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Highlights of My 2007 16,000-Mile Sabbatical
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North to Alaska!
Driving from our home in Massachusetts
to Alaska had been a dream for my
husband and me since our last long road
trip in 2003. We headed north to
the border, then
west on the Trans-Canada Highway.
When we reached the sign on the left,
where we turned north onto the Cassiar
Highway in British Columbia, I was jumping with excitement.
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Hyder is a hamlet
unconnected to the rest of Alaska, whose
main delight was a U.S. Forest Service
wild bear observatory. From an
elevated walkway, we watched a family of
grizzlies and several lone black bears
show up to catch and eat the salmon
swimming up the creek. Even without
the bears, the salmon were amazing to
watch. See how thick they are in
the photo to the right? (Look
closely...) |
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In Yukon, I was charmed by historic Dawson City, settled during the Klondike Gold Rush of
1897-98 and restored with dozens of Wild West shops and restaurants, such as those
on the left above. On the top
right is the cabin built by
author/adventurer Jack London south of Dawson City just prior to the Gold Rush. Yes, that's grass growing on the
roof to help hold the heat in! |
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An unplanned detour
turned into one of the highlights of the
whole trip. From Dawson City, we
drove across more than 400 miles of
tundra on the unpaved Dempster Highway
to an Inuit town above the Arctic
Circle. When we reached Inuvik,
Northwest Territories, it
had not yet gotten dark at 11 p.m. -
which turned out to be midnight local
time. We celebrated having reached
the land of the midnight
sun. |
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Below left is Inuvik's
inukshuk, an assemblage of stones used
in the Arctic to point the way and
demonstrate that others have come
through. I'd been captivated by
this symbol since seeing hundreds of
smaller ones built by travelers along
the highways bordering Lake Ontario and
Lake Huron in Ontario. Like most
homes in Inuvik, the building behind the
inukshuk is built on legs, about six
inches off the ground, because heated
rooms directly on the ground would melt
the permafrost and topple the
building. On the right, you see
our normally shiny black car caked with
Arctic mud at the only gas station on
the way back from Inuvik. It cost
$76 (Canadian) to fill up. |
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Within Alaska, the
most exhilarating thing we did was take
a 90-mile flight around Denali (Mt.
McKinley), North America's highest
peak. Flying at 12,000 feet just
before sunset, the 7-passenger plane
took us above glaciers and right
alongside Denali's massive snow-covered
crags. At right is how Denali
looks from a distance. |
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Sparkling, majestic
and fiercely inhuman, the vistas on this
flight were beyond spectacular.
The double rainbow we saw just before
boarding the plane served as an
appropriate omen. Even with three
bouts of air sickness, I felt I'd seen
the utmost beauty of our planet and had
the experience of a lifetime.
View a slide show of the flight around Denali in a pop-up window.
Pop-up doesn't
work for you? Try this
link instead.
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Our second most
exciting experience in Alaska was a
day-long boat ride from Valdez around
Prince William Sound. We saw
whiskered sea otters lolling on their
backs in the water, sea lions (at left),
seals, puffins perched in a rocky cove
and bald eagles. Equally
impressive were ship-sized icebergs
choking the passageway to a tidewater
glacier. |
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From Juneau, a boat
ride to Tracy Arm Fjord treated us to
both humpback and orca whales as well as
an up-close view of where Sawyer Glacier
meets the sea. All 30 people on
the boat commanded the glacier to calve,
so that icebergs would crack off and
tumble into the sea while we were
watching, but alas, the glacier did not
cooperate. |
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On land, we found
Alaska refreshingly funky, as in the
log-cabin-and-antlers style of the
Talkeetna shop to the left. The
legacy of early Russian settlement,
along with the Native American
influence, caught our attention, but
overall, Alaska's stunning natural
environment was the star of our trip. |
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