Top of the World

Day 26 – Tuesday, August 18th

We slept nearly ten hours and were still up and on the road before 8:00am. This would be our last day in Alaska and we were driving over the Top of the World Highway. We left Tok and immediately had the sense of driving into the wilderness. There were virtually no side roads or homes for 60 miles. We drove through alternating periods of showers and sunlight. Occasionally there would be other cars, but not many. The views were gorgeous, with lots of rolling mountains as our road climbed.

Even though we were expecting it, we gulped when we saw the sign “Pavement Ends” and we knew we had another 45 miles before we would see payment again. Almost immediately we had to dodge a grader trying to smooth out some of the potholes, ruts, and corduroy waves. It was helping but once were in front of it we had to fend for ourselves.

There is only one town on the road, the town of Chicken. It became a highlight for the day. This town purportedly got its name because they liked to eat the little ptarmigan birds, but no one knew how to spell it, so they used the alternate name for the creatures: Chicken. It was 75 miles out in the middle of nowhere, with a year-round population of maybe 9, in the summer 25 or so.

Chicken has three small business, who do most of their trading with tour busses and tourist who are on the adventurous Top of the World Highway. One especially interesting woman we met owns a little area called Beautiful Downtown Chicken: a store, bar and café. Her name is Susan Wiren, and part of what was interesting to us was that she moved here 21 years ago from the Philadelphia area where she ran a bookstore. She and her boyfriend at the time, decided to go on an adventure and move to Alaska. She found herself truly bored and jumped at the chance to buy the local café and bar. She then used all of her store owning and marketing background to create really a high quality tourist destination, including an amazing bookstore. We got to meet Susan and eat some of her still warm from the oven homemade pie. She talked about the difficulties in the current economic climate of keeping her business going, but she is doing it. Tired, by this point in the tourist season, but making it. She was pleased at Patti’s compliment on her book selection, but said she was sad that she had so much less book inventory than last year, just trying to cut back.

Although we had been warned by many people about the shape of the road, Dick felt like it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been portrayed. You just had to drive carefully. And we got a surprise that one we crossed the border into Canada, the road was mostly paved again.

Just over the border, now back in the Yukon, we stopped for lunch at the highest point of the Highway. It was a beautiful area, filled tiny flowers and berries, lichens, and many of the cairns that Canadians like to leave at special places. Patti climbed to the top of the highest hill with a large cairn. The view was splendid! We both took a lot of photos. It was clear that Fall is definitely in the air.

Dick commented that when he first imagined taking the trip to Alaska as a boy, that the alternating pavement and gravel road was what the Alaska Highway must have looked like, so this drive through the wild gave him the feeling he had hoped for as a young person. It was a very satisfying experience.

At the end of Top of the World Highway was another place we had wanted to visit: Dawson City. This had been a tiny sleepy town until in 1897 gold was discovered. Then, in two years it went from having 25 people to nearly 40,000! Gold Fever hit hard!

As we came off the Highway, we got glimpses of Dawson city and the mighty Yukon River. In order to get to the town, we got to ride on the ferry. We drove right on to our delight. At times, people have to wait up to 2 or 3 hours for their turn. Dawson City now has a population of around 1000 people, but they have worked hard at preserving the town as it was over a hundred years ago. Including none of the streets were paved and the sidewalks are all wood. It looks like a western movie set. What a lot of dust and mud! Since it was raining while we were there, we got the mud.

We spent several hours doing a quick tour of the area’s attractions. We enjoyed visiting the Jack London cabin. London lived here while looking for gold during the stampede. He didn’t find any but did find the settings for many of his most famous stories, such as White Fang and Call of the Wild. It was in the center next to the cabin where we met Dawne, a local woman with passion for Jack London and his writing. She had worked at his cabin and visitor’s center for the past 14 years, 12 years working closely with Dick North, the man who had rescued this cabin and gathered so many things together about Jack London’s life. We were sorry that had we missed her interpretive lecture earlier in the day. We always enjoy meeting people passionate about their work.

Dawson City is also the home of Robert Service who wrote The Cremation of Sam Magee. We drove by his cabin, but it had already closed for the night. So much history is in this land!

