Adventuring on the Steese Highway

Day 44  July 28, 2016                   Steese Highway, mile 29, Upper Chatanika River SRA, site 22, day 2

102 miles non-towing

Woke up to a rainy cloudy day.  Made a fire and sat out with our coffee anyway as it was letting up. 

Their fire pits were two sides with steel and then rocks.

Had some cinnamon rolls with our coffee, another treat we do camping.  Solar panel had no solar to run it so we fired up the generator to charge up our electronics like computers, camera batteries, phones, and the trailer batteries.  Been off the grid for four days.  It’s pretty quiet and only takes an hour to bring everything back to life.

Walked down to the river and fished from shore about 15 minutes with no luck.  Frustrating.

 We took showers in the Oliver, then I cooked us a big breakfast of sausage, toast, and fried eggs.  I use my grill to cook the sausage links and make toast.  It works well.  Marsha did the eggs in the camper, although I could have dragged out my camp stove.

Then we decided to go adventuring.  That’s when we go checkout campgrounds, back roads, river access, etc. off the beaten path.  There is the White Mountains National Recreation Area further up the Steese Highway. 

There are two BLM campgrounds there on different creeks.  There is also another Alaska SRA a little beyond that.

The first place we checked was Cripple Creek SRA at mile 60 of the Steese.  It was on a small tributary creek to the Chatanika River.  We walked around a little and looked at the campground and the river access.  We would stay there in the future.

Back to mile 57 there is a road called US Creek Road, unpaved, of course, that goes over a ridge and 7 miles in it comes to Nome Creek Road.  We went right 4 miles to Mt. Prindle BLM campground at the end of the road.  Nome Creek passes by this campground.  It was not the nicest.  Just low bushes separate gravel camp sites, but they are spaced well.  There was only about a dozen sites and there was no one staying there.  That’s a little spooky, to be 11 miles down an unpaved road and camping alone.  We don’t mind if other people are around.  Still, I might stay there just to try fishing Nome Creek.  It is a small, very interesting creek.  I like fishing that type of water.  Didn’t take any pictures.

Next, we went back to the intersection with US Creek Road and continued on for 12 miles to Ophir Creek BLM campground.

Nome Creek Road

I checked out Ophir Creek briefly and the creek is wide and shallow, at least at the campground.  I would enjoy fishing Nome Creek at Mt. Prindle campground more. At Ophir Creek we saw lots of neat looking mushrooms.  Marsha took these pictures.

We also came across a ptarmigan hen and her babies.

The baby.  Notice how good his mossy oak camo hides him.

The mom.

A mile down the road was a river access for a Wilderness River that is where the Nome and Ophir Creeks come together.  There were warning signs about how remote this river is and you have to be self-sufficient.  It would require at least a 15 mile hike out to the nearest highway.  It even talked about gravel bars where bush pilots can land.  It shows how remote Alaska can get.

On the way back to US Creek Road we stopped at a lookout at a pass. 

Looks like rain to the west.

A little nicer to the east.

There were people there picking wild blueberries.  In fact, wild blueberries are in season right now all over Alaska. We picked a Ziploc bag of them for pancakes or whatever.   People stop by the sides of the roads and just walk into the brush a pick a bucket of them.   

We also saw 5 moose, 1 bull and four cows along Nome Creek Road, coming and going to the Ophir Creek Campground.  Between Marsha and I, some of these pictures may be the same moose, and neither of us got the bull moose.

We went through some very heavy rain on the way back to the campground the last 10 miles.  It was raining pretty heavy when we got to the campground. 

We really enjoyed our stay along the Steese Highway, north of Fairbanks.  We are about 1 hour north of Fairbanks and would like to go back down the Parks Highway and see if we can spend a couple of days at Denali National Park.  Riley Creek campground is right at the entrance and we could do some hiking and hope to see Denali again.  We are concerned, though, because tomorrow is a Friday night and Denali is about halfway between Anchorage and Fairbanks.  We have some other ideas if that falls through.  Unfortunately, we can’t call and make reservations until tomorrow when we go through Fairbanks.

Will let you know where we ended up.