August 22 – We Really Are Crazy
Early morning weather report (6:00 AMish) sunny skies; by 10:00 starting to turn overcast.
We didn’t make it out the door until 10:30, and we didn’t finish our morning grub from Conscious Coffee until 11:00. As we drove towards the junction, Denali and all the rest of the Alaska Range that was within eyeshot, was out again in almost clear view.
So what does a car full of crazies do who are supposed to be heading south to Anchorage to catch their flight? They turn north… AGAIN! 30 miles later we pull back into the South Viewpoint parking lot for the fifth time in two days to only be disappointed that Denali was hiding again. I think that from far away the clouds are lower but as you get closer like the South Viewpoint is (only 40 miles away as the crow flies), it covers the mountain. In any case, we hadn’t minded the drive and the view was still breathtaking.
As we walked back to the car, we all agreed that this had been the most challenging of all our trips weather wise. Billy quipped, “Just think, if it hadn’t stopped raining, we would never know what we had missed.”
“So,” I retorted, “the sun finally coming out, royally screwed us!” Pretty much we all confirmed. Oh well… We got to see Denali!
You all might wonder what the big deal is about just seeing a mountain. But the mountains bring us peace, they ground us and remind us of just how minuscule we are in this world. They are Jenny’s favorite place to be – more than a beach or a lake or the desert. That was why it was so rough having missed so much of the landscape – because everywhere you look in Alaska, there are mountains.
When we finally headed south the rain began to fall. We dropped the car off to which as soon as we pulled in the guys commented on how dirty it was. Well, if they only knew where this car had been!
In 18 days of driving, we covered exactly 2,785 miles of Alaskan roads; when you circle the area we traveled on a map of Alaska, it is but a very small portion of the state. We used the word immense a lot to describe Alaska and it is no understatement. While planning the trip, looking at a map made places seem so close together, this isn’t even remotely true. Distances are great and traveling is slow going if for no other reason than you are trying to absorb the scenery around you. Of course the RV brigades, constant summertime road construction. and rough roads also do a lot to slow you down.
One of the most amazing things we noticed in all the distance we covered is how almost all of it was untouched whether to development or to exploitation of resources- minus the pipeline, of course. Much of our drives were spent in comfortable silence, just simply taking it all in. Frankly, I think we were stunned by the vastness and the untrodden terrain that surrounded us.
We made lots of observations during our trip. We have come to the conclusion that Alaskans must sleep with only one pillow (we have eight on our bed at home) because no matter where we stayed, that’s all we were allotted. 18 wheelers any other place are big in Alaska they are more like 26 wheelers. Alaskans are clearly a tough, self reliant people who are not entitled in the least bit, I assume because otherwise they’d die waiting around for something they think they deserve! They take ownership of property very seriously; there are no trespassing and keep out signs everywhere (I think our neighbors might think they are in Alaska). Alaskans have staunchly conservative values and look to the Lord a lot for guidance (we felt a bit removed from this one as we tend to look to Google for help [I can’t tell you how many times, in the midst of the silence, someone would ponder something out loud and then someone else would answer, “Google it.” Of course that only worked on the rare occasions we had service]). Alaskans are either a very friendly or most unfriendly lot – we found the prior to be more common but when it was the latter, it was extreme.
We all also found it fascinating that in these wild lands, we didn’t see nearly as many animals as we would have thought. We concluded that they have so much space to roam they aren’t locked in by boundaries and thus rarely make contact. Our final animal count was: 1 hitchhiker from Fairbanks, 7 grizzlies, 2 black bears, 4 moose, 8 caribou, 1 flock of ptarmigan, 2 red fox, 1 Canadian lynx, 1 snowshoe hare and nearly a dozen sea otters. Not too bad at all.
Yesterday, we received a message from Alaska airlines to get to the airport three hours ahead as lines were long. When we got there, we walked right up to the check in counter and right up to the TSA officer- oh well. I would have gone and checked out all the float planes at the Lake Hood plane basin but instead we had a front row seat watching 747 after 747 landing and taking off as Anchorage is the fourth busiest cargo airport in the world! It was actually very entertaining to help us kill time. We even watched as a flight aborted its landing only to hit it the second go around.
The scenery on our way to Seattle was marvelous, with the most resplendent views from a flight I might have ever seen. We had an clear views of the entire Alaskan coastline, peak after stunning peak. Jenny and I commented on the size of the mountains realizing that even from 37,000 feet they looked huge, yet we noted they were all smaller than Denali – now that’s perspective!
There is no doubt we will all return to Alaska and while Billy would gladly return to where the grayling can be found, Jenny and I would love to go even more remote – and yes, I realize that that would involve a bush plane or two.
Alaska certainly drew us in. We really felt so very comfortable there, almost at home. Billy said the ruggedness and remoteness reminded him of Greer- I can see some similarities but they are really not on par with one another. I like the fact Alaska lends itself to the need to be self sufficient. There are very few whiners here; it really marches to its own drummer when compared to the lower 48. Its nickname as The Last Frontier suits it well; it gives no illusion of something it isn’t- we like that, we really really like that…
Wandering Amerrickans 