Alaska part 2
Aug. 3rd, 2004 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanAlaska
Part 2.
The short summer night barely happened, and my father and I got an early start on our first morning in Alaska. We beat the crowd of elderly tourists in the contest to be first when the restaurant opened for breakfast, and we were out seeing Anchorage in the early morning light soon after. Most everything was closed, but we window-shopped the many fur stores (how much for a wolverine pelt?) and looked at the many sculptures of salmon.
We stood on a bridge, downstream of which were a dozen men fishing for the real thing. The posted signs indicated that fishing had to occur some distance downstream from the bridge. Just upstream of the bridge, by just a few feet, were the fish. They had to be king salmon, all of them at least 2 feet long, and the big ones were easily twice that. If you didn't observe the rules you could have waded into the shallow water with a club and brought home 500 pounds of salmon.
We had to be at out lodging in Denali National Park that day, and we had reservations for a "wilderness tour" early the next morning. We found a styrofoam cooler and some food, water and ice, and loaded up the rental car. Our maps were made for tourists who weren't on their own. A general layout of the major streets of Anchorage, and then two lines out of the city. We took the one that went north, and settled in to what we expected would be a full days driving.
The landscape just outside of Anchorage is stunning. I've never been so close to a city and felt so immediately absorbed into the wilderness. There are gorgeous tidal marshes nearest to the city. My father was astonished by the absence of large wader birds. I did end up seeing a sandhill crane, silhouetted against the sky, later in the week, but there were no herons or egrets anywhere. Even in Boston, herons are common in the swamps and wetlands, and further south they are downright abundant. The tall marshgrass conceals ducks, grebes and shorebirds, and thousands of nesting arctic terns, however, some of them allowing us to come bizarrely close.
As we traveled further inland, the scenery was dominated by the Alaska range. Colorado is the most beautiful state of the lower 48, of those that I have visited. The Rockies rise up out of the plains in the grandest manner possible. The Alaska range is much the same, but while Denver is the "mile high" city, Mt. McKinley is nearly four times higher, disappearing into the clouds that almost never untangle themselves from its peak. It is perpetually white with snowcover and glaciers. Snow and clouds mingle, creating a place where the earth and the sky connect. I know nothing about the natives, who called the mountain "Denali" or the "Great One" but other traditions saw great mountains as spiritual conduits between heaven and earth--was it so with them?
We passed through half a dozen small settlements on our way north, some were on our map and many were not. They seemed like places where one could find unique souvenirs (hand-made knives? beaver skull ornaments?) but we felt the pressing deadline and rushed along the narrow ribbon of highway. (I probably drove more in that week than I did in the rest of 2004. I developed the important skill of knowing when and how to pass a recreational vehicle on a one lane highway.) As predicted, fireweed was everywhere. I was surprised to learn that it was not an alien, but just a very efficient native pioneer weed. All along the highway, where the willow shrubs had been mowed back to improve lines of sight, the fireweed's magenta blossoms lit the way. In a month or so, the flowers will give way to seed, and the green of the plant will turn red like a maple leaf.
We saw signs for the State park, signs for hundreds of campgrounds, and then signs for the National Park. We were nearly past the whole thing when we stopped to call our lodge. The lodge was at the edge of the entrance, at the Northeast corner of the National Park. We were much closer to Fairbanks, at the center of Alaska, then we were to Anchorage, way down on the coast. We were, I now realize, further north than I had ever been.
We came to where the lodge was, and where there were several other lodges, as well as restaurants, gift shops, and even the first chain stores we had seen since Anchorage. It was a complete tourist village, populated almost entirely by transients. Most of us were there for a few days, and some were there for a few months. College students and other young people spent the summer as bartenders and waitresses, creating what must be a very interesting temporary community, densely packed in the middle of nowhere. In the winter there were probably a few dozen people here at most. But this was peak season, and it was more crowded than downtown Anchorage.
Another short night passed, and we found ourselves in a crowd of tourists in the misty morning air, waiting for our bus out in front of the lodge. We were variously prepared--some looked like they were ready for long hike, some looked underprepared for a trip to the gift shop. Dad and I were somewhere in the middle.
The bus came, essentially a school bus, which filled up with heavy American tourists and our heavy bags cluttering the small space inside. As promised, the bus had no bathrooms, but we would be making pit stops on this 6 hour ride. The crowd was rude and cranky, already complaining about seating arrangements and the provided boxed lunch. I brought my own food, a wise habit for any vegetarian tourist.... (The provided snack food was a pleasant surprise, the only meat being a small packet of reindeer sausage, which I brought home as a souvenir.)
Our bus driver and tour guide was one Bob Tourtelott, which I would have guessed was a fake name if an S replaced the middle T. He was a 23 year veteran of the Denali summers, sometimes a tour guide/ bus driver and sometimes a wildlife photographer. Bob immediately outed me as a birder ("Keep an eye out for eagle-owls!") and as a Bay-stater (the park is roughly the size of Massachusetts). I tried to keep my liberal, New England, yankee, Democrat, Red-Sox fan (I don't even like sports!) self hidden in my seat for the rest of the trip.
Bob advised that when we see an animal, to yell "stop" and he would halt the bus and we could all look and take pictures. I was conflicted: Did magpies count? I really wanted to know what all the small songbirds were, but Bob and I would be the only ones interested. Would I risk the ire of a busload of heavy-set southerners? Fortunately, when I did turn out to be the first one to yell "stop," it was because I saw a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). It perched at the top of a spruce, and after just a moment, decided that the bus was enough of a disturbance to move on. The beating of its tremendous wings coaxed gasps from those who were in the right seats.
Next: Lions and Tigers and Bears! (Well, bears, anyway.)
Part 2.
