Road Trip + Bay Area Wrap-Up

Sunday August 5th, 2007, 2:54pm

We're about to enter Canada, Tiff's in the driver seat, and I'm in the passenger seat hammering away at the keyboard. It's been a great road trip so far. I was going to jump back in time to the best hike of the summer, but Tiff's right, the first paragraph should provide that hook that keeps the reader interested and wanting more, so instead I'll recount exactly what we had for lunch. I had a half a turkey sandwich and a full peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I would have had a full turkey sandwich, but there wasn't enough turkey. I did get to have some red bell pepper with it, which was nice. Tiff, on the other hand, had a pb & j along with red bell pepper with peanut butter and raisins for a post lunch dessert. Quite the meal indeed.

And we just crossed the border! We're in the Yukon!! Yukon ho!!

Anyway, back to the best hike of the summer. It was up to an old mine called Bonanza Mine in the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park. We had to drive along a 60 mile dirt road to get to McCarthy, a tiny town that offered shuttle service to Kennicot, which is where the base camp for the mining operation was. The operation had its heydey back in the 30s and is pretty much completely abandoned at this point, but some of the old mining stuff is still preserved by the forest service so that us hikers can take a nice look at it. That hike took up most of Saturday, and it's Sunday now. Tiff really enjoyed the hike a lot, and was in fact the primary picture taker for most of it. I liked it a lot too, but spent a good part of it worrying about being mauled to death by bears, even though we never saw any (thankfully!).

We left Anchorage Friday afternoon and spent most of the day driving until we got to McCarthy around midnight and watched a very cool moonrise before retiring to our sleeping bags in the tent. We spent Saturday night at a mostly deserted State recreation area in Alaska called Dry Creek. By the time we woke up, it appeared to be completely deserted!

We just saw a swan in a lake and to Tiff's great chagrin, there was no place to stop (one might even say "No time to stop!"). Time to check out the map to look for a good place to hike.

Tuesday August 7th, 2007, 2:11pm

Let's see, at the end of the last entry we were just crossing the border and looking for a nice place to hike. Well, it turns out we eventually hit Destruction Bay, a little town where the gas attendent informed us that most trails in the area were closed off due to aggressive bears. It was getting late anyway, so we ate a crappy dinner at the adjacent diner (including Tiff's barely cooked chicken + garden salad). Then it was off to the lake across the street, where we opened up the rhubarb wine from the Bear Creek Winery in Homer and drank it as we walked around town, taking in the sights and learning the storied history of Destruction Bay. Then, just as the Sun was setting, we "hiked in" (a total of about 20 feet in) and pitched our tent right next to the shore.

The next morning we got sopped in by a constant downpour of rain. Eventually it broke through the rain fly and we had to pack up the tent. We got soaked in the process, but it was still a nice place to camp. Then, we headed eastward towards Haines Junction, where there was a visitor center with information about hikes in the vicinity. A kindly ranger informed us of two hikes that we could do. It was a tough choice between the two, but in the end, we decided upon King's Throne hike, which had a nice elevation gain, offering the additional bonus of getting above treeline -- and therefore the ferociously deadly bears -- as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, while we were in the middle of the hike, it began to rain. Once above the treeline, we experienced strong winds, which, when combined with the ceaseless rain, made for a sopping wet, freezing cold hike. Nevertheless, we perservered until we reached what we believed to be King's Throne, a neat little bowl near the top of the trail. We sat down for about 30 seconds, enjoying the peaceful feeling of the rain falling down upon us. Sadly, however, the weather forced us to head back down fairly quickly. We weren't the only ones suffering; indeed, we ran into several groups of hikers heading back down at about the same time. I should also mention that this hike included a stretch of a couple of miles fraught with the danger of those ferocious four-legged furry animals that so readily attack, maul, kill, and eat innocent human beings. Somehow, we survived the trip both up and down. All in all, it was a good hike.

