VANCOUVER TIME

Hi Team!

So the trip has come to an end. (Okay, it ended a month ago now, and I've worked 24 of 28 days since I got back. So... weeeee! :) )

But the trip has come to an end in Vancouver, Canada.

All of us got of the Star Princess calm and cool and relaxed. Very different from the hectic-ness of getting on. So I'd say the Cruise served that purpose of relaxing and enjoyment. Which is always good.

I bid farewell to my family at the airport after a day of driving in traffic and seeing a bit of Stanley park. And chilling in the hotel room with my Dad playing Carcassonne on the iPad. Seems a fitting way to finish up. My brother and family saw "Suicide Squad" for the second time on the trip! I wanted to go but was too tired to make it through a late flick.

I was a little sad that the trip was over, but also grateful that it happened. So grateful. It's wonderful to see people I love a lot and get to do something awesome with them. I look forward to our next visit! I hope all of you get to take trips with people you love soon. :)

After they rolled away I headed into Vancouver for 2 days of "backpacking" at the end of the trip. I stayed in a bunk at hostel, met some nice folks. And shared stories of travel. It was fun to look at the cruise route on Google Earth and see all the details of where we went from above.

I rented a bike and rode around for 7 hours. Around Stanley Park, which is this enormous park, much like Golden Gate park in San Fran. There were so many people on the bike path it was almost like a demolition derby. People were racing around, with views of the bay and cruise ships and a dozen cargo vessels waiting to come in. I wrote in my journal, ate a burger and enjoyed the people watching. And there were a LOT of people. And, quite frankly, everyone was gorgeous, fit and looked healthy. I know I live in LA, but folks, Vancouver is giving LA a run for it's money. Maybe because it was sunny and everyone actually had an excuse to be outside. Maybe because the lifestyle there is walking, biking, hiking and generally being active. Maybe it's the Canadian diet (though I doubt it's much different than the USA. But I could be wrong!) Maybe everyone works out all the time because they don't do any work. (I doubt that's it. lol).  Anyway, it made for enjoyable people watching all around.

I rode all the way till sundown, which here was by 8:30pm, and dark by 9:00.  How far south we've come.

The next day I took the bus to the sea-bus (ferry) to North Vancouver and another bus to LYNN CANYON PARK.
A gorgeous bunch of temperate rain forest nestled near a neighborhood. There was a suspension bridge hundreds of feet over the river. Pathways through the towering trees. And people jumping off cliffs into pools of water. And signs EVERYWHERE that said:  Cliff Jumping Is Deadly.  This area has already claimed several lives. That your fear is smarter than you are. And yet the people were unfazed as they leapt of 20 foot cliffs. And 30 foot cliffs. And one crazy dude leaped of a cliff that was EASILY 60 feet tall, over a waterfall and into a pool. He had a cast on his arm. Not sure where he earned that.  Another guy dropped 25 feet off a bridge (not the suspension bridge) into a pool that couldn't have been 10 feet in diameter.  This shit was crazy. I love cliff jumping and swimming and pools with waterfalls, but this was insane...

... and some of it looked fun too. You could jump off the bridge into a pool, then slide over a couple of 10 foot or 15 foot waterfalls down to the bottom. But there are signs EVERYWHERE that say how dangerous it is. (Did I mention this?).

I grabbed lunch and went to the 30 foot lake section, where there were even more people jumping into a gorge. Sure the jumps were only 10, 15 up to 30 feet. But there was a plaque dedicated to a 17 year old who had died there in March. I pointed it out to a mom who was there and she said:  "Looks safe to me. You could die crossing the street.".

Good point, and that is a lot less fun.

So after surveying the jumps and the depths, I got on the 10 foot jump and hopped into the FREEZING COLD water!  Yikes!  That'll wake you up!
I eventually built up to a 20 foot jump into the deep part of the gorge. It was fun. Cold, goodness.

After that I hopped the bus to GROUSE MOUNTAIN for a cable car ride to the top. It's a pretty touristy area, but I figured a nice 3,000 foot view of Vancouver at sunset was a good finale to a great trip. I ate dinner and enjoyed the lights coming out.

