DAY 276 Wednesday 11th JUNE 2008

Seward, Alaska (Miles to Date: 28350)

After spending Tuesday all at sea we decided to focus our last few days in Steward on terra firma. Since arriving in Alaska and Emily finding out about the existence of kennels for dog sledding huskies that were open to the public we had been pressurised into visiting one of these establishments. Luckily enough one such place existed close to Seward. Despite this being summer and the snow being long gone this tour also promised us a sled ride – how could we turn down this opportunity. So on Wednesday off we set to the “Iditaride” Dog Sled tour.

Dog sledding is a big winter sport here in Alaska and the blue riband event of the sledding world is the Iditarod, the largest sporting event in Alaska (which is not saying too much). The official website of this annual event best describes it:

“A race over 1,150 miles of the most extreme and beautiful terrain known to man: across mountain ranges, frozen rivers, dense forests, desolate tundra and windswept coastline”

Today the event starts in Anchorage before heading off into the vast Alaskan interior and finally ends up in the remote North Western coastal town of Nome. Amazingly the current fastest winning time record was set in 2002 by Martin Buser with a time of 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, and 2 seconds. Wow!

The race is named after the town of Iditarod, which was an Athabaskan village before becoming the centre of the Inland Empire's Iditarod Mining District in 1910, and then turning into a ghost town at the end of the local gold rush. The name Iditarod may be derived from the Athabaskan haiditarod, meaning "far distant place". The event in part is a tribute to the 1925 serum run to Nome, also known as the "Great Race of Mercy." A diphtheria epidemic threatened Nome, especially the Inuit children who had no immunity to the "white man's disease," and the nearest quantity of antitoxin was in Anchorage. Since the two available planes were both dismantled and had never been flown in the winter, Governor Scott Bone approved a safer route. The 20-pound (9 kg) cylinder of serum was sent by train 298 miles (480 km) from the southern port of Seward to Nenana, where it was passed just before midnight on January 27 to the first of twenty mushers and more than 100 dogs who relayed the package 674 miles (1,085 km) from Nenana to Nome. The dogs ran in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles (160 km).

Anyway back to our tour! The kennels is operated by the Seavey family and multi-generation dog mushing industry. In 2004 Mitch Seavey won the Iditarod and continues to participate along with his three sons. Our first stop on the tour is to see the dogs. They have some 90 huskies at this particular kennels, they are all chained to a stake just far enough apart from them not to reach each other. Their only shelter is a small plastic kennel which they can barely fit into. Karen and Emily are pretty shocked by these conditions, especially when you realise these dogs live out here even through the harsh Alaskan winters. We are told the dogs are friendly, although the sight of us has got them all of a quiver as they know our arrival means some will be going out on a run. These dogs do not like most people’s vision of a husky. They are skinny, wiry dogs of various shapes, colours and sizes; bred for racing. We are told the husky is a mutt – a mixture of dogs aimed at breeding the perfect sled pulling beast. After the initial shock of all this we go over and start petting and fussing some of the dogs and they are indeed friendly. Next up is the sled ride. Eight of us climb aboard what can best be described as a metal framed cart – with wheels instead of runners. We sit and watch as the handlers untie 14 of the dogs and hitch them to harnesses on the front of our cart. The back of the cart is tied to a large post to stop us being pulled away before our musher is ready. Our young guide/ musher unties the cart and after a couple of simple instructions off we head. The tour is around 20 minutes long but is punctuated by stops so the dogs don’t overheat – this balmy weather is too hot for these guys they prefer minus 40. Along route we get told about the basics of mushing. All too soon we are back.

Next stop on our tour is the breeding kennels where they have a litter of small puppies and some a few weeks older. We are introduced to Danny Seavey – one of Mitch Seavey’s sons. Emily is in her element as we are allowed to pick up and cuddle the smaller pups and go into the kennel and frolic with the older ones. Also here are a couple of Melamute’s. These dogs look more like the traditional image of huskies, hairy rounded faces, powerful features – real beasts of burden. Apparently these dogs are strong and great for pulling big loads but are too slow for racing. Our final stop is a lean to building where we are shown a video about dog sledding and our young musher friend shows us some of the essential equipment used in racing; from the sleds to clothing to food. This is a hands on demonstration so Jack and Emily are willing volunteers to dress up in clothing to preserve life at frigid temperatures at minus 40 and lower.

