Art's Work

Monday, July 16, 2012

Nabesna Road

The Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve encompasses 13.2 million acres of some of the most dramatic mountainous wilderness in the world. There are really only two public access roads that enter the edge of this large area, the Nabesna Road into the northwest corner and the McCarthy-Kennicott Road into the southwest corner. We first spent two days exploring along the Nabesna Road.

A light overnight snow blanketed the peaks with a fresh covering.

Bob and Di at one of the stream crossings

More scenery

Two small (and muddy) Jeeps in a very large national park

Cotton Grass

Prime Dall Sheep territory

This is the first group of sheep we spotted, but a fair distance away.

This group was much larger, but even further away.

At the end of the "maintained" road was a small community of cabins.

They even have their own dirt airstrip and spectacular scenery

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Haines

We reached the end of our Southeast ferry travels when we got to Haines. The small town of Haines and the surrounding area is a great area to spend some time, so we decided to stay a couple of extra days and spend the 4th of July there.

Haines is another Alaska town in a pretty spectacular setting.

When we previously visited Haines in September of 2005, there were several brown bears feeding on the salmon running up the Chilkoot River a few miles from town. Although we were too early for the salmon runs this trip, we did hear about a pair of three year old siblings that had been seen frequently near the mouth of the river.

We visited the American Bald Eagle Foundation Museum in Haines.

Eastern Screech Owl

Red-tailed Hawk

We also visited the Kroschel Wildlife Center several miles out of town. The wildlife center is run by an interesting filmmaking character.

A young female wolf named "Isis"

The foxes were molting from their heavy winter coats to summer fur coats.

Pair of weasels

Lynx

"Kitty" the brown bear (aka grizzly bear)

Porcupine

Mink

Owner Steve Kroschel with Arctic Fox

"Banff" the wolverine

We enjoyed the small town 4th of July celebration in Haines. They had a typical small town parade of locals for the locals.

Opening color guard

Local family

One of the floats

But the most memorable thing about the parade was the amount of candy that was tossed by parade participants to the onlookers. Several children were prepared with paper grocery bags.

That evening we watched the fireworks show from the harbor area. The show began at 11:00pm because of the long daylight, and even then the mountains in the background were very visible.

On our last night in the Haines area we boondocked alongside the road between the ferry terminal and the end of the Chilkoot River.

At this location we had quite an eagle show.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Glacier Bay National Park

Since the ferry terminal at Gustavus has severe limitations on RVs and there are no RV campgrounds, we booked rooms at the Glacier Bay Lodge, left the rigs in Juneau, took just the Jeeps over to Gustavus and drove over to the lodge.

Barbara and I had been to Glacier Bay once before 32 years ago aboard a small overnight excursion vessel. On that earlier visit, we had unusually clear weather. We expected to get the typically wet Southeast Alaska weather for this visit, but were delighted to get another couple of days of clear skies.

Panorama of Bartlett Cove by the Glacier Bay Lodge.