Daylight, Parks and Trails

June 22, 2006

We are staying at Jo’s house for the week, house sitting. Her house is one of the oldest in Anchorage, built shortly after I was born, and that is old. It is good to give the kids a break from parents and grandparents, although Birch and Cole did come to spend the night last night.

Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. I got up this morning at 1:45 and twilight was hanging around outside. I don’t know whether it was sunset twilight or sunrise twilight. It may have been both. The paper said that that the sun rose yesterday at 4:20 A.M. and sat at 11:42 P.M., giving us 19 hours, 22 minutes, and 27 seconds of daylight. The sun never gets far below the horizon since it has to rise a little over four hours after it sets. David says that Alaskans celebrate the solstice and also morn it since it is all down hill from here. Today was six seconds less light, that much closer to December and the darkest day of the year. Happy birthday Cynthia.

Jo’s house is next to Chester Creek Park. This park starts on the west side of Anchorage near the hospital and the Chugach and runs along on both sides of Chester Creek all the way across Anchorage to Cook Inlet. A paved path runs along the creek; the perfect old man bike path. The trail passes Goose Lake, numerous playgrounds, ball fields, an extensive well used Frisbee golf course, and Chester Lagoon where the gulls fight with the bald eagles and Canada geese fly by squawking. At Chester Lagoon Chester Creek trail hooks into the Coastal Trail, also paved, which runs north into down town and south past the airport to Kincaid Park. Kincaid Park is honeycombed with wide unpaved trails up and down hills and in and out of creeks and gullies. One can ride a bike all the way across Anchorage from east to west and from north to south with out ever crossing a street.

I have ridden my bike on many of the paved trails. Annie and Elmo walk. Elmo has decided that everyone on the trail is his friend. He wants to give them a friendly greeting. Sometimes I walk with them. The trails are heavily used by walkers, riders, skateboarders, inline skaters, people using cross-country skis with little wheels on them, the United States Army for forced marches, red foxes looking for dinner and moose. The moose don’t go very fast and spend most of the time munching on the lush green stuff along the trails. However, it is still somewhat exciting to come flying around a corner and screech to a stop a few feet from a crowd of bikers, boarders, skaters and skiers snapping pictures of a seven foot tall bearded moose casually blocking the trail. Elmo has not yet met a moose. We will see what he thinks about friendship then.

I have also ridden my bike at Hillside, a park near David’s house designed specifically for walking, skiing, running and biking. The trails there are all dirt, and some of them narrow, steep, rocky and laced with roots. One of those trails and my stupidity caused my bike to spend almost a week in the bike shop near Carr’s. My body escaped the fate of my bicycle as a result of a combination of superior physical strength, phenomenal coordination, natural good looks and luck.

In the winter all of the trails are used for cross country skiing. All of the paved trails and many of the non-paved trails are lighted so that they can be used after work in December when the sun goes down at 3:30 in the afternoon.

I haven’t mentioned all the trails in the Chugach; or the trails at Girdwood/Aleyska, the downhill ski area; or the paved trails running along next to many of the highways. In Anchorage alone, there are over 400 miles of trails.

There is no road in Alaska to Juno, the state capital. One must fly, walk or go by boat. That’s ok; they have great trails.

Across The Bay

June 18, 2006

We are riding one of Mako’s boats crossing Kachemak Bay. Mako is driving. He is a big man with a silver goatee and straight white teeth who smiles all the time even though it is almost seven o’clock in the evening and he worked all last night and all of today hauling people back and forth across the bay. David and grandson Birch stand on the deck in front of the little Cabin next to the red kayak watching the big ferry heading for Homer, probably from Kodiak. Birch thinks we are racing. The rest of us are in the cabin out of the cold wind. We are returning from Across the Bay Tent and Breakfast located on Kasitsna Bay about eight miles from Saldovia.

