6/26/17 Watching out the front windows with clouds low and sea flat.... just chugging along where the scenery stays almost frozen at this speed. Bigger water and grey skies.

I shouldn’t do a comparison but memories of my couple years in South America 1979-1981 have been coming back. On the reverse season schedule I traveled in the summers (Dec-Feb) to many places. Twice to Chile as it was a remarkable place. The first trip I crossed northern Argentina from Paraguay and over the Andes to Santiago. From there north and then west back over the Andes through the Atacama Desert on what was the old British built railway from Antofagasta Chile to Bolivia ….I kept going north through Santa Cruz,  La Paz, Bolivia. Puno, Cusco Huancayo, Ayacucho Peru and over the Andes again in the world’s highest railway (over 18,000 ft) and down to Lima: Up to Chan Chan and into Ecuador…. back down to Arequipa, Peru then home to Paraguay.

The second ‘summer’ trip was back to Chile… This time with a letter from the Embassy stating I was a scientist needing passage to Tierra del Fuego for research. This ruse was needed as there was still hostilities between Chile and Argentina and it was not long after the Allende coup. Needless to say military ran everything. Travel was restricted and there was no travel past Puerto Montt (being the last place with a road or rail) south. The only way south for the last third of the country to Puntarenas on the Strait of Magellan was by freighter (the other place I wanted to get to was the Torres de Paine). I presented my letter to the shipping owner in Santiago and was granted a free berth south on a freighter. Nothing like using the South American system at the time to advantage. 

This does get back to the ferry trip but all this out the window has me traveling ‘upstairs’ as well in memories. The Chilean archipelago south is nothing other than magnificent. Andes thousands of feet high going straight into the ocean… the freighter sailing a hundred feet off shore. Waterfalls, glaciers, porpoises, giant king crab…. it is all so similar to what I see out the window now. I am in the lap of luxury now compared to that trip. The storms in the southern Pacific once the boat left the safety of the passage where …. ‘highly unpleasant’.

Having seen the route of this ferry I invested in a box of a few Bonine pills. (I surely wish I had had them back then) and use them once so far when we went across Pacific open water where the swells and my inner ear came in conflict. I will use them again without shame after leaving Juneau. Memories of “driving the porcelain bus”  for three days makes it an immediate command decision. 

Fun Facts 6/27/17

Double click to enlarge

6/29/17 We were skirting a number of islands I did not think this boat could get through. Scale here is different, I keep having to readjust, like crossing the prairie for days seeing mountains ahead that don’t seem to come closer. Out of the kindness of the captain we slipped into an inlet so the evening meal could be had without spillage. This was very wise and kind as we later went out into the Gulf of Alaska for the leg to Yakutat. This is where I would love to spend some time…being the Steel Head (trout) capital of the world… 20 pounds …can you imagine that on your line and you not smiling? I have fished pretty much everywhere I have traveled to. Chile still stands out as best but I think it will get its run for the money. 

I am happy to report that I was not too disappointed in last nights travel prediction. As soon as we entered the gulf we were in swells. Big ones. Luann and I had thought ahead when I saw the GPS map of our route. I learn up pretty good …no need to show me twice. Even with the ‘little helpers’ I was struggling to stop trying to anticipate where the ship was going to be on the next step. It is not too unlike walking where one’s foot finds air on the first step and the second lands with the gravity of Jupiter. At least that is the first part. Lucky to have swells which were perpendicular to our route. After a bit though that had to change as we had to follow the coast. What I refer to is the “cork screw” ….up to the right forward …down to the left aft….is added to the elevator effect. Yee-Haw. Not the best time to try to get dressed…or make a hot cup of coffee or any number of things that would be better done bolted down. 

Sitting in the galley with the boat firmly tied up at the pier, coffee in hand and glad to be in Yakutat. Just a couple hour stop and off for the last leg to Whittier where we will once again get in the truck camper. Whittier is a port where the only way out is by sea or rail. A tunnel passes through the mountain and trains and vehicles alternate passing through. Our first step out into the wide open wonderland that we have been dreaming of and planning for for a long time. Even though it feels like I have been moving and covering a lot of ground for a long time it is really just beginning. As a member of the site Wander the West (WTW) who has helped me immensely in the planning stages said “ you ain’t seen nothing yet”. 

