Touring Alaska

Sightseeing in Alaska

   Here, in Anchorage, two of the oldest bars, the Scandanavian Club and the Montana Club were torn down to make room for a Parking Garage. Wanna see a genuine Alaskan parking garage? Outside of Town was the Bird House that tourists liked to visit before it burned down. It was an interesting little bar with underwear hanging from the ceilings and silver dollars molded into the bar counter, and business cards from anyone who came through and wanted to leave a business card, all hanging on the walls. I understand a replica of the Bird House is built on Spenard Road.
    But I imagine most tourists come to Alaska to see wildlife. And Mt. Denali (the locally preferred name for McKinley).
    If you never leave Anchorage, you may see Moose or Bear passing through. Ravens and sea gulls are ever present, but not together. Sea gulls in the summer, ravens in the winter. Both frequent open dumpsters. A road near the airport is a part of town where you're almost guaranteed to see a moose.
    You know, we have the largest moose in the world! Our black and brown bears eat airplanes, our ravens eat windsshield wiper blades (before that was discovered, it was blamed on teenaged vandals), and our polar bears eat people, one of the few animals that actually like the taste of human meat. Sorry, no polar bears around here, except in the Alaska Zoo.
    The Alaska Zoo is another one of those things a guest may want to visit. They do have a couple polar bears, black and brown bears, eagles, moose, an "arctic" elephant, and a few other critters. I gotta say, thought that the zoo denizens that are native to Alaska aren't trapped, or otherwise coerced into living there. Actually, most of them are rescued. Eagles with broken wings, bears without mothers and too young to fend for themselves, and, of course, being raised in captivity, their survival still questionable. I won't try to answer questions about the elephant, though. I'll hafta ask those myself.
    Don't get too close to the polar bears, though! Remember, they are humanivores, and they will use any chance they can find to supplement their diet. A few years ago, we had a different polar bear named "Binky". An australian woman climbed over the guadrail to try to get a picture of Binky without the bars being in the picture. Binky thought "Dinner!" Binky attacked throught the bars, some other zoo visitors fought him off with nearby sticks, and she woke up in the hospital, amazed at her stupidity! The picture of Binky with her sneaker in his mouth gained fame worldwide! A couple months later a couple drunk teenagers thought they would go for a swim in Binky's pool. I don't know how they escaped, but I have heard that one of them will sing soprano everytime he gets in the shower!
    Without leaving Anchorage, on a clear day, Denali is visible from the top of the Captain Cook Hotel - and there's a spot on Muldoon Road where you can see it, but no place to pull over to take a snapshot.
    To the south, we have Beluga Point, where, if you're lucky, you may see some whales of the type indicated by the name of the point. And just across the street, there is a spot where brave mountain goats come almost to the road and will pose and smile for a picture! You can see other sheep and goats farther up, but they look very much like the spot of snow next to them. Let me tell you how to tell the difference. Focus on a spot of snow on a mountain, and wait. If it moves, it's probably not snow. From that distance, though, you can't tell whether it's a sheep or goat.
    Farther south, we have Portage Glacier. The glacier has receded a long way from the point where the observation building was built. Still, icebergs occasionally break off from the glacier and float up to the observation station. Souvenirs available here, too.
    South of Portage Glacier, you have Turnagain Pass, another place where you can employ the skills you learned at Beluga point, two paragraphs ago.
    Once you leave Turnagain Pass, you come to a fork in the road. Don't pick it up! It's a tourist attraction!:-) If you're going to Seward, it's called the Homer cutoff. If you're going to Homer it's called the Seward cutoff.
    Seward and Homer are both fishing and tourist villages, each with its own charm. I think Seward's main charm is it's proximity to Anchorage, about 180 miles. Homer is about an 8 hour drive, and its main attraction is Homer Spit which got washed away in the Tsunami that followed the quake of 64. but has since been rebuilt and houses tourist traps, tour boats and fishing boats. Just outside of Seward is Exit Glacier, a ways back from the road, and, if you're suicidal, you can go up and put your hand on it. I've seen it calf though! A huge section of glacier breaks off and lands in front of the glacier without regard to what or whom it's falling on!
    While we're talking about Seward, you don't want to leave Alaska without taking a Kenai Fjord Tour. There are the three and eight hour varieties. Personally, I think 3 is enough, and you get to see, almost for sure, water, eagles, water, glaciers, water, stellar sea lions, water, sea otters, water, seals, water, puffins, and you may get to see whales and porpoises or dolphins. For this trip, you'll wish you had a camera! Oh, and did I say you're likely to see lots of water?
    There's only two roads that come into Anchorage. One, south, the other, of course, North. To the north is Fairbanks, 300 some miles. On the way up, there is another point where you can see Denali from the road it all its glory! You can also go to the Denali Park, but you can't see it from there. Too many clouds and trees. Some of the clouds are herds of mosquitoes in disguise!