We stayed with Tony and Mary Jane and their youngest daughter at Across the Bay for two nights. Tony, formerly a college professor, came to Alaska in 1964. He bought the Across the Bay property about ten years later and board by board built the retreat. Guests stay in wall tents erected on wooden platforms hanging to the side of the mountain rising from the rocky beach. A creek tumbled and fell down the mountain next to the tent platforms. At the bottom of the hill next to the beach, was the main house where meals were served and where we could go to drink coffee or tea, read, write, and get warm. Close by was the shower house (hot water), and two outhouses, one a two holer.

With the exception of a few brief periods, it drizzled on us the entire stay. I have to remind myself that this is the rain forest. It should not be difficult. A climb up the trail from the beach to the old lumber road that leads into Seldovia reminds me. Damp moss, thick and spongy, covers soil, fallen trees, stumps, and anything else on the forest floor that would stay in one spot for twenty four hours. Out of the moss the rain forest grows in thick layers: first, flowers in any spot where light squeezes through, starflower, dwarf dogwood, wild geranium, currents and false solomon seal; then ferns, fiddlehead and horsetail, waist high; next blueberries, elderberries, and the deadly baneberry; after that the ever present alders, devils club as big as small trees, and salmon berry in full bloom; and above it all the towering Sitka spruce and western hemlock. Around all is sound: the gentle sound of water dripping from leaves, needles and branches; the steady sound of the little creek tumbling over rocks; the beautiful song of the hermit thrush; the telephone ring of the varied thrush; the squeaking squawk whistle of the bald eagle, and out on the bay behind the trees the steady groan of the Tolman skiff running toward the log cabin at the end of the spit.

Most of the time we acted like it was not cold and drizzling. Annie and I (Elmo wanted to come but was prevented by jealously of the proprietors dog) put on fleece, rain suits, Eskimo bibs, and life jackets, got in the red kayak and paddled over the crystal clear water along the coast to Jakaloff Bay, then across to Cronin island. We watched giant starfish in the shallows near rocky cliffs, passed harbor seals and otters, chased a pigeon guillemot and a flock of marbled murrelets, and sat still in the middle of the bay watching raindrops pock the still waters.

Mako was two hours late coming to pick us up. Tony waited with us on the beach talking to David and Joey about Alaska issues. Birch played in the kayak pretending it was the biplane out of a sequel to the movie about Balto, the sled dog who saved Nome, and Cole had a great time trying to fill the kayak and the bailing pump with gravel. Annie watched the boys, and I sat on a log and watched the dance of the bay and the mountains and the clouds.

Not long before Mako arrived the eagles started fighting over the scraps of salmon Tony had dumped on the rocks where the creek runs into the bay. A full grown juvenile with motley feathers managed to grab a scrap and head for the top of the nearest spruce. He was chased by two other juveniles and at least one adult, all screeching. Before he reached the tree, the adult, white tail and head brilliant in the misty light, attacked from above, talons down. They tumbled screaming and falling until the juvenile dropped the scrap. The adult released the juvenile and recovered the scrap from the rocks, and we saw Mako’s boat coming across the bay.

Anchorage, on the edge

My new job
The Chugach Mountains from downtown Anchorage
Annie's new job

June 15, 2006

A few mornings ago I was sitting in the car with Elmo in front of the little post office located between the Carr’s gas station and my bike repair shop (that is another story). Carr’s has the cheapest gas in town, $2.75 per gallon if you buy $50.00 or more of groceries (or wine) before each fill up. We only have to make sure that we eat or drink as much as we drive. No problem. We were waiting on Annie to mail a package back to the lower 48. That is one of the things they call ya’ll up here in the far north.

I was gazing to the east at the Chugach Mountains which were still draped with snowy shawls and sashes. What I was looking at is part of the 500,000 acre Chugach State Park, which hooks around the east and south sides of Anchorage and is a little like discovering Yosemite fifteen minutes from down town Los Angeles.

