Tuesday July 6 I arrived in Anchorage (1) in bright sunshine at 9 p.m. I am staying at a Bed and Breakfast place right outside of town. I took a taxi to the home. The lady taxi driver was also a photographer. She would be interested in keeping in touch with us during the winter through the Internet.
Wednesday July 7 It is 4:00 a.m. and light outside. Because of the time difference, I am up and ready to go. First activity will be a train trip down to the Whitter area. In Whittier, I took a boat trip through the Blackstone Glacier (2). Even though it was pouring rain along the coast, glaciers were a great site. The salmon in this region is great.
Thursday July 8 Today was spent on another train going from Anchorage north to Mount McKinley which is now called Mount Denali. (3) This two-hundred-mile trip took most of the day. The train was a lot nicer with the best meals. The pancakes were great. I arrived at the Wilderness Lodge in Denali. There are many tourists here but the prices do not seem that unreasonable. I went on an evening Whitewater Raft trip down the Nenana River near Mt. Denali. This river flows north. The class three and four whitewater were tricky to navigate. I saw beautiful scenery. Unfortunately, I could not take pictures. The camera would be wet, and I needed to hold on to the raft anyway. The water temperature was 36 degrees. I wore a dry suite which was impossible to get on. I did not get back to my hotel room until after midnight, but the sun was still shining.
Friday July 9 I stayed in the Wilderness Lodge Village. After lunch, I took an eight-seater plane and flew around Mt. Denali. It was a clear day and was absolutely beautiful. I left on the four o’clock train heading toward Fairbanks. I saw a lot of beautiful scenery. I arrived at Fairbanks (5) at ten and took a cab to a Super Eight Motel.
Saturday July 10 I went on a fifteen-hour journey to the Arctic Ocean. (4) The van picked me up right at my hotel at six in the morning. Traveling the Dalton Highway with seven other people and Joe, our driver was a lot of fun. We stopped in some interesting places and met some interesting people. We waited thirty minutes for construction workers to open the road during twenty miles of construction. While crossing the Arctic Circle we saw famous landmarks. We eat lunch at the Coldfoot Truckers Cafe where we got to socialize with the truckers, some of which were on the Ice Road Truckers television show. We saw a brown bear off the road. Seeing rain and possible sleet in the mountains in July made for a very muddy experience.
Sunday July 11 Spending the day touring all the oil fields involved passing a lot of security checkpoints. I met with Bill, the owner of the hotel. He showed me around, fed me, and will be contacting students in the fall. I slept in the rooms reserved for the oil workers. (4) In the evening, things got interesting. I was going to go to Barrow (Utqiagvik) on ERA airlines. (Note: The city of Barrow changed its name to Utqiagvik in 2016.) The flight was cancelled, and the next flight out was not until Monday evening which would change all my flight plans for the rest of the trip. There are no refunds on any of my hotel reservations either. I decided to arrive in Fairbanks a day early and give up seeing Barrow (Utqiagvik). The last flight out to Anchorage and a Fairbanks connection was my only choice. I flew first class to Anchorage and then switched to a Turbo Prop plane going to Fairbanks. I arrived at ten in the evening.
Monday, July 12 I toured the greater Fairbanks area. Everywhere I went, there were outlets that looked like parking meters. (5) They were designed so drivers could plug in their car during the cold winter.
I arrived in the early afternoon at a bed and breakfast. I stayed for two days while touring the north Fairbanks region. The hosts were two teachers who gave me a great home to relax in. Their house was five miles from a little village called “Fox”. This community is right near a gold mine, thirty miles north of Fairbanks. Most of the roads are gravel in this area. Learning about some Inuit heritage was my agenda for today. I eat whale blubber called “muktuk”. It was really good.
In the evening, I ended up going to the Eldorado Gold Mine. (6) It was a real working gold mine where you could pan for gold and keep what you found. I ended up getting four grains of gold worth about twenty dollars I got a locket where you could put the gold shavings. I met a good country singer and fiddle player, Earl Hughes, who acted as the host for this tour. He ended up visiting our school in Pennsylvania and gave us a free assembly.
Tuesday, July 13
I went to Chena Hot Springs. (7) It was a ninety-minute drive from Fox, just down the road. There was a beautiful hot spring lake with waterfalls. I spent the rest of the day with other activities. Chena is a place where they take the thermal energy and convert it into electricity. They grow their own vegetables in a greenhouse for no cost whatsoever. The homemade salad was very good. I went in the famous icehouse. This building was a museum full of ice sculptures including an ice chess set. Anyone could even sleep in the house for six hundred dollars a night. The Iditarod dog kennel with over 100 dogs was my afternoon tour. I got to meet all the dogs and see puppies that were groomed for the race. I was given a tour by a real musher who had some interesting stories. I flew into Anchorage on the 10 p.m. flight and spent the night before heading out the next day.
Wednesday, July 14 I spent today traveling north and east of Anchorage to see glaciers. I started by going into Wasilla and drove up to Hatcher’s pass (8) which was close to 5000 feet in elevation. I was told by some locals that this was a great thing to see if I was in the area. The cliffs were huge, and the scenery was beautiful. I went southeast on the Alaskan Highway to Milepost 102.5 to visit the Matanuska Glacier. ) There was an unadvertised spot where tourists could actually walk on the glacier. Private individuals owned land between the road and the glacier, and they charged twenty dollars to access the road. After going down a drive on top of a cliff without guard rails and signing a release, I was ready to go. All that was needed would be another three-mile drive and a thirty-minute walk over a mountain to get to the glacier. Once on the glacier, I got stuck in some quicksand and had trouble getting up a slippery ice hill. It was the highlight of my trip.
Thursday, July 15 Today was spent going into the city of Anchorage. I went to the Fifth Avenue Mall to get presents for all of my family. I met a fur coat maker who buys skins from trappers and can make a coat in less than twenty-four hours. I got sample scraps of different firs he created. Today, is my last day in Anchorage. I am flying home on an 8 pm flight.
Friday, July 16 I was flying on United Airlines. The flight went directly from Anchorage to Chicago. It was a six hour flight with three hours added on. We arrived at O’Hare at 5 a.m. The plane was completely full and the air conditioning was not working. This was a very long night. I had forty-five minutes to connect to another United flight to Philadelphia. The gate was a fifteen-minute run for me in the airport. I got to the gate right when they started boarding. The flight to Philadelphia was uneventful. I arrived home about noon and went to bed.
