Alaska - The Reason

 

The Reason

I’ve been putting off writing this episode of our trip until it ends, but as endings tend to do, this one has ended.

The Alaskan weather today is exactly what we expected.  It’s heavily overcast and chilly, the sky densely clouded, and Mount Drum is hidden far behind miles of dark gray fog that has settled in for a long, damp and dreary presence.  The mosquitoes don’t care and are taking it out on us.

As most of you know, I “lost” my daughter Jeni in 2002.  She wasn’t misplaced. She died.  It will be 20 years in just a few months. Long before that, in 1991, she ran off to Alaska for a summer of fun, dig the land and relish her life.  She and I corresponded by letter mail in those days.  Can you imagine how much I wish I had kept every letter?  I can. I did not.

My ulterior motive for this Alaskan summer was to connect with Jeni in ways I had not done before. My wish was granted.  I’ve felt her beside me as we drive these empty roads, walk the scratched out trails and enjoy the friendly and pleasant nature of so many people we’ve met here.

My emotions have been on edge more often than not, and it’s a feeling I’m not used to.  Soon after we arrived in Copper, we learned our dear friend Dean had suffered the untimely death of his brother.  I called him with condolences and found myself weeping over the passing of a man I’d never met.  I’ve felt my eyes welling up here and there listening to people talk about their children. With a small group of fellow veterans and a slightly larger audience in attendance, I participated in raising the flag to full mast at noon on Memorial Day. My voice cracked as I made some brief remarks in honor of those who had died serving our country.

It's no surprise that Jeni was a wild child and free spirit from the start until the very ending of her short life.  She was born at the very apex of the '60s revolution, the spawn of love struck teenagers without a whit of parenting skills. Jeni's lullabies were listening to Cass Elliot belting out ballads from the living room Kenwood.  She knew the words to “Nights In White Satin” before she learned her alphabet. She saw Jimi Hendrix when she was two. Jeni told me the first car she could remember us owning was our 1963 VW microbus.  And I can recall driving her to parks and playgrounds in that old wagon.  I wore a Nehru jacket and had a full head of hair.  We dressed Jeni in striped denim bell bottoms, madras tops and leather headbands. Jeni always found the steepest slide, fastest merry go round, and wanted to be pushed so high on the swings that the chains would slacken at the top of each climb. By the time Jeni became a teenager, she was well equipped to emulate the undisciplined, random and live for today lifestyle in which she grew up. I encouraged her to do it.

And that takes me back to the reason I wanted to spend so much time in Alaska.  I didn’t want just a trip. I needed more than a cruise stop. It could not be a vacation.  I wanted to live here, work here, suck it up and experience life in this place as she did.  I was hoping to connect with my daughter again. I wanted to feel her close to me. I needed to know that she was still more to me than a memory.  And it happened.  Jeni is. She’s not was.

I’ll let Jeni close out my Alaskan story as if it were hers with this letter she wrote me in 1991.  She was 23 and free.  How very much I wish it had been me.

July 22, 1991

Hi Dad.  I'm still just surviving here in Kenai. I finally found work on a dock pitching fish out of boats. It's only part-time, only when boats come in - which is not often enough. The work here won't be lasting too much longer either. It's quite the bummer and though the work and money situation is not as planned, I'm having a pretty decent - if not different - summer here on the coast of the Kenai peninsula. At the moment I'm relaxing in a small camper trailer with four of my newly acquired friends. We're in Kasilof, a town without a town, about 25 miles outside of Kenai off a gravel roadside. Today we've been fighting complete boredom with complete insanity. We're all quite the artists and music junkies. So after a vicious game of poker using pieces of paper as chips, I drew a different picture on each new chip acquired.  Others followed suit and soon we were all quite absorbed in drawing our different interpretations of reality.  Been listening to various alternative artists today.  Eating fried biscuits with honey and rolling Bugle Boy cigarettes. Times are hard.  Haven't had a dime for a week. My daily luxuries of Kool cigs and a few coffees is now only a dream of previous times. Raw top ramen has been my best meal this week.  Wow.  I myself feel shocked at the limits I've overcome in this eternally long period of life.

