Sometimes I enjoy thinking that I’m “roughing it” and “off the beaten path.” But I’ve never done any travel as rough and untouristy as my sister, Jan. She’s a couple of frigid days into her fourth Iditarod race. She and her dogs are doing great — and I’m so proud of her.
With the disturbingly warm weather lately, the route was shifted north, starting from Fairbanks, after a slushy ceremonial start in Anchorage (shown in this photo). As it’s not allowed for mushers to be reporting in from the trail, communications will be sketchy as Jan and her team drive through the arctic wilderness a thousand miles to Nome. But her dog race blog gives a fascinating insight into this amazing race. Click on over and see how she’s doing. Go, Jan!
All her life, my younger sister Jan has been into dogs, hiking, and skiing rather than (like her big brother) Botticelli, Berlin, and Belgian beers. At the age of 52, she followed her dream and became an arctic dog musher. I’ve never seen her happier.
Right now, Jan is preparing to enter her fourth Iditarod. Her gusto, grit, and determination are an inspiration to me. And just looking at these dogs almost makes me want to put on my mukluks and toast s’mores.
My company is sponsoring Jan’s 20-dog Iditarod team. I love the team’s name: “One Ear Up.” And Jan has agreed to let the Rick Steves’ Europe gang of travelers come up with nicknames for four of her dogs. Since we’re all about European travel, we thought it would be fun to have a contest to come up with the best European-inspired nicknames. Jan says it’s best if they are short and concise — maximum two syllables.
So, here’s the deal. I’ll kick off the competition with two proposed doggie names: Picnic and Yodel. I can hear it now: a moose leaping across the path in the snowy distance under towering peaks, as Jan hollers, “Picnic!…Yodel!” Take a look at these gorgeous dogs and help us find the best dog names. Leave your suggestions in the comments of this blog post or on my Facebook page.
The Iditarod starts on March 7. If you’d like to stow away on Jan’s sled and root her on, check out her insider’s account of her personal quest at livingmydream2.blogspot.com. The blog gives an ongoing and intimate look at training and prepping for the world’s greatest race and a truly amazing slice of our culture.
As we enjoyed breakfast aboard our American Safari Cruise, our guide reminded us that with the beautiful full moon we enjoyed last night came a very low tide this morning. And in 15 minutes, the first skiff would head out for some tide pooling in Port Houghton. The little boy in me jumped into action, as I once loved nothing more than to lose myself in the wonders of a bay drained of water and entirely exposed at low tide. Every tide pool was both crisp and slimy, a salty wonderland. Every rock was some crunchy creature’s castle.
Landing with a dozen cruisers, our guide oriented us. I figured I’d wander off on my own. But he gave meaning to each discovery in a way I had never appreciated. He wielded a guidebook to the sea life (Audubon Society Nature Guide: Pacific Coast) like I would employ a guidebook to the Renaissance. Empty clamshells had a neat hole hammered by the beak of an oystercatcher. Chitons, considered one of the oldest life forms, clung to rocks as if part of the rocks themselves. An array of barnacles adapted to their environment so obviously that they inspired Charles Darwin to pursue his notion of evolution.
Standing alone in my mighty rubber boots, I just listened to the crunching, squirting, wilting, and tilting of the fertile compost pile of life all around me. With each step, I killed things… while convincing myself that they were heartless things that would kill me if they could.
Eagles soared overhead. Our guide said something about “obligate siblicide” among gulls, who had to kill their brothers and sisters to survive. I wondered, “Why? With this buffet of free and fresh seafood exposed with the falling tide twice a day, isn’t life pretty easy?”
After the ebbing tide reached its lowest point, it began its steady march back in. Watching a limpet go from high and dry to underwater a matter of minutes, I pondered the flexible toughness of these creatures — under the sun for half their lives, and then under the cold sea for the other…first the prey of grazing birds, then the prey of scary-looking crustaceans.
And surveying all this life — from that which the low tide never quite reached, to tide pools abundant with fanciful creatures; from the yellow lichen blanketing high rocks nourished only by sea spray, to birds overhead — I saw strata. It was a parfait of sea life.
A salty parfait of sea life.
