I Wonder as I Wander…

We know from history that Alaska was the 49th state admitted to the United States, but it’s also the 49th state that Bob and I have visited (only Hawaii—the 50th state left). And, what a visit we had! It was wonderful in so many ways.

First off, we had our family with us—which makes any trip more fun! I’m so glad that our kids still like traveling with us! And now we have added Paul and Richard to the mix—it makes it even more special. Second, only Richard had ever been to Alaska before, so it was exciting to see the things we had only read about, or seen pictures of. And, bonus—we came back with enough fish to feed our families for a long time!

We started off by traveling to Minneapolis on Thursday, and taking in ½ price appetizers at Applebees—one of our favorite things to do. Friday morning, Kara and Paul came to the cities—but not before they got a couple hours of wake boarding in (from 7 – 9 am). We left Ross and Richard’s at noon and took the bus to downtown and then caught the light rail to the airport. It was a good thing that it wasn’t rush hour, because we had seven people, with 5 suitcases (Kara and Paul had a friend with them who had two huge suitcases), 1 cooler, 5 backpacks, 1 roller briefcase, and two pillows.

After a 5 hour flight, we arrived in Anchorage, checked into our hotel—which was near the Historic Downtown area. We wandered around the area a bit, found Phyllis’s Café and Salmon Bake—which had seating under a tent and ate seafood—mainly Crab and Halibut!

The next day, we got up early—still on CDT which is 3 hours later than Alaska—and headed for our first exciting event in Talkeetna. We had booked a flightseeing tour around Mt. McKinley (which is known by locals as Denali--the Big One). It was the most awesome experience—we were right next to the mountains and could see the glaciers perfectly. We had a 90 minute tour—and 20 minutes of that was coming and going to the airport—the rest of the time, we went around and around by the mountains. The plane was long and skinny, so each of us had a window seat. Our pilot was really good about pointing out things and then looping back the other way—so the people on the other side could get a good look! At one point we had to put on oxygen masks, because we were above 20,000 feet in an unpressurized airplane. We all had on earphones and sunglasses—so we looked really cool! We couldn’t land on the glaciers because the ice was too soft, but it was really neat seeing them. And the day was clear and beautiful. We heard that a lot of people who go to Alaska never see Denali because it’s too cloudy. It was perfect for us!

We drove on up to Denali National Park and checked into our ‘tents’. Yes we had economy cabins at the Salmon Bake that were really foam insulated, canvas covered structures. Since ours were the ‘economy’ ones—the bathrooms were in a separate area—just like camping. We ate (more fish) at the Salmon Bake—I had king crab legs—which were delicious! We decided to drive a ways into the Park—you can only drive the first 15 miles. If you want to go the entire 90 mile road, you have to arrange for one of the tour buses. When we got to the end of the road, there was an area that had a trail along the river. We decided to go along that and Ross and Richard took off, but Bob and I spotted a trail that went up the mountain next to us and decided to take it instead. Kara and Paul went with us, soon passed us, and when we got up there, they were sitting at the top. Then they spotted another trail that went farther up another mountain and headed up there. Since we hadn’t really planned on hiking, Kara had on her Tivas rather than hiking boots. On the way back to our cabins, we spotted a moose and her calf—but could only see their butts through the trees.

Sunday was not a day of rest for us—instead it was a day of major hiking! We started out on a nice gentle hike down to Horseshoe Lake—about a mile and not too steep. Then we decided to head up Mount Healy Overlook trail--4.4 miles—and very steep—at the top it’s like climbing rock steps, but not as even. We caught up with the kids a couple times at the bottom, once when they were taking a picture on a bridge and once when they were on some log benches, but then we didn’t see them again until we reached the top—which was a couple hours later for us.

We kept plodding away and slowly made it up—although I probably would have given up, except we met several people coming down who asked if we had kids at the top. “They’re waiting for you”, they said. I did find a couple really nice places to rest. One was a large rock that had a beautiful view and an area that was shaped just like a lounger, the other was a bed of moss (and blueberries) on the hillside. I could lay back and snack at the same time. And I did get little blue dots on my jeans and t-shirt. After much huffing and puffing, we made it to the top—it was beautiful (and windy). And…the kids weren’t there—they had gone on up another path that went even higher! After a while, we could see them way off in the distance coming back down.