What's next? A question in my mind whenever I'm not thinking of my recent romance. The two thoughts are like night and day. One vague, confusing and unstable, the other bright, fun-loving and true. As mentioned, the carnival was not the right choice. I came back to Kenai after 4 days. I plan to leave Kenai on the first weekend in August to attend the Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival in Talkeetna. It's the best thing in Alaska to do overall. I'm not sure if I'll come back to Kenai or not. Like I said the money is nil and I don't even know if I'll be leaving Alaska by Summer's end. If I do manage to get out before October I'll take the ferry down to Seattle and then hitch back to San Fran and stay with Lilly for a while to get it together. 

But who knows? Anything could happen. Life continues on cycling and turning me in different directions as each new day begins with unlimited possibilities.

Well just thought I'd write a short note from the land of green bears and purple mountain skies.

Hope all is well and to hear from you again soon.

Alaska - Week 4

 

Gone Fishin'

With our off street parking secured at the Bear Claw, we’ve gained even more confidence in running down to Valdez for sightseeing, dining and fun.  I mention the ride as a short one, but it’s actually about two hours on a mostly deserted highway, over a mountain pass and a full time watch for both driver and copilot keeping a lookout for wildlife on the roadway.  Sunday night we encountered three moose and had to creep through heavy fog going over the pass.

Last week, we braved the trip to take a small ship out to view Columbia Glacier. We parked Wanda at the Bear Paw for $5 and felt good about the plates being off the street.  I had expected the glacier tour to be my big news of the day, but the late afternoon brought a much bigger story.

We had dinner at a Thai food truck and decided it was the best Thai in town.  It’s the only Thai in town.  Jared, the company driver, met us briefly for a chat, then we spotted two young ladies from the Lodge we call the “Alabama Girls”.  The pair, Sayleen and Tawny, might weigh in at 160 pounds if both were on the scale.  They are lanky ladies, thin as rails, have deep southern accents and came to the show with two equally scrawny young rebels to keep them warm and entertained.  We were surprised to see any of them galavanting around Valdez, knowing none had transportation.  That mystery was resolved when we bumped into the whole gang, plus a few hangers-on partying heartily in the back of a U-Haul truck in the Safeway parking lot.  The group had chipped in to rent the truck, threw some chairs in the back from the lodge and scooted down to Valdez for a night (ok, day) on the town.  Four had crammed in on the big front seat; the rest of the gang apparently hung on for dear life, dodging sliding restaurant chairs in the back of the truck for the wild and bumpy ride over Thompson Pass and into Valdez.  Oh to be young!

But two days later, our Alabama girls and their Bama Boys were on the way to Anchorage, escorted by the company security officer.  Apparently they had been playing hooky in Valdez and the party continued back at the lodge until early the next morning. of the rowdy revelers found their way to work for their shifts.

Susan and I climbed into the truck briefly and learned that word had spread that our Lodge would be closing for the season in just two weeks. The reason given at the meeting we missed, was that we were too far removed from medical facilities on the chance we might be overwhelmed with covid positives.  Susan and I know the occupancy rate, can guess at the costs of being open and know our arithmetic.  Our night auditor friend said she was called in out of bed on the first of the month to get the final numbers up to corporate.  The shut down notice was received the very next morning.  We’ve concluded the official line to be a line.  Looks like we will be out of work on the 16th unless we take them up on moving to another lodge, and we are not inclined toward that direction.

We drove back to Valdez Sunday night and were on a fishing boat before six the next morning.  It took over three hours for the captain to get us out to his fishing spots in the Gulf of Alaska.  We fished for six hours and both of us caught our limit of two halibut and four rockfish.  We also snagged some other fish that did not count toward our quota and tossed back some yummy looking cod, unable to bring them onboard as they are out of season.  Susan’s grin was as big as I’ve ever seen it.  I think I had more fun watching her than catching fish.  Another three hours back crashing and banging over every wave back to Valdez were followed by visiting the “cutters” and packing house.  We are shipping 40 pounds of fish home.

Back from the trip, we resolved that we will return home rather than go to another lodge.  We signed up specifically and only for this location due to its remote location and small footprint.

