we got to juneau and picked up molly at the airport - fresh from san francisco. we didn't waste any time, but immediately hit the local safeway for instant oatmeal, rice, and a baby loaf of cheddar cheese. then we hitched to a lovely campground in the outskirts of town, dumped some of our stuff, and started hiking towards a glacier. turned out we had chosen a more difficult route than expected (this happened more than once), and molly put her airplane legs to the test! we were walking along, i was giving molly the bear speech; stand your ground, wave your arms, play dead and all of that stuff, when suddenly we heard branches breaking a little ways away in the distance. we stopped, megan and i grabbed our bear spray (and felt really bad-ass!) and we held our breath. the creature kept on coming towards us, but the heavy bushes prevented us from getting a clear view of the thing, so we started saying "hey animal!" in clear and load voices to make the animal aware of our presence. the creature stopped up and stood for a while, sort of checking us out. for a moment there i was pretty sure that it would charge us, but instead it turned around and moved further up the hill away from us and the path. for a brief second we all saw parts of the animal and after talking to several people living in the area we came to the conclusion that it must have been a wolf. so awesome! the locals told us that a wolf by the name of romeo was roaming around those hills and that it was very likely him we had seen on our hike. it was so big though, i didn't know wolfs were that big. pretty exciting!
we got to the glacier and immediately felt the coolness of it's massive body and heard it's cracking and moaning. the thought of spending a night by this guy (and the fact that we had not been eaten by whatever animal we had seen on the path) made us jump with joy.
the glacier ice is incredibly blue at times. some ranger told us why that is, but i can't remember. i just know that it's beautiful.
we pitched the marmot on the banks of the glacier lake, finally all by our selves after having been interrupted by thirty boys on a field trip with their christian leadership group.the little marmot, lighting up in the clear alaskan night.
the next morning the clouds had vanished (or gone somewhere else to bother some other poor hikers) and the glacier looked even more beautiful than the day before. we decided to be little dare-devils and try to walk on it even though we didn't have any crampons. small warning lights were blinking in the back of my mind thinking about my crevasse rescue classes and z-pulleys, but it looked safe enough.
no need for any of my ski-mountaineering skills, however, we didn't get very far before the incline made it impossible to walk without crampons or skiing poles or something like that, so we had to retreat.we packed up and started to hike back, when suddenly my phone rung. turned out that the fishing boat "the fishnpole", with not only fish on board but also ross, was bound to reach juneau the next day.
next day i left the girls and hitched down to the harbor where, sure enough, the fishnpole was unloading it's fish. ron and janey, the nice couple owning and sailing the boat, invited me on board and let me watch as their daughter melanie and ross unloaded the slimy and humongous halibuts.
this is the fish hole, where ross spends most of his time on the boat in the questionable company of fish and ice.
halibut are enormous!
inside the fishnpole in the little kitchen, where megan and i, against all odds, ended up spending quite a few evenings.
after unloading all of the fish, ross and i headed out for a little adventure in juneau. we had read in my lonely planet (which was very much out of date) about this little cute place in the woods where you could stay for cheap. after having this guy drive us all around looking for this place we finally found it out in the middle of nowhere. we found a guy wearing a leather jacket, sleeping in a car with a little angry puddle and asked him about spending the night. his mom ended up giving us a discount and we spend the night like kings and queens in a small house down by the beach.i don't know what was up with this dead crow, but it was kinda creepy.
the next day the girls and i had a ferry ticket to sitka, this mysterious place on the very coast of the ocean that we had heard a lot about from different people.
on the ferry we ran into ayaka, a sweet japanese girl whom i had gone to school with in fairbanks and whom i had come to like a lot. the four of us hooked up and spend some amazing days together in sitka.
ayaka had come for the totem poles - turned out sitka is the totem pole capital of alaska - and we went and saw some of them. but not before spending a couple of hours driving around town with these juvenile delinquents who barked out the window and insisted on showing us every inch of this weird little place. poor ayaka, she didn't really understand what was going on, and i think the barking made her a little uncomfortable
next day we went hiking. for real this time. again, we thought we were in for a couple of hours long hike - turned out we were in for a lot more! we were planning on hiking up gavin hill, spending the night in a hut up there, and hike down harbor mountain the next day. the view from the top was suppose to be breath taking. however, as things worked out, we never saw anything else than snow, fog, and each others tired faces.after having hiked on a dirt road for a couple of hours we came to the snow covered trail head. with our lack of gear and hiking experience in mind, we probably should have turned around and walked home, defeated, but the thought of going back to the campground and spending another evening in out rainy campsite just didn't sound appealing. so we went on. "oh, it's nothing, i'm sure the snow won't continue all the way up. it will clear up" i said. i don't know if the girls believed me or if i even believed it myself, but we all silently agreed not to talk about it. very soon the trail disappeared and after a short moment of confusion we found a single set of footprints going in the opposite direction. "well, these footprints must have come from somewhere" we agreed and started to follow them.
if it hadn't been for those footprints we would probably still be up there somewhere in the fog. they were our only guide. it still amazes me how that person, whom ever it was, found his way across that mountain in the snow.
molly was amazing and kept on without complaining, but it was a bit too much, i think. she later told us that she had been close to collapsing several times in the snow, her stubbornness more or less the only thing that prevented it from happening. it didn't make it better that we kept on seeing bear poop in the snow. molly, like nanna, was pretty concerned about the whole bear situation. she had proudly told us a couple of nights before, that if she got eaten by a bear it was okay - she had come to terms with it. i tried to make her realize that hopefully it would never come to that...
needless to say i felt kinda responsible, so you can imagine my relief when i finally spotted this little fellow on the top of the mountain.
