Today we drove down along the Turnagain Arm Fjord to the Kenai Peninsular. I know I am sounding like a broken record but again it was an amazing drive. Lots of lakes , rivers, snowcapped mountains and glaciers. There are more than 50 glaciers in the Anchorage area. We hiked two mile into Byron Glacier in the rain but it was well worth it because we got to stand on the Glacier. Pretty neat!
A little further on we saw Exit Glacier from a distance. That was a much longer hike and we were already very wet so we decided not to go in. We really like going to the visiting centers at these Glaciers because they are so interesting with lots of information. Dave is collecting stamps from all the National Parks in his Parks Portfolio. We drove into Seward, a town of just over 2000. It was named after Secretary of State, William Seward who engineered the sale of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The town was founded in 1903 when the railroad ended there and a port was built to move goods up to the interior. the Iditarod trail starts here and goes 1049 miles to Nome. We had dinner here, Dave had salmon and I had snow crab, very good.

ANCHORAGE, Monday we headed into the city We stopped at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Here we learned all about all 10 Native cultures that make up all Native Alaskans. We took a guided tour of model village sites of the different tribes and saw the type of houses they built. There was dancing and story telling as well as Native People working on their crafts. We really enjoyed the dancing.
Next we spent almost four hours at the Alaska Museum. There was a gallery with art by local Alaskan artists which was very interesting and a new exhibit hall built especially to house 600 Alaskan Native artifacts that the Smithsonian has had and have been returned to Alaska. This exhibit was wonderful. We had a yummy grilled salmon dinner. I think we have had our omega 3's for a lifetime.

Friday we drove 151 miles from Haines on the coast to Haines Junction in the Yukon, Canada along the old Chilkat trading trail for the Natives, now a road. It was a very pretty drive, lots of lakes and this beautiful falls called Million Dollar Falls that we walked into. Haines Junction was a camp for the road crew building the Alaskan-Canadian Highway in the 40's. It is now a small town for the maintenance road workers with a post office, one store and two churches. The Catholic church took over an old quonset hut.
Saturday we drove 290 miles back into Alaska to Tok. This was not such a pretty drive. It was mostly permafrost, where only about 10 to 8 inches of ground melts in spring. The trees are stunted and the land very soggy. The permafrost also causes lots of potholes, pits and sunken road. Not fun to drive.

Sunday we headed south to Palmer near Anchorage, on the Glenn

Highway, 276 miles. This was a lovely drive even though it was a gray day. We drove down a wide valley between the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains. We say 3 glaciers. The one here was the largest, Matanuska Glacier. We are in Palmer three nights. It was established by the railroad and to house miners digging coal which was shipped to the coast on the railroad for ships during the war.

SKAGWAY. We took the fast ferry over from Haines for the day. It was a fun town to visit. Historic Skagway saw tens of thousands of gold seekers poor into take White Pass up to the Klondike. It had 80 saloons, places to gamble and "ladies" to keep them happy before the arduous trip up the pass. Today the town of just under 900 is a cruise ship destination. There are many picturesque false-fronted buildings preserved as a National Historic Park. We also went to the museum that gave lots of information about the town. We took a tour up to the Yukon (see below) and had a great day heading back to Haines at 8:00.

After exploring Skagway we took a tour with Southeastern Tours on the road running up to the Yukon and near White Pass used during the Gold Rush. ( see Gold Rush info below).

It was just Dave and me on the tour and Derek was our guide. We learned lots of facts, saw beautiful scenery, waterfalls and we saw our first brown bear on the side of the road eating dandelions. Really the highlight! We also visited the Gold Rush cemetery. Where the infamous "Soapy" Smith, a con man and leader of a gang that rob and cheated citizens of Skagway. He was gunned down by Frank Reid a vigilante who was also killed. It was a great tour. Thanks, Derek.

ALASKAN GOLD RUSH. In 1896 three prospectors found gold on the Klondike River in the Yukon and staked a claim. Within days the creeks around the area had been "staked" end to end by local prospectors and people of all walks of life living in the area. By the spring of 1897 more than 20 thousand had crossed the mountains and spent the winter building 7000 boats so they could float down the lakes and rivers 500 miles to Dawson and on to the Klondike to try and strike it rich.

