The couple at the site next to us were leaving and generaously gave us their leftover firewood. As Kris was skillfully making our Bloody Mary's (a very complete vacation breakfast as they contain a ton of antioxidants, vegetable juice, and snacks!), I was setting up the new grill that almost exploded 2 nights before.
If you remember from my last post there were some "issues" with this grill previously. I wanted to leave as little to chance as possible this time. There was a guy at the campsite to our left packing up to leave. He had a ton of gear and just "looked" like he knew what he was doing. So...the following is an excerpt from Krissy's travel journal:
"She [Kim] asked the guy on the other side of us, who was about done packing up his stuff if he knew anything about propane grills and if he would come over and check it out, the exact quote: 'Excuse me. You look like you camp a lot, can you come look at our grill so we don't blow our faces off?' This quote started our new friendship with Gabe."
Seward has about 3000 residents, and it's beautiful! It sits on Resurrection Bay and was founded in 1903 by survey crews looking for an ice free port to start a railway into the Interior of Alaska. Also historically significant is that the beach we were camping on was the start of the original Iditarod trail. In 1925 there was a diptheria outbreak in the gold rush boom town of Nome in northwest Alaska. It was winter and there was no way to get a boat through the ice and there were no railroads that far north at that point. The needed serum was brought into Seward by boat and was run over 1100 miles to Nome by several groups of mushers and their dogs. Without their bravery the entire town would likely have perished. Every year they run the Iditarod race (1150 from Anchorage) commemorating this historic act of heroism. It's known as "the last great race on earth." It starts the first weekend of March, and this year I am lucky enough to be a part of is. My mother, aunt and myself are going to Nome to volunteer as dog handlers for the race finishers!
Anyway...Krissy and I had big plans of walking around Seward and hiking some trails, but never left the campground except to go to the grocery store for some s'more ingredients and beer. We spent the day at our campsite with Gabe. He lives in Palmer which is ~45 minute drive from Anchorage. He works "on the slope". The Alaska North Slope is located on the northern slope of the Brooks Range along the coast of the Arctic Ocean and the Beaufort Sea. This is where the National Petroleum Reserve is as well as Prudhoe Bay Oil Field. Oil was discovered there in 1968. Gabe went to the culinary school in Seward and is currently working as a dishwasher awaiting an opening for a chef position. Most of the guys on the slope whether they are engineers, "rough=necks", medical or support staff work 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off with 12 hour days. We had a great day with Gabe and a few of his friends who stopped by. We were talking to the guys about recycling as we had both noticed that there are no recepticles around Anchorage. They said there is one recycling station in Anchorage. Apparently, because we are so isolated, it is more expensive for Alaska to recycle and it's not very popular.
Afternoon drifted into evening, then into night. Krissy was looking out into the bay and about 50 yards from where we were sitting, a whale breached! A HUGE WHALE! Gabe has been visiting Seward his whole life (his dad lives there) and he has never seen a whale in the bay. He told us we must have good things headed our way because that never happens. He said it was a fin whale, an animal on the endangered species list!
We were making s'mores when a bald eagle soared by our campsite as the sea otters played 25 yeards from us in the bay...again, not bad.
The following morning Gabe gave us some fresh peppermint for tea. He planted a peppermint patch a few years ago on his way to Seward one weekend along the coast and stops at it every time he comes down to pick fresh peppermint. He told us where he planted it and said we were welcome to grab some whenever we pass by.
We packed up camp and headed to the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward. It's a research center, and marine wildlife rehabilitation facility as well as a tourist attaction partially funded by monies from the Exan-Valdex oil spill. They have puffins, sea otters, a 2200 pound sea lion and his girlfriend (who was preggers at the time) and every kind of fish you can imagine. They also have a "petting zoo" where you can touch sea urchins, sea cucumbers, star fish and anemoneas among other things.
Interesting trivia tidbit of the day: shrimp are hermaphrodites. They start life as males then 3 years later becomes female. Seriously.
Heading back to Anchorage we blew a tire on the Pilot! We weren't worried for 2 reasons, 1) we'd both heard stories about how kind Alaskans are, always stopping to help with any car trouble and 2) we were both forced to learn how to change a tire prior to getting our driver's licenses. Well...I'd like to thank both my dad, Ken, and Krissy's dad, Bob, for insisting on teaching us this skill! We got passed by 3-4cars who didn't even slow down. We even got passed by a guy on a bike! As we were tightening the very last lug nut a State Trooper pulled up on the other side and said.."Everything ok ladies?" We smiled...:)
We rolled back into Anchorage, unpacked, threw in some laundry and headed to Moose's Tooth for pizza and microbrews! The next day we got the tire replaced and picked up a few things before heading to Denali the following morning.
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