We’re still in Palmer even though Deb, Fred and Sally have moved on to the Kenai Peninsula. We will meet up with them on Friday. We got Fritz back from the dealer yesterday, after getting the worlds most expensive ignition switch installed. This morning, I took him to the shop for a lube service. I wanted him ready for the long drive home. He’s logged over 5000 miles on the odometer so far; already more than half the scheduled trip, but he’s been on a lot of side trips.
A wooden boat sits dry in the salt marsh on the Knik River arm of the Cook Inlet.
This is always the time on vacations where I get melancholy. The vacation is already half over. Although there is a lot of traveling left, we’re still on the downhill run. After planning ‘the trip of a lifetime’, I hate to see it come to an end. As I said, there’s more than a month before we get back to the stress and rigor of retirement. We still have so much to see and do.
There’s a line in the Dan Fogelberg song Nether Lands that best explains this confusing feeling I have: “And where do you go when you get to the end of your dream?” I’ve already learned the answer to that question. It’s another quote from the movie Finding Nemo. The line is Dory’s, when she says “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.”
My ‘swimming’ technique is like an astronaut coming home from the moon (This is actually how I got through school well before astronauts). I need to focus on getting the landing right, but I stare blankly out the window and let my mind wander. Eventually, another hair-brain scheme pops into my head and (my last quote of the evening is from Tag Team); “Whoomp! There it is.”
Since we have some down time, and the dealer gave us a beater loaner (complete with cracked windshield), Anne and I drove down to Anchorage yesterday. My friend Jeff sent a link to a local food truck, so we decided to check it and the town out.
We missed the Babycakes truck. Either I read the schedule wrong, or they couldn’t make it. Instead we ordered a Cuban sandwich from one of the other vendors. With a slice of ham, a slice of pork, cheese and zesty pickle on a pressed Panini bun, it was tasty. There was a second truck selling baked good, so we indulged in a cupcake parfait; that’s where they alternate layers of cake with icing. We needed a good walk after that.
Anchorage has several sites where local food trucks can set up and sell food. The trucks rotate from one site to another. We took advantage of the K Street place for lunch.
I wanted to check out the street made famous during the 1964 earthquake. The newspapers and TV showed how one side of the street sunk a full story. There was far worse damage elsewhere, but that image remained with me. The area affected was along 4th Avenue between C Street and E Street.
Anne’s lured into the Kringle’s Store
While we walked the sidewalk, I remarked that this part of town reminded me of the road next to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. It’s at the edge of downtown, nearer to the port. It had all the trinket shops and the cruise ships sent busloads of tourists as part of the tour. But I didn’t see a single place to eat seafood. There were plenty of bars, but no salmon, no crab, not even a sushi restaurant. Evidently, Anchorage knows that this is high on the sightseeing list, because the Hard Rock Cafe is at the end of the block, but it needs more local seafood.
The south side of fourth avenue has a mix of building styles. It’s kitschy but at least has some charm.
The other observation that I made was the street had a split personality directly related to the earthquake. The south side of the street has the original buildings, a mix of old storefronts, bars, with an occasional log building here and there. The north side buildings that sustained most of the damage were replaced with two reinforced concrete structures designed in the 60’s. They act as a shopping mall, but there are few tenants. The owners painted the west building bright yellow, while the east one is purple. Inside of the west building we found the walls plastered with news clips and explanations of what and how the earthquake damaged the surrounding areas. Since the epicenter was in Valdez (an unknown little fishing village at the time), it will be interesting to see how it recovered.
It was the north side of Forth Avenue that sank one story. Those buildings were replaced with two commercial building that serve as shopping malls. They are conspicuously devoid of tenants.
We’ve been forced to modify our plans. Anne and I had to leave the gang behind and go on to Palmer, a town north of Anchorage. That means skipping over a stop where we could have spent more time near the park. We will be here for a week, and Fred, Deb and Sally will catch up with us in a couple of days.
Fritz has been acting up ever since Montana. Whenever we would turn the key to start the engine, it didn’t react quite right. It has gotten worse. Now, we have to say a prayer, then perform yoga and hold our tongue just right to get him to start in the morning. That’s when the problem is the worse.
Since we carried some tools, and the internet, we narrowed the problem to either the lock that prevents the truck from starting when it isn’t in park or the ignition switch. There are only two qualified shops in Alaska that could fix it. An independent shop here in Palmer, or the only dealer in Anchorage, or the state for that matter.
When we got to town and set The Ritz up, we drove to the independent shop, where they confirmed it was the ignition switch/steering lock-out mechanism. They can’t fix it, because the part has to be programmed specifically for Fritz, and they don’t have the electronics to do that, I have to take it to the dealer tomorrow. Cha ching! Even the electronic key needs re-programming. We don’t have a choice, either we drive it in tomorrow or drag it in on a hook from who knows where.
A red fox on the hunt, makes his way through an open field.
