SLOW JOURNEYING THROUGH ALASKA

Glaciers, Prince William Sound

My husband and I spent many months planning what he calls our Great Alaska Adventure, June-July 2016.  We began with five nights in Fairbanks in a cabin on the banks of the Chena River.  We did everything local we could find--a Fish bake with wood-grilled salmon, wild Alaskan cod, and snow crab; a summer solstice baseball game lasting into the wee hours of the morning; a river cruise by stern wheeler; and a visit to the training grounds of the Iditarod dogsled team. We used local shuttles to get from one adventure to another.

We plunged into the scenic wilderness of central Alaska by taking the Alaska Railroad Goldstar domed train to Denali National Park.  There we hiked, rented self-drive jeeps and photo-hunted moose and the elusive Denali.  We took the same train to Anchorage and rented a car for the drive to Alyeska, a glacier-carved valley in Girdwood, Alaska.  In the midst of seven glaciers, Alyeska became our base camp for trips to Whittier and the glaciers of Prince William Sound and Seward and Resurrection Bay.

On the road 

Amazingly, we saw every single bird, fish and mammal we hoped to encounter, from moose to whales, to puffins, to otters, to seals, to birds of every variety.  The rookeries lining the cliff edges of Prince William Sound were so swirlingly noisy they outdid even the waterfalls.

Rookery, Prince William Sound

Now we monitor the Fairbanks weather and sunlight.  On December 21, the winter solstice, the sun rose at 10:50 a.m. and set at 2:41 p.m.  Three hours forty-two minutes of daylight!  There were fireworks downtown to celebrate the shortest day.  I wish we had been there.