Sept 24, 2001 Update: Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula
First of all, it is 2:30 in the morning, so this will be short. I just got done sifting out 6 rolls of film into 3 new albums (15-17). If you haven't looked at those yet, definitely plan on it. The pictures of Denali are incredible, and we still have one roll yet to be developed. The Gates of Arctic and Prudhoe pictures are good at capturing the desolation of the area and the great scenery of the Brooks Range and the drive North from Fairbanks. This will likely be the last update made while we are on the road.
A Quick Definition
My father asked me a couple days what a "bear barrel" was. Apparently I used the term in an earlier update, and forgot that it's not a term thrown around in areas of the country where there are no bears. A bear barrel is a plastic barrel about 20 inches high and 10 inches in diameter that animals cannot break into. When you camp in bear country, you have to put your food out of reach of the bears. In Washington and British Columbia we just hung our food in trees. In Glacier, Denali and Gates of the Arctic National Parks, there weren't a lot of trees where we were, so we put our food in these barrels and just set them on the ground at night, 100 yards away from our tent (so that we weren't bothered by animals smelling the food and trying to break into the barrel). The first night we were in Denali we did have an animal knock our barrel around a bit during the night.
Anchorage and the Kenai
Earlier on in our trip, while we were in the middle of nowhere in Washington (Chelan and Stehekin), we had the good fortune of meeting a couple (Bruce and Monica) from Anchorage who were on a short vacation to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. Upon hearing that we were heading to their neck of the woods later on in the summer they gave us their phone numbers and told us to call them when we got in the area. We made that call a couple weeks ago and since then we've ended up spending the last two weekends with them. They've been great hosts (and it's their computer that I'm typing away on now at 2:40AM). Two weekends ago Bruce had a great idea to rent an RV and travel down to Seward with his boat in tow and spend a couple days fishing in Resurrection Bay. My first ocean fishing experience was a blast. Hopefully we'll have pictures in a couple weeks of an interesting way we found to catch huge ling cod. We were fishing off of the bottom in about 100 feet of water. 3-5 lb rock fish would grab the bait and begin to fight, and then seconds later a huge (around 3 feet long) ling cod would grab the rock fish, and not let go. We pulled at least 5 cod to the surface simply because they would refuse to let go of the rock fish which was hooked on our line. Twice, the shock of the cod crunching on the rock fish, ended with the rock fish "not feeling so well" and unable to swim back to the depths from which we pulled it. On both occasions, bald eagles swooped down from the shoreline cliffs and plucked the fish from the surface not far from our boat. The whole experience was incredible and a lot of fun.
After that weekend, we left them alone for a week while we went to Homer and Seward. We mainly played the role of tourist during that week, visiting a lot of galleries and similar stores for which the Kenai Peninsula is known. We did revert back to the hikers we've been the rest of the summer for one day to hike up 3000 feet from the end of the Exit Glacier to the Harding Ice Field. It was a killer of a hike. The 3000 feet were climbed in little over 3 miles. At the end of the trail, at the edge of an ice field that extends as far as the eye can see, the wind was horrendous and sleet was pelting us, so we didn't stay long. We had great views of the glacier all along the hike.
We returned to Anchorage on Saturday for some more tourist stuff (shopping) and Bruce and Monica were kind enough to allow us to stay with them again for the weekend.
Where from Here?
We're going to start the long drive back on Monday morning. We'll make a side-trip to Valdez and stop at a few hot springs on our way through Canada, but we're planning on covering the thousands of miles rather "quickly" and returning to Chicago in early October. We look forward to seeing all of our friends and family soon!