Exploring Alaska I Kenai Fjords, Wasilla, Seward, Hatcher Pass & Wrangle St. Elias National Park

It's not fair to remind you of a mess you made up, baby, I don't know, to remind you of the mess you made up, baby, I don't know, to remind you of the mess you made up, I'm trying to fly! They were amazing hosts. They gave us so much meat and fresh vegetables and good food and conversation. It was so nice to have family, so it's really fun. We're glad we could visit them. It has been an awesome couple days hanging out with them. Kristen forgot to get videos. Absolutely awesome cabin that they'd built together here in Wasilla, Alaska. We came out here and spent a couple days and they were, you know, just the greatest hosts. We were talking about pretty much quintessential Alaskan experience eating a lot of fresh, you know, caught silver salmon from the last few days and then we had some moose tonight and salads from their greenhouse of all the crops they've been growing here and, yeah, it's been awesome. So we did some hikes around, did some, right after Denali we came and visited and just had an awesome time. So that was a cool experience and now we're heading down towards Seward and Kanai Fjords. All right, you can't really see it but this is at Beluga Point. We're watching some Beluga whales coming in out of the water right up the side of the highway here. We are entering Kanai Fjords National Park. You can see Exit Glacier in the distance. It is a beautiful sunny day, thank goodness, and it feels so much like fall in the air. Of course, because it is fall here but just beautiful smell and we're excited to be in Alaska. It never wears off. It's so crazy. All right, we're working our way up to the Harding Glacier or Harding Ice Field here in Kanai Fjords. There's flowers and berries and it's super pretty. See all the gravel bars down below and we got a pretty much perfect day today. You know, we've been hiking and biking a lot in the rain so it's been nice to get some sun out here and enjoy the weather. It feels like we're in Washington again with how hot and humid it is and not have to worry about all the extra rain layers. So pretty sweet and hopefully we'll be at the glacier soon. Made it to the Harding Ice Field. You can see down into that nice crevasse on the glacier. So right at the top of Exit Glacier kind of on to the rest of the ice fields it goes for I don't know how many miles but pretty sweet. Big of the snow came down from there. Unfortunately, I'm not nearing near this time so we'll just be at the end of the line here. All right, so we're gonna at the end of our hike do this little offshoot to see the gravel bar but um that's not happening clearly. Somehow the trail filled it's deep like that is that sign over there. Daily this is how we get our water to fill up gallons a day. We don't have a pump. Made it to Seward, Alaska after we went hiking all day and we are in a fishing town so we got some seafood chowder to start and I'm getting some scallop mac and cheese and they unfortunately didn't have caribou burgers even though they said they did. So we're getting uh splitting a burger and some scallop mac and cheese which looks good and discover the little pork town that is Seward, Alaska. We have booked a Kanai Fjords tour apparently other than the hike we did yesterday the best way to see the park is by boat because it's so big and pretty much most of it's on the ocean so it's all fjords tons of uh marine wildlife they said and we'll see glaciers hopefully some calving which is when the glaciers break off into the ocean so our boat's right over there we're just grabbing a coffee and we're gonna head on and yeah so pretty good stuff out here we're having fun ready to get on the bay we're at mile zero of the Iditarod starts here 938 miles to Nome where it finishes up down here in Seward southern tip of Alaska and it is beautiful it was predicted to rain and we've got a local musher it looks like who's uh getting ready to start a race here yeah predicted to rain all day and this is what we ended up with which is something you can't beat it's like you tell me if you think this hose is fine like i don't want it to fall off what we're driving i mean is that screwed in as it was before i think so just scares me a little jordan's making our gourmet meal with the moose sausage we got from uncle mark and aunt sharon oh some peppers some avocados some rice some broccoli so happy to be eating like this all right we got moose sausage they're philly cheesesteak sausages apparently and kristen's uncle mark sharon and then we got some sauteed peppers with it already ate a bunch of rice and stuff kristen's not feeling carbs tonight so we're just going for this and uh it looks pretty damn good so excited to get into it all right out here biking the lost lake ride on seward unfortunately i chose i just one day the ******* year that has a road race or trail run which is uh quite surprising so just waiting to know anyway beautiful views out here up in alaska other than having to stop every 30 feet so it's good stuff having fun it's a fun ride i'm excited when the 700 runners pass me finally yeah all right so i just finished a little bit muddy on this ride but uh yeah i am waiting for kristen to come pick me up i think she was working on the vlog here while i was biking um kind of unfortunate just because that was genuinely one of the most fun like alpine mountain forest rides i think i've done at least as far as i got um got three and a half up out of seven and then came down those three and a half supposed to be seven up seven