Denali Park

Yesterday I drove to Denali National Park to pick up a group and bring them back to Fairbanks. I was SO LUCKY because as I left Fairbanks at 6:30 in the morning, the Alaska Range was still clear and I got to see the mountain! Denali! Mt. McKinley to you Lower 48ers. It was out bright and beautiful in all its amazing glory!! Not very many people get to see it because it is so huge that it creates its own weather and so its usually covered in clouds. I couldn't believe it. I was really excited. Anyway, I continued on to Denali Park, picked up my group, took them to the Visitor's Center for 45 minutes and then we headed for Fairbanks. This picture is at the Parks Monument. The highway to Denali Park (and on to Anchorage) is the Parks highway. The sun had just come out and the fireweed looked very beautiful. Too bad I don't have a better camera so you could really see just how amazing they look right now.

Here is the view from the Parks Monument. You're looking at the Tanana Valley and the Tanana River. Fairbanks is located in the Tanana Valley. The Tanana is a braided river and is either the largest or fourth largest contributing river to the Yukon. File that away in case you're ever on Jeopardy. Oh, I don't know if it's the fourth or the biggest. My tour material contradicts itself. :)





Token picture of my motorcoach.

Here is a gift shop in Nenana. Nenana is a little town on the banks of the confluence of the Tanana and Nenana rivers. It's a cute little town. I thought the flowers were beautiful so I took the picture.
I took this because it shows how they announce the fire danger here. They hang up signs at the little towns you pass through. I'm sure other places do this as well, but fire is a huge threat here. Approximately, 500,000 acres burn each year.

This little boat is next to the visitor center. I have no idea why it's here on display, but since I was taking pictures of the stuff at the visitor center, I felt obligated to take a picture of the boat.

Totem poles are very common here. We even saw one on the side of the Alaska highway out in the middle of nowhere. They are a reflection of the Native culture here.





Okay, now this tripod is cool. It's used as part of the Nenana Ice Festival. Every year they put this tripod on the Nenana river. They hook it to a tripwire which is hooked to a clock. At breakup (when the river starts to thaw and massive chunks of ice flow down the river) when the ice really is breaking up and spring really is coming, that tripod begins to float down the river on the ice, trips the wire, and records the official time of "breakup."
People from all over Alaska buy tickets for $2.50 and guess what time breakup will happen. The winner takes the winnings from the sale of the tickets (minus costs, I'm sure). If they are the only one to guess the right time, they get it all. If more than one person guesses the right time, they split the money. Even people from the Lower 48 can guess.

This is an example of a cache. The natives built these to store food, tools, and goods in. When white people came here, they adopted they idea if they lived out in the bush.














This is the visitor center. It's cute. It has pretty flowers hanging on it.

Chicken, Alaska

I got back from my Eagle tour on Saturday. I realized that I hadn't posted any pictures of Chicken on my last post, so here you go. Chicken is a mining town of about 12 - 50 depending on the time of year. Sue owns downtown Chicken, which you'll see pictures of. It's a great place. When we're doing our tours, we meet up with our pilot car here in Chicken if we're coming from Tok or our pilot car leaves us in Chicken if we're heading to Tok. We drive about 100 miles from Chicken to Eagle. The other 60 miles are paved, sort of. This picture is one side of the downtown parking area. In professional driving terms, we call that a parking lot. :)

This is another view of the parking lot. Sue keeps promising that she's going to have them come put gravel down and fill in the potholes. Some of those nasty potholes are big enough to swallow a motorcoach!










This is another picture of the potholes, the parking lot, and my friend Mike standing next to the pilot car. Mike has been filling in as the pilot car driver for a week while Robin, who usually drives, was on vacation. Check out the mud on the pilot car. Yeah baby!









The highway department is doing road construction on the Taylor highway which doesn't usually slow us down TOO much. On this last trip, however, we suddenly had to pull off the road and then the construction guys started asking if we had any medical people on either of our coaches. I had a doctor and Karen, the other driver, had a nurse. It turns out that one of the construction vehicles had rolled off the side of Polly Summit. Polly can drop off as far as 2,000 feet. The guy rolled three times but he survived. If he had been wearing his seat belt, he would have walked away. There's my plug for safety. Anyway, I didn't look at the accident site as we drove by but behind me I could hear my passengers saying, "Oh my gosh! Look at that! That is scary! Do you think he survived?" I'm just happy that everything turned out all right in the end.