Following the hike, we quickly changed clothes and warmed up in the car. Then we decided we had had enough of going east, meaning that it was time to turn around and head home. We passed by Haines Junction again, then came to Destruction Bay. We wanted to eat at a different diner, but it was closed. So, we decided to press on until the next available foodery. It was already past 6pm at this point. But really, who needs to eat, anyway? As it turned out, every place we passed that might have served food was closed. The only thing that saved us, was the shop at Koidern where we bought some homemade rhubarb pie that was fantasticly delicious. It really carried us through to Beaver Creek, where we ate a quick dinner at Buckshot Betty's. Buckshot Betty, incidentally, is rather rude. She snapped at us when we indicated interest in dinner food that would take a half hour or longer to cook, since it was "already 9pm", even though the grill wasn't supposed to close until 9:30pm, and the store itself at 10pm.

So, next, we decided we didn't want to stay at the RV camp that ol' Buckshot recommended, so we pressed on westward passed Canadian customs towards the border. Eventually, we saw a turnoff to the right and pulled over and pitched our tent. We then opened the fine bottle of wine that Tiff purchased for eleven big ones and went for a walk into the wilderness. I indicated a feeling of "uncomfortableness" most likely originating from a perhaps irrational fear of bears and other dangerous creatures that walk Mother Earth. Tiff, of course, was in her element and really enjoying being far away from the next human beings. However, once she discovered how terrified I was, we headed back to the car. There, we discovered a group of hooligan grizzly bears turning our car over and bashing open the windows to get at some bread crumbs. We chased them away though, and turned the car back over, then used duct tape to repair the broken windows. Good as new.

After that adventure, we decided to relax in the tent a bit for a tough, competitive Gin Rummy match. Tiff barely beat me, 650-350, after about 4 or 5 games. Tiff then promptly fell asleep, while I stayed awake, thinking that every sound I heard was either a murderous bear prowling around our tent, a pack of wolves hoping to tear us into bits and pieces, or a psychopath with way too many knives. Unfortunately, it was a windy night, and the rain fly made a lot of noise as it whipped around and scraped the ground. It took me about four hours to fall asleep, but eventually I did. I think I woke Tiff up and some point and made her scared by being scared myself. Oops.

We survived the night and that's why I'm sitting here writing this. It rained once again in the morning, and so once again we got sopped in and our tent is still in fact drying out. Indeed, the car has a nice musty smell going for it at the moment. It's pretty disgusting. We just departed from Tok, and now we're heading for Valdez, where we'll be catching a ferry tomorrow afternoon that will take us to Whittier. Ta ta for now.

Monday August 13th, 2007 11:10am

Been awhile since my last entry... We made it to Valdez after stopping briefly for some nice views of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains, including Sanford Mt. and Bradford Mt. The road to Valdez from Glenallen was especially beautiful and was the place that reminded us most of the fjords of Norway, with its sharply rising mountains and awesome waterfalls.

Valdez itself was a nice place too. I talked with an environmentally-inclined friend of ours from Alaska after the trip, and he had a very negative impression of the place, but the truth is that I enjoyed it a lot, and I think Tiff did too. It was an interesting mix of a tourist town and an oil town. The permanent residents are heavily tilted towards the oil side, since Valdez is where the trans-Alaska pipeline ends, but in the summer time there is a heavy infiltration of tourists. The weather when we were there was beautiful, which was no doubt part of the reason we enjoyed it so much. But the whole town just seemed like a nice place to be to me.

In the evening we walked around town, deciding against a hike that would have taken us right back into bear territory, thankfully :). We did a short little hike that took us up onto a mound in the middle of town and had a nice panoramic view. Then we checked out the salmon spawning area, which was a really neat thing that I liked a lot. There were tons of salmon trying desperately to swim up a river that could not have been more than a few inches deep! Many of them had failed and were lying dead, beached practically in the middle of the river. Some of them were even fighting each other, preventing their brethren from getting upriver at the cost of preventing themselves as well. Apparently, the salmon grow up for a couple of years in the ocean, then swim upriver to lay their eggs and die. It was a very real reinforcement of the salmon's life cycle.

We camped overnight on the side of an infrequently travelled road and had much better sleep than the previous night near the American-Canadian border. We took a shower in the morning, which was only noteworthy because we took it together in the women's bathroom at the harbormaster's public restroom. When a female employee came into the bathroom and heard my voice, I guess she freaked out and called the police. They asked me to come out of the bathroom and then asked me what I was doing in there. I said, "I just wanted to take a shower with my girlfriend." I certainly wasn't expecting the police to be called for a silly little thing like this. But they took down my information, then told me that I could never come back to that restroom again. The officers were pretty cool about it though. At one point the guy I was talking to told me it wasn't really that bad of a thing to do, but that I still shouldn't be doing it. I was just glad I wasn't getting a fine or anything -- though the whole thing did seem a bit silly to me.