We also took in the Dawson City Museum, which focused, of course, heavily on Gold Rush artifacts, and also on First Nation culture. Patti also enjoyed a display of an old time trapper meeting a modern day dogsledder both carrying the same type of equipment. It was quite amusing. The equipment had changed dramatically in a hundred years. A lot more plastic and aluminum now. We kept trying to think about this sleepy town growing from 25 to 40,000 people in one year only to drop back again in a couple of years when the major gold dried up and they moved on.

We learned at dinner, at Sourdough Joe’s, that during the height of Gold Rush times, dinner of beans, bread, a stewed apple and coffee could cost $5. And, that a dinner that might cost $5 in Dawson City cost just $.30 in Seattle in 1899! Talk about prices being hiked up!

Even though there was more to see, we had miles and miles to go and so drove on to Moose Crossing and our campground of the evening. We are now officially headed home, The trip south will take us another 11 days of pretty steady traveling. We drove the evening through a rainstorm, our being led by a rainbow for miles and miles.

It wasn’t a very good night sleep. Not that cold, but VERY damp!

Turn for home

Day 25 - Monday, August 17th

We left Seward in combinations of rain and sunshine on the Kenai Peninsula. The tide was out in the Turnagain Arm which meant the mudflats were even larger than when we came by the first time. Traffic wasn’t bad, so we made good time. We whipped right through Anchorage, almost before we knew it. Patti had been so tired that she slept through the whole morning drive and woke up feeling much better.

We had lunch at Mirror Lake just north of Anchorage. It had rained recently, but had cleared and the lake lived up to its name, at times the water was a like a mirror. We saw 7 floatplanes at the other end of the lake and imagined what it was like when several of them took off from this smooth lake. We had a visit from a family of ducks, the young ones almost ready for their Fall migration. Suddenly, one then a second loon appeared in the middle of the lake. We had expected to see many more, but those were our first loons so far. As we walked back to the car we discovered a number of beautiful mushrooms. With all the rain on this trip, we are finding many lovely mushrooms. It keeps us looking down for more.

After lunch we turned east on the Glen Highway towards Glennallen and looked at beautiful scenery. Even though we couldn’t see the Chugach Mountains because they were covered in clouds we were rewarded. As we approached Sheep Mountain, we looked even more carefully. There on a series of rocky ledges far above the road we could see six Dahl Sheep. Their white fur stood out against the darker rock. These included four ewes and two lambs. We watched them for a while before we had to move on.

We drove in and out of rain several times and continued with hopeful hearts that when we got to Glenallen, that we would be able to see the Wrangell Mountains in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. For a moment we got a glimpse of them, then the clouds swept in and took them away from us. It was as if there were no mountains around! We did stop at the visitor’s center were we saw a beautiful movie about the wildness of this park that is as large as Connecticut or six times larger than Yellowstone! This is the park that is connected with Kluane National Park in Canada that we visited in Southern Yukon on the way up the Alaska Highway. We didn’t see the mountains from that side due to smoke. Sigh! Maybe next trip.

Without the mountains to be seen, we headed north and the scenery really got lovely when we drove through the eastern end of the Alaskan Range. The clouds and the mountains were spectacular, and we even had a rainbow.

We bedded down for the night at a roadside pulloff, just south of Tok, Alaska. We snuggled into our warm nest at the back of our mini-van. We made the decision as we were packing up in the morning to pack the tent down deep. No tenting this trip!

Kenai Fjords National Park by boat

Day 24 – Sunday, August 16th

Although when the day started out, it was surprise! raining, we were still hopeful of a good day. First on the agenda was a trip to The Alaska Sealife Center. This is an educational and research institute that was originally set up with a portion of the money that Exxon had to pay after the Exxon Valdez accident twenty years ago. Patti spent quite a bit of time in an exhibit that focused on the impact of the oil sill on the sealife in the area and its recovery. Interestingly enough, bald eagles were the first to recover. This center is working hard to understand how people and climate change are impacting the environment around here. Dick was really into watching the puffins. One of the things that was really fun was to watch the staff come and weigh most of the birds. He had a little scale, would offer the birds fish, and then they would hop on the scale. They lined up and took turns. What fun! Another project the center is doing is called the Traditional Knowledge project where they interviewed 40 old Native fishers about sea birds and their experience with hunting them over the last 70 years. Highly interesting!
http://www.alaskasealife.org/

The boat tour was amazing! When we checked in, we were told there was a weather warning and it was unclear as to whether we would be able to get from the fjord where Seward is located into the next fjord where the glaciers would be found. Fortunately, the weather and seas moderated and we were able to do the whole tour. The major bummer of the trip was Dick got pretty seasick. Not so fun! Nothing like getting green and throwing up to sap your energy. But, he decided it was still worth it. Most of the time he was doing pretty well. No salmon lunch, though.

