Tierra de Tortugas

Summer Sojourn 2019: Denali and more of Alaska

DENALI 

I’m finally here. I mean really here, in my body, my head, and my heart. I’m in Alaska.

I’m the one who wanted to come here. Perry asked me last year, as we were returning from Europe: “Where do you want to go next year?” I answered “Alaska!” And you know the rest — the complications that surfaced, the changes in schedules and modes of transportation. We flew over the border into Alaska from Bellingham, WA on July 27, and we’ve pieced together visits to Fairbanks, Anchorage, Homer, and a trip to Seldovia on a local ferry. But I’m not sure I really knew why I needed to be here until we came to Denali.

We had already taken the full-day train trip from Fairbanks down to Anchorage, passing through the Denali station and watching folks in parkas and rain gear offloading their bags, knowing we would return a couple of weeks later, thanks to the convoluted nature of our itinerary.

The trip back up, though, is like a totally different experience. The sky is relatively clear. We ride in an upper dome car, with broad views of the forests, moraines, rivers, and mountains as we enjoy our breakfast of smoked local sockeye salmon spread on bagels and an outrageous cinnamon roll.

So many mountains! Mile after mile of majestic peaks, occasionally snowcapped and tantalizing, off in the distance. Rivers, canyons, streams.

 

We do manage to get one view of Denali in the distance. At first it looks like just a large bank of clouds. But it truly is “the big one.”  We consider ourselves lucky; they say only about 30% of visitors actually get to see it, as it is usually obstructed by weather. We are fortunate, also, that we saw it under sparklingly clear conditions from overhead, back in 1998, when we flew through Anchorage and over the top on our way to Vladivostok, Russia. 

The wildflowers have begun to lose some of their color, the salmon in the streams below have nearly finished their spawning runs and are changing hues, losing strength, and completing the life cycle as white fading brushstrokes, dying at the water’s edge.

The train slows, then stops; and we watch the train engineer get off to manually switch us to another track.

We have a trip “host,” who points out things we might miss, along with tales of Alaskan adventurers and settlers, their tragedies and successes. 

 

We pass a large blue cabin sitting in a meadow, painted with the words: CITY HALL. This is Mary and Clyde Lovel’s cabin. They left Minnesota many years ago as a young couple with three small children to follow their dream and build this house in Alaska — piece by piece, with their own hands. With no roads. And no Home Depot! Mary is now in her late 80s, and Clyde is 94. They recently moved to somewhat more commodious quarters, but they and their children remain in Alaska. The “City Hall” sign? Friends so named it in honor of Clyde and Mary’s contribution to their “community.” She has written a book called Journey to a Dream, about their adventurous life.

 

And, so, I begin to get it. I now can envision what it might have been to come north as a 20-something instead of going the other direction, as I did, to South America. I can imagine how challenging and exciting it might have been to choose this unknown, to expand horizons in this direction.

And I most can feel the pull of nature. I am never more humbled than when face to face with nature’s grandeur. This is my “church” …a soaring mountain range, the horizon line almost lost between sky and sea, broad cloud-dressed skies over plains or valleys…the tiniest fallen leaf, a bee nosed into a blossom…the myriad forms large and small in which life is manifest. They all take me back to the top of that tree where, as an adolescent, I would climb and sit to gaze out over the rolling farmlands of Illinois and dream, dream of all the places I would go!

 

In Denali, we stay at a very comfortable lodge run by the cruise companies. We catch shuttles to the Park Visitors Center, with its informative displays; other attractions, including a damp afternoon with the sled dogs, who are actually part of the working staff at the park, hauling supplies and taking part in rescues. On one shuttle ride, we see a very large bull moose...or at least a moose behind!

 

On our way back from Denali to Anchorage on the train, we stop over for two nights at the Mt. McKinley Princss Lodge in Talkeetna, undoubtedly the most luxurious of our stays in Alaska.

We hiked up to see The Treehouse which was famously built on the TV show, " Treehouse Masters."

 

Talkeetna is the place where climbers begin their assent of Denali. The mountain was named Mt. McKinley in 1896 by a gold prospector, then officially named so in 1917 by the federal government in honor of President William McKinley of Ohio. In 2008, President Obama used his executive power to restore the Alaska Native name with deep cultural significance to this, the tallest mountain in North America.

Talkeetna is a funky little town with lots of attitude..and a gazillion tourists!

