Traveling through Alaska Days 9, 10 The End!

 Day 9... We signed up for the Kenai Fjords boat tour. It's much nore expensive now than the last time. It was 275.00 a person for about 6-7 hours out on the ocean. We've been on it before, but we never get tired of seeing the beautiful whales and wildlife on that trip, and the spectacular glacier views, so off we went! We hadn't been five miles out of the harbor when we saw our first humpback whale! 

He did a little whirl and twirl around and then he was gone....

We saw otters....They are too cute! Sparky did not know some specifics about them so she was happy to learn some new things today. Alaska is home to about 90% of the world's sea otters. Did you know they have a little pouch of skin under their arms that act as a storage bag? They keep little snacks in them! They are one of the few known non-primates to use tools. They bring up rocks from the ocean floor and use them to crack open hard shelled prey. They don't have blubber but DO have the most dense fur with up to a MILLION hairs per square inch! They have a super fast metabolism and eat up to 20-25% of their body weight every day. A group of otters is called a "raft"...To keep from drifting away in the ocean current, they will hold hands with each other and/or wrap themselves in seaweed and kelp. An otter pup's fur is so dense they can't dive underwater until they get their adult fur. They can live their whole life without ever leaving the ocean. They spend many hours cleaning their fur to distibute the oils throughout their fur. They weigh 75-100 pounds...

We saw mountain goats on the rocky hillsides above us..too far away to get a photo...We saw puffins fly by in front of us..They looked like little footballs. Again, too fast a fly-by to get a photo. We saw the Steller sea lions. Pee-ewww!  Man, do they STINK! From quite far out....

Two Dall porpoise jumped over the bow. They were so fast and left just as quickly. Onwards to Ailalik Glacier and Bear Glacier...

The ship gets in fairly close to the Ailalik glacier...it is always a thrill to see the humongous height of these beautiful glaciers. 

We saw three humpback whales in total today...and to celebrate,  Sparky decided to have a glacier margarita! Here's how they are made...One of the crew was on ice chunk capture duty. 

He scooped up a big chunk of iceberg ice and brought it in to be chopped up and served in frozen drinks of your choice. How cool is that? (see what I did there?) tee-hee....So Sparky had a Ailalik Glacier Margarita, haha.

When we got back, we ate at Ray's restaurant in Seward, the food was just ok, but there's a wonderful view out the window onto the bay. 

After dinner, we had missed the last free shuttle back to the campground. Well phooey! BUT--Seward does have three taxi services and we managed to get one to get us back to the campground. We could have walked, it was slightly less than a mile away, but we were too tired to do that.  One restaurant that WAS recommended by several locals, that we missed, was The Primrose, in town. Ah, well...maybe next time...(hint, hint, Eldy....) He says, maybe, in about two years time, which has been our average between visits. 

Tomorrow is our last full day in Alaska....we will be heading back towards Anchorage to fly out on Saturday morning.

Day 10...Driving back towards Anchorage. First, we stopped at Potter Marsh. It's a fantastic area for bird and wildlife watching with a lot of boardwalks to explore in and around the marsh. We have been there four times and only seen a moose once--make that TWICE! Today--a bull moose! Moseying his way fairly quickly across the marsh. 

Potter Marsh

Turnagain Arm Inlet

After a nice visit at the marsh, we headed to Palmer, AK to spend our last night. Staying in and around Anchorage was a bit expensive, and Sparky did not want to stay in a "parking lot" like Cabelas or a Walmart, so we picked Bear Creek Campground to try first, near Anchorage. Bear Creek is right beside the Turnagain Arm inlet. 

The Turnagain Arm is a dramatic 40 mile long inlet in the Gulf of Alaska. It's known for its extreme high tides, stunning scenery and wildlife--moose, beluga whales and Dall sheep). At Bear Creek, there's a great trail right behind the campground. BUT--sites were short and the small campground was quite busy, so we headed out and picked the KOA in Palmer, instead, with a view of the mountains in front of us.

KOA Palmer, AK

While checking in, Sparky went to pick up some candy bars, and overheard a gentleman checking in, give his phone number and it was the same area code as Eldy's! It turns out he is from the Elkhart/Bristol IN area and just lives a couple of miles away from us! Wow! Small world for sure! He drove up the Alaskan/Canadian Highway (the Alcan) on his motorcycle. Although paved, it's one of the roughest roads and toughest on your vehicle, should you decide to drive from the US to get to Alaska. It's due to the many frost heaves, potholes and construction areas. It's a 1387 mile trip! It runs from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Delta Junction, AK. Amenities and automotive help are sparse, so it's not for the timid traveler. The guy we met was retired and tenting it at the campground. Quite the traveler! Eldy enjoyed having a long conversation with him, once he found out he was from our area.