As we made the three hour trip each way, we saw harbor seals, humpback whales, sea otters, puffins, stellar sea lions, cormorants. In short, great wildlife. The captain would take the boat close and idle for a few minutes so we could get good views and photos.

But the highlight was sitting for about 40 minutes alongside Aialik Glacier. The face of it was several hundred feet high. (You can see the size compared to another boat in the photos.) It just towered above us as we sat in a sea covered with chunks of ice with a couple hundred yards of the mass of ice. The captain asked that if you were outside on the deck, that you stay totally quiet, not even whispering. This allowed people to both enjoy the noises that the glacier made as the ice cracked and groaned. He advised people to listen to what it had to say. And it was VERY load and talkative. We got quite a show. Every few minutes another huge chunk would fall into the water. At times it sounded as though there were a cannon shooting, at others like thunder rumbling. Many times, the waves created by the falling ice really rocked our boat. Our park ranger, who did the interpretation of the nature, was thrilled. She said this was the most calving in one visit that she had seen in a couple of years. Wow, wow, wow!

The trip back was through a little less rough waters, and we both snoozed a little as we scooted across the water in our twin hulled boat. It was fun to hear the swearing in of a new batch of Jr. Park Rangers who had completed their activities while in the boat. Patti and story partner James went through that ceremony a number of years back at the Tetons National Park. These little guys were very serious and totally in to it.

Then, we were back on solid land. We took a couple hour nap, after which Dick was finally ready for some real food. We had a satisfying meal of seafood quesadillas followed by chocolate cake back at our hotel.

As we worked on our photos and the blog, we had time to talk further with Alice, a young college student from Cornell where she is majoring in hotel management. She has been working at our hotel for the summer. It was fun to help her reflect on her experiences working in a boutique hotel, living in a VERY small community in Alaska, and on her future plans. Having been raised in upstate New York, she really did take a big risk to come live in Alaska, but was ready to fly back to New York again tomorrow. She also talked about getting to see the 4th of July Mountain marathon Race here in Seward. This is the nation’s second oldest footrace, having started in 1909 with two old guys betting each other they could run up and down a nearly 3000 mountain in less than an hour. It moved into the whole town coming out for it, and then into an annual grueling and crazy race, straight up and straight down. Another wild Alaskan experience. And, yet another interesting person that we met in this trip!

The reality is that we are now making the turn. Seward was the furthest point on our trip. We now head south by first driving north. The only way out of Alaska to the east is to drive to Tok. We stayed in Tok coming up the Alaskan highway. This time we will cross it and take a more northern route. We are now on day 24 of a projected 38 day trip.

Our schedule for the next week:
Monday, 17th Start drive home, reach Tok, Alaska for the night
Tuesday, 18th Drive the “Top of the World Highway” to Dawson City, Yukon
Wenesday, 19th Explore Dawson City and then drive south towards Whitehorse, Yukon
Thursday, 20th Drive to Watson Lake, Yukon, celebrate anniversary
Friday, 21st Drive south in Central British Columbia
Saturday, 22nd Continue driving south in BC

The Kenai Penisula

Day 23 – Saturday, August 15th

The drive between Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula was amazing. Unfortunately, we ended up scheduling this on a Saturday, which is when we were told that everyone in Anchorage decides to take this same drive. But, still no serious traffic like our experience in Southern California! Actually, although there were quite a few cars, nothing bad at all. The bummer was, our streak with rain continues on, so we had on and off rain all today. We had some breaks though, and had some nice stops despite the weather.

South of Anchorage, on the Turnagain Arm (a smaller fjord off the Cook Inlet),We saw the famous mudflats south of Anchorage which look like your everyday average large sand beaches, but are really glacial slit that when it is low tide look like sand, but are really quicksand. Every year they have people who get stuck in these and sometimes die because they can’t get out before the tide turns. They have large tides here, sometimes over 20 feet. Impressive! It was low tide, so we couldn’t see any Beluga whales that come in at high tide. We hope to see some of them on our boat trip, too.

