Alaska'a Inside Passage thru the Yukon back to Alaska

 Tuesday June 18th we boarded the Matanuska Alaska Marine Ferry from Prince Rupert, BC to Haines, AK.  It was rainy Tuesday the 6 hours we waited to board.  Going through yet another customs and border crossing.  But once we were on the ferry the clouds started to break and we had beautiful weather for our day and a half trip through part of Alaska's Inside passage.

 The beauty of this area is amazing.  Glaciers, hump back whales, sea lions, quaint fishing villages, light houses, and miles and miles of wilderness.

Once in Haines (12:45am docking), we camped in the ferry terminal parking lot for the night.  The next morning we drove to Chilkoot Lake St Rec campground.  So pretty and a great place to camp for two days.  We were blessed with sightings of eagles, baby eagles on a nest, harlequin ducks, and surf scooters.

 We left Haines and traveled the one and only road out, north through a bit of Canada to the Alaskan Highway then headed west back to Alaska.  We have been treated this entire trip so far with beautiful wildflowers.  Here is Lake Kluane in the Yukon.

 Below you see a sunset picture from Delta Junction just 100 miles south of Fairbanks.  What you need to know is that this was taken at 11:45pm!  The days here ARE long.  Sunset about midnight and sunrise around 3am!  And the "night" is not dark at all.  Glad our blinds in the camper are good at darkening.

 We are seeing a lot of moose now feeding along the roads.  And being spring we get to see the babies.  Here is an adorable little moose.  But they sure do grow up to be very big. 

 We were told many times in our research for this trip that there would be a lot of road construction along the way because the hard winters are tough on the roads and they have a very short window of opportunity to do their work.  We are seeing this very often.  But thankful they are doing it because there is many miles of dips, patches, and holes that still need attention.  You really have to drive below the speed limit or you will be air born, literally!

 We are camping just outside Denali tonight.  Tomorrow we will go to our reserved site in Teklanika campground.  It is 30 miles into the park.  No private vehicles are permitted past 15 miles so we are excited to get back in a more remote part of the park.  We are not permitted to move our RV once there until we leave (7days).  We have stocked up on supplies, will empty our tanks and fill our fresh water.  Lets see if we can make it stretch for 7 days!  Oh, did you hear that Alaska is having a heat wave?  Yes, 90o!  We did not pack enough shorts I fear.  But we probably won't want shorts as that just exposes more for the bugs!  Yes they are abundant too.  But we are still having a wonderful time!

Port Edward and Prince Rupert, British Columbia

We had 3 days to explore this area before boarding the ferry to Haines and our trip through some of the inside passage. It has been interesting. We arrived June 14th.  There was just 3 campgrounds in this area: a Provincial Park that is about 20 miles from PR; a private park in Port Edward about 10 miles from PR; and a park just 1 mile from the ferry terminal in PR. We looked at the PR one and decided to go to the Port Edward cg. Built literally on a hill and terraced to get the most units on the property, it really was not too bad. Lots of greenery. 

Saturday, we toured a reconstructed cannery, the North Pacific Cannery. Very interesting. We saw how they did the canning manually in the late 1800's and then how the mechanization came in. This cannery was used up to 1980. This cannery is on the Inverness Inlet. This day was the first day that the commercial fisherman were allowed to gillnet. There was quite a lot of boats out with their nets but we did not see them bring much at all in. They are only allowed to use the gillnets about 3 days at this time of the season so a poor day makes a big impact on them. Hope this doesn't foretell poor fishing for Les?

 

 

They have a Mess Hall here that is working as a cafe. They had Salmon Burgers, Salmon Cakes, Salmon Melts, Salmon Chowder and more on their menu. Les had the Salmon Cakes and I tried the Chowder. Both were delicious. We topped off our meal with a homemade cinnamon bun. One was big enough for both of us!

 Monday we took the day to stock up on supplies, fuel, funds and do some sight seeing. The diesel is more expensive here in Canada. Alberta was only about $0.50 per gallon more but British Columbia is running higher, around $1.30 higher. Groceries are approximately 30% higher.

As you can see Prince Rupert is a crossroads for many people and places as it has the ferries, cruise ships and rail services bring people here. It is also a very big fishing and freight shipping hub.