Sparky busied herself with packing up and finishing up last minute details and a good book. While the guys were talking, Sparky was sitting outside reading and somebody's darn carbon monoxide detector started going off. Those suckers are LOUD! After about 20 minutes with the alarm still going, (it ebbed and flowed decibel-wise with which way the wind was blowing), Sparky went over the the fellas and said, "I wish I knew whose rig that was! Why don't they shut the darn thing off and air out their rig?!" Uh, Sparky, says Eldo, that's our rig. Oh, crap! Sparky had set off the propane gas detector again by microwaving some popcorn and had bumped the loose gas stove knob again. Geesh! Once again, we aired out the rig and the alarm silenced itself. That is a real design hazard if you can bump a stove knob and start the gas flowing that easily!

Alaska Airlines

Our final destination--the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage was just a 40 mile drive the next morning. That airport is the third largest cargo airport in the world. Sparky loves that airport. So many cool things to see there.

The glass panel of the salmon swimming upstream-"Migration"-by Luftz Haufschild is one of Sparky's favorite installations at the airport and it is really beautiful. It features hundreds of individually cut strips of glass laminated into a steel base to represent the outdoors of Alaska and the annual migration of the salmon.

We always get a photo of the airport's resident moose while we are there.

First we had to fill our propane tank and gas tanks before turning our rig in, so we did that. We turned in our rig and Great Alaskan Holidays checked it over and we got the green light to head to the airport on the company shuttle van. 

several planes hanging overhead at the airport

We were flying from Anchorage to Portland, to Dallas, to South Bend. Our Dallas flight got cancelled but we were rerouted to Charlotte NC, then to SB. We made it! But our luggage didn't.  Two days later, however, we got our baggage and settled back in at home in Elkhart, IN. It was a really really great trip! Sparky didn't think about being ill- not once the entire time we were away. That was an added blessing! 

Thanks for following along. We aren't done traveling yet...We'll post again one of these days..Stay tuned!

Traveling Through Alaska Trip 2026 Day 4, Day 5

Our highway guide-a must have!

To recap renting an RV through Alaska, you can get great service and pricing through Great Alaskan Holidays rentals. There are only 12 highways in Alaska, and when you rent an RV from this company, you can only drive on 5 recommended roads. They are: 1. The Glenn Highway- from Anchorage to Canada, 2. The Richardson Highway-from Tok to Fairbanks, 3. The Seward/Sterling Highway-from Anchorage to Soldotna- 4. the Parks Highway-from Palmer to Fairbanks- and 5. The Denali Highway, a mostly unpaved gravel highway which connects Paxon to Cantwell. The reason you can only drive these specific roads is because of road conditions. The four main interstates are in VERY good condition. Other roads are in terrible conditions--frost heaves, gravel, potholes, and you run the risk of damaging your rental RV with flying rocks and damaging your windshield. The Denali Highway is probably the most spectacular 135 mile scenic drive. It is one of the most scenic and remote drives in the world. It is also one of the worst highways to drive on, as it only has about 25 miles of it paved. We attempted it on one day but turned back very quickly as we could only go 25 mph or less and worried so much about damaging the RV we gave up on the rough gravel road. There was almost no cell service and we were worried about our tires going flat and getting help if we needed it. Nobody was on the road! Our goal this trip was to travel to a few different places we hadn't been before but this drive was not to be one of them!

The photo above is our travel "bible" for driving in Alaska--The Milepost. It has a mile marker by mile marker description of the roads-their conditions, the history of the area, places to watch for wildlife -"watch out for moose!" marked in red, and descriptions of reststops and pull outs. It's terrific! You can get it on Amazon and in bookstores. On to Day 4!

Day 4...We headed south out of Denali National Park. We saw a herd of caribou in a low lying field. It was 39 degrees last night! Then we saw a black bear along the roadside! We were driving too quickly to get any photos. We were headed to Talkeetna, a new town for us. It is often described as a quaint drinking town with a climbing problem. We took the Talkeetna Spur Road off the Parks Highway to get there. It's a cute, quirky little town-population of about 900. There is no official government there. If something needs fixing, the people rally together and get it done. The mayor for over 20 years was a cat named Mr. Stubbs. To be more serious, it IS the mountaineering staging area for Denali and a center for flightseeing glaciers and other trips. It has a vibrant arts scene, dirt roads, wooden boardwalks, and an old inn-The Fairview- with the oldest original bathtub in Alaska. There isn't much of a downtown at all, it's a conglomeration of small shops and a couple of small lodging places. There are a couple of really great restaurants there, and some famous spots to try like the spinach bread food truck. There are buildings with interesting placards that tell the location's previous history in front of each establishment.