A guy in a rusted black van with an aluminum skiff tied to top rails with faded orange ski rope pulled into the parking space next to me. Elmo growled. “Susssh,” I said. The guy got out and slowly walked into the field in front of his van. He looked to the east, at the Chugach, raised his arms to the place where the sun probably was and dropped his head back onto the rolls of flesh squeezing out the top of his t-shirt which was decorated with a picture of what may have been a dead movie star that had been copied from one originally painted on the nose of a B-29.

“Gerrrr.”

“Ssssh.”

In the lower 48, Chugach State Park would be Chugach National Park and people would come from everywhere to climb its peaks, watch its rushing waters, and hike through its lush rain forests. Tourists here, while waiting for the train to Denali or for their zip-off leg hiking pants to come back from the cleaners, look out the window of their room in the Captain Cook Hotel and say, “Oh Alice isn’t that pretty.” That sometimes creates a problem when the guy’s wife is named Jane.

The young and sometimes not so young who live in Anchorage walk out their back doors and ski, hike or ride their bikes into the Chugach, into the wilderness.

I didn’t have to look at the guy’s license plate to know he was from Alaska. In addition to the t-shirt, the guy wore yurt size nylon swim trunks that, in some previous life, may have been blue. It was 56 degrees and clouds hung like feathered boas across the sashes and shawls running around and down the mountains in front of me; and I was wearing a lot of clothes and a fleece vest. I am becoming accustomed to Alaskans’ sense of summer. It is almost like being in Canada and having to convert kilometers and liters and Canadian dollars. Except that in Alaska one must convert the skin’s reaction to air temperature. I have decided that if you add twenty or twenty-five degrees to the current Alaskan temperature, a Texan will know approximately what the temperature feels like to an Alaskan.

Behind me and behind the Post Office and several blocks of stores and houses was Turnagain Arm, a wedge of ocean coming off Cook Inlet at Anchorage and squeezed between The Chugach and the top of the Kenai Peninsula and ending about 90 miles to the south just before it would have bumped into Portage Glacier. In fact, I would guess that Portage Glacier in a previous ice age (that would be pre-W) had something to do with the origin of Turnagain Arm.

The Alaskan in the cute shorts still had his hands raised to the heavens. I thought that he was probably Buddhist or an evangelical, or that he had forgotten to put on deodorant and was airing his pits; or possibly some combination of the foregoing. Isn’t that nice, I thought. What a wonderful view for a spiritual experience.

Behind Turnagain Arm and the top end of the Kenai is Cook Inlet, and on the far side of Cook Inlet are snow covered volcanoes. At David’s (my son’s) house located high up a hillside overlooking Turnagain arm, I get up every morning and look for the volcanoes; Spur, Redoubt, Iliamna, Augustine, Kukak and several others. Spur, closest to us, is 11,100 feet tall, and that is straight up from sea level. Most of the others are almost as tall as Spur. I look from the same spot at the same spot, but the view is new each day. The volcanoes change colors, blue like the Artic night, yellow like molten metal, white like the feathers of the tundra swan. They float in and out of clouds, disappear, move close to the deck where I watch, and drift away toward Russia.

The Alaskan closed his hands into fists, raised his face to the gray swirling clouds and then beat on his chest right on top of the dead movie star. He then screamed some words that I have elected not to print. I might just mention that it was not particularly spiritual. Elmo barked and I slumped down in the seat.

About that time a lady parked her Honda Pilot on the other side of me. She got out and went into the post office. Two little girls in soccer uniforms got out went into the field to kick their ball. The man looked at them, went back to his van, and drove off.

To my left, north of Anchorage; beyond the Army base and the Air Force base; beyond Kinik Arm; beyond 200 miles of mountains, lakes, rivers, and forests is Denali, the mountain and the park. On a clear day, I can see Denali from David’s house.

For Isabella and Emma

Fairy Houses
The Storm
The Waterfall

Special for Isabella and Emma

June 7, 2006

The Mist Fairies

By popi

Alice Preston lived with her mother, father and baby brother in a log cabin on the Athabasca River just outside the village of Jasper. They also had a dog named King. No other children lived near Alice, so most of each day Alice had to play by herself.

