Travels with Billie

Transatlantic Cruise (Belatedly)

In December we had the opportunity to take an 18-day cruise that went from Rome to Fort Lauderdale. It was a little crazy: we were in San Antonio to spend the week of Thanksgiving with our son and his family. We got home late one night and left early the next morning for San Diego. The following morning we headed to Rome. When we returned, it was Christmas and we went jet-lagged into the festivities with another son’s family.

The flight to Rome was notable only thanks to the newlyweds sitting behind us on the transatlantic flight. They were alternately loving, loud, obnoxious, drunk, and squabbling. We got no sleep. But neither did they, and they looked somewhat the worse for wear when we arrived in Rome. I can only wonder how long that marriage lasted!

Once we arrived in Rome things took a positive turn. I had arranged for a car service to take us to our hotel, and they were wonderful. RomeCabs is a great company and I highly recommend them. And they cost LESS than a taxi! When we got to our hotel it was around 9 am, and I asked if they would check our bags while we went sightseeing since I knew check-in time was 3 pm. They actually gave us our room early, and did not charge extra. Another big win.

Once we got settled in our room we went off to the Colosseum to do some sightseeing. How do you describe standing in a building that’s 2000 years old? I can’t. You gotta go! Looking out from those walls, I was able to see the Roman forum, and could almost imagine Caesar and the Senators walking along and discussing the state of the Roman Empire.

Highlight of the day? Trying to figure out how to find a cab back to our hotel from the Colosseum. We were finally assisted by a Roman soldier in full regalia, who was talking on his cell phone. Now why didn’t I take a photo of that? Oh, and the other highlight: Pizza!

Alaska As I Remember It

The Fourth of July. Usually it passes mostly unremarked here…we have guests to attend to, buses to run, vacation dreams to fulfill. Oh, we do have a cookout and some games, but it’s still a workday.

This year was different, however. I was invited to the celebration in the town of Ferry, which, until the day before, I didn’t even know existed. I have a distant relative, whom I’ve only met once before, who lives in Ferry, Alaska. My sister-in-law has encouraged us to get together, but it didn’t really register how very close they live. Anyway, my cousin-by-marriage called me the night before the 4th and invited me to come to their town cookout. It turned out to be much more than I expected, and a delightful time.

I agreed to come after work, and I got the directions of how to get to the town. It went along the lines of: drive to milepost xxx on the Parks Highway and take the Ferry Road (which, by the way, is unmarked) to the railroad tracks. Then turn left and follow the tracks until you come to a lot of cars. Wait there to be picked up. I did all that. There’s a railroad bridge that crosses the Nenana River. Shortly after I arrived, here came my cousin on an ATV over a walkway on the bridge. I climbed on the back of the ATV and off we went, back over the river to Ferry.

I walked into an Alaska I remember from my childhood. Our host was an true Alaskan old fart who welcomed me with a kiss on the hand and an offer of food. His hand-built log cabin is a step back into history, obviously hand-built. Their “community center” was at one time the post office-also a log cabin that was turned over to Ferry when the Parks Highway was built and mail started being delivered to mailboxes on the highway rather than by the train. It has a bar, a sitting area with an original barber chair, a pool table, and enough memorabilia to make an antique lover swoon.

I also got a tour of our host’s cabin. So here, in the Alaskan bush, in the cabin of this 80-something sourdough, sits a baby grand piano. How did it get there? Well, the good citizens of Ferry carried it across the railroad bridge. Ah, the railroad bridge. That’s a whole other story. It turns out that the town of Ferry is quite famous. Maybe I’ll write the whole story once I get it right from the mouths of those who know the real story-the residents of Ferry. For now, let me entice you with a promise to tell the story of the Ferry Moon.

But Ferry isn’t completely Alaska Bush. In fact, one of the folks there said they live in the “Cush Bush”. Yes, they are highly spread out (I didn’t actually see any homes other than our host’s-people in Alaska like their neighbors to be close enough to visit…but not too often). Yes, they have well water and outhouses. But they also have electricity and 4G internet and cell service. Turns out the cell tower is right in town.

