|
Travelogue,
08/12/04
Click
here for links to other Travelogue pages
Photo Contest
I couldn't decide which one of several photographs I should use as this
page's "cover shot." So I'd like you to help me pick one. Look at the three finalists and then send
me an email naming your choice.
Click on each number to view the choices:
And now (drum roll)... click
here to email me with your choice. Which one will it be?
Contestant
Number 1? Contestant Number
2? Or Contestant Number 3.
It's UP TO yyyYOU!
The winner will be
announced no later than September 1, 2009. All entries are final and
become the property of tor.cc upon submission. Employees of large
corporations are
prohibited from voting. Any dispute, controversy or claim relating to the
winning contestant, including but not limited to the interpretation
thereof, or its breach or existence, which cannot be resolved amicably by
the voter and tor.cc, shall be referred to arbitration by Tor Himself, which shall
be the sole and exclusive forum for resolution and settlement of any
dispute, controversy or claim between the parties.
The arbitration shall be conducted in accordance with the Rules of Tor's Arbitration Association then in force and shall be held in the
city, state and country in which Tor happens to be, unless the voter and
tor.cc mutually agree upon another place. Any
award of the arbitral authority shall be final and binding upon the voter
and tor.cc with respect to all disputes, claims or controversies therein
and the voter and tor.cc shall comply without delay. The arbitral
authority shall, in its award, fix and apportion the costs of arbitration.
The award of the arbitral authority may be enforced by any court having
jurisdiction over the party against which the award has been rendered or
where assets of the party against which the award has been rendered can be
located. The voter and tor.cc further understand and agree that
arbitration shall be the sole and exclusive forum for resolving any
dispute, controversy or claim relating to this contest and that neither
party shall resort to any court except to compel arbitration, refer
questions of law or to confirm, vacate or modify any such award.
Well, now that I've sobered up I'll get on with my
travel notes. After Denali National Park I spent a few days in Fairbanks, an inoffensive
city as cities go. Everything is available and it's relatively easy to
drive around once you understand the layout. I picked up snail
mail from General Delivery, did laundry, re-provisioned, caught up on email
and Internet stuff and took care of a few other city-type errands. I was
preparing to drive 500 miles north to Deadhorse, literally the end of the
road in Alaska. Deadhorse is on the coast of the Beaufort Sea in the
Arctic Ocean, well above the
Arctic Circle and just 1200 miles from the North Pole. It is the
northernmost road-accessible town in the hemisphere, if not the world.
Having come so far over the roads of America and Canada these past months,
it
just seemed like a fitting destination.
However, that was before I read the guide books and
talked to some Fairbanks locals about the road and the terrain I would have to cross
to get to Deadhorse. As the Rough Guide to Alaska put it,
"Travelers' folklore has it that the Dalton (Highway) is always in
one of two states, muddy or dusty; worse still, the forty-odd
eighteen-wheelers that ply the road each day supplying Prudhoe Bay have a
nasty habit of hefting large rocks through windshields." They went on
to say, "Allow for a couple of punctured tires (take two if you can)
and a cracked windshield."
If you survive all that, you arrive in Deadhorse.
"Deadhorse is a weird place; not really a town at all but an
industrial area where venturing outdoors (and there is little reason to do
this) risks stumbling into restricted territory or getting bowled over by
a fifty-ton truck." In fact, this industrial complex, which is the
beginnings of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, entirely blocks access to the
Artic Ocean, which is another 12 miles north. Visitors can only catch a
glimpse of the sea aboard special tour busses operated by the Pipeline
company, for which they charge around $60. It is generally regarded as a rip-off and a worthless thing to do. Even lifelong Fairbanks residents I spoke to said
they had never bothered to drive up
there. The most they'd do in that direction is go camping in the Gates of
the Arctic National Park, a remote region of mountains and tundra through
which the highway passes.
In the end I decided to skip Deadhorse, opting
instead to drive 75 miles back the way I'd come and attend a bluegrass
music festival I'd read about. It was just about to begin. Looking back, I
think I chose the more fun option.
