Denali!

The only day I have had to explore the park so far.... at least it was the awesomest!

Denali photos from the sky

The Great One

Sometimes it is hard, even for me, to comprehend my life. All this moving around, changing residences, changing jobs, and traveling was hard for those closest to me for a long time. Even now it's probably hard for my parents sometimes, but my friends have gotten used to it (it seems) and others just shrug it off. While I like to think that it has kept me active and excited about life, even I find it difficult sometimes to be in constant motion, and it often takes a toll on me physically. After being in Denali about a week, I came down with a head cold, which is really not that awful. However, when starting a new job and trying to make an impression, staring into space and speaking with a voice like a 70-year-old throat cancer survivor feels a little awful. No matter what I did, I couldn't kick it. I tried to sleep a lot, but I'd just get angry when I slept.

So today, we went for a hike. I was a bit wary at first, thinking my stamina with this cold wouldn't be the best, but I went anyway. A bluebird day in Denali is rare, and the chance of seeing Denali itself is even more rare. It's been on and off rain-snow-hail-sleet-sun here for the past week, in an unseasonably cold spring (so say the locals), and there was no way I wasn't going to spend some time in the sun today. So after lunch, Ben, our new friend Mike and I headed out to the park to cruise up the road and find a place to walk in. Denali NP is huge- twice the size of Glacier in area, 2 million square miles- but is very open. There are miles-wide floodplains creating valleys between the mountains, obviously remnants of massive glaciers. There are still massive glaciers all around Denali itself, and even some of the "lesser" mountains, which are still all over 14,000 ft. Take that, Montana.

Even more incredible is the accessibility of hiking in and around Denali. Because it is the arctic tundra, there are little to no trees. There are some, but avoiding clusters of trees is fairly easy. We parked on the side of the road, a bit past the 12-mile mark, which happens to be the normal turn-around point for personal vehicles during the normal season. Mike has worked in the area for years, and pointed out a footpath that skirted up into the brush and quickly emerged into a ridge walk. Within an hour we were on the ridge, albeit rather out-of-shape for ourselves, squinting into the distance at a cloud-free Denali. We figured we were at about 80 miles from the massive mountain, and it's summit about 16,000 above our heads. It is huge. Though the peaks around it are tall, none of them compares to Denali itself.

 Denali/ Mt McKinley

moose on the loose!

Getting out in the air, letting my nose run a little bit, feeling the sun and wind chap my cheeks was a nice reminder of the beauty in these ridiculous places we choose to inhabit. This summer I hope to write quite a bit in this blog, as I would like to practice my writing and bounce ideas off of the soundboard that is the world wide web. Maybe getting my ideas out in the open will challenge me once and for all to start this book that has been festering in my mind for the past couple of years. Either way, I will provide photos of our escapades in Denali, and maybe a story or two about our time here, but facing the facts about our summer: it will be short and it will be busy. Total immersion in the workplace needs to end somewhere, and hopefully writing here can be my escape. 

2181 miles to Tok

We started the drive in Whitefish, six days and 2181 miles ago. A close approximation, of course, as we didn't turn on the odometer until Eureka, MT and have probably added a few miles looking for gas and whipping u-turns to photograph bears. Today we arrived at our 6th stop, Tok, Alaska, at about four in the afternoon, Alaska time (which happens to be one hour before Pacific Time). Though we still have two days of driving to our destination, Denali National Park, the sense of ease that came with our entering the state of Alaska cannot be ignored. After almost a week of driving through Canada, through ever-changing landscapes and weather systems, we have entered the largest state in the Union.

We began last Friday, a little later than planned due to some revelrous activities the night before with good Glacier friends. Sad to part with those we have come to know so well, but also thoroughly excited about bigger mountains, bigger animals, and well, bigger jobs, we left on good terms with Whitefish, Montana, and hope to see her in the future. The first day we only drove about five hours, crossing the border at the Port of Roosville and camping for the night in Golden, British Columbia. Just west of Yoho National Park, Golden was a sleepy little town, that definitely blows up with tourism during the summer months. Right now, as in every place we have stayed, Golden was at the bare bones, just setting up for the season and collecting only the very early travelers like ourselves. After a dinner of lentil stew with sausages we curled up in our tent, situated just beside a river leading into a canyon. Though train tracks bordered the opposite side of the river, we have become so used to the bumping and clanging of the train cars through our winter in Whitefish that we didn't even notice.

Kurt's beautiful rice bowls proved extremely useful on the journey

Saturday we set out to explore Yoho, the Columbia Icefields, and Jasper National Park. The last time we had been to the Canadian Rockies was the summer of 2009, when Ben and I had first started dating. It was our first international adventure, and Ben's first trip abroad. Needless to say, we were both really excited to see the parks in their winter glory. Though it was still very snowy, especially around the Icefield, the weather outside was gorgeous and warm. Driving the road we passed loads of parked cars, mostly Canadian folks out backcountry skiing for the weekend, making me wish I didn't have a broken hand and wish we had brought our skis with! As I can't describe the beauty of these parks with words, I will let the pictures tell all.

(above) Huge glacier in the middle!



