We are now in Homer Alaska and finally have decent WiFi. Homer is at the end of a peninsula and is surrounded by glaciers and snow covered mountains. There are three volcano’s in the area and two have been recently active. From the campground we could see steam coming from mount Augustine seventy miles away in the middle of the bay.
The last two day here were sunny and clear. The temperature gets into low sixties in the day and has been dropping to the mid forties at night. This is normal for this area.
I went fishing for halibut on one of the rainy and windy days. We could only go out about thirty miles because of the weather. We only caught fish in the 12 to twenty pound size but everyone got their limit of two. We were fishing in 200 feet of water with two pounds of weight and it took awhile to bring one in.
Our next stop is in Soldotna about eighty miles back the road we came in on.

Welcome to Homer.

Overlook just outside of Homer.

View from the beach at the campground.

Volcano Mt Redoubt.

Harbor View.

View of one of the glaciers.

View from Skyline Drive.

View from Skyline Drive.

View of Homer Spit where all of the ships and fishing boat are docked.

Seward, Alaska Seaport Town

Seward, Alaska is a seaport town. While we were there for three days we saw two different cruise ships in the harbor. We visited the Alaska Sea-life Center and did some touring around the area.

Salmon waiting to go up stream.

Harbor view from the Sea-life Center.

This was the guide that gave a talk about all of the sea birds.
When he started talking this Puffin came up to him.
He put his hand down and it settled in his hand for the whole presentation.

More Puffins

Maggie in front of the Exit Glacier.

Exit Glacier.

I did some geocaching at the glacier.

Waterfall in town from other glaciers.

The road to Seward, Ak.

On the way to Seward from Anchorage we stopped by an wild animal rescue farm. Most of these animals will never be released back into the wild. The scenery on the way was spectacular.

Buffalo

Brown Bear

Musk Ox

Musk Ox

Elk

Caribou

Road To Seward.

Road To Seward.

Road To Seward.

Road To Seward.

Airplanes are everywhere.

Everywhere you go in this area there are airplanes.
Every town of any size has a lake for airplanes to land.

On August 9th we traveled from Denali to Anchorage. The next day we took the train from Anchorage to Whittier. The train followed the waters edge most of the way and passed through two tunnels. The longest tunnel was three miles long and was shared with auto traffic. The cars and trucks had to wait for the train to clear because the road and tracks occupied the same space.

Train terminal

View from train

View from train

View from train

View of train

When we got to Whittier we boarded a boat for a close up look at some glaciers. When we got near the glaciers you could hear the groaning, popping and cracking as they slid down the mountain to the sea. This area gets a lot of precipitation and as much as 100 feet of snow in the high elevations each year.
We had a nice salmon and prime rib dinner on the boat on the way out and desert on the way back. It was a full day we left at 9AM and returned at 8PM. The train ride was two hours each way and the boat trip was about six hours.

Glacier

Glacier

Glacier

Up close the glaciers look blue.
The glaciers absorb all of the other colors
except blue giving it a blue appearance.

It was very cool with an occasional drizzle.

Water fall from the glacier.

Denali, Sunday

On Sunday the sky was clearing and we went back to the park and were able to see Denali. The mountain is all snow above the seven thousand foot mark, the mountain elevation is just above the twenty thousand feet. We are almost 100 miles away at his point.
We also saw a moose from the park road.

Denali

Denali

Bull Moose

In the evening I went out to get something from the truck and saw the most beautiful sunset.
By the time I got my camera it had changed dramatically, but I still got a couple of good shots. The time was about eleven PM.

Denali, Saturday

We are camped just outside Denali National Park. Saturday we went for a tour of the first 15 miles of the park road. It was cloudy and we did not see Mount McKinley or known locally as Denali which mean the big one.
Saturday after we returned Malcolm and I took a hike up the mountain behind the campground.

Great views from the top

That is the campground below.

Check out the path.

Fairbanks

Highlights of our four days in Fairbanks.

This gold dredge was assembled in a dug out large pond
and floated with water from a near by river or creek. It would
then dig its way forward filling in behind and
filtering all of the gold from the rocks and dirt.
All of the tailings they left are just as they left them.
We saw many areas in the Yukon and Alaska
that these dredges were used

Inside the Beast

Inside the Beast.

Buckets used for digging.

Gold Dredge

This steam shovel worked on the Panama Canal,
in Hawaii and finally on the Alaska highway.

Alaska Pipeline

Alaska Pipeline