There is some good news however. Most things that come into Alaska, come in through Anchorage, and most of Alaska’s fresh produce is grown here in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. At the store today, tomatoes were 2.49 a pound instead of the five bucks apiece we’ve paid since we left the states. Even better, there is a variety of produce in Freddy Meyers, so we can save our canned goods for on the road.
To capture mountain sheep you need an extreme lens, or be a big horn sheep. i neither have an exotic lens or am I a sheep. My lens makes little white specks into bigger white specks. That will have to do for this trip.
Once I get car things settled, I may get to try some salmon fishing. The rivers run clear here and salmon are in the streams. That’s quite different from the park where the glacial rivers are sterile because of the silt runoff. I’ll have to keep my eye out for bald eagles. If they’re around, there is fish near.
There’s a competition among the bus drivers in Denali. The primary score is the mountain as I’ve already explained. The other triumph is to see the big five: Grizzly, Dall Sheep, Moose, Caribou, and a Wolf. Hunters have decimated Denali’s wolf pack because of recent law changes that govern area adjacent to the park. Here is the last of our ‘Big Five’. A beautiful black wolf we found in a part of the park where he had never been spotted before.
I’ve processed a couple of photos from yesterday’s bus trip, and I want to share them with you. I hope you like them, I’m sure that you don’t want to see the inside of a garage (OK, I know a couple of you might), so I will be away from my camera for a day or so when we’ll get to check out Anchorage (and the Costco store).
A high pressure front was supposed to move in today bringing warmer temperatures tomorrow. That means the weather should clear giving us the best chance to photograph The Mountain. So, we extended our stay another day here in Nenana Canyon (the real name of the community the ranger calls Glitter Gulch).
The view from the Eielson Visitor’s Center
We’ve already purchased tickets for tomorrow’s shuttle bus. We’re betting on the conditions being right. It’s been cold, windy and cloudy all day with the temperature never breaking into the sixties. We will be moving to Cantwell on Wednesday regardless, so we all have our fingers and toes crossed.
The Teklanika River has a glacial source so it’s water runs the color of wet cement.
I wanted to get in this short post so that I could give you that update, but it’s also an excuse to show more of the photos from Saturday’s bus ride. Even if we don’t get a good shot, there are some scenes that I didn’t get the first time. We have a 7:00am departure, so the Queen is already preparing for her beauty sleep. Wish us luck.
Caribou antlers decorate the grounds of the Eielson Visitor’s Center. If Mt. Denali wasn’t socked in, it would be where the dark cloud is.
When we first talked about this adventure, my destination goal was Denali National Park. Everything up to this point and everything we do on the way home was icing on the cake. We’ve made it, and today is our third of five days camped in the community outside of the park, or as a ranger called it; Glitter Gulch.
I wanted to see the Great Mountain for myself and possibly photograph it. That’s an elusive task because as the Park Service explains, only a third of the visitors get to actually see the mountain. Normally the moist air coming up from the Alaska Gulf rises over the Alaska Range and the mountains squeeze the water vapor out of the air so it condenses into beautiful clouds. But Denali cloaks itself in those clouds most of the time.
On our first attempt the only view of the mountain we got, was from seventy miles away.
The park is different from any other National Park that I’ve visited. Besides the visitor center on the east side, there are very few concessions within the park boundaries. The intentions for The park was to be more of a wilderness experience. The park service limits traffic to fifteen miles on the single park road. Imagine, the state of Massachusetts having one road and you will get a sense of the space set aside for preservation.
We spotted this female grizzly escorting two cubs across the meadows. Unfortunately, the cubs were shorter than the grass in this photo.
You can’t drive your car into the heart of the park, but you can walk anywhere you like, you can ride a bike along the road, but over three-hundred thousand people use the shuttle or tour buses each year. The tours offer guides and video screens, so you don’t even have to leave your seat to view the wildlife (you can even buy a DVD recording of your tour when you get back).
Thunder clouds gather over this white mountain before breaking into afternoon showers.
The shuttle buses take you to various stops along the road and the cost is proportional to the distance. The guide is the driver and there aren’t any video cameras, so you have to spot the animals yourself. Anyone on the bus can yell stop, and the driver will stop, spot the object, move the bus so people can get a better photograph, and explain about what you’ve stopped for. There are only two rules: 1. No body parts can hang out of the windows (lenses are not body parts, so they can protrude). 2. You must stay quiet while the animal is near the bus.
A red fox on his way back to the den with three ground squirrels. This will be food for his hungry kits.
So, that really sucks, right? I want to hang out and try to pet the bears! It’s actually a pretty good system. Because of the rules, the animals don’t associate the buses with humans. They’re just big inedible cows moving back and forth across the landscape. Like being in an observation blind, the passengers get to see the animals act naturally. The ‘Stop!’ thing? Believe me when you have a bus load of people staring intently out the window, you stop more often than if you were by yourself.
