Category: wildlife

The gang goes North: Part 8- Girdwood, Valdez, McCarthy/Kennecott and the Yukon

.Reading time 20 minutes.

July 26-August 1

Glass on Kenai Lake awaited us the next morning. We’d decided to make our return trip back up the Kenai Peninsula that day, but had some time to spare.

Blowing up the kayak, we floated out onto the water. About a mile wide, and about 22 miles long, with two deep bends, I wanted to get to the east side, across the skinny way. A mountain cascade poured into the lake from beneath a tunnel of small trees, and we traveled to the mouth of it and relaxed for a half hour or so, in silence, save for the stream. Jamie and Charley took a nap. I couldn’t stop staring up at the long bowl that we floated within.

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The gang goes North: Part 7.2- Kenai Peninsula (West side)

.Reading time 15 minutes.

July 21-25

Not shockingly, we left Seward the morning of the 21st in the midst of a rain shower. Heading north along the Seward Highway, then splitting off west along the Sterling Highway, our surroundings changed from mountainous to rolling forested flats. Homer sits at the end of the Sterling Highway, and “The Spit” stretches a handful of miles out into Kachemak Bay, only few hundred yards wide and marks the end of the road- as far south on the Peninsula as a car can take you.

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The gang goes North: Part 7.1- Kenai Peninsula (Seward)

.Reading time 15 minutes.

July 17-20

Rain again. We slept in at Porcupine Campground in Hope, hoping it would dry up outside before we started packing. It didn’t.

Jamie finalized a blog post as we huddled under our awning. We’d be heading further south in the Kenai, to Seward, so we grabbed coffee at Kayak Coffee Co in town to give our bodies a little extra fuel. I spotted a guy wearing a Bills hat under a pavilion beside the coffee shop’s parking lot.

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The gang goes North: Part 3.1

.Reading time 22 minutes.

June 24-29

The Alaska Highway: Dawson Creek, BC to Whitehorse, YT

“Name’s Jim Connors,” said our neighbor at the Dawson Creek Mile ‘0’ Campground. The rolling hills and farms surrounding us reminded me of Upstate NY. It felt familiar, though so far away from home. 

An older gentleman with a hardened smile, Jim gave us the skinny on his upcoming northern journey. His beat up wood-paneled Chevy pickup hailed from Wyoming, as did Jim.

“I get 9 miles to the gallon in that thing, and the front tank doesn’t play nice with ethanol. I’ll try to keep the back tank good and full, but that’ll mean stopping every 120 miles or so.”

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