I will report a small (I hope) glitch which I hope to correct in Seward. I suspect that the sway bar attachment is loose or perhaps the rear leaf spring. We are carrying a heavy load that the truck is handing fine….except a growing ‘clunk’ when moving slowly and a sudden turn is done. This is why I think it in either the front or rear sway bar. Going over significant bumps makes no sound nor a high speed cornering.  We will see… I would love to have that corrected before heading to the  Arctic Circle or “Top of the World Highway”. 

In this town of Yakutat, there is a geological anomaly (as we are on a vey active volcanic ring) that magnetically interferes with cell and electronic time pieces… funny to watch folks checking their now dumb smart phones…. mechanical time pieces work fine. It is a wet town… either mist, rain ice or snow… again so similar in clime to Chile. There are two sides of the coin when one sees the the license plate state logo: “The Last Frontier”. What have we done to all the others? Having crossed the continent and seen the natural beauty that remains I can only imagine how beautiful this land was before we organized it to suit our survival and in truth mostly greed. The coin has a side that is the struggle to eek out a living in a hard place to be. Doing so is not for the weak of spirit. It can cause real poverty and all it’s ugly offshoots. The other side is that of excess. Those that see it as all theirs to exploit and of the mind that it is their right to do so if they have the means. It is the false definition of ‘freedom’ they use… the one without the thought of their responsibility to the whole. 

It is a place I want to see and know others do too… as the saying goes “This was a great place until people like me came here”. We like to think we are the exception and no matter how hard we try we will eventually alter even a place as big and as rugged as this last frontier.  

It was truly different traveling to far off places before the communication revolution. Remote was remote in all senses of the word. Even though we are in the wild we are now tied with an invisible string. It is good to know I will go to places left still off the electronic map but sad to think it will not be long until there will not be places left like these. I know I know, I made it all maudlin but sometimes I think this world too good for humans. 

Back to the “sunny side of life”!…. we have just left the last port bound for Whittier and have entered a fog bank; looking out the window like staring at a white sheet. That also means (oh joy), it is back to the Bay of Alaska with the pitch and yaw to play with. I was talking to a stewart on the boat who says he has to readjust after a long shore leave to the tiredness caused by how muscles need to be always working on a moving ship. A real isometric workout. 

Our plan when we disembark is to repack/organize the truck/camper just enough for comfort for a day’s travel and one night camp on the Glacial Road which runs from Whittier tunnel northeast; a 3 mile tunnel under the mountain and glacier. We will have time to ‘gear up’ after R&R in Seward! We are looking forward to the reunion with my nephew Mike who calls Alaska home. He lives in both Homer (a log homestead up on the plate) as well in Seward where he and his honey have a coffee shop called the Resurrection Cafe. A mixture of coffee, food, art gallery and community hangout. I can’t wait to see the massive soapstone fireplace/stove he has installed in the once church now cafe to warm the place and the hearts of those by it. We heat our home with a Woodstock soapstone wood-stove and the heat from it is special. The mass of the soapstone delivers the heat in a gentle curve. It radiates long after the coals have died; it just looks good standing there too. 

Dang, very time I look up I see something else. Like saying the word “squirrel” to my dog! Slam up to the window to see an Orca arc up from the water….my their dorsal is huge. Then… there are the tug towed barges…. insanely packed eight or 10 shipping containers high… twenty long and to top the impossibility of what you are seeing is the fact that there are two mobil homes 3 vans and a bulldozer on the top (!) of the stack of containers. Did I mention the swells? How does this work? A cable is maybe 300 feet long attached to the barge and away we go. Somehow physics is ignored here. That not only should not float, it should not do so without tipping over or just plain falling apart losing bits and pieces along the way. I can only imagine a newcomer’s face as their Mercedes Benz perched on top sails away to the assumed depths of oblivion. To my regret I have not photographed one yet as I am too dumbstruck every time I see it (“squirrel!”) I will try if I see another before landing. 

Nope 'only' a pod of Orca.