down and uh got through all the steep and uh hard stuff you know it's just the fun rolling alpine meadows i had left with the good views unfortunately so you know it is what it is can't win them all sadly all right so we're here wild scoops the reason we had to come is because of this thing which is an ice cream cone with burnt marshmallow fluff that they make in house which is outstanding kristen's getting a uh ice cream nachos so we'll see how that comes out hey reindeer true alaskan reindeer okay moose dinner day two honey berry pancakes yeah and our canadian maple syrup loose bacon and kristen crushed it and beautiful views beautiful views we are in the hatcher pass area we're gonna do some climbing haven't decided if we're gonna do toto which is the peak over here or if we're gonna do some just kind of single push stuff today hiking the road we're up here in hatcher pass where it's the only real rock climbing in alaska apparently there's an alpine granite and uh check it out there's a lot of bouldering mostly single pitch trad one or two multi-pitch climbs and we'll see we can get on a pretty fun one uh corner crack there and very lord of the rings like how they describe this area some guy camping down there it's pretty awesome we've been doing some rock climbing we were up on that guy today and another big thing about hatcher pass is it is filled with wild alaskan blueberries so basically all these fields are just full of blueberries and you can see them they're these guys they're pretty good some are sour but um they're pretty awesome people come out here with buckets like big home depot sized buckets and just spend all day picking them while we're climbing which is pretty wild um and then you know they eat them they said they make a lot of pies and tarts and all these other things with them um kristin's sad that we don't have a bucket to pick more drug's getting mad at me for picking so many blueberries just wait just wait trim i can't stop there's so many are you picking a blueberry ones yeah you just can't see them from there are you putting these dark things no all the ones back there are huge these are ripe you can tell because they just fall off i don't know i picked a giant one i tasted it it was good it was super sour oh i picked that one it was the best blueberry i've ever had in my entire life all right your phone's in the grass i know i told the vlog viewers that you're gonna get mad at me for picking blueberries and i wanted them to hear you say christian christian look how many i got well i hope they're blueberries because i've been eating a lot of them christian why are you doing christian's gonna poison herself i love blueberries all right this is night was it four three of moose meat after uh the pounds of meat we got from mark and sharon um so we made our standard stir fry and just added the ground moose meat to this which is really good it's pretty interesting this one tastes you can taste the the moose meat flavor a little bit more on the ground meat than you can on the tenderloins and this has a little bit of i think cow fat mixed in with it so um tastes really good uh this package had opened so we wanted to cook them tonight we're going to save the other one to make burgers with um really get some half pound patties rolling and uh christian picked a bunch of blueberries today alaskan wild blueberries out here which is like most of the people that come here to pick blueberries so true hunters and gatherers in alaska all right i'm at the top of the first pitch of the infamous toto climb here in alaska christian's almost at the anchor this is like the multi-pitch rock climb here um in hatcher well just all of alaska but we're in hatcher pass and it's beautiful pretty epic views hopefully those clouds aren't menacing we'll find out in a little bit this is our first attempt to get a covid test before we get back into canada it's a surprisingly long line for the testing so fingers crossed if not we'll come tomorrow morning if we can't get in all right we got our covid test that was much easier than uh seattle and anything like that we get our test results back in 48 hours at the latest and we should be good which is she really dug up into my nose this time so that wasn't very comfortable they got jordan but hey score more road stops and the drive and wrangle saint elias biggest national park in the u.s but uh probably one of the least visited it seems you are the only people on this road and it is pristine alaska wilderness it's pretty much exactly what i expected from alaska when i was thinking about it it was just like endless forest landscapes and mountains on the horizon nothing but the sounds of nature we are 50 miles from the canadian border um oh man i can't flip this we are on the alcan highway which as sharon has taught us the big bumps are frost heaves and so we have to be really careful a because there's a million potholes but b because the road is super um bumpy like a roller coaster and we'll bottom out if we go too fast and so yeah completely launches us so we are enjoying our time by listening to a podcast it's very bumpy it's very loud but we have you know hundreds of miles on the alcan highway before we get back to canada the good news is we get to go back um a different way through jasper national park and then bam and it starts right after the canadian border a different road so new scenery although the same scenery because it's still the yukon but we're saying goodbye to alaska which we loved we're crossing our fingers no um northern lights yesterday so i'm crossing our finger