Travel

I learned long ago that the tighter you try to hold onto something the swifter it passes from your grasp. Yet, this week, I still tried to hold onto to time with mom, the time here on the Cape a little too tightly, wanting the time to last, and here I am at the end of the week happy to have had this moment but sad that it is almost over.

The trails led me first to Duck Pond. Duck Pond is one of several kettle ponds on Cape Cod. They were formed roughly 15,000 years ago. Back then glaciers covered much of this area.

G3 had turned back without me and he made it known that he wasn’t happy. If only G3 could have enjoyed the seals with me. If only he hadn’t been cranky and in a rush to get back. If only he could have walked with me instead of being short with me.

While I was wandering around P-town, my memory was in overdrive as I recollected things we used to do and places G3 once posed for photos. He used to get so excited about spending a week out here.

The last time we were in Cape Cod in the summer, it was the year Dad died. G3 and I needed to get away, we needed a change of scenery, an escape from our all consuming grief. We came here for a week, allowing the ocean to heal us as well as it could.

That was also summer we took a day trip from Eastham to Plimouth Plantation and Plymouth Rock and my love of visiting historic sites while on vacation was born.

It is a dreary day. We will leave Anchorage as we arrived—wet and cloudy. It is still raining and we go home this evening. Alaska has been fun but these two weeks went by too quickly.

The air temperature was 50 degrees. The water temperature was much colder. Of course, I couldn’t let G3 be the only one to defy the cold, so I too changed into my swimsuit and ran into the water.

I hate boats! I hate being on boats. Yet, I continuously find myself voluntarily on them. If someone is going to be gripping the rail, leaning over the side, and throwing up, you can bet it will be me.

Going down the rapids, I got smacked in the face so many times that I got brain freeze. On the raft, the look on G3’s face was one of pure joy.

There were even some fascinating etchings in the ice. Some looked like a mosaic. Others looked like jellyfish. The roof of one looked like a dinosaur’s spine. None of the caves were deep or dark but some of the walls seemed to have a slight glow due to the sun’s light reflecting off them.

I had never had mead. I read about it—often. Usually in novels or historical accounts. I knew it was alcohol and that in a time long before water was safe to drink people drank mead. I also knew that it was made from honey but that people sometimes, when talking about it historically, mislabeled it as a type of beer.

It seems the national park opened a visitor center here to do nothing other than draw tourists who wish to experience the beauty of America so that local Alaskans could take advantage of their fellow Americans.

The glacier was beautiful. I know, in every Alaskan post I have gone on about the stunning views, but I am not exaggerating. Seeing the glacier up close was amazing. The glacier looks like water frozen in motion. Parts of it look like waves.

When I was planning the itinerary for this trip, I did my best to take into consideration what all three of us wanted to do. I successfully managed to squeeze everything in except for Valdez. It was the one place I wanted to hit that didn’t make the cut. It just seemed too far removed and too long of a drive to make work. I was disappointed, but realistic enough to recognize that I just had to let it go.

Tonight we are boondocking. It’s what they call dispersed camping up here in Alaska. That means we can camp for free on public land. Finding a site was a bit of a challenge. Most—perhaps all—of the pullout areas are more geared towards RVs. We also wanted a spot with a good view

The knives are forged by Mark Knapp and right on one of the glass counters was a plaque that read “Mark Steele Knapp Champion Forged in Fire.” There was a time that was one of G3’s favorite shows. It was even a show I enjoyed watching.

Sled dogs are working dogs, not pets, although many of them seemed to really like the attention they get from tourists. They came right up to the ropes and let us give them a bit of love.

We were ten minutes out from the visitor center, returning from our bus trip, when we saw a moose. It was further away than the one we saw yesterday but she was out in the field drinking from a pond, not partially hidden by trees.

G3 caught up to us on our way back down and then pushed on ahead. The steep downhill killed my knees far more than the uphill had but they didn’t hurt as badly as Kati’s did. When we were about a mile away from the visitors center I spotted G3 up ahead frantically waving for us to catch up.