 We heard of a local favorite, Dolly's Seafood Market, that not only sells fresh seafood but has a handful of tables to enjoy their restaurant dishes. We stopped and they were full so we walked the Cow Bay area a bit. Taking in the info on the port, then returned to find a table open. Les had the seafood combo which included haddock, shrimp, scallops and smoked salmon. Yum! I had the fish and chips, halibut. Oh so good!

 Other sights in the area were a beautiful sunken garden and small island in the inlets filled with pines.

It has been interesting to spend some time here but we are anxious to continue our adventure. We leave tomorrow, June 18th, on the ferry around 3:30 pm. We will be traveling through the inside passage to Haines, arriving midnight Wednesday. One day and 9 hours on the ferry. We splurged and booked a cabin since they do not permit you to stay in your campers and we did not relish the other options: sleep in recliners on the observation decks or pitch a tent outside on the deck.

We saw a govt rec campground that looks good outside Haines. We will try for a site there first. The wildlife viewing here is suppose to be really good. Maybe seeing bear fishing for the salmon that are just starting to run now.

Hwy 16 West from Jasper to Prince Rupert, BC

What a lovely drive. Pretty good road, very little traffic, magnificent scenery. What more can you ask for. Oh, very nice Provincial Parks (Canadian equivalent to our Sate Parks). Our first stop was Purden Lake PP. Nice park, no hookups, few people, beautiful lake. Just a few yards into the road we surprised a bear. Lots of signs of elk while we walked a lake trail. Very nice stay.

Day 2 on this route found us at Prince George to explore awhile. While there we enjoyed a very nice lunch at a Greek restaurant. On the way out we filled our tank, stocked up on supplies and stopped to get a picture of PG man! (Prince George Man) It was rainy all day. We planned to stay at Burns Lake but found all the campgrounds had closed. So onto Houston, another hour driving, to a nice private park. Here at Houston they are big for fly fishing and have a LARGE fly rod that I had to see.

The next day we stopped at The Hazeltons where there was a reconstructed village of long houses and totems, 'Ksan Historical Museum. A very interesting display and tour explaining the culture of the Gitksan people.

That night we stayed at another Provincial Park, Kleanza Creek PP, Terrace, BC. A quiet, small, uncrowded park by a swift running creek of snow melt. The sound of rushing water lulled us to sleep that night. The next day we woke and took a walk on a trail to an over look of the small canyon. So pretty.

Then on the road to Prince Rupert. Oh my, the drive here was spectacular. Following the Skeena River to the Ocean through snow capped mountains. Wow. After arriving, looking around Prince Rupert, we stopped at Butze Rapids. A 3K trail takes you to a look out where you can see a reversing tidal rapid. The water flows over the rapids in the opposite direction just after low tide as the water returns.

We will hang around here until Tuesday when we board the ferry for the inside passage and Haines, Alaska.

Banff and Jasper Nat'l parks to Prince George, BC

On our way to the parks we stopped by a buffalo jump. It was very impressive and interesting. Smashed-In-Head Buffalo Jump. Run by the local native tribe you could see how proud they were of this site. It was very nicely done and a good stop. Pictured is a marmot we saw while viewing the jump. Then about another 200 miles to Banff Nat'l Park.

We must admit that we were not impressed with this area at first. We entered the park where you were asked to pay admittance. Of course we were ready for that, but here you are charged $9.80/person/day. We planned to stay 4 days so approximately $80 just for entrance. They give you a receipt to hang on your window and a magazine type publication on the areas of the parks (they run together), but nothing on hiking. OK, let's find a Visitors Center at the first stop: the town of Banff. I don't have any pictures because we were just trying to dodge people as we searched for the visitor center. That town is very built up and loaded with tourists/shoppers. People, vehicles, buses and campers everywhere on the narrow streets. When we finally identified the visitors center (on the third pass by) we realized that the limited parking they had for it was filled and nothing around on the streets. Let's get out of here and just find our first campground to figure things out.

A quick search of the info book lead us to a campground about 20 miles north of Banff, Johnston Canyon. It was after 4pm and they had a notice that the road the campground was on was closed from 6pm-7am. OK. We arrived there and a notice told us to find a vacant site and return the next day to pay. Oh, did I mention we arrived on Friday and lots of others thought it would be a good place to be on the weekend. There were a few open sites but they were spaced decently apart. Got out the grill and our chairs and thought, “OK, here we really begin our Canadian Rockies experience”; then the freight train came barreling by behind our camper, blowing it's whistle no less! We just had to laugh. But knew we couldn't stay there a second night. That campground did have a good hot shower, but no hookups and I will tell you about the dump later. The best thing was the wonderful smell of pine. Pictured below is our campsite there.