We really took our time coming back down—several times I even backed down a really steep place. The next day we were all pretty sore—except for Paul—he probably could have done the trip up and down a couple more times.

Kara and Paul were celebrating their first anniversary while we were there. Kara had the best present—she got a 1500 family while we were playing pinochle. It was first one she’s ever had—so she was really excited.

The next day we were all moving fairly slowly, so we took it a little easy--and ate a HUGE breakfast at Flapjack Fannies—everything is served family style—with tons of food. That afternoon we had a horseback ride out on the tundra—it was really interesting. There were tufts of grass with lots of muck all around it. The horses were up to their knees in mud most of the time. They said in the spring of the year, we would have been riding through big herds of caribou—now it was tons of blueberries.

On Wednesday, we had a long day of driving—since there aren’t many roads in Alaska, we ended up driving up through Fairbanks to get to Valdez. We stopped at the Worthington Glacier where you could climb right up to it--it was beautiful--I never realize how blue they were. Later than evening, we arrived there and moved on to the “Wunda Wunda” which is Larry and Ann’s (Bob’s cousin) boat. It’s really a nice boat—has two ¾ size beds below deck, a couch that folds out into a bed and a huge booth that we could all sit around to eat—and Bob and I slept on the seats. Kara and Paul were in charge of the food on the boat, so we ate really well—even ice cream and blueberries.

We had so much fun on the boat—we saw puffins, sea lions, bald eagles, glaciers, ice bergs, and lots of silver salmon (especially as we pulled them into the boat)! Paul was the only person really interested in fishing, but this was so much fun—we usually had two or three fish on at a time and hardly ever waited for more than five minutes without pulling one in. Kara and I were sitting up on top of the boat cheering Paul, Bob and Richard on as they were pulling in fish. We ended up catching 29--threw two small ones back and ate one). Then the next day we caught 8 more—so we ended up with 130 lbs of salmon that we brought home. We should have salmon for all winter! I even reeled in and netted several. We also lost quite a few this time, but they sure were jumping all over the place. Paul fished for Halibut for a while, but didn’t have any luck—it would have been fun to have caught a 100 lb Halibut (and had even more fish in the freezer).

One of the fun parts was when we went ‘fishing’ for ice for our coolers. We went near the glacier and caught hunks of iceberg with the net. It was great fun—Kara thought that was the best fishing there was. We found a nice quiet bay and anchored there for the night—it was so dark, and since we were close to the glacier—fairly cool. We could hear the water lapping around the boat—really nice. We got fairly close to the Columbia Glacier—there were lots of icebergs floating all around and some of them were the most beautiful shade of blue—they took your breath away!

We had booked a ferry to go from Valdez to Whittier—it was a three hour ride and was absolutely gorgeous—a beautiful day and through fjords with glaciers all around. The boat was really nice—great booths seats by windows. We had packed a lunch, so sat and ate our sandwiches. Then we went to the front where there were really comfortable, reclining seats. Kara and Paul thought they were too comfortable, because they slept all the way. After we arrived in Whittier, we had to take a 3 ½ mile tunnel out of the town.

We had a whole day to wander around Anchorage—there was a farmer’s market going on—with lots of fun things for sale (and to eat). We had Piroshki (bread dough wrapped around ground beef and cheddar cheese and then deep fried), which was really good. We went to the Ulu factory and bought some—one for us and all my Christmas presents for next year. Ulu’s are the curved knives that the Alaska natives have used for centuries.

This was the most wonderful trip—Bob and I are so fortunate that our family has always enjoyed each other’s company and everyone loves to travel. This trip was even more fun because we got a change to get to know Larry and Ann again—we hadn’t seen them since the 70’s. We even discovered they like to play pinochle—so we were able to have a couple games. And Paul even left fishing to play pinochle—so we’ve got him hooked!

We caught the red eye back to Minneapolis—and then decided to drive on home—so we were pretty tired by the time we got home—went to bed by 8 pm. Usually when I go on a trip, I don’t care whether I got back there for several years, but I think I could go to Alaska every year—for the fish if nothing else. Not only was it fun to catch, but it’s been great because I love Salmon and we’ve had several meals already.