Picnic with Sara on Saturday in Anchorage. Even got her autograph!

We vsited the Alaskan SeaLife Center in Seward. This is Alaska's only public acquarium and was built with money from the settlement with Exxon from the Valdez oil spill. It is awesome.

Movies, live animal presentations and hands on exhibits.

Monday we arrived in Seward to rainy weather. We camped at Millers Landing on the Resurrection Bay. We dressed in our rain gear and headed to Exit Glacier.

We tried out hand at fishing again in Soldotna. No luck. but this a site we saw!

The salmom were running in Kenai and at the mouth of the Kenai River and Cook Inlet. Here were hundreds of residents camping and dipnetting for salmom.

We also toured the Russian Orthodox Church in Old Town.

We left Homer on Friday morning headed to Cooper Landing on the Kenai River. We stopped here to try our hand at salmom fishing. If you look close you can see the salmom, but they weren't hungry for what we had!

Thursday, we took a bike ride from Homer to Anchor Point to Ninilchik Village.

This was taken at 11PM- Homer Spit and the Dixon Glacier looking across the Kachemak Bay.

Here I am with my 9lb. salmon. Captain in the background cleaning the fish that was caught.
We were in a little town called Seldovia which can only be reached by boat or air. A beautiful harbor with about 300 residence. We had the opportunity to go into town and Steve and I had our afternoon cup of coffee!

This is Captain Wally and Misty, the fishing boat we took out for our full day of halibut fishing in the Cook Inlet. We left at 5:30am. There were 3 fishermen and 1 fisherwomen !! plus the captain and his mate. It was a beautiful day.

As we went out the 40 miles for fishing we saw otters and puffins and 2 volcanos; Mt. Iliamna and Mt. Redoubt which last erupted in 1990 and is still puffing smoke. It was just awesome.

We all caught our limit on halibut by 11AM. No small feat for me! With a 4 pound weight and 200 feet down it was a lot of work bring up the catch, so I had help from the fishermen!!

So off we went in search of salmom. By 3:30 we had caught our limit and the Captain took us to Seldovia.

We arrived in Homer at the Driftwood Inn and RV park. This is the view from our RV. We are looking at Kachemak Bay and 2 glaciers, Greningh and Portlock Glaciers. Homer is known as the "Halibut Fishing Capital of the World."

Sunday on our way to Homer on the Kenai Peninsula we stopped at Hood Seaplane Base in Anchorage. There are over 800 take off and lands on a busy summer afternoon. We enjoyed watching for about 3 hours before heading south. We will tour Anchorage later in the month.

Brent, What's this?

Saturday we arrived in Wasilla and visited the Transportation Museum. This is the Don Sheldon Building which had restored vintage cars, Alaska Historical Memorabilia, gold mining exhibits and the Bush Pilot Hall of Fame. There we also many outside exhibits.

Friday in Talkeetna we took a flight in an Havilland Otter ski-plane thru the Alaska Range and landed on Ruth Glacier. Mt. Mckinley is in the background- about 10 miles away. This was totally awesome!

It was about 60 degrees.

The rains cleared the skies and as we headed to Talkeetna,AK Friday Am we were able to view Mt. McKinkey for about 100 miles.

Stunning!

Polychrome Pass in Denali.

Off to Denali National Park on Thursday. We took the 8 hour bus tour. 4 hours into the park and back. We went as far as the Eielson Visitor Center, mile 66. There are great exhibits and on a clear day you can see Mt. McKinley. You can only drive the 1st 13 miles and then you have to take a bus. It was a rainy day and hard to see any of the Alaskan Range but we did see lots of wildlife including these bears which crossed in front of our bus.

University of Alaska has The Museum of the North, and should not be missed - fascinatng stories about Alaska's cultures, places and wildlife. We also viewed two excellent movies, the Aurora (Northern Lghts) and Winter's in Alaska.

This photo was taken at Flat Creek enroute to the hot springs.

On Monday July 6th we took another motorcycle ride to the Chena Hot Springs about 60 miles north of Fairbanks. This is a natural outdoor hot springs. Been around for more than 100 years.

We soaked for about 15 minutes as it was very hot- over 104 degrees!

We rode on the Tanana Valley Railroad in Fox, AK to the El Dorado Gold Mine on July 5th, riding thru a permafrost tunnel, panned for gold and this time Dawn got enough for a locket!

Another beautiful day.

On our way back to Fairbanks, we viewed the Alaskan pipeline.

Fairbanks Internatonal Airport we saw the float plane section and this is corrision corner where planes are robbed of parts to keep others flying!! Interesting mix of aircraft.

There is also an airport campground for fly-ins.

7/4/09

Fourth of July we are in Fairbanks and took a cruise on the sternwheeler Riverboat Discovery on the Chena and Thames Rivers. We took a walking tour of the Chena Indian Village, saw Susan Butcher's Iditarod sled dogs and viewed a bush pilot landing and taking off on the Chena River.

It was a beautiful day. We also went to Pioneer Park which offers the history of interior Alaska.

Steve found the Pioneer Air Museum most interesting.

7/1/09

Alaskan Mosquito is the state bird!!

Delta Junction, AK the official end of the Alaskan Highway. We drove the 1,442 miles!

The Chicken, AK post office!!

Tuesday we took a motorcycle ride to Chicken AK., about 120 miles round trip from Tok.

Dawn is panning for gold!! Should have saved the $. There'a a hugh river dredge on display which was used at the height of the gold mining days. "Beautiful downtown Chicken" consists of 3 0r 4 shacks strung together in a dirt parking lot!! We did have lunch at one of the cafes and I just had to mail a postcard from the post office!

Arrived in Tok, Alaska staying at the Tundra RV Park.

6/29/09

International marker at border crossing

From KluneLake we drove thru Destruction Bay, Beaver andon to Tok, Alaska.
A long day as we travelled 35MPH the last 100 miles due to permafrost.

6/28/09

From Whitehorse, YT we drove to Klune Lake. the largest lake in the YT, and stayed at the Cottonwood RV Campground. There was bridge construction en-route.. car and rv need another wash!!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Whitehorse, YT

Miles Caynon in the Yukon River