We camped in Jasper Saturday night at a full campground, and actually ended up sharing our site with some latecomer Canadian boys fresh out of exams for the year. The campsite was the only winter/ offseason camping in Jasper, and as it was the first beautiful weekend of the spring, it was filled with RVs and tenters alike. Sunday they took over our site as we bid them adieu and headed still northward toward Grande Prairie, Alberta. There we crossed again into British Columbia, and stayed the night at a little family-owned RV park at Charlie Lake. The RV park had a host of grassy spots, wifi, and hot showers- and it was fabulous. Only about an hour after we arrived, a couple from Minnesota pulled up to camp next to us. Jared and Katie were also driving up to work in Denali, not at our properties, but at a large restaurant in the area. For the next three days we would criss-cross paths, staying at the same campgrounds, and gradually getting to know that they were fun, nomadic folks like ourselves.

While at Charlie Lake we commented on how we had hardly seen any wildlife yet on the trip, and attributed it to the time of year. That night, I was awoken out of my slumber by loud footsteps outside the tent. Waking in the middle of the night always causes irrational thought, and I had a brief vision akin to the scene in 'A Christmas Story' where masked bandits jump over the fence to raid Ralphie's house. Shaking my head and convincing myself that it wasn't bandits stealing things out of our car, I listened closer and heard... chomping. And munching. It sounded like a large ruminant. It was a moose. Or more than one moose. Horrified, I didn't move and tried to make myself go back to sleep. I thought I felt one brush the tent. I find moose to be the most horrifying animals I've ever encountered, aside from hippos. Both large, cumbersome creatures, they are aggravated randomly, and strike with the vengence of a small army. Hilariously enough, curled in my tent, I remembered our experience camping at Lake Baringo in Kenya where night-roaming hippos chomping on grass woke me up. Even more coincidentally, Ben woke up both the hippo night and the moose night with an unignorable urge to use the bathroom. Though hippos were enough to force him to forget the urge, he wasn't as scared of moose and proceeded without any trampling occurances.

Not the moose outside our tent...but a moose nonetheless

The next two days of driving blew by as a whir of trees, plains, trees, plains, mountains. Northern British Columbia is somewhat monotonous and akin to the Northern Plains at points. Towards the end of our driving on Monday, however, it began to get hillier and more interesting, but also colder. We had one thing driving us, however. Hot springs. We read about the Liard Hot Springs the day before, and were dead set on checking out the campground-cum-hotsprings that was the 'one thing to absolutely see on the Alaska Highway'. We arrived in the late afternoon, and immediately set out for the hot springs after setting up our tent. OH it was fabulous. It was the hot springs of my dreams. I have been to quite a few hot springs in my life, and there seems to be two types: 1) large, warm concrete pools resembling nothing but a communal bath without the chlorine, or 2) slimy rocks in some hot water. I am more a fan of the slimy, if I had to choose, but the Liard Hot Springs changed my mind forever. It was a minimally developed natural spring in the forest with a large deck and gravelly bottom. No slimy rocks, but beautiful surrounds. Even more amazing was the relative changes in temperature- you could position yourself close to the spring for the scalding hot, but the further you went downriver, the cooler it got. Even more awesome, was that approximately 8 other people at the campsite were all heading to work in Alaska/Denali as well. One huge, crazy caravan.

 Drying my bathing suit

 The river pool

The actual spring and hanging gardens

Hard to top the hot springs, I didn't want to leave. I had spent a medicinal hour in the hot tubs soaking my mending hand, and it felt soooo good. Nonetheless, we headed out in the morning and covered the remainder of the Alaska Highway in British Columbia until we hit Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. The Yukon is big. Everything about it is huge, which makes it apt that Watson Lake, the first town over the border would be home to the world's largest signpost forest. What is a signpost forest, you ask? Well, some road construction worker in the 1940's was homesick for the lower 48 and decided to start collecting signposts, and each year it grows by about 2,000 signs- making the collection over 70,000 current signs! We added our front license plate, of course.



 our plate!

 my personal favorite sign

 note: yield for camels sign in far back

After the signpost forest, there wasn't much to be seen until the town of Whitehorse, where we stopped for the night. As we drove through rain and snow all day, we pondered the idea of staying in a hotel, and when we heard that the forecast for the night was in the teens, we decided for sure. We stopped at the visitors center in Whitehorse, where we ran into Jared and Katie again. Together we determined that Canada's Best Value Inn was indeed Canada's best value at a whopping $100/night. A little bit weather worn, and in a sketchier part of town (a local on the street told Katie that she was staying on 'skid row'), the Best Value turned out to be decent enough for what it was. Perhaps the most interesting part was the evening front desk worker, Ron. A Montreal-er by birth, a BC-er by life, and a Yukon-er in retirement, he is also a wildlife and landscape photographer who just loves what he does. Ron's goal in the next year is to actually stop working, buy an RV, and come up to Alaska himself (you can find him on Flickr- The Yukoner).

