Alaska part 2: Where the moose and the caribou play

As I sit down to write, I realize that it’s been a while since I wrote part 1 and even longer since I was actually in Alaska. But I’m here today at last. 🙂

Moving on…

The bulk of the touristing happened in the first couple of days while the sun was shining. The week’s forecast was glum, and it wasn’t far off the mark. We spent days and partial days running errands or just at home, organizing for the beginning of the school year.

We did have an exciting incident involving a broken down refrigerated truck, laden with ice cream and Texas toast and Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches. Free while supplies lasted. That night, we put the kids to bed and then curled up on the couches with popcorn. There were more long talks throughout the next couple of days.

On Sunday morning, I overheard my friend tell her husband that someone had brought them some moose. “How nice. Mousse,” I thought, visions of chocolate fluff dancing in my head. “Yum.” It wasn’t until they were digging around in the cooler that it dawned on me that I was in Alaska, for goodness’ sakes, and this wasn’t chocolate.

I got to taste that moose for supper one night with a bit of barbecue sauce drizzled on top beside a slab of perfect flaky grilled salmon.

One evening, we went flying just as the sun was thinking about setting. As my friend’s husband, the pilot, explained everything to me, I nodded and smiled and wondered why he was being so informative…until I realized that he was asking me to lift the thing off the ground. Gasp.

We managed to stay alive in spite of that, and soon were gliding over mountains with no roads and no people. It was strange to peek into such an untouched land, to let our eyes adjust to seeing tiny black dots which, as we drew closer, became black bears, bull moose, or caribou camouflaged on the rocky mountainside. We watched a black bear lope along the side of a mountain as our shadow chased him. And we flew over a blue glacier snuggled into the mountains.

It was stunning.

Until it wasn’t and I was holding a little baggie to my mouth. But let’s skip over that part because it’s hardly the part I remember. When I look back, I see the magical moments of glimpsing hidden bits of creation. It was that same night on our way home from the airport that we saw a moose soaking a swamp beside the road and a black bear gallop across the road in front of us.

On my very last day, it rained. But we bravely started the several hour drive to Homer, a fishing town. The boys were excited. My friend and I spent the hours talking… when we weren’t passing out PBJs and carrots and water bottles and wiping sticky fingers or settling arguments. 🙂 We also were busy doubting our decision all of the way to Homer. The clouds hung low and wet, and with clouds, there would be no scenery. Without scenery, Homer was a waste of time, my friend said.

But as we approached the Homer Spit, it began to clear. And it was perfect. We saw a puffin, a sea otter, starfish, jellyfish, and the boys even saw a seal. We walked along the beach and soaked in the scenery. And just before we left, we got we walked along the docks where fishing boats bobbed gently in the water. The cool air was fresh with just enough of a fishy tang to remind you that you weren’t dreaming.

We grabbed one last chai on our way out.

I left that evening, but with a heap of good memories. I wish I could bottle up the beauty of that week to take it with me to Spain. Then whenever I needed some beauty in the middle of my city life, I could uncap the bottle and sip a bit of Alaskan scenery.

Alaska part 1: Where the bears and the red salmon play

It started in a quiet airport. I was one of a handful going through security. Everyone was that small-town sort of friendly, but that didn’t keep the guards from noticing the water sloshing around in the bottom third of my water bottle. *face palm* That was the second time I’ve done that recently: forgetting to drink my water before marching through security with the confidence of a seasoned traveler… and then returning shame-faced to the end of the line.

So maybe it wasn’t the most suave start to my journey, but I arrived in Anchorage mostly as planned and found the tiny airline that would take me down to the Kenai Peninsula. Tiny, as in, I was one of four travelers. I had never imagined traveling to Alaska, at least not until a friend had invited me up several years ago. But there I was, flying over miles and miles of unpolluted scenery as the sun set.

I stepped outside of the Kenai Municipal Airport to await my friend. It was cold and mostly dark. I was pretty alone, which, after a day of traveling, was pleasant. Pleasant, that is, until I went to toss some trash and saw that the trash can was one of those bear-proof ones.

