As we finished the last week in Homer Alaska, this week we started moving back north through the Kanai.
We watched the tractors launch boats at Anchor Point.
They pulled the boats out to the water, launched the boats, & return with the empty boat trailers.
Anchor point is the most westerly highway point in the US.
We drove to the Lands End in Homer.
This is the ferry that travels the ports docked in Homer, Alaska.
They have a Memorial for the Seafarer's who have died in there work.
We atched the Salmon fishermen on the river in Hope. They were catching lots of fish.
We went to the Hope-Sunrise Historical Museum. It had several buildings & artifacts from when Hope was a busy mining town.
Hope is a small town that was once a booming mine town.
Moose were crossing the road in front of us.
We went to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.
They had a wide variety of common Alaska animals.
The animals were being taken care of from injuries.
There are lots of glaciers along the roads.
The Wrangell Mountains
We went to the Wrangell-Elias Visitor Center to find out about the road conditions.
The mountains were beautiful.
We went to Worthington Glacier.
There were several waterfalls along the road.
We found the perfect clock for our vacation.
We took a glacier tour from Valdez. We passed an oil tanker being filled.
Fishing net boats were allowed to be out for 14 hours. At 2 pm, they would find out if they would be allowed to fish the next day.
On our trip we saw a Columbia glacier calving.
There was a whale swimming along side of our boat.
We went by the favorite place of the sea lions. We watched them swim, sleep & play.
On the way back we watched one of the fishing boats unload salmon into one of the buyer boats. They use a big vacuum to unload the small fish boat.
After the boat tour we went to Old Valdez. It was declared to be unfit to live in after an earthquake. They moved as many of the original building to the new Valdez site as were possible. The remaining building had been damaged too much so they were burned
At the Valdez there is an oil refining plant.
We stopped at Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery. There were lots of sea lions eating fish. All the sea gulls were trying to steal the fish the sea lions caught.
In one of the museums was a oil barrel that was the first barrel of oil from the pipeline.
On the way out of Valdez, we came across the unfinished railroad tunnel.
We decided to take the McCarthy Road to Kennicott. It is 62 miles long & mostly unpaved. It is built along an old railroad bed. Some of the spikes work their way up into the road.
At the start is a one lane road which was cut out of a mountain.
There are a few one lane bridges. This is the Kuskelana Bridge. It was built in 1910. It has a 525 foot span & is 238 feet above the river.
The decking on the bridge is wood.
At the end of the road is a pedestrian bridge that you cross in order to take the bus to McCarthy & Kennicott. The road has water over it so walking was not recommended.
At the end of the road is the Kennicott Mine. It is a national Historic Landmark.
At the edges of the mine is rocks pushed up.
Kennicott is a historic copper mining town. They have rescued some of the old buildings & are in the process of redoing several more.
In the Visitor's Center is a large quilt displaying Alaska in the squares.
In McCarthy we watched the finish of a marathon where the competitors had to run up a mountain carrying an inflatable raft, jump into the river, paddle back to McCarthy & run to the finish line.
On our way back to civilization we saw the Long Lake Post Office. It was just a joke that someone had put along the road as there is no post office here.
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