The Klondike 1998 - Alaska.
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Page 1: Canada - British Columbia, Yukon.
Page 2: Alaska. Page 3: Canada - Yukon & Alaska - The Alaskan Marine Highway. |
Last Updated December 14, 2010.
The Klondike group 1998 in Alaska.
| Finally on September 3rd we so arrived to Poker Creek and the Alaskan border on our "Klondike" trek. We were all extremely excited about this and got quickly out of the van to take a lot of photos and when we showed our passport at the border we also all got this very nice stamp in it, the picture of a Caribou. |
Chicken Alaska
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We drove a few more miles to Chicken Alaska, a small town we all had heard so much about, to
take a brake and have lunch. When we arrived there we all had a big laugh at the welcome sign
beside the road which said; Welcome to Chicken Alaska - population 22 and one grumpy
grandpa.
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 Beautiful downtown Chicken, Alaska. |
 Me sitting in the "The husband waiting area". |
In the town itself, and the downtown it just existed 4 buildings; 1 Saloon, 2 gift shops and 1
Cafe´.
Outside one of the gift shops I found the place for me;"The husband waiting area", and I sat down there for a while, in Old Grump's Chair to see if any husbands showed up. Strange enough no one did????? |
Tangle Lake
| After our lunch brake in Chicken we continued to Paxton and Tangle Lake where we had rented a cabin for the night. On our way over there we came across a Moose family beside the road and the girls from "OZ" got pretty excited about that since they had never seen a Moose before. Me being a Swede; I almost said here I see them every day, which is not true of course, but we see them pretty often along the roads and in the forests over here so I am quite used to them. So I remained in the van when the rest got out to take a closer look at them. Then suddenly the Moose family started to move across the road 10 meters away from the van and all of the girls on the outside came running inside screaming, and I started to laugh of course, it looked so funny (forgive me girls, but I couldn't help myself). I wish I could show You a picture of that. |
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Tangle Lake is a very nice place and for the first time in days, for some of us, we were
about to sleep in a bed and believe me; it felt like heaven.
We also had a very nice evening here with good food and relaxing time in a beautiful environment. |  Our cabin at Tangle Lake in the sunrise. |
Denali National Park
 On the road from Tangle Lakes to Denali NP. |
The next morning we continued our journey to Denali NP, which was something we all had been
looking forward to.
It was a beautiful drive with a lot of photo stops. When we arrived to Denali NP we first went to the visitor center to have a look what to do the following two days. We knew that we were going to do a lot of hiking the question was which ones. After that we went to our campground by the river; Grizzly Bear Campground. |
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Then the next morning we entered the bus that was going to take us out on our journey in to
Denali Nationalpark. No one is allowed to drive in to the park by themselves. We were very excited because we had great hopes to catch some wildlife in there and of course at the top of our list were the Grizzly Bears. The bus ride was about 3 ½ hours before we got out at Eilson where we had decided to go on a long hike out in the wilderness. |
 Me jumping around in front of the old school bus that took us in to Denali NP. |
 The magnificient Mt McKinley. |
On the way in to the Denali area we saw our first Grizzly Bear on a distance.
We also saw the Alaskan State bird The Ptarmigan, some Dall Sheep, Caribou's etc. and the magnificent Mt McKinley,
North Americas highest mountain in a beautifully clear sky. Seeing Mt McKinley in a clear sky like this is a very unusually sight. |
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The hike we did that day at Elison was great but also exhausting. We split up in to smaller groups and five of us went on this 6 hours hike where we managed to see a lot of wildlife. |
 Me and Lisa taking a brake. |
 The curious Fox. |
One of the highlights for me was when we saw a Wolf from
a distance; just sitting there, looking at us for a long time. We also saw a huge Grizzly Bear
not far away when we had stopped to take a brake. I must admit I was a little bit scared at the time, beeing so close to a Bear. When we were almost at the end of the hike we met this very cute little Fox, sitting there for a long while watching us to see what we were up to. |
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The hike we did that day was quite hard. We went up and down the steep hillsides, went through a lot of bushes, in and out the creeks so we were all tired, sweating and wet when we got
back to the road where we were very close to miss out the last shuttle bus back to civilization.
I ended up with a huge blister on my fot after that hike.
