John Rachal's Blog

DAY 43, July 3, Wednesday

Pure tourist day. We took a walk on the beach with the tide way out, collecting a few rocks; then to the Visitors’ Center; then lunch at a Thai restaurant; then ice cream on the Spit; then the Pratt Museum (both art and history); then sticky bun and raspberry scone at the Two Sisters Bakery; then another walk on the beach with the dogs and the tide near the full. At full moon the tides can vary by 28 feet.

We have noticed numerous Thai restaurants; even in small towns like this there are two. Talkeetna also had two, counting one on the Spur; and Soldotna, though bigger, also has two. I asked the owner of today’s restaurant if he had an explanation for this profusion, but he did not. We have not seen any Vietnamese or many Chinese or Indian—the Thais seem to have a near monopoly on Asian food. Mexican food is also rather rare; we thought it a real Southern treat to find the Mexican restaurant a few days ago in Soldotna.

There were three earthquakes around Alaska today, including a 4.7 whose epicenter was about 30 miles from here, but we never felt it. Val’s fact-finding ability discovered that 11% of the world’s earthquakes are in Alaska, including three of the six largest in recorded history, if one source on the internet can be believed. Since 1900, Alaska has had at least one 7.0 or higher every year, and 10,000 total quakes annually. I remember the great 1964 Alaska earthquake because I had been in Alaska the year before, and I think I remember a cover of Life magazine picturing the damage. That was the second most powerful one on record at 9.2 on the moment magnitude scale, which is considered a better measure of seismic power and has replaced the Richter scale. This earthquake killed over 100 people, mostly from tsunamis, one of which had a height of 219 feet near Valdez (how that was measured I have no idea), and the water-sloshing effect was felt as far away as Louisiana and sank several boats there. Some Alaska villages dropped ten feet. Wow.

DAY 44, July 4, Thursday

Today is so far proving to be a rest and relaxation day. We could only schedule two nights at this RV park with hook-up, but they had a vacancy for dry camping fifty yards across the lot, and we hitched up and moved before checkout at 11. We set up the dog pen and put out the awning at least a little way since Val doesn’t like it out very far, if at all. But she is the widely acknowledged international expert in regard to the 732-page official and rigorously enforced Casita Rules and Regulations Manual promulgated by the Casita Union of Lifelong Travellers (CULT for short). I’m still in fourth grade Casita-wise, so I defer.

I had my third shower and shave in three days—three days in a row! I sometimes shower in the camper, as Val almost always does, and sometimes in a park’s shower. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Along the way, I have become a connoisseur of showers, at least at RV parks. I have developed the Rachal Shower Rating Scale (the RSRS), whose stringent standards would dismay almost all of the RV park owners so far encountered. The criteria are: Is the overall bathroom clean? (In the parlance of the shower industry, this is referred to as the cootie factor). Even if reasonably clean, does it seem cheerful and well constructed (as opposed to old and rundown)? What is the shower cost and time limit? (If there is a cost, there is always a time limit). Is it hot enough? Are there hooks to hang clothes on? Are there shelves to put things on? Is there at least one soap dish or corner mini-shelf inside the shower to put necessities on? Is there a handicapped bar? Is the water pressure satisfactory? Are there enough showers for the size of the campground? Is there a low shelf or stool/chair (for sitting and/or putting a foot up for drying, shaving legs, or other such duties)? Is the shower area sufficient and uncramped? I have not yet pilot-tested the instrument, but I am confident that with a few tweaks the RSRS will prove both reliable and valid and will become the standard shower-evaluating instrument used in the best dissertations at the best universities, as well as within the laboratories of the shower industry.

I got some pretty good photos of an eagle at the very top of a tree today at perhaps fifty yards. It’s almost amazing what kind of magnification and resolution you can get even with a little $230 digital camera these days. Thirty years ago you had to spend almost that much—and a good bit more considering inflation—for just a single, heavy, no-name 200 mm lens, equaling just 4x of magnification.

Homer had its July 4 parade which we watched with pleasure. It wasn’t exactly Mardi Gras, but it was just right for a small-town parade.

DAY 45, July 5, Friday

We spent a leisurely morning with ocean and mountains in clear view, with the tide moving out. I typically take Lucy and Leo for their morning constitutionals, along with their other business, as Val attends to morning camper chores—making the beds (she often makes mine), making coffee, a little straightening. In the course of my doggie duties, I chatted with a young woman who told me that so many people up here have dogs partly because of what she called village specials, meaning that dogs in the smaller villages run free and do what dogs do, and thus there are lots of dogs to be had. In these dog conversations I always brag that Val started our spay-neuter clinic as a component of our shelter in Hattiesburg and that between that and our transport program, our shelter is now a no-kill shelter, unlike the bad old days when up to 75% of our animals were euthanized. The woman mentioned that Alaska, somewhat to my surprise given its “last frontier,” pioneer reputation, is no-kill statewide, and any excess animals are transported to other places.

