The Last Frontier
I was thinking along the superlative lines for describing this place. But then I ran through the whole list before giving up.
Traveling from New York City to Anchorage, it was a drab landscape all the way into Canadian territory. Six hundred nautical miles before Anchorage is when it all changed dramatically. Frozen wastes (this is the first and last time I will use that term), long stretches of ice punctuated with the rise of a dark mountain peak (When you travel here, make sure you ask for a window seat). The sun reflecting off the snow and ice as far as the ‘I’ can see.
Ted Stevens Airport – Anchorage; looks like a usual American airport, feels like one, so it must be one. The moment you step out is when you realize why the Alaskans disdainfully call the rest of the United States as the lower forty-eight (Hawaii and Alaska are non contiguous while the rest of the states…go look at a map). After a North West Airlines employee gleefully informs me that they have lost my bags, I step out of the terminal and…well…I stepped into. …(I have no choice except to use the much used cliché) “If there is a heaven on earth, this is it”.
I have two days to drift around Anchorage (By the way this is not the capital of Alaska. The capital is a city called Juneau, and it has roughly around a tenth of the population of Anchorage and in other news, North West found my bags and delivered them to my hotel). A day later, after seeing the sights and having this crazy idea of staying back as an illegal immigrant, I just about manage to convince myself to act like a responsible adult and go back to work and family. But then, that was before I traveled to Seward.
Seward, Pop- 3500. Located in south central Alaska. It has absolutely nothing except a small port called Resurrection bay. This bay has a few hundred boats that take the tourists to the glaciers and other assorted places where whales come to mate and the sea lions come on a date. It is surrounded by mountains and glaciers and it also happens to have a profound influence on any human who wants to take the time to just look in any direction, get themselves speechless and Kow Tow to Mother Nature, all this under a fraction of a second.
I have been to some amazing places and ‘mind blowing’ comes to the mind when I think about a few of those places, but Alaska, I need to invent words to describe it. (Mail me if you need any assistance to travel any place, I would probably know someone who has been there and who would be glad to assist you, that’s how the travelers network works and you are welcome to join it).
From Anchorage, take a train to Seward would be my advice. It takes four hours as opposed to two hours by road, but then “Time” is a relative concept in the Artic Circle. After traveling thorough snow capped mountains, glaciers so close you could touch them and forests of spruce and rivers of glacial waters, I arrive at my destination. Being on a budget (stop laughing, I was on a budget), I had already booked my rooms over the Internet in a place called the Salmon Bake Cabin.
I get off the train at Sewards only platform (which it shares with a regular road) and have the usual first few minutes of ‘lost look’ on my face. A shuttle bus driver who looks like David Boon (the Oz batsman) comes up to me and introduces himself as Mike and asks where I am headed. Mike learns about my destination and strikes a deal. I help him load his passenger’s bags in the bus and I get a drop to my hotel/cabin/whatever, in return. Ten minutes later I am loading bags in a bus and thirty minutes later I reach the Salmon Bake Cabin.
A bunch of dogs come to greet me in a place that is most certainly not ‘up market’. The sign says “Cheap beer and lousy food”. In all optimism I get off the bus and Mike tells me that Salmon Bake serves the best food in Seward. I am not sure if he was being sarcastic but what the hell, not like I have a choice anyways, my credit card is already a couple of hundred dollars weaker and that happened when I decided to book a cabin here over the big 3W’s.
Daisy and Shadow (I learnt their names much later) the adorable Labradors lead the way and knock on a couple of doors before eventually getting the right one.
A lady comes out and asks if she can be of help. Busy playing with the dogs I remember my manners a bit late and turn around with an apologetic smile and say, “I have a reservation.” Light dawns, I am handed a key and escorted to the most amazing log cabin I've ever set my scopes on. Seeing that I didn’t have a mode of transportation (Americans don’t consider legs as mode of ‘transportation’) she offers the use of her granddaughter’s bike. Now I have a cabin and a bicycle to ride, am I set or what?