Besides that, we’ve had our kicks.  It's a long flight home.  That's plenty of time to cook up a new adventure.

Alaska - Week 3

 

Help me Wanda.  Help, help me Wanda

We last left you with the news that while waiting for our flight to Los Angeles, we purchased, sight unseen, a car on the internet. A long weekend with family and enjoying the thrill of sharing in a celebration of our nephew's college graduation was an elixir extreme. Our flights back to Anchorage were smooth and on time, and Wanda’s (the car) seller met us at the gate. We followed him to a nearby gas station to consummate the deal. Lacking paper or printer, I had fashioned a bill of sale from inside the packaging of a tube of hand moisturizer. Everybody signed, money changed hands and we headed eastward and outward into the wild Alaskan terrain.

Just in case our little GMC Jimmy might have an appetite for fluids, we stopped at Walmart and picked up a quart of oil, a quart of transmission fluid, a pint of brake fluid and a gallon of antifreeze. We also bought a can of bear spray.  We nursed the car for fifty or sixty miles. I stayed in the right lane, kept below 55, watching the temperature and oil pressure gauges a lot closer than the speedometer. Susan kept her eyes peeled for moose. Steep mountains loomed at the halfway point, yet little Wanda putted sprightly up every hill, showing off plenty of compression for a gal her age. By the time we reached the Wrangell area, we were topping 70 now and then. The car tracked well and the brakes worked without a screech jerk or pulsation. The major annoyance was the de-studded tires on all four wheels. When taking curves or making turns, the metal studs buried in the treads roared like irritated lions. We made it back to the lodge around 830, enjoyed dinner in the “Two Rivers” dining room and hit the sack.

On Monday I drove to Glen Allen to fuel up and register the car. We had averaged 18 miles to the gallon on our trip, causing me to believe the engine operates normally. Unsurprisingly, all the idiot lights on the instrument panel are permanently illuminated, but we will refrain from “servicing the engine soon” or resolving the “anti lock brakes'' warning. There’s a hole in the dash where a radio once lived, but we get no radio reception out here anyway.

At the DMV, the clerk took one look at the title I produced, shredded it, then laughed when I showed her the bill of sale. She let me know the title had been replaced in 2017 and the seller had signed the line indicating a lien had been released rather than the ownership change. She told me I need to get the seller to order a replacement title, signed in the right place and mailed out to me. I did. Let’s see if he does.

As mentioned in a previous post, we’ve met the State Trooper who patrols this area. He’s the fellow who let Susan blast the siren on his patrol car. He warned me that when we go into the city of Valdez, it’s the locals who enforce the law. I decided it would be prudent in Valdez to back into parking spots so as keep the long expired license plate decal out of casual view. It seems there are many old and beaten down cars out here. Perhaps the old plates might help us blend in.

The work has been mostly fun and mildly rewarding. We get a real kick out of dealing with people. Susan tracked down a man’s water flossing charger at the Denali Lodge, arranged to have it put on a train to Whittier and be delivered to his ship cabin before he arrives. There’s an app required for ship passengers passing through Canada and I’ve spent a lot of time installing it on phones for codgers, scanning passports and vaccination cards in order to produce a QR code they can display to get into the country. I helped one lady with it the other night and she dropped off a thank you card the next day with a C note inside. How about that?

On the other hand, we’ve also had some real pistols to deal with. Guests headed to Valdez for transfer to the ship are tested for Covid here and we keep those testing positive overnight until an ominous black van comes for them the next day. We’ve had five positive tests and as most people are couples, we’ve hung on to as many as ten people who will miss their ships. Upon leaving the building one man threw his key across the counter as he blurted out insults. And a woman tossed hers, saying, “I should have spit on it”. It was all I could do to refrain from advising her that the past tense for spit is spat. We all smiled instead. It is interesting to see how different people deal with disappointment and the travails of travel.

We went to Valdez with Wanda last Sunday for kayaking in and around the port. I parked on the street with the tags facing the curb. It worked. Later, I stopped by an RV park and have made arrangements for “off street” parking for our next and future trips to town.

That’s it for this week. Fun continues to outweigh aggravation, and that’s the standard we’ve set for the continuation of our stay.