6/29/17 Wet and wetter. We arrived in Whittier at 6 AM, a place with World War II history as a harbor for the troop transports and supplies in the Pacific campaign. Then the cold war additions. A tunnel built in 1943-3, drilled through the mountain and under a glacier two and a half miles originally for rail transport of military supplies to Anchorage… more recently added a concrete slab between the rails to allow vehicles through. Every hour on the hour for 15 minutes for cars, alternating on the half hour for trains. A rock chute. The tunnel opens to tall mountains, snow and waterfalls with heavy dark grey clouds hanging low and steady rain. As it is nearly the fourth of July weekend  and there is a marathon happening in Seward… there are lots of road barn campers headed that way…all seeking a place to weather the weather for the night. We found a nice spot on the side of the Glacier Road headed west, down on a stream… and we were alone for a bit but other road campers seeking the free sites have found what we did and have come in to ‘our space’ … first night in the camper in Alaska and it is thankfully just an ‘on the way to someplace else on a wet day’ stop over. A loon swims by and calls. Luann is starting the acclimation to the camper (boat living mentality)… “where is everything and where to go in a shared space”? For me at nearly the two week mark, the space seems adequate but new routines for two. The new, front opening Isotherm refrigerator is a big convenience over the top opening Engel. Though both are very high efficiency (low energy) the Isotherm is much quieter… I have to put my ear to it to know it is running. We had it turned up high (cold) for the day before we put the camper on the ferry where there would be no solar recharging of our batteries. We also had frozen 2 quarts of water. On the sixth day, without sun for solar recharging of battery use, the ice was still solid in both quarts. The energy used was small starting at 13 V and at 12.64 V after 5 days. That is plenty to last while it rains for the next 4 days. I have one bar/4G here so post this as something to do to while away the time with the sound of rain on the camper roof.  

7/2/17 Sitting in the rectory of the Resurrection Cafe once Lutheran church which turns 100 years old this year. It is the home of my nephew’s charming lady who has created a space that is both a snug, warm coffee house surrounding folks with local art and a place to relax in a community hub. Seward is dynamic. Besides the fact that it is surrounded by stunning beauty of twelve kinds keeping one trying to remember to stop head turn gawking on every corner,  the town seems filled with dynamic people, people with purpose with a magnetic warmth and friendliness. The kind of place where busy people stop and chat on their way to what they are doing…busy but seemingly not harried. A healthy, non-anonymous commute of people who know what each is doing … a human bee hive. Luann and I stepped into the middle of it with the ignorance of tourists but fortunate to get the inside skinny on local connections and how things work culturally. We have already hiked up to the (half way) view spot over the Exit Glacier, toured the town’s hot spots, picked up local history and not just the sunny summer snapshot of a place but a “what happens when the cruise ships leave” .... the day to day work that is done in a place that requires real work to live. That is the fun part of going places…. if you are lucky enough to get to see the real fabric of a place.My nephew Michael is a captain of a boat that tours the Kenai Penninsula National Park by boat. He has a wild collection of experience on ships in literally all parts of the globe, in all manners of sea faring work… a graduate of the Maine Marine Academy. It is a marvelous thing to be able to learn so much so quickly from hearing his tales of navigating these waters and those whose jobs/life is bound by the sea. It is a complicated, high intertwined collection of skills. It is also the fourth of July weekend and the town is gearing up for a celebration that only a small, tightly sewn town can produce. The kids are wired. Amongst the festivities run by locals are we tourists…the town explodes with visitors as it is also the famous race up Marathon Mountain that draws them here to watch. Frankly an insane idea. From a bar bet one hundred years ago, the challenge of running up a shale scrabble mountain, two and a half thousand feet up at thirty something degree angle to the top and then (!) down in under an hour. Okay … seems like an idea spawned in an alcohol environment with all the high probability of drawing blood… Incredibly there are those that do this and train for it. If you saw the mountain you would just snort… no way you could do it in ten hours.A leisurely day of roaming the town and The Alaska Sea Life Center. Alaska King crab for dinner tonight. Halibut and Salmon yesterday...whoa.

7/4/17 Luann and I were treated to an all day cruise to the Kenai Peninsula. It is nearly beyond words. We were treated as VIPs as my nephew Mike is the captain on the boat. Whales, Orcas, dolphins, puffins, rookeries of thousands of birds, sea lions, harbor seals, mountain goats, and then up to a glacier… collected ice from 24,000 year ago with ancient air trapped inside under pressure higher than my truck tires… pops like crazy in whiskey and is so hard it nearly never seems to melt.  A full day of learning the ecology of the remarkable place packed with wildlife. A unique privilege. 

Home to the coffee house for an evening meal…talking not thinking as time slips into the light of Alaska two weeks after solstice …. it’s midnight?! Just doesn’t get dark. The body starts to suffer the lag from the mind convinced it should keep going… sleep requires eye covers or towels over windows. We move on tomorrow… the fourth of July to Mike's cabin up on the plate above Homer for a few days; there we will have the time to regroup as a camper team and start the FWC Eagle life for the next six weeks. For that leg the truck and camper must be  reorganized to be in that mode….not traveling…wandering. Happy Fourth of July!  

