Twenty-four years ago, this group–Dave, Paula, Joyce, Paul–set out on a trip to Alaska. We made it as far as Denali when we got word of a death in Dave’s family. Before we caught our train to Fairbanks, we had the morning in Denali with time for a short hike and a sled dog demonstration.
From Fairbanks Dave and I caught a flight back to be with his family. My folks continued on with the scheduled trip.
Mom and Dad sent us postcards from each stop along the way. And a few weeks later we received a photo album with captions like the one above.
Life was hectic for all of us back then, so it took a long time for us to plan to do it again. This is the week–the same itinerary, almost exactly the same dates. We’ll miss Mom and her bear bell!
I plan to write a few posts along the way. Not sure how that will go since I (for once) am not going to carry my computer. And, except for this one, I will only be posting about the trip on my blog at https://paulanixon.com
If you have a spare moment, check it out, and feel free to leave me a comment.
Valdez, AK. Elevation 98 feet. Monday July 22, 2024-High 50s/Overcast and rainy. Sunrise: 4:55 am/Sunset: 10:46 pm. 17 hours and 50 minutes of daylight.
Valdez, AK
2024
The small boat was painted greenish blue with an outline of a seal sketched in black on the starboard side. It was docked in a slip at the Valdez harbor and at 23 feet was a little longer than the Shasta trailer we camped in when I was a kid. We found this unusual lodging on Air BnB and booked it for two nights. It slept three and didn’t have running water.
Before we boarded the boat, we took in the view and checked out the harbor facilities. It was late Sunday afternoon, and the fishing boats were coming in. Most seemed to be personal or charter boats.
Near the harbormaster’s office was a public area with long counters and overhead water hoses with spray attachments for fish cleaning. Heads, guts, and bones were washed onto a slide area that ended in a chute that emptied into a container in the harbor. A row of attentive gulls and crows (some of my only bird sightings while in Alaska) kept a close watch on the activities ready to snatch whatever they could.
A whiteboard hanging nearby kept a daily and overall tally of the summer’s fish derbies which included halibut and silver salmon.
The harbor and adjacent village are situated on the Valdez Arm of Prince WIlliam Sound (PWS) in the northeast portion of the sound. We came in over the Chugach Mountains via the Richardson Highway and in the final thirty miles we crossed the summit of Thompson Pass (at 2805 feet it averages 500 inches of snow per year) and saw waterfalls and glaciers at almost every curve in the road.
My reading during the trip included the memoir The Heart of the Sound: An Alaskan Paradise Found and Nearly Lost by Marybeth Holleman. She describes the location of Prince William Sound:
It is a place of convergence–the geographic center for Alaska and the Pacific, where the Arctic to the north, Aleutians to the west, and Inside Passage to the south all intersect.
Holleman arrived in Alaska a few years prior to the Exxon Valdez oil spill and spent those years and many after the disaster kayaking or boating on the sound and camping on its beaches. The spill spread oil throughout the sound killing thousands of fish and animals. Her story recounts not only the toll on marine life but also on the humans who lived, worked, and recreated in this unique and pristine environment.
The timeline (see below) provided by NOAA was thumbtacked on a bulletin board at the harbormaster’s building. It shows the status of PWS species recovery 25 years after the spill. Another ten years has now passed, and I wonder if anything has changed especially for those on the bottom row.
In the evening, we returned to the boat where we had loaded our backpacks and suitcases. The sunny evening and a big salmon dinner kept us going even though we were all fighting colds that I caught first and had now moved on to Dave and Dad. We found the accommodations challenging but not impossible. A bench, one folding chair and, a big cooler with four cupholders was our living room. An extension cord gave us all a place to charge our phones and one bright light, but we never did figure out how to turn on the string of party lights.
By morning fog and rain had moved in and weren’t budging. Getting out and exploring wasn’t appealing so we went from a coffee shop to the library to the visitor center to a Chinese restaurant for dinner trying to stay warm and dry. I connected my phone to the public Wi-Fi at each place we stopped but was never able to upload the photos for my previous post about fireweed and white spruce. I finally conceded defeat and decided to finish these posts once I returned to my dry dining room table.