that we see some tonight maybe it looks pretty cloudy do you have your thing a passport yeah we made it through the canadian border my god but not without hassle the lady who checked us through was super mean super mean and when canadians are nice yeah every other one's been nice they managed to pull our van over and they searched it but like in a really annoying way like literally threw our ---- everywhere unzipped everything but like left it out like my camera was just like on the bench and like jordan's like toothbrush case was in the sink which is gross and so um it wasn't our sink is gross there's a lot of raw meat our seats is gross maybe they now we're fully in the yukon and i think we're gonna find a place to make dinner and sleep soon because it's 11 p.m yeah we've gained um or i guess we've lost an hour so it's it's late now so we're back on canada time and back on canada speed kilometers only we are in the middle of the yukon just woke up jordan he's freezing i guess but also enjoying his time on this dock maybe he's looking for animals they look cold out there what's wrong with man crazy anyway coming here making some breakfast some oatmeal some banana bread so we can drive for 12 hours today all right two massive grizzly bears on the road yes um we're in whitehorse it's the capital of the yukon it's the only wi-fi for probably four days um we've been hiding out in starbucks because the local coffee shops don't have any wi-fi which is crazy i'm a nice quiet person i'm not gonna lie we got some bad news today because we were gonna go down through jasper national park hit the bugaboos and then bamf but um it's september so it's starting to get the cold first of all and second of all they had a really bad hot summer so a lot of the glaciers melted and the routes are kind of weird and there's a lot of rock fall so we can't do the bugaboos fire like we wanted to um and now we're trying to figure out what we do do we climb some part of the bugaboos do we go to bamf and climb some there do we go to idaho and climb up some of the sawtooths um so currently we're figuring that out we're gonna cook some moose burgers tonight our last moose meat our last moose meat we're kind of sad oh it's been so good um and we have like 24 hours of driving ahead of us for the next couple days and then of course more after that but we saw grizzly bears today we saw moose today and jordan having a great hair day just kidding we haven't showered fantastic when i don't shower jordan has good hair two week old hair exclusively when it's dirty however i have to wear a hat wherever i go because it's gross so i get an afro if i just shower so yeah actually jordan's hair two days you rub sweat and dirt in my hair pristine all right so it's pretty common in america to have inside bathroom stalls people writing you know f you go after yourself at least in men's stalls i feel like only in canada you have go vegan people declaring their love for each other have a safe drive time like their own adventures and sometimes the vaccine and full posts so pretty wild um also common question for most people is where do we sleep where do we go to the bathroom well we usually sleep at canada it's a lot of uh rest areas they have on the side of the road which is nice you know so you get cool views usually lakes and wherever america a lot of trailheads um you know especially a lot of ones where people backpack from and park their car a couple days anyway and uh vault toilets are kind of the name of the game to be honest which honestly they're too bad i've gotten used to them most of them are actually a lot cleaner than you think some are disgusting but you know it is what it is and here we go so we're in the heading back um towards the canadian rockies jasper band bugaboos all that stuff rainy day which will make driving a little bit easier and i feel super sunny but getting going we are almost out of gas and we're at this weird pump station that we think we're fueling right but i don't know the united states does not have fueling stations in giant like ship and crate style and our first time in alberta full of a bug covered windshield i'm making jordan do crossword christian will not stop doing crossword puzzles off of a book she bought and uh 98 of the words on the crossword puzzles are three-letter words and um they make no sense so anyway we went from alaska to the yukon to british columbia and now we're in alberta which means we're heading down towards jasper national park and then bamf we'll do some hiking and climbing and the plan to currently go is to um idaho and the sawtooths maybe city of rocks the tingtons maybe vataville then colorado guys if we see you in october it's jordan's fault yeah well if it were my choice to be coming back in december you don't have any money and um you know you'd hit rocky mountains up in colorado you obviously gotta hit our utah trip as it gets cold and ice climbing season begins i don't want to get a job so here we are alberta canada home of bamf and jasper here we come all right in our last you know a few days in canada apparently something super famous is ketchup flavored everything christina's tried it i don't like it it's like a very assaulting flavor it's salty i haven't tried it yet it genuinely tastes like you squirt a bunch of ketchup on a potato chip not bad i can't say i'd actively get these ever not that i ever eat chips anyway i haven't bought a bag of chips in ever i love you just come for free i think yeah i love chips eat that anyway canadian um wow a lot of hot dog sense that no it's the bag smells nice