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Alaska
August 2014

View from the plane...

 Saturday - Drizzle, Temp in the mid 50s.

The view from our hotel room in Anchorage. Preparing for a good, cold downpour. Anchorage is an utter shithole, truly. But I gotta say, one thing I liked most about Alaska is Alaskans. 
Every single person we met was warm, kind, friendly, down-to-earth and just all around AWESOME. We were in
a liquor store and the lady behind the counter had an adorable Golden Retriever and while we were petting it,
she asked us to come behind the counter and watch her do her trick (which was to scratch on the door for a treat).
I cannot imagine anywhere else that someone would say, "Hey stranger! Come back here and stand where our cash register is!"
Heh heh. The same thing happened at a gas station where I was asking for directions and the guy didn't know,
but then said "Hold on a sec, I'll ask Dan" - and then promptly left the cash register totally unattended while he
got Dan from out back.

Sunday - Pouring rain, Temp in the mid 50s.

This is the closest I got to seeing a bear. We ate at an Anchorage institution called "Gwinnies" to load up on warmth
before the big adventure. It was a classic western restaurant - loved it. We were really excited, though not looking forward to
camping in the rain (and getting our gear wet) on our first night.

 We stayed at Bertha Creek campground (Kenai Peninsula) for the first couple of nights. All the campgrounds are directly
off the one main road, so just imagine the sound track more constant jake-braking, semis and streams of cars and
not so much birds and gentle rain. Looks can certainly be deceiving. :( On the plus side, we got a new tent and I JUST LOVE IT!
Stayed more or less dry inside and is much bigger (though lighter) than our old one. We sure put it through a rough first test.
One good thing about so much rain is that we got all our campgrounds practically to ourselves.

 I was determined to conquer the rain. As it turns out, I think this picture pinpoints the exact last moment my feet were dry.
Seriously - they never, ever dried. They were still damp on the plane ride home. 

This is the land behind our site. All berry bushes. My bearanoia set in right about here. But one (I suppose)
comforting thing about this is that right behind that line of evergreens is the main highway. The highway was never
far away, even though this looks like remote wilderness.

 This is the car that cost me twice as much as they said it would when I made the reservation online. Apparently according to Alaska
law, you have to have the top-notch insurance option if you don't have your own car insurance carrier. We really saved
a lot of money in the end taking it back a week earlier.

Meanwhile, it is the ugliest car ever, and people actually stopped and stared at it. Everyone here drives pick-ups, and
NONE of them are green. Also, this expensive little car would never be able to make it out to places like Wrangell,
where we wanted to escape the rain (no gas stations for a hundred miles, and this got TERRIBLE mileage). It also can't 
go too far on gravel roads, as you might expect, so no off-the-highway adventures for us.

 Monday - Rain, Temp in the mid to high 50s.

Morning in the rain. Boo. 
I'll tell you, it's a bitch to make coffee and breakfast in the rain, but the umbrella I brought sure helped! Why didn't I think of that before?!

 Our first hike was "Gull Rock" at the end of Porcupine Campground (one of the most beautiful campgrounds I've ever seen!)
near the teeny tiny town of Hope (Kenai Peninsula). The view couldn't be beat - looks out on to the Turnagain Arm
and we even saw an eagle! If we had stayed longer, we were going to stay at this campground eventually.

 Campground ptarmigan. They were everywhere here on the Kenai Peninsula.

 View of the Turnagain arm and mud flats on the hike. Since this was our first hike, and we weren't used to the area, we were pretty scared of bears.
This was an awful hike to have gone on as a first hike in bear country - totally obscured with bushes, TONS of grizzly crap on the trail letting
us know who this territory belongs to. YIKES! I heard what I swear was a huge animal growling and snapping branches when we were just a 
mile or so down the trail, and we high-tailed it back with bear spray in hand. I was terrified. He may not admit it, but so was Aaron.

 Fresh grizzly crap. I yi yi. Much bigger than a black bear's and EVERYWHERE.

 Cute squirrel warning of impending death!

 Seen in the front yard of a house in Hope. Alaska, you so crazy!

 Family of magpies on our campground picnic table.

Tuesday - Scattered showers, even a few minutes of sun! Temp in the mid 50s.

Primrose campground (Kenai Peninsula). We took the wet tent down, spread it across the back seat and
went to this campground just outside Moose Pass. Luckily we were able to set it up again between rain showers, so it got
to air out a little. This was a LOVELY campground with a great trail at the end, and really brought up our spirits.
It even provided a bit of sunshine, which we really needed. And then it rained again :(

But the worst thing about this (besides the sounds of highway behind us and CONSTANT buzz of float planes above) is that construction crews rolled in
in the afternoon, and about 7PM that night, a giant truck came and began dumping dirt into the boat launch parking lot about 100 yards away. Turns out it was just one of the many "You want to enjoy nature? FUCK YOU!" moments we had on this trip. Boo hoo - first world problems, right? :)

Lovely river across from our site. Where Aaron clogged his water filter from all the silt.

We went on a magical trail - Primrose trail - that was right at the end of our campground. There was
a group of mushroom hunters there taking pictures and samples of all the different mushrooms in this part of the forest.
I can't remember any time I have ever seen so many different kinds of mushrooms - so much variety, and color - and they were everywhere.
It's hard to believe a peninsula with so many glaciers could also house so many tropical looking mushrooms.

