Come Camping in Alaska

Heat [Applause] up here. [Applause] [Applause] The Hillaries had always dreamt of visiting Alaska or better still spending a camping vacation in that land of boldness and beauty. While Cloud Crest at Mount McKinley doesn't begin to have the elevation of Mount Everest, which Sir Edmund Hillary had conquered in 1953, this highest mountain in North America had always intrigued his imagination. Though he might never have the time or opportunity to climb it, he'd always wish to see it for himself. But above all, there was the country itself. Geologically ancient as any textbook will tell, sociologically new as a hit tumor. It was a place the Hillaries wanted to visit for its mystery and its grandeur. It was also a place they wanted to visit for the sheer fun of camping together as a family. They'd been camping from Chicago to Seattle to Vancouver from where the Princess Louise had taken them by way of the inland waterway to Juno. But if you really want to drive as well as camp in Alaska, you take the ferry from Juno to Hannes where the road system starts for which both Canada and Alaska have become famous. From Hannes in southeastern Alaska, one drives by the side of the incomparable Chilcat River to Canada. One crosses the border at Camp Pleasant. And a very good name it is too because you have the challenging beauty of British Columbia and the Yukon ahead of you. The roads may be gravel instead of hard top, but they're excellently maintained. And when British Columbia gives way to the Yukon under the pounding of your tires, you really can't tell the difference because the same beauty is still there. But it's the end of the day and you and your children are just a little weary. So you turn off the highway because the shores of Lake Desash are where you would like to camp this night. Ed has already started putting up the kind of tent home whose appeal the Hillaries and campers everywhere simply can't resist. Besides, there's a boat on the lake and Desdash is famous for its lake trout. [Applause] You troll for them or you cast to them from the shore. But like all the waters of the Northland, whether in Canada or Alaska, Lake Desdash also provides graing. And Peter has his first. Whether you're casting for lake trout in Desdash in the Yukon or whether you're casting for salmon in Alaska's celebrated Montana Creek, fishing is one of those simple pleasures which makes so many millions go camping the world over. Sometimes you lose them. Sometimes you land them for sport and sometimes for the lauder. [Music] Oh my. Is just what any girl would say when her husband and her son bring home a catch like this. Whether it's salmon or lake trout or graing, a supper of fish fixed over a campfire just doesn't have any equal. Staying in your holiday home at a lovely spot is one of the great joys of camping. The other is going places. And if Alaska is where you're headed for, you join the Alaska Highway at Hannes Junction. The border is a mere 205 miles away. And very soon now, you will be leaving the Yukon and entering South Central Alaska at Toe Junction. Heat. Heat. From here you will drive south to Glenn Allen and then you'll head west on the Glenn Highway. You don't drive all the time. The country is so compelling that you have to stop every so often for no other reason than just to look at it in wonderment. Abundant fire weed at your feet and the glorious two gatch mountains in the sky. And then you stop again because on the knife sharp peaks of the Taleta mountains you might just see a koi young lass of the doll sheep family outside the mating season. The rams run together in flocks of their own in these high and beautiful places. [Music] The use stay together in their turn. [Music] [Applause] One last look for Louise and then they're on their way again. This time it is one of Alaska's primordial glaciers. The one from which the Matanuska Valley where you are heading takes its name. After the mountains come the rivers and after the rivers the lakes. Until you suddenly catch your first glimpse of the Matanuska Valley itself. Here the tundra has become the richest farmland in all of North America. Alaska's summer sun. warms this prolific soil for almost 24 hours a day, making the brief growing season pregnant with the earth's bounty. As magnificent the cabbage as either Ed or Louise had ever seen. And Hillary, the New Zealand farmer, stops being a camper for just a minute while he talks shop with Sherid, the Alaskan farmer. These giants are going to win a ribbon at the annual Matanuska Valley Fair. For the eager commercial market, however, one plants the cabbages much closer together so they grow smaller. They're excellent eating whether raw or cooked. South of the Matanuska Valley, the Kenai Peninsula divides Touan Arm from the Gulf of Alaska itself. [Applause] And if you love to ski, you feel compelled to ride Mount Alaska's lift for all of its 1 and a/4 mile length, even though it's summertime. And you won't be able to shush down the mountains 3,000 ft. [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. You're rewarded, if your name is Louise Hillary, by the fragile loveliness of flowers like these. [Applause] If your name is Ed Hillary, the combination of cloud and mountain takes you back to the Himalayas in the season of the monsoon. [Music] The most gracious ornament of the peninsula is Kenai Lake itself. A few hundred yards from where Quartz Creek loses itself in the lake. The hillies might well decide to camp. >> This is a lovely spot, Louise, isn't it? Yes, this is beautiful. Thank you. >> Be ideal for a camp. >> Yes, I think we found a really good one this time. >> You think the beach will be safe for the children? >> Yeah, I think that looks a very good beach for them. And there aren't any weeds or sticks and things from the trip on, which is good. >> Now, what about the camp? Um, you think we ought to have the the trailer camper over there? >> Um, oh no, cuz we won't be able to see the view if we put it there, will we? Well, >> we could put it here. I suppose we could lay it along here and then uh put the the tent there. And where would you like the campfire? >> Um, should we have it over there? Cuz that's a nice clear patch, isn't it? >> We can put it there. >> And we can even put a clos line between those two trees behind the fire. >> Be ideal >> cuz I've got some dirty washing that needs to be done. >> I noticed some uh dead trees over in the forest there. I can hack one of those out and we have plenty of firewood. >> Yes. Well, we need that cuz it's getting a bit cool now, isn't it? >> The drainage is quite good here, so we won't have any trouble with the drains. >> Yeah, I think we'll be set for everything. >> Well, let's go and get all the gear and bring it on. