Reflections of My Travel

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We woke up this morning and packed the car back up and prepared to go sea kayaking. We got to the shop and our found out that it was just going to be us and a guide, a nice personalized tour. Our guide, Jared, supplied us with some wet bags for our cameras and lunch and such. As we were changing into our boots and splash-skirts, a car pulled up and out popped our stalkers. They were going on a different kayak trip but we laughed and talked a bit and agreed that we might as well have dinner together. We made plans to meet at Mike’s Palace at 19:00 and then went on about our sea kayaking way. It was beautiful out there, but it turns out kayaking is hard work. I was very glad that we were in a two-seater. Not that I just didn’t try, I paddled as much as I possibly could, perhaps 85-90%. It was hard work. And it was a five-mile paddle one way. On the way out to Gold Creek, we paddled by several harbor seals, sea otters, and a very large stellar sea lion as well as several bald eagles. It was very neat. When we paddled to our take-out place, we got out and pulled the kayaks all the way up onto the beach and hiked through some very high vegetation to get to Gold Creek. We then crossed a footbridge and started a vertical (and I do mean vertical) hike up to the waterfall that feeds Gold Creek. We stopped at a semi-mosquito-less area and sat down to eat some lunch. Jarrod even had some hot cocoa for us, which I thought was very nice. I, of course, took no more than a sip before promptly dropping my whole cup down the cliff. I have a special talent for stuff like that. Randal and Jarrod had to do some pseudo-rappelling in order to retrieve it. Unfortunately, the bears got to enjoy that cocoa more than I did. After our mini picnic, we continued our uphill trek. It got steeper and steeper as we went along, which my oversized rubber boots did not seem to think was their appropriate use. I felt bad because I slowed the guys down a lot, but I was proud to have made it to the top. And it really was a very difficult hike. It was beautiful though. And if you moved just fast enough, the mosquitoes barely bothered you. It was a very sizeable waterfall. Going down was slower than going up. I’m much better at upward hiking than I am at downward hiking. When we got back down to the bottom and crossed the bridge again, we went down the creek and observed some of the old, abandoned gold mining equipment. We waded through the cold creek a bit (now there’s a good use for those rubber boots) and looked for some gold-inhabited quartz. We didn’t find any but it was a nice cool down between hiking and paddling. We soon made our way back to where we had pulled our kayaks ashore and launched them to head back. Not long after we got started paddling again, I got up the nerve to bust out the cameras for a little bit of mid-water kayaking photography. Jarrod was kind enough to take the camera, paddle away a little, and take a couple of pictures of Randal and I in our kayak. On the way back, we were followed for quite some time by a curious harbor seal. He never got closer than about 30 feet but it was fun to watch him watching us. All in all it was a great experience, even if a little tiring. When we got back to town, we passed a bit of time exploring the old Valdez town site and such and then headed to Mike’s Palace to meet Ken and Alice for dinner. It was a very nice dinner with pleasant conversation. In all of our travels, we’ve never actually met up with people we’ve spoken with for the purpose of joining in a social activity of some sort, but this was a really enjoyable experience. At the end of the evening, we parted ways and Randal and I headed north. We camped out in Glennallen.

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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.

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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.