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.