It's Just a Long, Long Way to Alaska!

July 12, 2011


It was a grueling travel day:  three back-to-back two-plus to more than four hour long flights.  Thankfully we had no complications! Bottom line,  when you start from Texas, or really anywhere except farwest Canada--it's just a long, long way to Alaska! 

We arrived in Anchorage at 10:30 p.m. Palin hour; 1:30 a.m. Perry time.  It was strange to deplane into such a bustling airport so "late at night".  My arrivals to Austin at this hour would mean encountering near-empty terminals, lights dimmed low, one's footsteps clicking on the granite floor as you make your long way to baggage claim. Perhaps there might be a lone janitor to nod your head to.  But, not so here; the shops and bars are all still open as are the worker-people's faces as they do their chores all bright-eyed and seemingly fatigue-free.
Jim rounded us up and stuffed us and our too-much-lugguge into the Jeep that normally just faithfully tags along after their RV.  We drove to a generic, sardine-packed RV park called the Gold Nugget and getting there was like driving down any ol’ anywhere-USA-type-city street with a  Barnes and Noble here, and a Starsbuck there, here a Sears, there an Auto Zone, everywhere a Village Inn.
Feels like April temp-wise to this burned up Julyified Texan. When we arrived it was light outside, not sunshiney light but a light gray.  Sometime during the night when I awoke the light outside was still gray.  And still now at 6:30 in the morning, I'm lounging in my gray-hoodie, gray sweat pants and gray woolly socks and I blend right in with the dull, gray light that photographers would probably call "poor" and not worthy of the effort of capturing a print.
Jim has friends who have raised their families here and they tell of their lives in the summer as “the season of the sense of lost time”; people forget to eat dinner until 10 p.m. don't notice that their kids are still out playing and its midnight.  
All my impressions of Alaska, thus far have all been received through very blurred eyes and from high above; seeing the fjords, inlets and bays of the Alaskan Marine Highway and witnessing the un-peopled expanse of the dark-shadowed mountains.  The immensity or it makes me believe that the wilderness is still quite safe.  

Today I'll be checking "the last fronteir" at RV eye-level as we roll Mom and Jim's Texas-plated "wheel-estate" toward the Kenai.
Fare thee well and I’ll do the same,

Ellen