Jumping Forward

There are still a couple of tales to tell about our time in France last spring, but I've just been reminded by the snowfall of last Saturday that it's nearly winter - or at least definitely autumn.  Rather than hold off writing about the recent past while waiting for inspiration to blog about the more distant past, I thought I'd do a post about our summer in Alaska.

We arrived late this summer....July 2nd. A fact which made for a confusing entry into Alaskan life. After 8 seasons of arriving in time for the start of the tour guiding season (late May), it was disconcerting to see trees completely leafed out.  Alaska made it easier for me, though, by providing the coolest, wettest summer on record.  It never really felt much like summer.

I led two Day Hiker trips for Adventure Alaska Tours and filled in the rest of my days working as an Expediter and Waitress for the local cafe and bar, the Seaview Cafe.  Expediting consisted of driving a van to Anchorage one or two days per week to do a major shop at Costco and supermarkets, pick up the halibut and beer kegs and drop off empty kegs.  It was a great way to be able to do my own grocery shopping without having my own vehicle.  Serving in the restaurant was an excellent opportunity to hear all of the live music that was offered as well as witness more of the Hope social scene (which had previously been impossible with my number of days on the road).

   

Michiel left Hope in mid-August to start an extended contract in Antarctica.  He has been down there for "WinFly", the winter fly-in period used to prepare for "Mainbody".  Working at the Seaview allowed me to earn a bit of money and stay busy enough to make it through these last 2 months without him. The other saving grace was a glorious September.  We had almost 27 days without rain (which is absolutely unheard of in September in Southcentral) and day after day of sunshine, blue skies, and, for me and my friends, super hiking and the birthday celebrations that never ended!

I leave Alaska this coming Saturday for the long haul southward and season 6 at McMurdo.  Here are some summer photo highlights taken by friends or with our cellphone (Michiel took the camera!).

   

The End of Summer...

Yukon Adventures

Hurray for Adventure Alaska Tours!
After joining Sheri on her first camping tour of the season (which was very much fun) I got to on another Adventure Alaska Tour (this one). This time with guide, Patrick, taking us to the mighty Yukon river. A long drive to get there, but well worth it. Fall was coming and the colors of the vegetation were getting more beautiful every mile we drove.

Our base was in Eagle, which is a lovely little old town on the border of Canada.


From there we drove to Dawson (Canada), a well preserved and famous gold seekers town, to begin our downstream paddling. Awesome weather, beautiful views and meditative peace and quiet greeted us for most of the 4 days we were on the river. I had packed a considerable amount of cold weather gear, but luckily we were blessed with some gorgeous sunny days and we hardly needed our rain gear at all. Unfortunately, the one day that I decided to paddle the canoe by myself was the one day that the wind was blowing very hard. Despite going downstream, it was very hard work and I eventually had to relinquish the boat to Patrick.

Update from AK

First an update on Blogarithm...if you would like to receive an email when we update the blog, you now need to sign up with www.rssfwd.com. They purchased Blogarithm and it seems that the migration of old Blogarithm accounts didn't go so smoothly.

We've been back in Alaska now for a month and we're exceedingly busy. I'm leading tours again for Adventure Alaska Tours and Michiel is busy with a host of big projects, including putting in a large garden and greenhouse at the home we are staying in, staining cabins, cleaning, chopping and bundling wood and many other things. He's also done a lot of fishing already this summer, including 2 (failed) attempts at king salmon (in his defence, he was the only person in the boat to get anything (a sockeye salmon) on the first trip and he was the only person to hook a king on yesterday's trip.) He was successful at landing a couple of halibut so we've got some nice fillets in the freezer.

Our friend, Sandra, from the Netherlands will be here tomorrow for 3 weeks and she will be joining us on an Adventure Alaska hiking tour. We'll get some photos up when we can.

Road Lottery in Denali

Every summer, the National Park Service holds a lottery for the opportunity to drive your own vehicle into Denali National Park. Normally, the 93 mile park road is closed to (almost) all private vehicles and travel in the park can only be done on park buses. The park officially closes on a Thursday in mid September and the following 4 days are open to 400 vehicles per day on the road. The fee for entering the lottery is $10 and this year, there were over 6,000 entrants. We had enormous luck - (perhaps it was fate's way of rewarding me for a season with lots of rain and some difficult clients???) - and won a spot on the final road lottery day.

Fall in Alaska normally starts in late August and is marked by lots of rain and cool temperatures. This year has been no different, but we managed to experience Denali in the best possible fall weather - blue skies, sunshine and late fall colors on the mountains and tundra blessed us for the duration of our stay.

We drove 6.5 hours up to the park on Sunday, stopping for short hikes and lots of photos of the glorious colors and soft lighting that signal the end of the continuous sunlight of summer. We set up camp at the park entrance and got to sleep early.