Back on the damp boat for our second night we consoled ourselves that it was still better than sleeping in a tent. And I said, “If we survive this, we’ll look back on it as an adventure.” But I’m not sure I convinced anyone. Everyone’s spirits seemed to lift a bit the next morning when we carefully disembarked the boat through its small door for the last time.
I confess I was also beginning to feel melancholy about the trip. Since our first brief trip to Alaska back in 2000 I had looked forward to returning, hoping that we would be able to make the trip with Dad, and now it was almost over.
So, it wasn’t long before I began thinking about a return visit somewhere down the road. I’m still not sold on the Inside Passage cruises that are so popular but maybe a flight to Anchorage and another trip on the Alaska Railroad–south to Seward with a with a stop in Whittier to get a look at the other side of Prince WIlliam Sound. And maybe this time I’ll see some tufted puffins.
From the window of the Denali Star, we saw our first stand of fireweed (Epibolium angustifolium). The tour guide on the train pointed out that the plant blooms from the bottom up and told us a local legend claims that summer is over when the blooms reach the top.
I later read that the plant is called fireweed because it is one of the first plants to bloom after a fire. It seems to grow everywhere in Alaska. I saw it from Denali to Fairbanks to Tok to Valdez and back in Anchorage, mostly wild but sometimes cultivated. By the end of our trip, it seemed to me that it was as ubiquitous as sunflowers are here in the western part of the Lower Forty-Eight.
Photo: Fireweed, Denali NP, AK 2024
Two weeks before our mid-July trip to Denali National Park, the Riley Fire started near the visitor center which is just across the road from the Alaska Railroad station. Within hours the park was shut down. The fire burned 432 acres but was nearly 100% contained by July 10th when the park re-opened, and train service resumed. We saw stands of charred trees within the park, and as we departed on the train to Fairbanks, we saw areas that had burned right next to the tracks.
As Denali faded in the distance, I wondered how long it would be before the dormant, deeply buried seeds of the fireweed would sprout and make their showy comeback in the newly burned areas of Denali.
While visiting Denali I went on a short hike led by a Youth Conservation Corps ranger named Izzy. Just outside the back door of the visitor center was a stand of white spruce (Picea glauca) where we walked. The trees are tall, skinny conifers with spire-shaped tops. Like fireweed they grow in much of Alaska.
Sixteen-year-old Izzy’s enthusiasm for her topic was contagious as she talked about the importance of white spruce to animals and humans. Red squirrels (one of whom was keeping a close eye on us) build middens from the cones which provide both shelter and food. Moose browse the trees in winter when it’s hard to find other food sources. Athabaskans rely on all parts of the tree for a multitude of uses including shelter, medicine, and fuel. Before the group dispersed Izzy suggested that we all think about our role in protecting the forest.
We drove through miles and miles of white spruce on our trip from Fairbanks to Tok. I later learned about black spruce (Picea marianna) that looks (at least to untrained eyes) similar to white spruce. Both are widely distributed in Alaska but thrive in different conditions. So, I’m guessing some, or maybe many, of those white spruce I saw were actually black spruce.
The trees pictured at right are white spruce. They appear to range from about forty feet to sixty feet in height. It’s hard for me to guess how old they are since I’ve read they can grow anywhere from three to twelve inches in a year.
Alaska has always been about mountains to me–range after range of snow-covered peaks. But after this trip that image in my mind has been replaced with forests of stately spruce trees and shrubs filled with pinkish purple flowers blooming in the sun at their feet.
Photo: Bearberry Cabin, Tok, AK 2024
Postscript: Right after I published this post I discovered that the next chapter in the book I was reading about Alaska was titled “Fireweed”. Here the writer compares the plant to its namesake:
Fire: with weedlike tenacity, it ignites a fire of green on barren ground. Fire: it blazes across mountainsides in mid- and late summer, blooming profusely and then bursting white cotton-swathed seedpods that look like wisps of smoke as they quiver and release to the winds.
The book is called The Heart of the Sound: An Alaskan Paradise Found and Nearly Lost by Marybeth Holleman.
