John Rachal's Blog

DAY 40, June 30, Sunday

Our third full day in Talkeetna—such a Jack London-ish name—and I drove to a nearby trailhead and took the little three mile stroll in the woods that goes around Lakes X and Y. Apparently they had run out of names and resorted to letters. The walk offered occasional glimpses and one or two full views of one of the two pristine lakes, somewhat reminiscent of Walden Pond. But mostly it was a pleasant hike through dense woods, over slightly undulating terrain on a trail a few feet wide with only a few rocks and roots. The temperature was just right, with an occasional pleasant breeze. The near silence was like stepping into a country church an hour or two after the last verse of “Just As I Am” drifted heavenward and all the congregation drifted homeward for Sunday lunch. I heard only my own footfalls, a few chirping birds, and the pitch of flapping mosquito wings. It is interesting that only the females of that tribe are bloodthirsty, in contrast to most of their four- and two-legged distant cousins. The cunning little gals play with your mind so much that after a while you’re not content with slapping at real mosquitoes but begin slapping at imaginary ones. The undergrowth on both sides of the trail was chest-high, and there was an occasional whiff of some conifer—not sure which—that has always been my favorite scent from cool summer mornings during vacations in Kalispell, Montana. In the last mile I came across a couple, and not too long afterward two young women and a big chocolate lab passed me. But otherwise, I had the place to myself.

The afternoon was leisurely. We had lunch in the village, walked dogs, got our propane tank filled, and drove the 14 miles to the main highway where we picked up a few groceries and Val got a frappe at a drive-up window place. There was another aviation company along the spur, and I tried to persuade Val to take one of the seaplanes that land and take off from the lake along the spur. And I think she wanted to, but she’s not a little-plane kind of girl.

One other distinction of Talkeetna: It is the take-off point for flights to Denali base camp for climbing expeditions. Since at least the 50s, no one bushwhacks in to the mountain anymore; almost all climbers fly in to a base camp glacier at about 7,200 feet. The climbing season is already almost over, since as the summer progresses the snow and ice at lower points on the climb get warmer and less stable. But at the highest elevations, it can still get to 20 below or lower, with wind chill at 40 below or lower. They speak of a warm day as 10 or 15 above at 17,000 feet or higher. One winter expedition experienced 148 below zero, counting wind chill, according to a local weather service. Winds can rip tents down to flapping threads, with death not far behind. The coldest I ever camped was 4 degrees above, and I didn’t want to get out of my sleeping bag. That was in the North Carolina mountains when I was in grad school.

It was much cooler today with a high around 80.

DAY 41, July 1, Monday

We hitched up and rolled around to the campground’s dump station where we performed that necessary task. If anyone ever tells you that it is enjoyable and pleasant, they are Tom Sawyering you.

Leaving Talkeetna for somewhere on the Kenai Peninsula, we almost independently came to the same conclusion to alter our plans. Val’s original intent, made way back in Hattiesburg, was to join up for an RVing-to-Alaska confab in Chugach State Park on the peninsula for three or four nights beginning tomorrow, but it would be dry camping and the other travellers would mostly be larger rigs with little in common with us other than journeying to Alaska. With all their capacities and internal generators, dry camping is less of a challenge than it is for us. Also the smoke—more on that in a moment. We both would have been more interested if they had mostly been small, fiber-glass trailers like ours. I also like moving. From the road there did seem to be some good hikes in Chugach, but I’ll forgo that.

It bears repeating that Val is the logistics person. While we make joint decisions, she is the one who navigates and finds things, either through her Facebook connections with other Alaska travellers or through all the studying she does of books, the internet, and maps. She is great at it, and I am positively Paleolithic with all the technology. For example, our destination tonight is a parking lot in Soldotna that numerous other travellers have recommended for dry camping for up to three nights. On my own, I would never have known about it. For us it’s perfect for one night as we move on to an RV park in Homer.

The highway down toward Anchorage was excellent and the scenery delightful—snow-streaked mountains, spruce and birch forests. We went into Anchorage and got onto Highway 1, heading south for the peninsula. The road followed the Cook Inlet, with water and mud flats on one side and steep, forested, small mountains on the other. I thought of it as a little similar to the coastal highway of California, spoiled only by a little smoke from the Swan Lake fire. We went through Wasilla, a bigger town than I thought, where we had planned on dropping in on Sarah Palin. But her housekeeper said that she had left to climb Denali this afternoon and planned to go water buffalo hunting when she returned this evening, it being so light out and all. I had really hoped to see Russia from her back porch, but life is strewn with disappointments, so we loaded back up and kept heading south.

We had already been warned of smoke in Anchorage and southward; one fellow I chatted with in Talkeetna lives in Anchorage and came up to Talkeetna for a while to get away from it. By Anchorage, it was already obscuring the mountains and even making the road hazy, with signs saying Heavy Smoke and Drive With Headlights On. The nearby Swan Lake has burned 70,000 acres so far, and we saw evidence of trees burned on one side of the highway and some firefighters. Neither of us wanted to spend several days in smoke. After 265 miles from our start in Talkeetna, we reached our day’s destination, a huge Fred Meyer parking lot in Soldotna with perhaps twenty other RVs lining its perimeter, including truck campers and the usual $100k to $300k motor homes. We know our days are heaven sent, as Chris Stapleton and the Steel Drivers say: The sky was blue again, the smoke was gone at least for now, temperatures were in the 70s, and a gentle breeze meant that we could dry camp in comfort.

DAY 42, July 2, Tuesday

After going in to the Wal-Mart-like Fred Meyer store about half a dozen times this morning buying this and that, along with chatting with a firefighter and a local who worked at the Fred Meyer store, we left the parking lot and Soldotna. But not before buying cinnamon rolls, one with raisins and one not, at a highly recommended bakery. We headed for Homer, 75 miles away. Homer is our outermost point of this little adventure, though at around 6,300 miles not necessarily the half-way point.

The road down the peninsula was free of smoke, though a slight haze persists. We went through the villages of Clam Gulch, Ninilkitna, and Anchors Point (I like the mix of Sourdough and native American names), and I saw my first two eagles of the trip, though Val missed them. Homer is at the end of the peninsula and pretty much the end of the road. It’s a cool little town, definitely more than a village, resting on the banks of the Kachemuk Bay and Cook Inlet, with snow-covered mountains and volcanoes across the Bay. We got to the Ocean Shores RV Park around 4 pm and got a water and electric site close to the water but still about 50 feet above the water level, with the mountains in the distance and a glimpse of the Homer Spit. The Homer Spit is a finger of land maybe 200 yards wide at its widest that projects four and a half miles into the Bay. It’s a hopping place with shops, places to rent, places to take boat tours and fishing ventures, and what seemed like a thousand rigs of various kinds dry camping, with a few places for hook-up. It’s a good source of city income. Homer in general is definitely appealing—ocean and mountains together. The town itself rises (and rises) several hundred feet above the sea where there were some nice homes with very nice bird’s eye views of the Bay, the Spit, and the mountains/volcanoes across the Bay. A couple of the volcanoes had non-catastrophic eruptions as recently as 2006. Also Val read that just this morning there was a 4.6 earthquake 32 miles from Homer. Grizzlies, poisonous plants, volcanoes, wildfires, and earthquakes—Gee, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore!

It’s 8:45 here now, still bright sunshine over the water, and a pleasant 63 degrees, going down to 53. Sunset is 11:25 and sunrise is 4:53. So much darkness!