The music playing at the restaurant was fun, and right before I headed down on the last tram, they played "Knocking On Heaven's door". It's a song that makes me think of my Mom because one of the patients at the hospital played it on the guitar when she was being treated. It was great to have her visit at the end of the trip. In truth, she visited a lot during this trip. In songs that were played in different places. In conversation. In feeling. The Alaska cruise was to have been my parents 35th wedding anniversary trip together... and as any of you who know me know, that trip didn't happen.

Well it did this year.

On what would have been their 50th anniversary, we took my Dad to Alaska.

:)




This is Craig Ouellette,
last member of the Nostromo (aka: Star Princess)
Signing off.

ROAD TRIPPIN!

So it's 12:30 at night and I'm looking out at the twilight in the sky thinking... this is so bizarre.

And then it's 4:00am and I'm getting up in the middle of the night, and oh, wait... it's dawn already.

It's funny. When we first got to Alaska, dark came that late and day started that early. But by 10 days later, the day was already 45 Minutes shorter. Time flies! One thing that happens when the sun doesn't set until 11pm, is we just kept going and going every day. When back in the lower 48, we would unlikely go past 8pm on a summer road trip. Here... shoot, let's keep driving. It's still daytime!  Makes you feel like you are getting a lot more done. (Of course, neither my Dad nor I are early morning risers, so we didn't get going till 9am... but heh! If you're burning the candle at both ends that'll wear you out. And that wasn't exactly the plan).

DENALI HIGHWAY

127 miles of... not much.  There were 3 road houses. Well, really 2. And no other signs of civilazation. No other roads and only one or two random houses out there. It was a rainy day, so we didn't see the distant Alaskan range, but we had beautiful scenery. A moose run next to us for 1/4 mile, and quiet...

except for the rattle, rattle rattle of the RV on the road.

We did see a bald eagle on a tree near our picnic spot. I took pics of it. Super excited. (I didn't realize we would see many many more bald eagles before the end of the trip. Still cool though!)

VALDEZ

So we headed to the metropolis of Valdez, Alaska. Pop: 4000.  In Alaska terms that's a pretty good sized berg. It's a fishing village, and the end of the Alaska Pipeline. My Dad was super excited to see it, and we drove alongside it for a few hundred miles to get to Valdez. (My Dad is a retired geophysicist). Back in the day you could just drive right in and check out the refinery and pumping stations, but after 9/11 you can't even get close to it, but we did get some pics from afar.

And, because my Dad, as awesome and willing to adventure as he is, doesn't have all the same interests that I do. We took a day where he went for a hike and enjoyed town and I went for a lake Kayak adventure with Icebergs, that involved eating lunch on a glacier and taking kayaks into a deep blue ice cave. What?!?!?!?  Yeah, it was really awesome. Totally surreal and amazing.  The first part was a misty, foggy lake, with ice bergs floating in it. Completely calm. No wind. No waves. Some of the ice bergs were covered in rocks, some were white-ice, and some were blue. Magical, mystical blue.  We crossed the lake, and reached the toe of the glacier. The Valdez Glacier is covered in rocks, broken apart from the sides of the mountains all around it. We climbed out of our kayaks and had a picnic lunch. Then walked around the glacier -- which pretty much felt like walking on a rocky slope. Except every once in awhile you could see the ice through the cracks. Or see a canyon of Ice going deeper into the glacier.  The fog and mist cleared up, giving us a view of the whole lake. And then we took the kayaks into the cave. It was about two kayak lengths deep, and you could touch the sides and ceiling. You had to either back in or back out. It was pretty surreal...

... and next week it will be gone. That's the amazing thing about exploring glaciers, is that they are constantly changing. The guides say from day to day there might be new or different ice bergs, different cave openings, different places to get off the kayaks. It's really cool.

Now, I know what you're thinking:  "Craig! You're on the toe of a glacier as huge pieces of ice break off into the water like I see on the disovery channel!"  And the answer is, not this glacier.  That's called calving (pronounced caav-ing). And we did see quite a bit of that, but not here.

And after a good day, Dad and I met up, grabbed dinner, where my Dad swiped a Valdez pint glass from a bar!  (Okay, he asked if he could have it and the waiter said, "well, we can't give it away, but I'm not looking". Lol!  So funny... Oh shit, I just called you out Dad! Sorry!  :)  What did I say, my Dad is clearly a rebel!

