July 25, 2010

Why do all the good places have no cell phone coverage?  I am feeling a little disconnected from the rest of the world.  For most of this summer, we haven’t had TV, radio, internet, or even newspapers.  The world could be at war and we wouldn’t know it.

Our latest stop off the beaten path is along the Denali Highway, about 20 miles in from the Paxson side.  We have been camped at Tangle Lakes Campground for the last couple nights with our friends, her parents, and their three dogs.  They are all in her parents’ motor home that they brought up for the summer from upstate New York.  It looks a little crowded in there with the three large dogs.  I have almost felt guilty about our spacious accommodations, but we are living at home while they are out on a weekend camping trip.  These are different activities that we can just happen to do at the same place and time.

Tangle Lakes is a chain of connected lakes way up the Delta River System.  Yesterday, we kayaked around most of the perimeter of Round Tangle Lake.  The weather hasn’t been great and we got rained on while kayaking.  The wind was blowing up some mild waves on the relatively large lake, but it never got rough.  It is a beautiful subalpine location, although the lack of trees probably isn’t beautiful to everyone.  We can see forever in the rolling hills.  This also means we can see the other campers, a few cabins along the lake, the Denali Highway and the large lodge.  It doesn’t have that same wilderness feel when you can see such clear signs of other human beings, but most of the cabins are vacant, the lodge doesn’t seem to be very busy, and the campground is quiet in spite of the couple dozen RVs. 

And the highway wouldn’t rise to most people’s concept of a highway.  It is paved for the first 20 miles at this end, until just before the campground.  The two lane road sees very little traffic.  It cuts across the middle of the state, a distance of about 140 miles, and most of that is gravel.  We have driven the road before, and this time we were happy to be only coming in a short distance.

So all these clearly visible buildings and a paved road can make you forget that this is a remote location.  There is no electricity available along this road.  There are no telephone lines.  And there are no cell towers.  This is the middle of nowhere.

Today was a slower pace.  We took a ride another 20 miles up the highway, a ride of about an hour on the washboard and pothole surface.  We drove to the Mclaren River area, one of my favorite spots in Alaska.  The scenery has been blocked out a little by rain and clouds, but it was still a wonderful area.  We took a long hike toward the glacier in the afternoon.  We ate dinner at the Mclaren Lodge, a quaint little establishment that gets by on the occasional traveler and the busloads of Princess Cruise Lines guests that stop for lunch.  Our companions decided to park their motorhome at a different location for the evening.  We didn’t want to hitch up and tow up the rough road so we returned after dinner.

We arrived on Friday afternoon. We weren’t expecting our companions until the evening, so we found a suitably large camping area and slowly parked the trailer, contemplating the layout with a motorhome.  It made a nice little compound with a great view from both RVs. 

While waiting for their arrival, I walked down to the lake with a fishing rod.  The river dumps into the lake only a short distance from the trailer.  A couple of fishermen were fishing the good spot, so I cast along the shore for a few minutes, then walked upstream a little ways and cast the river.  I was just about to quit when the two fishermen walked by, heading for their car.  I decided to go fish the good spot, the point where the river dumps in.  Within a few minutes, after trying a few different techniques of fishing the fast moving water, I hooked a fifteen inch grayling.  I quickly cleaned it and began preparing it for dinner.  Our friends arrived and they began setting up while Kris and I ate our dinner.  This morning, I caught another one almost the same size in just a short time of fishing.  This is some of the best grayling fishing I have ever seen, big fish with relatively steady action.  Of course there are many fishermen stopping to try so there is a constant flow of cars and people past our prime campsite,

Around lunchtime, I saw a couple walking back from the lake wearing waders carrying several large lake trout.  I expected that the lake trout would be in the deep water, not accessible from shore, but clearly they caught these only a short distance from shore.  Dan and I talked to them and they explained that they were using grayling guts as bait while fishing the outlet of the river.  I reviewed the rules and determined that this was legal, as long as they kept the filets of the grayling.  I did find that the three lake trout that they kept were in excess of the allowed one per day, but I suspect they were confused by the rules and not flagrantly poaching fish.  I may have to try for some lake trout before leaving here.

Before Tangle Lakes, we spent a couple nights on the road between Fairbanks and Paxson.  The first night was at Chena Lake Recreation Site.  It is a strange place.  A seven mile long dam was constructed after Fairbanks flooded in the sixties.  The dam can be closed if the Chena River runs too high, capturing the water in a massive flat area that eventually overflows to the Tanana River if the rains continued.  The dam was open so the river just flows through this massive 50 ft high embankment. 

We found a campsite near the river and I took an ultralight fishing rod down to the river to see if I could find any fish.  Other fishermen were a little more heavily equipped and a couple of big kings rolled while I was fishing.  Luckily, no one was catching the kings since I didn’t think I could land one with my gear.   I was disappointed not to find any other fish since many other species are available.

We tried to kayak in the afternoon, but the weather was looking rather threatening.  Instead we waited until late evening, a great choice as the winds died down, the rains passed, and the sun even came out for awhile.  We paddled around Chena Lake which is an old gravel pit that was flooded while creating the flood control system.  We fished a little and caught some little fish, but soon realized that this lake is massive and oddly shaped.  We followed bend after bend in the shoreline, even following what looked like a stream until it joined with another similar channel that took us back to the open water.  We saw beavers and a few birds.  We eventually had to cut our trip short, taking straight paths across a couple of bays because it was getting very late.

The next morning, I fished a little more, this time with a little heavier gear, while Kris picked raspberries which are in the freezer with our blueberries.  We took an afternoon bike ride along the dam, to the lake, and around the facilities before packing up and heading down the road. 

Our next stop was a simple overnight at a commercial campground in Delta Junction with water and electric hookups.  We feel so decadent when we have electricity as we can turn on lights.  We even turned on the TV.  That evening, we took a walk around the campground that turned into another several mile hike.  The treat of this hike was the discovery of wild strawberries along the road.  We were both stunned to find them there.  They were small berries, but incredibly flavorful.