4 driving through Keystone Canyon
Beautiful views along Highway 4
Glacial views along Highway 4
Glacial views along Highway 4
Glacial views along Highway 4
We stopped at Worthington Glacier State Park and hiked up by the glacier and got a few pics, eat lunch and take a short nap. We headed towards Tok, our destination for tonight. With construction delays and really rough roads it took us 7 hours to drive approximately 250 miles.
Worthington Glacier State Park
The next morning we get up and eat at the campground cafe and end up talking to a couple gold miners who came into town to stock up, they had some pretty interesting stories! We head towards Haines Junction, BC. This had to be the roughest road in all our traveling, it took us about 10 hours to go 300 miles. We ended up staying at a little rest area right in town, it was convenient and right across the restaurant where we had dinner.
Construction along Highway 1 made for a dirty RV
Scenic views along Highway 1
Scenic views along Highway 1
Scenic views along Highway 1
Sue & Peanut at a roadside pullout on Highway 1
We cross into the U.S. again with no delays and get to Haines and check into our campground first thing. While Sue and Peanut walk into town to check it out I wash the truck and camper at the truck wash, it was filthy!!
Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Chilkat River, Haines Alaska
The next day we walk into Haines and visit all 3 museums in town, my favorite was the Hammer Museum, they had every hammer known to man there!
World's largest hammer, Hammer Museum, Haines Alaska
One of the many walls of hammers in the Hammer Museum, Haines Alaska
Next we walked to Fort Seward, what an interesting place and interesting history!
That afternoon we drove to Chilkoot Lake where the bears are suppose to hang out. They sure did, they were busy catching salmon and feasting on them and constantly on the move, moving from the lake to the river, we saw about 3 different ones.
Brown bear looking for salmon, Chilkoot Lake, Haines Alaska
Brown bear feeding on salmon, Chilkoot Lake, Haines Alaska
Brown bear on the Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Brown bear on Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Brown bear giving us the look, Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
We went to the Southeast Alaska State Fair the first day that it opened, we should have waited until the second day as they didn't have a lot of stuff set up yet. It was fun to go to a small fair like that and see all the different exhibits.
The next day we took the High Speed Ferry to Skagway, we left Peanut with a dog sitter. We walked around Skagway, then saw a theater play, the Soapy Smith Theater Show, about the gold rush days, that was fun! After that we took an Auto Tour around Skagway, listening to some of the history of the town, it was pretty interesting. Too many cruise ship people for me, the town was busy, it was good to get back to Haines.
Skagway Alaska
Sue in front of the Auto Tour bus and cruise ship, Skagway Alaska
July 29th
We check out of our campground and poke around town for a few hours, watch the State Fair Parade come down Main Street. For lunch we go to one of our favorite restaurants in Haines, The Lighthouse, their halibut tacos were the best!! We go down to the Ferry dock about 4 pm to check in and get in line with the truck and camper. A little after 6 pm we load up and get settled in our seats on the top deck of the ferry, a pretty cool experience to us! We are headed to Juneau now which is about 2-3 hours away.
Driving into the belly of the ferry with our truck camper, Haines Alaska
I will be closing this trip report here, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!
We stayed at Eagle River State Park Campground last night, it was a nice little campground. We stopped in Eagle River for breakfast and headed for Glennallen. We're driving on Hwy 1 when we hit this hard expansion joint in the road and a "Throttle Control" light comes on and stays on and I can feel a loss of power and luckily our turnoff to Glennallen is close and after I turn off I start losing throttle power and I pull over on the first turnout. I decide to turn it off for about 10 minutes and start it back up and the light is no longer on and it ran just fine after that, weird!! We stopped in Palmer to get Peanut our dog groomed and picked up some groceries while we were waiting. We discovered our coat cabinet door in our camper had completely broke in half and part of it was laying on the bed, wow, how did that happen?? We stopped along Hwy 1 to photograph Matanuska Glacier and then eat lunch and take a nap.
On Highway 1, headed to Glennallen
Scenic views on Highway 1
Roadside stop on Highway 1 for lunch and a nap
View of Matanuska Glacier from Highway 1
Telephoto view of Matanuska Glacier from Highway 1
Coming into Glennallen we saw a True Value Hardware store, so we stopped and bought some clamps and wood glue to fix the cabinet door. We drove on to Copper Center to our campground there. We had seen a really cool old church in Copper Center to photograph, so we did that the next morning on our way to Valdez.
An old rustic country church near Copper Center
The road to Valdez was really rough and we stopped for construction along the way. We also stopped to photograph Worthington Glacier and some waterfalls along the way.
View of Worthington Glacier from Highway 4
Horsetail Falls from Highway 4
Bridalveil Falls right across the highway from Horsetail Falls
We get to Valdez and check into our campground and I proceed to clamp our cabinet door back together while Sue goes to do a little shopping. We decided to sign up for an 8 hour cruise to Meares Glacier. The next day we walk to a couple different museums in Valdez and learned how the 1964 earthquake affected Valdez and how they had to relocate the town 4 miles away from the original location, really interesting! Sue met with the dog walker that was going to check on Peanut in our camper while we went on our glacier cruise tomorrow. I installed our cabinet door back on the camper, almost as good as new!