A little side trip included stopping at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. This is another of the places that people are working hard at both taking care of injured and orphaned animals, and helping to reintroduce animals back into the wild. Highlights included a couple of bears, one a Grizzly and the other a Brown Bear, who were really large and highly impressive, lots of moose who were willing to pose for quite close ups, musk oxen, elk, plus wood and plains bison. We love that people are doing this type of work. And can never pass up a chance to get yet MORE great animal pictures.

We went over Moose Pass and had to stop to take a photo of the sign that was next to the waterwheel and grindstone. You had to smile at the message: This is a peaceful little town, if you have an axe to grind, do it here.”

We were also able to do a little hiking at Exit Glacier, the first thing you could really see in Kenai Fjords National Park. We’ll see much more of the park tomorrow on our boat ride, but the glacier was beautiful! And the walk was really especially lovely since, although the flowers are now gone, it is big time mushroom season here. It is really wet, and the mushrooms are EVERYWHERE. A park ranger told us that if we knew our mushrooms well enough to know which ones are not poisonous, we could pick and eat them. They all looked the same to us, so we certainly didn’t want to take that kid of a chance, but they sure were pretty.

The main event for tomorrow is going to be going on a glacier and wildlife tour down in Kenai National Park; A six-hour cruise!

We are staying at a historic hotel The Van Gilder in downtown Seward. It was built in 1916 and is filled with great old photos of earlier Alaska. The funky rooms include modern and comfortable mattresses, as well as good Internet access, Yah!

Driving and sightseeing kept us from eating today, so we settled on an early supper at the wharf and really gorged ourselves on truly fresh crab and salmon. Delicious! And artfully prepared. There is nothing like great food when you are so hungry!

We walked the mile there and back to our hotel. Of course, by the time we were walking back, it began raining again! Then settling in for the evening working on the blog and Patti finished a great book we bought about a woman racing in the Iditarod Dogsled Race.

One of the really interesting things that is happening before our eyes is the seasons are changing! This is especially interesting now that we have on our 12 years living in San Diego eyes. Here are the signs that we see: one of the hotels we checked into last week has now gone to their “winter rates”, the wildflowers are mostly gone, we had a couple of nights below freezing with frost on our car while we were in the Denali area, there is a frosty feeling-a briskness in the air, we stopped being able to wear shorts and Patti had to buy some long underwear at Costco, we haven’t needed sunscreen for a while. Our friend, Scott, in Healey told us this was the type of weather that caused people to ask, “How’s my woodpile and my fuel oil?” and “Am I going to get that weather stripping project done before winter sets in?” We understand that “real winter” is still a ways off, but it is less like summer in Alaska.

Exploring Anchorage

Day 22, Friday, August 14th

Day two in Anchorage. Woke up to another rainy day…. After breakfast, first on the agenda for the day was an amazingly place, The Alaskan Native Heritage Center. This was created in cooperation by the different Native peoples in Alaska and it is wonderful.

Some of the leaders from the various different Indian Nations in Alaska were concerned that so many of their young people were now living in the city and had no connection with their heritage, art, stories and traditional way of life. With some HUGE amount of effort and cooperation (as well as we suspect about a million meetings) this center was opened ten years ago, both as a place to teacher Native Young people about their culture and a place for tourists to come and also learn. As well as giving many young people good jobs doing interpretation and teaching, especially during the summer. One of the really special people we met was a young Athabascan man who had worked for the center for five years. (The Athabascan people live in central and eastern Alaska as well as parts of the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta.) His name was Harold Wilson, and he was a very gifted communicator, being able to describe things some vividly and helping people to understand his experience in growing up in a very isolated village and then moving to the large city to go to school. He generously told us so many about his life, as well as what it is like now being a supervisor at the center.

What a special place. One of the really neat things was going around a lake where they had built traditional homes for the various groups. Inside the example of a living shelter in each area there would be someone from that group to talk about the home, the clothing and cultural patterns and celebrations. AND it as all hands on so that you could touch and feel the clothing, the animal fur, and the fine carvings. In our cultural explorer role, these were excellent for us, and we had the chance to have some great conversations, ask a bunch of questions and hear some great stories. An Eskimo man told the story of how he killed his first whale when he was only 4 and 1/2 years old. He told this tale with great gusto! A special treat for Patti was being able to buy a “story stick” used by young Yupik Eskimo native girls to drew pictures in the dirt to go along with stories they were telling. “A traditional entertainment for girls and young women was to recite for each other the myths, legends, and stories that make up the oral tradition of Yupik culture. The story knife was used to scrape a smooth surface in dirt or mud or sand and then to draw lines, figures, and symbols in the surface to illustrate the story being told. A particularly fine story knife, such as one made of ivory, would be passed down from mother to daughter for many generations.” Patti is looking forward to exploring what she will do with her beautifully carved story knife or stick. We invite you to take a look at the Center’s website at: http://www.alaskanative.net/