Here's a picture of the store in Chicken. It's mostly a gift shop. Our Holland America passengers keep Sue in business.












Here's the Chicken saloon. I had a very nasty old man that was extremely drunk at 5:00 in the evening hit on me. It was gross.












Here's the Chicken Cafe. Sue is an excellent cook and she gives us free cookies.













Here's my motorcoach at one of our picture stops. Isn't my coach beautiful? :)













Here's a view of the Tanana river from that picture stop that I took a picture of and is the picture above this picture and I'm wondering how many more times I can write picture in this paragraph.

If it wasn't cloudy, you'd be able to see the Alaska Range. It's very pretty.

Eagle (and a non-related bull moose)

Last night my friend Tyler and I were driving down Chena Hot Springs road and we saw this bull moose just hanging out doing his thing.











Another shot of Bullwinkle













I wish my camera took clearer pictures when it's on zoom.












Here is my tour director from this past trip, Jimmy. He was cool. He told us to bring our cameras because he had a special picture for us to take. The rumor was that he was going to moon us. I'm glad he didn't. :)









I'm so lucky because I get to drive the Taylor Highway. It's a beautiful 160 mile drive from Tetlin Junction on the Alaska Highway into Eagle. The first 60 miles are paved (mostly) and then from about milepost 60 at Chicken on into Eagle, it's all a dirt road. It's absolutely beautiful and it's my favorite drive in the whole world. I've included pictures of some of the spots we see. This picture is from Polly Summit.





Picture from Polly Summit













The road is so narrow and windy that we have a pilot truck that takes us from Chicken to Eagle and from Eagle to Chicken. Robin is the pilot car driver and he's REALLY cool.










Here is the fireweed from the Taylor. Fireweed is the plant that grows first in an area where there has been a fire, hence the name. The picture doesn't even begin to do justice to the brilliance of the color of the fireweed. Of course, it was cloudy and had just hailed, so we didn't get the sun to bring out the colors.







Another shot of the Oglivie Mountains from Polly Summit.












One of my favorite pictures from Polly. I love this view!












This is the road we drive and the spot where we pull off. The women's bathroom is on the coach and the men's bathroom is to the right. :)











Here is living proof that I do actually drive the motorcoaches. Matt was kind enough to take pictures of me driving so I could prove it. :)











More proof













Here's Matt helping his passengers off the motorcoach. (This is also Matt getting a boatload of money in tips!!) This is what I also do when my passengers get off the coach, but since I couldn't get a picture of me doing it, Matt had to fill in. What a good sport! :)








Look it's me on the motorcoach!! My hair is in pigtails because we leave at 6 am and so I already had to get up at 3 am. I go on the clock at 4:30 to pretrip and load luggage.










My seat


















My passengers' seats













The gray line van in front and the bluff which I have never climbed but REALLY want to! I thought I would climb it on Thursday, but Matt isn't paralleling with me anymore because he had to go rescue passengers yesterday. :( Sad for me.









My motorcoach in Eagle. I love driving these things and I love driving this road!!!












The Yukon Queen - This is the boat that takes the passengers I dropped off down the Yukon River to Dawson City in Canada. This is also the boat that brings me my passengers from Canada that I then take down the Taylor highway. I love the Taylor!








Here is a shot of the Taylor Highway. Power to the Taylor!! I love this road (in case you hadn't caught on to that).











This is the Hard Rock Cafe. This is where we used to stop for lunch on our way into Eagle.












This is also where I got stuck briefly and it scared me to DEATH!












The Taylor













Nancy, this picture is for you. This is a shot of the "Top of the World" highway that leads from the Taylor into Canada and Dawson City. We only drive this if for some reason we can't get into Eagle.

