Back from Alaska, eh.

I may have mentioned in my last post that spring was finally here. That might have been just a little premature but I'm happy to report that finally, over a month later, spring is here. No, really. In the meantime though I've had a brilliant time up here in the north. I met up with my Swiss friend Sandra again in Whitehorse, and she came with me to Alaska for about 3 weeks. Our first destination was Fairbanks, where we were hoping to see the Northern Lights. The bus trip up was a great start to the wildlife bonanza that was Alaska, on our way to the border we saw about 4 moose, and best of all, a family of 5 lynx right by the roadside. They're really shy animals so to get such a good look at so many of them in the wild was pretty special.



Fairbanks in winter is kind of bleak, it gets seriously cold up there (although it was only about -25 at it's coldest while we were there so not too bad) and Alaskan cities are kind of no frills places to begin with. It only took about 2 hours to fully explore downtown, and that was stretching it out quite a bit. They had a pretty good museum though which killed one day, and we also checked out some more ice sculptures at the World Ice Art competition.



But the aurora was what we were really there to see, and we weren't disappointed. It's a hard thing to describe, it's really something you have to see for yourself to appreciate. Each time it can behave differently, subtly fading in and out, rippling across the sky or curling in upon itself; it can just be low on the northern horizon or can stretch from one side of the sky to the other. It's really quite indescribably beautiful, and we happily endured the cold to enjoy it. Well, kind of happily anyway - I had 2 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of pants, about 4 layers under my jacket, 2 pairs of gloves on and still got cold hands and feet. I won't go into technical explanations about what causes it (the aurora that is, not the cold feet, that part should be obvious), if you're curious you can check this out: http://odin.gi.alaska.edu/FAQ/ . Otherwise, just enjoy the pretty colours.







Next it was south along the Denali highway to Anchorage. That was a nice drive, through the Alaska Range and past Denali himself, the tallest mountain in North America at about 6,200m, who can be difficult to see but we got a nice clear view. We arrived in Anchorage just in time for the ceremonial start of the Iditarod, one of the most famous sled dog races in the world. That was cool, to see, but you don't really appreciate what sort of endurance the full race takes, covering thousands of miles over more than 10 days. Anchorage was a nice enough city, very pretty when seen against the Chugach Mountains, and you can encounter moose right in among the suburbs - we came across 3 of them on a walk one day, so it was nice to be able to watch them so close somewhere they have no fear of humans.





From Anchorage we went south to Seward, in Resurrection Bay on the Kenai Peninsula. It was good to get back to the Pacific Ocean again, although a much colder part of it than I'm used to. Seward's a nice little town, very quiet in winter and we unfortunately we got lots of rain and snow (it just keeps coming back) so we spent a lot of time watching TV in our hotel room (a bit of uncommon luxury, but most of the hostels in Alaska are closed in winter so the hotels work out just as cheap with winter rates when shared between two people). We visited the SeaLife Centre, a research centre for sea lions, seals, puffins and other north Alaskan sea creatures (my favourite was the giant octopus).







While in Seward we went on a cruise around the bay, where we got to see orcas (killer whales), more sea lions, sea otters and Dall porpoise (a smaller relation to the orcas) and had sunshine, rain and snow all on the one trip so it was pretty good value for money. There were probably about 20 or 30 bald eagles hanging around town, which we were kind of excited about, but we were in for a much bigger treat in Homer, our next destination.



We only had one day here but were favoured with fantastic weather, and headed out onto the 10km spit which extends into beautiful Kachemak Bay. We'd been told that sometimes there could be up to 50 bald eagles gathered out there in the winter, which sounded like it was worth seeing. We saw about 30 or so on our way out there so thought they might have been leaving for the day, but at the far end there were at least 100 of them gathered together, so we would have seen well over 150 in the course of the day. They're big birds, and very impressive to watch so to see so many of them all together, sitting on every house, on light poles and even on the beaches was really great.







Unfortunately there wasn't a great deal more to do in Alaska in the winter, a lot of places and activities don't really get going until about May, so I'll be coming back to the north towards the end of summer to spend some more time. We headed back to Anchorage for a few days and then returned to Whitehorse, where I am now. I figured I'd have a break for a few days, but 2 weeks later I'm still here and will be for a bit longer. As I mentioned spring's finally arrived, we even had a bonfire celebration about a week ago to celebrate the fact, which was nice yet creepy in a Wicker Man kind of way. It snowed on the night of course, and most of the next day, just to show us winter would be over when it was good and ready.







But most of the time there's brilliant sunshine, and with the ice on the Yukon River starting to break up (well, it had started when we left but when we got back it was all frozen up again) you get an amazing combination of green pines, brilliant white snow and the deep blue of the river. Temperatures are up to a toasty 4 degrees during the day (you may laugh but it really feels great, especially being able to just sit outside in the sun), and it only drops to -10 at night so it's been a bit more pleasant watching some of the fantastic auroral displays this past week. A bit, still get cold feet.





So that's it for now, from here it'll be south once more, exactly how far though is something I haven't figured out yet. We'll see. For now though, here's a map of where I've been so far in North America. All the major legs of my journey are colour coded to make it easy to follow, and my current location is marked with my head (this is not to scale), will make sure I include it on all future blogs. Enjoy ; )