For lunch we happened upon Big Al’s Soup and Sandwich shop. Al and his wife had relocated here from Las Vegas three years ago. We enjoyed hearing their experiences as happy Alaskan transplants. And Al Loves cooking up his reindeer hotdogs right there on a grill on the street.

Next we went to the Anchorage Museum, the local art and cultural museum. We enjoyed looking at some great Alaskan landscape paintings, as well as some additional displays of Native traditional homes, clothing and culture. We also saw a stuffed musk ox. We now seem to find some form of them nearly everywhere we go on this trip. We also got a kick out of the old photo of a softball game being played in snowshoes.

We especially enjoyed watching a movie at the museum called Deadly Ascent, which focused on the health impact of climbing Mt. McKinley. Having just seen the mountain this week, it was much more immediate to think about climbing it. And this movie didn’t change our minds that it was a REALLY difficult dangerous climb. Many people die doing it. No thanks!

A bit later, as we were walking through the really tourist part of town, Patti was drawn to a man at a table in front of a dog sled (her new hobby, learning about dog sledding…not doing it!) She went over to see what was up and caught the end of hearing the guy say that he was in the first Iditarod race in 1973. His name was Rod Perry, and he had written a book about the early Iditarod pioneers. It stuck Patti that if he had been in the early race, maybe he would know the story of getting the dog team to the top of Denali. Well, not only did he know both of the dogsled racers who climbed it, but three of his personal dogs went most of the way with these dog mushers. This led to some highly spirited conversations about the early 70s and days of the dog sledding resurgence, some gossip, and some terrific personal and historical stories. When he found out that Patti was a professional storyteller, he was delighted and confessed that it is only in the past several years that he has come to understand that who he REALLY is, is a storyteller. As it turns out, when we later pieced things together from his book and from the Internet, this guy is a huge player in the Alaska dog sledding and political scene. AND he was a delight to talk with, so generous and really funny. We bought a copy of his book and then got our photo taken with him and his sled (Patti is now getting quite a collection of her at the back of sleds!) What a delightful serendipitous meeting. We have been having so many of those magical conversations with people. What blessings come with you are looking for the interesting people in your day.

A quick trip to Costco puts us in good shape to continue on with our journey. Two full weeks more to go. Let the adventures continue.

On to Anchorage

Day 21, Thursday, August 13th

We woke up to a light rain, said our goodbyes to Beth and Scott, and by the time we were leaving Healey and on the road, it was pouring! It rained a good steady rain all the way to Anchorage. We had had some hope t get another glimpse of Mt. McKinley while driving down the highway to Anchorage, but the clouds were at treetop level with no mountains in sight.

Driving along, we got to Wasilla, of Sarah Palin fame. We stopped and had lunch at a great café. No sign of the Palin family, but a pretty little town once you got off the main highway running through town.

We then made another interesting stop at the Headquarters for the Iditarod Dogsled Race. This is the most famous, and one of the most difficult dogsled races in the country. Here is a little descriptions from their website: “You can’t compare it to any other competitive event in the world! A race over 1150 miles of the roughest, most beautiful terrain Mother Nature has to offer. She throws jagged mountain ranges, frozen river, dense forest, desolate tundra and miles of windswept coast at the mushers and their dog teams. Add to that temperatures far below zero, winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility, the hazards of overflow, long hours of darkness and treacherous climbs and side hills, and you have the Iditarod. A race extraordinaire, a race only possible in Alaska. From Anchorage, in south central Alaska, to Nome on the western Bering Sea coast, each team of 12 to 16 dogs and their musher cover over 1150 miles in 10 to 17 days.
http://www.iditarod.com/

At the Headquarters, they have all sorts of race photos and videos and paraphernalia that are really fun to look at. We were also finally able to get a few more questions answered about the people who took a dog team up to the top of Mt. McKinley. They actually did take a small dogsled and they arrived at the top with five dogs. They started with seven, but found that the dogs pulled too powerfully and had to send two back!