It’s a four-mile pedal to ‘downtown’ (I use the word loosely) Seward. And I ride into its cloudy overcast glory. That’s when I fell in love. Boats and yachts moored in the tiny harbor, a few little pubs to garnish the boardwalk and….lets just say, interesting landscape (it will stay that way till I post the pictures). I sit there speechless for a few hours and think to myself, I could have ‘not’ traveled to this place for a thousand reasons, but I came here for just one, because I wanted to.
Next day is cruise time. I am offered a wide variety of cruises down Resurrection bay, Prince William Sound and the Kenai fjords. Most are impersonal 150 seat cruise boats. While trying to strike a deal I run across a place that says, 25 seater personalized cruise. The ding thing goes ding in my head (along with the bulb glowing) and I book myself on it. Yet another good decision (lady luck has been spending a lot of time with me lately, maybe I'll marry her if she’ll have me!)
Coming up
Salmon Bake cuisine (people like cheap beer and lousy food?)
Hair cut in Anchorage.
Gay bar Anecdotes.
Cruising the Kenai Fjords aboard the Northern Wind.
The Perfect Storm (If I can figure out how to upload videos)
If you want to go someplace. GO. (Much more metaphysical musings)
(All of the above will be posted whenever I decide to move my ass and write which could be anywhere between a few days and a few decades.)
Warning: Photos coming up shortly! If you don’t want to spend all your waking hours (and most of your sleeping ones) thinking about going to Alaska, I suggest you never visit this page).
Contributions to:
AM’s fund to move to Alaska
You'll find me holding out my hat on a different street corner each day.
Note of Thanks:
Diffdrummer for helping a stranger navigate unfamiliar territories.
Chinnu for telling me that diff drummer exists and being the first and only fan of my writing (I hope she still is).
The company I work for. They sent me on a route I wanted to go, instead of moving me from point A to B.
My girlfriend, for being the most encouraging character on the planet. Thank you woman. Next time around I hope you are with me.
My sis, for just being my sis and having the urge to travel as much as I do, I hope you get to do it all.
Traveling from New York City to Anchorage, it was a drab landscape all the way into Canadian territory. Six hundred nautical miles before Anchorage is when it all changed dramatically. Frozen wastes (this is the first and last time I will use that term), long stretches of ice punctuated with the rise of a dark mountain peak (When you travel here, make sure you ask for a window seat). The sun reflecting off the snow and ice as far as the ‘I’ can see.
Ted Stevens Airport – Anchorage; looks like a usual American airport, feels like one, so it must be one. The moment you step out is when you realize why the Alaskans disdainfully call the rest of the United States as the lower forty-eight (Hawaii and Alaska are non contiguous while the rest of the states…go look at a map). After a North West Airlines employee gleefully informs me that they have lost my bags, I step out of the terminal and…well…I stepped into. …(I have no choice except to use the much used cliché) “If there is a heaven on earth, this is it”.
I have two days to drift around Anchorage (By the way this is not the capital of Alaska. The capital is a city called Juneau, and it has roughly around a tenth of the population of Anchorage and in other news, North West found my bags and delivered them to my hotel). A day later, after seeing the sights and having this crazy idea of staying back as an illegal immigrant, I just about manage to convince myself to act like a responsible adult and go back to work and family. But then, that was before I traveled to Seward.
Seward, Pop- 3500. Located in south central Alaska. It has absolutely nothing except a small port called Resurrection bay. This bay has a few hundred boats that take the tourists to the glaciers and other assorted places where whales come to mate and the sea lions come on a date. It is surrounded by mountains and glaciers and it also happens to have a profound influence on any human who wants to take the time to just look in any direction, get themselves speechless and Kow Tow to Mother Nature, all this under a fraction of a second.
I have been to some amazing places and ‘mind blowing’ comes to the mind when I think about a few of those places, but Alaska, I need to invent words to describe it. (Mail me if you need any assistance to travel any place, I would probably know someone who has been there and who would be glad to assist you, that’s how the travelers network works and you are welcome to join it).
