Day 32 Our last day with Brenna, boarding the ferry

Dear Diary,

We awake to clear but overcast skies.  It’s in the 50’s.  We begin the process of once more packing up and moving on.  We do laundry in the house stacked washer/dryer and Pat takes one last hot tub session.  The views are beautiful in the tub area and it is very quiet.  We eat a last lunch of Pat’s halibut chowder and leftover hamburgers.  Bidding farewell to this lovely house and a fun weekend with Brenna.  Brenna is staying with us for the day and we take advantage of our late ferry departure by exploring Girdwood.  We have been here many times but we decide to find some new things.  Brenna takes us back to the foot of the mountains in an area called Virgin Creek.  It is a short climb but lots of roots in the path.  What an incredible forest.  You’d swear you were not in Alaska.  Rainforest with tall trees and thick moss on everything.  It is very still except for the sound of a waterfall.  It’s very eerie.   Makes you want to sit down and just look.  After a very short but tangly uphill walk we come to an incredible falls, a chute of water crashing down a steep slope.  Thick moss covers the rock on both sides.  Hard to describe how pretty it is, can’t take enough pictures, words don’t describe.  But we see fresh bear tracks and there is some dead animal nearby so as much as we’d like to linger, we don’t.  We drive back to Crow Creek Mine.  The road has always been bad going back there.  We negotiate our way back on fair condition dirt and gravel.  Brenna has a Highlander and it handles it well.  There is supposed to be a few RV spots for camping back here but don’t know how they get past each other on this very narrow road.  Crow Creek Mine is a family owned historical site.  It is a darling little oasis of mowed yard, tiny spring fed streams and pond.  The original 1898 buildings are still intact with most of their original tools and documentation from when it was a mine.  Someone has planted flower beds and hanging baskets.  Many of the large outdoors old machinery have flowers planted in them too.  It is a lovely setting with high mountain views in the distance.  Lots of people get married here.  We are across the mountain from Eagle River valley.  The same valley we hiked and the same that we camped our last nights.   This is the opposite side for a beginning of the Crow Creek Pass Trail, an old gold mining trail and a continuation of the historic Iditarod Trail.  We look through the old buildings and walk down to the creek.  For a fee you can pan and sluice for gold.  People are trying their luck.  Mostly a few flakes.  The owners still mine to a small degree and they make gold nuggets in glass bezel necklaces.  Looking at the price of the piece, it seems you’d be getting a good portion of nuggets for the price.  We are talking about nuggets much smaller than peas, but not flakes.  We stop off at the Winner’s Creek trailhead.  A lovely valley hike that requires use of a hand tram to cross the river.  Bren says it’s much like Virgin Creek falls in views but the trail is much better.  It also follows the Iditarod trail.  We are not geared for this today but would make the trip another visit.   We bid farewell to beautiful Girdwood Valley and head out to the

Seward Highway

.  We drive south to the Alaska Wildlife Animal Conservancy.  This is a relatively new place situated on land that had dropped during the 1964 earthquake.  Basically mudflats with gravel and grass.   The old buildings of the former Portage town are run down and derelict.  Very cool to see them still around.  And the trees are dead white sculptures.  It’s a new opportunity for a different view of Turnagain Arm and the various valleys that run off of it.  There is no wind break at all so while it’s not a cold day the wind makes us bundle up.  $10.00 per person up to $30.00 for a car full, unlimited viewing time on the 200 acres. Some of the best money we have spent.  We are delighted with the animal viewings.  These are rescue animals.  When the need arises these types of animals either go to the Anchorage Zoo, here or outside zoos.  We stop off at the Roosevelt Elk.  These majestic and incredibly beautiful animals are in plain view.  The males’ racks are already huge with intact velvet, more growth?  They are so striking we can hardly stop looking at them.  Elk were once indigenous to Alaska in southeast.  This small herd was brought here from Washington.  We decide to drive and stop rather than walk the large compound.  