Alaska 2025 – 25

Our nephew and niece, Brett and Tina Peterson arrived in Anchorage on July 19th. We immediately went to the Alaska Railroad Terminal in Anchorage and booked our Hurricane Turn Train excursion for the 21st (they did not operate the turn route on the day which we had planned). We spent the better part of the day on the train and visiting the town of Talkeetna. Brent managed to spot a black bear up the tracks and we reluctantly admitted that he did indeed see the animal.

The next day, we traveled again up the road and rented ATVs for a three hour excursion up Hatcher Pass Road. We stopped just before midpoint on the road and tried our luck (not) at gold panning. Failing to find the nugget, we continued on.

Brent, Cathy and Tina posed at the gold panning site. ALL pans left empty.

The photographer, trying his hand, and again the pan was empty. Hmmm…

It sprinkled most of the morning and the roads were a little muddy, but we carried on, driving through creeks and over rocks. We spent about three hours driving the rugged little vehicles. Tina and Brent took over the driving about halfway through the trip, just after the gold panning. These are some of the views from the back seat. After the ATV ride, fog had totally obliterated the view of the Independence Mine so we continued on to the local musk ox farm. After spending some time there, we drove to the the Manatuska Glacier view point.

There was a fire when we came through a couple of weeks earlier, but all is clear now. Brent and Tina stood at the view point of the glacier. On the way back from the glacier, we stopped in the town of Palmer to see the visitor center and botanical garden. We also took a drive though the historical Mat-Su Colony, which still had some of the original homes, churches and town hall.

The next day we took a ride out to Eagle River. Not to be outdone, Tina spotted a moose in the bush. The vista opened up as the clouds disappeared. The salmon hadn’t started their annual run up the river so the area was open to hiking. While Brent and Tina hiked up a portion of the original Iditarod Trail, Cathy and I read our books in the sunshine at the visitor center. I managed to take an additional walk down to the river to photograph the beaver dams and a show-off duck.

After Eagle River, we made a stop at Thunderbird Falls, then the historical town site of Eklutna. We saw several spirit houses at the cemetery.

The Russian Orthodox church diocese with local Dena’ina built the Old St. Nicholas church in Knik circa 1870. The structure was relocated to Eklutna in 1897 due to the influx of miners into Knik, which displaced the Dena’ina from the area. In 1972, Russian Orthodox Clergy in Alaska nominated the church, along with 148 other Russian Orthodoxy sites in Alaska, to National Register of Historic Places.

We got up early and headed down the Seward Highway to Portage to catch a 10:30 cruise across the lake to Portage Glacier. Arriving early, even before the ticket center was open, we took a short drive to see the Whittier Tunnel, the longest combined railroad and vehicle tunnel in the country. We got back to the dock in time for the cruise and weather was perfect for glacier viewing.

Tina and Brent on Portage Lake, overlooking Portage Glacier.

Cathy joined the group, viewing the glacier, I was behind the camera.

After viewing the Portage Glacier, we decided to take a hike up to the Byron Glacier. You can see the ice fields in the first photo, a close-up of the ice fields in the second photo and Tina and Brent beating us back to the car in the third photo. We managed to have time to play around on the snowfields without falling!

After the glaciers, we stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, located at the turnoff of the Whittier-Portage Glacier access road. We viewed up close most of the wildlife that is in Alaska, including a reindeer, smaller kin the the caribou, a black bear hiding in its cave, and a moose.

My favorite will always be the grizzly. It was a little warm so the bear was in the water. There were two bears playing in the water and a couple walking about, sometimes sneaking up to the fence and surprising us. Thank goodness for electric fencing, cable and wire! We also saw lynx, porcupine, wood bison, marten, elk and a very, very energetic black bear spinning a piece of wood like a baton!

After the wildlife center, we traveled to Girdwood to visit the country’s smallest Safeway store to get some sodas and munchies. We then drove to a turnout on the Seward Highway and waited for the approaching bore tide. Turnagain Arm is one of only a few places on earth that has a known or expected bore tide. It arrived on time but was not as large as others we have seen. We did see the rapid change in water flow, from outbound to inbound, and watched a dozen or so surfers gather to ride the wave going into the inlet.