Make a rubbing of Alaskan history

One of the great ways to see part of Alaska is via the Alaska Marine Highway system, a collection of sea-going ferries that transport vehicles and passenger to a number of Alaskan communities not served by roads, including Juneau, the state's capital. Northbound, you can board ferries in Bellingham, Wash., or Prince Rupert British Columbia.

If you only ride the ferry from a southern port to a more northern connection to the road system like Skagway or Haines, you're going to miss some of the best Alaska has to offer. It's far better to pick a couple of ports along the way and plan to spend a few days. One of my favorites is Wrangell on the island of the same name.

Things are pretty quiet in Wrangell these days with the all-but-complete shutdown of the timber and pulp industry some years back. It is also far enough off the beaten track that cruise ships don't bother to stop. But the Marine Highway System ferries make it here several times a week. You can roll your RV off the ferry here and spend a couple of great days in the rain forest exploring the island.

Petroglyphs cared into stones on the beach just north of the ferry terminal are a lure for many visitors. Check the tide tables and head out here at low tide for best viewing.

To make the trip more memorable, you need to make a rubbing that can later be framed and hung on your wall at home. Up until a few years ago you purchased some rice paper in town, grabbed a handful of ferns to rub across it, and walked up to the real thing. Well, the rice paper and ferns haven't changed, but now replicas are available for rubbings due to fears that the carvings were being worn smooth. You can still walk up to and photograph the original carvings, but you have to make your rubbings from the replicas.

For information on ferry schedules and reservations, call 800-642-0066 or go online.

Beat the crowds for salmon

I cheated by going to Talkeetna a day early for the Moose Dropping Festival last weekend. You see, the Friday before the festival was the last day of king salmon season, and I had my favorite riverboat operator run me to a special place.

Fishing along the road in Alaska usually means combat fishing in a crowd when the salmon are in. Doesn't matter whether the fish are kings, reds or silvers. Guided fishing, on the other hand, gets real expensive, real fast. Figure on a couple hundred bucks a day when you add everything in. There is, however, an alternative.

Mahay's Riverboat Service in Talkeetna will run you up the Talkeena River to the mouth of Clear Creek--and bring you back whenever you say--for just $45 round trip. While there are almost always some people at Clear Creek, it is nothing like the popular roadside streams. And, if you go at the end of August, you'll still have plenty of fish, silvers and chums, with virtually no competition unless a bear wanders by. Several times in the last week of August, my friends and I have had Clear Creek to ourselves.

Some of the best fishing I can remember in Alaska has been on Clear Creek drop off with Mahay's. They've been around for more than 20 years now and run an efficient, safe operation that will get you both a taste of the wilderness and fish for the freezer for very little money.

Biker brings his dog

The image of the rough, tough biker took a big hit at the Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival parade this past weekend. From a distance the effect was about what you expect, loud pipes, salty language, tatoos, a nasty stare and so forth. The effect was lost, however, when he got up close and you saw the apricot-colored, teacup poodle peering out of his leather vest.

Mountain mothers pack a wallop

A major part of the fun at the Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival every year centered around the second Saturday in July is the annual Mountain Mother contest. This is not your typical beauty contest or celebrity event.

Mountain mother contestants are required to don hip boots and a back pack with a diapered doll representing a baby. Then they must rush across a log and several wobbly rocks carrying two heavy bags to simulate a stream crossing, rush to the wood pile and split four pieces of wood, load the wood into a wheel barrow and rush it to the campfire site. Once the wood is dumped each pauses to blow up a balloon and tack it onto a target board and then rushes to the bow-and-arrow station some 50 feet away. You get 10 tries with the bow and arrow, then it's on to pounding a nail into a board, rushing to the casting area and showing your ability to accurately cast a fishing lure more than 50 feet. The final rush is to a table to take the diaper from the baby, wash it and hang it out to dry, then put together a confection (cookie, whipped cream and a cherry), and rush to ring the bell at the finish line.

Needless to say, there are a lot of laughs at this event.

