Anchorage: We're Up Ship Creek

Ship Creek isn’t very picturesque.  Not at its mouth down in the industrial part of Anchorage, close among the shipping containers, metal recyclers and warehouses. 

You can only fish for salmon as far up as the first low dam. 

But people flock here when the salmon are running and sometimes stand shoulder to shoulder along the banks of the creek.  Outsiders call it “combat fishing,” but it really isn’t.  All you need to snag salmon is about a 6-foot section of ground to yourself.  Plop, lift; plop, lift (explained in our “Red Salmon Are Running” edition of this blog in July).

The creek gets much nicer higher up as it runs through Elmendorf AFB and Ft. Richardson, which are now operated as one joint installation called Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, quickly shortened to JBAR.  We are camped at the Army end of JBAR in the Black Spruce Campground.  It has lots of trees and full hookups. And comes with a free airshow from the F22 Raptors and C17 Globemaster IIIs based at Elmendorf next door. And an intangible that is very special, indeed.  As I drove the big motorhome through the main Elmendorf gate, I had to open the side window and hand our id cards down to the young guard in USAF camo gear.  He handed them back, then drew himself up to attention, saluted, and holding the salute said, “Thank you for your service, sir!” 

No, thank you.  The Air Force is in good hands.

This isn’t my first visit to Elmendorf AFB.  I landed here back in 1966 as a brand-new Air Force lieutenant.  I was in the earlier Globemaster II, the C-124 we called Old Shaky or Cumulus Aluminus for its size.  It was dark at the time. In late fall it was dark much of the day.  I was sitting in the jump seat between the pilots and remember clearly what the moose looked like standing on the centerline of the runway ahead, illuminated by our landing lights as we touched down.  The pilot cursed and poured in the power.  We roared over the moose’s head—barely—somehow not rendering him taxidermy-ready. I come back here every fifty years or so. 

Downtown Anchorage is an interesting combination of shops, hotels and two of the busiest airports in the world.  No, I don’t mean Ted Stevens Anchorage International. I’m talking about the light aircraft field, Merrill airport, that runs along Glenn Highway. Its ramps and runways are alive with small planes.  Heck, Alaska is alive with small planes. But there are still other airfields in town, one of them also the world’s busiest in its unusual category.  It has no runway.  It caters exclusively to floatplanes.  The Hood Lake Seaplane base was created by digging a long channel between two lakes.

The planes take on and land on the lakes, from the channel, or wherever they happen to be.  It looks chaotic, especially to a light aircraft pilot like myself. Ted Stevens is right next door, so somebody must be controlling the traffic here, right?

Here are some more photos of the floatplane activity:

The thing about downtown Anchorage that most impressed us was the flowers.  These people grow flowers everywhere. 

Flowers were in hanging baskets along the streets; bursting out of miniature gardens, and crowding flower boxes. The only other place we’ve seen this many flowers was Carmel, California.

We had lunch at the Snow Goose, a rooftop eatery our friend Gary Turner recommended.  It had really terrific seafood chowder, and we split an order of cod fish and chips.  We had been here a month earlier with Jack and Gayle Stayton.  After this visit we ended up coming back the very next day with our friend Evan McCollum who was visiting from Colorado.

Thursday we drove through the town of Palmer north of here, and up into the Talkeetna Mountains to see Hatcher Pass which sits high above everything.  We visited a state park there set up to preserve the old Independence Mine (left), a hard-rock gold operation from the 20s and 30s. Millions of dollars worth of gold were pulled from these mountains. Converted into today’s gold prices it would total a half billion dollars in gold. That’s 500 million bucks.  A teacher from Texas, here for the summer as a park docent, took Marsha and I into the mine buildings so we could see what it had been like to live and work here.  Some might find these conditions cramped, but these miners lived better than I did in the dorm in college.  And they had better food.  The cook had a much better apartment than the mine foreman, and was paid more. 

The miners stayed put when they got the best food and best dorms.  During the depression good jobs like this were a godsend, allowing the miners and flunkies (new arrivals doing menial jobs while they learned to be miners) to send money home to their families. Still, the work was hard and hours long.  Today, people in similar situations might prefer to stay in town and draw checks from the government.

The Hatcher Pass road is a loop, with a western descent that takes you down a wash-boarded dirt road to Wasilla. We tried that, but soon decided it was no fun bumping along into the glare of the mid-afternoon sun (at 7 pm).

We turned around, and went back down the paved road where enjoyed views of Little Susitna River. It is really more of a creek that high up.  How high was it?  We were huffing and puffing our way around the hills of the mine only to learn it was only a few hundred feet higher elevation than our home down in the deserts of Green Valley.  And less than half the elevation of Show Low. We are going to have to do some acclimatizing when we get home!

Oh, I need to tell you about how we got from Seward to Anchorage.  We decided to stop back at Portage valley, where we’d stopped on our way down to the Kenai Peninsula, so we could fish.  The Portage River was said to have lot of salmon of various varieties.  Jack Stayton and I got out our fishing gear and tried our hand at it from the banks of one of the most beautiful streams I’ve seen.  We caught lots of salmon.  Actually, Jack did.  I hooked quite a few but they always got off. Well, except for one Dolly I put back.

Jack hooked a bunch of big ones, some that ran away downstream taking his line right out to the end of the backing and breaking the leader. Jack also landed some very large red salmon (left), but they were bright red with green heads and had humps, the sign of a dying fish ready to spawn.  We took a couple of photos and eased them back into the stream.  The only thing we kept was Jack’s "chrome" red, and a very nice 2 pound Dolly Varden.

That speck at the right is me.  What a spot!

While there we drove over to the nearby town of Whittier.  It is only a mile or two down the road from our RV park, but you have to go through a very long tunnel that cars and busses share with the train (below).  Whittier is a tiny town with a ferry and cruise ship terminus. 

A million people get off the ships and onto a train or busses that take them to Anchorage.  Few stay, so there isn’t much in Whittier. We did find a nice restaurant, however. I had probably the best fish and chips on the whole trip at Swiftwater Cafe.

We have been in Anchorage for a few days trying to get one of our slide-outs on the Winnebago to unlock and go out.  After two trips across town the part finally arrived on Monday.  We are  heading out to Valdez on Tuesday.  It is 300 miles east of Anchorage so we need to get going.  They are having some kind of silver salmon festival next weekend so we need to get in and out before the festivities get rolling.  Then on to Tok, where we first arrived Alaska from the Yukon way back in mid-June.  Then we'll go south on the Alcan back to Whitehorse then down to Skagway.  Alaska--Canada--Alaska--Canada.  We are being told that the Alcan roadway has roller-coaster frost-heaves so bad across the border in Canada that we won’t be able to get over them.  So keep your fingers crossed for us.

And stay tuned.  There is a lot more ahead.

John and Marsha

(All photos copyright 2013 by John and Marsha Taylor)