We caught the salmon hatchery action on the far side of the bay as well.  Millions. Maybe tens of millions of Salmon coming back to spawn at a hatchery. The water was a churning soup as they tried to figure out how to navigate the fish ladder into the hatchery. Salmon have such a weird life cycle: They swim out to sea for a couple years, then come home to where they were born, exhaust themselves swimming upstream. On top of that, they don't and CAN'T eat anything, so they lay eggs and then die in the streams and rivers. Later in the trip, in Ketchikan, there were hundreds of dead salmon in this stream. Just completing their life cycle.  And here at the hatchery, sea lions swam into the fray -- the Salmon would spread away from them, and always one got caught. The sea lion would beat it back and forth on the water and then bite it in half. Or maybe swallow it whole.  Anything left, the seagulls came and pecked at. Eyes, gills. The soft stuff.  Bears also come down to feed, though we didn't see any.

So what do you do after a day of fun in Valdez?  Dad read. And I hit the Karaoke bar!  Gotta do it up Alaska style.  Was a good time!


COOPER LANDING

After our Valdez adventures (Of which there were even more, but I can't make this thing 50 pages long), we headed back to Achorage to meet up with Myque, Rachel and Lily and head to Cooper Landing where we did a raft float recommended by my awesome Uncle Kevin who had been with his family 10 years or more ago.  It was no wild white water (if you want that you have to goto 6 mile creek), but the water was this strange milky pale blue, and the scenery was very pretty.

THE EXIT GLACIER

The next day was one of my favorite days with everyone from the whole trip.
After we got going in the morning, we drove to the Exit Glacier. Everyone was excited and in a good mood. We ate lunch in the RV in the parking lot, then all got ready to hike up to the toe of the glacier. About a mile plus each way.  We trekked through the woods on an easy trail. My niece was running ahead, and so excited to be out there. We all chatted as we walked, and switched up who we were with. I ended up catching up with Lily as we broke out of the woods and onto the scree in front of the glacier. (100 years ago we would have been on the glacier at the parking lot, but it has retreated a bit since then).

Lily was like a mountain goat. She was hiking up the rock slopes, climbing over boulder and cruising along. She and I got way ahead of everyone else and it was so much fun to be hiking and climbing with her. At one point she said "This is the most fun I've ever had!" and then she added "Well, this and the 21-pilots concert.". I love her.

Myque and Rachel caught up to us and we took pictures as the cold glacier wind blew off the surface. My Dad didn't make it all the way, but he made it way further than I expected. He got to an overlook up a steep slope. Not bad for a 75 year old adventurer!

Days like this remind me of how we used to all hike around Colorado. Going off trail into the woods. Or hiking alongside the Cataract Falls. Or Hanging Lake. Or any number of magical places. It was wonderful to share that day with them here.

TO THE DOGS

The dogs were barking wildly. about 50 of them.
All sled dogs, all ready to pull the dog-sled cart we were sitting in. The guides say the dogs are saying "Me! Me! Pick Me!", and you'd be hard pressed to disagree. Sled dogs are a fascinating breed of the animal. They live to pull a sled. We took a ride through the woods with 13 of them pulling us along at 10+ miles per hour. The mushers use these summer tourist visits to help train and keep their dogs exercised so they will be prepared for the dog sled races of the winter... the grand daddy of which is the 1,000 mile Ididarod.  The dogs are all pretty adorable. And Lily got to dress in all the mushers gear. The tour is a little cheesy, but it's really fun too. I mean, how serious can a visit with a bunch of barking dogs be? :)

Alaska is full of all sorts of people and activities, that seem similar to things you might do elsewhere, but are very unique in the end. Strange adventures. Wonderful sites. Welcoming people. It's quite nice.

This day ended with a massage chair at Myque and Rachel's apartment they rented in Seward. Why an apartment for a couple nights? Because the only hotel room left was $600! What?!?!  Plan ahead for Alaska in the summertime folks.


Whew! This is turning out to be quite the update!
I've actually been home for 3 1/2 weeks now, and it's nice to take the trip back to Alaska.
I was going to include photos, because I'm actually at home and in theory can. But for some reason, they aren't showing up as attachable! Maybe I'll have a Photo Album email I send at the end or something. But for now... WORDS!


SUNSHINE!!!

We had good weather for Exit glacier. In fact, whenever we would pay for an activity, we had sun. Otherwise it likely was raining.
Maybe it just knew!