One my way to the festival I camped
overnight just off Route 3. As I was finishing my supper, a couple of
pickup trucks pulled in towing trailers, apparently to spend the night. I moseyed out to meet my new
neighbors. Turned
out the guy I talked to was an old Alaska miner, now moving to Arizona. I asked him if he knew Jack
LaCross, the Alaskan mining legend that Megan Leary married. Well, did that ever start him going. Sure he knew Jack! They'd mined together back in
the old days. He knew Megan, too. This fellow had lots of stories to tell about
Jack. Then he got going about all kinds of other wild & crazy Alaskan characters he had
known over the years and what life was like up here in those days. His
tales flowed like
pages from a Jack London novel and we talked well into the evening.
The Anderson Bluegrass Festival
 |
Bluegrass is excruciatingly simple music - rarely more than 3
chords, usually in the key of G, often sung in tight nasal
harmonies - but there's an upbeat spirit and a kind of
nostalgia Americana to it that bonds people who normally wouldn't
party together. |
 |
This year's annual Anderson Bluegrass Festival attracted a
cross section of celebrants; local families with their kids, old timers with fiddles
and banjos, spry 20-somethings from
Fairbanks, crusty hermits from the Interior, gray-haired retirees in RV's.
Young and old, quiet and rambunctious, everyone got along for the
three-day event and everyone had a good time in spite of some rain and
mud.
Anderson, Alaska is some miles off the main
highway. It has a part-time post office in the town hall building, a
friendly bar/restaurant, and a small general store. Several dozen houses,
some with a rough, homemade look about them, string along back streets
in a sub-suburban manner. The front yards are mostly mowed, some cluttered with
rusting car parts and kids toys, some trim as the Jones', but everyone's backyard melts quickly
into the trackless taiga that covers much of Interior Alaska. I doubt
whether Anderson gets many visitors the rest of the year, but under the auspices of the Anderson and Clear
Lions Club they do a fine job of welcoming hundreds of revelers to their
annual bluegrass festival.
 |
Some of the best pickin' happens in the
mornings and evenings in small campsites throughout Anderson's sprawling
Riverside Park, a temporary city of camper vans and tents. |
 |
|
Parties went on late into the night. Even I made
it to midnight once or twice, listening to musicians jamming,
drinking moonshine and making new friends. |
 |
Onward, Upward and Downward
As I said earlier, I spared my vehicle and myself the
ordeal of a thousand mile roundtrip to Deadhorse on the infamous Dalton
Highway. However, after the Anderson festival I did traverse a dirt &
gravel road (not to be confused with the smooth highway pictured in the
photo
above), which crossed 135 miles of tundra east of Mount McKinley.
Until 1972, the Denali Highway was the only road to Denali
National Park. Today it's just a leftover track through the wilderness
that roughly
parallels the Alaskan Range, the same mountains that form the backbone of
Denali National Park before swinging eastward across the state. This road bears a
reputation similar to the car-eating Dalton Highway up north, minus the
eighteen-wheelers. However, unlike the Dalton, the Denali Highway rewards
those who brave it with Alaskan Interior scenery at its most spectacular.
The dusty, washboard-like Denali Highway was
teeth-rattling, but not bone
jarring. I found it was actually a little smoother to drive forty miles
per hour than twenty. Still, I discovered later that I lost a hub cap somewhere along the way. I hope I'll be able to replace
it in Anchorage.
Once across the Denali, the perfect pavement on Route 4, a.k.a.
the Richardson Highway, felt like a ride on clouds. It wasn't too shabby in the scenery
department, either.
As beautiful as the scenery was along these routes, it
was merely a warm-up for what lay ahead as I traveled south to the lovely port of
Valdez and
Prince William Sound.
Valdez (pronounced "Val-déez")
|
Significant as the seaport terminus of the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Valdez briefly achieved world notoriety
with the grounding of the 987-foot tanker, Exxon Valdez, in 1989.