The town fascinates me, and I assured both my cousin and my host that I’d be back to visit. I itched to take time to really photograph this remnant of Alaskana, but it didn’t seem polite. Next time I’ll take my camera, and ask permission. There are literally hundreds of photos sitting there waiting to be made.

Just a Moment

Sometimes an amazing moment happens so quietly, unnoticed by most. This was one of those moments. The photo isn’t one of my best, but it captures something special so I’m going to include it here anyway.

The other morning I was leaving our housing to walk across the street to have breakfast at our larger facility, which houses our Employee Dining Room. Because it was early in the morning, no one was about, and I was focused on starting my work day.

I walked out the front door and onto the deck, which is only about 10 feet deep. I nearly walked right across and down the steps, but thankfully I noticed the moose that was standing right next to the stairs. I didn’t see her at first because there is a railing there and it blocked most of my view of her. I say thankfully, because moose, particularly females, can be very aggressive. You really don’t want to get into an argument with a creature who weighs over 1000 pounds, no matter how docile they might seem to the casual observer.

She was just standing there quietly, not moving, until I came out the door. She lifted her huge head and looked at me, standing only ten feet away. I was so astonished I just stood there and stared at her. It wasn’t until she started to casually stroll away that I came to my senses and started frantically digging for my iPhone to take a picture.

She walked across the parking lot, across the street, into the parking lot of the bar/restaurant across the street, and disappeared into the woods behind the bar. No one else was around, she didn’t run, she just slowly ambled away and into the woods. I stood there for several minutes looking at the place where she vanished into the trees, and finally walked across the street to breakfast. It was almost like it never happened. Almost.

Summer Has Arrived

Last year I talked a bit about how everything here seems to be in a hurry to stuff everything they can into the short summer season. When the warm weather arrived here, it seemed as though the mountainsides turned green overnight. One of our drivers told me she saw the roadside flowers bloom between 2 AM and 6 AM. Just that fast. With 21 hours of daylight here in Denali, summer is in high gear.

The moose have been very evident along the roads, chomping on all that nice tender greenery. I hear tell the beavers are busy at Horseshoe Lake, too, but when I finally made it there yesterday the only wildlife I saw was the Alaska State Bird: the mosquito. There were so many my pictures are full of blurry little smudges.

While last summer we experienced very few really warm days, this year seems to be trying to make up for the late arrival of Spring. Today the thermometer (according to the Weather Channel) hovered at 88 degrees. There is no air conditioning. Fortunately I have a fan, but it’s still pretty uncomfortable.

The good thing as that since this is Alaska, it might snow tomorrow. We can only hope.

What a Great Weekend!

This is what I’ve been waiting for since I arrived two months ago…

I finally got to take the shuttle into Denali Park on Saturday. I rode to the Eielson Visitor Center, and saw my first grizzly of the season. Actually, the tally was 31 Dall sheep, four grizzlies, 14 caribou, six moose, and three ptarmigan. None of our encounters was extraordinary…no bears walking down the middle of the road, no baby moose, and no view of the Mountain (Denali, for the uninitiated). But the landscape continues to call to me, the sheer joy of being in a land untroubled by modern civilization.

Well, there was one bear reasonably close, and since it was my first good look for the season, I’ll take it.

The plan for Sunday was to relax, do laundry, and maybe venture over to the Park entrance to hike to Horseshoe Lake. It’s an easy hike, under a mile, with a pretty lake with beavers and other wildlife (including the gigantic Alaskan Mosquito). Somehow I never made it. My friend Diane convinced me to do the hike early instead of later, so we started out toward the Park only to be waylaid by a moose and twin babies. Of course we had to stop and take lots of photos.

Finally, off to Horseshoe. We got about halfway in to the lake when Diane spotted an owl having a disagreement with a raven. It seems the raven had its eye on the owl’s nest; whether it was for baby owls or eggs we don’t know. We spent a good deal of time watching the drama unfold, and at one point the raven came right to the owl’s nest, who proceeded to spread her wings and cover the nest to keep the raven out.