 

So. I will never have the experience of plying my fate in Alaska, but I can embrace it as one of the 14 lives I have always wished to live simultaneously! There are just so many places to go, so many ways to view the world, so many differing perspectives, so many ideas, adventures, and things to learn! Having to chose any one over the other has often been difficult for me. Maybe that’s why I travel. I can at least imagine what those 14 lives might have been…and one might have been here, in Alaska.

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Now that I have waxed philosophical, I need to share some of the other things we’ve done here; because our time in Alaska is running down, and we’ll soon be on a cruise ship out of Seward headed south again, to Vancouver! 

Our Alaska experience has been a whole lot easier than Mary and Clyde’s. We have traveled on trains and buses. We’ve been shuttled here and there; stayed in lodges and modest Airbnb apartments; toured; walked; heard good music at our friend’s place, The Writer’s Block in Anchorage; eaten the greatest food! And I’ve even found a new, favorite beer — Midnight Sun Kodiak Brown. Herby, with a touch of molasses. Probably won’t find it in Mexico!

We signed off the last time from our first visit to Anchorage, and I’ll pick up from there, as we’re on our way to Homer.

 

HOMER & SELDOVIA

I’m looking for moose!

We saw just one from the train between Fairbanks and Anchorage. Then Perry saw one from the bus to Homer, but I missed that one. In Homer, we take a long walk to a wooded wildlife viewing area, look out over the lake and wetlands. Signs all along the path warn of moose and how to behave should you see one. We read every word, are extremely watchful and ready to do whatever is recommended. But nothing. Well, nothing but birds... 

 

We stay in the “Little r̶e̶d̶ ̶s̶c̶h̶o̶o̶l̶ BLUE Skoolie House!” That’s how it is named on Airbnb, and yes, it’s a bus! It was the only Airbnb listing I could find available near the center of things — if you can consider there IS a center of things. Homer has not changed our perception that things are very spread out in Alaska! I guess with so much available land, people feel they can take advantage of it. 

 

We walk 20 minutes from our bus before finding any restaurants. The only thing we find open the night we arrive is the Bigfoot Burger food truck. It’s not dark, and we are kind of puzzled to find nearly everything closed. Then we realize — it’s 10:30 p.m.! The burgers are really good, and Bigfoot obviously has a loyal clientele. It’s busy. 

In the morning we make a quick and good (thanks to Robert and Dania) cup of coffee in the bus before trekking off again, this time to look for breakfast before exploring more of Homer. Robert had recommended the Cosmic Kitchen. And what do we find? Everything from biscuits & gravy to breakfast burritos. Mexican food influences seem to crop up everywhere. We try the burrito. It is delicious…and huge. We can happily share one order and still have trouble finishing it all. No wonder people have problems with obesity!

The second night it’s fish and chips at Alice’s Champagne Palace, a great, funky place where there is to be live music. But we can’t manage to wait for it. We’ve hiked all day and still need to walk back to the bus to rest up for tomorrow! 

Our final dinner in Homer is at Cups Cafe. On my! One of the best gourmet meals ever! It is so good that I write down all the details so maybe I can replicate it for our Kino dinner club. 

The food in Alaska has been fabulous! With the long summer days, vegetables grow to astounding proportions. One favorite story is of the record-setting 138-lb cabbage. Today we walk to the Farmer’s Market and find ourselves surrounded by the most scrumptious looking produce.

One day we take a long walk around the town, visit the marshlands and a wilderness path that leads us to the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center  where we see movies about bears, moose(!), fishing and wildlife research in the Aleutian Islands, and the lives of native peoples and other early settlers, all in beautiful and accessible exhibits.

 

The big attraction here is the Homer Spit — a narrow strip of land extending 4.5 miles south into Kachemak Bay. It is the home of the Homer Boat Harbor, loaded with fishing boats, ferries, and small tour ships.

We book a ferry ride across the bay to Seldovia. Turns out to be a sweet and quirky little place where one could happily hide out for a month or so! We add many cute and playful sea otters to our wildlife sitings.

Homer is the place Alaskans tell us they would like to retire. Wouldn’t be a bad choice, but I still think it gets too cold for me! 

 

BACK IN ANCHORAGE

The bus takes us another four hours back to Anchorage, and we check into yet another Airbnb, this one near the University of Alaska. We again visit The Writer’s Block for more good food and music; and we take various rides on the city bus system (just $1 for seniors!) to different parts of the city, to get a feel for it. Public buses provide great and very inexpensive “tours.”

