Alaska Day 9

I must have slept because I was dreaming, but I did not sleep well. In my dream, I drank water from a centuries old pond. Something in the water gave me the ability to shoot fire out of my hands. I didn’t realize it at first. Kati did and tried to stop me from knowing because she was afraid I would cause damage. But then I accidentally exploded a sink and that’s when G3 tapped me on the shoulder to wake me up. It was seven o’clock. Even in a more comfortable tent, I haven’t slept this late, but I do not feel well rested. That’s how I know I did not sleep well. I feel super groggy. Hopefully, tonight we will find somewhere to set up the tent. Kati is still sleeping. Normally, I would set up a chair and sit outside to read, but the mosquitoes are awful. I had to step out of the car to pee and they assaulted me, biting me in places I’d rather not have itchy bug bites. To protect myself. I have opted to read in the car instead.

We got on the road at eight when Kati woke up. We skipped breakfast. Who wants to eat while they are under attack. Sitting in the car we could see the mosquitoes swirling on the other side of the windows. We figured we’d either drive to a less buggy spot or eat an early lunch on the road. We drove back to Paxson on the Denali highway and turned south once we got to Route 4. Clouds

were plentiful, so the views were not as beautiful as they had been yesterday. Also, the wildlife eluded us this morning as it did yesterday.

For breakfast, we stopped in the Caribou Cafe in Glennallen. The food was subpar. G3’s pancakes were undercooked—still raw batter in the center. Kati asked if he could get more that were cooked through. His second plate was no better than the first. My omelet wasn’t terrible, but it was too greasy. Kati had bacon and eggs and seemed to be the only one who liked her food.

After we ate, we went to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Visitor Center. Not only is Wrangell-St. Elias the nation’s largest national park, it contains nine out of 16 of North America’s tallest peaks. It is 9.4 million acres and contains four mountain ranges. The St. Elias range is the highest coastal range in the world and it receives an average of 60 feet of snow every year. The Wrangell Mountains were once mighty and massive volcanoes, but the ice has chiseled them down over the years. To give you perspective, six Yellowstones could fit inside Wrangell-St. Elias. It is bigger than Switzerland and its mountains are higher. It contains one of the largest concentration of glaciers in the world and one of those glaciers is larger than Rhode Island. To say it is vast would be a severe understatement. Unfortunately, for the average shoestring tourist (such as myself) nearly all of it is in accessible. There was a short one mile hike by the visitor center, but the main accessible part of the park is down a dirt road and it would have taken two hours to get to the old mine and glacier hike. That would not have left us enough time to see and do what we wanted to do, especially since we have tour reservations for tomorrow.

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. When we realized that there was so little to do at the visitors center, Kati, knowing I wanted to get to Valdez suggested we forgo the one mile hike and head to the coast. That’s the lovely thing about Alaska in the summer. It never gets dark so you can just keep going. It’s two hours there and then two hours back on top of the hours we already spent in the car. We asked G3 how he felt about it and he laughed, “What, a long car ride on vacation? That’s nothing new.”

So here we are on the road heading to Valdez. I love not sticking to an itinerary when it means seeing or doing more than we intended. The views, as on many of the roads we have traversed here, are beautiful: waterfalls threading through forests, large patches of snow wedged into the rocks and on the side of the highway, and glaciers flowing down mountains. In the distance, we could see the snow capped peaks of the mountains in the national park rising towards the heavens. Unfortunately, the views were marred first by thick gray clouds and then by rain, the heaviest we’ve had since our first day here. Just outside of Valdez, we stopped to take pictures of Bridal Falls. The falls tumble down the rock face next to the highway. It is pretty sight to see.

I love the mountains, but I am at home by the sea. The smell of the slaty air is invigorating. In Valdez, the mountains come down to the coast and meet the sea. I can only imagine how beautiful it would be on a clear day. As we neared the water, the clouds got darker, the fog thicker, and the rain heavier. I suppose we were somewhat fortunate that when we reached the Solomon Gulch Hatchery the rain stopped. We went there because an article online said it was a great place to see seals and sea lions. It did not lie. We walked out to the water and watched several seals (they may have been sea lions—I only saw their heads from a distance so I can’t be completely certain) swimming around not far from where we stood. They would poke their heads above the water, look around, swim a few strokes, and then dip below the surface. I greatly enjoyed watching them. We were so enamored with the seals we didn’t notice the tide coming in and cutting us off from the parking lot. I was glad I wore my sandals despite the forty-eight degree temperature. I was able to slosh through the freezing cold water easily. Kati had worn her boots and had a slightly more challenging trip back to the car walking precariously over the wet rocks that were slick with water and seaweed.

Valdez was a long way to drive just for seals  and salty air but the beauty of the mountains rising up out of the valley, completely dwarfing us as we drove through made the drive worth it. I wish the clouds had dissipated or at least thinned out so that we could have seen the mountains and sea in all its beauty but I would much rather have been there with fog obscuring my view than not have gone at all. The rain, happily, held off as long as we were out of the car and walking around, but as soon as we got back into the car to head north it started up again. And it rained for most of the drive back although it did eventually stop.

We are camping at Dry Creek State Recreation Site which is right outside the national park. We opted not to boondock because it will be far easier and more convenient to be able to stay at the same campsite for two nights. It saves the hassle of having to break down and then set up again. When you boondock you can’t leave your tent unattended. Since we plan to return to the national park on Thursday it makes sense to stay close-by. The mosquitoes were even worse tonight than they were yesterday. We raced to set up the tent and even wearing long pants and long sleeves they feasted on me. I should have worn my head net. My face is now covered with itchy bites. We got the tent set up just in time because soon as it was up it started to rain again. Hopefully it won’t rain hard and the inside of the tent will stay dry.