Pretty amazing day, right? Well, we never got to Horseshoe Lake. We got a call telling us we could take a glacier landing flight if we could get back to the lodge in a half hour. So we hustled back, always within the speed limit, of course. The weather was beautiful, but I was worried that I was in a t-shirt with no jacket, heading up to Ruth Glacier on Denali. I needn’t have worried. I was so excited, and the weather was so beautiful, I never noticed the chill.

This was a bit of my personal history coming back to me. When we landed, the pilot pointed out a building that belonged to the famous bush pilot, Don Sheldon. Many years ago when I was just a child, Don was in my mother’s restaurant and tried to talk her into letting him fly me up to the glacier. Mom’s reaction was mostly along the lines of “Are you kidding me? I’m not letting you take my 9-year-old up to land on a piece of ice!” Of course, I was doing every bit of wheedling I knew to get her to let me go, but no dice. So, Mom, wherever you are up there, I finally got to go!

This is why I come back to Alaska in the summer. Why I actually work when I’m supposedly retired. Because you never know what you might see around the next corner.

A Change of Direction

I’ve learned through experience that sometimes life changes while you’re making other plans. On Monday morning, while we were all getting ready for a new work week, one of my friends and coworkers had a stroke just before she was to start her shift. Wendy works in the King Salmon, our fine dining restaurant. Her husband Roy is a driver-guide. Both have been coming here for several years and they are well-known and well liked throughout our little community. Last year Wendy brought coffee our office every day, and when she learned that one of our team members didn’t drink coffee she brought him milk. Both Wendy and Roy are known for their enthusiasm and kind spirits.

So it was a shock to hear that Wendy was being airlifted to Anchorage with Roy at her side. The next realization was that they are thousands of miles away from family, and without health insurance.

That’s when the most amazing thing happened. From all sides, people were asking “Are we doing something to help them?” This came from the newest, youngest members of our team to the top management. We put together a collection, and by the end of the week we were able to deliver over $2300 to our friends to help with their expenses. Princess and the Denali management arranged for our Care Team to look in on them and help in any way we could. I went to Anchorage over the weekend with my friend Diane to offer our assistance and to deliver the many greetings we had received by setting up a table in our employee dining area and providing paper and markers to create cards for them.

While Wendy faces some challenges, we were delighted to see that she had her sense of humor intact. I came away with a couple of reminders. One is that we are strong in the face of adversity and can find ways to cope. The other is that people can be wonderful. We received donations from people who knew Wendy only by hearing about her. We received donations from international students who come here to work and save for their next year of school back home-some working two jobs to make the most of their time here. We found some $100 bills in the donations from people who did not want to tell us who they were. And the outpouring of support and concern has been wonderful…not only for Wendy and Roy, but for all of us who care about them.

So this week…no bears, no moose, no adventures. But the warmth of good people helping others made it a good week.

Spring Is in a Hurry!

One of the reasons I was looking forward to going to Fairbanks was because it tends to be a little warmer there and I was hoping for a little green on the trees and bushes. Last year when it was still brown and bare in Denali, we were seeing a little start of green when we visited Fairbanks.

Through the entire drive I looked hard to see hints of green…anywhere! Nothing.

I decided to enjoy the trip anyway, and drove 55 miles out to Chena Hot Springs. The river was running high and since it was a holiday weekend there were lots of campers…and therefore no wildlife. But I visited the Ice Museum, which was fascinating (and cold!) and had an Appletini in a glass made of ice.

On the drive back to Fairbanks, just three or four hours later, I was starting to see hints of green! The trees were in such a hurry to catch up and start enjoying summer that they were leafing out within just a few hours.

The next day after doing my errands in Fairbanks I started back toward Denali and the hillsides were all turning green. As I said in my blog last year, summer in Alaska is short so the wildlife works hard to make the best of it. Apparently the fauna does, also!

Spring…then summer

As I’ve been whining about in my earlier blogs, spring came late to the interior of Alaska this year. Just one week ago we were in the middle of a major snowstorm that dropped upwards of eight inches on snow on already lingering snowdrifts.

Today we had spring. It came early this morning, that kiss of mild air that tells you the leaves might start thinking about cautiously showing their buds. The snowdrifts were creating little streams of snowmelt in the ditches and other inconvenient places.