On our way back on the shuttle bus we were that fortunate to see some more wildlife beside the road. At one time we stopped to have a look at a Moose family again and this time we managed to get some photos. |
 The king of the forest. |
 Me waiting for the bus to pick us up. |
The next morning five of us went back in to the park to do some more hiking and the rest of
the group stayed at the visitor center to do some hiking over there.
As I said before no one is allowed to drive in to the park by themselves and the shuttle bus thing works out like this; You enter the shuttle bus at the visitor center and then you either get of the bus at the regular stops or you tell the driver where you want to get of and they stop there for You. When you want to go back you just go out on the road and wait there for the next shuttle to show up, wave your hand and they'll pick You up. Works very smoothly. |
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This time we decided to get out first at Toklat and do some hiking in that area and then take
the shuttle again to go out at the Polychrome Rest Area and do the same there.
This day was the big day when we actually have some real Bear sights. A couple of hours after we left the VC in the shuttle bus in to the park we were very fortunate to meet up with a whole Bear family; mother and her 3 cubs. The shuttle bus stopped for us to take photos and we were told to be very silent not to let the Bears hear human voices. |
 The curious Bear cub very close up. |
 Very close Bear experience. |
We had our windows open and we took photos like crazy? They were all sitting on the
hillside but suddenly one of the Bears got a bit curious and came down to the bus.
Not ones the Bear look straight at us, just passing by very slowly like it wanted to be seen but not wanted to see us. I was so exited about this that I was shaking and had a hard time keeping my camera steady. |
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The hikes we did this day were just short ones and we kept close to the road so we wouldn't get
lost. My foot was aching from the blister I got the day before so we took it a little bit easy.
But we saw some wild life again; Yellow Bellied Marmot and some Dall Sheep up in the mountains to mention a few. |
 Looking for wildlife in Denali NP. |
 Rainbow over Denali NP. |
On our way home later it started to rain and afterwards this very beautifully rainbow came up
in the sky over the autumn colors trees. |
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When we came back to our Denali camp it was time for the Swedish Chef to make dinner.
The next day we drove to Anchorage to spend a few hours in the town before we headed of to Seward and Millers Landing Campground. |
 The Swedish Chef in action with the wooden spoones - Skidi, bidi, budi....... |
Seward and Kenai Fjords
 Our first Killerwhale in the Kenai Fjords. |
At the campground in Seward we met up with two other Trek groups and we spend a few hours in the evening
by the campfire together.
In the morning the next day we took this 8 hours boat cruise out on the Kenai Fjords to see if we could catch up with some wildlife in the sea. O'boy that was an excellent trip, we saw it all. We had just left the shore when we met up with a Sea Otter lying on his back in the water, eating from something he had on his belly. A few minutes later we saw our first Orcas or Killerwhales and then during the whole trip they showed up everywhere. |
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On our way in to the bay with the Glacier we saw a rare sight; a Bold Eagle sitting in a tree.
He took off when we got to close and it was a beautifully sight seeing this huge bird fly in the
air in it's naturally environment.
When we got to the Glacier we stayed beneath it for a while and suddenly we heard a big crack in the ice and a big pile of it went down in to the water a few meters away from us with a big splash. |
 Me in front of the big Glacier. |
 Another Orcas very close up. |
After that we headed back for shore and we saw more sea life; on a small island a group of Sea
Lions was lying, and then again some Orcas showed up.
I think we were very fortunate during this trip, the next day the weather was pretty bad again and one of the other trek groups that went out on the same trip didn't see at all as much as we did. It was a bit cold out there though, out on the water, even me the Swede was freezing a bit. |
 Me again and the Big Glacier. |
 Me trying to take cover from the cold on the boat. |
Exit Glacier
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The following day we went hiking again, up to the magnificent Exit Glacier together with one
of the other trek groups.
It was quite a hard walk up there and I know some in the group were fortunate enough meet up with some Black Bears on the way up. The four of us who walked together; we managed to miss out on that. There was a lot of snow on the top and it started to rain a bit so we were quite frozen when we finally got to the top. Unfortunately my camera didn't enjoy the cold so it didn't work until we were on our way down again. |
 My fellow Trekkers; Nicole, Lisa and Marc on our way down from Exit Glacier. |
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The next day we drove back to Anchorage again but this time just for the night. The next day
was a long day in the van again for another border crossing back in to Canada and Yukon.
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I wish to thank those in the Klondike group who sent me some of the photos that are included
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Last Updated December 14, 2010 - 09:15 CET.