As you may have discovered in your panicked search for an open vacation spot, it’s busy out there. RV oases are full to the brim, popular national parks like Yosemite require appointments and the better hotels are turning pilgrims away by the boatload. The cabin fever which has infected the land over the past 15 months has finally broken and celebrants are running through the streets in glee, blowing up the reservation lines and polishing up the woodies. It’s long past time for a Road Trip or an excursion on the great silver bird. But where, oh where, do frustrated travelers go when the roads are packed, the inns are saturated and the trails are wall-to-wall with hikers? Simple. They hitch up their britches, pull on their mukluks and head for Alaska.
Northern Sights
There are several ways to get to Alaska. You can take the better part of a century and drive up. At the risk of being called a big sissy, you can hop on a cruise ship and float comfortably through the Inside Passage. Or you can fly to Anchorage, rent a car, drive out to the permafrost and stomp around like Vitus Bering, who discovered the place in 1741. We prefer the latter as long as there’s coffee.
The first thing you’ll want to do in Alaska is something you can’t do almost anywhere else in the United States; see the glaciers. And don’t waste any time, they’re shrinking faster than Ted Cruz’ presidential hopes. Fortunately for you, there are many opportunities. A two or three hour boat trip on Prince William Sound or Glacier Bay will provide you with an eyeful of the things….you might even see a glacier calving. You can get up close and personal with the Exit Glacier near Seward or the Portage Glacier near Whittier, but if you want to actually get on intimate terms with one of these big boys, reach down and tickle its ears, walk across the length and breadth, there’s one place where the price is right and the livin’ is easy:
The Matanuska Glacier
Just a 2.5 hour drive from lovely Anchorage, the friendly Matanuska Glacier sits on private land just off the scenic Glenn Highway. More than four miles wide at its terminus, Matanuska is so massive that the water flowing from its snout forms the roaring Matanuska River. The family which made the glacier famous, the Kimballs, bought the property anticipating eventual oil royalties and was at first forlorn to discover there was no oil to be found. Just as Papa Kimball was about to rend his garments in frustration, a friend tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well, Papa, at least you’ve got the glacier.”
Pops perked up, installed a little gate next to a small gift shop and started charging customers $15 to drive to the glacier’s parking lot. That’s what Siobhan and I paid several years ago when we visited. The prices gradually increased to $30 a head before the land was annexed by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and now first-time Matanuska visitors are required to join a tour, which costs a hefty $100. That’s what happens when a big-time tourist attraction has no competition. It’s not like 7-11, where you can just stick a cheaper glacier across the street. By the way, you’ll want to wear your non-slip rubber boots while glacier-walking---the things are slipperier than goose doody or even Steven Miller. And be careful when taking naked pictures, your skin will stick to the ice and AAA has nobody available to chip you out. We found that out the hard way.
The Invisible Mountain
If you’re glacier-phobic, there are a few other things in Alaska you might like. Mt. McKinley, aka Denali, the highest peak in North America at a whopping 20,310 feet, is out there near the Anchorage-Fairbanks highway. Or so they say. You couldn’t prove it by us, though.
The cutesie postcard town of Talkeetna serves as airport central for a small army of bush pilots who will fly you to the mountain, land at its base and let you frolic in the snow for awhile. This sounded like a good time to Siobhan and Bill but each of the three times they tried to go the weather on the mountain was unacceptable, even though it was perfect in Talkeetna. Now, we’re nobody’s fools. We can spot a scam when we see one. Bill told a local merchant that he suspected that tales of Denali were fabrications, stories told to boost the stock and fill the hotels and restaurants of Talkeetna, which otherwise was a bump on a log in the middle of nowhere.
The locals protested and showed Bill pictures of Denali, which looks a lot like any other snow-capped mountain. “That could be Kilimanjaro for all I know,” he said. “Big mountains are a dime a dozen. I think you people are a bunch of grifters.”
Denali National Park, on the other hand, is the real deal. The park and contiguous preserve encompass 6,045,153 acres, which is larger than the state of New Hampshire and almost as snowy. Denali’s landscape is a mixture of forest at the lowest elevations, tundra at middle elevations and glaciers, snow and bare rocks on the heights. You might want to bring your dog-sled to get around.