The next day we're up early, eat breakfast and I call my daughter to wish her a happy birthday. We walk over to where the our boat is docked and get ready for departure. It was a beautiful scenic boat ride and we saw so much sea life; puffins, porpoises, whale, sea otters and seals! We got to see Meares Glacier calve a couple times, pretty spectacular!! We had a great lunch on the boat and they also served soup on the return ride back to Valdez.
View of Port Valdez from our boat
Two bald eagles watching over their nest
View of Port Valdez from our boat
Fishing boats with a view of an unknown glacier
Fishing boat in action in Port Valdez
Ms. Jennifer reeling in her catch
Beautiful glacier falls
Beautiful sculptures of glacier ice floes
Beautiful sculptures of glacier ice floes
Playful sea otter
Overly cute sea otter
View of Valdez Arm from our boat
View of Meares Glacier
Seals lounging on the glacial ice floes
A little calving action on Meares Glacier
Puffin on take off
Puffin, these are such cool birds
Puffins, I wished we could have gotten closer, but they spooked easy
Seals on a siesta, although there are a couple watching for trouble
Fishing boat in Prince William Sound
Unknown glacier near Valdez
The next morning we leave Valdez stopping at a little river on the edge of town so Sue can do a little gold panning. After a hour of no luck we walk back to the camper and while I am in back of the camper putting things away I hear Sue yell Bear! I jump out and run to the front where Sue and Peanut are in the front seat. She saw a bear after hearing Peanut growl about 20-30 feet away from them, but the bear turned tail and ran away after hearing her yell, I never saw it and kidded her it was probably a black lab dog. A minute later a hiker came by with her dog and said she had also saw a bear.
Funning with Sue, read the text on the picture
Highway 4 driving through Keystone Canyon
Highway 4 driving through Keystone Canyon
Highway 4 driving through Keystone Canyon
Beautiful views along Highway 4
Glacial views along Highway 4
Glacial views along Highway 4
Glacial views along Highway 4
We stopped at Worthington Glacier State Park and hiked up by the glacier and got a few pics, eat lunch and take a short nap. We headed towards Tok, our destination for tonight. With construction delays and really rough roads it took us 7 hours to drive approximately 250 miles.
Worthington Glacier State Park
The next morning we get up and eat at the campground cafe and end up talking to a couple gold miners who came into town to stock up, they had some pretty interesting stories! We head towards Haines Junction, BC. This had to be the roughest road in all our traveling, it took us about 10 hours to go 300 miles. We ended up staying at a little rest area right in town, it was convenient and right across the restaurant where we had dinner.
Construction along Highway 1 made for a dirty RV
Scenic views along Highway 1
Scenic views along Highway 1
Scenic views along Highway 1
Sue & Peanut at a roadside pullout on Highway 1
We cross into the U.S. again with no delays and get to Haines and check into our campground first thing. While Sue and Peanut walk into town to check it out I wash the truck and camper at the truck wash, it was filthy!!
Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Chilkat River, Haines Alaska
The next day we walk into Haines and visit all 3 museums in town, my favorite was the Hammer Museum, they had every hammer known to man there!
World's largest hammer, Hammer Museum, Haines Alaska
One of the many walls of hammers in the Hammer Museum, Haines Alaska
Next we walked to Fort Seward, what an interesting place and interesting history!
That afternoon we drove to Chilkoot Lake where the bears are suppose to hang out. They sure did, they were busy catching salmon and feasting on them and constantly on the move, moving from the lake to the river, we saw about 3 different ones.
Brown bear looking for salmon, Chilkoot Lake, Haines Alaska
Brown bear feeding on salmon, Chilkoot Lake, Haines Alaska
Brown bear on the Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Brown bear on Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Brown bear giving us the look, Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
Chilkoot River, Haines Alaska
We went to the Southeast Alaska State Fair the first day that it opened, we should have waited until the second day as they didn't have a lot of stuff set up yet. It was fun to go to a small fair like that and see all the different exhibits.
The next day we took the High Speed Ferry to Skagway, we left Peanut with a dog sitter. We walked around Skagway, then saw a theater play, the Soapy Smith Theater Show, about the gold rush days, that was fun! After that we took an Auto Tour around Skagway, listening to some of the history of the town, it was pretty interesting. Too many cruise ship people for me, the town was busy, it was good to get back to Haines.
Skagway Alaska
Sue in front of the Auto Tour bus and cruise ship, Skagway Alaska
July 29th
We check out of our campground and poke around town for a few hours, watch the State Fair Parade come down Main Street. For lunch we go to one of our favorite restaurants in Haines, The Lighthouse, their halibut tacos were the best!! We go down to the Ferry dock about 4 pm to check in and get in line with the truck and camper. A little after 6 pm we load up and get settled in our seats on the top deck of the ferry, a pretty cool experience to us! We are headed to Juneau now which is about 2-3 hours away.
Driving into the belly of the ferry with our truck camper, Haines Alaska
I will be closing this trip report here, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!