Fortunately Alice’s cabin was located just above a beautiful waterfall, and Alice liked to play along the trail that led down the mountain next to the falls. The trail twisted and turned down the mountain. She walked under spruce trees that were tall and green and under birch trees that had bark like pieces of paper. Robins sang and landed on the trail in front of her, and Alice stopped to smell the little blue bells and the wild pink roses.

Sometimes Alice would sit on a rock next to the falls listening to the roaring water and watching the rainbows form in the mist rising from the tumbling water. One day while watching a rainbow, Alice saw a tiny fairy flying in and out of the rainbow. At first she thought it was a dragonfly. But then Alice noticed that the fairy had short hair the color of sand and that she wore fairy clothes that looked like a field of wildflowers. The fairy also had a tiny pouch tied at her waist that she would put something into as she flew in and out of the rainbow.

Alice watched the fairy for a few minutes and then said, “Hello.” The little fairy stopped in mid air and looked at Alice with big wide eyes. Then she flew down and sat on Alice’s knee. The fairy folded her little wings behind her back, and Alice and the fairy smiled at each other.

Alice said, “My name is Alice. What is your name?”

The little fairy almost fell off Alice’s knee. She whirled her silver wings and held her hands over her tiny ears. Then the fairy’s mouth moved, and Alice heard squeaks and whistles so soft they were like sounds a baby bird would make in the top of a great cottonwood. But in Alice’s head or in her heart she heard the words that the squeaks and whistles said.

“My, my, don’t talk so loud, Alice,” the fairy said, folding her wings behind her once again. “You will knock me into the water.”

So Alice whispered. “What is your name?”

The soft squeaks and whistles came again, and Alice heard, “My name is Angel, and I am a Mist Fairy. What are you?”

Alice thought for a minute. She wasn’t sure what she was. She had never really thought about it before. “I guess I am a person,” she said. “Yes, of course, I am a human.” Alice looked closely at the fairy. “Why do you fly in the rainbow?” Alice said.

“Oh my, don’t you know? I am collecting pieces of rainbow.” Angle reached into her pouch and pulled out a tiny handful of red and yellow and green and blue and purple rainbow pieces. She held them up to Alice. Alice’s face became warm, and the air between Alice and Angle glowed in all the colors of the rainbow.

“They are so beautiful; what do you do with them?”

“I collect pieces of rainbow for all the fairies. The rainbow pieces keep our fairy houses warm and make them bright. Every fairy caries a little bit of rainbow with them all the time. When the storm comes, the rainbow pieces help us remember that the storm will pass.

Here, hold out your hands; these are for you.” Angle dropped the pieces of rainbow into Alice’s hands.

Alice felt the warmth in her hands and the colored lights flashed in her eyes.

She put the rainbow pieces in her pocket. “Thank you, Angel. I will keep these forever.”

Angel flew into the air. I have to go to the fairy houses,” she said. I have deliveries to make. With a zip and a whirl Angel disappeared in the rolling mist.

When Alice got back to the cabin it was almost dark. She climbed the ladder to her bed in the loft. There hanging on the wall behind her bed was a small leather pouch decorated with colorful beads that her father had given her after one of his trips. Alice took the pieces of rainbow from her pocket and poured a glowing stream of them out of her fingers into the little pouch. Then she hung the pouch around her neck.

The next day Alice and her father walked together down the trail by the waterfall. They sat on a rock and looked at the river flowing away below the falls. Alice’s father held her hand. “You seem bright and cheery today,” he said.

Alice smiled and touched the leather packet with the rainbow pieces in it. She heard soft squeaks and whistles and looked into a sky that looked like it was painted with bluebird feathers. Alice knew that storms would come, and that when they did, the pieces of rainbow that the Mist fairy had given her would remind her that the storm would pass.

