Kenny Lake to Lake Louise, AK

This morning was a travel day and we only had a little over 80 miles to go so we weren’t in too much of a hurry.  I had most everything in the RV ready to travel and while Ken was eating his cereal, I was just doing something on the computer.  I happened to look up at the front window and all I could see was a large moose covering pretty much all of the viewing area.  I got up to grab a camera and asked Ken to get his and as I looked out the window, I saw that she had twins.  Once again, the cameras were too slow, but we got these shots as they retreated to cross the Edgerton Highway.

 

 

 

With that excitement over, we finished packing up, dumped, and filled the fresh water tanks and were on the road.  We stopped at the junction of the Richardson Highway and the Glenn Highway to add more diesel to the tank at $4.89 a gallon.  It could be better…a lot better!  We continued west on the Glenn Highway to about milepost 2 where we found a grocery store to pick up some necessary groceries to get us to Eagle River.  About 30 miles from the junction, we arrived at our turn onto Lake Louise Road and we headed north for a little over 17 miles.

Although it is in the middle of Memorial Day weekend, we found a campsite and we’ll be here until Tuesday morning.

After getting set up in our site, we walked over to the other part of the campground and back…probably about a mile.  The were some informational signs down by the lake…I’ll take some photos and post more about that tomorrow.

In addition to the 3 moose, we saw a porcupine and a snowshoe rabbit today.

Valdez, AK to Kenny Lake, AK

We left Allison Point Campground this morning, and before heading back north, we stopped in town to take on some fuel.  The service station at Airport Road is the least expensive in the area and $.10 lower than in town, but still not what I would call a good price.  We had to go slow getting out of their lot as it has a lot of potholes in it.  We headed north on the Richardson Highway and stopped at Worthington Glacier which is at about milepost 29.  Here are 5 photos taken there…it still wasn’t too easy to get around there as there is still lots of snow on the walking trail.  It might be better for the next group as a group of young men wanting to hike on the glacier took the snow shovel and offered to actually use it to clear some trails.

 

 

 

 

 

At milepost 82.5, we headed east on the Edgerton Highway toward the Wrangell Mountains.

 

It wasn’t too long before Ken spotted this black bear.  It didn’t pose for photos too long before going back into the trees.

 

 

We got situated in our campsite, then took care of some of the household work that stacks up.  Before dinner, we drove up the Old Edgerton Highway to the Richardson Highway, then south to the Edgerton Highway and back to camp.  Ken pointed out this unusual trailer he saw on the way to camp earlier today.  It appears to be a single wide mobile home encapsulated with rocks attached as though they were bricks.  I guess it must be for the insulation factor.  While out on our drive, we also saw a trumpeter swan.

And with that, we are back at the RV for dinner and relaxing.

 

8/19/2009 - Kenny Lake, AK

After leaving Glennallen, we stopped at the Wrangell/St Elias National Park visitor center which was just off the Richardson Highway. We explored their visitor center and found some informatin that had been eluding us until now. Friends at home asked us before leaving on the Alaska trip if we could bring them some diamond willow. They had told us to look in Chicken, but the weather was really rainy when we were there and we had no idea what a diamond willow would look like before becoming a walking stick. As we traveled throughout Alaska, we would ask at places we thought would be knowledgeable without any luck. While in the visitor center, we found the following information posted on the wall. At last, we now knew a little bit more about the elusive diamond willow! The visitor center gave us some information on campgrounds on the Edgerton Highway. They knew about the campground at Kenny Lake but couldn't really help us out with anything closer to Chitina. Looking through the Milepost, I found an ad for the Kenny Lake Mercantile and RV Park which included the statement: "Guests: Ask about picking your own diamond willow sticks". That settled it...that would be our next campground!

After getting set up in our site, we ate lunch, then headed off toward Chitina after getting some advice from the campground owner as what to see and do there. There was a viewpoint on the way to Chitina that overlooked the Copper River.

She sent us to a place on the Copper River just outside of Chitina where Alaskans are allowed to set up their fish wheels and can harvest 500 salmon in the season (per person qualified to use it). Once there, we drove around and found this working model. We really learned a lot by talking to the owner of this fish wheel.

Here's one of the fish he caught while we were there. We probably spent about 30 minutes watching. When we first got there, he had caught 3 salmon...when we left, he had about 15...not too bad!

Back at camp, we fueled the truck for our planned sightseeing trip tomorrow to McCarthy and Kennicott which will be about a 80+ mile trip one way. We borrowed the saw from the campground owner and headed back into the woods to try to find some diamond willow. We found a couple of pieces already cut on the ground that looked okay and cut down about three additonal pieces. Here they are and we'll see what they look like as finished product later: