Postcards from Alaska 36

One of my last views of Alaska, taken around 9:55 p.m. My wife told me early on that her goal was for me to love Alaksa by the time we left. Looking out at those pointy, purple mountains, I realized that I truly did. It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen and I'm already looking forward to my next trip up.

Until then I will miss this place. I also fear that all other states have been ruined for me by its beauty. I only thought we had mountains in West Virginia.

Postcards from Alaska #35

Ah, we finally spotted a moose up close. Unfortunately, he was probably filled with sawdust. This guy was in an Alaska museum down town. Moose are huge and it just amazes me that all that bulk can stay balanced atop those awkward, skinny legs.



The carcas of the rarely seen, crafty and ever-elusive species, the Mountain Whale.

Postcards from Alaska #34

My major regret of our journey was a double slam. Midway through her medical conference, Ashley sent me a link for Cyrano's Playhouse in Anchorage. At first I didn't know why until I looked at their coming attractions page and saw my friend Suehyla El Attar's play The Perfect Prayer was being produced there. What was more, Suehyla would be attending several shows and giving talkbacks afterward from May 24 through May 28.

I've known Sue since high school and have acted with her many times. The Perfect Prayer was a play she had written an early version of in college and had produced at Mississippi State. I wasn't in the production, but she and I were both in the production of Triumph of the West that was paired with it. I thought it would be the greatest thing ever to show up for those talkbacks unannounced and ask her some dumb question just to see her lose her shit when she figured out it was me. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that we were not going to be in Anchorage at any point during the time she was there. We were already going to be in the Fairbanks area and couldn't exactly jaunt back for a night in the RV. I phoned her up to see if she would be coming in any earlier, so we could maybe extend our time in the south before heading up, but it was not to be. She said she would have loved to have lost her shit at seeing a long lost costar such as myself planted in the audience. "I thought you people were all dead!" she would have said.

My other regret is that we didn't get to see her play at all. By the time we did return to Anchorage, on May 31, we had something of a crisis involving luggage and rapidly thawing fish, which took until well past 9 at night to resolve. I had to make do with seeing the theatre it was produced at and reading a glowing review of it posted in their window.

Postcards from Alaska #33

Because the sun doesn't ever completely go down in May, ten o'clock at night there's this very cool glow that comes over everything, making the mountains turn purple. I live in a very mountainy area, so I've seen purple mountains before, but this was PURPLE. The photo above really doesn't do it justice AT ALL. That particular hue was one of the most beautiful things I saw during the trip and I was never able to quite capture it.

Postcards from Alaska #32

Solomon's Gulch is a scenic area across the bay from Valdez, very near the shore end of the AK pipeline. The gulch itself is beautiful, but the Soloman Gulch trail boasts what our guidebook called a steep trail leading to a lake. I thought this sounded challenging so I and the wife hoofed it up a very steep and rocky trail, through a wooded area filled with strange plants, including skunk weed (which did indeed smell like a skunk) and devil's broomstick (which is a long flowering plant with thick spiky vines that looks like it would really ruin your day were you to, say, roll down a steep hill into them).


We eventually reached a crossroads between two even steeper trails, which was where the wife said she was headed back to the RV and I could decide if I wanted to walk further. The above picture is taken from atop the next ridge, looking back toward the bay. Nearly killed me to reach this point.


Once I reached it, I had this to look at: a valley leading, I hoped, to the top of the gulch and more very steep hills beyond, presumably leading to the lake. I stumbled on toward the bridge and gulch top, cursing the journey and declaring that someone would be made to pay if the view from down there wasn't pretty damn spectacular.


I don't know if the topside view was all that great, but it was pretty enough. I decided, though, that the lake would have to be pretty for someone else to see, because I wasn't walking up any more hills beyond the one that would lead me back down the trail.

Postcards from Alaska #31

Down by the shore in Valdez. We considered going out fishing while visiting the area, but decided that $260 per person, not to mention addtional equipment rental costs and license fees, was a bit steep, particularly considering it isn't even salmon season yet. We'd have to catch a loooooot of fish to justify that kind of expendature, and I'm not that great a fisherman. Instead, we settled for a more practical solution and simply went down to the local seafood distributor, who send out hundreds of their own commerical fishing boats, and bought a bunch of salmon, halibut and halibut cheeks from them. (We bought that last item simply so we can invite people over to eat "`but cheeks.")



Valdez is a twice built town. The original was wiped out in an earthquake, and then relocated down the road a ways. The original town's footprint can still be found among the plants along the western shore of the bay. I thought it might be creepy to visit it, but instead it's just mostly this flat place occasionally broken up by concrete slabs.

Postcards from Alaska #30

The Valdez Public Library was one of three such institutions I visited during our time in AK. As using the internet was the only reason I was visiting, I found it very odd to find myself forced into the role of an "innanet" crowder. I also found it odd to have to figure out the internet useage protocol for each of the libraries. Each of them was different from one another and from my own. One (Fairbanks' Wein library) issued me a temporary library card with which I could use their sign in computer to reserve a system for either 50 minutes or 15 minutes. Valdez had a sign in sheet, but one prebroken into time blocks of the day, offering only one half hour's credit for the entire day. Anchorage also had a temporary login card, but conducted a bit more of a personal interview with me, typing some personal information up before handing it over.

I must give the staff members credit for being patient with me as I gave them confused looks when asking such questions as "Uhhh, which computer is Stacks #5?" and "Where do I print?" and "So, I don't have to have any sort of login to use your wireless?" To a person, they were nice and helpful. And if any of the Fairbanks staff is reading this, I was the guy in two different Superman T-shirts on two consecutive days.

Postcards from Alaska #29

Young bald eagles don't get their white heads until they're a couple years old. They're still scary huge, though. This was a morning shot on an overcast day (Valdez is known for its overcast days).