They sat quietly for a while looking at the river. “Oh dad, look.” Alice pointed down the river. “Those rocks stacked up at the edge of the river look like fairy houses.

“Why they sure do Punkin. They sure do.”

Fact Check #6

June 6, 2006

We have been playing in Anchorage and enjoying our grandchildren. Annie is getting her dirt fix. Elmo is learning to clean the floor under the dinner table and I look out the window a lot. Here are some final numbers on the Alaska leg of our adventure:

· 9 times we crossed the Continental Divide.

· Traveled across four time zones.

· Drove through or close by 153 cities, towns and villages (had to be able to see the water tower).

· Identified 104 flowering plants.

· Crossed 79 major rivers.

· Passed through 6 states and 3 Canadian Provinces.

· Camped in 10 campgrounds

· Toured 2 US National Parks and 4 Canadian National Parks.

· Drove 4,602 miles from driveway to driveway.

· Loaded and unloaded the car 33 times.

· Saw; 1 grizzly bear, 5 black bear, hundreds of elk, 52 buffalo, 4 prairie dogs, 32 pronghorn antelope, 7 moose, 1 live coyote, 1 weasel, 12 bighorn sheep, 3 stone sheep, 4 deer (not currently identified).

Elmo would also like to tell you that he saw many ground squirrels and chipmunks, but was unable to catch any. He also asked me to report that he was severely handicapped by the leash.

Elmo's log #7

Elmo and Tim
Sunset from the deck in Anchorage, around 10:45 P.M.
The highway to the house above Turnagain Arm

Elmo’s Log # 7

May 31, 2006

Posting Note: The posting of Elmo’s Log #7 was delayed due to computer connection issues. Hopefully that has been resolved.

Once again, we broke camp this morning in the rain, but with much less annoyance; for tonight we would sleep in a bed in a warm house in Anchorage. I think that both Annie and I are ready for a short break from camping.

The Drive from Tok to Anchorage along Alaska Highway 1 may be the most beautiful of the entire trip. I know that the Wrangle Mountains were just to the east of our route and that we passed close by both the Nelchina Glacier and the Matanuska Glacier. Unfortunately we missed much of that beauty because of clouds snuggled in valleys and marching down mountain sides. Fortunately, the part of the trip from Glennallen to Anchorage we have traveled before when the weather was more suited to expansive vistas.

What we did see had beauty of its own, clouds breaking momentarily to reveal craggy peaks and massive glaciers, cloud tatters swirling up the side of an overhanging cliff, the Matanuska River roaring, spewing, and foaming beside the road snaking around the mountains, lake surface mingling with cloud surface, and waterfalls materializing out of hanging clouds. Our route today would have been a great set for one of the Lord of the Rings movies.

Then Anchorage appeared hugging the shore of Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm. Across the Inlet a string of volcanoes, like ghosts, hung on the horizon. The end of the first leg of our journey.

Elmo's Log #6

Elmo got to visit with the Flag girl on the shore of Kluane Lake
Mountains and Teslin Lake
Kluane Lake near border of Yukon and Alaska. That is ice in the distance.

Elmo’s Log #6

May 30, 2006

On up the Alaska Highway heading for Tok, rhymes with Polk. Tok is in Alaska. Mountains in front of me, mountains to the right of me, mountains to the left, and mountains behind me; mountains behind mountains behind mountains; layers of mountains upon layers of mountains, and those most far, white towers where the sun streaks through the cloud, hurting my eyes. The sense of distance and mass is like other worlds, like planets or moons suddenly on the horizon, in our atmosphere.

There is so much beauty. I am not numb to it, but I am incapable of taking it all into my soul and storing that certain view of a lifetime when a turn of the head, a blink, a curve in the road presents me with another.

We saw a grizzly next to the road just outside of Haynes Junction about the same time that our trip odometer turned over 4000 miles. Just after we entered the USA, we saw a bald eagle, white head and tail, flying low over the car.