7/5/17 The 4th of July in Seward…The Marathon mountain race to the top and down… the drive from Seward to Homer… Halibut fish and chips on the Homer spit and a drive up the mountain to my nephew’s log cabin on the plate overlooking the mountains and glaciers south. Okay we won’t mention the yellow jacket hive in the outhouse or the being caught in the middle of a family feud as to which is better…  Seward or Homer… 

We have bear spray… a marine fog horn and a nautical flare… so we are safe as we can be. 

After our first night at my nephew’s cabin up on the plate above Homer we are settled in to start to explore the area this afternoon. After using a propane weed blow torch to clear the yellow jacket nest…discovered the hard way…. we are snug and safe. Backing up a bit… The 4th of July in Seward was wonderful … a real community special celebration. The Marathon Mountain race must be experienced to be believed… almost a rite of passage for those that live here. There are three groups: mixed youth 8 years (!) to 18 who do to the half way mark and back. There are then the women and men’s races. A figure eight climb and descent of the mountain so steep you can reach out at arms length to touch ground. Needless to say the runners comeback muddy and bloody. Not a race in the park. We stayed for the first two racers and was in awe of the stamina and grit to make this run. Attached photo is of the women winner… 49:19 and the men’s 44:22…. insanely fast…..running down a slope like that. Attached if you can click on it and enlarge to read is the newspaper history and info.

We went on to Homer to escape the road crunch. We were also excited to get to the cabin we have been hearing about for a number of years. It was built in the 1920’s …a log homestead. There is now electricity and cold water well. Overlooking the mountains to the south it is a beautiful setting. We will be here a few days before heading to McCarthy and Valdez… or reverse… there is some heavy rain coming for that area so must take day by day. Distance is the determining factor for routes …back tracking hundreds of miles seems not sensible. 

PS...be sure to zoom in on the mountain photo to see the runners! Also the mileage photo was from Seward to Homer

7/8/17 Here is the trouble of travel. One slowly becomes warped in time… I feel like apologizing as it seems such a luxury and it is…mostly not yet attained by my peers … when days are not named but destinations or tasks are. 

The cabin on the Homer plate was what it should be….a place to sit after what was needed to secure comfort … and relish in the view and surroundings. Moose and yearlings walk by. Mountains and glaciers sit there all day so when you look up they hit you with ….”I’ve been here forever”. Rattles the senses. After a couple days we pumped fresh spring water into our 20 gallon water tank and set sail for ‘north of Anchorage”… not that the city hadn’t  things to offer but it was not for us… getting through the rush hour traffic was a shock to our “delicate senses” … we are not that far from reality….the scary one that says …if what is …what we see… is here then it will be everywhere eventually. 

In my time on earth I have been lucky.  I feel to have traveled to places all over the earth before the ‘crunch’ … we are in that crunch now… Alaska’s ‘final frontier’ is exactly that and it is vanishing as I type. Anyone who impedes saving “Forever Wild” at this point is simply greedy. We need as a species to feel the wild…once gone we will evolve to something else. Before that last step we need to think…. but seeing human nature as it is… I have no real hope of the inevitable… We will be left alone. 

Sounds dismal but that is the truth of it. I am SO fortunate to be here and see what is left. 

We drove from our boondock camp site (big hint here… use google earth before the drive to see the old road… before the new one you are on. They have straightened it over time and left behind a number of curves still sort of paved that one can find that wiggle around the new… find them and drive off to a quiet pop up and free sleep as we did last night on or way from Palmer AK on the Glen highway. Free and easy. The Glen highway was insanely big and crazy drop offs to immense glaciers and mountain terrain. This morning we drove on to Valdez.

How can I keep typing about this … running out of superlatives…….. driving on a road that requires the driver to focus on the pavement…yahoo .... the 65 mph frost heaves… rivers and glaciers…mountains so big …fuh-get-about-it…. big.. yeah big….crazy big.

We came across the river gorges and such to Valdez… both natural and man made marvels … god’s engineering and man's…. to boggle the mind … I kept asking "how did they make this” on every turn of the road… then I look at what nature did and fuh-get-about-it…. too much. The pipe line ends here… google it and imagine yourself in a cloud of bugs welding that together?! I have no problem with what we build it is what is left behind after the money goes to the wealthy. Look into the copper mine of Kennicott. A marvel of man’s ingenuity … when the metal was gone …they walked away…leaving everything they made and destroyed… money made and exit. Seen this in many places … it is not ‘freedom of regulations’ it is rape. All this can be done …though with less profit… and still maintain the spirit of the land and people. 

