Catching Up

Saturday (7/19) (Anchorage)

Coffee at Snow City Cafe. While we sipped our coffe we rented bikes a couple of block from the Anchorage Coastal trail. The bikes had flat platforms for pedals and I had to request one with a water bottle cage. The pricing was $20 for the first hour and $5 for each additional hour. We rented the bike for 3 hours. The shifting was weird with the “shift up” lever on the front side of the right handlebar and the “shift down” lever on the back side of the right handle bar tucked in behind the brake in the same place but a little farther in front. Multiple times I tried to shift down and braked instead. The path was pretty nice and was clearly appreciated by tourists and locals alike with many other bikes that were clearly rentals but also dog walkers and normal walkers and bikes with real cyclists on top. We rode all the way out to Kincaid Park (about 10 miles) without stopping but once there we paused to raise our seats. On the way back we stopped and watched an airplane take off from the airport then continued on to Earthquake Park. The park in on a ledge that is maybe 20 or 30 or 40 feet high that was not a ledge before the 1964 earthquate. Until that event the land extended out for another 1000 feet before dropping to the water. The earthquake displaced 12,000,000 cubic yards of earth on the edge of Anchorage and extending into Turnagain Arm.

We had lunch at Simon & Seafort’s Salon & Grill. I guess we were feeling extravagent because Arlene ordered scallops and we both ordered wine. For lunch! I ordered cajun chicken fettuccine and it was the spiciest food I’ve ever received in a restaurant that didn’t also come with a warning.

Potters Marsh is a marshy area that was created when the railway was constructed along Turnagain Arm. Now it is a protected area that over the course of the year hosts some 200 species of birds squeezed between the railway (along side the highway) and a housing development on a hill. On the west end there are a couple of interpretive boardwalks out into the marsh which conceivably provides the opportunity to see cool birds. We saw gulls and ducks and this Red-Necked Grebe.

Sunday (7/20) (Anchorage)

We went to the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on Sunday morning. Since we’ve been in Alaska we’ve been partially operating on Alaska time and partially on Pacific time an hour later. This has led to several timing mishaps. We arrived at our bus into the park at Denali an hour early. We arrived at the airport to fly to Utqiagvik an hour early. Now we’ve also arrived at a Sunday service an hour early. So we went for coffee at Little Sister Espresso a couple blocks from Fake Cedars. (I call all UU churches that aren’t Cedars “Fake Cedars.”) There was also a bakery (Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop) so I had a coconut/blackberry muffin and Arlene had a raspberry scone. (Arlene informed me that it wasn’t just raspberry but can’t remember it’s other qualities other than it was really good.) We sat outside and it wasn’t raining. The sermon was based on the TV show West Wing which I’ve never seen. We talked to a minister named Becca for a while after the service. We had met her when she was leading the service at Fairbanks UU Fellowship.

Running out of things that we really wanted to do around Anchorage we attempted to walk out to Knik Arm which is perpendicular to Turnagain Arm. We followed a path from Beach Lake Park and saw the spur. It looked silty.

At one point we crossed the Iditirod trail and saw people on horses; only mushing was allowed in the winter.

Monday (7/21) (Anchorage to Tok)

After packing up the car and checking out of the AirBnB we went back to Darkhorse for coffee. Arlene wanted to try some chocolate but I forgot what it was. (Arlene informed me that it was dark chocolate with almonds then complained that the nut chunks were too small.) Then began the long drive to Tok. Still trying to increase the overall mpg for the trip, I had been stuck for days at 35.9. And after leaving Anchorage and driving through Wasilla, we started an ascent which took us to around 3000 feet. Miraculously I lost nothing on the mpg. During this time Arlene was going through all of her 4th quintile REM songs looking for a few to move down to the 5th quintile (so that it would be complete). Moving songs up from the 2nd quintile is more fun than moving them down from the 4th but we spent hours discussing the comparitive merits of so, so many songs. After finishing Arlene’s 4th quintile, we started on my 3rd. The mpg ticked up to 36.0 then 36.1. In Tok we had booked a room in Young’s motel but we checked in in an adjacent restaurant, Fast Eddy’s. Perhaps Eddy Young owned the whole complex. One bad thing is that when the restaurant owns the motel then the room in the motel have neither microwave nor refrigerator. Outside it was cool and the heat in the room didn’t seem to be on but the temperature in the room was nearly 80 and it never cooled. We ate vegetable sandwiches for dinner.

Tuesday (7/22) (Tok to Haines Junction)

Our first time through Tok was in mid-June. We had tried to find a coffee shop called Auntie Helena’s. The map we were following had it a half mile from Young’s Motel on the other side of the highway. Turns out it was on the other side off Fast Eddy’s from the motel and Arlene and I happened to walk by it on Monday night on our daily constitutional. I ordered my standard double short breve but Auntie Helena’s didn’t have 8 oz cups and the barista was unsure of what to do so she pulled the espresso shots and poured them in a 12 oz cup, steamed the half-n-half, then pushed the cup and the steaming pitcher to me and told me to pour in however much I wanted. I tried making a nice foam art tree. I failed.

Tok is about 90 miles from the Canadian border and much of the highway is bumpy and lumpy and dusty. And it was raining. (It wasn’t dusty and raining at the same time. It alternated.) At one point I ran the rear windshield wiper and muddy sludge oozed down in brown streamlets. We passed an area where the trees were burning not to far to the north but our passage was uneventful.