Blue sky! :D

These two photos were taken almost EXACTLY a year apart.
On the left is Aaron on the Primrose trail last week. On the right is Aaron in the Olympic Peninsula (Washington) August 2013.
 It's fascinating to see how the tree and plant life sizes differ on the same Pacific coastline.

 Snippets of little planties for my soil sample collection...

No trip is complete without an Aaron tangled picture. 

Dinner! Dehydrated food packs on Kenai Lake.

Looks idyllic, right? As though it's a remote wilderness. But...

 A closer look reveals the constant float plane traffic, the houses all around the lake, and the sights and
sounds of the always-in-the-background expressway.

 Here comes the rain again... Falling on my head like a memory... Tearing me apart like a new emotion...

Wednesday - Pouring rain. Temp in the mid 50s.

We went to Seward and decided to see the Exit Glacier - TOTALLY worth it. Pouring rain and cold, but TOTALLY worth the long day of hiking.
My feet will never forgive me, and they are still wrinkled from the wet. I think this is the last trip for my faithful hiking boots :( 
This is all the silt left behind from the quickly receding glacier.

River of melted glacier and two kooks.

 How strange to be at the foot of a glacier and see such tropical looking mossy rocks.

 Behold the Exit Glacier! It is MASSIVE!

 And melting!

 But we wanted to see more...

 The sign at the Harding Ice Field trail.

WTF? Who approved this sign? "If it starts to eat you?!" There is something so bizarre and hilarious about this sign.

 The Harding Ice Field trail was one of the most amazing hikes we've ever done, even though it was in the
pouring rain. It was a 2,000 foot climb (VERY strenuous!) straight up. Keeping an eye out for bears. Yikes! But the view
of the top of the Exit Glacier couldn't be beat.

 Green forest on one side, Glacier and silt on the other, bears and gluttons for punishment in the middle.

 Awesome boulder is awesome.

View of the top of the Exit Glacier (when the clouds weren't obscuring it).

 If we walked another mile or so, we would have probably seen mountain goats, but we just didn't have it in us.
Sometimes the climb down can be just as exhausting. And at this point, my feet have been soaked for the better part of a week.

For dinner after that exhausting hike, we decided to go back into Seward to this COMPLETELY AMAZING old hole-in-the-wall, past-its-prime
restaurant/bar called Thorn's Showcase Lounge. It was like being a kid and going back into the 70s in Chicago. Super dark, red leather
padded booths and chairs, locals at the bar, smell of old cigarettes, the walls covered in shelves of old weird liquor bottles and
trophies. It wasn't a retro tourist place, it was the real thing, frozen in time. Heinz 57 sauce (instead of ketchup) on the table. 
I'm not completely sure, but I think there was dark red shag carpet. Wow. What a way to get out of the rain.

 Thursday - Scattered showers. Temp in the mid 50s.

We wanted to see what was in the western part of this Kenai Peninsula, so we decided to drive to Soldotna.
It was a mind-numbing waste of time through completely flat land and nothing but crappy gas stations every few miles.
But we did notice this cool campground on the way back near Cooper's Landing. We spent the rest of our time here. It had an awesome
rushing river in the back, and was a really secluded site. Of course, the rushing river had white water rafting tour rafts and fishermen going by every
10 minutes or so, but...Also, there was a pizza place about 500 yards from here. So there's that.

But yes, nature.

 The Kenai river was beautiful and majestic. You could literally see huge red salmon 5 feet from the banks - you could practically 
wade in and grab them.. We just chilled here and watched the fish, birds and people while the rain came in.

Obviously it was really difficult to find anything to burn that wasn't wet.
 During the dryer parts of the day, we chop tinder for the BioStove from firewood 
we bought in Anchorage. At Walmart - do you love it? :)

Dehydrated dinner. I don't think we'll ever go back to coolers again. There is so little mess - just a
plastic ziplock bag filled with dehydrated food that you pour hot water over and let sit for a few minutes.
They've really come a long way - they're delicious. Lasagne with real mozzarella. Spicy beans and rice. Delicious.

 Friday - Cloudy. Temp in the mid 50s.

We went on this lovely hike hoping to see bears. There's a short walk to a falls that is filled with salmon, and bears
gather there and gorge themselves this time of year.

Like my rain outfit?

 Photogenic ptarmigan is photogenic.

An owl pellet from what must have been one hell of an owl. Look at that claw!

 10" mushroom

 We got to the overlook and beheld more salmon than I have ever seen! You could practically walk over them - you 
couldn't even see the bottom of the shallow river. If ever there were a place for bears, this would be it. We waited for an 
hour and a half and nothing. Oh well - they probably try to avoid humans. And you could see that there were fresh fish
guts on the rock in the middle that the gulls were picking at, so we probably just missed them.

Spider nest.

The last straw, heh heh :)

Saturday - The first sunny day. Temp in the high 50s.

The first sunny day and we spent it on the Byron Glacier trail. This was really, really cool. Pun intended.

Close up of the huge, magnificent glaciers!

 You could walk right up to the one on the bottom!

All the rocks and ice chips were huge!

 And you could scratch at the surface - it wasn't as smooth like a marble.

 Photobombed.

 This is one of the last photos I took of this part of the Alaskan wilderness. And it seems apt - a very 
beautiful landscape, but when you look a bit closer... It's not all that wild.

 Sunday - The second sunny day. Temp in the high 50s.

Glaciers from the plane ride home...