Rex and Nancy's Travels - "ALL WHO WANDER ARE NOT LOST" - JRR Tolkein

Sunday we headed back into Yoho National Park to do some kayaking on Emerald Lake.   Mariah enjoyed the beautiful views from the lake. The water in this glacier-fed lake is very clear and a beautiful turquoise color.     The Indian Paint-brush and Fireweed flowers along the shore were beautiful. We also saw some Canada Geese – we think these are true native Canadians - Eh! We paddled to the far side of the lake where we stopped for a picnic lunch.   Mariah is enjoying the view of Emerald Glacier from the middle of the lake. We had great views of beautiful mountains all around the lake. We all enjoyed kayaking on this beautiful lake and the weather cooperated with very little wind.  When we got back to Golden Eco-Adventure Ranch we watched more hang gliders land on the landing field.

We left Valdez this morning in rain and fog and retraced our route back up the Richardson Highway. We ran out of the fog and rain after we went over Thompson Pass and thought we would be able to see more of the scenery. Not to be, shortly we ran into more smoke. We stopped at the visitor center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park but it was really smoky so we didn’t stay very long. The ranger there (we think he was a ranger but he looked about 15 years old!) told us that there are currently 60 fires in Alaska and the smoke here is from the fires North of here around Fairbanks. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest national park in the US at 13.2 million acres. There are only 2 short gravel roads in the park so access is limited to backpacking, hiking and flight seeing. The park is mainly wilderness and has 4 major mountain ranges in it and includes 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US. Unfortunately, because of the smoke we were not able to see any of them. We turned off the R...