August 5 to August 11 Kenai to Washington State

This was our last week in Alaska.  We went from Anchorage, Alaska to our sons house in Washington state.  We had to start working on getting back so they could go to work and we will watch the grand-kids this next week.

We stopped at the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center.  It had passport stamps for the National Wildlife Center.

On our drive we came across the ending of a bike race on the Alaska highway.

We stopped at Kluane National Park.  It is the Canadian part of Wrangell Mountain & was the only visitors center that we had not visited.

We stopped at Million Dollar Falls.  They had a boardwalk for viewing the falls.

There were several large glaciers along the way.

This large jack hammer was chipping away at the mountain for making larger lanes on the road.

There was also an operating fish wheel in one of the rivers near Haines, Alaska.

In we went to one of two Hammer Museums in the world. The other hammer museum is in Lithuania.

We found a hammer that would be perfect for NOMADS to use.  An electric hammer.  Actually it was invented to be plugged in to keep the user's hands warm.

They had a claw hammer with a real claw handle as well as a collection of over 80,000 real hammers that had been collected.

There was a moose that had antlers made out of hammers.

We went to a fish packing company. They get fresh fish from the boats, gutted the fish, filet them, cut them into portions and package & freeze them.

It was called Haines Packing Company

In Haines there were several carved statues of Alaska wildlife.

Our campground in Haines was right on the ocean.  The weather was rainy & cool with gale force winds most of the time we were there.

At one of the state parks was a fish weir.  It was a mama bear & her 2 cubs that hung out there feeding on the fish stopped it.

We took the ferry to Skagway on our way back.

The weather was rainy & cool.  The water was choppy.  We saw several waterfalls along the way.

We docked in the same area as the cruise ships.

We went to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park.  The grand-kids got their junior ranger badges there.

On display at the train depot were two old trains.  The red one was used for clearing snow off the train tracks as a snow blower.

We took the train trip to White Pass.

We passed a Salmon Hatchery.

We crossed over several rivers & through several tunnels.

We ended the trip at White Pass.

White Pass is just inside the border of Canada. You can see the fog that surrounded us at this level.

We stopped at the Gold Rush Cemetery in Skagway.

Carcross welcome's visitors with a caribou sign.

Even though it was wet rainy weather we saw two beautiful rainbows on our drive.

There were several large water falls.  This one was filled with soil from the mountains.

In the rain we stopped in Hyder at the Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site.

We were hoping to see bears in the river but all we saw were lots of salmon spawning.

We stopped at Bear Glacier.

There was lots of farm country on our way to Washington State.

A moose decided to run out in front of the truck.

The city of Quesnel is known as gold pan city.

There were several forest fires all over British Columbia.  The smoke was everywhere.

On Saturday we made it to Washington state.

July 29 to Aug 4 Fairbanks to Seward

After our trip to the Arctic Ocean we spent time cleaning up our vehicles and ourselves. It was nice to have sunshine again! This week we were with the kids on the visit to Fairbanks, Denali National Park,  and Seward.

As we left the campground mama moose & her two babies crossed the road in front of us.

Our first venture was to Gold Dredge #8 to pan for gold.

As with most "towns" in Alaska there was a sign post telling how far Gold Dredge # 8 was from everywhere else.

We traveled by train.  The conductor provided entertainment before we left.  He sang several "oldies" songs with the audience joining in.

Along the way we saw a lot of mining equipment.  When we got to the dredge we were told how it worked & the history of gold dredging in the area.

We all received a small bag of soil with gold filings in it to pan.  After directions we each tried our luck at finding gold!  We ended up with over $70 worth of gold.  The grand kids got their gold into pendants, & Amy & I had ours put into a lockets on magnets.

After returning from our gold panning trip, we were treated to some information about the Alaska oil pipeline by a man that had worked on the pipeline.

While our son & wife got ready for their family overnight backpacking trip in Denali National park, we took the kids on a train trip at Pioneer Park.

Before having dinner at the Salmon Bake, we watched the ducks in the park pond.

On the way to Denali we watched the mountains open up through the clouds, we were treated to a great view of Denali.

While the kids were backpacking we took a 6 hour bus tour to Eielson Visitor Center in the center of Denali National Park.

Along the way we saw lots of animals including this fox.

There was grizzly bear that followed the bus for a short time.

Before leaving Denali, we went to the Sled Dog Demo. There were several friendly dogs to pet and Elizabeth was making friends!

The park rangers demonstrated how the dogs are hooked up to a sled & how the dogs work together. The dogs are used to patrol the park in winter.

Along the way to Seward in the rain we were treated to some great mountain views. Here the clouds are peaking over the top of the mountains.

We stopped at Exit Glacier Area of Kenai National Park.

After hiking to Exit Glacier the grand-kids finished their junior Ranger books & got their junior ranger badges for the park.

Our next stop was the Alaska Sea Life Center.  We all had to check out all the neat sea creatures in the touch tank.

There was a sea lion who posed for pictures.

Some of the creatures were amazing.

We finished the week by stopping at another one of the Wrangell-St. Elias Visitor Centers.