In Search of Robert Service

  (left) "Mr PG," Prince George, B.C. (above right) " Neecheah," Transportation Museum, Whitehorse, Y.T. Crow, Tok, AK In the van (post sauna), Bell 2 Lodge (RV parking lot), Lake Meziadin, B.C. Lake Louise (beginning of the trip)

It is the end of a several days that have had frustrating elements - nothing tragic, just the feeling that my wheels are spinning.... Our last few days involved driving to Seward - and spending a couple of days there - then over to Valdez, and up through the Wrangell-St. Elias Park. During our couple of days there, I picked up and read Two Sisters , by Aileen and Sammi Gallager, the "Coming of Age and Living Dangerously in the Wild Copper River Valley" (2004). Aileen , at the age of 21, moved to Alaska and lived with (eventually married) a man almost twice her age - in 1927. Her younger sister Sammi came up for a year at two different times - she was six years younger than Aileen. All this took place in the Wrangell area. One of the many things that was striking about their accounts is how little the place has changed in 80 years.....(Aileen died several years ago at 89, Sammi was 97 as of a couple of years ago.) Marshall and I then began a trek back across Canada, taki...

I'm slowly getting to corrections, adding photos - and even finishing old posts (they go in at the date that they were created, so some get buried). Consequently, you might want to peruse "back listings." It is raining this morning in Valdez. Hope to see the bears "fishing" at the edge of town. Then, on to Whitehorse.

This will go through some updates, as I have a slow connection tonight in Haines. AND, I'm updating old posts - check them out. Wrangell-Elias is the largest park in North America. Over 13.2 million acres, in the southeast part of the state (it also links with Canadian parks to extend farther south along the west coast). There are only two roads into it... We went 30 miles down the first (Edgerton Highway) to Chitina, hoping to go the full 90 to Kennicott, and discovered there was a bridge that had been damaged during the summer at about mile 45, which wouldn't handle more than 6000 lbs. safely (we're closer to 8,000). So we crossed the Copper River and turned around. We drove north to the other entrance (at Slana), for the Nabesna road, and stopped at the Ranger station to check on road conditions. Some creeks were running across the road, but she thought we could make it the entire thirty odd miles. So we had lunch on Rufus Creek,  Finally we drove through the ...

More big stuff (bad public art and/or strange mechanical wonders) from this trip. Big Fish, outside a defunct store, in Valdez. "Alaska's Largest Eagle" (so they claim) outside the Bird Ridge Motel, near Bird Creek, off the Turnagain Arm south of Anchorage

While it may not seem so, I've been thinking a great deal about Robert Service and his writing during this trip, and have been working my way (again) through his collected poems. Approaching Dawson City, and thinking both about Service and Jack London, I recalled some of my introduction to their writing, and the youthful romantic notions that the latter (and certainly both writers) conjured in their readership, despite the age of the reader. I still have a book - Jack London Stories (1960) - that my parents gave to me. I was a voracious reader (that quality has come and gone through the decades), and my father also passed on to me books from his youth - which I still own. Books like: Lost Indian Magic (Grace and Carl Moon, 1918) and Rolf in the Woods (Ernest Thompson Seton, 1911). There is a penned note in the frontpapers of the latter by him (my father) that reads: "When I was a kid, I must have read this book & Robin Hood a dozen times each. I think Seton...

Homer Spit Everyon e who had lived in or visited Alaska recommended going to Homer and many of the older, smaller cities that ring the southern and southeastern portion of the state. So, when we left Anchorage, we settled on Homer as our next stop. After all what is not appealing about a town that is actually named after a con man - Homer Pennock? We actually spent all our time on the spit - cruised the street a bit, and had a beer at the infamous Salty Dawg. The photos convey little of the appeal of this landmark. We also decided that it was imperative to sample the seafood. We stopped at an establishment (that will remain nameless) - Marshall had some crab and I sampled eight local oysters. The establishment will remain nameless, because the oysters ran through me like a hot knife through butter over the next eight hours.