At 11 I departed for a beach hike, knowing that if I did not do so exercise fiend Teresa, known as The Warden, would have me whipped and thrown into solitary for laziness. This way I could leave the car for Val if she wanted to go anywhere—say, a bakery—and I told her I’d be back by 2. So I took the little access trail down to the beach, perhaps 40 feet below the bluff on which we were camped, and began walking into a breeze, one more noticeable than at our campsite, and was glad to have my windbreaker since the temperature was in the 60s. The terrain was varied: hard-packed wet sand for easy walking; dry, deep, pepper-colored sand that was harder; deep, gravelly pebbles that were also harder, and larger softball- and football-sized rocks that were trickier as well. I doubt I walked more than four miles in the three hours. As I walked away from camp, the ocean to my left was well out, and the bluff to my right got higher until it gradually became about a 100 foot cliff. High tide would come right against it later in the afternoon, trapping anyone not paying attention and not able to climb a nearly sheer cliff. I turned around and soon watched an eagle surfing on the wind, seeming to patrol the cliff heights that were his domain.

I got back at 2 and Val and I went to a bakery for lunch and then drove back onto the Spit hoping for the eagle we saw yesterday perched on top of a house. Not there. We frittered away the afternoon until I left a little before 7 to go to a tiny little theater on the Spit where an excellent production of Much Ado About Nothing was performed. Val chose to pass. There may have been 40 people in the audience, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was home a little before 11 and had a bite to eat and soon to bed.

DAY 46, July 6, Saturday

After four nights, we left Homer heading back up the one road that comes down the peninsula and ends there. A look at a road map of Alaska immediately shows how few major roads there are, virtually all two-lane except for some three-lane sections for passing and four-lanes around Fairbanks and Anchorage. But remarkably, the western half of Alaska is indeed frontier; there are no roads. They do not exist except for one or two little gravel 10 mile roads from one village to another, or the three short roads leading out of Nome on the Seward Peninsula that end 50 or so miles later at three other little towns. It took me a little while to realize that the western 60% of the state is virtually road-less. In fact, except for Highway 11 going up to the top of the state, the roads are pretty much concentrated in the southeast corner of the state.

We drove back up through Ninilchik, Clam Gulch, Kasilof (the Russian names still persist from when the only non-native inhabitants were Russian; buying “Seward’s Icebox” from Russia for $7 million in 1867 was surely the best deal we ever made with those wily Russians), Moose Pass, and a few other such places on our way to Seward, which involved going up the peninsula, then eastward, and then back down. But as we drove southward, the air became increasingly smoky and grey, and then we saw plumes of smoke on the mountainsides. It was certainly bearable, but it was unpleasant, and 23 miles from Seward we pulled off the road to assess. Seward had been a definite destination all along, but we decided we didn’t want to camp in a smoky haze, and so we turned around. After an hour or so, now heading northwest to Anchorage, suddenly, almost magically, the sun emerged from the haze, the sky was blue, and the mountains, which earlier had been peeking through the blue-greyness, emerged clear and sharp.

Val connected with our new Virginia friends, the ones we first met in South Dakota, and arranged for us to join them in Anchorage at the Golden Nugget RV Park. I expected a welcoming committee of 20 Vegas dancing girls, but no. We had leftovers for supper, had our fifth shower in five days—we positively sparkle with cleanliness—and joined our friends in their behemoth camper (the main awning alone costs what our entire camper cost) for a pleasant evening of conversation and wine.

DAY 47, July 7, Sunday

Still no Vegas dancing girls at the Golden Nugget, but plenty of smoke as we got up this morning. I smelled it as soon as I stepped out, and it was even slightly visible at ground level in the park as a bluish, light fog. Our immediate inclination was to pack up and leave; our next-door neighbors, a fifty-ish couple from Holland whom I talked with upon our arrival, had already left. We did not un-hitch overnight, so all we had to do was unhook the power cord, stow all loose things in the camper, take the dogs for their stroll, and go.

We made another somewhat difficult decision as we left Anchorage, initially heading for Valdez. Supposedly there are 118 fires in Alaska right now (which, for all I know, may be normal for this time of year), and Val said it first: I think I’ve seen about enough of Alaska. This seems almost heretical; our friends from the night before, living considerably more comfortably, won’t even make it up to Denali for four more weeks. They seem to like to land somewhere and stay put a good bit more than I and Val like to do. Valdez was on our itinerary, but we decided to forgo it after all and avoid any smoke it might be having and make our way on back to Canada. We are in no rush, but I know that we are both looking forward to several days either in or around Glacier and Kalispell, then Yellowstone, then Tetons.

So we headed east on Highway 1 and then north on Highway 4, where we got gas and ate a modest lunch in Glennallen, a tiny burg at the intersection of Highways 1 and 4. There are only eleven highways in the whole state, conveniently numbered 1 through 11. We soon faced a fork in the road: go north on 4 to Delta Junction and then southeast to Tok, or take the Tok cutoff and head straight to Tok continuing on 1. The latter saves over 100 miles, but we had earlier heard almost unanimous advice to avoid the cutoff as a very bad road. So we chose alternative one, and soon enough wondered if it could really be better than the Tok cutoff. I drove the first leg on scenic but mountainous, skinny roads with a good bit of oncoming traffic, half of which were RVs of some description. Val took over for a while and her stretch was straighter and flatter, but mostly disturbed by extreme roughness and frost heaves, which make whatever you are towing bounce like a rodeo bull. Still, it was pretty, and I particularly enjoyed all the wildflowers along the shoulders, especially the unfairly and harshly named fireweed, a lovely one- to three-foot tall violet flower. I finished out the day at under 50 mph due to the frost heaves. Val figured if we get off this road with all the camper rivets holding we will have done well.