Crossing into Canada we found, once again, that the Canadian border agent were mostly concerned with what weapons we were transporting. I mentioned the bear spray but he was only interested in chemical agents made for people. He let us in. And we continued classifying REM songs by finishing my 3rd quintile and starting on Arlene’s 3rd quintiles.

When we arrived in Haines Junction we found our motel, the Stardust, and it looked a little rundown and the wifi was horrible. The little refrigerator didn’t have a freezer big enough to re-freeze the ice in our cooler. But we hadn’t yet discovered the extent of the decrepitude.

Wednesday (7/23) (Haines Junction to Skagway)

I awoke Wednesday morning at about 3:30am (not sure which timezone) to the sound of gurgling. I followed the sound into the bathroom and found the bathtub containing a couple of inches icky looking water and the level in the toilet bowl abnormally high. This marked the second plumbing disaster of our Alaska Trip.

We thought about getting an usie in front of the bathtub full of disgusting sewage water but decided against it.

Arlene and I started packing up immediately after she woke up at 5:45 pacific time. Of course this meant that the coffee place we’d picked out wasn’t open yet and we would have to drive all the way to Whitehorse for coffee. We had found a nice place the first time we drove through there perhaps 6 weeks earlier. As we were carrying all of our stuff out to the car we stopped to chat with our neighbor who was also packing feverishly to escape her own plumbing disasters.

Coffee at Midnight Sun Coffee Roasters in Whitehorse. The trip mpg was up to 36.2.

A couple of miles east of Whitehorse we finally turned south toward Skagway and drove on roads that we hadn’t already travelled in the first week of the trip. We mostly drove and continued our classification of REM songs but there were some great sights.

At Customs the Unitied States let us back in again. When we arrived in Skagway the trip mpg was up to 36.4.

The business district of Skagway is 7 blocks by 2 blocks with maybe double that in residential blocks. When we arrived there were four cruise ships at different docks. Skagway is truely a bizarre place. We considered stopping at a sandwich shop for lunch but the line was long so we went to the grocery store then ate PBnJ sandwiches in the car. Across the street from the store with this place:

After lunch we started hiking up to Reid Falls. The first part of the hike was very steep and packed with people who seemed to be unprepared for climbing such a steep hill. Once we were past all of the closer destinations on the trail the people thinned out and we passed Icy Lake then arrived at the falls. This was apparently the Upper Reid Falls for there was a sign that said that there was no access to Lower Reid Falls. On the map the trail to Lower Reid Falls was on the other side of the Upper Reid Falls but there was enough water so that crossing seemed inadvisible.

Our hotel was accross the street from the trail head because Skagway is really small and the Skagway Brewing Company where we ate dinner was only a block from the hotel. Our hotel had wifi but only in the lobby.

Thursday (7/24) (Skagway to Juneau)

We started the morning by taking our laptops down to the hotel lobby so we could get on wifi and watch stage 18 of the Tour de France. This was a day with three HC climbs and we’d been expecting fireworks between Pogačar and Vingegaard but the fireworks fizzled. It seems like they are pretty tired or maybe just both feeling sure about the final result.

The day was going to be busy because we had originally planned on taking the ferry from Skayway to Juneau on Friday but while we were still in Denali we received an email from AMHS saying our Friday sailing had been cancelled and our reservation at been moved to Thursday. But we had already booked a ride on a train from Skagway up to White Pass from 9am until noon. Since the boat didn’t leave until 2.45pm, it seemed that there should be plenty off time but we weren’t quite sure about any of the logistics such as where to leave our car after checking out of the hotel and riding the train. But it turned out to be easy. We checked in for the ferry at 8am local time and walked 5 minutes to the train depot. The train wasn’t super crowded and climbed the nearly 3000 feet from Skagway to White Pass in about an hour and twenty minutes. The tour guide dude talked both about how there was just one section of old growth forest left and also how the railway was built in a bit over 2 years when now it would take longer than that just for the permits.

On the train the tour guide dude went down the aisle selling caps related to the railroad and I didn’t want one so I didn’t buy one. But then he said that the first person to say the name of the Alaska state flower would get a cap for free. So now I have a cap that I didn’t want.

After riding the train we had enough time to go to a few of the touristy shops in town. Arlene found the yarn shop and went all crazy (again). Many of the patterns that were posted by the yarn were from Churchmouse on Bainbridge Island.

Here is a picture of Skagway when 4 cruise boats are in town:

The ferry was spectacularly inefficient compared to the ferries in Washington. It took an hour to unload and reload the boat even though it was far smaller than the Wenatchee or Tacoma. We drove into the side of the boat, turned left toward the bow, then did a u-turn and drove toward the stern where we parked.

We gathered a few things and went up for the 7 hour trip; we were not allowed to return to the car while the vessel was not docked. There weren’t very many seat and people would claim seats with their bags and walk around the boat so it was unclear which seats were available. Arlene and I couldn’t find a place to sit when there was row upon row of empty seats. There was a cafeteria which convinced us that on the 3-day trip down to Bellingham we should bring our own food. And the boat was late getting into Juneau; we didn’t get to our AirBnB until 11:30 pm. The views were, of course, amazing because we are still in Alaska.