The municipality, it turns out, is 1,944 square miles — larger than the entire state of Rhode Island — with a population of just over 300,000 (half the total population of the state). That’s a population density of around 160 people/square mile! We think about the inevitable cost of highways and infrastructure. Densification would make a very tiny footprint. The entire place feels like a huge, semi-rural suburb, peppered with shopping malls, and a very small central core. We are surprised that this is such a car-overrun and gasoline-dependent place for a population that prides itself on being “self-sufficient” and “the last frontier.”

 

We look for some evening events and find there will be a concert by students of the Alaska Jazz Workshop Summer Jazz Camp at the University not far from where we are staying. So, after one of our long, exploratory rides, we get off the bus just a short distance from the Fine Arts building. It’s a very pleasant, woodsy, and (yes) spread-out campus. As we approach the building, I see, and begin to point out to Perry, what looks like a life-size moose sculpture under a tree. Then I realize…it’s eating the leaves off the tree! That’s no sculpture. It’s a female moose; and then comes the calf, trailing up behind her. They are much less than half a block away. We’ve found our moose!

But this may not be such a good thing! Moose kill many more people in Alaska than do bears. And there is nothing more fierce than a mother moose. Fortunately we were not in between mama and baby, which is really dangerous! We quickly head down a path in the opposite direction, around the back of the Fine Arts building. Perry tries (unsuccessully) to snap some pictures from behind a tree. I sneak a look back at her, and she is looking straight at me! You are told that if you come upon a moose, the best thing to do is run. We do! But we finally saw a very real moose, and much closer than we expected.

The concert, by the way, was great. Two memorable events in one evening!

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It's August 17, and we’re now in Anchorage for the third time, back from Denali. We’ve learned to negotiate the city quite well and seen most of its highlights. So, we’re taking a day off to catch up, write this post, and do laundry, because tomorrow we board a Holland American ship and head down the inside passage to Vancouver. We’ll now be looking for glaciers (instead of moose) and will let you know what we find. — CJK

 

Summer Sojourn 2019: Fairbanks & Anchorage

FAIRBANKS 

How does one arrive at a sense of place?

There is a special scent. Wildflowers and a tangle of grasses. Damp. Cool. And the gray of rain clouds ringing a pale sun. Jeanne, a Lyft driver and friend of our host (they were both born here, in Fairbanks), picks us up from the small airport at about 11:00 p.m. It’s quiet. The sky is dusk-like and the streets deserted. The night is almost warm — maybe 70 degrees. Jeanne tells us this is the place in Alaska with the warmest summers and coldest winters. Every car around here has an electrical plug hanging out of the grill (the 'Fairbanks Tongue?') to heat the engine on cold winter nights, but right now it feels like spring in Vermont or Colorado.

We wind our way quite a distance through sparsely populated areas, to the house where we will stay, described on the Airbnb site as "in town." It's on a quiet street beside a small lake in the middle of an industrial area surrounded by fields and wooded areas. The houses ringing the lake are modest and well tended, with broad, neatly mown lawns. The streets and driveways are clotted with cars, campers, pick-up trucks, and an occasional snowplow. There is no visible sign of a "town." We're both thinking the same thing: Just how far will we need to walk to find a grocery store?! 

We sleep well and long under fluffy comforters in the cool and bright Alaskan night, and wake late. Lisa, our host, has provided us with good coffee which we use for a jump-start, then we set off walking to look for food. Google maps says there a convenience store up the highway not too far. Before we get there, though, we see a cafe! With several cars parked outside. Always a good indicator. The Hot Spot looks to be popular with locals — your basic and very friendly neighborhood cafe. The Sunday morning special: Eggs Benedict and reindeer sausage! We feel a lot better about things, and look forward to getting plenty of good exercise after doing an excessive amount of driving in Albuquerque. 

After breakfast, we hoof it on up the highway to the — uh — convenience store. A sign on the door says "CLOSED SATURDAY & SUNDAY." We promptly redesignate it the "INconvenience store." We also learn that the local bus route — that could potentially take us to the Fred Meyer or Safeway to stock up — does not run on Sundays. And by now we're validated that it is a very long walk to "town."

  As we walk, we notice strange markers above fire hydrants, service boxes, low walls along the street. What? Imagine being a snowplow driver in the dead of winter! 

Back to the Hot Spot we go to buy a large carry-out order of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and salad, and a piece of apple pie. And, while the convenience store is inconveniently closed, the liquor store is not, so we score a bottle of nice red and head back. We'll have a fine dinner "at home," watch something on Netflix, and start over on Monday morning. 