We headed out on a glacier / whale / bay mini-cruise to Kenai Fjords National Park. I'd talked to multiple travelers who recommended it. In addition, Brendon had said one of his highlights of his cruise a few years ago was something similar. And since our cruise didn't offer it, we did it here.

And it was BEAUTIFUL!

The sun was out. The mountains shooting 5000-7000 feet out of the water. Snow capped. We had humpback whales surfacing nearby. And then there were the Orcas. 3 pods of them. All around the boat, maybe 200 feet out. They would jump out of the water, roll sideways, and crash back into the sea. They would swim on the surface and slap their fins back and forth (presumably to stun fish), and seemed to be having a good time. The Park Ranger who was talking on the boat said that Orca's have behavior that as far as the scientist who study them can tell... is just for fun. They like to play and be silly and have a good time. And they sure looked like they were.

The trip also stopped at glaciers. Everyone got quiet and you could hear the popping and cracking of ice. And here and there pieces would fall off into the water. It's hard to get a picture of, because by the time you hear it, it's already happening. It's one of those things, I feel like, where you either choose to enjoy the moment OR try to get a picture of it. Which is better? I'm not sure. Both have their pleasures. I think mixing up the two is a great way to experience things.


DENALI

So, we drive back up to the National Park. Now that everyone is here, we can do the visit.
And in Denali, that visit involves a bus ride. Because other than the first 15 miles or so of the one and only park road, you have to be on a park bus. This keeps traffic down, and frankly improves your chances of seeing animals. Caribou, check!  Bald eagles, check!  Moose, check (though no bulls, only cows. So none of the big crazy antlers), bear, check.  Bear eating 150 feet away, check. Bear walking towards the bus, check. Bear walking right up to the bus under my window, check.  Bear walking along the side of the bus, seeing it's reflection in the door, and running it's ass back down the road, check, check and check. Bear watching us from the middle of the road, check.  Bear taking a shit in the road and walking off into the grass, check and check.  Yep. the bear scared the shit out of itself.

There was another bear, hanging in the middle of the road, that just walked over and was eating 15 feet away. Couldn't care less that a big green school bus and a car were nearby.

And way way way in the distance, we saw a lone wolf trotting along a high grassy slope. The driver said that is VERY unusual now. Denali's wolves stay far away from the road. After all they have 6,000,000 acres to enjoy. And the single road is only 90 miles long.

We were lucky when it comes to wildlife.

And we were lucky when it comes to the mountain. Because Denali is usually hidden in clouds, In fact, only 1 in 3 days out of the summer is it visible. So if you see it, you beat the odds. Well, we saw it that first day driving up this way. And today, late in the afternoon, the Big One came out again. Completely clear. A giant slope of ice and rock 20,000 feet tall. And with the base being about 3,000 feet, it is the largest mountain Massif in the world from base to summit.  And seeing it in that long endless magic hour of the Alaskan summer was a fabulous finale to our road trip...

Next stop:  Cruisin!

I’M IN FRICKIN' ALASKA
Aug 21, 2016


Hi Team!

I'm in the great white north! (Actually more the great gray north, since there's lots of rain) but either way it's BEAUTIFUL!

(Okay, I'll be honest:  I'm actually back in Los Angeles after an amazing 3 week trip to Alaska and Vancouver. Due to the nature of this trip, there were only 2 internet cafe's I even saw. One of them was closed. And the other was on the last day. So I'm going to do my best to go back there as I write these to hopefully, give you a fun adventure read. :)

So Alaska.
The 49th state.
The largest state in the USA by a long shot. (Sorry Texas!)
Population: 740,000 (with 400,000 of that in Anchorage area).

All these goes to say that there is A LOT of open space in Alaska. I almost wrote "open road", and while there is a lot of that too, the roads don't cover much of the state by any means. The capital, Juneau, is only reachable by boat or plane. In fact there are a lot of places in Alaska only accessable by boat, plane or just plain walking.

So how did we see Alaska?
Behind the wheel of a 29 foot RV we dubbed the "Minnie Winnie" (Since it said Minnie Winnie in big letter on the side.)

That's right. This was a road trip extraordianire with my Dad for the first 5 days, and then with my Brother, Sister-in-Law and Niece joining us for the next five days. And then there was a 7 day cruise...

But lets start with the road trip.