Denali National Park. Elevation 1746 feet at the Visitor Center. Thursday July 18, 2024-High 50s/Partly Cloudy Sunrise: 4:40 am/Sunset: 11:43 pm. 19 hours and 4 minutes of daylight.
On this trip to Alaska just like the one in 2000, we started our trip in Anchorage and took the Alaska Railroad to Denali National Park and then on to Fairbanks. We spent one night in Denali and had had several hours before our train the next day. That gave us time for a short hike and ranger talk near the visitor center and then a bus trip over to the sled dog facility to see the Denali Park dogs and a demo.
It reminded me of the dog we had when I was a kid. Her name was Punkin, Punk for short. She was black with pumpkin-colored eyebrows and chest markings. Dad told me that Mom picked her out at the pound at Fort Richardson in Anchorage where they were stationed. Dad and I recently found Punk’s first rabies certificate, signed by the Army veterinarian, in his old wooden footlocker.
Punk was still a puppy when I showed up and she wasn’t happy that all of the attention shifted to the new baby. She took to pulling my diapers off the clothesline. Eventually we would become buddies, but she was always a backyard dog, and I’m afraid we never paid enough attention to her.
The dogs at Denali are freight dogs, bred to pull heavy loads–they haul everything from supplies for trail building projects to equipment for scientific experiments. Built for work, they have long legs, big compact paws (to minimize ice balls), and thick coats. Although the AKC doesn’t formally recognize the Alaskan Husky, they are a distinct breed.
The Denali dogs welcomed us with wagging tails. Many of them came close enough to be petted by the day’s second wave of visitors (there would be total of three demos that day). Once they heard the wheeled cart being readied for the demo their attention shifted, and the howls started. They all wanted to participate in the short run, but only four of the twenty or so dogs would be chosen.
Punk died when I was fifteen, our last tie to those brief years in Alaska. I saw a dog at Denali yesterday with the same eyebrows and remembered our sweet old family dog.
We left Alaska before my first birthday. It was a long car trip; Punk and I rode together in the backseat of the blue ’56 Ford all the way to Kansas.
7/20/24 Tok, AK. 1635′ elevation. Sunrise: 4:13 am Sunset: 11:00 pm. 18 hours and 47 minutes of daylight.
I am behind on my notes and my posts. And I seem to have caught a cold. But our clothes are clean!
We spent two nights in Tok, a small town about 200 miles east of Fairbanks. It’s on the Alaska Highway (milepost 1313) close to where Dad worked on a survey crew during the summers of 1953 and 1954. More about that later.
I like going to a local laundry when traveling. It’s a good way to slow down and get a better feel for real life in an unfamiliar place. This one was at a big RV park (most of Tok’s business comes from visitors passing through) but seemed on Saturday morning to be frequented by locals.
Every other Saturday Tok has a market with a food truck, crafts, and treats, but our visit was on an off week. Even the visitor center was closed, not open on the weekends.
The day was sunny and warm, our nicest one yet. So once the laundry was folded and put away, it was time to get out on the highway to see what looked familiar to Dad after 70 years.
This one is a slow read but well worth the effort. I read it once before and have only made it through the first of three chapters/books this time around.
So much detail here, it’s hard to choose a favorite paragraph. From bush pilots getting lost to grizzly bears that can be shooed to this bit about trees:
“The forest around us, to the extent that it could be called forest, consisted of bands of spruce and cottonwood. Occasionally, it made sallies up the hillsides onto protected slopes or into dry ravines, but mainly it pointed north like an arrow, and gradually it widened as we moved downstream. Close to the river edge, much of the way, were clumps of willow and alder, backed by the taller trees, which in turn had bands of alder backing them, before the woods gave way altogether to open, rising ground–to the lichens, the sedges and mosses of the high tundra. The leaves of alder chewed to break out the sap, relieve itching when rubbed on mosquito bites. The forest Eskimos make red dyes from alder bark–American green alder, the only species that grows so far north. Willow, as a genus, is hardier. The Sitka spruce is the state tree, in recognition of its commercial distinction, for Sitka spruce is the most negotiable thing that grows from roots in Alaska. It grows only in the south, however, and while the Sitka spruce goes off to the sawmill, the willow vegetates the state. There are only a hundred and thirty-three species of trees and shrubs in all Alaska, and thirty-three of those are willows. . . “
Amazing how much there is to learn in this half, yes, half a paragraph: there are only 133 species of trees in Alaska; Sitka spruce is the state tree; and you can chew on alder leaves and apply the paste to relieve the itching from mosquito bites–that’s the one that caught my eye. I have yet to meet my first mosquito in Alaska and have my cortisone cream in my suitcase, but now I know.