We do, indeed, figure out the buses that fairly well cover the city – and are free if you are over 60! We have three days to explore — which probably is not enough, but we'll do what we can. The bus drivers are very friendly here and seem to know most of the riders. One thing we can do is ride the different bus routes to get a better understanding of the place, as we've done in other places. We learn that Fairbanks is like lots of frontier towns: spread out all over the place!

After a Monday morning breakfast of biscuits and gravy, more reindeer sausage, and sourdough pancakes (if we keep eating like this, we’re going to be in trouble!) at the Diner Cafe, we hop a bus to Creamer's Field — once a large, working dairy farm, now a wildlife preserve of fields and marshes populated by many species of birds and animals. And, yes, the owner really was named Creamer! We walk about three peaceful miles through the forest and along bogs and streams, watching large flocks of sandhill cranes ripple the tall grasses, lift and cruise over the fields; and listening to the mysterious sounds of hidden creatures.

On the way back, we stop at the Black Spruce Brewery that sits along a highway a couple of blocks from the house. We're wondering if they have food, as well as brew. Well, technically, they don't; but a food truck is pulled up along the side door, and you can order pizzas! Which we do, along with two of the local best. And I bought an Alaska t-shirt. Can't go home without an Alaska t-shirt!

 

On another day we visit the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), which sits on a bluff overlooking the city and valley. The museum is a stunning presentation of art, science, history, and culture. Oscar, the huge stuffed grizzly bear and a mummified Steppe Bison (only one in the world) are awe inspiring. Oscar, as you will see, is a very popular guy around town. And the art — ranging from ancient to contemporary, and local native to internationally significant – is beautifully curated. 

 

A walk around the central part of the campus takes us to the Wood Center (student union) and the Arts building, which we enter through the foyer to the performance auditorium — and I go off wandering through the halls, looking at student art displays. Perry comes to get me. He wants to show me someone he once knew! 

Back to the auditorium — the Charles W. Davis Auditorium. And there, in a glass case, is an oil painting of Charles. Perry points at it. Turns out Charles was once the Music Director at the Wilkes' family church in Albuquerque, St. Luke's Lutheran, when Perry was in junior high. He remembered that Davis had left for someplace in Alaska but never heard any more about him. Davis passed on in 1994, but Fairbanks obviously offered more fertile ground than Albuquerque for his talents.  He is revered for his musical and leadership contributions to the university and the community over a 30-year period.

Our last night in Fairbanks, we find the Jazz Bistro. It’s downtown, near the Transit Center (where all the buses originate), so will make it easy to get a taxi back to the apartment! Unfortunately, we are tired enough from our trek (we’ve become obsessed with getting our 10,000+ steps a day), and we need to be up very early in the morning to catch our train to Anchorage, that we can’t make it until the live jazz begins at 830pm. But the food is fantastic — roasted pork and vegetables with black beans — Caribbean fare. We find ourselves speaking Spanish with the charming Cuban-born owner, who swears he’ll visit us in Kino.* We are suddenly connected in another way here in Alaska, where you find transplants from all parts of the world — cabbies from Honolulu, waiters from Serbia and Macedonia, tour guides from Croatia, restaurant owners from Cuba…

Jeanne, who collected us from the airport, picks us up on a rainy August 1 morning and drops us at the Alaska Railroad Depot in Fairbanks for a long, lovely ride to Anchorage.

 

THE TRAIN

It's a full day's ride from Fairbanks to Anchorage. And it's beautiful. Yes, there are long stretches of mostly firs and birch, but the excitement is suddenly seeing a moose or a stream filled with salmon. The skys were gray and ocassionally rainy, with streaks of sunlight breaking through from time to time. 

The odd thing is that we will be back on this very same train a little later for a four-day trip to Denali! We might have planned it a little differently, had we known we would not take the ferry and visit Fairbanks instead, etcetera, etcetera... But, as we mentioned, this trip has required flexibility. So we will "doubly" enjoy the train! And we'll tell you more about it the next time around! For now, just a few pictures to give you a feeling.

 

ANCHORAGE

We collect our bags and find a taxi (the driver's from Somalia) to take us to our Airbnb rental. Finding places to stay in Alaska during the height of tourist season had been quite a challenge; and we have had to opt for places with public transportation nearby rather than be in easy walking distance of the center. This is a car-centric place. Most people who visit here either have driven up the AlCan or rent a vehicle once they get here. Walking seems not to be so common, and we often find ourselves walking along highways with no sidewalks.