    Three of Fairbanks' attractions are hot spring. Chena hot springs, Manley hot springs, and another couple hundred miles out (very close to the arctic circle) is Circle Hot Springs, located in Circle. Speaking of Hot springs, there is the Liard hot springs, which many pronounce Laird, but that's over in YukonTerritory (of Sgt Preston fame), Canada. Between Fairbanks and Circle, you'll see piles of tailings from mining - gold? Coal? I'm not sure, I do know that Usibelli coal mine is in Usibelli, Alaska, up near Fairbanks.
    Well, so much for tourist attractions for this missive! Let's talk about weather!
    Generally, for Halloween, we have dirty snow! Which means snow has fallen somewhere around mid October and had a chance to get dirty. This year, we have yet to see snow! I think the rain is keeping it away!
    That sounds funny, but clouds keep the heat from escaping and temperatures are kept from dropping to snow levels.
    Now, I hope it doesn't clear too much. If it gets too cold for too long without snow, the cold gets into the ground and freezes all kinds of things, pipes being the big problem.
    Our weather is much like Massachusetts weather, but 20 degrees cooler. Which means we rarely see temperatures above 70, and when we do, we sweat like proverbial pigs! And, you know, proverbial pigs sweat much more than the pigs you and I know can be used for ham and bacon! And we're most likely to see those temperatures in June and early July. I figger the rainy season to start July 18th. Any sunny days we get after the 18th are gifts!
     There are 3 things I want to hit now.
    1. Weather
    2. Earthquakes
    3. Dangers of living in South-central Alaska
    Thursday, the clouds left, and, of course, the temperatures dropped. Now, we're just waiting for the clouds to come back so we can have some snow, for groundcover.
    The epicenter of the earthquakes has been located up near Fairbanks. The only one we even felt was the one that did a lot of damage in Fairbanks. The same one that caused water in swimming pools in Louisiana to "slosh" and muddy drinking water in Pennsylvania. We just got a long, gentle rumble. Susan's son, on his bicycle didn't feel a thing! Actually, I understand Fairbanks has been rocking all week. I hope it's ended by now.
    Now, for the dangers of south-central Alaska. I'm not talking about Muldoon road (Kamikaze Strip), or the corner of Lake Otis and Tudor (known for rush hour traffic jams and frequent accidents), or non existent polar bears. I'm referring to water and mud.
    There's a saying in Alaska. The reason you need a personal flotation device in Alaska is so that search and rescue can find your corpse. Even with the Japanese current, the ocean water is cold...cold enough to cause hypothermia in a few minutes. The local rivers and most of the lakes are just as cold, if not colder, being fed by glacier water.
    Once, when my ex and I were camping by the Kenai River, a rubber raft overturned, and one of the rafters, a non -swimmer, was rescued. Karen and I talked him out of his clothes, put a blanket around him, fed him hot coffee and toast with jelly. We knew he was going to be all right when he was warm enough to shiver!. And that was very mild hypothermia!
    In recent years, I understand that the recovery rate from severe hypothermia is better than it used to be. Used to be, if a pulse wasn't detectable, the victim was dead. Now, if the pulse isn't detectable, it's still a rush to the hospital, because, apparently the pulse and heartbeat, in a severe case, are so slow, and so faint that they aren't detectable under normal circumstances, and the victim might still revived!
    Now, the mud. This is killer monster mud! The kind that grabs hold of you and kills! No, I'm not overstating the case, but you're probably imagining some bad horror show! Some of the mud flats around here, at low tide are made up of this type of mud. The mud is made up of little tiny granules that interlock and don't let go of an intruding foot- meanwhile, you're sinking! Stories are rampant about people who died on the mud flats, one in particular is a story about a hunter who died, using his gun barrel for a snorkel!
    I should also point out that the moose can be pretty violent, too. People's fault. Remember the Yogi Bear cartoons, with bears stealing picnic baskets? The rule in Jellostone Park was "Don't feed the bears". That's true of moose, too, for the same reason,and as far as I'm concerned all wildlife, even geese.
    If you feed moose and bears, they get to expect food from people and get downright irate when a human doesn't have it. And they don't necessarily target the offending human. A human is a human. And when the normal food is under 4 feet of snow, they can get pretty irritable. And for obvious reasons, you don't walk between a mama moose and her calf. Them mamas are VERY protective.
    Why do I include geese? Feeding geese, I think, discourages them from visiting warmer climes when it's time. They'll get hungry at 20 below, but will you be out feeding them at 20 below? If they went south, you wouldn't hafta be.
    I was talking to a shop owner last Christmas about that last topic. She said, "Oh, we used to.
    We were camping in Florida, and my husband had just fed a loaf of bread to the alligators. The game warden came around and asked, 'You haven't been feeding the alligators have you?'
    After we profusely denied it, he said, "That's good, because, frequently, if you do, they come up into the campsite at night looking for more." That shopowner said that she never spent a more sleepless night than she did that night.
    So, basically, what I'm saying here, is, don't stand next to a glacier, stay off the mud flats, and go swimming only in pools, don't feed the animals!
        If you come to Anchorage and keep that last sentence in mind, you should be able to have fun.