Postcards from Alaska #28

Bridal Veil Falls, near Thompson's Pass. Some jerk at the bottom.

Postcards from Alaska #27

This partially finished train tunnel, near Thompson Pass, was hand dug and nearing completion, sometime in the nineteenth century, when a dispute broke out over it resulting in a gun battle and an abandoned tunnel project.

Postcards from Alaska #26

A different eagle feeding on a different frozen lake, later in the day. A few hours after we saw this, we witnessed a bald eagle feeding on something completely different. As we neared Thompson's Pass, we spied some turns attacking a bald eagle in mid-air. They swooped and soared around him, pecking at him and then manuevering away before he could snap them out of the air. They were trying to distract him from their nearby nest. They were unsuccessful. Just after we stopped to take photos of their attack, the eagle landed in their nest and gobbled up the baby turns. The parent birds continued to swoop down, angrilly pecking him on the head. Perhaps fortunately, all of the pictures and mpeg footage I took of the event disappeared from my camera.

Postcards from Alaska #25

This was a scenic little creek near Paxon, AK, where Ash and her family built their first cabin. They were homesteaders, which meant if they developed a given patch of Alaska owned land, stayed on it and kept it up for three years, they could claim it as their own property. They found one atop a mound of springy tundra located by a running creek and with a fantastic view of the mountains nearby. In fact, Ashley's dad refused to put a door on his outhouse on the grounds that it would block his view.

Just shy of three years later, some locals who didn't like Ashley's father decided they wanted him out. They found a loophole in the state code that said you couldn't build within three miles of the oil pipeline and because Ash's family cabin was barely within that boundary, her dad was forced to tear the cabin down. After that, Ash's family left the area. The only thing remaining of the cabin today are the footers, an overgrown road, a few weathered boards and that fantastic view.

Postcards from Alaska #24

Tracking the wily moose. We'd seen an actual moose earlier that morning, which seemed to jog parallel to the highway as we drove. I was just happy to see a moose, but Ashley nearly had a heart attack at the thought that it could dash in front of us at any moment. When a girl in her early 20s, Ashley barely survived such a moose strike. The moose did too. Her car, not so much.


Found his poop, though.

Postcards from Alaska #23

A bald eagle feeding on a frozen lake. Originally, he was much closer to the road. So much so that when we saw him we both said, "What the hell is that big ass thing out there?" before realizing it was an eagle. I don't know if you've seen one live, before, but they're imposingly huge creatures. By the time we got the RV parked and Ashley had dashed barefooted through mud and snow melt to photograph it, the eagle took off and flew further out onto the lake to finish his meal.

Postcards from Alaska #22

Springtime in Alaska, (taken at Summit Lake, May 28, 2007, midmorning). Soon after this was taken, it began to snow.

Postcards from Alaska #21

This was my first real glimpse of the famous oil pipeline, this section near Grand Junction. Ashley's dad helped build this sucker.

Postcards from Alaska #20

Ashley grew up in the Sa1cha area, near North Pole, AK. As a kid, she used to climb the Sa1cha bluff with her friends and sister and swore she would do so again before we left the area. We were late getting out, though, and it was around 11 p.m. that night when we started to leave the area. I knew she wouldn't get another chance, this trip, and asked if she was still up for it.

"Well, do you want to climb the bluff at 11 at night?" she asked.

"Hell, I'll do it just to say I climbed the bluff at 11 at night," I said.

By the time we made it to the top it was 11:30 p.m. It was still twilight.



Mid way up the bluff is the location for a graveyard for the Sa1chacket indians. I can't find them in Google, so the rumors of how small they are in number may be true. In fact, according to local Sa1cha tradition, there is one surviving member of the tribe left in the area and she will be the last person allowed to be buried on the bluff when she dies.



Another look from the Sa1cha bluff, including the Sa1chaket river for which the area is named.

Postcards from Alaska #19

Here we find the Unofficial State Bird of Alaska, the mosquito. Yep, they grow em big here. Locals drink their whiskey with a deet chaser.



Oh, yeah. You might have heard that Santa lives in North Pole, AK, too. He has an RV park. He charges too much, though, so we stayed in a friends driveway instead.

Postcards from Alaska #18

I want a log cabin with a turret.


And a cool door.

We saw this place while seeking fried halibut at a place called Ester's Gold Camp, a former gold mining camp turned seafood buffet. Unfortunately, the buffet did not offer the halibut I assumed it would. Also unfortunately, their crab was not particularly impressive. I mean, it wasn't bad, or anything. It WAS tasty enough, being Dungeness crab and all. And I did eat an awful lot of it to be complaining. However, so far in my life, I've not yet tasted crab that explains why those guys on Deadliest Catch risk their lives. Maybe I just don't get it.

Postcards from Alaska #17

I used to hear people say that halibut have both eyes on the same side of their head, but I never believed it. Now that's one #$%&ed up looking fish, but damn if he ain't tasty.

Halibut, for my money, is some good fish. I like it much better than crab, but then again I didn't eat any king crab on the trip so maybe I don't know from good crab.

My quest, during my trip, was to find perfect beer battered, deep fried halibut. Now, most halibut is good anyway, but I sometimes paid out the ass for fish that wasn't all that impressive. I eventually succeeded in finding two fine fine examples, though. The second best I found was at Mike's Restaurant in Valdez, where they offer a $15 halibut fingers plate that was mighty nice. The hands down best, however, was at the Glacier Brewhouse in downtown Anchorage. I'm sure their $27 halibut plate with all its herbs and spices and alder smoke is quite nice, but I recommend just getting the beer battered halibut appetizer. For around $12, you get five massive chunks of beer battered deep fried halibut. For a few bucks more, you can get it with Parmesan and garlic encrusted fries.