Our friend Clark, who lives in Minneapolis, once explained to us that Minnesota has two seasons; winter and construction. Alaska is much the same so we knew our trip back to Anchorage could take anywhere from two to three hours.
Before we left, we called the company to make sure they were flying that day. They weren’t sure but we decided to try. Yeah, it took nearly three hours and, yeah, fifteen minutes before the plane was scheduled to depart, the flight was scrubbed. So, now we had to drive back to Seward.
Fortunately, the Seward Highway rivals Alberta’s Icefield Parkway as one of the most beautiful roads I have ever driven. Glaciers, rivers and beautiful mountains are all around us. Talk about waterfalls - on one mountain, Judy counted 14 waterfalls!
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| Turnagain Arm |
About halfway back, there is a place called the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, which is a sanctuary for rescued animals. We saw a lot of critters there that we had not seen elsewhere, including brown bears. We had learned that brown bears and grizzlies are the same species but the ones that live in the high country usually have a lighter (grizzled) fur. I was intrigued to see my first ever musk oxen and was surprised how little they were – not much bigger than a prize winning hog back in Georgia.
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| Elk at AWCC |
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| My first Musk Oxen - cute little buggers! |
We also took a side road down the Kenai River to Cooper Landing to see all of the fishermen. Apparently the Kenai and Russian Rivers are world famous. We hoped to spot the brown bears, known to compete with the humans for salmon but had no luck.
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| Drift boat on the Kenai River |
Even though we were disappointed not to see Denali (and no, we did not schedule a fourth attempt), we made lemonade out of lemons and had another great day.
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