A-L-A-S-K-A! (8/02)

A-L-A-S-K-A!

A-l-a-s-k-a. Alaska. There is no ‘N’ in Alaska, but there should be. Given six days and six nights Nilaya and I have definitely put the ‘N’ in Alaska (I couldn’t do it on my own, there isn’t an ‘N’ there to begin with).

For those of you who don’t know her, Nilaya is my housemate from senior year and friend since freshman year. She is currently training with the Alvin Ailey Dance school in Manhattan and desperately seeking shelter in the aforementioned borough (or somewhere in the vicinity). Despite her impending housing horrors she managed to haul her little butt up here for ten days to visit Portland and Seattle and accompany me on the great Alaskan adventure.

**

Alaska is referred to as America’s “Last Frontier” in those dreadfully cliché
guidebooks and on the state license plate. We flew in on the red-eye, with little more than said guide books and a return flight. Loosely translated, we were Going to go wherever the nearly non-existent public transportation services were willing to take us, and we faced the possibly calamitous consequences of poor planning. We hadn’t booked accommodations and said guidebooks claimed that cheap lodgings are hard to come by without reserving a month a head of time, at least. (In Seattle, Nilaya and I considered making an itinerary…we went out for coffee instead.)

The trip proved to be a riotous adventure full of beautiful glacial scenery, large mosquitoes, plenty of friendly bickering, pungent fish-smelling locals and several surprises, at the very least.

**

I got my clue that this trip would be different from all others when the flight attendant offered me not peanuts, not pretzels, but metabolite bars as the in-flight snack.

We arrived in Anchorage, a sprawling cement grid dotted with of bars, army surplus stores, fishing outfitters, seafood lockers, furriers and cruise offices. To say that Anchorage is bleak is a gross understatement. It is absolutely depressing and it effectively masks the fact that it is surrounded by some of the most beautiful natural scenery EVER.

We cabbed it straight to the hostel, where we were met by a man in overalls singing about a woman who “loves white trash.” He welcomed us and we headed to our bunks, ignoring the gutted out rooms and doors that wouldn’t shut on the way. Nils slept soundly. I was kept awake by sounds that can only be likened to the sound of whales mating–possibly the beds creaking, possibly the chainsaw-like snoring of hosteller–regardless it rendered me sleepless (my general state of being for the entire trip).

The next morning we attacked both Anchorage and our lack of an itinerary with equal vigor. It was a learning experience. We learned that Alaskan women, especially the ones who work at the Anchorage visitors center, are not at all helpful. Rather, they are rude, abrupt and spitefully withhold or are ignorant of vital information that tourists might actually need.

After seizing said vital info (from a very reluctant Alaskan woman) Nils and I settled on an itinerary: head south. The problem is that Alaska is one fifth the size of the United States (Texas plus a few other states) and its extreme climates are not all conducive to frequent, rapid or public transport. People who go to Alaska do one of several things: rent an RV, rent a car, take a cruise, ride the limited train service (which we had already missed) or hitchhike. Unwilling or unable to do all of the above Nilaya and I took it upon
ourselves to find a sixth mode of transport. This is a chore equal only to searching for a lost contact lens in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

After countless unsuccessful phone calls we finally found a van that made trips to our first destination, Seward. To get to the departure point we navigated the vast, nasty suburban wasteland that is greater Anchorage on a city bus–most people don’t know there are city buses in Anchorage, they own vehicles with names like Tacoma, Expedition, Yukon and Navigator with GPS and leather interior. We were left by the bus to walk along the freeway in the rain to reach to office. Once we got there it was smooth sailing straight to Seward in a Van with a man who snacked on foot-long rods of beef jerky and lots of chewing tobacco…yummy.

*Seward*

Its about to get a little waxy…watch out…We traveled along a two lane highway surround by petrified pines spiking through mossy plains, punctured by jagged slate rocks at the base of rich green mountains dotted with gleaming white permafrost being carefully carved out by cobalt tinted glaciers. I was mostly struck by the sheer size of everything. Alaska is, if nothing else, HUGE. And, the color of the water is equally unbelievable. I really thought that outfitters like Patagonia, north face, marmot etc made up the colors and the names like glacial blue…but that color really exists.

All right, enough about the color of the water. We arrived in Seward with no place to stay. The Silver Salmon Derby rendered us homeless and wandering along the highway (again) searching desperately for a space in which we could conceivably sleep, or at least put our stuff. We ended up at the Breeze Inn–a fisherman’s favorite, a fact made obvious by the large men in orange rubber body boots who frequently passed by our window and the two forty-ounce bottles of Olde English we found under the sink in the bathroom. We dropped our packs and headed out to explore.

