Turnagain Arm Alaska

After a great time in Homer, we headed back up the west side of the Kenai Peninsula toward Anchorage. The Sterling Highway was all smoky due to the numerous wildfires in the area. One, the Swan Lake fire, was burning in an area that hadn’t burned for something like 80 years, so the brush (read fuel for wildfire) was pretty dense. It ended up burning just over 100,000 acres but never really threatened any populated areas, which says a lot about how sparsely populated Alaska is.

The fire was pretty close to the road as we drove!

Since there are so many lakes and rivers, water was easily accessible. A large pump was set up with pipes running up the road for the trucks to refill.

Hope AK is billed as one of the best preserved gold rush towns. If it’s well preserved, that means there never was much town to begin with! But there was an interesting collection of old log buildings and gold mining equipment. Life in a gold mining camp was harsh, indeed.

Artifact or …?

The mud flats when the tide was out are very impressive. The guidebooks include warnings to not venture out onto the mud. Some of it is like quicksand and people have sunk into the mud, unable to be rescued before the tide returns.

 

The colors and vistas never cease to amaze!

 

Bald eagles everywhere.

We boondocked here just to soak in the view.

    

We camped at Williwaw, a state forest campground, and rode our bikes along the Blue Ice trail to the Portage Glacier visitor center. We saw a t-shirt that showed a bicyclist pedaling hard to get away from a large bear. The caption was “Meals on Wheels.” Since bears can run 30 mph, we opted to carry bear spray and make a lot of noise as we rode.

The Portage glacier is somewhere out in the mist and clouds

Weather on the Kenai seems to be cool all the time! Although we did have one hot day – July 4th. So the old jokes about summer being scheduled on the 4th of July might be true.

They grow very large up here!

One of the surprises up here was our mistaken notion that glacier fed creeks would be crystal clear. Not so. As glaciers move up and down the valleys, they grind up the rock into a fine flour-like silt. The melting glaciers then carry the silt down into the streams turning them a light gray color. The silt is so fine that it never really settles out,

Every campsite seemed to be surrounded either by snow capped mountain vistas or amazing water views.

 

Hiking through the wildflowers in the Chugach.

Note the bear spray. Always at hand!

      

Our view of the Turnagain arm while we plan the next couple of days.

The Turnagain Arm has a 25-30 foot tidal range and has the largest Bore tide in the world. A bore tide is one that has so much tidal range spread over such a small area that it can create a wave with the incoming tide. The Turnagain Arm tidal bore is so large it can be surfed!

  

Next to the Anchorage airport is the worlds largest floatplane base. Planes landing, taking off and taxiing around the lake at all hours!

The last photo was taken at midnight. There are lights along the edge of the lake – runway lights – but they aren’t needed in the summer!

 

 

But if not…