The short summer night barely happened, and my father and I got an early start on our first morning in Alaska. We beat the crowd of elderly tourists in the contest to be first when the restaurant opened for breakfast, and we were out seeing Anchorage in the early morning light soon after. Most everything was closed, but we window-shopped the many fur stores (how much for a wolverine pelt?) and looked at the many sculptures of salmon.
We stood on a bridge, downstream of which were a dozen men fishing for the real thing. The posted signs indicated that fishing had to occur some distance downstream from the bridge. Just upstream of the bridge, by just a few feet, were the fish. They had to be king salmon, all of them at least 2 feet long, and the big ones were easily twice that. If you didn't observe the rules you could have waded into the shallow water with a club and brought home 500 pounds of salmon.
We had to be at out lodging in Denali National Park that day, and we had reservations for a "wilderness tour" early the next morning. We found a styrofoam cooler and some food, water and ice, and loaded up the rental car. Our maps were made for tourists who weren't on their own. A general layout of the major streets of Anchorage, and then two lines out of the city. We took the one that went north, and settled in to what we expected would be a full days driving.
The landscape just outside of Anchorage is stunning. I've never been so close to a city and felt so immediately absorbed into the wilderness. There are gorgeous tidal marshes nearest to the city. My father was astonished by the absence of large wader birds. I did end up seeing a sandhill crane, silhouetted against the sky, later in the week, but there were no herons or egrets anywhere. Even in Boston, herons are common in the swamps and wetlands, and further south they are downright abundant. The tall marshgrass conceals ducks, grebes and shorebirds, and thousands of nesting arctic terns, however, some of them allowing us to come bizarrely close.
As we traveled further inland, the scenery was dominated by the Alaska range. Colorado is the most beautiful state of the lower 48, of those that I have visited. The Rockies rise up out of the plains in the grandest manner possible. The Alaska range is much the same, but while Denver is the "mile high" city, Mt. McKinley is nearly four times higher, disappearing into the clouds that almost never untangle themselves from its peak. It is perpetually white with snowcover and glaciers. Snow and clouds mingle, creating a place where the earth and the sky connect. I know nothing about the natives, who called the mountain "Denali" or the "Great One" but other traditions saw great mountains as spiritual conduits between heaven and earth--was it so with them?
We passed through half a dozen small settlements on our way north, some were on our map and many were not. They seemed like places where one could find unique souvenirs (hand-made knives? beaver skull ornaments?) but we felt the pressing deadline and rushed along the narrow ribbon of highway. (I probably drove more in that week than I did in the rest of 2004. I developed the important skill of knowing when and how to pass a recreational vehicle on a one lane highway.) As predicted, fireweed was everywhere. I was surprised to learn that it was not an alien, but just a very efficient native pioneer weed. All along the highway, where the willow shrubs had been mowed back to improve lines of sight, the fireweed's magenta blossoms lit the way. In a month or so, the flowers will give way to seed, and the green of the plant will turn red like a maple leaf.
We saw signs for the State park, signs for hundreds of campgrounds, and then signs for the National Park. We were nearly past the whole thing when we stopped to call our lodge. The lodge was at the edge of the entrance, at the Northeast corner of the National Park. We were much closer to Fairbanks, at the center of Alaska, then we were to Anchorage, way down on the coast. We were, I now realize, further north than I had ever been.
We came to where the lodge was, and where there were several other lodges, as well as restaurants, gift shops, and even the first chain stores we had seen since Anchorage. It was a complete tourist village, populated almost entirely by transients. Most of us were there for a few days, and some were there for a few months. College students and other young people spent the summer as bartenders and waitresses, creating what must be a very interesting temporary community, densely packed in the middle of nowhere. In the winter there were probably a few dozen people here at most. But this was peak season, and it was more crowded than downtown Anchorage.
Another short night passed, and we found ourselves in a crowd of tourists in the misty morning air, waiting for our bus out in front of the lodge. We were variously prepared--some looked like they were ready for long hike, some looked underprepared for a trip to the gift shop. Dad and I were somewhere in the middle.
The bus came, essentially a school bus, which filled up with heavy American tourists and our heavy bags cluttering the small space inside. As promised, the bus had no bathrooms, but we would be making pit stops on this 6 hour ride. The crowd was rude and cranky, already complaining about seating arrangements and the provided boxed lunch. I brought my own food, a wise habit for any vegetarian tourist.... (The provided snack food was a pleasant surprise, the only meat being a small packet of reindeer sausage, which I brought home as a souvenir.)
Our bus driver and tour guide was one Bob Tourtelott, which I would have guessed was a fake name if an S replaced the middle T. He was a 23 year veteran of the Denali summers, sometimes a tour guide/ bus driver and sometimes a wildlife photographer. Bob immediately outed me as a birder ("Keep an eye out for eagle-owls!") and as a Bay-stater (the park is roughly the size of Massachusetts). I tried to keep my liberal, New England, yankee, Democrat, Red-Sox fan (I don't even like sports!) self hidden in my seat for the rest of the trip.
Bob advised that when we see an animal, to yell "stop" and he would halt the bus and we could all look and take pictures. I was conflicted: Did magpies count? I really wanted to know what all the small songbirds were, but Bob and I would be the only ones interested. Would I risk the ire of a busload of heavy-set southerners? Fortunately, when I did turn out to be the first one to yell "stop," it was because I saw a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). It perched at the top of a spruce, and after just a moment, decided that the bus was enough of a disturbance to move on. The beating of its tremendous wings coaxed gasps from those who were in the right seats.
Next: Lions and Tigers and Bears! (Well, bears, anyway.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Jef you are a great story teller.....
Date: 2004-08-03 10:52 am (UTC)how small does the population actually get up there in the winter?
I love that you were the first one to stop the bus....did anyone else stop it for other animals?