fun and mayhem on the kenai peninsula, may

two little girls, thousands of humongous mountains. there's something about being two little foreign girls traveling alone across great distances in no mans land that make people want to help. never were we alone and never, ever, ever were we afraid. i find that pretty amazing. The man taking this photo drove us all the way from denali to anchorage and told us about life and about dropping out of school and feeling accomplished just the same, about love, and about hitch hiking in alaska in the seventies, standing for three days at the same spot.

the view of mt denali followed us all the way. it is a rare sight and we felt very fortunate.

we made it to anchorage in good time and called up jason, this guy that i had contacted through hospitality club. he picked us up and showed us this wonderful beach before he drove us home to his place and showed us where we could sleep.
the great thing about anchorage is the amazing access to the outdoors compared to the size of the city. the city itself is nothing special. just another big city and not what i came to alaska for.

this mountain is called "the sleeping lady". if you try hard, you can see her laying there in the sunset. from the left her hair is stretched out, then her head, her breast, stomach, and her legs going out into the water on the right.

the tides in alaska are insane. these great mudflats are bare half of the time, exposing miles of treacherous mud. jason told us that people have died because they got stuck in the mud and couldn't get up before the powerful and freezing cold waters came rushing back in.

in anchorage we met up with lovely miss megan.
jason offered to take us down to hope on the kenai peninsula, where his dad has a gold mine. we gladly accepted and spend the following night by the roaring river on golden grounds.
here is the four of us, jumping of joy!

jason's dad is a real gold digger. no doubt about that.
as we stepped out of the car, he looked up and said: what, y'all stewardesses or somthin'? we nodded.

the next day we went to homer. a stretch we were expecting to hitch hike, but the kind jason offered to take us down there as well.
we camped on "the spit", which is a beautiful little piece of land going out into the water. here we pitched up our new home: megan had brought an unbelievably amazing tent, orange (the color of all outdoor gear), by the name of marmot. love of our lives. to the right of us on this photo were a row of houses and behind those houses on the beach was an actual five-dollar-a-night camping ground. we decided to take our chances and put up the tent on this gorgeous spot. no one ever made us leave.

the sunsets were amazing down by the beach and we spend several evenings sitting by our little fire staring out at the sea and the sea otters playing around in the waves.

another sunset, this time over the harbor with all of the fishing boats. homer used to be a fish processing town. since the processing plant burned down it hasn't ever been the same. however, there are still tons of fishermen. at the "salty dawg saloon" out on the spit i saw a sticker saying: a quaint little drinking town with a fishing problem. very accurate. as it turned out, almost all of the small towns we visited after homer, claimed to fit that description as well.

on the spit also, we found a boat graveyard where this little guy was hanging out. despite the "keep out" signs we went exploring.

more mudflats. when it's low tide you can find the most amazing things on the beach. a wonderful woman be the name of allison told us about this beach and gave us a map of all the animals we could find in the mud. this woman took us out kayaking and later on invited us to come stay with her and her family up on the ridge. we accepted, of course.

her husband was danish and the founder of homer brewing company and her daughter was an amazing little actor-tree climber-handcrafts girl. we drove with allison from the spit, up the mountain, onto a dirt road, parked the car, and hiked the remained mile to their house. they build it themselves, of course, and only with trees that had fallen down on their own.

we had a view of the mountain range on the other side of the bay. the little arch on this photo is where allison and lasse got married. it's a holy ground.

they had sled dogs and this little dog welcomed us every time we came back home.

allison let us help her with her kayaks. we would sail close to shore, nanna and i would jump out (and get water in our boots), run for the kayaks laying on the beach, drag them down to the shore and push them out into the water towards the boat where megan and allison were waiting to pull them up. great team work and a great day. nanna and i had to sit and let our socks, long-johns, and boots dry out in the sun and wind.

after some time in homer we went on, hitch hiking to seward, a wonderful little town north of homer. we were struck by some bad weather and waited it out in our tent for some days before we went on another hike.

this hike went through both forest and beach, so we had to time it right with the tide. we got a somewhat late start, and in the end of the hike we were walking pretty fast in order to make it to our destination before the waves reached us. exciting! a man we had met that same day, george walker, who had let us leave some things at his place, had given us his phone number in case we got trapped by the tide.