The summer of 87, 80 passengers and three tons of gold took two freighters to Seattle and San Francisco and reporters let the world know about Gold in Alaska and the Gold Rush was on. There were two passes over the mountains, White Pass from Skagway and the Chilkoot trail from the town of Dyea, both steep and dangerous. Soon more than 100,000 stampeders headed for the klondike. Very few made it to claims and even fewer ever got rich In 1898 British investors started to build the White Pass and Yukon Route railroad which was completed in 1900. With the railroad Dyea became a ghost town and development along the trails ceased but by then the rush was over.

Skagway is now a "booming" tourist town, a destination for many cruise ships, (Dave said it was like Alaska Disney) and the railroad still runs taking sightseers up the pass to the Yukon.

HAINES, was founded in 1881 by the Presbyterian Church as a mission. In 1901 the church gave 100 acres to the government to build an army fort because of a border dispute with Canada. Because of the fort the town developed to meet the needs of the army. Today Haines has a population of 24oo and is a fishing, timber and art community.

The town is small and in fact there is a story here that a foreign Student was picked up at the airport and her host
drove her around town and asked how she liked Haines. She said that she liked the little bit she had seen. When told she had seen the whole town, she burst into tears and asked to be taken to a real American town! The town does have a Hammer Museum with over 1,700 hammers. It has Sheldon museum with native artifacts and items from early Haines.

All the white buildings above were the officer's housing in Fort William Seward, when the fort was decommissioned after World War II a group of families bought the fort, 85 buildings, and established a planned community and art center. In 1970 it became a part of the city of Haines. It is the pretty part and is private homes, restaurants, shops and galleries. I bought a book, If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, by Heather Lende who lives in Haines and writes about the town. It gives a real good idea of life in a small town very isolated from most things. I am enjoying it. Tomorrow we take a ferry (without car) north to an even smaller town, Skagway with a population of 250. Another Adventure

JUNEAU, is the capitol of Alaska, and has many buildings that date back to the late 1800's. We were a little surprised at how small and shabby it is for a capitol city. It is built into Roberts Mountain and surrounding hills. Which means there are very steep roads and lots of stairs for pedestrians. People park on the street and "hike" to their house! We did a lot of walking around. We saw St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, the small blue and white building, and the Governor's Mansion below.
The houses are small and very close together and pressed into the hillside. Some were quaint with lots of flowers and wonderfully preserved. Along Gastineau Channel are the wharfs for the many cruise ships and docks for the float planes. That area is full of shops and restaurants. Most of the harbor area is built on fill from the mines.

We visited both the city museum and the Alaska State Museum. We are learning more history than we will ever remember.

Only Dave was foolish enough to climb the Mt. Roberts trail. A steep 45 minute hike, but the view was worth it.
The weather the four days we were here was the best we have had; warm and sunny. We actually wore short sleeve shirts for the first time since Seattle. We had some great salmon and fish meals and enjoyed talking with several locals that we met.

Today, Tuesday, we took the ferry to Haines . It is a small town of 2400 and we will be here three nights. Speaking of night, there isn't any really, since there is 18 hours of light and the rest is either dusk or dawn! Ah, an adventure.

Last Chance Mining Museum. The city of Juneau began as a mining town when Richard Harris and Joe Juneau discovered gold in 1880 on a creek near by, that they named Gold Creek. Within a year there was a trading post, saloons and missionaries and the camp became a town. There are two kinds if mining, Placer mining which is digging out dirt/rocks from a river bank and panning for small nuggets or flakes of gold washed down the river, and Hard-Rock mining which is digging tunnels into the mountain, bringing our the rock, crushing it and processing the crushed rock for gold.
It takes 20 tones of rock to get an once of gold. From 1882 to 1917 The Tredwell mines operated in the area and produced $66 million in gold in its 35 years. In 1916 the Alaska-Juneau gold mine was built and became the largest gold mine of its kind in the world. At its peak it employed over 1000 men, an ran 24 hours 363 days a year until 1944. It produced more than $80 million in gold. We toured the only remaining building that features original tools, the large compressor that ran lights, the rail cars into the mines and the drills, and lots of old photos and information. It was very interesting. There are still small mines in the area and we saw people panning for gold along the river edge.