We’ve staying south of the downtown and mid-town areas of this, another spread-out city, on the edge of Lake Spenard, a base for small sea-planes that continually land and take off throughout the day. One of my take-aways from Anchorage will be the roar of small plane engines…along with the sounds of unmuffled motorcycles and trucks, and jets from the nearby airport.

 

Anchorage will be where we spend time between other places — Homer, Denali, and Seward, where we will hop the Holland American cruise ship to Vancouver on August 18. We will get to know Anchorage well.

An early task, then, is to figure out the bus system — the PeopleMover. The map is downloadable from the internet, and we spot the bus stops near our place. Then we begin walking toward the uptown area to find a place for breakfast and get a feel for things. 

We find breakfast at Gwennies Old Alaska Restaurant. Seated next to a bear’s very large, um, behind, we order one breakfast to split (thank goodness!). It's a mountain of an omelet — maybe four or five eggs over a pile of reindeer sausage, with grits and biscuits. We cannot eat it all, between the two of us!

Onward a few blocks we find something we had planned to look for later — The Writer’s Block Bookstore, Cafe, and performance venue. We were just walking along, looked across the street, and there it was! It’s owned by Vered, the daughter of dear Albuquerque friend Tony Mares, who passed away a few years ago. His wife, Carolyn Meyer, had reminded us to look for the bookstore. She had been there just a week earlier presenting her one-woman, stand-up comedy act, “Don’t Call Me Young Lady!” Carolyn is a well-known, widely published author of literature for children and young adults; but she has embarked on a completely new performance career. We are very sorry we missed the show!

In the city, we visit the amazing Anchorage Museum — a huge collection of historic and contemporary art, performance and educational spaces for kids — in downtown Anchorage.

We spend a couple of hours in the fascinating “Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition” exhibit, pondering the horror of being ice-bound and starving to death in the frozen Arctic. And we ran into Oscar again!

And after a few hours of “museum walk,” we find a little respite in the “Seed Lab” viewing space, filled with the most comfy bag chairs! They're easy to stay in – and snooze – and hard to get out of!

It’s “First Friday” in Anchorage, with all kinds of arts and performance events in the downtown area; but we choose to go back to Vered’s place for dinner and music by Eric Lytle from northern California, who is doing a tour around the area here. The Writer’s Block is a first-class book store, the food is great, and Eric’s music is fantastic!

Vered is busy tending to business when Perry asks her if she has anything written by E.A. Mares.

“Uhh, could I get back to you in a minute?” she asks, with a long, curious look.

We manage to monopolize her for about ten minutes to reminisce about her dad and learn a bit about the difficulties of living and doing business in Alaska, where the governor just cut about 40% of funding for all sorts of vitally important programs. It seems to be the main subject of conversation and headline stories in all the papers; and there's a recall drive now underway. I can imagine it is traumatic. You see everywhere the evidence of a proud, energetic population focused on caring for the environment, social justice, hard work, and self sufficiency, with a passion for this place where they live. But it can be a tough environment; and when the heart is cut out of the economy, it’s likely to get tougher. 

 

On Saturday we take the bus into the center again, spend some time at the sizable Saturday open-air market where you can buy almost any kind of Alaskan artifact or food…with a little thrown in from other places, like Mexico! 

 

We don’t have a frenzied agenda here. It’s more like, “What do you think we should do now?” We’re not booking small plane flights over the glaciers or long treks through the Alaskan wilderness. Maybe had we done this twenty years ago…

So, after a lazy hour or so on a park bench overlooking the bay, we book tickets to a comedy called, "Boeing, Boeing," at Cyrano’s Theatre, and have a lovely dinner of salmon, risotto, and spinach salad, with a nice bottle of red wine, at the Yes Bistro across the street before the show. We have, indeed, already chalked up 13,000+ steps for the day, and call a cab to get us back to bed by 11:30 p.m.! It's still very light outside as we nod off, but not as much as Fairbanks which is farther north.

It’s Sunday. We’ll visit the nearby airport to check up on an art installation there for our friend, the artist, Dana Boussard. It’s nice to have this sort of real-time connection with a place. 

Tomorrow we take a bus to Homer, where we hear Alaskans like to retire. Sounds good to us! We'll be back in Anchorage two more times before exiting Alaska. Next up: Homer and Denali. — CJK

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*Cannot tell you how many cards we’ve handed out throughout our travels, and how many people have said “We’ll be there.” We never hand out cards to “advertise,” rather, it’s a way to connect; and while we surely would welcome visits from those we meet along the way, they are yet to happen!