The next stop is a small herd of musk ox.  They are very near us and we can see all their details, especially the highly prized quivut.  Their thick horns that make curlicues and short squat bodies make them endearing, especially the 2 calves we see keeping up with the adults.  Next we stop at the brown bear exhibit.  Brown bear or grizzly, same animal different geo locale.  We see a large brown bear right by the fence, she is pacing.  Very impressive, then out of the dense bush comes a male 3 times her size.  We are all startled and he’s right by the fence.  A worker is there and gives the bears commands.  The male rises up on his hind legs with his front legs in the air.  OMG!  Seeing this makes us feel pretty stupid for wandering about in the woods with fresh bear sign.  He is about 7 feet tall stretched out.  He and the female are sibs orphaned up by Willow.  The female sits on her rump and puts her front paws together in a clapping motion made by the worker.  These movements are taught so the workers can make a physical exam of their underbellies.  If they get in fights they can be injured in this area and it wouldn’t be seen.  These bears have an 18 acre enclosure and will never be returned to the wild.  They say they get take one more bear in the compound.  Can’t imagine how they co-exist in that space.  A coyote let himself into the compound at some point and has made it his home.  We see him curled up under a tree, the bears ignore him.   In the background we see a third bear, an 11 year old female that is also very large but she keeps her distance from these two.  We have never been this close.  The Zoo doesn’t allow it and thankfully we have never had an encounter this close.  We are once again awed by their power and size and are reminded of taking great precautions on the trails.  According to the worker, brown bears can sense humans from 7 miles away and they will quietly stalk them for miles.  Not as much as food source but as curiosity.   Worker says, humans never know when and where they have been stalked.  These huge bears are quiet and can disappear into brush in a heartbeat.  We tear ourselves away and move on to the Woodland Bison.  The only remaining herd in the world if we read it correctly.  They are very similar to the buffalo in Yellowstone but less thick and shaggy heads.  The body build is still similar, the horns are more slender and pointy.  There are several calves.  We are allowed to be very close to them outside the fence.  Another similarity to the buffalo is irritability.  They don’t like us near the calves and there is a lot of grunting and swinging heads and false charges.  Like Yellowstone buffaloes, they poop everywhere and eat any grass to the nub.  We can tell they must be moved frequently to new pasture.  There are other bison here too and they are very similar.  We move on to the moose grounds.  Two ‘teenage’ male moose are very near the fence with new antlers sprouting.  There is a caribou compound and the large male in the back has an incredible black velvet rack.  It’s huge and still growing, the velvet is still much intact.  There is a calf and it’s very cute.  There is a baby moose in a lean to.  It was just recently orphaned; they are feeding it with a bottle.  It’s a little milk chocolate bundle of fuzz on 4 spindly legs.  We come upon the Kodiak bear cubs.  These babies are already 300-400 pounds.  They can get up to 1500 pounds.  Not sibs.  The female is a ginger brown with a tan ring around her neck.  The male is very pretty solid brown.  They are asleep in the little log cabin and funny to watch them wake and stretch and start to walk around.  The male has the jaw bone of a moose and he is playing in the water with it.  He is such a clown he has us in stitches and so close we could reach out and touch him.  A bear trainer comes in with a bucket of dry bear food pellets.  He sits down on it.  The female who is the more aggressive of the two walks up to him.  Upon his command she sits and claps he gives her a handful.  The male stays away for a while and then suddenly jumps out of the water and climbs some fallen trees to see what they are doing.  Besides their size etc. we are amazed and alarmed at their quickness for their large size.  And they are problem solvers and relentless in pursuit.  Now the two bears are sitting in front of the trainer and he has to keep them under control with commands etc.  Each bear has begun to tap him on the knee and arm with their paws.  They know he’s sitting on the bucket of food.  