From Anchorage, take a train to Seward would be my advice. It takes four hours as opposed to two hours by road, but then “Time” is a relative concept in the Artic Circle. After traveling thorough snow capped mountains, glaciers so close you could touch them and forests of spruce and rivers of glacial waters, I arrive at my destination. Being on a budget (stop laughing, I was on a budget), I had already booked my rooms over the Internet in a place called the Salmon Bake Cabin.
I get off the train at Sewards only platform (which it shares with a regular road) and have the usual first few minutes of ‘lost look’ on my face. A shuttle bus driver who looks like David Boon (the Oz batsman) comes up to me and introduces himself as Mike and asks where I am headed. Mike learns about my destination and strikes a deal. I help him load his passenger’s bags in the bus and I get a drop to my hotel/cabin/whatever, in return. Ten minutes later I am loading bags in a bus and thirty minutes later I reach the Salmon Bake Cabin.
A bunch of dogs come to greet me in a place that is most certainly not ‘up market’. The sign says “Cheap beer and lousy food”. In all optimism I get off the bus and Mike tells me that Salmon Bake serves the best food in Seward. I am not sure if he was being sarcastic but what the hell, not like I have a choice anyways, my credit card is already a couple of hundred dollars weaker and that happened when I decided to book a cabin here over the big 3W’s.
Daisy and Shadow (I learnt their names much later) the adorable Labradors lead the way and knock on a couple of doors before eventually getting the right one.
A lady comes out and asks if she can be of help. Busy playing with the dogs I remember my manners a bit late and turn around with an apologetic smile and say, “I have a reservation.” Light dawns, I am handed a key and escorted to the most amazing log cabin I've ever set my scopes on. Seeing that I didn’t have a mode of transportation (Americans don’t consider legs as mode of ‘transportation’) she offers the use of her granddaughter’s bike. Now I have a cabin and a bicycle to ride, am I set or what?
It’s a four-mile pedal to ‘downtown’ (I use the word loosely) Seward. And I ride into its cloudy overcast glory. That’s when I fell in love. Boats and yachts moored in the tiny harbor, a few little pubs to garnish the boardwalk and….lets just say, interesting landscape (it will stay that way till I post the pictures). I sit there speechless for a few hours and think to myself, I could have ‘not’ traveled to this place for a thousand reasons, but I came here for just one, because I wanted to.
Next day is cruise time. I am offered a wide variety of cruises down Resurrection bay, Prince William Sound and the Kenai fjords. Most are impersonal 150 seat cruise boats. While trying to strike a deal I run across a place that says, 25 seater personalized cruise. The ding thing goes ding in my head (along with the bulb glowing) and I book myself on it. Yet another good decision (lady luck has been spending a lot of time with me lately, maybe I'll marry her if she’ll have me!)
Coming up
Salmon Bake cuisine (people like cheap beer and lousy food?)
Hair cut in Anchorage.
Gay bar Anecdotes.
Cruising the Kenai Fjords aboard the Northern Wind.
The Perfect Storm (If I can figure out how to upload videos)
If you want to go someplace. GO. (Much more metaphysical musings)
(All of the above will be posted whenever I decide to move my ass and write which could be anywhere between a few days and a few decades.)
Warning: Photos coming up shortly! If you don’t want to spend all your waking hours (and most of your sleeping ones) thinking about going to Alaska, I suggest you never visit this page).
Contributions to:
AM’s fund to move to Alaska
You'll find me holding out my hat on a different street corner each day.
Note of Thanks:
Diffdrummer for helping a stranger navigate unfamiliar territories.
Chinnu for telling me that diff drummer exists and being the first and only fan of my writing (I hope she still is).
The company I work for. They sent me on a route I wanted to go, instead of moving me from point A to B.
My girlfriend, for being the most encouraging character on the planet. Thank you woman. Next time around I hope you are with me.
My sis, for just being my sis and having the urge to travel as much as I do, I hope you get to do it all.
posted by Antimatter at 9:33 PM
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