Ok, where did we leave off? This will be a long one. I believe we had just gotten to Ninilchik and had visited Homer. We moved camp a little down the road to Halibut Campground (I want to remember this one), where there were so many bald eagles on the beach! They let us get sooooo close. The two below were eating a sea otter 🙁 and it was awesome to be able to watch them so close. We even had Gizmo and Bean with us and they didn’t seem to care at all. The brown ones are juvenile bald eagles and the other, of course, is an adult. Each afternoon there were numerous eagles on the beach just hanging out.
…and in the trees around the campground as well.
The next day we drove to Homer and took the ferry to Seldovia!
On our way, we saw this much of an orca. I have never seen an orca in the wild (Garry had). It was pretty cool. We saw a couple and we saw a whale spouting as well, but just the spout.
We hung out in Seldovia, where we hiked to the beach via the Otter Bahn :-), hung out on the beach watching some otters, then had lunch and back on the ferry.
The next day, we made our way to Whittier, a town you can only access via boat or plane or through a very long (2.5 mile), very narrow tunnel – the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel (the longest tunnel in North America – just a bit longer than the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 in Colorado). Both cars and trains share the tunnel and there is only one lane of traffic, so it is timed throughout the day and they take breaks after each passage of vehicles to air the tunnel out.
Whittier is an odd, very small town, where most of the residents live in one building. It would be a very strange place to live. There are several glaciers in the area but the weather, as you can see from the pictures, was very cold, overcast and rainy, so we just stayed the one night. We will definitely go back, but I would NOT want to live there.
We took a drive through town, got out to look at a river, and turned around and this guy walked out of the bushes. He was much bigger than the other black bears we had seen, or maybe he was just much closer, so he felt much bigger. Didn’t seem to care about us in the least. Below is the link to a short video of him.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/X6gz3pgSsPjJVwMp8
From Whittier, we headed to Wasilla to look at some properties we had seen for sale (we just love this place!!!) and texted our new friends, Patty and Terry (remember them, we met them at the campground and went salmon fishing with them) to see if they could recommend a place to camp near Wasilla. They invited us to stay in their backyard, which was so beautiful and relaxing and better than any campsite we could have found for sure! They have a beautiful pond/lake behind their house, with a picnic table, and fire pit. We also got to meet their adorable dogs and chickens! Such a wonderful place!
We then headed to Talkeetna today on our trek north. Patty suggested we take Hatcher Pass on our way there, and holy moly, it was amazing!! It is good to meet new friends who know the area and can suggest amazing adventures! It was breathtaking!
You know how I love wildflowers! These guys were only in one area near Willow on the West side of Hatcher Pass. I have not seen them anywhere else on our journey. They were like FUR!! Super soft! You could actually pet them. The fur/fluff/whatever it is doesn’t come off. I looked it up, and apparently it is called Arctic Cotton Grass. “Eriophorum is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cyperaceae, the sedge family. They are found throughout the arctic, subarctic, and temperate portions of the Northern Hemisphere in acid bog habitats, being particularly abundant in Arctic tundra regions.” I just love them!
We are now at a campground in Talkeetna, where it is 11:30 and still light out (though overcast and a bit rainy). Not sure where the wind will blow us tomorrow, but somewhere north of here toward Denali National Park. Goodnight all! We HIGHLY recommend Alaska so far!