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Oh my god. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Wow. Oh, hey. [Music] Louise, would you come and give me a hand? >> Yeah, it's warmed up rather quickly, hasn't it? >> Yes, it certainly has. Rather >> wonder if you'll give me a hand on that end, Louise, and get this uh tent up. Makes it a bit easier. >> Yeah. Right. Right. [Music] Is that okay? >> Yes, it's not too bad. >> Oh, it's fine. It's a good thing we're stopping here. I think the children are getting a bit tired, you know. >> Yes, I think they are, too. It's jolly handy. This tent goes up so quickly. want any of the uh windows open? >> No, I think I'll open that one tonight. >> I'll get the weekend. [Music] Well, let's go and get all the gear on the children. Heat. Heat. [Music] Just pick the place you want to put your bed. >> Where you going to put your bed? >> Where are you going, Lindsay? >> I'm going right by the door. >> Oh, I see. That sounds very nice. Where's Where's Sarah going? >> Yeah. On a camping trip, bedtime comes early for the And then there is that quiet moment when you and your wife just simply decide to linger here a little while longer. And so the next day, Ed puts up a second tent, which is going to be the children's bedroom. and What must always happen in a children's bedroom before they go to sleep? A bedtime story, of course. What was I going to tell you about? >> Did you um >> rattlesnake? >> The rattlesnake. Oh, yes. Well, I'll tell you. No. Last story we had this frightful business about Jimmy Job and at Mura Lake in the Uenta Mountains and you remember how the mosquitoes lifted him up? There were so many of them. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well, he got back in the car when we traveled away. You remember? And we traveled and we drove and we drove right across Utah and then we came to Nevada, didn't we? And we drove right across the desert. Remember one night we camped in the in the forest there? >> Yeah. Mhm. Well, we all camped down nicely and as soon as we got there and as soon as he called Jimmy Job, he got out of the trailer. You see, he sneaked out when nobody was looking and ducked out on the side into the bushes and he had his little pack with him and he had the little pack and then he had his little tent in the pack. So, he walked along in the bushes and it was pretty dark there. You remember that place where we camped amongst all the trees and things and down by the stream? >> Quite dark. >> Yeah. And you got muddy there once too. Remember that? Yeah. >> Well, that's where we were. And he sort of went up the valley a bit and he made his little camp and he was going up the valley and he hitched his little tent tent and he crawled inside and he went to sleep. And early next morning he woke up and said, "I'll go and have a bit of an explore around and see what it's like here because this is a new place for me in Nevada. I haven't been here before. Be interested to see what happens." So he went on and he walked around. And he walked up the side of the hill and he walked along the trees and all he was very interested and there were lovely views you see and he was going along and he sort of walking along amongst the trees and suddenly there was the most horrific rattle. He jumped about six feet in the air and he heard a hissing and a rattle and so on and he looked down and he he was still practically up in the air. was so scared. There was a great big rattlesnake just getting his head up in the air and hissing and rattling. But no matter how compelling a camping site might be, one must eventually move on. Next stop, Anchorage. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Owned by the federal government, the Alaska Railroad was built to carry supplies from the warm water ports of Seward and Whittier to Fairbanks via the Cape that was to become the city of Anchorage. Like every small boy, Peter would love to drive his very own train through country like this. [Music] He wouldn't care very much whether it were a brand new passenger train or a brand new freight train carrying indispensables from South 48 to the people who are building a brand new state. Getting from Anchorage to Mount McKinley Park is perfectly feasible by road and thousands of people do it. But our time is wearing short and so we decide to go by way of the Alaska Railroad. [Applause] Here it is. Famed Mount McKinley Park. And you travel the Denali Highway to get as close to Majestic Mount McKinley as you can by car. On the way, you may be lucky enough to see a caribou with a magnificent rack. But as you're getting a snapshot of him, he might just go off to rejoin his fellow members of the herd for which the Alaska and Taletna rangers are so notable. The Wonder Lake camping ground is where the Denali Highway ends. And here you are closest to Mount McKinley. And so if your name is Sir Edmund Hillary, you are going to pitch your camp at Wonder Lake if nowhere else in Alaska. While Mount McKinley might hold the greatest interest for Ed, the children are far more intrigued with the parky squill who has come to call. [Applause] [Music] [Music] Actually, the Hillaries did not get their best view of Mount McKinley from this campground. The mountain was still bathed in clouds as it almost always is when they reluctantly had to leave Wonder Lake. It was only after they traveled several miles back toward the railroad station that the clouds cleared for a brief moment to let the sun shine on what is perhaps the most beautiful site in all of North America. Further up the road, they spotted a grizzly bear eating away at wild blueberries. [Music] The grizzly and the brown bear wear coats of almost identical colors. But the grizzly lives inland and the brown on the coast. Here he catches salmon for his dinner. [Music] Wellfed and content, he needs only to stand in one of the rivers up which the salmon come to spawn and deafly catch his fish before it eludes him. Sometimes there are so many salmon that he can't decide which one to go after and so he stays hungry until he makes up his mind. The grizzly, on the other hand, has no choice during the summer but to eat blueberries the live long day. No camping vacation ever lasts long enough. And so Ed and Louise must push on. In a few hours, the train brings them and their car and their camper trailer to Fairbanks, where this signpost tells them that they are some 1500 miles away from where the Alaska Highway begins in Canada. Among other things, it also happens to tell them that they are 12,826 miles away from Cape Town and 9,95 from Singapore. And so the Alaskan camping trip the Hillaries had always dreamt of ended as all camping trips must. Even for the conqueror of Mount Everest. [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music]