Bears in an airport? That wasn’t the only alarming thing I would see during my weeklong visit. This was the land in which hearing a snap of a twig while on a walk sent adrenaline surging through one’s veins. The land in which moose were regular roadkill. The land in which vicious brown bears wandered through one’s backyard, right past the swing set.

In the untamed Alaskan outdoors, I began to realize just how soft I’ve become as a city dweller.

My friend arrived at the airport and managed to find me before a bear did, so things ended well for me. The two of us had three years worth of news to catch up on, but we postponed some of it until another time, due to the late hour.

The forecast promised sunshine the next day in a week of mostly rain; so, despite the fact that we were all pretty tired, we knew we had to seize the day. My friend bravely loaded up her six adventurous boys and we hiked part of the Kenai River Trail. Every now and then, we would stop to catch our breath, only to find that due to the scenery, our stops were mostly breathtaking rather than breathgiving. Even the fairytale mushrooms and the blushing fireweed looked so untouched by the world.

We watched bright salmon jumping as they wound their way up a river turquoise with glacier silt. The sunlight caught their rosy backs. The boys splashed around in the river, trying to catch salmon. Even the littlest splashed, letting his boots fill with river water. I dipped my toes in and pulled them back out quickly. The water was icy.

The next day was nicer than the weather had forecasted, which was wonderful considering that we had train tickets to a glacier park. Again, we headed out: six boys, three adults, lunches, snacks, and DVDs for the trip home.

We had heard the park was a bit of a letdown, and were admittedly pessimistic. However, we only wasted our time fretting. I will say that having a vanilla chai latte with whipped cream for the second day in a row did help our moods considerably. (In fact, I had quite a few of those vanilla chai lattes over the course of the week, always expecting it to be my last chance to get one.) Of course, the latte stop combined with road construction delayed us enough that even the boys were making negative train-missing predictions from the backseat.

Spencer Glacier Park was exciting from the oldest to the youngest. The scenery from the train was gorgeous, even more gorgeous considering that in was inaccessible by car. It felt sort of like luxury scenery, if there is such a thing.

We took off hiking once we arrived at the park. In just over a mile, we arrived at the foot of a glacier. Stunning. So stunning. And cold. We shivered, even in the sunshine. That didn’t stop the boys from getting a bit wet while rescuing glistening glacial chunks.

glacier with ice chunks floating in river

We almost missed our return train. No excuses. Just pure negligence on our part. But we did make it. On the way home we took a different route in hopes of seeing some bears, but even the beariest trail of the region was bare. Wildlife seemed to be hiding from me. But it couldn’t hide forever…

Weddings and the Wild West

Two weddings in two weeks. Whew. They were lovely weddings. Both fairly small and fairly simple. One was a dear friend’s wedding; the other, my baby sister’s. One couple puttered away in an old car; the other roared off in a helicopter on what turned out to be an unfortunately windy day.

I helped coordinate the ceremony for one wedding and was a bridesmaid in the other. By the time both were done and we had gorged ourselves on Casey’s pizza that last Saturday night, I was ready for a change of pace.

So I headed west.

But my Wild West trip was not wild. It was hardly the West either, but even to us in Illinois, anything west of the Mississippi is pretty far west. Besides, it’s not often we Illinoisans see “Pavement ends” or “Gravel ends” signs like you see in Nebraska.

I stayed with a dear childhood friend. We lounged, talked, read, took a snack to the church’s school, visited friends, shot a dirt pile (so, I have a ways to go yet before I’ll be hunting Bambi and Thumper), had runzas, and did oodles more things.

One of the “oodles” was a tour of a state park in Fairbury, NE built around wagon “swails” from the Oregon Trail route.

Later that week, the scenery on the way to Kansas was bland and comfortable. After spending the afternoon pricing books at Choice Books, another dear friend and I spent much of the weekend talking and reading in a beautiful, plant-filled apartment.

We also managed to hang some lights, decorate for fall, and do a little downtown shopping… in between our lounging. 🙂

No, indeed, my Wild West trip did not turn out wild at all, but exactly, exactly as I had hoped.