Seems the entrance fee was not the only surprise in fees. The camping for no hookups is anywhere from $17 - $27 for a site, $8.80/night if you want a campfire (with wood provided), and $8.80 if you want to dump your tanks. These add up to make camping very expensive. Johnston was $27.60 (because they had showers, flush toilets and running water spigots (not to fill RV tanks); so we paid $46.20 for our first night camping and did not dump or have a campfire, that would have made our total $63.80! Wow, our parks are a steal!

After listening to the freight trains our first night, we had to move on and we still did not have any idea of where we could get some good hiking. As we paid on our way out, I asked about hiking maps and yes, they did have them and but when we looked at them on the way out to the road, they were only for this area and we were almost out of it by now. ;-( So, let's drive another 40 miles to the next town and see if we can get some information. Oh my. Well, the drive there was very enjoyable. Beautiful scenery of 10,000+ ft snow capped peaks and glaciers, plus we saw 3 elk grazing by the road side.

We arrived at Lake Louise. It was smaller and less crowded. The visitors center actually had a large parking lot. When we spoke with an attendant she was wonderful and told us everything plus, that we needed to know to start enjoying this area. They had a nice hike right there outside town and we were so ready to get out and stretch our legs. We drove to the trail head, a large parking lot by a massive hotel on the lake. Put on our hiking boots and packs and were anxious to get on a trail. This one was a 6 ½ mile round trip with a elevation climb of around 1300 ft, there was still snow on much of the upper trail which made for some interesting experiences, but at the top was the promise of a Tea House.

On the way we saw a bear feeding across a narrow valley. Too far for pictures but we saw it just fine and that was exciting. There were many mountain goats grazing on the side of the cliffs. After 2 hours we arrived at the Tea House and enjoyed Vegetarian Soup, Apple Pie and of course, Tea. The hike back was a wet one. We had some slight, short showers up but back was fairly steady rain. Thankfully no downpours or gusty winds. Back to the camper and into dry clothes. Now this is what we were looking for!

We headed further north to our next campground, Rampart Creek. The sign was knocked down but we tried it anyway. The info said it had just opened 2 days prior. We found a campground of 50 sites and only about 6 campers. And no train tracks around!! We camped on a gorgeous river with mountains in the front and back of us. So nice that we decided to stay 2 nights. The second full day there was so peaceful and relaxing. Walking along the river, Les found many interesting and large tracks in the mud.

Monday, June 10^th Our 35^th Anniversary.

We left Rampart, continuing north to the Columbia Ice Fields. Beautiful drive. It had snowed last night in the high mountain passes. We stopped at Athabasca Glacier. Les hiked a bit and I took the Snocoach ride onto the glacier. It was over cast. Snowed before and at the end of our visit. This glacier grows 15m in the winter and melts 25m each summer. A net loss of 10 m per year. This glacier will be gone in 600 years.

One of the peaks is a Triple Continental Divide, Dome Mountain. The water to the north of the mountain travels to the Arctic Sea, to the west it goes to the Pacific Ocean, and the east goes to the Atlantic Ocean. The south is the Columbia Ice Fields. There is only one other Triple Continental Divide, and that is in Siberia.

We drove on to Jasper and our last stay in this area, Whisper Campground. We were treated to an amazing experience with the local elk. It is calving season and there are a number of elk who have decided that this campground is a good place to have their young. We saw elk as we drove in, had a group walk in front of our campsite, and saw some while taking a walk. They are very big and impressive.

We also saw squirrels and gofers. Tomorrow we will leave the Rockies and head west on Rt16 toward Prince Rupert, British Columbia. This day, Tuesday, our entire trip is through the Mt. Robson Valley, so pretty. On this trip we saw 3 black bear and 2 grizzly (a mother and cub). One on the road into our campsite and the others along the road during the day. We also saw 2 big bull elk and a mule deer. So cool! We stopped for a short hike through old growth red cedars and on the trail were huge prints of a moose, pretty fresh. Oh my, wonder if the bear spray we are carrying will do anything to turn a moose?

We board the ferry there for Alaska via the Inside Passage, June 18^th.  We are posting this in a visitors center at Prince George.