Mid-September 2005 - Dalton Highway

*Update: See below

Our recent travels took us north on the Elliott Highway, and then we continued north on the Dalton Highway to Wiseman, a former trading place for miners back in the early 1900s. Located at the foot of the Brook's Range, its small population boasts just 14 citizens.

We left North Pole at 5:00pm and arrived in Wiseman, after brief stops at the Yukon River bridge and Coldfoot, at midnight. We stepped back in time as we crossed the middle-fork of the Koyukuk River and drove the last few miles on the dirt road leading into Wiseman.

When we awoke in the morning, we saw the old remnants of life as it used to be lived. Old trucks and parts were scattered in the yards of many of the residents.The remainder of the picturesque town is made up of log cabins, most of which were built in the early 1900s.

The dirt road leading through town winds past the old Wiseman trading post, the charming Boreal Lodge, and the other remaining cabins. A long, grassy field forks off to the right, and a lone airplane sits near the end of the landing strip.

Moose antlers stacked on a pole, a swing made from a chunk of tire, and a recently caught bear hide embellish one man's home. The town chapel, a quaint log cabin built in the early part of the last century, seats twelve. If you look real close, you can see wads of clothing stuffed between the tin sheets nailed to the roof of the cabin and the main roof. A hole in the timber along the roofline exposes this bit of historic insulation.

Alaskans are famous for recycling and using whatever parts and pieces are at hand because some necessities are difficult to come by in rural areas or freight is high due to the limited access and distance to a town or village.

After visiting with some of the local residents, we learned that Wiseman was only accessible by bush plane until the trans-Alaska pipeline was built in the 1970s. Along with the pipeline, came the partially paved and dirt highway stretching from Fairbanks to Deadhorse. Accessible by car, Wiseman is one of the few towns located on the Dalton Highway. In the 1970s, Wiseman became a National Historic District. To learn more about the area, pick up a copy of "Arctic Village," written by Robert Marshall, a naturalist who wrote about his experiences living among the miners and the native peoples of the region in the 1930s.

Today, the Elliott and Dalton Highways leading north from Fairbanks are accessible to anyone that cares to venture into the breathtaking northern wilderness. Parts of the highway are paved, but many sections are dirt. A second set of tires is recommended for the adventurer that travels these narrow roads shared by truck drivers hauling freight from Fairbanks to Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay). Be sure to stop at Coldfoot, the last truckstop for over 200 miles, before arriving at the Arctic Ocean.

Our next stop brought us south on the Dalton Highway, then west on the Elliott Highway to the town of Manley Hot Springs.This historic mining town really caught us by surprise with its charming log schoolhouse, the historic Manley Roadhouse, and the Manley hot springs.

We spent the night in the one-room log schoolhouse - it was built in the early 1900s. The cabin's only heat-source, which proved to be more than sufficient, was the piped hot springs water which entered one end of the cabin and exited the opposite end, flowing straight into the hot springs creek that flowed a few feet from the cabin doorstep.

We had a peaceful night's rest listening to the creek running next to our cabin. Our boys thoroughly enjoyed playing in the creek the next day, which under normal circumstances, would have been bitter cold. After playtime, we put on some warm clothes and walked down the dirt road toward Manley.

We crossed a steel bridge over the hot springs slough and upon gazing out over the slough, we saw four floatplanes and an old river boat docked along the banks. On the other side of the bridge stood the Manley Roadhouse, next to the hot springs slough we had just crossed. It was an endearing site to behold on a fall morning. The roadhouse looked as it must have looked over 100 years ago.

Historic glass bottles lined the front windows and an embossed door latch opened the door to the past. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast in the old roadhouse and spent our time enjoying the old relics from years gone by. Three long tables with chairs awaited hungry visitors. Our waitress doubled as the cook. Rooms were for rent upstairs with a shared bath down the hall, or a room could be rented with a private bath.

