Making like a Tree and Leaving

I thought you would get a kick out of this sign I passed the other day with all the hype about McCain's VP choice. Since his announcement there has been something everyday on the front page of the newspapers about Gov. Sarah Palin and most Alaskans are still divided on her role as a major politician.

After three weeks of straight rain I decided I was ready to leave Alaska. Then miraculously there was a break in the clouds and the sun came out one morning. I took the opportunity to take my bike out for one last farewell ride.

I passed an interesting house that just looked so typical 'Alaska' (complete with large barking dog).

I continued on my bike up Nash Road which winds around the other side of Ressurection Bay. It was interesting to see everything for the first time from the other side.

I had some nice views even though I could see another storm coming. I also passed a big waterfall along the way.

And for a moment before the storms rolled in I remembered again why I love it here.

You can see the fall colors starting to change on the mountain and the air is turning nippy.

My favorite Alaskan wildflower, fireweed, normally looks like this:

But now it is starting to look like this:

However I love that the fireweed continues to give brilliant color to the landscape even as it's dying. It is also edible in the spring, and it is one of the first plants to start breaking down the soil for other plants to grow after a glacier has receded. It makes me want to start singing, "Give Said the Little Fireweed."

And so I say goodbye once again to this great state of Alaska knowing that there is something addicting about it that just may bring me back here in the future.

I'll be back in Utah tomorrow and hopefully I'll be able to pop in and say 'hello' to some of you!

Following Fields and Fjords

This is what Seward has usually looked like this summer. When it does finally clear up and we get a few sunny days (which has been about 1 or 2 days out of 10 rainy ones), I take every opportunity to go outside and do something fun.



This weekend I had a couple of days off so the first day I went out on the Kenai Fjords National Park boat tour. I went out once before in the beginning of the season, but it was cold and most of the mountains were still covered in snow back then. This time it was more beautiful even though it is getting late enough that most of the animals are starting to migrate already. But of course the sea lions are always on their favorite haul-out rocks.






I also saw three whales but my camera was giving me trouble so I didn't get pictures (which is Ok because whales can be difficult to photograph anyway). I always feel a sense of wonder when I see or hear whales. There is something mysterious about them that I feel with every encounter. It's one of the reasons I came back to Alaska. We moved on and went as far as Northwestern Glacier.






It is a pretty active Glacier and we saw lots of big chunks calve into the water.






The vastness, beauty and power of glaciers are other reasons I wanted to see Alaska again. Of course wherever there are many glaciers there must be an icefield feeding them. The Harding Ice field feeds all the glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park and about 9 miles up the road from where I live is a trailhead to a lookout point over the ice field. So the next day my friend Andrea and I decided to hike the 4 steep miles up to see it.



The views were incredible.

Of course we girls appreciated all kinds of views . . . .

The trail follows Exit Glacier (a piedmont glacier, or one that ends on land) up all the way to the mother source of it's super-compacted ice.

As we got further up the trail other hikers kept warning us that they had seen multipe bears (as many as three different ones) So we kept our eyes open and our granola bars hidden. Sure enough we saw one foraging up on the hill. We watched and waited until it passed behind us.

A little while later I started wondering if we would see any others since other hikers had warned us there would be more. Right when this thought came into my head I looked up and saw a bear eyeing us not far from the trail. It meandered along and went behind a rock out of sight. We waited and waited for it to come into view and never did. So I inched my way up to peek around the rock when Andrea saw it's head pop up in a different place further behind us. We stayed in one place and continued to talk and sing loudly. Eventually it kept going up the snowy mountain.

As we continued on the trail we saw where the bear had crossed in front of us. The paw print is a little bit bigger than my hand, which isn't very big for a bear, but still big enough to rip my face off.

We continued up and made it to the emergency shelter which is just before the Harding Ice Field lookout point. There was something about the place that made me want to light a big bonfire to help Gondor call for aid.

When we finally made it to the lookout there was an amazing view that looked kind of like what Idaho looks like in the winter. But this was August - we weren't in Idaho, and I knew this vast land was the source of all those beautiful glaciers down below.

As we were gazing over the land suddenly two of our rebel friends stopped by to say 'hello.'

Ok well maybe not, but it did remind me of the Hoth system in The Empire Strikes Back.

The views were beautiful again on the way down only we had to keep moving because the sun actually goes down now and we had to make it down before dark.

As we were coming down the path we met a little marmot friend who was not scared of us at all.

And as long as we are on movie themes, this little guy reminded me of something right out of the Kingdom of Narnia.

We made it down the trail with plenty of daylight and went to the restaurant for a big plate of nachos. I'm pretty sure it was the nachos that made my stomach hurt the next day and not from drinking giardia infected glacier water (though I guess that could have done it, too). But I feel fine now even though it's back to raining all day again.