Anchorage and Anoraks

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Dear friends,

Much has happened since we last updated this blog! We’ve travelled by helicopter, small plane, big plane, bus, boat, kayak, bike and dog sled! We’ve looked down on the highest peak in America. We’ve seen whales, seals, otters and sealions; bears, moose and wolves; puffins and eagles. Not to mention, of course, the whole wedding thing!

We have photos of all this and more, far too many to post here, so we’ve picked a few favourites for now, and in the meantime we’ll try to keep this brief in the hope that we’ll get round to actually posting something before we get home next week!

So let’s start with Juneau, where we were married. We were there for almost a week, staying at the fabulous Pearsons Pond a real home away from home, better in fact because this home has kayaks, bikes, fresh baked bread, and cheese and wine every afternoon!

We can’t thank Diane and Stephen Pearson enough for their wonderful hospitality, as the picture caption shows. We'd also like to give a special mention to Paul, who helps run the B&B. Paul and his wife took us out for a 'rehearsal dinner' on the day we didn't get married! Pearsons Pond is in a great location, but it's the warmth, kindness and generosity of Diane, Stephen and Paul that make it such a unique place. We'll definitely be back!

Our stay in Juneau was everything we had hoped for, ok, so the weather stopped us getting married on the glorious 12th, but thankfully the 14th was, as the wedding pictures show, a glorious day in itself. Even the false starts were fun, we started each day with champagne in the outdoors hot-tub, and made bets as to whether we’d be married later in the day. There’s always a bright side, and at least now I can use the sound of shotguns on the 12th as a stern reminder to get an anniversary card!

Juneau is the capital city of Alaska, despite being much smaller than Anchorage, and despite the fact you can’t get there by road. The airport is one of the busiest places I’ve seen for light aircraft, and it even had a parallel water runway for floatplanes! There are so many helicopters that I can’t think of a decent collective noun, but, I’d guess there may be a ‘whirligig’ of helicopters. Juneau is actually the 2nd busiest heliport in the world. Downtown is geared towards tourists from the large cruise ships, we often saw 4-5 docked at the same time, each ship carrying up to 2000 wallets full of tourist dollars.

From Juneau we took a half hour flight North to Glacier Bay, a National Park crammed with glaciers and wildlife. As we boarded the plane we got a standing ovation! I was carrying my wedding bouquet and the attendants announced that we’d got married the day before! On the next flight, up to Anchorage, the flight attendants gave us free champagne after asking about the bouquet, too! Top tip, will have to get some flowers for the transatlantic flight on Friday, maybe they’ll upgrade us! (It's mental really - Security take my suncream off me, but flying with a large wet bunch of flowers is no problem!)

As I was saying, Glacier Bay, crammed full of wildlife and glaciers… and drizzle and mist. Ah, the Alaskan weather hits us again! We did get pretty close to sea otters (possibly the cutest animals on Earth!) and sealions, and saw wolves and bears on the shore. We eventually reached the face of the Marjerie Glacier, a mile wide, and 300’ high, this is a tidewater glacier crumbling into the ocean. Our little boat sat bobbing in a sea of icebergs, listening to the groaning, creaking cliff of ice in front of us, all of us desperately willing a giant chunk of ice to calve off the face, like in the documentaries. We did get a small avalanche, but not quite the dramatic separation we’d hoped for!

From there, via the free champagne, to Anchorage; where our good friend Fife kindly let us use his flat and car in his absence, cheers mate! Anchorage is a very cool town. It was also, while we were there, a very wet town. The wettest summer in twenty years apparently; or maybe thirty depending on who you talk to. There was A Lot Of Rain. So much so that the only road north out of Anchorage was washed away in three places! It was five days before it was reopened to limited traffic.

The salmon were running though, and fishing is a good wetweather activity, so on the Friday Al found himself up Ship Creek - without a paddle - just a pair of waders and a fishing rod. He caught two big silver salmon, but had to throw them back (allegedly!!) since they were snagged in the side rather than caught in the mouth. Al adds: The water was completely brown with mud from all the rain - the poor fish were unable to see my hooks until they hit them. I was gutted - they weren't!