Our last highlight in Manley was taking in the hot springs across from the old schoolhouse. Three cement squares filled with natural hot springs were molded to the floor, located inside the visqueen-covered greenhouse. When we arrived at the door of the greenhouse and opened the tattered screen door, we were struck by the green foliage that was dangling from the rooftop - it felt like the Garden of Eden. On closer inspection, we realized that the large, green leaves climbing the walls and the roof of the greenhouse were grape leaves. It was unbelievable, we even saw two clusters of grapes hanging near the hot tubs.

In addition to the sprawling grapevines, there was a yucca plant, a pink hibiscus, and numerous other plants growing inside this secret chamber of warmth and light. Later we learned from the owner, that he grew 2,000 pounds of grapes inside the hot springs greenhouse and sold them at the Tanana Valley Farmer's Market in Fairbanks. He had no trouble selling the grapes!

After visiting with the owners and sharing a sandwich, we headed down the dirt road and kept a watchful eye for a creek the waitress had said, was easy fishing for grayling. We found it and within 20 minutes, my son reeled in a small grayling. It was getting dark, so we decided we better keep going - it was still a four-hour drive back to North Pole.

We stopped for food and gas at the Yukon River bridge and saw the parking lot filled with pickups and trailers. Many hunters had put in their boats on the Yukon and were headed down river to see what nature would provide. Next stop was home.

We hope you enjoyed traveling with us on this journey. We don't write extensively about our trips, but wanted to share some information about our occasional travels that take us around Alaska. We have added photos from our journey on our Alaska Photo Gallery page.

*Update...we visited Manley Hot Springs in June 2006 and spent the night again in the old, one-room schoolhouse next to the creek. We also saw 100 to 200 clusters of beautifully ripened, green grapes hanging from the roof over the tubs, and along the sides of the greenhouse. Many beautiful flowers were also growing next to the path leading to the hot tubs. What an enchanting place to soak, it was even more beautiful in the greenhouse than the previous fall when we last visited. Watch for photos to be posted on our Alaska Photo Gallery page, showing the grape clusters and flowers inside the greenhouse. You may also view a photo we took of the greenhouse and hot tub on the Travel Alaska Web site.

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Early September 2005 - Denali National Park

Fall is in the air and the birch leaves are turning bright yellow and gold. The tamaracks have turned a golden color as well. The hillsides have become a patchwork of beautiful colors and the tundra takes your breath away with its lovely carpet of reds, oranges, golds, and browns.

We just took the Alaska Railroad to Denali National Park, crossing several times over the Tanana and Nenana Rivers - both glacier-fed rivers originating in the Alaska Range. The four-hour trip from Fairbanks to Denali National Park is well worth a visit during the summer months and early September. The views along the way and the comfort of rail travel, make for a memorable trip.

One of the highlights of our trip was seeing Dall sheep on the high cliffs in the canyon just before arriving at the train depot in Denali National Park. What an extraordinary place to visit!

A footnote for those of you thinking about train travel within Alaska...

Train service to Denali Park is discontinued between mid-September and mid-May.There is weekly train service during the winter months from Fairbanks to Anchorage, a 12-hour trip through snowy terrain, including the breathtaking Alaska Range and Talkeetna Mountains. Concessions on the train are limited during the winter months, but traveling at this time of year brings a great opportunity to catch-up on some much-needed reading or writing.

For more information about train travel in Alaska, contact the Alaska Railroad at 1-800-544-0552 or (907) 265-2494.

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Late May 2006 - Yukon Territory, Canada

We just traveled a portion of the Alaska Highway, or ALCAN Highway as it used to be called, into Canada. Our turnaround point was Haines Junction in the Yukon. We spent the night in Beaver Creek, which is located at the Alaska/Canadian border, then traveled to Silver City at the far end of Kluane Lake, where we stayed in a charming B and B that looks out at the lake and the surrounding mountains. Kluane Lake is enormous; it's the largest lake in the Yukon. The lake was still frozen, but the small amount of water that was exposed was turquoise green and looked very much like the postcards we had seen on racks in the gift shop.

While driving to the B and B, we stopped in Burwash Landing, the first town on the northern part of the lake. We were captivated by what must have been the world's largest painted gold pan. The gold pan was about two stories tall. We couldn't resist snapping several photos of the oversized mining icon.