Wonder Lake was at the west end of our shuttle bus rid. In all, we spent eleven hours touring the Denali back country.
You may have guessed by now that we took one of the shuttle buses yesterday out to Wonder Lake and back. We did get to see Denali, but only at the first overlook, seventy miles away. That qualifies us for the “I saw the Mountain” tee-shirt. I didn’t get a good shot however. It’s raining today, but Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s forecast is for drier skies, so we’re going to take another bus. I still want my picture.
Last evening Anne and I drove to a river crossing our map said was a good place to fish. It was around six in the evening and we figured there would be another ten hours of daylight left. When we got there, Anne sat in the car reading her Kindle book while I assembled my fly rod.
I had started casting along the shore to the right of the car then, not having any luck, moved upstream to the left of the parking area. I made a couple of casts when I heard a car door close. I glanced back to the car, thinking Anne had gotten bored and wanted to go back to camp.
It wasn’t. Instead it was a young slender woman about medium height with long black hair walking towards me. She wore a smoke blue silk blouse over black skinny jeans tucked into shiny black boots. Then I noticed her dark brown eyes as they looked directly at me and she smiled. She seemed familiar, like Janet Lee; the pool player.
She carried something in her hand and it took me a moment to realize it was a fly rod case, large enough for a two piece rod and reel. When she stood next to me, I’d lost track of my cast and hit the back of my head with my wadded up fly line.
“Do you mind if I fish the bank below you?” she asked with a deep sultry voice. My mind tried to respond with something like “If it pleases you, my dear,” but I swear it came out as <curly> “Why sointley”</curly>. She then gracefully descended the muddy slope to the river’s edge. She remarked how she had caught two graylings the other night. Then she looked puzzled and told me that this wasn’t her spot, because it was closer to the downed log upstream and began to climb back up. I offered my hand in help, but she refused and walked up the bank as if there were stairs. When she stood on the grass, her boots still shined without a trace of mud.
She looked for a path through, and then around the aspens blocking her way. Then she slipped around the end one, and then . . . disappeared; vanishing without a trace. I looked for her for maybe a minute before realizing the Goddess of Fly Fishing visited me. After exhaling and releasing my gut, I began reeling in my limp fly line from the grass, then slowly walked back to Fritz . . . and Anne.
I put away my rod and reel and sat in the driver’s seat letting out a huge sigh as the door closed.
“What was that all about?” Anne asked.
I turned to her and excitedly blurted, “Oh thank God you saw that. I was afraid that I was hallucinating.”
It’s July 4th, and as you all know, that’s an important day because it’s Queen Anne’s birthday. As far as she’s concerned, the nation celebrates her birth with fireworks. She also believes in Santa Clause, she can’t help it.
So imagine what happened as we drove into Fairbanks yesterday, and passed by a forty-foot statue of the jolly elf glaring down at the expressway. “Santa! I want to go see Santa for my birthday.” Jeez! Kids!
The forty-foot carving of Santa looks more menacing than benevolent when you drive past on the expressway.
We spent the afternoon at the Santa Claus House, which sells Christmas decorations and fudge all year-long (those are two things that I believe will rot your brain if you have too much). Little kids are running around the store house, giggling and pointing at all the pretty things on display with wide excited eyes. Anne was leading them. The only problem was that Santa doesn’t work on July 4th. It’s a federal holiday, but he did have all of his minions there. So now we have to go back tomorrow.
Deb and Sally take a break from Christmas object shopping, and cool their heals
In case you’re wondering, we didn’t make a wrong turn and wind up in at the real North Pole. This is the name of the town east of Fairbanks; sort of like Tempe is to Phoenix (without the heat). We missed the street and had to drive through some of the town, where they have decorations on the candy cane light poles. Normally Anne will get out of the car and yell a people who don’t take down decorations, but she found this charming.
Deb tries to convince Santa (Fred in this case) that she deserves something other than coal for a present.
The Queen was also afraid that there wouldn’t be fireworks for her birthday in Alaska. After all it’s a foreign country. It is a possibility, because of the constant light. Fireworks don’t show up well during the day. Not to worry, Alaskans substitute light with noise. Firecrackers have gone off around us for the last two days.
We had a birthday dinner at a Triple D restaurant (Dinners, Drive-ins and Dives). We ordered family style (with one you get egg roll), and now we’ll be eating Chinese every other hour for the next two days. But there wasn’t a cake . . . or the annoying happy birthday song (far ra ra). Fortunately, Anne unwittingly solve the problem. She bought a piece of fudge.
Anne gets a surprise birthday cake complete with rocket candle, while Sally sings Happy Birthday.
You see, in Watson Lake, Deb and Sally bought a cake sparkler candle for just this occasion. They were desperate and down to an orange as an alternative, until I remembered the piece of fudge. So we jammed the sparkler into the candy and surprised her with a serenade. Good show indeed.