Anyway, we still had a bit of time before our ferry trip to Whittier, so we checked out a couple of museums around town. One of them had some interesting info on what life was like for the first gold diggers in Alaska. It also had an exhibit on the oil spill, but we both thought there could have been more pictures of the spill and first person accounts (things that were both found in abundance for the gold diggers, who visited Alaska almost a century earlier!). I wonder if the oil companies have some say in what goes in the museum.

The ferry ride turned out to be really great, even though we never stopped to check out wildlife or nice views. It took three hours to pass through the Prince William Sound from Valdez to Whittier, and just about the entire time there were beautiful islands with waterfalls to look at. Unfortunately, there wasn't much outside area to see from, and half of that area had smokers stinking it up, but as long as you leaned out far enough the strong breeze overcame any foul stench from cigarettes. There was also one point when I forgot to hang onto my SF Giants hat, and the wind blew it off into the ocean, lost forever.

We probably should have stopped in Whittier for a bit, but we were concerned about the one lane passage through the mountain to Portage being closed for the oncoming traffic or the train, so we went straight from the ferry to Portage. We decided to stop in Portage instead, doing a short hike to nowhere, then resting for an hour or so at the foot of lake that's fed by the Portage glacier, among others. It was incredibly peaceful and relaxing. We both needed a bit of rest too. The nearby visitor's center had a bunch of cool info, including some stuff about how much the Portage Glacier has shrunk in the past 100 years or so. Apparently, when it was first built 50 (?) years ago, you could easily see the Portage glacier. Now you have to take a 1 hour boat ride to get a view of it! Global warming sucks...

After Portage, we pretty much went straight back to Anchorage and made it back around 6pm or so. We packed everything up that needed it and headed over to Tiff's intern friends from Trustees for Alaska for one more getogether before we left the next morning at 8am for the bay area. It was a nice party and a good way to say goodbye to all of the friends we made over the summer. Everyone passed around contact information, so I imagine it won't be the last time we see any of them.

We had to wake up at 5:30am to get our rental car back to the airport and still have lots of time to check in before our flight at 8. It was pretty tough, but we managed to do it. At Enterprise, they took the car fine (even with all the grease marks from the bikes, and the general dirty state we left it in), but they indicated the final bill would be over twice what we were expecting. Tiff tried to ask them what it was about, but they said we would have to talk to the folks at the 4th avenue office, since that's where we rented it from in the first place. Conveniently, they didn't open until 7:30am. We ended up needing the extra time we had, because of a long wait in the luggage-check line due to a bunch of Koreans that had identical names except for one letter, including one person who had the same name as a wanted person (different birthday though). It didn't help that only one of them could speak any english at all. Then the security line was long and slow too, so it took us over an hour just to check in and get to our gate.

Once we cleared that hurdle, Tiff called Enterprise to figure out the bill issue, but our contact at Enterprise (Shannon) was "too busy" to talk with us, so we said we'd call back after our flight to Portland. Tiff was getting a bit worried at this point (I must have heard the word "bullshit!" uttered quite a bit) and spent the first part of the flight planning exactly what she was going to say to Enterprise to argue her point. But then we started talking to the guy next to us and telling him about our experiences in Alaska and he told us about his experiences learning Japanese and we all relaxed a bit, which was nice.

Then we got to Portland, called Shannon again, and again he said he was too busy to talk to us, but that he would call us back as soon as possible (in half an hour I think). We waited half an hour, then called him again, but no dice! We were pissed. We couldn't do anything more though, because our flight to SJ was boarding. That flight was a nice relaxing one. Uneventful, but nevertheless making an appearance on the blog. Once we arrived in SJ, it was time for another call to Enterprise. We had plenty of time while waiting for our bags, but still no luck with getting any help from them. I told Tiff to tell them she had called them four times the next time she called and that she was tired of getting no help. So the next time she called, it turned out that Shannon was having a family emergency and wasn't going to be around for awhile. So we called back a fifth time, talked to somebody who wasn't Shannon, and actually got help. They had to talk to their manager and call us back, but eventually they worked it out and our bill was fixed. What a pain in the arse.

