Alaska Ride News, Vol. 1, Dispatch No. 2.5 (July 2023), pp. 12/7/2023: The weather in Anchorage is surprisingly perfect for thin blood and older bones like me I expected rain, cold, intermixed with what else but, a smattering of mosquitoes.
I’m now using my iPhone to tap away updates to my blog while slowly acclimatizing my body to Alaska before the start of our next ride. This is precisely why I arrived early. I’m also taking the time to, in this case, smell the lilacs.
Tom and Kiley my host and hostess, left me to my own devices in their country home estate, where the moose’s, the bears and the caribou roam. “Oh give me a hooooooome! Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day”
I haven’t seen any bears today but, I did see at least three moose and counting. And by almost midnight, when I was still looking, hoping, wondering if I would see the northern lights today; I borrowed Tom’s huge 4×4 ultra diesel blue truck, capable of plowing its way through a herd of even buffaloes and made my way to Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, to pick up my friend Roberto 1. And before the clock struck midnight, I now have five moose’s zero hit and no northern lights seen.
In a cartoon series stars two mice from my youth; the bow-tied Pixie and the vested Dixie, surprisingly impersonated by Marlon Brando, the trademark line was always, “I hates those meeces to pieces!”
My CFO says that I’m killing my yearly travel budget, it’s only August, so, no new travel laptop until Christmas. Traveling on a motorcycle can be hard on your body, equipment and the motorcycle. As for me, I needed to replace both pairs of my glasses, what with bug spray, road debris and other stuff, they were too scratched and cloudy to wear. Flying Brian on the other hand, I’m assuming is also experiencing some downtime. It seems to me that his broken foot was possibly a result of his severely damaged and worn rear tire which caused him to go down, and hence a broken gearshift foot. We’ll miss you! Stay strong.
Anchorage or rather Alaska at its highest point is over 20,000 feet and the lowest point in Alaska, the mean elevation of the state of is 1,900 feet above sea level. According to Wikipedia in 1964, Alaska experienced an earthquake that lasted for four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, with a magnitude of 9.2. And Roberto shared with me that prior to his departure from our first ride he ran around Todds house yelling and screaming that the sky was now falling down on account of an earthquake; or perhaps that was Angie, I now forget.
It set the record for the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in N America and the second most powerful one in the world since the study of in seismography began in 1900. And right now I’m really not that far away from the old and the new Seward Highway. Reconstruction was required to raise and fill the Seward Highways above its new high tide mark.
So where to go from here with the blog story?
One of the problems of today that I see is that we are not so well acquainted with the things that count vs the news of the day and the problems of the hour.
Why is it that the news of the day has to impinge itself upon your attention and inner life!
When you get to be my age, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you safely turn to your inner life—well, if you don’t know where it is or what it is, then you’ll be sorry.
When you live a simpler lifestyle, or in a place like Alaska, the story in your mind, does something to your own life by giving you a perspective on what’s happening to you.
So we tell stories to try to come to terms with the world?
The perfect human being is uninteresting—and would not make for an interesting read; it’s the imperfections of life that are lovable and interesting to write about, read and enjoy.
My grandchildren are children are lovable and interesting to me because they’re always moving, falling, trying to talk and understand things and life all around themselves, while their little bodies, oftentimes with heads too big are always thinking, developing and creating new memories for themselves.
Debbie is a person who could tell you stories for hours about her life, Alaska, motorcycle travel and mystic paths. She showed me a 1,000 year old walrus carving, about the size of a large finger. The piece was missing his right leg. Apparently that is how the artist intended it to be. Native eskimos won’t get near the piece as they consider it extraterrestrial. She convinced me. I won’t even photograph it as I now am building up my reserves of road karma. That is the way I roll and you can’t convince me otherwise.
I last stepped into the Fur Factory back in 1991. The same owner recognized me. Just kidding. Actually she is here in this picture as my friend Roberto who is often cold is getting the ultimate in Alaska riding apparel.
There are 8 National Parks in Alaska: Denali, Glacier Bay, Kenai Fjords, Katmai, Wrangell-St Elias, Gates of the Arctic, Kobuk Valley, and Lake Clark National Park.
Guess we’ll have to return to visit the ones that we missed.
Three of Alaska’s National Parks are accessible by road from Anchorage: Denali (4.5hr drive), Wrangell-St Elias (7.5hr drive) and Kenai Fjords (2.5 hr drive).
Gates of the Arctic National Park in northern Alaska is the least visited. Because of its remoteness and isolation, Gates of the Arctic receives the least visitors of all the National parks in the United States. Only 10,518 people visited Gates of the Arctic in 2019.
To watch brown bears, head to Katmai or Lake Clark; to see calving glaciers, take a cruise in Glacier Bay or Kenai Fjords; to witness Caribou migration, visit the remote Kobuk Valley; for easy access to rugged wilderness, take a shuttle bus in Denali; or for complete solitude and isolation venture to Gates of the Arctic.
One of the ways to explore Gates of the Arctic is by floating one of its six wild rivers: John River, Noatak River, Kobuk River, Alatna River, Tinyaguk River, and Koyukuk River. The only way to access the rivers is by air taxi, so make sure yours is a collapsible boat, like a raft or an inflatable canoe.
As wild and remote as Gates of the Arctic National Park, Kobuk Valley is famous for huge herds of caribou that crisscross the valley on their annual migration and for the largest active sand dunes in the Arctic.
Tomorrow we ride.
End
Trawlercat Chronicles 