Our ship’s dining room — 10 tables for the 60 of us, with the crinkled surface of the sea at about table level just outside the big windows on either side — was a place of conviviality, for feasting on seafood while still marveling at the majesty of Alaska. Sitting down for dinner, we left Port Houghton and were heading up Frederick Sound to Stephens Passage. Just before dessert, our captain suddenly slowed way down and turned 90 degrees starboard. On one side, the sun was dipping behind glacier-blanketed mountains in the distance. On the other side, a big full moon was rising over glacier-blanketed mountains in the distance.
After five days, I thought I had experienced all that a cruise through Southeast Alaska could offer: breaching whales, calving glaciers, bears dragging salmon out of waterfalls, kayaking among harbor seals in desolate inlets, and hikes through temperate rainforests. Now, with this meal, bookended by the sun and the moon, I thought, probably not. Southeast Alaska goes on and on.
The beauty of my recent Alaska trip with American Safari Cruises was that there was no contact with civilization on land. The closest thing we got to civilization was hiking down a desolate logging trail through a peaceful forest. I parked my rubber boots at the shore and slipped on my normal hiking shoes, not realizing we’d encounter giant puddles. Thankfully my guide went above and beyond the call of duty by carrying me piggyback across four such puddles during our memorable-for-many-reasons hike…while my travel partner, Trish Feaster, filmed it (over the giggles of my fellow hikers).
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
Still thrilled after our bear encounter (see my post from last week), our American Safari Cruise motored to the next stop. Up in the bridge, I studied the traditional yellow charts and learned to navigate the software program with those same charts digitized. A channel led to the distant horizon, evoking the mystique of the Pacific Ocean. Between us and the open sea was a dramatic landmass. The captain said, “That’s Admiralty Island — 1,700 square miles and 1,700 bears, one bear per square mile. Tlingit Indians called it the ‘Fortress of the Bears.’”
Anchoring in Thomas Bay, we geared up for a hike along Cascade Creek. In Southeast Alaska, the metabolism of nature seems to churn at a high level. While the region has a thousand estuaries, the entire area could be considered a single, vast estuary. Geologists figure more freshwater flows into the sea in Southeast Alaska than in the Amazon basin.
Everyone on board was issued rain pants, rain jackets, and rubber boots. While I wanted to use the hiking boots I packed from Seattle, it was the ship’s rubber boots that served me best. In this area, there are almost no trails and certainly no docks. Skiffs skid to a stop on wild beaches. Boatswains expect to ding up propellers on their outboard motors. Our 90 HP Yamaha outboard has a guard for the propeller — but they still get bent up, and the ship comes with four replacements for each skiff. Hopping out, then walking through marshy tidal flats, we often encountered the notorious “boot-sucking mud” — mud that could literally pull the boot right off your foot. The other risk was “topping off” — stepping into a river or tide pool that was deeper than your boots were high.
Our hike followed the aptly named Cascade Creek up and up. As is the case when experiencing Southeast Alaska, the trail didn’t actually take us to a particular destination. Time after time, we’d venture in some direction, and the venture itself was the reason. We’d hike, motor, paddle, or gaze until we’d seen enough…then turn back. Things don’t seem to end around here. Stand on the prow of the ship and pan slowly in one direction, and the view doesn’t stop. Things just keep going.
It was amazing to think that the very rough Cascade Creek trail, apart from faint and unseen animal trails, was the only path through a vast wooded mountainside that towered mightily out of the sea. It led deep and high into a vast yet rare-on-this-planet coastal temperate rain forest. This climb took concentration, as each step needed to be carefully placed on a notched stone, exposed root, boggy ground, or stretch of boot-sucking mud. Walking sticks were so helpful it almost felt like I was cheating.
For the photographers, this was a chance for extremely close-up work: spider webs beaded with dew drops; armies of tiny mushrooms festooned in red, marching up a nursery log; and vibrant bouquets of little flowers growing in vertical gardens on the dirt-caked root system of a once mighty but now upended tree.
Sun and shade were nature’s sweet and sour, as a towering canopy filtered the light, and silver rims of backlighting seemed to direct my attention. Standing silently, I listened, smelled, and looked. Turning very slowly 360 degrees, it was as if I was in a fertile world where the cycle of life was a slow-moving carousel and the only color was moss.