We decide this is getting too hairy for us.  He seems to be in command, but if these bears decide they’ve had enough of his play and want the food, we are sure the trainer loses.  We stop off to see the rescued black bear; he has a large patch shaved on his rump.  Looks like he’s had surgery but he’s moving around well.  He’s very pretty pure black.  They are so distinctive in their shape from brown bears, especially the head.  People say they’d rather run into a brown bear than a black bear.  After today, we are convinced we’d rather not meet either, especially the griz.  We finish by viewing the eagle and two great horned owls.  The owls are incredible; it’s hard to stop looking at them.  Quite large and very pretty in their owly way.  We stop in the gift shop/café.  Very nicely done log cabin with the usual gifts but a few surprises.  It’s time to go.  This has been a wonderful outing.  We would recommend visiting this spot and would do it again.  We head into the Portage Valley in order to enter the tunnel for Whittier.  The one way from Bear Valley to Whittier is on the hour.  We line up behind other cars waiting to go through.  There are beautiful glacier views in this small Bear Valley and we can view the Portage Glacier face from this angle.  While we wait a small train, commissioned by the cruise ships, passes through the tunnels ahead of us.  Then the light turns green and we enter the Anderson Tunnel.  We have to keep 25 feet between each vehicle as we travel through at 25 mph.  It is fairly well lighted, some diesel fumes still from train but there is circulation.  We travel on top of the railroad tracks which require that we straddle them.  This is a 2.5 mile trip of engineering marvel, but Pat doesn’t like going through.  The thought of a whole huge mountain overhead in earthquake country.  Not a happy thought.  We arrive Whittier.  It’s warm and overcast.  This tiny harbor and the Passage Canal make everything look close and dramatic.  Sheer mountains with glaciers and waterfalls, we are on the edge of the Sergeant Icefield.  There are tiny shops and the old Anchor Inn.  The whole town lives in a high rise apt. building.  It’s also the home of the town hall, school, post office etc.  The land is so narrow and tight, no room to build. Lots of charters and fishing and shrimping, glacier tours go out of here.  It is an ice free port.  Since the opening of the tunnel to driving it has made the harbor slips very desirable.  We stop for dinner at the relatively new Harbor Inn.  Constructed to look like an east coast building, it’s very quaint.  The business has been taken over by the Hooper Bay Native Consortium.  There has been a lot of care and attention to detail, it’s small but very nice.  We sit in the bar with a window overlooking the whole Canal.  It’s a pleasant dinner and our last few hours with Brenna.  We take a walk around town and she drops us at the ferry terminal.  It’s about 9PM, Brenna has a drive back to town and it’s getting late.  It’s hard to say good-bye because we have had such a good visit with her.  We have too much gear and we struggle with getting it on board.  We board on the car deck which still has large containers that we have to negotiate dragging gear.  Def not glam.  Thank God there is an elevator.  We finally get to our room, a lot of hurry-up and wait.  It’s a roomette.  Kind of laughable.  Basically a closet, at 7 feet by 5 feet. The table and benches fold down to a single bed and there is a bunk bed that drops from the wall over it.  We have a port hole that has no view but it keeps the room from being totally claustrophobic.  It is very stuffy, not sure Pat can stay here.  We adjust the thermostat and air is circulating.  With all our gear we can barely turn around.  What have we done?  There is a full bathroom facility near down the hall so that makes it somewhat handy.  We basically will use the room for sleep and storage, spending most of our time on deck.  There are nice lounges, cafeteria and solariums for viewing and a movie theater.  Sit out watching semi-darkness descend on Whittier.  Have never seen it at night, it’s very pretty, this tiny fishing village.  It’s past midnight and we’ve had a very busy day.  Can’t hold off to watch the departure so prepare for bed.  It’s a juggling act to get there.  Pat is on the fold down seats.  Not very comfortable, will have to make adjustments tomorrow.  Chuck near the ceiling in his nest.  Has to use a ladder to get up and down.  We’re still in dock, but sleep is begging.  Night.