Juneau, The Mendenhall Glacier. We could see this glacier on the ferry coming into Juneau and it was impressive then, but today we walked in as close as you can get and it was amazing. A wall of thick blue ice flowing 13 miles from the Juneau Icefield in the mountains down to Mendenhall Lake. It is retreating at a rate of one and a half feet a day!
There are lots of calves (broken off ice) floating in the lake, we did not get to see any calving while we were there. We were able to walk into the base Nugget Falls that is run off from the melting snow and ice into Mendenhall Lake. Paige got to fish a piece of 250 year old ice out of the lake. Pretty neat!

SITKA, a village of about 8000, and a cruise ship destination so much more prosperous than Petersburg. The ferry trip was again beautiful, 180 degrees of snow covered mountains. We saw whales and seals.
Sitka is on Barnof Island and was the location of the Russian American Fur Company in 1804 when Russia claimed all of the land as their territory. It is an interesting city because of its history and has 22 National Historic Sites. We were able to visit quite a few of these just taking the walking tour in town. We visited the Sitka National Historical Park where the battle of Sitka took place between the Tlingit tribe and the Russians, The Sitka Pioneers Home, built in 1934 for Alaska's elderly and Castle Hill which was originally the home of the Tlingit tribe, then taken over by the Russians who built a fort and the headquarters for the fur company, and then in 1867 the ceremony was held here to transfer the Alaska territories to the United States when it was purchased.
We have enjoyed the beautiful wild flowers and gardens throughout Alaska. The wet, cool weather makes the blooms last for a very long time. The roadsides are covered with Lupine, buttercups, red and yellow columbine, queen-ann's lace and poppies. The huge pink poppies are beautiful.

We toured St. Michael's Cathedral, Russian Orthodox and the Centerpiece of Sitka. It was built in 1844 under the direction of Bishop Innocent who had been a missionary in the Alaskan territory for years and had the church built to convert the Native People. It burned in 1966 but the people of Sitka rushed to the church and were able to save most of its artifacts, art and religious objects. The church was rebuilt in 1967. We also visited this large yellow home, built in 1842 and the oldest intact Russian building in Sitka. It was the home of the Bishop. Another amazing place we visited was the Sheldon Jackson Museum. We could have spent all day there. Jackson was a Presbyterian missionary who traveled all over Alaska working with the many tribes, he collected artifacts from the Athabascan, Haida, Aleut, Inupiq and Tlingit tribes. The museum was built in 1895 to house the collection. June is when Sitka's Music Festival takes place and we went to a wonderful concert. We were able to get reservations at the famous Ludvig's Bistro and had the fabulous Alaskan Paella. Also, this is a shopper's haven, I have bought lots of Christmas presents, so relatives, be forewarned. Headed to Juneau today.

This is the dance troupe we watched at Sitka, The New Archangel Dancers. A group of women learned Russian folk dancing and perform during the summer. These are dances that might have happened in Sitka when it was a Russian Territory in the early 1800's.

PETERSBURG, a small fishing village of about 3000 on Mitkof Island, most of the Island is rainforest and muskeg bog. It is known as "Little Norway." Unfortunately it rained the entire three days that we were here. The area gets on average 106 inches of precipitation a year.

We explored the town, poked in all the shops and galleries and enjoyed the little museum. This is a picture of the largest King Salmon ever caught, 126 pounds, in 1939.

There are four canneries here, in 2007 75.4 million pounds of fish were caught and processed. We saw a lot of bald eagles everyday, they are so common here. We have also seen black tailed deer and fawns. This is the time of year for the babies.

The rain let up a little yesterday and we drove the Three Lakes Loop road through 21 miles of rainforest. We stopped and hiked into Crane Lake on a one plank boardwalk through the bog. Lots of fun. We were also able to drive up to a lookout spot to see La Conte Glacier, very impressive.

Sarah paid a visit, Dave thought it was a great photo-op, you betcha!

We head out on the 2:15 Ferry, a 13 hour trip to Sitka, we arrive at 3:15 AM, the sun will just be coming up for another 16 hours of daylight.

Another Adventure!