Last American Frontier

Well, some people love whales, and 'round here some people love whales - to eat. Either way, Hollywood is in town filming "Everybody Loves Whales" with the iconic Drew Barrymore, the iconic Ted Danson, and that guy from The Office who needs a haircut.

Every once in a while they commandeer the far corner of my work parking lot. They also brought along Hired Goons, seen in the foreground, to harass locals. "Can I help you sir?" "I don't think so, with what?" "They prefer you don't take pictures." OK, OK - no more pics of your precious rented RV's Universal Studios! Spoiler alert - apparently they wear white parkas at some point in the movie.

Granted, the "actual" events took place in Barrow, and they are using Anchorage instead, but at least they are finally filming a movie about Alaska in Alaska. Most of the movies about AK are filmed in British Columbia.

Missed Drew by about 10 mins at lunch the other day - that would've been cool - but not as cool as meeting Sam Malone.

Past overdue, but here are some pics from the first week of August when my buddy Jeff from Denver came up for a visit. Credit to Jeff for most of the pics, as I was camera-less. Unfortunately, he was here in the midst of what ended up being a record-breaking 31 consecutive days of rain in Anchorage. It was a magnificent summer early, and was gorgeous late, but that middle part was a bit rough!

First up, camping on the Knik River up near Palmer, with Knik Glacier in the background. It's down an ATV trail not many people know about - what a sweet spot!

There's a looottttttt of spent ammo out there (I may have added to the pile a bit). The only downside I see to this spot is Knik Glacier is an extremely popular spot to fly over, and when the sun is up there is nonstop small aircraft traffic over the river. And the sun's up a lot in summer. On this day we kept seeing a big plane with what looked like a really small plane flying too close to it, until it came close enough to see.

Cool! I've never seen a military helicopter refueling behind a plane before! What we didn't know at the time was this was not training, but an actual rescue mission. It seems one of those sightseers crashed their plane way up on the glacier with no way down!

This is a pic from inside the helicopter in the newspaper a couple days later. Unfortunately, while attempting the rescue, the chopper crashed too! It took a few days, but eventually everyone was rescued safely. The Ted Stevens crash happened the following week. It was a particularly rough summer for small aircraft - too many fatal crashes to count. I assume it had a lot to do with that long stretch of poor weather.

The main plan when Jeff was here was to get over to Valdez. We've done a lot of the other top stuff during previous visits. The goal was to do the "The Loop." I've been thinking of doing it for a while now, and it involves driving over to Glenallen (about 3 hours) then south to Valdez (maybe another 2 hours), and then taking the Marine Highway back across Prince William Sound to Whittier, then driving back up to Anchorage. The driving part is spectacular and there are many places to camp along the way. I've never been on the ferry . Unfortunately, we couldn't get the days and times of the ferry to work for us, so we drove both ways. The funny thing, with the weather, is we drove over to Glenallen on Friday and camped at Lake Louise, which was gorgeous, woke up to socked-in weather, and decided to turn around and come back to Anchorage. Went to an outdoor concert at Moose's Tooth that night, woke up Sunday, checked the webcams, saw sun, and headed BACK to Glenallen (hmmmm - looks familiar). Had a lovely drive (once you got about an hour our), a beautiful, clear night, and then we woke up to clouds AGAIN! We could see daylight south, though, and headed that way into the most brilliant skies I had seen in weeks.

Oh....my....goodness. Talk about having your batteries recharged! Those are the Wrangell Mountains. Spectacular. If you are ever in Copper Center you must go to the Princess lodge. Unbelievable deck out back with panoramic views.

It was so beautiful, and we were so concerned we might hit clouds again in Valdez, that we took the side trip 50 miles to Chitina, and stopped at Liberty Falls along the way. Didn't even know the falls were there, and the area was lovely, and it's a camping area as well. That's part of the joy of doing no research before you take a trip (the luxury of living in such a place) - you never know what you might come across.

Like Worthington Glacier, back on the road to Valdez. Boom! Look at that - it's right on the highway!

Wow - didn't see that coming either! Shortly past the glacier you hit Thompson Pass, then drop back down the other side toward Valdez. Thompson Pass is at 2805 feet - I was making fun of Jeff for still being a half-mile under ground compared to Denver. Thompson Pass is the snowiest place in Alaska, averaging a half-inch shy of 46 FEET of annual snowfall!!!!!! It set a record in 1955 with 5 feet 2 inches of snow in a single day, and a record in 1952-53 for the most snow in one winter at 81 feet 2.5 inches. It's hard to even fathom that much snow. Lush and green today, though.

When we actually did make it to Valdez, lo and behold, we turned the corner through a tight canyon and right back into the clouds. Darn it. But when we woke up the next day....

Hahaha - ohhh yeah! It was raining this whole time in Anchorage. There's not a whole lot to Valdez - it's sort of a smaller version of Seward. Plenty of fishing and sightseeing charters, but we skipped those this time.

In the morning Jeff and I had gone up a berm at the edge of the campground to look back toward the mountains around Valdez, and on the way walking the road back to our campsite (which we had already broken) I was lamenting that it was August already and I hadn't seen one bear yet while hiking, biking, or camping. This would be a major bummer for me, as I'd seen multiple bears in each of the my previous three summers (and I'm talking bears when you're out doing something, not bears from a Denali bus). WHILE I'm saying that, Jeff looks to our left and says "Like that one?" I kid you not there was a black bear standing 25 feet away in a vacant camp site looking back at us! We were just about past the site so I said to just keep walking calmly and turned back to make sure he didn't follow, which he didn't (if he had we would have stopped). We got back to the truck and decided to drive back to where the bear was (three campsites down) so Jeff could get a picture. Hopped in the truck, pulled out, and realized there was ANOTHER bear in the campsite opposite hours, standing behind us while we were talking! At first we thought it was the same one, but as soon as this one ran off into the woods the first one popped out of the bushes just to the left and followed. Jeff was able to snap a quick pick of the original bear before we lost them. I thought he just got the derrier, but if you look on the right side of the tree you can see the bear's head.

These bears, like most bears, want no part of you - they run. I like those kind. They keep to themselves, I'll keep to myself. The unfortunate part for these bears is that there were warning signs up about them, meaning they've been using the campground as a grocery store. That's not a recipe for a long, happy existence for a bear.

It occurs to me I've covered almost every road in the state, which isn't saying much from the standpoint of our lack of roads (recall you cannot drive to the State Capital in Juneau, and if you try to even get close you have to leave the country and re-enter it to do so). But it is saying something as far as getting out there and exploring all the miles. Still quite a bit of work to be done, though. At the end of the road to Chitina is the dirt road to McCarthy - it's on the list:

Such a beautiful few days - we stopped for a late lunch in Copper Center on the way back, and it occurred to me it would be a sin to go back to rainy Anchorage to get ready for work the next day. So we didn't. Jeff later told me he thought I was kidding when I made the announcement at the Copper Center Princess Lodge (great burger, lousy service). I wasn't! Lake Louise Round II, here we come! 24 more hours of sun was just what the doctor ordered.