Sitting directly behind the gold pan were two or three old cabins with sod roofs and a cache. Alongside the cabins, stood a building that looked like a shed with an overhang. Four aging wagons were tucked side-by-side in the aging overhang. The historic wagons were a wonderful discovery, each built from different material (wood or metal), and from different eras.

After our overnight at the B and B on Kluane Lake, we traveled south to Haines Junction. The entire drive was picturesque as we traveled next to mountains. Haines Junction is a small, but charming community surrounded by mountains. We visited the Kluane National Park Visitor Information Center and stopped for lunch before turning around and heading home. We drove all the way back to North Pole in one day. With two stops for food and fuel, and a gander with a local Yukoner in Destruction Bay, it took about 12 hours to return.

Throughout our trip, we enjoyed seeing a lot of wildlife. The highlight was seeing a grizzly bear. The bear walked across the road in front of our car as we were driving around Kluane Lake. There was no traffic, so we pulled over and watched the bear play in a thicket of grass next to the lake. Some of the other wildlife we encountered, included seeing several moose, a caribou, a porcupine, and a fox as we traveled around the Yukon and back to Alaska.

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We just returned from a trip to Eagle, Alaska, with an enroute stop in Chicken, Alaska. After we left Eagle, we drove over to Dawson City in the Yukon Territory (Canada). It was a beautiful trip, although a good part of our trip was spent traveling on bumpy, dirt roads with little to no shoulder on the road. Traveling to Eagle takes about 8 hours from North Pole and it is well worth a visit.

Enroute to Eagle, is the infamous town of Chicken. The postcard I purchased told how Chicken was originally suppose to be named Ptarmigan, but because the miners didn't know how to spell Ptarmigan, they named the town Chicken instead. There's not much in Chicken today except gas, food, souvenirs, and some miners that have lived in the area for about 25 years.

One of the most popular stops in Chicken is the mercantile/bar/and cafe, which are all connected together. There's even a small chicken coup with live chickens between the bar and cafe. We had breakfast at the Chicken cafe and our meal was served in a plastic gold pan. We found this very amusing, however, the food was decent and the portions were fairly good-sized. We also tried their oversized cinnamon rolls and brownies, which proved to be pretty tasty for being in the middle of nowhere.

After breakfast and visits with some of the other local tourists, we left for Eagle. Eagle is reminiscent of the early 1900s. This charming, small town is filled with old log cabin homes and sits directly on the banks of the Yukon River. We arrived on July 4th and although we missed most of the earlier festivities, we joined the town folks on the airstrip to watch adults and kids play baseball, and we played some freehand soccer with our boys. While we were kicking the ball around, we discovered almost the entire airstrip was made up of miniature, wild strawberries and grass. For the next hour, we picked and enjoyed eating the tasty little strawberries before retreating to the local campground for a few night's stay. To learn more about the Eagle area, pickup a copy of John McPhee's book, "Coming into the Country."

Our next stop was Dawson City. We traveled across the "Top of the World Highway" to get there. We were pretty much on top of the mountains the entire 60 mile-plus drive, but soon we began dropping in elevation and descended into a valley and there sat Dawson, directly on the Yukon River. The Klondike River flows into the Yukon River just south of Dawson.

There wasn't a bridge to cross into Dawson. Soon we realized that we needed to line up on the dirt road in order to board a car ferry that would transport us across the Yukon River into Dawson. The ferry only held about 6 cars, but since it was 10:00pm, we didn't have to wait long. On a busy day, you would likely have to wait for quite awhile. Our boys thought that taking the car ferry was the best part of the trip.

We spent two nights in Dawson and we learned a great deal about the Klondike Gold Rush, including the miners and other characters of that era. Some buildings from that era are still standing, others are leaning or sinking into the ground.

The highlight of our trip was a visit to Robert Service's cabin. The cabin sits on a hillside above Dawson, complete with many of Service's original belongings. We learned how this young man from England ventured over to the U.S. and eventually made his way into the Klondike, around the time of the Klondike Gold Rush. Service penned most of his famous works in this very cabin, including "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew." We were told that the landlord never rented the cabin again after Robert Service left Dawson.