Despite being saddened but the apparent harsh conditions in which the dogs are kept (we are assured this is the norm) we had a wonderful time and learnt a lot about a sport about which we had no idea.

DAY 275 Tuesday 10th JUNE 2008

Seward, Alaska (Miles to Date: 28330)

Another Alaskan summer’s day – cold with a low dank mist covering the mountains. Today is an early start, and we wearily raise ourselves from our slumber, grab a quick breakfast from the provision we bought at the local store and hit the road. The plan is to take 9 ½ boat trip from Seward up the Northwestern Fjord some 70 odd miles down the coast. The overcast weather puts some doubt in our mind on this endeavour but we have already bought the tickets so we committed to doing this.

At around 9:00am our boat glides out onto the calm waters of Resurrection Bay, a deep water bay cut by glaciers. The bay is surrounded by steep mountains (so we believe as they are not visible today) which butt up right against these frigid waters. As we pull away we have our first wildlife sighting, a very cute sea otter contentedly floating on his back as we cruise past him. These wonderful and endangered creatures were nearly hunted into extinction but fortunately are now protected, but fishing and other man-made influences to their environment still put these otters at risk.

We leave our otter friend behind and travel further down the bay. Our captain for the day is handsome (this is Karen’s opinion not Marks!!) and dry-witted uses his eagle eyes to keep an eye out for any more wildlife. Occasionally the radio sputters into life and tour boat captains further up the bay radio in potential spottings. After one such call we head towards the shore. Here we find a pod of Orca (Killer Whales) serenely swimming and hunting in the bay for King Salmon. Almost immediately as we pull to a juvenile Orca breaches (jumps clear of the water) and crashes back down. We all see this except Karen – who always seems to miss these. Truly wonderful! Our captain explains more about the Orcas and how they can be identified individually by their markings and how the pod can be identified by their calls. Unfortunately we cannot hang around too long as there is much more to see so off we head further up the bay towards to the Bay of Alaska and the open ocean.

As we get closer to the open seas two things happen – the wave action gets more pronounced and secondly we start to see whales. These are not Orcas this time (which are actually not whales) but hump back whales. Back in March we had down a whale tour in Hawaii to observe the humpback whales that visit to breed in the warm waters of the pacific during the winter months before returning north to their feeding grounds. We wonder whether if any of these humpback we see now were the same individuals we saw thousands of miles south of here – a romantic but unlikely prospect. It is difficult to say how many humpbacks we saw during this trip but it was probably between 15 and 20 – most were distant sightings but we were treated to one or two visits by these 40 foot long magnificent mammals much closer, perhaps 75 to 100 feet from our boat.

Jack and Emily were enjoying the ride. Jack was determined to demonstrate his man hood by staying outside on the bow of the boat for the whole trip. Despite this technically being summer in Alaska it was a raw day and he got absolutely frozen, but was determined to take this adventure head on and spent about 90% of the journey outside. Although we had to thaw him out at the end of the day. Emily, who sensibly like her parents, spent more time inside only venturing out to see sights before returning to the warm, spent most of her time befriending everyone on the boat. She stuck up a relationship with two ladies travelling with one of their grandchildren. At the end of the tour these ladies said how wonderful Emily was and we think they would have happily adopted her. It is amazing how much better behaved our children are with other adults!

Eventually we pass through the rougher open waters of the Bay of Alaska, around the Kenai Peninsula into the calm waters of the Northwestern Fjord. Our main purpose of coming here is to see glaciers. On a clear day glaciers can be seen high up in the valley and circs of the mountains – but today we have come to look at tidewater glaciers. These glaciers are descending from the vast Harding Ice Field high up the mountains, drawn by gravity these rivers of ice cut their way through to the edge of the sea where they crumble into the icy waters. There are three of four tidewater glaciers in this Fjord but the one we have come to see closer up is the Northwestern Glacier. As we approach the glacier the captain has to drop the boat speed as there are huge blocks of ice floating in the water which have fallen from the glacier. We spot grey specs on top of numerous of these floating ice raft, as we draw closer we see that these are actually harbour seals happily resting on their own frozen craft. The captain stops the boat for 15 minutes which gives us time to stare in awe at the magnificent glacier, which even on this cloudy day shimmers a cold blue a few hundred feet from us. This was the real goal this tour for us. 90% of the glaciers in Alaska are retreating at the planet warms and we wanted to see this marvel of nature whilst we still could. Every so often ice would break from the face of the glacier, an phenomenon known as “Carving” and crash into the sea sending us water high into the air. Sadly we all too soon had to leave and return back to Seward.

