A lot of the forest that we see in Alaska is what is called the ‘boreal forest’ – there are fewer species here, but the ones that are here (trees and animals) are the ones that can survive in extreme winters with short summers. The trees are spruce, balsam, birch, aspen, etc (all conifers – yeah, takes you back to geography class days!)
For more details: https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=boreal.main
Around 10:30 am, we were on our way back, leaving Denali. 30 minutes into the drive, I stopped Moorthy after we crossed a bridge – I remember there being an interesting view around here when we drove past this on our onward journey. This place is called Hurricane Gulch – a gulch is a V-shaped valley. Moorthy pulled over to the side on the gravel, and we noticed there was another car that had parked ahead of us as well. We couldn’t walk on the bridge – it was a highway, and you don’t have a walkway. But there was a side path which went into the woods. We followed it.
“Hey man be careful. I don’t know if there is a path. It seems steep.”
But Raghav went over a hurdle and proceeded down – it’s only a few steps that you can go.
“Come here Ringo,” we heard an old lady calling out to a cute little dog which was on a leash. The view was spectacular – there was a river flowing way down below, woods to our left, the bridge to the right – you never realise how high the bridge is till you look down!
We took a few snaps; the old lady wanted to take a snap with her dog, the bridge in the background. She was old but still firm and steady as she managed the dog with one hand, and she even offered to take a photo of us as a group. Not for those with a fear of heights, but worth a pitstop for the view. The car in front was hers; she was from Canada.
We ran into a traffic jam due to road construction on one lane of the highway (the highway only had two main lanes); so you had construction workers letting vehicles go for a couple of minutes from one side while they blocked the other side, and they kept alternating. This is one of the rare situations in which vehicles can cross the solid double yellow line separating the two lanes.
“What’s our plan? Straight to Seward?”
“No. We stop first at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre. It’s on the way only – after Anchorage. But the last entry is at 6, and it closes at 7.”
My hope was that we’d make it between 4 and 5 pm, so we’d have at least a couple of hours.
“We’ll see bears?”
“Probably, since there are supposed to be some there. But I don’t know if we’ll see it.”
“May turn out to be like Denali.”
“But Denali, also, we would have seen if we went on the trail – that night, there was a notice there which said a bear was seen the prior day.”
“And that hiker who came on our bus the next day also said they saw a bear.”
“If only we had got the bear spray and practised with it, we could have gone on the trail that night.” I did feel quite confident using the bear spray now.
“The bear spray worked on a different bear!”
Alaskan Gold
After about 3.5 hours of driving, we stopped at the Jitters coffee place (since it was on the way and not much of a detour); picked up coffee and drove along. At 2:50 pm, we were in Anchorage and decided to stop somewhere for lunch. Raghav and Rakesh were the ones who picked the place.
“It’s a Nepalese restaurant. Yak & Yeti cafe.”
Inside, they had pictures of Tintin from ‘Tintin in Tibet’ – that was, I guess, the inspiration for the name of the cafe. I’m not really sure why Google had this marked as a Nepalese restaurant – the first couple of items on the menu were palak paneer and channa masala, which are typical Indian dishes. But then we did see something called a shapta (pork dish – Tibetan) and a couple of other pork dishes as well – one of them was definitely Indian (it was the vindaloo curry – a dish popular in Goa). I picked a half-sandwich while the other 3 picked rice bowls; ended up being lucky we didn’t do 4 rice bowls since the bowls were fairly large for one person. The food was good – very Indian except for the sandwich.
Raghav had been going through some brochures during the 4-hour drive, and he saw an interesting jewellery shop he wanted to check out.
“If we are running out of time, we can skip it.”
I checked the map, “It’s nearby only. Can quickly stop and go. Let’s keep the cut-off as 4 max, so that we can make it to the conservatory by 5, since it’s a one-hour drive from here.”
Moorthy parked in a slot where we had 10 minutes of parking time available – after that, we would get ticketed; it seemed like the earlier person who paid for parking may have left with some time remaining.
“Bet that Raghav will finish within 10 minutes?”
“This I think he will because we’ve said there’s the next place that we have to get to!”
I knew of Raghav’s impulsive shopping but didn’t feel he’d exhibit that trait in a jewellery shop.
It was a cosy little shop – he was looking for something unique to get for his wife. He saw a couple of interesting pieces and enquired about the price.
“How many carats?”
“We do jewellery only in 14 carats. In India, you do a lot higher, right?” the staff asked as he took out the items from the display and gently placed them on the glass top for Raghav to take a closer look.
“22 carats,” Raghav said.
There was also an American family in the store; their little kid was gleefully crawling all over the carpeted floor, while the mother looked closely at the pieces, and the dad kept an eye on the kid.
We were out of the place within 10 minutes. “Very expensive compared to India. Can get similar ones in India also. I was looking for something unique to Alaska.”
“On time for parking.”
Anchorage city traffic signal stops are similar to what you find in New York or Boston – it feels like there are signals at very short distances. We passed a brown, low-key building that said “Federal Bureau of Investigation”! They surely didn’t want to be seen as an attraction.
In 30 minutes, we were racing down our familiar Seward Highway – the same one with the scenic views that we drove on the first day. Only this time, we had to go further, all the way to the city of Seward. We went past the Chugach National Forest and then crossed the town of Portage – wiki describes this town as a ghost town since it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1960s.
At 5 pm, we reached the Wildlife Conservatory. This place does have some activities too – but we were late for them – there is a “moose encounter” where you can get up close to Moose and even feed them; there’s the tour where a guide will walk you through the conservatory; there is the black bear encounter (the most expensive ticket, but there is a note which says no physical touching of bears!); and then a bear encounter (to get closer to brown bears). But all of these are limited tickets for a day, and the activities wrap up by afternoon.
“This place takes in injured or orphaned animals and provides them a place to live.” That’s how this is slightly different from zoos.
There are also a few free activities during the day, but again, nothing after 5 pm.
You get a map to the place when purchasing the tickets. You can either drive through the area or walk it out.
Moorthy drove the car slowly while we stepped out and walked. We landed first in the moose area – there was one moose within a shed that you could see up close. It didn’t seem bothered by the visitors. Next to this was the elk – there are a few of these that may seem similar – moose, elk, reindeer, caribou! An elk is bigger than a deer and caribou, but smaller than a moose. They shed their antlers every winter, and a new set grows in the summer. On the other side was the muskox – has a thick coat of fur; sort of looks like a bison. They herd together when defending against predators, but this becomes a problem with human predators – it made it easy for human hunters to wipe out the whole herd together. This species was wiped out of Alaska by the 1800s, then reintroduced in the 1930s by bringing a few from Greenland – there are about 2500 now in Alaska. The muskox were sitting in the middle of the grassland. The animals did have a fair amount of space to themselves.
Map of the place: https://alaskawildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/AWCC-Map-Summer-2024-Web-Size.jpg