Okay …it is not a diatribe … we sit in Valdez surrounded and overwhelmed by beauty.  

Tomorrow it rains big time and we will hunker down for the morning … then go back to the boondocks hunt for a place more quiet… thereafter to McCarthy on the Copper River … 50 miles of gravel road into Wrangle-St Elias National Park… incredible beauty. (The beauty saved by out forefathers …. we still need our present ones to do the same…not take it away).Photos soon... 

7/10/17 We popped down and split. Sayonara Valdez. The rain was steady and hid the mountain tops, valleys, waterfalls, and snow we had luckily seen yesterday. Back up through Thompson pass past the Worthington glacier and on out to the Richardson Highway, north again and east up the Copper River on the Edgerton and McCarthy Road going through Chitna, beer stop at the Hotel. Moose in the parking lot (like the show “Northern Exposure”) the moose's name was ‘Patches’ to the hotel bar staff. 

It was foggy and luckily it had rained making the potholes shine with evening light. Now driving is fun to navigate a route in a purposeful direction …. like skiing down a hillside around obstacles. Is that a guy thing?… sometimes I drive my motorcycle on a windy hill town road and all I’m thinking about is the road coming up and how the bike would best go into it. Feels good going into a curve to the sweet spot and accelerating out to a straightaway though when asked could not tell what went by for the view. 

After about 65 miles ‘in’ we decided to search for a place to boondock camp… after we got 75 miles in we decided to turn around and take a site we saw on Moose lake of a small spur. We were in a low cloud area and a lot of mist…was okay though, as we would see all we missed in haze, on the way out. On the way back we encountered a smaller ‘road barn’ broken down on the side of the road. There was a guy stopped from the other direction to help, towing a trailer. I stopped and asked if help was needed and all said “yes”. Stopped to fix loose roof top cargo, they could not restart the camper…not even a click of the starter solenoid…. ah…the solenoid… to be bypassed but how….. I agreed it was the best idea to go from the battery to starter ….I wasn’t going to say something bad couldn't happen in the process…no guarantees … upon which I got a conscientious nodding…. a kitchen fork was produced and bent in a “C” with lashed and frapping attached to a slender piece of firewood….into the battery compartment it went  to the back making proper contact with a satisfying spark!…. I think Elon Musk would approve. 

We went to the spot to camp only to find it had been taken!…. but wait ….they are leaving!!!! Just a couple locals out for evening look see. So we backed in to the lake watching scores of ducks in the water. All set up and happy… we decided to watch a pre-recorded iPad movie (lousy) as the rain was coming down. An hour later 11?… I went out to ‘see a man about a horse’  and was hit with an almost clear sky and sun at the perfect evening light… the lake was still, mirroring the mountains I hadn’t even seen before….. right up beside us. We both came out of the camper and spent a half hour wandering around to a beautiful site…. a mink swan right by too.

Next morning up and off, the last 30 miles to the River. A Town called McCarthy on the other side connected by a foot bridge ( though locals have a vehicle bridge down stream to haul in essentials …not open to folks from ‘away’)

The town of McCarthy and also the derelict, Kennicott Copper Mine, now a part of the US National Historical site. One of the richest strikes of nearly pure copper in the world. When the copper ran out so did the profiteers… leaving all behind as undoing what was built was not for profit… walked away rich. All abandoned …. as if they simply stood up and left town. Because that is what they did. It is a marvel of human proportions… the history of the WORK done here is mind blowing, under severe conditions… $5 a day with $1.50 a day taken back by the company store for food and lodging)…. a good read about those tougher than we. when we were in the Info center the ranger, a young woman told us she had lived in Goshen…next town near ours. She said if it weren’t for Alaska thats where she would settle …tall praise. 

So I type again in the camper hearing the very loud ‘white noise’ of the glacial till swollen river sweep by 10 feet away carrying hunks of ice off the glacier…..back to raining… good to clean off the 1/4” thick cemented mud off the truck/camper and sleep on a cushion of sound. 

Tomorrow we no doubt will pull up stakes and go north again once ‘out’ to take Denali Road  in the westerly direction. The weather dictates the pace, more then likely leisurely, so to not drive through what should be seen, in rain. We will camp somewhere and putter for a day.