Our first experience of traffic and ‘big city’ since leaving Georgia! Anchorage rather sprawls out, but the grid layout made it easy to navigate around town. Our first stop was to the Smithsonian museum – with a great display of Alaskan native life of the various tribes – Aleut, Inuit, Yupik, Athabascan and Tlingit. Some of the clothing exhibits were particularly interesting – including a jacket made out of complete birds sewn together! (the earliest puffer jacket!) Their balanced lifestyle was very evident in the displays – working in harmony with their surroundings.
We had lunch in the camper while parked beside Anchorage Airport – strange thing you might think – but seeing the planes linning up to land with Mt. Denali in the background was rather neat!
Finding a place to camp for the night was interesting – our iOverlander app was showing very few boondocking spots – one was on a city street which didn’t appeal – another was a good ways out of town and sounded interesting. However, as we navigated our way out, Google Maps insisted on taking us through a huge military camp! We asked at the gate if it was possible to traverse through – nope! So we got turned around and looked for an alternate route. Again and again Google insisted on taking us through the camp – so we basically ignored it and made our way towards the camping spot – only to find that it lay within the camp perimeter! Rats! As a bailout, we rationalized going into an organized campground on the basis that we’d be able to do laundry and get long hot showers! Worked out quite well!
The following day we met up with friends from my past cruising history – Anders and Annette, who have been cruising up through the Aleutians and are headed down to the Olympic Peninsular prior to a second crossing of the Pacific next year. It was great to see them both.
From Anchorage we headed north and stopped at a pub in Palmer. It was very nice, very friendly, the dogs were welcome and the drinks were flowing. One of the locals bought us ‘Duck Fart’ shots – which were very tasty, and several ended up being sampled. Fortunately, our campsite was nearby and we stumbled our way home!
Kahlua, Baileys, Crown Royal
After Palmer, we headed towards Talkeetna – by way of the Hatcher Pass and the Independence Mine workings. Now defunct, it was once a successful gold mine.
The Hatcher Pass is a gravel road with steep inclines and hairpin bends, going up over the mountain, where numerous paragliders were launching. On our way down, we took a detour along Upper Willow Road to a boondocking spot identified in iOverlander… ‘road’ is a bit of an exaggeration as it was really a collection of rocks and potholes! Still, we made our way slowly along and found a most excellent spot, right beside the small stream. It was so nice we stayed there for a couple of nights and got time to explore another disused mine.
Next stop was Talkeetna where we had an appointment for a flightseeing tour that would take us to the top of Denali (requiring oxygen) and included a glacier landing. It was a thrilling ride and the weather was spectacular.
We stayed another day in Talkeetna and got to take in a fantastic band ‘Rose’s Pawn Shop’ at a cosy pub. They were to headline a few days later at the Salmon Festival – but apparently like coming to Talkeetna for this small event. We danced and made fools of ourselves!
Time to head East…
We started our homeward journey, with an overnight stop in the Anchorage campsite again to replenish supplies and to do our laundry. From there, we headed along the Glenn Highway to Glenallen and then along the Tok Cutoff where we turned right onto the Nabesna Road – which is the only northern access into the Wrangel-St. Elias National Park. The road resembled the road into McCarthy (southern access into the Wrangel-St. Elias National Park) – basically a groomed gravel road with lots of pot-holes to a state campground at the 28mile marker. While there was room within the campsite, we opted to boondock on the side of the road, in order to avoid some of the flies that were in abundance.
Past the campground, the road deteriorated significantly, but we were able to carefully pick our way to the end of the road at Nabesna – where there are a few buildings and an airstrip. Not much to see so we headed back again to a fantastic boondocking spot that we’d noticed on the way out, lying right beside a river.
The best feature of all the boondocking spots is that we can usually let the dogs run free and they have a complete blast.
We continued eastward the following day through Tok and to the Alaska/Yukon border where we were warmly greeted at the Canadian immigration post.