So I kissed my parents goodbye and flew to Alaska. A week later, I'm still here in the last frontier, traveling all over with my boy and seeing what there is to see. I didn't know it could get so rainy here (we've had just three days of sunshine) but I figured out that you can have fun in any weather as long as you've got the right gear. Plastic tarp covers for our packs, rain jackets and shoes, wool socks and gloves and hats... I only vaguely considered the possibility of rainy weather when I was packing, but J is an every-scenario kind of guy (he packed his own rape horn, for example, in case of a bear attack) so he made sure we'd be prepared for anything. We've been hosteling, camping, and couchsurfing in Anchorage and Seward, a tiny fishing town along the southern coast and also the endpoint of the Iditarod. The landscape here is so romantic and wild, even more so in the rain and wind. We took the train down to the coast and passed through mountains with glaciers, thick spruce forests, rivers teeming with brightly colored spawning salmon, big bodies of water milky blue with glacial till (crushed rock silt flowing out from under the ice). Everything I ever heard about Alaska is true.
More in Seward. I had my first White Russian (thought about The Dude). We cooked and ate all sorts of freshly caught fish: fried halibut, halibut sandwiches, grilled salmon, salmon on the campfire, more salmon... They have this thing in Seward called the Silver Salmon Derby, where folks line up shoulder to shoulder along every fishable dock and shoreline to try to catch the biggest coho salmon (the winner this year was 19 and change, big deal). It would seem that there's no limit to the amount of fish in the waters here; even just walking down the highway, J and I spotted a runoff stream with trout in it the length of my thigh bone. It's thrilling, but also kind of foreboding. J's dad says the fishing in New York State was just as bountiful when he was a kid, and people just fished it all up. Big game hunting and fishing is part of the Alaskan lifestyle, it would seem, but who knows for how long?
Other friendly critters we ran into this week: moose with gigantic antlers, mountain goats, bears, porpoises and otters in the Kenai Fjords, pesky squirrels that ransacked our food supply... We've been doing all sorts of physical outdoorsy things- hikes and bike trails and what not, and trekking these backpacks everywhere is an olympic event in itself. Best thing so far has been a 6 hour hike up to the Harding Icefield- thousands of acres of solid ice that feed all the glaciers in the Kenai Mountain range. At the crest, the weather was freezing rainy and the landscape looked like the surface of another planet. I had never seen a glacier before- or climbed that high in any mountain range really, so the whole experience really blew me away.
No accidents or catastrophes just yet. We had a minor setback our last day in Seward when J left his backpack in the backseat of some kids' truck when they were kind enough to give us a lift into town from the campground at Miller's Landing. Luckily, we knew one of the guys worked on the boats there, so we were able to a.) postpone our train trip back to Anchorage at no extra cost, b.) figure out another place to stay in Seward and c.) play phone tag with a bunch of irritated strangers to locate the truck and retrieve said backpack, which contained (among other things) J's cellphone and several pounds of salmon... Those who know J understand that misplacing and/or losing important items while traveling is just part of his mystique. Keep 'em guessing, J!
11:00AM
Anchorage, Alaska
More in Seward. I had my first White Russian (thought about The Dude). We cooked and ate all sorts of freshly caught fish: fried halibut, halibut sandwiches, grilled salmon, salmon on the campfire, more salmon... They have this thing in Seward called the Silver Salmon Derby, where folks line up shoulder to shoulder along every fishable dock and shoreline to try to catch the biggest coho salmon (the winner this year was 19 and change, big deal). It would seem that there's no limit to the amount of fish in the waters here; even just walking down the highway, J and I spotted a runoff stream with trout in it the length of my thigh bone. It's thrilling, but also kind of foreboding. J's dad says the fishing in New York State was just as bountiful when he was a kid, and people just fished it all up. Big game hunting and fishing is part of the Alaskan lifestyle, it would seem, but who knows for how long?
Other friendly critters we ran into this week: moose with gigantic antlers, mountain goats, bears, porpoises and otters in the Kenai Fjords, pesky squirrels that ransacked our food supply... We've been doing all sorts of physical outdoorsy things- hikes and bike trails and what not, and trekking these backpacks everywhere is an olympic event in itself. Best thing so far has been a 6 hour hike up to the Harding Icefield- thousands of acres of solid ice that feed all the glaciers in the Kenai Mountain range. At the crest, the weather was freezing rainy and the landscape looked like the surface of another planet. I had never seen a glacier before- or climbed that high in any mountain range really, so the whole experience really blew me away.
No accidents or catastrophes just yet. We had a minor setback our last day in Seward when J left his backpack in the backseat of some kids' truck when they were kind enough to give us a lift into town from the campground at Miller's Landing. Luckily, we knew one of the guys worked on the boats there, so we were able to a.) postpone our train trip back to Anchorage at no extra cost, b.) figure out another place to stay in Seward and c.) play phone tag with a bunch of irritated strangers to locate the truck and retrieve said backpack, which contained (among other things) J's cellphone and several pounds of salmon... Those who know J understand that misplacing and/or losing important items while traveling is just part of his mystique. Keep 'em guessing, J!
11:00AM
Anchorage, Alaska
G
J
Behind us, miles of ice
No comments:
Post a Comment