In preparation for my trip to Alaska I reread Seth Kantner’s novel Ordinary Wolves. It’s about a boy named Cutuk growing up in the Alaskan wilderness. This time around I especially enjoyed his vivid writing about wildlife. Wolves, of course, but also his description of the life of a bull moose, who had spent the winter hanging around his igloo “for company in the lonely winter, the way moose often did.”
And now it’s autumn and the big moose has been killed for its enormous rack, little more than a trophy, and Cutuk wishes the hunter,
” . . .could feel the other 364 days a year the moose had fought to live. How it felt to survive birth in the willows while brown bears waited; winter stands beside his mother against the wolves; survive years alone in wading deep snows, the willows buried, the tundra howling wind; survive the spring crust that dropped moose to their ribs while it supported big hungry bears; and the summer insanity of mosquitoes driving him to his eyeballs into water. All for the cool sweet fall and the chance of mating.”
On my last trip to Alaska in the summer of 2000 the only wildlife I saw was the above pictured moose. She was grazing next to the road, just being a moose. It was thrilling and was the highlight of an all too short trip.
Twenty or so years ago Mom and Dad sorted through boxes of old family photos and scanned about a hundred of them, added labels, and put them on a cd for me. This is one of my favorites. It was taken in front of their living quarters on Fort Richardson in Anchorage. where Dad served for two years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Since it was peacetime (between the Korean and Vietnam Wars) Mom was able to go with him.
Last year I wrote this chronicle of that piece of our family history, and it was published in a military anthology titled Holes in Our Hearts. It was a fun project (I hope Dad enjoyed it as much as I did) and gave me an excuse to ask him lots questions about life in Alaska in the 50s. It also spurred us on to plan a trip north.
Dad, Dave, and I are leaving for Anchorage tomorrow morning. We’ll spend a week traveling to Denali National Park, Fairbanks, and Tok where Dad worked for two summers during college for the Alaska Road Commission.
On our return trip to Anchorage, we’ll stop for a couple of days in the town of Valdez on Prince William Sound.
I hope to see some wildlife along the way, so stay tuned.
My first visit this year to the Albuquerque BioPark was a few weeks ago on a sunny April Saturday. Lots of other folks had the same idea so I couldn’t stand and watch the resident Mexican wolves as long as I would have liked. I did get this short video before I had to give up my viewing spot to another visitor.
While taking photos a little girl next to me asked, “What’s he doing?” but she was not satisfied with my response, “Oh, just walking around.” She thought about it a minute and came up with a more satisfactory answer, “He’s looking for prey.”
Although it was a little early for pups, I was hoping to get an idea of whether or not there might be a new litter at the zoo this spring. What I saw was three adult wolves in the public display.
In an email exchange with Lynn Tupa, the BioPark manager, I learned that Archer (born at the zoo in 2019) and two females were the wolves I saw. Four sibling wolves are also at the zoo but are off-exhibit and are not visible to the public. No breeding was recommended for any of these wolves so no pups this year. To prevent unintended pregnancy, female wolves are implanted with birth control.
A few days after my visit, the ABQ BioPark issued this press release which included exciting news for the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program–a new large, off-exhibit habitat will be built, construction starting this spring. Once complete it will enable the BioPark to increase its efforts in the wolf surrogacy program. Surrogacy is a big part of the recovery effort and focuses on breeding Mexican wolves in captivity and placing pups into the dens of wild wolves to be raised along with their own pups.
The most recent survey of Mexican wolves living in the wild indicated a population of 257 wolves.
A little early since we have yet to celebrate Halloween but here’s the PDF version of an op-ed I wrote for Veterans Day that was published in the Santa Fe New Mexican.