There are, as you might suspect, a variety of Denali tours, some of them into the furthest depths of the park. You do not want to go to the furthest depths of the park. It takes forever and the bus stops every time a 6-year-old kid spots a chipmunk or an invisible elk rustles the bushes. About a three-hour soiree will do. We did see a mother bear with a couple of cubs, though, and a small pack of disgruntled wolves. Oh, and it was very nice back at the roomy lodge. They even had huckleberry pie.
Good To The Last Drop
They have a lot of coffee stands in Alaska. Rumor has it that it gets very cold there and people have to stop every few miles to thaw out. Tiny coffee emporiums dot the highways, often across the street from one another, pouring gallons of the stuff to wayfarers. When we went, none of them were offering lattes. Alaskans don’t cotton to sissy-coffees---they don’t even like it if you take milk or cream. Sugar? Don’t even bring it up.
People who live in Alaska are not all that crazy about what they call “the lower 48,” with an emphasis on lower. They pride themselves on being tough and self-sufficient and wouldn’t think of putting heating pads in their mittens or calling somebody to fix the toilet. They are rugged frontiersmen, even if they work at Bath & Body Shop or put the icing on birthday cakes at the Abominable Snowman Bakery. People in the lower 48 are soft, spoiled, unable to function in temperatures below 12 degrees, have no knowledge of tire chains or ice axes….those fools use snowmobiles for sport, for crying out loud. And don’t try to convince Alaskans any different or they’ll stick you on a glacier without a map and make you find your way home. It’s worse than being a Kappa Sigma pledge at Mississippi State. Don’t worry, though, you can make it all up to them by buying something expensive. It’s nice to know the lower 48 has some redeeming social value.
There Are Strange Things Done In The Midnight Sun
Now, my wife is of the sensible sort, pragmatic, stoic, not given to emotional peaks and valleys, hardly impulsive. She won’t be running off with the pool boy or parachuting out of a plane on her 70th birthday or dancing naked in the Trevi fountain anytime soon. But show her a creek where she can pan for gold and she lights up like a Christmas tree. On panning day, she’s up at the crack of dawn, packed and ready to go off in search of plunder. She takes another look at the big map of Alaska on her wall. There’s a large red tack stuck in it about 30 miles from Anchorage in the town of Girdwood. Siobhan is so ebullient she starts to sing:
“Yo-ho, yo ho, it’s off to the Crow’s Creek Mine we go!
We’ll bring a sluice box and a cottleston pie and we won’t be back til the Fourth of July!”
“Welcome To Beautiful Girdwood,” says the sign and for once the sign is right. Girdwood is a lovely little place sprinkled with invading tourists, quirky locals and a liberal encampment of hippies. You can see the latter on the outskirts of town, walking their dogs, washing their vans and sporting their ancient tie-dyes. Everyone is welcome in Alaska, even unwashed dope-smoking expatriates from the lower 48. That’s because almost everyone in Alaska used to be an unwashed dope-smoking expatiate from the lower 48.
The Crow’s Creek Historic Gold Mine has been in operation since the start of the Alaska Gold Rush in 1896, at one time mining an astounding 700 ounces of the stuff a month. World War II brought an end to large-scale mining but even today some say that half the original deposit lies undiscovered in the ground. This is good enough for a girl from Fairfield, Florida, who---like all big gamblers---is sure she’ll pull down the winning arm on the proper slot machine. Sometimes gold fever even infects the best of us, rattles our brains, tickles our ivories. But where else can you buy a dream for $24?
If anyone discovers gold while panning in Crow’s Creek, they deserve it. The running water of the creek is COLD. Worse than cold, frigid. Colder than Caligula’s heart. Colder than Trump’s bedroom. Colder even---and I know this is impossible to believe---Bron Beynon’s mammary appendages. So, cold.
Siobhan doesn’t care. She’s not leaving without some loot. She tells me a nugget could shoot down at any moment, but I’m not buying. Lucky for her the gift shop hands out little bottles of gold flakes so she can fool her friends. Down but not out, she sadly stashes her sluice box and pick for another day. After all, in Alaska, there’s gold hidden virtually everywhere. You might even find some right out there in your motel parking lot.
Hey, Siobhan….come back! I was just using poetic license.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