Meanwhile, Jayme and Nelson were having their own battles with PG&E. It turned out that they had been paying everyone else's gas and electric bill (and the neighbor's water instead of their own) since they had moved in, making for some huge bills ($300 for a month when they were gone!). I don't know if all that's been worked out yet, but at least they know about it and have made the owner aware. My parents, Tiff, Tucker, and I brought some food over to their house to help them out with their travails. It was cool, because we got to see their house, which is extremely nice and their two new kittens, which are also extremely nice. They really lucked out on getting the place.

Friday was a mostly relaxing day. Tiff slept in big time and I had some nice conversations with my family. Jayme and Nelson took Tiff over to a rehearsal dinner for a wedding she was participating in. Unfortunately, there was mega traffic on the way to Stockton and she missed the rehearsal, but did make it for the dinner (nice!). I watched an episode of DS9 and went for a walk with Tucker with my parents.

Saturday was another relaxing day for me, but I think Tiff had a tougher time with her 3 hour hair & makeup appointment for the wedding. Her stuff didn't take more than 20 minutes, but there were other folks for whom that wasn't the case. They did a really good job with her hair and they didn't put too much makeup on, so I'd say it turned out well. I hit the road around 2:30pm for the wedding and arrived at 4:30pm (a bit of traffic but not bad). The ceremony itself wasn't bad. The rabbi knew Joe since at least his Barmitzfah (Tiff: definitely not right spelling) and said some nice things about Julia too. A bit God-heavy if you ask me, but it was a wedding ceremony after all.

The reception afterwards was nice too. Joe's family was huge and seemed to really enjoy dancing, which made it a lot easier for me to dance without being completely liquored up. We closed the party at 11pm, then I drove back to San Jose, including a stop in Los Gatos to drop off Sean, an old co-oper from Lothlorien. We finally got to sleep at 2am, then woke up promptly at 9:30am to drive up to Brentwood for peach picking with my parents and Jayme and Nelson.

I think Jayme and Nelson really apreciated our call at 2am asking if they wanted to go peach picking, and then our call at 9am telling them it was time to come over to our house to leave! We also assaulted Jessica with about 20 phone calls urging her to come. It was fortunate she decided to accede to our requests, because we were able to give her the wine that Tiff bought at Bear Creek Winery along with Horsey, who was positively euphoric at the opportunity to be reunited with his true and rightful owner, Jessica Levy.

I ate about 5 peaches during the hour or so we were there, and I think that was on the low end of consumed peaches. Nelson must be a peach-hater though; he only had 2 and a half. I think we ended up with about 75 lbs of peaches to take home. Not a bad haul, eh?

Tuesday 8/14/07 1:23pm

That afternoon Tiff and I took a nice long nap, and we were fortunate to have Dane and his new girlfriend Erin (sp?) stop by for a quick bite to eat before checking out Jayme and Nelson's new digs. It was nice to see Dane who I hadn't seen in a long time. We only had a few days to spend in the bay area, but I really think we made the most of them.

The flight back to Tucson stopped through Phoenix, where the temperature was 110 but in the walkway from the plane to the airport it felt like 150. Then as we were getting ready to fly to Tucson, one of the two AC units broke and there was a delay in taking off. It honestly felt like I couldn't breathe it was so stiflingly hot. Once we got airborne it was a little better, but as soon as it wasn't miserable anymore it was time to descend.
Suresh kindly picked us up at the airport and since then we've been getting back in the swing of things. Our bikes should be getting dropped off by Fedex today, which will be really nice. We had to do a lot of plant repair because there was one week I forgot to arrange to have anyone taking care of our plants. However, we had one minor miracle happen, which was that the basil in our garden is flourishing! It's three times bigger than it was when I left in June, and the only watering it's gotten has been from the monsoons (which I hear have been nearly constant, thankfully). It was a wonderful surprise that saved us when it came time for dinner, since we were able to whip up some pesto really quickly. The only other noteworthy thing was the four cockroaches in our bathtub that apparently crawled up the dried out toilet drain to hang out in our tub. We're hoping there aren't any more around our apartment, but you never know.

Posted by Shane at August 14, 2007 1:47 PM