We got to meet the son and daughter-in-law of the man who started the race, and then, as a highlight, go on a ride in a wagon pulled by a team of actual Iditarod racing dogs. They went FAST! These dogs just love to pull. They are so beautiful and excited. As we were trying to decide if we should do the ride, another older woman who had just done it said, “Oh go ahead. Life is too short. And once you’ve done it, they can never take it away!” Good advice. Patti is smiling that she never intended to have this trip get her so interested in dog sledding, but it is really a fascinating subject. Who knew?

So now Anchorage. Alaska’s largest city. One of the statistics that really cracked us up was that there are over a thousand moose that live within Anchorage city limits! In the city, hanging out in parks and in people’s back yards! Okay! We are on the lookout for moose. They live amongst the nearly 280,000 city residents.

Today Dick was able to get the oil changed on the car and check that it was still in great shape. We have now put over 5,000 miles on since leaving home on July 23rd!

It was strange to go from supreme wilderness to the city, but there are also so many wonderful Alaskan experiences to be had here. We spent the late afternoon at an Imax movie about Alaska and then one on the Good Friday Alaskan Earthquake of 1964, the worst earthquake in all of North America. 9.2 on the Richter scale. Lots of damage, caused tsunamis and killed 114 people.

Supper was a couple different kinds of fish chowder (salmon and halibut) that were delicious. The evening was spent catching up on reading, phone calls and getting this blog back up and moving. Having a great time! More to come.

A relaxed day

Day 20 – Wednesday, August 12th

Our “other day” in Denali. Using the good suggestions from our local hosts, we spent the day catching up and doing a little more kicked back activities. We learned from Beth and Scott that Chris McCandless, the idealist but inexperienced young man from the book and movie “Into the Wild” got dropped off for his Alaskan wilderness adventure just a few miles down the road from where we are staying. Both Scott and Beth had gone down that road hunting and trapping many times over many years. They own land in the area. They had even slept all night many times in the old bus where the young man stayed and eventually died because he didn’t have the wilderness skills needed to care for himself in the Alaskan wilderness. We had the chance to drive about 4 miles down the gravel road where he started out, but decided not to go to the end of this potholed road. Too rough for our min-van! Some visitors take the trek to pay homage to his guy, but you have to hike a long ways and cross two intimidating rivers to get there. Sounded like more than what we wanted to take on. But, it was quite interesting to be there.

Then we did a little local exploring including Otto Lake where locals relax in the summer: picnicking, boating and fishing. It was really windy and cold, with kids taking kayaking lessons in their “dry suits” but looked freezing (especially to Patti.)

Then we did a bit of shopping, bought a few souvenirs, and were delighted to discover a book written by our guide from the bus tour describing her entry into dog mushing when she was in her 40’s. We bought the book and eagerly await reading it.

Speaking of dog sledding, we then went back to Denali Park and had a visit to the dog kennels and had a demonstration of dog sledding. Denali is the only one of the National Parks to be patrolled in the winter by rangers with dog sleds. Watching the dogs getting ready to do even a small practice pull was something. The dogs started parking and jumping like crazy, saying “pick me, pick me!” once five of them were harnessed, they were already pulling like crazy with the break and ties on, and once they were released, they took off like a shot. There is no doubt that these dogs live to pull and run! The park service keeps 32 dogs, and then using them all winter long to keep an eye on things and watch for poachers or people who need help. They have been doing this since 1921. There was a couple year period of time after WWII where they tired using snow machines, but found that these weren’t nearly as reliable as the dogs, and went back to using dog teams.

We then left and met Beth and Scott for dinner at a wonderful local place, Creekside Café, which was comfortable and had great food. We both had an amazing baked halibut dish cooked with artichoke hearts and spinach in a cream sauce. Sure beats dehydrated food on a camp stove!

Getting to know Beth and Scott and many of their experiences of living for over 30 years in Alaska has been a highlight for us. They have done a lot of classic pioneering activities: building their own cabins, subsistence hunting and trapping, having their own dogsled team for 20 years. For a period of time, they didn’t have a car but had a dog team for transportation. They also raised 3 children in the area. We had a chance to ask many, many questions and they were gracious in responding to our questions and sharing about their lives. We have come to greatly admire and appreciate them.