The
subsequent oil spill desecrated some of the world's most pristine marine
habitats in Prince William Sound. Today Valdez enjoys a quiet prosperity, largely thanks to
Pipeline employment and tax revenues, bolstered by a sedate flow of
tourists and a small commercial fishing fleet. |
 |
|
Valdez
is sometimes described as the Switzerland of Alaska, or as one local tour
operator put it, "Many consider Switzerland to be the Valdez of
Europe." The surrounding mountains are about as imposing as
mountains get. By contrast the village is small and neat, with an
all-American hometown feel to it. A laid back, 3-block tourist
district faces the small inner harbor. There's not a lot going on
in Valdez. But then there's Prince William Sound.
|
 |
As I did when I was in Seward, I talked to some of the
tour boat operators in Valdez about possible employment next summer as a
captain. And as before, as a
professional courtesy I was invited to go along on a free cruise, which I happily accepted. The tour I accompanied,
aboard the motor vessel Lu Lu
Belle, lasted 7 hours and visited just one corner of Prince William
Sound, all of which is famous for its natural beauty and abundant marine
wildlife. It certainly lived up to its reputation on both counts. Here are some photos I
took that day. Click to enlarge them:
No doubt the sea otters above are whispering tourist jokes to each other.
"Psst, hey, did you ever hear the one about the tourist and the sea
lion?"
When
we got back to Valdez harbor, I spotted the fishing trawler below. It
bears the
most perfect, most excellent name imaginable (click on photo to enlarge):
 |
Later, along the shores near Valdez, I watched salmon by the hundreds fighting their way up streams to spawn
and die. Flocks of seagulls feasted on the fresh carcasses, as do
the local bears (although I didn't spot any that day).
|
 |
While dozens of recreational vehicles crowded the
typically tasteless RV parks in Valdez (and paid for the privilege!), I found
(as always) a succession of excellent, free campsites just outside of town
that I had all to myself. These alternately provided me with private
waterfront camping on the shores of Prince William Sound, access to some
awesome back country biking in the deep canyon flanking the village, and
tranquil riverside views at the base of Thompson Pass. No other
campers ever pulled in. I am constantly amazed at the
herd instinct that drives most RV travelers into those tacky, barren, expensive RV
parks where they are stacked like cattle in a boxcar, and I'm very grateful for it. By
corralling them in there,
it leaves all of these beautiful, empty campsites available for me out here.
I left Valdez reluctantly, but had some business to
take care of in the big city. I'm renewing my Coast Guard captains
license, something I've had to do every five years since I first got it in
1978. This entails getting a stack of forms from the USCG Exam Center in Anchorage, filling some
out myself, getting a physical exam and a drug
test so that a doctor and a lab can fill out others, listing and
verifying my accumulated sea time
during the past five years, assembling copies of my former boat's title
and my current captain's license, plus any other paperwork they want, and
turning it all in to them for approval.
I also wanted to
pre-arrange winter storage for my RV somewhere around Anchorage. I plan to
leave it here this winter and fly to warmer climates.
I do not care for cities in
general. Anchorage isn't all that big by Lower 48 standards and I'd been
there previously, but after the
beautiful places I've been lately it jolted me with its concrete,
noise and traffic congestion. I could hardly wait to get out of there, so I took care of my business quickly.
Twenty eight hours after arriving I
headed south, back to the verdant Kenai Peninsula.
A company in Seward, at the
edge of the Kenai Fjord National Park, is
interested in having me skipper a schooner for them next summer, taking
groups out on day sails on Resurrection Bay. I'm not certain that's something I really want to do, and they're not quite certain of their
plans, itinerary, pay scale, etc, but I returned here yesterday to talk to them
some more about it, with the result that we agreed to wait and see, to
sort of go with the flow.
That seems to suit us both for the moment. In fact, it summarizes my
approach these days to most details when mapping out my future.
 |
So, here I sit in one of
my private campsites, just outside Seward, Alaska. The sun
is shining. Snow-spackled mountains are reflected in the pond a few feet from my door. Today seems like a fine day to
hike up to the high waterfall on Mount Marathon, which flanks the
village. |
I intend to pass what's left of
this summer exploring the mountains and forests of the upper Kenai
Peninsula, which is more lush and diverse than the Alaskan Interior up
north. I'll keep
you posted.
Next Entry: 08/16/04
|