This afternoon spring seemed to have run its course. and walking out of my office on the resort property I found that I had to take off my jacket-the one that seemed so inadequate earlier this week. Summer is arriving.

For the first time since I arrived last month, I walked across the highway to the employee dining area without a coat. Everyone was heading outside to play basketball, talk with friends, and just enjoy life. The snowy mountains surrounding us didn’t seem quite so forbidding. And on the drive back to our housing area, we saw water gushing down the hillsides.

The ice on the rivers is finally starting to break up, although there are ice dams forming that could mean trouble down the line. The Nenana Ice Classic came to a close on Monday afternoon when the tripod fell from the broken ice. It was the latest breakup since it started so many years ago, breaking the 1964 record by only four hours.

This weekend I’m heading to Fairbanks to take a little break from Denali, and do some sightseeing. My camera is packed and ready to go, and I’m hearing reports of many wildlife sightings and lots of baby moose. It’s also supposed to be 75 degrees in Fairbanks tomorrow. I’m sure our arriving guests tomorrow would not believe it if we tell them we had a blizzard last week.

I Spoke Too Soon

I guess I got a tad overconfident about the weather when I posted last weekend. It seemed like Spring. It felt like Spring. But Mother Nature had other plans.

Beginning early yesterday morning, we got hit with a major snowstorm that is just now finally moving on to bother someone else. When you’re in a business that’s involved in transporting vacationers and giving them a wonderful experience, a snowstorm is a BIG DEAL. All we could say was “Welcome to Alaska!”

My hopes of driving into Denali National Park today were dashed, so instead I’ve spent most of the day watching movies. I’m figuring that no self-respecting grizzly would be out wandering around in a blizzard anyway, and even if he was I wouldn’t be able to see him! I did go out and clear about eight inches of wet, heavy snow and ice off the car I leased for the season. There wasn’t an ice scraper or snow brush in the car-it was only for the summer, after all.

I’m holding on to great hopes that I might get into the park tomorrow, which is the last day cars are allowed to drive beyond Savage River. With the snow it’s likely I won’t get beyond Savage anyway, but it’s worth checking, anyway.

Alaska has a long-standing tradition called the Nenana Ice Classic. It started in 1917, probably by people who were suffering from cabin fever and needed something to do. Why not bet on Spring? Besides, Alaskans will bet on almost anything. So every year a tripod is set up on the ice on the Tanana River, in the town of Nenana, south of Fairbanks. When the tripod falls over, breakup is official. People buy tickets and make their guess on when the ice will go out. Last year the winner received $350,000. The latest the ice has ever gone out was May 20, 1964, the same week I graduated from high school in Anchorage. I remember it being a cold spring-I wore a heavy coat over my graduation gown because it was so cold. It looks like this year might set a new record. On May 6 the ice was still 40 inches thick. That was the last measurement, because the ice starts to get soft and it isn’t safe to go out on the river. With the very cold weather we’ve been having, I somehow think that ice hasn’t deteriorated all that much in the last couple of weeks. I’ll keep checking and let you know when the ice goes out. I;m ready for it right now!

I always try to live in the moment and enjoy whatever comes, especially in Alaska. There is so much beauty here, and the many seasons and types of weather make it a constantly changing picture. But I’ve been here now for seven weeks of winter. Seriously, I’m ready for summer.

Trip to Anchorage

After a month of living in Healy and seeing the same scenery every day, I finally had the opportunity to go to Anchorage last weekend. I picked up one of our vehicles there and brought it back with another coworker. It gave me a chance to do some shopping and try out a couple of restaurants. When you live in a big city you forget that not everyone can just walk into a Target or a Safeway or a Walgreens whenever they want to buy what they need.

I haven’t seen much wildlife since I got to Alaska, but the trip to Anchorage brought several great sightings. On the way down I saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree next to the road. Coming back, we spotted three grizzlies and two moose.

I’m getting excited about being able to get into Denali National Park soon. There are trails to be hiked, wildlife to watch, and photos to be taken. It’s why I come here. Maybe next weekend….