The planned trip to Denali National Park had to be cancelled because of the road closure mentioned above. We weren’t put off though and drove as far up the road as we could, making it to Talkeetna, about 120miles south of the park. There we were lucky, for a short time there was a break in the weather, and the clouds were low enough for a light aircraft to get through and above, so we treated ourselves to a flightseeing tour around the summit of Mt McKinley, at 20,300ft it’s the highest peak in the USA. Flying around and over these beautiful peaks was an incredible highlight (even for a jaded old flier like Al!)

So our clouds surely did have a silver lining! Had the road not been washed away we would have gone to the National Park, got up at 5am for an eight hour bus ride into a misty wilderness, and not have been able to see the mountain though the clouds! Instead we flew up and over into the blue sky above!

The 120 miles of road from Anchorage to Seward is hailed as one of the most scenic drives in Alaska… unless of course it’s raining, and as usual it was. The bright spot we did find was a nature reserve for typical Alaskan animals - bears, moose, caribou and a smelly little fox. We continued to Seward, where we toured the Sealife Center, and saw lots of sealife(!), including puffins, seals, and one very large grumpy sealion. That evening we ate dinner with a view of the marina, and were surprised to see two large non-grumpy sealions swimming right in front of us. One of them was eating, shaking his head to tear a fish apart, we were only a couple of yards away and got some great footage!

The next morning finally brought some good weather (wow, blue skies!), so we embarked on a guided kayak tour of Thumb Cove. The local newspaper had shown a picture of a dead whale, accidentally harpooned by the bow of a passing cruise ship, we found the remains washed up on one of the beaches. The paddling was good, but the views of high mountains with hanging glaciers were spectacular. We paddled over thousands of salmon, all jostling to swim up one of the rivers. Two fishermen stood waist deep in the middle of the stream, I guess they were fishing for sport, not that it was very sporting. We stopped on a beach and walked along a stream to a small waterfall, eating wild blueberries and salmonberries all the way. Kayaking is great, I think we’ll both be joining the Lossie Kayak Club as soon as we get back to the UK.

Hobo Jim is a legend in Alaska, a folk/country singer/songwriter who rose from hobo to become The Official Balladeer for Alaska. We were lucky enough to catch a performance when we got back to Anchorage. He had the audience in stitches, many of whom had followed him for years. Some of Hobo Jim’s tunes are still buzzing around in my head, songs about life as a fisherman, cannery worker, the Iditarod dog race, and my personal favourite “Fishing for chickens” a hilarious song about red-neck fishing when there ain’t no place to fish except the yard. Even the locals get fed up with the weather sometimes, Hobo quipped that Fall (Autumn) was his favourite season, which is great cos it started on May 15th this year!

We’re writing this update from Smithy & Karens fantastic pad on the coast about halfway between Seattle and Vancouver. The area is beautiful with pacific sunset views in one direction, and snow capped mountains in another - it’s slightly different here to Goldsboro. Last night we attended the Navy Officers Ball at NAS Whidbey Island, which was loads of fun, and a final chance to give the kilt an airing in the USA (Ali was very excited to have a placecard in her new name!). We’ll be back in the UK in less than a week, after short stops in North Carolina and Washington DC. This will probably be our last blog entry for this trip, but who knows where our next trip will be...

Looking forward to catching up with all our friends and family in the homeland!

Much love and thanks again for all the good wishes and congratulations. Wish you were all here! (OK, not really, it is our honeymoon!!)

Ali and Al Read

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Photos

Are you looking at me?
A moose stares down a dogwalker and friends in an Anchorage city park

The wonderful Diane and Stephen Pearson
The gracious owners and hosts of Pearson's Pond. Diane - wedding organiser, celebrant, and generous champagne pourer; Stephen - bread maker, kayak expert, photographer and lawyer. Thank-you for making our wedding and our stay so memorable!

Chief - it's all in the eyes
We spent a great afternoon at the kennels of Vern Halter, a local dog sledding champion. He has around 55 adult dogs, and another 12 puppies, it gets pretty noisy!

Up Ship Creek
Anchorage has a salmon stream flowing through downtown - it gets pretty crowded!

'Can anybody fly a plane?!'
Oxygen masks are worn as standard in a tiny plane flying over 20,000ft mountains!

Kayaking under a blue Alaskan sky!
Adam, our guide, in Thumb Cove

Cuuute!!!
Iain and Mhairi, this one's for you! ;-) We had to come all the way to Alaska for Ali to see some otters!