Category: Alaska

Alaska travel articles – try a little harder to get it right!

It really bugs me to find travel articles that have either serious or many errors. The newly-posted article “Taking the Long Road: Exploring Alaska’s Scenic Highways” by Jamie Ehrlich (at http://www.frommers.com/articles/4847.html – now heavily edited from when I first saw it and wrote this post) is full of errors...
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Alaskan Clydesdale

You might enjoy this email I received this morning: Only in Alaska… This guy raised an abandoned moose calf with his horses, and believe it or not, he has trained it for lumber removal and other hauling tasks. Given the 2,000 pounds of robust muscle, and the splayed, grippy...
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Truths in Alaska? Read Craig Medred

Every place needs a writer or 2 or 6 who thinks about what’s going on and what’s being said by others – I mean really thinks – and then writes about his assessments. My favourite Alaskan writer in that vein is Craig Medred, whose columns appear in the Anchorage...
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There are no elephants in Alaska

At least as of last night there are no elephants in Alaska. Maggie, a 2-ton, 25-year-old African elephant, has spent most of her life at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, but last night was flown in a C-17 military cargo plane to the Performing Animal Welfare Society facility in...
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Bargain bald eagles next week!!

Eagles dive-bombing each other along the Chilkat Rver at at Haines, Alaska No, you can’t buy bald eagles cheaply next week, but with the US dollar going for 97.3 Canadian cents at banks today, getting to Haines, Alaska, to see the incredible Alaska Bald Eagle Festival is a bargain....
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Justice & the Law – not the same thing at all

I expect that almost all of you remember when, on March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Alaska’s spectacular Prince William Sound. Many of you probably don’t know that the court case against Exxon is still going on. Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit...
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On the road with a tour – Denali to Anchorage

Everyone seemed to enjoy having the morning to relax and/or explore at the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge yesterday morning. To avoid getting to Anchorage too soon, I offered the group a chance to go to the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer as well as the scheduled stop at the Iditarod...
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On the road with a tour – Denali Wilderness Tour

The Maher group was yet again blessed in Denali National Park yesterday – the variety of animals we saw was wonderful, and some were in unusual places compared to my last 25+ trips into the park. We left the McKinley Chalet hotel on the Tundra Wildernes Tour (TWT) bus...
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On the road with a tour – Alaska Railroad to Denali

After a very full day on Sunday, Monday was a very leisurely one for most of us. At 0820 we departed from Fairbanks for a 4-hour trip to Denali National Park, in one of the luxurious McKinley Explorer cars on the Alaska Railroad. This was one of the things...
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On the road with a tour – Exploring Fairbanks

It’s 05:00, and there’s hardly a cloud in the sky – it’s looking like a gorgeous day to take the Alaska Railroad to Denali National Park! Yesterday (Sunday) was our “Explore Fairbanks” day. This is a city that takes some research if you’re travelling independently – it certainly doesn’t...
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