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Published: June 24th 2011
Monday June 20, 2011 mileage 10202 55 degrees at 11:45 when we left Black Bear campground .
Walked the Trail of Blue Ice along Williwaw Creek first thing this morning. The trail starts on a boardwalk between the river and the road to Whittier. Lots of wildflowers were blooming along the trail. At certain times of the year when they are running, you can see salmon in the creek as it is that clear.
On the way back to Rosie II we were stopped by a woman interested in asking questions about and seeing our Roadtrek. Soon the whole family, including a sister, whose husband’s mother taught school for 25 years down the street from where Mom and Dad lived in Lilburn. Anyway, the family is from Fairbanks and we talked quite a while. The husband is a wildlife biologist with US Department of fish and game. Of course, we had lots of questions for him, like “how do the animals know when it is time to sleep when it is light for 20+ hours a day?”, “Is it normal for moose females to have twins?”, “Where are the male moose?”and, so on. Both of us left late with
check-out being 11:00. We drove north and they continued their drive south.
Drove back along Turnagain Arm until we got to a nice spot at a wide turn-out to have lunch. We looked over at the people sitting in a car next to us and realized that they had a front flat tire. The car looked like a rental and the man was on the phone to an agent in Arizona when we asked if there was anything we could help with. The two on the phone were trying to figure out where they were. Since we knew exactly where we were, Valerie spoke with the Arizona agent to help the couple, who turned out to be from Cyprus.
After we were assured that someone was coming to take care of them as they were only a couple miles from the town of Girdwood, we drove on to the Bird Creek State Park. Unfortunately, pine beetles had weakened so many trees that the State decided to close it until they could remove all the dead wood. Across the road they had a day use section that they had opened for camping, so we spent the night in the
parking area there.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 Bird Creek State Park Starting mileage is 10231 and it is 55 degrees at 9:00. Fog, fog, and more fog drifting over the mountains and lying parallel to the water
.
Heading a few miles in the direction of Anchorage, but just at the edge of town is Potter’s Marsh. This is a large wetland bird sanctuary. On the way down through here we had seen only seagulls, but this time there were arctic terns and seagulls nesting. We watched a male tern swoop down and catch a fish while his mate was sitting on a nest nearby.
Continued on into town to a Chevy dealer to get an oil change. They couldn’t do it, as their lifts will not hold the weight of Rosie II. So, went to a Jiffy Lube type place as they have pits to drive over. Nearby we stopped and got gas at $3.99 per gal. She took 15.88 gals at a cost of $65.50. We also took advantage of the station’s free dump site.
Drove back toward downtown and found the Wells Fargo Main Bank on Northern Lights, a major street in town. Before
the bank was purchased by Well Fargo, the founder of the Alaskan bank had amassed a collection of Native artifacts from all over Alaska and had them displayed in a special room in the bank. Wells Fargo agreed to maintain this museum when they purchased the bank.
It is a fabulous collection with very fine stuff. One parka was made primarily of the skin/feathers of murres so it was white fluffy feathers with some black striping where the back of the birds were. One parka was made from walrus intestines, dried and processed, and then sewn together for a waterproof, lightweight jacket. This parka had decorative beadwork on it also. They had a bit of everything in the collection; fine woven baskets, tools, bead worked leather of various kinds, some clothes, sacred shaman items, scrimshaw, and ivory carvings.
After this visit, we drove along the Knik Arm off Cook’s Inlet, which is what Anchorage is on, and looked at homes, gardens, and green spaces. It is Spring again here as the yards are full of blooming lilacs. We saw them blooming in Nebraska and Idaho 2 months ago.
Anchorage has a lot of green spaces with over
128 miles of paved and 300 miles of unpaved trails. One of the parks was on dammed up Chester Creek where there were several pairs of Canada Geese with goslings and another female, we can’t ID, with her ducklings. A group of both greater and lesser scaup were nesting there also.
Another park is dedicated to the ’64 earthquake as the area of the park was where a 8000 foot strip of bluff, 1200 feet wide, fell in blocks into Cook Inlet. The fall dumped 12 million cubic yards of sand, clay and gravel into the Inlet which ruined sea life there for a while. Turning away from the Inlet, we soon came to the International Airport where we saw the largest Fed-ex facility we have ever seen. Right across the road is a smallish lake that is the “runway” for the world largest group of float planes. Float planes were “docked” on every bit of space along the whole lakeshore.
Drove to the Dimond Mall area and found the Sam’s club where several Roadtrekkers were parked. Parked for the night for free. Wish the 18 wheelers would have turned off their generators so it
would have been quieter.
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Ella Nichols
non-member comment
I love reading this blog
your blog is sooooooo good. I love seeing pictures of goslings. In Branson, MO me and abby were walking to the lake, i said, "look Abby" one little gosling came up to us and said,"SQUAWK". and ran way.