Whitehorse

On Thursday, two of our guests were supposed to go with their tour group down the Alaska highway, through Beaver Creek, through Whitehorse, and on into Skagway. Well, the man had a medical emergency and so they ended up missing their motorcoach. Doctors here in Fairbanks cleared him to travel and so I had the opportunity on Friday to drive him and his wife from Fairbanks to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, Canada. Usually, that's a two day trip. The first day is from Fairbanks into Beaver Creek. The second day is from Beaver Creek into Whitehorse. We were going to attempt to make it in one day. It's 600 miles - over the Alaska highway. That makes it about a 12 to 14 hour trip, depending on the condition of the road and how often you stop. So my guests and I set off at about 11:45 am on Friday. We arrived in Whitehorse at 2:00 am Saturday morning. They had to be up at 6:00 to put their bags out and catch their tour to Skagway to get on their cruise ship. They were really nice people and we had a great time. By the end, I was DEAD exhausted! I went to sleep around 3:00 am and woke up around 11:45 am. I slept in a BED (I've been on an air mattress) in the basement where it was somewhat dark. I slept better than I've slept in a really long time! I headed back for Fairbanks around 2:30 pm and got in at 4:00 am. These pictures are pictures I took along the way.

I thought it was cool how the clouds were sitting down on the mountains.












This is Kluane (pronounced Clue-on-knee) Lake. I understand it's icy cold and extremely deep. On one of the mountains that border the lake, you can see mountain goats. The mountain is really steep (think sheer drop down the side of a cliff) and it's impressive to see how they just casually lope around on something I'd be afraid to ski down. I didn't get a picture because you need binoculars to see them and so if I had tried to take a picture, all you would have seen would have been a mountain.





This is the Alaska highway. They're doing a lot of construction and there are vast stretches of road that are dirt and gravel and potholes and washboard (you know - like my abs). The road can be brutal to your car. If you drive this highway, you want a tire changing kit and a spare tire. Or two.








He was just hanging out on the road like "I have no fear. Just try to take me out. I dare you."












These are the Canadian Rockies. Yeah, they're freakin' awesome and so dang beautiful. Again with the tears and the beauty.

This is my commute. Yeah. I love life.










Some people wake up to traffic jams and smog. The Alaskans and Canadians wake up to this.













Proof - Wal-Mart is actually everywhere. Thank goodness. I had stuff I had to pick up.













Whitehorse! We made it! It's a cute little gold rush era town. They do a show here called the "Frantic Follies" that our passengers watch because, while Whitehorse is a charming place, there's not a heck of a lot to do.










The main street in Whitehorse.














Whitehorse is located down on the banks of the Yukon River. It's surrounded by hills and mountains and is a quiet little town. The people are friendly, the air is clean, and most important, they have Tim Horton's which has sour cream doughnuts that are really, really good.









Okay. So, parking meters in DC and New York - I get that. Parking meters in Whitehorse? Seriously, everything is located within a three block radius. Plus, visitors (you know, the one's who would actually have to use the parking meters) can get a three-day parking pass to encourage them to stay in Whitehorse. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the meter?












Around 10:00 pm we were driving along the highway. We had passed about seven moose on our journey and suddenly, we came upon these guys. There were three of them. We just got pictures of two. They were small - probably still cubs - but the mother was no where to be seen. They were really cute! I've only seen bears one other time in Alaska. Bear sightings along the highway like this are rare. I know people that have lived here for years and have never seen a bear. Of course (seriously) these also tend to be people who don't get out a lot. If you travel, you're going to see bears sooner or later, I think.


They were actually a lot closer than my camera makes them look. They were probably 20 feet from the sprinter (the vehicle we were driving).












This is glass on the dashboard. Just keep reading...













This is the sprinter. This is what I drove to and from Whitehorse.













Remember what I said about the road construction? Well, we were in one of the road construction areas going about 20 miles an hour since it was all potholes and washboard when a guy pulling a trailer comes flying from the opposite direction like he's in the Indy 500. I look back at him and think, he's going WAY too fast when I hear a crack and then my passengers ask me if I'm okay.







I look up and see this in my windshield. I look down and I have glass in my lap, all over the steering wheel, and all over my hands and arms. We pulled over and I brushed the glass off myself, the seat, the steering wheel, and anything else it had covered. The worst part is that the crack was right exactly where I looked out the windshield. I ended up driving by leaning to the right. I drove from Beaver Creek to Whitehorse and then Whitehorse back to Fairbanks with that crack in the windshield.