My family grew up road tripping. My parents always took us on multi week road trips during the summer growing up. We'd head to the southwest USA, the east coast, the mountains of Colorado, to visit relatives in the midwest. The list goes on and on, and I thank them everyday for instilling in me the wunderlust I have to explore and travel. So, it seemed appropriate to do a 10 day roadtrip-cruise with my Dad for his 75th Birthday. It's been years in the coming, delayed for all the reason's one finds to delay a trip (money, schedules, etc etc). But we finally were able to put it all together and head to Alaska.

So, RV? You might ask. How was that?

The answer: Awesome.  It was so much fun! In Alaska you can literally park ANYWHERE that is not private property and doesn't have a sign expressly saying "no camping". Which means you can pull out at an overlook of Denali (as we did the first night) and just say "This is camp". Or pull off on a rocky edge of a wild glacier fed river and say "Now this is camp!".  Sure, you can stay at an RV park (good for pumping out the "black water" and "grey water" and refilling the fresh water), or an official campground. Or you can just park on the side of the road, wherever you feel like it.  It took a day or two to really understand this. To not feel strange or out of place just stopping and "camping" wherever we wanted. But once we did, it was great.

Was there enough space?
Our 29' RV was great for 2 people. Dad had the bed in the back. I had the loft over the drivers seat. It was like a fort! We had shower, microwave, stove, oven, fridge, freezer, table. Even a TV and DVD player (which we didn't turn on a single time!)

Gas Mileage? Cost?
Our RV cost about $240 / day after the extra collision waiver, some camp chairs and taxes.
To put it in perspective: A mini-van cost $200/day.
Hotels in Alaska are very hard to come by in the summer and quite expensive. So we would have had to plan every step ahead of time, and book early. And each room would be $150-$250 or more. And that's the cheap room. My brother had to search long and hard to find an apartment when we were in Seward because the only hotel room left in the city was $600!  What?!?!
So the RV was actually a pretty big money saver on top of being fun. Sure it only got 10mpg. And had a 55 gallon tank. But we lucked out that gas was in the $2.40-$2.90 range most of the time. (In previous years it could easily top $4.00/gal).
Anyway, you get it. RV = fun and money saver!  Both good things.


How is it to drive?
Not hard at all. We got it from "Great Alaskan Holidays", and they have a very thorough video showing you how to drive it, where to watch when turning etc. It took me about 2 hours before I felt really confident and was zipping up the road. It's big, but it's fun. If you need to get a snack just hop up and go to the fridge while you're cruising down the road.

LET'S HIT THE ROAD!

After a breakfast of eggs and Reindeer sausage in Anchorage, we picked up the Minnie, stocked up on food and headed north through Anchorage Rush Hour. Which consisted of a few multicatch stop lights and about a 2 mile back up with some construction.  Other than that 10-15 minute delay on the first day, and some construction stops on the 2-lane highways, we never sat in any traffic at all for 10 days. In fact, there were times we would drive 200 miles or more without a stoplight or stopsign.  In the lower 48, one of my favorite road signs is in Utah and it says "Next Services on I-70, 112 miles".  In Alaska, it is COMMON to have 125 miles between gas stations.

There's a lot of space up there.

And a lot of it is GORGEOUS.  7,000 foot mountains shooting straight up out of the ocean. Ridges and ridges of hills and mountains stretching to forever. 17 - 20,000 foot mountains towering over everything around them. In some ways there is so much amazing scenery that it feels like overload... in the best possible way.

And there is also some monotonous tree-lined highways too. I mean, there's a LOT of space. And some of it is a 2 lane road with trees on both sides. It felt a lot like North Carolina, only the trees were different. Hey, in a place that big not everything can be off the charts.

Some of my fondest memories of the trip are just driving through beautiful scenery with my dad, some tunes on the radio, talking about his "rebel" days of youth. (I'll leave those stories for us, but it was really fun to hear about a time when my dad was.... well, still a good kid, but doing some silly goofy stuff that kids do. )  Or sitting by a camp fire, next to the glacial river as the twilight faded from the sky (at 11:30pm or later). The two of us tending the fire, listening to the river rush past and looking up at that big Alaska sky. Skipping and collecting rocks on riverbanks, or glacier sides. Bringing a little bit of Alaska back home with us. Laughing about whatever caught our funny bone.

There are adventures to be told, and they will be, but for now I'll leave you with the simple pleasures and joys of spending time with loved ones in amazing places. I'm grateful every minute that we are able to share these times together.

Alaska...