The following morning was our day in the park and we got going before sunrise (at this time of year it's 7:30 AM). Within the first few miles, the pink glow of the rising sun illuminated the far-off peak of Mt. McKinley, the gem of the park and North America's tallest mountain (20,320 feet). As we drove farther into the park, the mountain became more and more glorious until it was almost too much for us to look at her anymore.

We spotted several wolves and even learned that there are several all black wolves in the park. One lone wolf even walked directly down the road toward our car as we gaped in awe. We watched beavers working diligently on storing away branches of birch trees high up a rocky slope (we had no ideas that beaers would or could climb so high and so nimbly). We saw several groups of grizzlies (mostly sows with 2 cubs) , Dall sheep, golden eagles, a fox trotting down the road towards us, and most excitingly, a wolf and a grizzly boar (male) having a stand-off over a cache (stash) of caribou meat taken from a recent kill.

Ice climbing! (is cool)

Last week we went ice climbing on the Matanuska glacier. Sheri's colleague at Adventure Alaska Tours, Joe, whom I finally got to meet was kind enough to take us and infect us with his enthusiasm. We made use of the camp spot overlooking the glacier to stay the night and thus had ample time for the actual climbing. Donned with warm clothing, boots, crampons, helmet, climbing harness, ropes, screws and ice axes we went on our way.






















The access to the glacier is really near to the carpark, so we only had to walk a short while until we had to put on our crampons. After reaching a suitable wall, we got a crash course in tying knots and roping up (and all the lingo that goes with it) and we were on our way to climb the wall. Kicking the points of the crampons in the wall and using the ice axes to hook into the ice; it is amazing how these tiny points of contact can bear your weight. Of course once in a while it doesn't (user error) at which point it is good to know that you are roped to the top of the ice wall and someone is belaying you to stop the fall. The equipment gave me such a confidence that I wasn't bothered by any fear of height and it felt good to go higher and higher. It does require quite some coordination and strength, so we were rather tired when we came back to our camp site. After climbing for a couple more hours the next day we were beginning to feel our muscles protest, but we had a wonderful time.








If the pictures aren't enough, you can watch a short movie at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dkpE2CQ4v0



Tremendous big thanks to Joe for all his patience and willingness to teach us and being a fun companion.

What's new in Alaska?

What's new, you ask? Well...since we wrote some pretty extensive coverage of our time here in Hope, Alaska last year, we didn't feel the need to cover familiar territory. However, we have been doing some new stuff since we got here in snowy and wintery May.

We've had a very late summer and Michiel's efforts to get an early start on the vegetable garden were thwarted by snow and icy soil. As we approach summer solstice on June 21, things are FINALLY starting to feel like summer and the lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, and sunflowers are starting to do some real growing.

It was great, however, to experience a taste of winter in those first couple of weeks with temperatures in the 30's and 40's during the day with occasional snow flurries and a snow shower and below freezing at night. During the last week of May, I guided my first trip of the season and the state experienced a heat wave, including record-breaking high temps in Hope. When we returned from that great trip (Michiel joined me), all of the trees had leafed-out and winter was certainly over.

Gone Fishin': One of the fun things we did recently was to go out for our very first salmon fishing attempt. Our friend, John, took us out on the Kenai and Russian Rivers for red (sockeye) salmon fishing. He taught us how to tie the fly onto the line and how to cast, etc., but we were all unlucky and/or unskilled and spent the day with our boots in the frigid waters trying to stay warm in the downpour.

Fishing on the Kenai River is never a solitary pursuit



While hiking along the Kenai River to the confluence with the Russian River, we saw a small brown bear doing some fishing of his own.



We DID enjoy it, though, and vowed to try again now that we have our annual fishing licenses. There's something very satisfying about the idea of bringing home your own food. Unfortunately, that night, we had to eat leftovers.

Michiel was the only one of the three of us to get a fish on the line (twice!), but, alas.....no dinner.



Gone Runnin': Today, we both ran the Anchorage Mayor's Half-Marathon (13.1 miles/21 kilometers) - formerly known as the Midnight Sun Marathon. Michiel was extremely supportive and stuck by me the whole time - even going so far as to carry extra GU (energy gel) and Gatorade. It was incredibly helpful and motivating to have him there with me to help me through the tough moments (like from mile 11 to mile 12). It was surprisingly fun to do and very inspirational to see all of the different body shapes, sizes and ages of people who were out there running. I also managed to beat my time goal of 2.5 hours by finishing in 2 hours and 23 minutes or so (results are still unofficial). UPDATE: Official time was: 2:23:26, which put me at 309th in the women's race and Michiel at 281st in the men's race.