There is no room for any RV parking downtown but there is a nearby visitor type center with a large empty gravel parking lot as you come into town where you could park a rig and then walk a short distance to town. You can take a short walk from there to see the braided river and mountains in the distance at the river front park. Braided rivers are a combination of silt runoff from the glaciers meandering through the river and giving it a braided look. 

Talkeetna Camper Park

tourist decals from all over on the sign

We stayed at a beautiful little RV campground called Talkeetna Camper Park, which had a terrific lodge style restaurant next door with great food, called "Latitude 62". It's a ten minute walk to downtown Talkeetna from the campground.

Talkeetna is also a place where you can take the Hurricane Turn Train and we did! The Alaskan Railroad has a dedicated track for this small train to ferry people and supplies to and from "the bush". The train stops for wildlife if tourists are on board. The train can be flagged to stop by people out in the remote areas by them just coming to the tracks and waving for the train to stop and pick them up. Drop offs and pick ups are informally requested. Supplies are regularly dropped off to the people living out in the boonies, backpackers get off and on at random stops, and random times. Everybody waved to us as we stopped and let people off and on....

If you are on the train to go to the Hurricane Gulch which is one of the tourist stops, the train will stop for wildlife sightings and even back up for a better look! We started in Talkeetna, the train station was right behind our campground! We did the round trip to Hurricane Gulch and back, and thoroughly enjoyed it. You have to bring your own food and snacks on board as it is a no frills train and the trip was about 6 hours. It travels about 25-30 mph, and there is a person who gives a little history about the area and how the train operates as you go along. We saw a baby moose running uphill. We stopped at an Alaskan author's home right beside the tracks to see her studio and peruse her books. We stopped to let another train go by to use the tracks and visited an old Alaskan Railroad set of train cars with the old historic snow plow.

We saw a mama moose way back in the woods, which the train stopped and backed up so everybody could see it. The engineer saw a mama black bear and baby, but we missed it. 

Hurricane Gulch

We stopped at the famous Hurricane Gulch Bridge, dead in the middle of the tracks overlooking the gorge, and took photos out the open baggage car window. The bridge is 296 feet above the gorge and is the longest, tallest steel bridge in North America. Stopping in the middle of the bridge with just skinny little cables between you and the drop below, and looking down was not for the faint of heart! Sparky felt a little dizzy. The price for this historical train trip was 125.00 a person. We had a great narrator host along for the trip and it was very educational and fun. This is not a well known tour so many people miss this opportunity to see more of the "real" Alaska.

We arrived back at our campsite around 7 and had dinner next door at the Latitude 62. Great food and highly recommended! We had a wonderful conversation with our waiter, Matt, who shared his personal story with coming to Alaska and trying to make it in the difficult climate and the challenges of building and establishing a home for his family.

Day 5... We traveled to Glennallen, AK, to the east, a distance of 219 miles. On our way, we saw a sled dog team pulling an ATV with people on it. That's one of the "sled dog tours" you can take in the summer in the area. On the way driving to Glenallen, we saw a young female moose in a parking lot, just moseying through the lot looking for grasses. You never know where you are going to see moose. They are often by the roadside! Less than a mile away, we saw ANOTHER moose at the side of the road! A little while later, TEN caribou quickly crossed the highway quite far in front of us, but it was still a thrill to see them.

Sparky and Eldo watched the moose for a little while and got one more iconic photo of the moose in front of the Mantanuska Glacier. Wow!

We wanted to stay at a roadhouse called Ranch House RV Park which we remembered from a past trip. It's a cool place, an original Alaskan roadhouse with an historic tavern, on mile marker 173, on the Glenallen Highway. They have added more campsites since the last time we visited a couple of years ago, and the sites are along the Tolsana River. They have full hookups (electric, water and sewer) and some pull thrus.The sites are gravel and level. It's a great stop between Valdez and Anchorage. The lodge/tavern has tremendous fireplace and rockers. Eldy was missing his rocker from home so there he is. 

Which is your favorite name?

The Ranch House has great chili and hot sauces galore as well to choose from! Sparky loves the names of the chilis and the sauces...but no hot sauce for her!

Here is our pull through site at Ranch House RV campground....wish we could have had the windows open at night to hear the rushing creek, but it got down to the low thirties and our water hose froze briefly! 

Ranch House site

Tomorrow we head towards Valdez, 125 miles to the south, and the remarkable Keystone canyon with multiple waterfalls before entering the harbor town of Valdez. See you then!