While in Dawson, we learned about a popular Yukon author named Pierre Berton, who wrote an extensive historical account of the Klondike Gold Rush era. My husband spoke very highly of Mr. Berton, and said he was the keynote speaker at his graduation ceremony at UAF (University of Alaska Fairbanks) in 1984. Berton recently passed away in 2005. Pierre Berton's mother, Laura Beatrice Burton, also wrote a great account of her days in Dawson in the early 1900s, following the gold rush period. To fully understand the gold rush period, read Pierre Berton's book entitled "Klondike" and his mother's book entitled, "I Married the Klondike."

We just returned from a 9-day trip to Anchorage with an enroute stop in the charming, small town of Talkeetna. We stayed over at the Talkeetna Roadhouse both ways and enjoyed a quiet and cozy evening in the town of Talkeetna. Please read on for more information about the Roadhouse...

After listening to a few local musicians at the local pizza place across the street, we walked the quiet and snow-lined streets of Talkeetna. We hit all of the businesses that remained open after 9:00pm - there were two of them. One was an old mercantile store, complete with a purring cat upstairs, lounging on the sweatshirts that were neatly folded for sale. The other business was a local bar/restaurant that could be accessed by walking to the back of the aforementioned store and stepping into the bar. Talk about convenient - you could have a beverage and grab your groceries in one place, then walk home. The mercantile store and bar are listed on the National Register for Historic Places.

Back at the roadhouse, which is also on the National Register for Historic Places, we enjoyed hanging out in the cozy, old dining room with a comfortable fireplace. Flags signed by mountain climbers from foreign lands hung on sections of the wall, along with an old black and white photo of Susan Butcher shown perched on Denali (Mt. McKinley) in 1979. I felt a sense of sorrow when I saw her photo. I began remembering her during her hey days when she won three Iditarod sled dog races in a row back in the 1980s, and now she was gone. In addition to her photo, Butcher had signed a T-shirt that was extremely popular during the '80s and it was stretched across the wall near her photo.

Tucked in the corner near the fireplace was a piano complete with dozens of books filled with sheet music, waiting for someone to come along and play. Our boys were immediately drawn to this part of the room and each one took a turn tapping on the piano keys until we reminded them it was time to find something else to do.

Our rooms were upstairs (we stayed in 2 separate rooms) and featured exposed, hand-hewn wall logs. Electric heaters provided warmth to the rooms that would have otherwise had a slight chill in the air, but that made it all the more inviting. Little insulation in the floors meant conversations could be heard in the dining room the next morning, but it was time to rise and shine, and grab some breakfast. The shared bath and shower was across the hall.

The Talkeetna Roadhouse is a regular gathering place for locals and guests alike, and the friendly atmosphere makes for engaging and pleasant conversation. We enjoyed a delicious breakfast in the morning. The owner serves up huge portions along with a wedge of her homemade bread and a choice of homemade raspberry jam or apple butter to slather on the oversized toast. There's also a choice of delicious baked goods if you aren't in the mood for a big breakfast. Oh, and the roadhouse serves extra strong coffee in the morning for all of you coffee lovers! Click on the link to learn more about the Talkeetna Roadhouse or call (907) 733-1351.

After we left Talkeetna, we were thrilled and surprised when we saw four Caribou cross the Parks Highway near Broad Pass, close to the town of Cantwell. Having driven the Parks Highway to Anchorage many times over the years, we have never encountered Caribou until this year. We didn't have a camera on hand, but the scene will remain etched in our thoughts for a long time to come.

We have some great photos of Talkeetna from our previous stay and points of interest along the Parks Highway. We will add the photos to our Alaska Photo Gallery at a later date.

To check out some local Talkeetna muscians, one of which was playing at the pizza place we visited across the street from the Talkeetna Roadhouse, visit these Web sites, Esther Golton, and Larry Zarella. Larry Zarella plays a classic song about Talkeetna in his song entitled, Eblings Waltz.