as some point we had to cross a river, because, as you can see, the bridge had seen better days. so we took of our hiking boots and socks, rolled up our long-johns and put on our running shoes - brought along for that very reason, and stepped into the rapid waters.

it was freezing cold!

the beach was absolutely beautiful and every corner we turned made us think we had gone to a different country.

when we finally made it to the beach, after half-running the last way, we were so tired that we more or less passed out.
later on we pitched up our tent and started cooking. nanna, in charge of cooking that day, turned her back to the food for five minutes and found that a bird had eaten our enormous block of cheese in the meantime. we decided that it probably was revenge from the day before where i had laughed a little to hard by the fact that a dog had eaten our sausage during the night. what goes around comes around i guess.

we stayed two nights on the beach and walked back into town. when we met up with mr walker to get our stuff, he offered to host us for a couple of days in his yurt. we were wet and tired and absolutely in need of real beds, so we were ecstatic. we were amazed with our luck and spend the next two days with satisfied smiles on our faces. the yurt had not only beds, but a kitchen and a bathroom and a ghetto blaster!

so we of course started a dance party! it got so hot in the yurt that we had to shed some layers. of course, our excitement made us jump.

bears on the brain in denali national park, may

heading out again, this time for real, saying goodbye to fairbanks. it was hard saying goodbye, not because of the town itself, but because of all the wonderful things that it represents.

ross, nanna, and i hitch hiking from fairbanks to denali. ross eventually took off his bandanna and we got picked up. we bet on what kind of car would pick us up and i lost so i had to wear the humiliating bear bell for the rest of the trip.

we never waited for very long in between rides. people in alaska pick up hitch hikers. spread the word and try it out! however, we did do a little bit of walking. in these surroundings it was hard to be too bummed about it though.

mountains and wild life. two things we were about to see a lot more of in the park.

the hike we originally had planned on doing turned out to be impossible. or rather, turned out to remind us too much of granite tors. so we sat down with our hiking guides and made new amazing plans! we are unstoppable!

we agreed to do some backtracking and enter the actual national park. this little red square of a car picked us up. "miss piggy" it was called. it's owner and her dog seemed to be curtain that we could fit, even though we all had our doubts. however, after a little pushing and squeezing, we all made it inside the lovely automobile, which turned out to be about to fall apart. it was almost impossible for the lovely woman to shift gears cause i was practically sitting on the gear shift, and up hills we all had to lean forward and think light thoughts. we made it though. in one piece.

the park was stunning.
we took the bus a couple of miles in and started our hike into the back-country.

we followed a river into the mountains. the weather was perfect and our optimism impossible to break.

well, maybe not impossible... after a while the underbrush thickened and grew bigger, and before too long we were walking slowly and clumsily through elders taller and thicker than i have ever seen before. the thing about not being able to see three feet ahead of you is that you might surprise a bear. which you don't want to do. so for three hours we were yelling "hey bear!" at the top of our voices. we tried to make variations, cause as you can imagine, "hey bear" gets kinda old after a while. i even made up a little song asking the bear not to eat us. nanna was not amused.
when we finally made it out of the alders this beautiful view met us and we quickly forgot about distress and fear of bears. we might have lost our voices but we quickly regained our enthusiasm!

we found a perfect little flat spot to set up camp. just big enough for nanna's and my one-man tent and ross' bivysack.

meanwhile the sun was setting, giving everything an orange shine, even ross' green jacket (i'm kidding, it was orange to begin with).

we found a place to cook and enjoyed a grand meal and the beautiful view. we followed the recommendations of the park and made a triangle of our camp, cooking place, and storage spot. due to the importance of keeping wildlife wild (and people safe) the park asks that you make sure that the animals don't connect smells or leftovers of food with humans. so you have to cook 100 yards away from your tent and place you bear containers 100 yards further away. ross found it silly, nanna insisted, and i didn't really care. we ended up doing it and we all slept well that night.

nanna and i tucked in our sleeping bags in the little one-man tent. later on this trip all three of us actually spend a night in it. nanna was squished somewhere down in the bottom. before we fell asleep she gasped and said: if i scream during the night, it's because i can't breath and i need to get out. we promissed to let her out if that was ever the case. fortunately it never came to that.