This brings us to today. Another day of driving, starting with a rather bumpy 200-mile stretch to the Alaska border, and ending here in Tok. That being said, it was not really that bad. For the amount of warning we got about the Alaska Highway- "Bring at least a 5-gallon gas can!" "You should definitely have a couple extra tires"- the entire highway has been a gem. Even today, with shallow dips and crests giving the sensation of a childrens roller coaster ride, it was nothing compared to a lot of the roads in the Chicago-land area. So know now, the Alaska Highway is not the Al-Can of yesteryear! There have been major improvements in the past 20 years- i.e. it is a normal highway. We skirted the ouside of Kluane National Park in the Yukon, the vast landscape of Lake Kluane giving way to mountain range upon mountain range. No one lives there. We saw decrepit businesses, of poor souls thinking they could make it selling gasoline, only to find themselves out of business in who knows how long. It was a beautiful but desolate landscape, that seemingly changed when we crossed the American border. It was strange, but the moment we crossed, not only did we cross to freshly paved highway, but we crossed into snowy mountain passes, sunnying skies and the mountains of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Though the clouds were low, the mountains looming on the horizon are the biggest ones we've seen yet. And at that, I will leave with some photos of the day.

Lake Kluane

End of July (already!)

At the end of our Elk Lake weekend

We, unfortunately, were too full to eat this one (we had already eaten another)

twin trout catch!

Elk Lake. Awesome.

My first catch- 17 -18" cutthroat!

I am pretty sure this pika has been in the frozen water all winter. I love dead things.

Devil's pass? Not sure what it is called.

In the dorm bathroom.

The coolest ranger station ever. Belly River.

Looking beyond Cosley Lake in the far NE of Glacier.

Belly River valley

July so far

July 1, Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, Canada

July 2, trail to Iceberg Lake

tourists at Iceberg Lake

July 4, St. Mary KOA

July 5, experiments with things

July 6, outside our room in the Upper Dorm

Just to further my point

Skyscanner's 2011 Travel Awards named the USA and Australia (tied) as having the "friendliest locals" of all the countries in the world... well, Western world I think.

http://www.livethelife.eu/australia-crowned-king-at-skyscanner-travel-awards/

An Ode to Oz

This was supposed to be posted BEFORE the previous post... but for some reason it didn't. Sorry!

This is a ode to a country that is vast, self-centered, and wholly Western (in both the worldly sense, and the cowboy). It is an ode to a place where people are generally kind and welcoming, down-to-earth and ready-to-talk. It is an ode to a people that love their country, for all its faults and errors throughout its short history. This is an ode to Australia, which I came to love in the short time I was there, as it reminded me fondly of my own country, while being completely different. It's almost like we are brothers from different mothers. Or at the very least, Crocodile Dundee and Butch Cassidy are. I mean, we both have a lot of deserts and a lot of coastline, we both have Kmart and Target, and we both have race/class/social issues that we have been trying to work out for the past 100 years. Our economies are opposite right now (Australia on the up! US on a flatline!), and the Australian minimum wage ($18/hr) is about THREE TIMES that of the US. However, the good things in life stay the same: you walk into a bar in either country and the chatty old men come a-runnin', filling you with stories, jokes, and a dose of reality.

Such was our experience in south and central Australia. Ben and I spent a little over two weeks road trippin' it from Melbourne to the Red Centre (yes, that is an 're') and back, covering some Great Roads, National Parks, and a whole lot of nothingness. We started with The Great Ocean Road, which snakes its way along the coast of southern Oz, through Victoria and South Australia. We started in Lorne, where our free campsite gave us the false hope that this would be a cheap trip. That was the only free campsite we ever saw. We then hopped from cute coastal town to cute coastal town for the next few days, spotting koalas in trees (and witnessing our fist koala bear jam!) and admiring the fantastic surf, until landing on the mother ship of coastline in the south: The Twelve Apostles. The end of The Great Ocean Road is a 30 km stretch of shear cliffs, rock formations, and moon-like landscapes. The morning we saw it the sun peeked out from behind the clouds only long enough for us to get some awesome sun streaked views of the crazy scenery, and the ocean was so angry that sometimes the waves splashed us- several hundred feet above the water.

From there we headed to Grampians National Park, which, because it was Easter weekend (woops) was so overly crowded with people that we both felt claustrophobic and decided to continue on immediately. We decided to make our way towards Ayers Rock, 900 miles away, which before that point had only been discussed in speculation, but all of a sudden became a reality. Or favorite mantra: why not? We stopped only in Adelaide to check out the weekend market and buy some supplies for our road journey. When traveling in the Outback, one must pack well. Water, food, and extra tires if you plan on going off the main drag. We were to scared of our $3,000 deductible on the rental car to make any off road moves, so we settled for food and water. Off we went!

Our first stop (btw, all of these stops are literally the ONLY stops on the highway between Port Augusta and Alice Springs)

You know a country is big when you drive through absolutely nothing for multiple days. Much like driving through Nebraska, or Arizona, some days all we would see were a couple dead kangaroos on the side of the road. Luckily, we come from a place where driving two days just to get somewhere else is fairly common. We were aiming for Ayers Rock, Ben was undergoing a massive cold, and the highlight of each day was stopping at a Roadhouse to get a Lift (carbonated DELICIOUS lemon beverage) Come day #3 on the Adelaide-Darwin highway, we started to wonder whether this