Fun problems to have

Depending on which version of the bumper sticker you believe, Talkeetna, Alaska, is "a quaint little drinking village" with either "a climbing problem," "a fishing problem" or "a tourism problem." When you also consider that this town devotes an entire summer weekend in celebration of moose turds, you begin to think it's time for yet another bumper sticker.

The Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival is always centered on the second Saturday in July. It involves...well...moose poop, thousands of robin-egg-sized pellets deposited locally by a thriving moose population to the tune of several hundred a day per moose. At the Moose Dropping Festival you can buy a moose pellet with a chance to win a $1,000 prize, you can toss poop pellets in a game, you can buy decorative jewelry made from moose poop and oh so much more. Bet you never though that poop could be so useful.


Talkeetna is probably best described as a cross between a hippie commune and a veterans' enclave. Both groups, not always able to tolerate each other's company in other parts of the country, give this town its special flare and charm. Both groups also engage in lots of smoking and drinking during party weekends like the Moose Dropping Festival; one group completely legal, the other somewhat less so. And, speaking of parties, in Talkeetna the party is not even getting cranked up until every state trooper within a hundred miles has been called out at least once.


And of course, something as crazy as the Moose Dropping Festival is bound to be misconstrued by some animal-rights dingbat in the Lower 48 states. Some years ago one of these nut cases indignantly called the Talkeetna Chamber and demanded to know how high the moose were when they were dropped. Without missing a beat, the woman in Talkeetna answered, "It depends on whether we're dropping them on gravel or on concrete." Even in Talkeetna, dropping a live moose is a little over the edge. Not much over the edge, perhaps, but still over the edge.


Running down the pictures from top to bottom, Vietnam vet Julius Lenhart was managing vehicles in the handicapped parking area for the festival; Kris Dupey was handling the Moose Poop Toss Game in the kids area; the Talkeetna Red Hat Society had the brightest float in the parade; and the young woman on the beautiful blue-eyed horse was a hit with everybody in town. (Note the loaded .44 magnum revolver in a shoulder holster under the horse-woman's left arm.)

Separating Sheep from Goats

I guess it's a pet peeve of mine...people not being able to distinguish between Dall sheep and Rocky Mountain goats, both of which can be seen from the road in parts of Alaska. It struck me again today as I was thumbing through another Alaska guidebook written by some cheechako who only visits here occasionally. He had a picture of Dall sheep ewes in his book identified as mountain goats. I probably come across something like this a dozen times a year or more.


For the record, the top picture shows a mountain goat, the bottom picture shows Dall sheep ewes and lambs. Goat horns are black; sheep horns are brown. While Dall sheep ewes and young rams have horns shaped similarly to those of a full-grown goat, the horn color is a dead giveaway. Goats are also heavier-bodied animals with much longer hair and a fairly prominent hump over their front shoulders. Goats also tend to grow beards as they get older.

Alaska's Lack of Roads

Most of us have heard the old joke about cutting Alaska in two and making Texas the third-largest state. Extending that thought even further, at low tide you could cut Alaska into thirds and make Texas the fourth-largest state. There is a lot of land up here.

However, there are not a lot of roads serving all of that land. There are, in fact, fewer miles of road in Alaska that there are in Maryland, one of the smaller states. If you take into account that part of Alaska you can drive around, you have an area about the size of Oregon with vast distances between the roads.

With the exception of a tunnel to Whittier and the pipeline Haul Road (now the Dalton Highway) Alaska has not built a new road since opening the Parks Highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks more than 35 years ago. The Haul Road was built by industry; the Whittier road was delayed more than 26 years by environmentalists filing one frivolous lawsuit after another. On the latter we ended up with a one-lane tunnel that is shared with a train and the highest toll for driving 2.5 miles in the history of U.S. road building.

Alaskans and our guests are essentially restricted to a 35-year-old road system. To be sure, there is plenty to see from these roads, but there is so much more to Alaska that most people will never see because of the lack of access.