the next morning we woke up to another beautiful day. we went up on the ridge to eat breakfast, but never made it that far, cause out in the distance we spotted a brown creature. bear? moose? caribou? it was big and moving gracefully. we observed it for a while and once it made it's way down to the river we were sure that it was a moose. we were pretty relieved that it wasn't a bear. we sat down to cook but suddenly saw another brown creature coming down the same way as the moose. this one moved differently though, faster and more determined. it noticed us and seemed to not know what to do. it walked directly towards us for a little while but turned around and walked the other way. even though we were pretty sure that it was just another moose, nanna decided that the wildlife was a little too wild for her, and after a group meeting we decided to turn around and walk out again the same way we had come in (minus the elders).

the way out went a lot faster than the way in, and ross and i decided to try and hitch hike a little further into the park on the dirt road. a nice couple let us sit in the back of their pickup truck. nanna took the bus back out, still with the almost-bear encounter on her mind. as she sat down in the bus and it started moving a big old grizzly crossed the road right in front of the bus. nanna sat there, safe inside the bus, and experienced the closest real-bear encounter you can get without being too close for comfort. coincident? i think not.

we met back at a camp ground near by, where we spend the last night. although ross and i were a little bummed about not being inside the park anymore, we were still so happy and excited that we just had to jump!
the next day ross left back to fairbanks and it was just nanna and i. i was sad. but nanna made me feel better. she is so good at that.

foggy days at granite tors, fairbanks, may (which in most parts of the world is considered a summer month)

school is out! summer has begun!
that is, if fog and snow can be considered summer. apparently, in alaska it can. we left fairbanks for the supposedly beautiful and climbable granite tors but were met with rain and snow and fog. we praised our gloves, nanna and i damned our boots who turned out not to be waterproof, and we all kept a close eye out for the cabin which was promised to us and in the end more or less the only thing that kept us going.

unable to see more than a few feet ahead, nanna and i stayed close together. ross storming ahead, full of optimism and energy in search of the trail lost in the snow, and pete and erika falling behind, pete trotting through the snow, cursing and growling. nanna and i honestly thought we heard a bear at one point - turned out it was poor pete, tired and angry stuck in snow to his waist.

you can imagine our joy and relief when we finally reached the cabin. the thought of spending a night out in the snow in our tents wearing our wet clothes was almost to much to bear. although the cabin was almost too small to host us all, the floor covered in snow from the open door, and the wood stove almost impossible to start with only wet and snowy firewood, we were as happy as can be.

drying socks and gloves, getting the wood stove going, cooking the well deserved dinner (forgetting every rule about not cooking in your sleeping quarters due to bears. however, after frying meat on the stove, we agreed that pete should sleep with his gun loaded).

pete was in a poor state once we finally reached the cabin. we force fed him and warmed him up, and after some rest and warm cocoa he was his old good self again, making fun of nanna for being scared of bears and giving ross shit for taking us up a snowy mountain. good old pete.

pete was not the only one who was out. kodiak, who had been carrying his own food in a dog backpack was completely wiped out and was practically sitting up sleeping.

the next day everybody's mood was better, although the foggy weather was still the same. the others decided to head back down, whereas ross and i decided to go check out the tors, whom ross believed to be somewhere out in the distance.

so we headed out again. this time without backpacks, which made hiking in the snow a lot easier.

suddenly, without warning, some fog lifted and the tors were visible not far away from where we were. the closer we got, the more the fog vanished, and not before long we could see the whole range of tors, sticking up from the ground like spikes.

we walked up some of them, but we had left our climbing gear at the cabin, so even though our little climbing muscles ached, we had to be satisfied with enjoying them from the ground.

there was still snow and frost on the rocks however, so it would have been a cold experience had we attempted to climb.

while we were running around the tors, seeking out possible climbing routes, and finding little cracks and funny shapes and colors, the weather was changing around us and the sun peeped down between the heavy clouds.

after a while we left the tors and headed after the other guys. the way down was amazing and it was almost impossible to believe that this was the same landscape as the day before.

as we walked out we decided that this trip with good reason could be characterized as a type-two-fun kind of trip. the kind of trip that might not be particularly fun while it's going on, but very fun to talk about later on.