Seward is a big sport fishing town. Rephrase: Seward is a little town where sport fishing is the main lure. The fish are probably the biggest thing in the town, well maybe the fisherman are bigger. Anyway, we strolled along the dock and witnessed two seals fighting over salmon with the gulls. We had heard that the Exit Glacier hike was THE THING to do…but then we realized that without a car it would not be our THING to do. Instead we kept dry (it was still raining), ate fish and chips and watched the fishermen haul in, weigh, gut and clean their salmon.

*Ron and the Road to Homer*

That morning we miraculously caught a van to Homer, just missing the hoards of cruise ship idiots by the skins of our teeth. Our driver this time was a guy named Ron. Ron, not unlike many Alaskan men between the ages of 40 and 50 made the move to the 49th State in the early seventies when the notorious Alaskan pipeline was being built. Apparently the pipeline project held the promise of great wealth for those who worked on its construction–whether that is true, I don’t know, but the workers still get a monthly check from the state for building the contraption. Back to Ron. Ron drove us from Seward to Homer. He stopped a couple of times to show us salmon spawning in a freshwater stream and to deliver 20 12-packs of Coors beer to a liquor store.

**Fun Fact**

The salmon were fluorescent red, having spent the long journey upstream through freshwater surviving on the nutrients stored in their own flesh (also fluorescent red).

Brace yourself, I am about to start waxing something awful about how beautiful
it was to drive into Homer. The scenery between Seward and Homer is considerably
flat and arid. Ron called the that trees dotted the plains Dr. Seuss trees because they resembled the tall, slender weeping cartoon trees drawn by the children’s book author. I have to add that the sky was incredible. It seemed huge and the cloud formations were so neat…Nils and I were spotting all kinds of things up there. After making out a few eagles and snakes we rolled through Soldotna and passed Anchor Point, to Homer.

Homer is a small town which swells during the summer because it is Anchorage’s favorite vacation spot. Its main industries are fishing really large halibut, shipping and tourism. The town is located half on the mainland and the other half (about four miles) extends into the water on a long skinny spit (a piece of land that juts out into the water, like a peninsula).

Things to do in Homer: Hike, take pics of the sunsets, fly in an Ultralite, hike to glaciers, scope the fisherboys, ogle the over-sized halibut longer wider than Nilaya and I put together, hangout with L.B. the over-zealous but extremely generous manager of the hostel, console a lost traveler who was obviously sad about a girlfriend who up and left him in the middle of Alaska after dating for a year and a half, chat it up with an Irish American chick from NYC about traveling alone through all of Asia, eat fish and chips…a lot, scope for good boat names in the harbor, watch the sea otters playing with their food, and walk up and down the spit (over and over again).

Homer Rules…the only downside is that it is Jewel’s hometown.

*Whittier*

We spent the last day of our adventure in Whittier, a 300 person town surrounded by not one, but three glaciers (Shakespeare, Billings and Whittier). Nilaya, Ryan–our guide, Brent and his girlfriend, an uppity flight attendant from Dallas and I ventured out into the hypothermia-causing water for five hours of kayaking! We kayaked in tandems…Nilaya and I paddled (or oared depending on your appreciation of the word oar) our little hearts out to see a whole lotta ‘laska . It was definitely a sight, Nilaya and I in a tandem kayak
that is. I got all nostalgic about my days rowing crew in high school. This encouraged Nilaya, somewhat. She realized that her comfort was ill conceived as she soon found out why I only rowed for two years…despite having medaled. She realized that I am a lazy rower. I have no desire to paddle, row or oar for that matter. The scenery and the cold water interest me far more, and I cannot steer for my life (we almost hit several rock formations and another kayak). The Kayaking proved successful (we didn’t tip the boat) and we caught the train into anchorage in time to catch our flight home.

Quickly: Train ride back- splendid, hour-long sunset, standing wave during tide change. Cabbie to the airport–an amateur Moose photographer–he takes portraits of moose while he drives the night shift, and blabs about them, their eating habits, sizes and varying moods to unsuspecting passengers. The airport: a freak show: acid-wash denim jumpers, Styrofoam coolers full of carcasses of any number of Alaskan animals, drunken and hysterical passengers screaming about patriotism, men still in rubber boots, several varsity sports teams…I don’t know its all a blur now.

A successful trip if I may say so. Sorry to bore you with the details.