For more info on the marathon and official times, see www.mayorsmarathon.com

I'm not too sore, yet...but it has only been 7 or 8 hours..... UPDATE: Ouch.....

Fishin' for World Cup Soccer: Our (especially Michiel's) biggest sadness at the moment is that we can't find reliable internet coverage of the World Cup soccer games. In case you haven't been following, the US even has a small chance to advance to the second round. Of course, we are most interested in seeing how Holland does and after watching the European Cup two years ago while living in Amsterdam, I developed an appreciation of the game that everyone else in the world seems to care about.... GO HOLLAND!

End of the Season

The tour season ended fairly early this year as we didn't have any bookings for the last week of August. It was just as well, really, because the weather turned gray and rainy (as is typical for late summer).

I had five tours in all - two tours that had little physical activity, which are geared towards those who might otherwise do a cruise but wanted a small group, van tour type experience. For me, these tours are tough because they require lots of driving and eating and very little exercise. I end up the week feeling fat and lazy. However, these tours do end up with a wonderful boat tour in Seward. I normally don't go on the tours, but I had a nice group and decided I'd go along. I was thrilled that I did because we saw puffins, sea otters, Steller sea lions and cormorants (aalscholvers) and we were surrounded at one point in the trip by a whole pod of orcas. We also had a portion of the trip in which we had at least 4 humpback whales (bultrug walvissen) in sight. One of them was playing by flapping its tail against the surface of the water. Excellent!

I also led two day hiker tours, which include 5 days of camping and 1 to 5 hour hikes each day. One of the trips (with Michiel) was great and the other was awful (bad weather and a difficult group, who bonded well with each other, but treated me like a servant. The highlight of THAT trip was getting stuck at a road construction stop and talking to a father and son from the Netherlands (Drenthe).)

The 5th trip was a new 7-day itinerary that included 4 days of camping. The weather was incredible! Hot, clear and sunny in all parts of the state. I couldn't believe that we could see every single mountain, including Denali, throughout the week. We even breakfasted at our campsite while watching the colors of Denali change from pink to white.

Now that the season is over, Michiel and I are enjoying recreational time in Hope and soon, we'll start packing and preparing for our ice departures.

On tour with Sheri

I've done quite some traveling with Sheri, but this time it was different. There were 5 more people with us. Sheri's bosses allowed me accompany her while she was working. We did the so called "Dayhiker Adventure tour" and it was beautiful. On our way we visited 3 glaciers, did lots of hiking, saw lots of wildlife (the group was very fortunate on the Denali Park bus, exclaiming upon return that they had seen everything) enjoyed gorgious vistas and had lots of fun. The weather varied from beautiful (for instance when we did a tour (with crampons) on the Matanuska glacier) to rainy in McCarthy.

On our 9 day trip we did some 1000 miles (1600 kilometer) of traveling by van and still we only saw a small part of Alaska. Our fellow passengers were amazed to hear that this distance is 5 times (and a bit) as long as the Netherlands from north to south. Of course I was happy to answer all their other questions about the Dutch.

Seeing Sheri work I must say that my already high admiration rose to a peak. Apart from driving a big van safely for so many hours a day she managed to also give info and other conversation while doing so. She took us out hiking and instructed us on how to do that safely. While camping she cooked/provided every meal (which means getting on top of the van an awful lot of times) and did the dishes. Now I know exactly why she is so exhausted when she comes back from a trip. I was glad that I could make life a little bit more easy for her on this trip.

HOPE!!!

After a short visit with a fellow guide and friend, Kathleen, at the Elementary School where she works and a stop at the grocery store in Anchorage to stock up on supplies for the Memorial Day weekend, we made our way down the usually stunning Seward Highway. On this day, however, it was raining horizontally but there were still some very hearty people out dip-netting for hooligan, a type of small, school fish. The bald eagles were eager to get their claws on the fishies, as well.

It’s great to be in our new home – reunited with all of the wonderful people here who have heard about our arrival (in a town of 180 residents, news travels quickly and easily). We were especially happy to see Todd and Barb, Sheri’s bosses and our good friends who helped set up our current living situation in the guest cabin of one of Hope’s residents.

We spent the first full day here moving into our new home and trying to devise clever ways to manage the fact that we have no running water or bathroom. For now, the answer is that we are using the home-owner’s guest bathroom and a 5-gallon bucket (more popularly known around here as a “honey bucket”) for the middle of the night calls of nature. A more sophisticated solution will come later.

We also looked through the mail that had been accumulating for us and were shocked and surprised to see that Michiel had already received his permanent resident card (green card). He is legally allowed to live and work in the U.S. until April 2007, at which time, we have to demonstrate that we are still married.