while we sat on the mountain top eating our supper, the other mountain tops were sporadically reveled by the coming and going of the fog. it never did clear up though.
we made it down in one piece. on the trail close to town we ran into a young man who eventually ended up inviting us to his friends bbq that evening. we gladly accepted. molly made it clear that a night in a hotel bed was necessary, so we checked in to the sitka hotel, showered, took a nap, and went to dinner with a bunch of people we didn't know. we got to know them, though, and by the end of the night we were offered a place to stay in exchange for some baby sitting in the evenings and mornings. we were in need of a change of scene and didn't really feel like returning to our wet and cold campground, so we accepted. we spend the next couple of days sleeping on the floor in carolyn and pat's office, entertaining little emma, and driving around in pat's car. we felt right at home. we took the car to the trail head of beaver lake trail and hiked up to this little lake, where we sailed out in the boat, stripped down to the skin and jumped in the cool waters.
ayaka left for fairbanks and molly eventually had to leave for san francisco.and so they were two.
megan and i considered staying in sitka for another week, but for some reason we felt like we had to keep on moving. we didn't know what to expect from the canadian high ways, and the thought of hitching such a long stretch kinda made us nervous. also, megan had a job to return to and i was expecting felia in san francisco a couple of weeks later. so before we knew it, we were back on the ferry. this was one of the most beautiful rides and we saw a humpback whale. yes, that black dot out in the distance.
the ferry crew and interior design is an entire chapter in itself, and taking the ferry can strongly be recommended, not only because it's beautiful and because it's the only way to get anywhere, but also because it's so super weird!
it is beautiful, though. this is from the wrangel narrows and was exceptionally amazing.
the weather kept on changing dramatically. rain and sun and enormous clouds made it a great environment for rainbows. we just sat in our little plastic chairs and let the surreal scenery pass by before our eyes.
this is petersburg, a small town we thought we would only see from on board the ferry. however, as the ferry pulled away from this little place, megan realized that ross had called us, so i called him back, and after a few confusing minutes we found out that he was standing in the small boat harbor in petersburg, looking at the ferry as it pulled away. you can imagine our excitement and bitterness when we realized how close we had been to each other. long story short, megan and i figured out that it would actually be possible for us to jump off the ferry in wrangel, stay the night, and jump on another ferry the next afternoon going back to petersburg. quick team-meeting and we ended up letting canadian highways be canadian highways and head back to petersburg and ross.this ended us being quite a dramatic travel, even though it was so short. we were annoyed about having to pay for two additional ferry rides to and from petersburg, so we figured we'd try and hitch a ride on a fishing boat! miraculously we found a ride going to petersburg that very day, and the kids on the boat invited us to wait for their parents to come back. turns out the farther wasn't gone - physically anyway. suddenly he came bursting out of the bedroom, oozing of booze and hangovers. he started talking nonsense about the boat and his dogs and his boys and something about having been on television. we obviously had second thoughts, but our tight budget and out sense of adventure made us stick with this questionable plan. we waited in forever. the boys were running around on the boat like small confused deer, chased around in circles by the dad, swearing and shouting and pointing in all directions. suddenly the mother showed up and pulled us to the side. with regret and sorrow in her voice she told us that her husband was an alcoholic and that she didn't want him to go out with the boys. she advised us to get off while we still could. we didn't think twice. this weird feeling had been haunting me all along and when the mom finally came clean we split immediately. i looked at my watch and realized that the ferry would leave in fifteen minutes, so we asked the woman to drive us to the ferry terminal. we hauled ass through the little town and made it just in time to jump on the ferry.
it took me the entire ferry ride to get my heartbeat back to normal.
back in petersburg, ross was waiting for us at the ferry terminal and we walked back to the fishnpole, where ron, janey, and melanie were waiting for us with hot chocolate and family-love.
the next day they took us out to their beautiful house on this deserted beach a forty minute boat ride from town. here we spend what might be the best part of this entire alaskan adventure of mine.
without electricity or running water and with no other kids around, melanie and her brother had to come up with their own fun growing up out here. i think it wasn't equally fun every day, but we sure had no troubles having fun, we just put some silly hats on and ran around on the beach!
living of the land has a whole other meaning out here. we got crabs from the crab pots, dug for clams in the sand when the tide was out, and of course, eat tons and tons of freshly caught salmon and halibut. i was happy to be a fish eating vegetarian, that's for sure.it felt amazing to realize how little you need and how plentiful the nature is, at least out here. i felt so healthy and happy, feeling how this simple way of living filled me up in a different way than any city life could ever do.
of course, boiling the crabs while they were still alive might have been a little much for the sensitive vegetarian mind. i quickly forgot my morals though, and ate the dinner with great enjoyment!
we borrowed a couple of kayaks from the neighbors and sat out to sea. we paddled among seals and bold eagles in search of a cabin where we could spend the night.
we found it eventually. that night we sat with tired arms around the bonfire with our twisted bread on sticks a la danish style and told crazy alaskan stories. we figured out that we resembled the four friends from the wizard of oz pretty well. maybe parts of it was kind of a stretch, and maybe the raw dough and the clear summer air had made us slightly light headed, but it seemed to us that our personalities fit the problems of the personalities in that very story, only opposite. you see, in stead of missing a brain, like the scare crow did, megan might have had too much of one. instead of missing a heart, like the tin man did, melanie might have had too much of one, also. instead of missing courage, which was the problem of the lion, ross might have had a little too much.and instead of wanting to go back home, like little miss dorothy, i just wanted to stay forever.
who wouldn't want to stay here?
