Anchorage to McGrath

After the heat of Hawaii things are starting to get a little chillier. Our travels are taking us to the wilds of Alaska! Su has been dreading this part of the trip for the best part of the year but I've managed to drag her (kicking and screaming) along. We arrived in Anchorage and literally chilled for a few days to acclimatise. To be honest we don't have too much to say about Anchorage except that the people are nice and the city has an amazing backdrop - here's a photo of the local Walmart for example:

The mountains in the background are stunning (when you can see them). My main reason for coming to Alaska (as silly as it sounds) was to visit a place I read about roughly 10 years ago called McGrath. It's a little village in the middle of Alaska that was named after a U.S. Marshall called Peter McGrath.

As good a reason as any to visit a place. This is nearly as remote as you get in Alaska (the population is less than 300 in the winter) so we weren't too sure what to expect. However, we booked our ticket....

...got to the airport...

...and boarded our 30 seater plane for 2 days of wilderness! If you think a 30 seater plane is small, just wait.

We had two goals for the trip: I wanted to find out some more information about the Peter McGrath that the town was named after, and Su wanted to see a moose. We didn't want to aim too high just in case. We landed in McGrath at around 9:30 in the morning and hit the main street:

We saw Hotel McGrath just by the airport:

but being poor backpackers we weren't staying there. A short walk down the road was the cafe which had a few rooms above it - not as fancy as the hotel but fine for us.

We were sort of at a loss for something to do at this stage so we went for a walk around the town and less than an hour later got back to the cafe having seen what we though was pretty much everything. How wrong we were. Not sure what else to do, we relied on instinct and had some pizza at the cafe (very good!) and hit one of the two pubs in the town: Joes Bar.

It serves the best (and only) draft beer in McGrath! Certainly good enough for the likes of us!

Things pretty much took off from there. We had been a bit worried that we had spent one of our two days in McGrath walking around, eating pizza, and going to the pub - which we could (and do) pretty much do anywhere but all that changed when we got talking to this guy:

Chris! Local jack-of-all-trades from lumber to whatever you need, he's your man. We told him what we were doing in his fine town and he got a great kick out of it. Soon all the bar knew about our great adventure in McGrath (there were about 5 people in the bar including us and Nick the barman). The other person in the bar was Camille and she headed off and came back a few minutes later with a bag of her finest homemade Smoked Wild Alaskan Salmon strips and Moose jerky - both of which were delicious - these were bar snacks Alaskan style!

As the evening wore on we met more and more people - all of which were friendly and delighted that two Irish eejits went out of their way to visit their town. Chris, acting as our agent, rang the radio station and booked us in for an interview first thing in the morning (sounded like a great idea after a skinful of pints). He also promised us that he would pick us up afterwards and bring us around to a couple of the sights. We staggered home in the -10 degree cold to the cafe, happy with the way the night had gone and very unhappy after discovering that even with thermal underwear, 4 layers, and our beer-coats on, -10 degrees is COLD!!!

The next day was the busiest day we've had since our journey began. We awoke early to head over to the radio station: KSKO.

We had around a half hour interview with Mike Lane the local (and only) DJ where we told him about our travels and he told us a little about the area. It was a good laugh.

Su thought she'd be clever and stand by the doorway talking photographs but Mike wasn't having any of it and called her in, live on air, and grilled her as much as he had me. We found out that even though not a lot of tourists visit McGrath at this time of year, they expected the first heavy fall of snow soon which is basically the start of the severe winter so we might get a chance to experience that! As if -10 wasn't cold enough.

After having a cup of Irish tea with Mike and saying our goodbyes, we met Chris at the cafe and he was all set to take us on the grand tour of McGrath! First off was a bit of Moose hunting (well... Moose sighting..) and sure enough, Chris knew just the place. It's amazing how well an animal that big (think of a horse but ganglier) can camouflage itself. Su took quite a few photographs (with me hiding behind) and this is the clearest:

 

This was a female Moose, hence no antlers.

Next we took a trip to McGrath Air Terminal. Not to be confused with McGrath air strip where the commercial flights land (like the one we got to McGrath). This Air Terminal is a privately owned business which flies goods and post to even smaller, even more inaccessible nearby villages in ridiculously small one-engine planes. Anyway, Chris rocks up there and asks if myself and Su can hop on board on the runs for an eagle eye view of McGrath. We were told that if there was room, there'd be no problem. An hour later we were hopping into this:

and flying over this:

This is the Kuskokwim river on which McGrath resides. It meanders quite a bit, as you can see. This is the real Alaska folks! We landed on the side of a mountain in a place called Takotna, helped unload the airplane, and took off back to McGrath - all done in less than 30 minutes.

After the flight, we thought it was time to find out a big more about this McGrath fella so we took a walk to the museum. So, here he is: Peter H McGrath:

I don't know, Chris was beside himself when he saw the photo - he thought the resemblance was uncanny. I myself wasn't too sure. He IS a handsome guy though....

I'll leave it up to you to decide. Here's some info about him (if you can make it out):

Chris picked us up again to take us around the some the local sights. He introduced us to Donne - she is one of the native Alaskans who live in McGrath and she kindly allowed Chris to show us her homestead - a magnificent log cabin with surround forest and incredible view (it even had it's own outdoor wood-fired sauna folks!):

 

 

We also paid a visit to Donne's fathers house which had it's own airstrip! Incredible!

We took a trip to Mount McKinley lookout (Mount McKinley being the highest mountain in the U.S.and the second highest in the world!) but the weather was closing in. We just had time to stop by a friend of Chris's who was building his own log cabin. He and his (pregnant) wife were living in a wall tent while they built their house. A wall tent is a military-style canvas and plastic waterproof tent. It had a stove, so they were alright. Hardy people these Alaskans. The picture of Chris at the start of the blog was in their outhouse. This picture is of their cabin:

They've got quite a bit to go.

By the time we got back to the town the river looked like this:

It was getting down to -15 Celsius now - it seemed we got there for the heavy snow! Nothing for it but to hit the bar again where we met even more people and heard even more amazing stories! One guy we met who worked as a gold miner gave us a gold nugget as a souvenir! A gold nugget!!! We bought him a Budweiser but it didn't seem like enough compensation somehow...

The next day we awoke to this:

 

We were told that it was 50/50 if we'd get out of McGrath. There are certainly worse places to be but we had to catch a train to Fairbanks the next day. All of a sudden the incoming flight landed and we were boarded without delay. It was all too quick as we didn't get to say goodbye and thank everyone that we should. We had an amazing two days in McGrath and the people there should be proud of what they have. If your name is McGrath, or if you want to see a bit of real Alaska, I highly recommend it! You can't go wrong! They've done the name proud!