The trip back was thankfully uneventful. The route was a little different taking in some of the small, uninhabited rock like islands more remote from the mainland. Here are the habitats of the endangered Stellar Sealion communities and sea bird breeding grounds. The cliff walls of these islands are teaming with birds; horned and tufted puffins, auklets and the penguin-like murres. Finally we pull back into dock after a wonderful day at sea (despite the weather)

DAY 274 Monday 9th JUNE 2008

Seward, Alaska (Miles to Date: 28320)

Today we left Anchorage and travelled south towards the Kenai Peninsula. One thing we have learned so far is the unpredictability of the Alaskan weather – today is one of the better days with partially clear skies. Sorry to continue on about the weather but it is a big thing here up in Alaska. In the southern coastal areas, south of the gigantic peaks of the Alaska Range of mountains, the weather is relatively temperate ( it is still cold by most people’s reckoning in the winter) and they get a lot of rain (and snow in the winter – the road side snow markers are about 12 feet high!!). No need to worry about snow today though! Our route takes us down the Seward Highway along a tidal estuary known as the Turnagain Arm. The views are amazing with steep, snow covered mountains of the Chugach Range on either side of the estuary and visible far into the distance. Absolutely stunning! About 40 miles south of Anchorage we pull over in a road side Visitor’s Centre to get our bearing and realise we are only a mile or two from the Alaskan Wildlife Conversation Center (at Mile Marker 79 on the Seward Highway). Of course with an animal mad girl with us stopping was compulsory. In fact it was great fun, with elk, musk oxen, caribou, brown & black bears and or course moose on display. The highlights for us were the brown bears and the moose.

The three brown bears were in a playful mood and when we reached them they were happily frolicking in the pond – despite their mock ferocious attacks its was plain to see they were simply enjoying each others company. We got some great shots as they splashed around for some 15 minutes or so. After that they disappeared into the undergrowth in their enclosure (which to be fair was large – not always making it easy to spot the animals). This would have been enough for us but by the main building of the Center were three very tame moose. Now Emily is a huge fan of moose, but had yet to get close enough to touch one – but these moose unlike their wild cousins were very amiable and sidled up to the fence where we were able to pet them and touch their antlers (commonly referred to as “paddles”). Some of the visitors, who claimed to be locals, were feeding these moose bananas and allowed Emily to have a try. Normally we would not approved of this as they obviously were not supposed to be doing this, but Emily does love her moose and may never get a chance again to feed one, so we turned a blind eye. We were all now very happy!!

A short distance from Wildlife Conservation Center is a turnoff from the Seward Highway which squeezes down a pass through the mountains to the port town of Whittier on Prince William Sound. We didn’t plan to go all this way but wanted to visit the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center at Portage Lake. From here you get a great view across Portage Lake, which has been created by the melting waters of Portage Glacier, which is no longer visible from the Visitors Centre and requires a boat trip out onto the lake which we didn’t have time for today. Portage is also the site of the 1964 earthquake, which had a moment magnitude of 9.2 and was an 8.4 on the Richter scale. It was the most powerful recorded earthquake in U.S. and North American history, and the third most powerful ever measured by seismograph. 131 people died mostly in the tsunami waves which were created by the earthquake. There are some great exhibits in the Visitor Centre, covering the story of the glaciers in the area, impact of people on global warming, the earthquake and the wildlife in the valley. Life is pretty tough here, especially in the winters – although milder than interior Alaska they get feet and feet of snow here.

After Portage Lake we continue south to the town of Seward, where we will be staying for the next few days. We are staying in a small log cabin owned by Joe Allen.. The first person we meet is Joe’s son, TJ. Our quaint log cabin in the woods was small – a one room one bathroom affair with a queen bed and pull out sofa bed. TJ is desperate for company so immediately starts to tempt Jack and Emily to come and play in the woods – he shows them his bow and then his knife. This immediately gets their attention and ours – but a reassuring word from Joe means we relent our concerns and off they go to play, although when Joe tells us of the bears and moose sighted in the woods this does nothing to further allay our fears.