This road has become an adventure in itself. What the natives call “frost heaves” creates most of the excitement. Frost heaves are humps and dips in the road creating a roller coaster effect. Each heave is like a mole the size of Cadillac Escalade had tunneled under the road. Mixed in with the heaves are the traditional pot holes and a new obstacle which must be called a pot river. And of course you have the stretches of gravel where they plowed the heave or the pot river. We passed Snag Junction where the lowest recorder temperature in Canada was measured on January 23, 1971, -81.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yesterday and today were our longest hauls. We got to Tok and our campground on the Tok River around 5:00 Alaska time. We were the only campers there until around 11:45 P.M. (still light) when some young girls in a pickup camper pulled in. We also experienced our first mosquitoes of the trip. They like my bald head and Elmo’s snout.

Elmo's log #5

Beaver Creek, Yukon
Sergeant Preston of the Yukon
Signpost forest in Watson Lake, Yukon; started in 1942, now over 50,000 signs

Elmo’s Log # 5

May 29, 2006

When we woke this morning I knew it was cold, and I could hear what I thought was a very light drizzle. I didn’t want to get out of the cozy bag. When I finally got out I realized that the sound on the tent was snow. In a few minutes, Elmo looked like he had dandruff. The snow stopped and the sun came out. We broke camp and took off for Whitehorse, the capitol of the Yukon, and the place where most of the prospectors started their adventure down (up) the Yukon River. The Yukon flows north from Whitehorse up into the Klondike and into Alaska. It finally turns west and south and flows into the Bering Sea at Emmonac. I can’t help but think about Sergeant Preston riding along in his bright red uniform chasing bad guys through the Klondike with his dog. . . What was that dog’s name?

For a while I thought that we might at last be getting ahead of Spring. The aspen at higher elevations were white sticks; no touch of green. The grass on the roadsides was winter yellow and we were running the heater. Then when we got to Whitehorse, and took a hike on a trail above the Yukon River, we found the beautiful purple pasque flowers thick in the woods. We saw a lot of Buffalo along the road, including several light brown calves. We camped at Wolf Creek Campground outside Whitehorse and went in to town to have fried calamari and buffalo burgers on the deck at the High Country Inn.

Elmo's log # 4

Last suspension bridge on Alaska Highway
Snowing on the pass
Another first (but they do not sell piminto cheese) .

Elmo’s Log # 4

May 28, 2006

We left the Super 8 and Fort Nelson this morning in a cold drizzle that quickly turned to snow as we headed for Summit Pass, the highest point along the Alaska Highway. Yesterday the Alaska Highway (AH) was a bit disappointing. Between Charlie Lake and Fort Nelson, The AH crosses gently rolling terrain densely covered in white spruce and aspen. The road was as straight as the road between Plainview and Olton. Set the cruise control and move to the back for a drink. Just kidding, there is no room back there.

Today was what the AH should be; up and down hills and mountains, around sharp curves, climbing high passes in low gear, dodging potholes and hitting a few, braving snow flurries and rain showers, passing overloaded RV’s, rolling past great gray limestone mountains and broad tumbling and foaming rivers, zipping between stands of spruce and aspen frosted white, and crossing the Liard River on the last suspension bridge on the AH. We camped at Liard Hot Springs Campground. We set up camp in a cold drizzle, very cold Annie and Elmo would say. Annie and I went to the hot springs and soaked in the pristine 110 degree water bubbling out of the rocks nearby. The pool was surrounded by ferns, patches of violets and great ancient birches. For a few moments we forgot the cold and the drizzle. We remembered when we got back to camp and tried to figure out how to fix our soft chicken tacos in the cold rain. Hunger is the mother of invention. Annie finally suggested, from the tent, that I back the Highlander up to the table and drape the tarp over the open hatch so that we would have a place to cook. It worked and the tacos were delectable. I built a fire, but we didn’t stay up and watch the coals spit and sizzle.