Reflections of My Travel

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This morning, we set the alarm for 05:30 so that we would be packed and ready to get on the camper bus at 06:30. We boarded the bus with six serious backpackers who were headed to the back country. Their gear was impressive. We made one other stop at the visitor’s center to pick up no more than ten others. Then we were on our way. The original six with whom we boarded at Riley Creek turned out to be a very pleasant and conversive group. One of them has lived in AK for about 9 months, working as a physical therapist. The other five were a group of friends who have a history of wonderful, male-bonding travel adventures together. This was to be their last hurrah since one of them is going to be having a baby in October. About three hours in, we saw our first big animal. It was a pretty blonde grizzly just grazing around the tundra. The bus pulled over and we watched her for a while from above and then the bus drove down the road a bit and pulled over closer to her for us to watch some more. She was probably about 300 pounds. We continued on our way, making occasional stops to either take a short travel break or to let backpackers off in the middle of nowhere. Along the way, the bus driver told us that we could ride with him all the way to the end of the road, past Kantishna, which happens to be the most western-point of the continent that can be driven to. We’re all for gathering superlatives on our trips, so we had to go. He said that he would drop us off at the Reflection Pond on the way back and we could hike from there back to Wonder Lake. So when we got to Wonder Lake, we hopped off the bus, gathered our gear, walked around and found a campsite that was directly across from McKinley (beautiful view really), set up the tent and such, and headed back to the bus. We were pretty pleased with our decision to ride instead of staying at the campground since all the sites were in the sun and it was pushing 90 and getting kind of miserable. Riding the bus a bit more gave us shade and the breeze of wind coming through all the open windows. On the way back, we came across the end of a wedding and the officiant and witness flagged us down for a ride. The bus driver tried to get the bride and groom on the bus for a picture since he had never had a bride and groom on his bus. No luck. He then dropped us at Reflection Pond, as agreed upon. Reflection Pond is where all the pictures of McKinley with water reflecting it are taken. Unfortunately, it turns out that it’s pretty rare to get that picture since the very least amount of wind can ripple the water and destroy all hopes of reflection. So it goes. Not that it would have made any real difference since the smoke from all the wild fires had moved in to obstruct the mountain completely. We started the mile and a half hike back to Wonder Lake in the 90-degree heat with no shade and only the slightest breeze. I think that’s when it really started getting miserable. By the time we got back to our tent, we thought that perhaps a nap would help our moods. We turned on the fan and stripped down to our coolest layers and attempted to nap in the very hot tent. One of us succeeded, but unfortunately it wasn’t me. I decided to get out and go sit under the food pavilion for shade and whatever breeze I could get. I’m not sure how long I sat there, fighting away vicious mosquitoes, until Randal came out. We both sat for a little while and snacked on some peanuts and breakfast bars and water. We then decided to walk down to the lake. Luckily, it was only about a quarter-mile, and surprisingly mosquito-free. We spent most of the day there, socializing with other heat- and mosquito-escapees, and even took a brief dip in the water to cool off. About 23:00, when the sun was slightly less bright, we decided it was cool enough to go back to the tent and try to get some rest. it was much cooler in the tent, unfortunately we had gotten some very rowdy neighbors while we were at the lake and i stayed awake for several hours listening to them screaming and running around and making all kinds of noise. finally got some rest though.

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This morning, we got up bright and early, around 05:30, to get our tent and gear all packed up and ready for the 06:30 bus. We had discussed it last night and decided that we just couldn’t take another miserable day of heat and mosquitos in there so we’d just go ahead and get out on the first bus. By this morning, the smoke had moved in so heavily that if I didn’t know any better, I would call you an outright liar for saying there was a 20,000+ foot mountain right there in front of us. It was insane just how absolutely obscured it was. While waiting for the bus, we were amused that everyone who was waiting for the bus was wearing mosquito nets. Someone took a pic of all of us “netheads”. When we all boarded the bus, so did the mosquitoes. On the way back out, we saw several owls, more ptarmigan, more caribou (one blocking the road ahead of us), and a big black bear running (and i mean full speed) up to the top of a mountain. But the highlight was a 350lb grizzly that was in the street ahead of us, we stopped and it walked around the bus a few times – right under the windows where if we would have put our arm out (not that nuts) we could have pet it. It was highly exhilarating. When we got out of the park, we headed north toward Fairbanks. The closer we got, the less we could see or breath. We were heading straight at the fires and the smoke was horrible. We had planned on trying to go to Chena Hot Springs but it was just too smoky (and i think the road was actually closed anyhow). We started back south and stopped in at the North Pole in order to mail out postcards with a North Pole postmark (I was so happy that we spent all that time there breathing in pure smoke just so for all the postcards to end up with Fairbanks postmarks – dangit! I want my money back). We stopped in at Santa’s workshop and saw his reindeer. It was all pretty dismal though, I was really expecting more from the North Pole. After breathing a sufficient quantity of smoke, we continued south and ended up camping out at Delta Junction for the night. The road on the way to Delta Junction must have just been moose haven – we had to have seen 15 moose on the side of the road throughout the night. No bulls, but we did see one cow with calfs.

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We woke up this morning and continued on our southern course toward Valdez. We stopped in Glennallen for a hearty breakfast at a hotel (slim pickins on restaurants in them thar parts). Back on the road again, we saw signs for Worthington Glacier and decided to stop and see what it was all about. This was very exciting, our first up close glacier. We actually were able to walk right up to/on it. It was beautiful and cold and brilliantly blue. I walked through a tiny stream of the frigid meltwater, which was a neat experience. When we finally arrived in Valdez, we stopped at the visitor’s center to see what all there was to do and where we might stay. As we were getting in the car to leave the visitor’s center, we were approached by a semi-familiar looking couple. They said that they had apparently been following us because it seemed that everywhere they went, they saw our vehicle (easily identified by all of the Just Married stickers on the windows). It turns out that this was the couple that we had conversed with up on the mountain in Denali State Park 5 days earlier. They said that they had seen our vehicle there (not realizing that it belonged to us, of course), then they saw it in Denali National Park (both at Riley Creek and Savage River), then again in North Pole, Delta Junction, along the side of the road (apparently during one of our scenic overlook naps), and now here. We talked for a little while and they told us that Valdez was their last stop before heading back to Anchorage to fly home to Colorado, so this would be the end of the stalking. We laughed and went our separate ways. We decided to stay in walls tonight so we got a cabin at the Totem Inn (chosen because they had free wi-fi and I could post the pics we’ve taken so far). When we got to the room, we unloaded the car so that we could clean it back up and organize better. I did a load of sink laundry and we got a nice shower. We then headed to the grocery store to pick up some frozen pizzas to cook in our little oven and some ice cream. I was appalled by the prices at the grocery store. This was the first we had really run into a steep price difference. A gallon of milk was over $5 and a bag of potato chips was nearly $6. It was insane. We went back to the cabin and cooked up our dinner. We took some time to try to plan out some of the rest of our trip and made reservations with Pangaea to go sea kayaking tomorrow morning. I’m very much looking forward to that. It should be a good time. We spent the rest of the night relaxing and watching tv.