Lindsay’s right, I did not sleep well. I kept waking up, trying to get comfortable which was difficult since the seats couldn’t recline all the way due to all the crap in the car, and sitting regular made my butt hurt. So I tossed and turned for hours. I should’ve just stayed up to read. But we got up, and headed to the dogsledding place. Now, I am all about authentic. So going dogsledding in Alaska, that’s pretty legit. We mingled with the store workers and then out to learn. Ofcourse, we got placed in the group with asian nation. They were typical tourists, peace signs and everything while we sat in our cart. Justin our tour guide and I exchanged the “you’ve gotta be kidding me” look. He pretty much directed his attention to us, well mostly Lindsay, since they were talking about dog breeds and paw maintenance, things that I don’t care about as long as the dog is cute, which Justin proclaimed was the reason dog breeds have gotten so weak. The ride through the forest on the cart was fun…very smart dogs. The “dog yard” and the forest smelled perpetually like dog poop, not surprising since there was about 70 dogs in this yard. But the best part, we got to play with these cute puppies. I got a cuddly little one and Lindsay’s was quite squirmy. We didn’t want to give them back.
After returning our pups, we watched a “music video” about dog mushing. Apparently that’s what they call it. Doesn’t sound like a pleasant term to me…but what do I know. This music video was somewhat of a rap about dog sledding, hilarious. Spencer showed us all the gear and how they have to change the booties every 20 miles (16 dogs, 4 booties, about 5 times a day). And about the gear that they wear (moon boots and big parkas) since it gets as cold as 50 degrees BELOW zero. One of the dogs even modeled the dog wrap to keep his family jewels warm and free of frostbite.
We ended the tour and bought some sweatshirts. I was sick of being cold so I thought a new fleece might help. We also submitted our names for the new pups. Each year they name the new pups in a theme. Like Presidents Names and their wives (Eleanor) or Places in Alaska like Sitka or Regular People names like Dave or types of Cheeses (Colby, Jack). I entered mountain ranges like Rocky or Cascade and Lindsay entered trouble names like Rascal. And off we go.
Lindsay had really wanted to take this boat tour, and it wasn’t that I didn’t. Since when do I turn down BOAT rides. I just felt sort of guilty spending more money. I am trying to be budget conscious but since I’m on in Alaska once, why not. And yes, permanently cold and damp. We bought our tickets for the 12 pm and headed for lunch at Subway. Thanks for the gift cards Mom. We got a quick car wash for the girl….shes been pretty dirty since we crossed into Alaska.
Then on da boat. We were on the Star of the Northwest so after we chatted with the parking lady to make sure we weren’t gonna get any tickets (had enough of those) for parking for 5 hours in 2 hour parking, we headed down the dock. The boat offered a buffet of prime rib and something else, but that was out of the budget so we just got a table by the window and got ready to cruise. I had breezed through almost all of my book so I was into it, and wanted to finish it. I stayed inside the cabin reading while Lindsay went on the bow of the boat to look for birds. I went up there a few times to check in with her, but it was damp and I was still cold. And I wasn’t dressed improperly or anything. I had on my underarmour tights on and jeans. And a tank top, underarmour turtle neck, long sleeve tshirt, my new fleece, and a sweatshirt. Most of you know I’m not one to sit inside instead of explore…sounds like I’m turning more and more into my mom. A hot bath would’ve been wonderful. I found some hot chocolate and sat in the cabin until something exciting happened…I had viewed the puffins and sea lions from the cabin just fine…and even a sheep and some babies frolicking down the mountainside… but then whales. That was reason enough to go outside. Plus all the body heat of the children of America kept me warm. There must have been some boys club or boys school aboard cause there were all these young boys in matching sport coats. And when I say young, I mean like 10. Not eligible bachelors in sport coats, that would’ve been better than whales.
We saw the whales from afar, and then they got close. Blowing water and fishing and flapping their fins at us. We watched them for a while, then we kept going. Another whale in the distance. We began our approach to Bear Glacier and then the whale breached/jumped out of the water. Hello National Geographic. I looked at Lindsay and she had a big grin on her face, and gave me a thumbs up, telling me she had captured it on film. Good work. Now, there’s very few times I see this particular smile on Lindsay…. The “couldn’t get it off her face even if you tried” smile. Once was in Ireland when she was on the horse. Another time was right now, watching these whales. I didn’t care if I was freezing, she was happy enough for the both of us. Then came the porpoises. Like little killer whales… they swam on the wake of the boat…. And I had my head over the side, watching them glide alongside us. They flipped through the water, zigzagging. It was like they were out to play. That was cool.
We saw some more whales in the distance, but I decided to head down to the cabin for our last hour. I got to talking with the intern from the sealife center and the older couple at the table next to us. When Lindsay came down, I looked through her pictures and showed them one of them. We got to talking and found out they were from Seattle. I told them about Lindsay’s love of Seattle and the San Juan Islands, and they have a place out there. We tried to see if they had any connections at the zoo out there, but no luck. We told them about us, and about our road trip, and they found us hilarious. We continued talking to them as we got off the boat, and the older man kept laughing hysterically at us, especially when I told him how Lindsay wanted to stop every 5 minutes to take pictures of birds. They found us all together amusing and when we ran into them again in the parking lot, they laughed at our full car of stuff. We bid them farwell and they wished us luck.
We headed to see the salmon. I’m not a big fisher kinda gal but I’ve always heard about salmon jumping upstream…I wasnted some first had experience. We found Bear Creek and wandered around. I couldn’t see the fish at first, I think it was because I was looking for something salmon…like the color, you know PINK, not the gray color of the salmon. Turns out, only the inside of salmon are actually salmon. Pink fish jumping would’ve been so much cooler. There was some sort of fish preserve that had gates on the creek, so everytime the fish would try to jump, they’d smack this gate and fall back down. Sort of funny. I watched the fish for a while and then decided to go find Lindsay since the jumping was cooler than them just swimming upstream which sort of looked like I-94 during road construction, all jammed up. I found her on the opposite side of the creek, told her to come with me, so she did, but first falling off the log she was crossing. Good work slick, you would’ve never made it in Dirty Dancing.
Once Lindsay changed, we were on the road again. We had a 15 hour drive to Haines (where our ferry was picking us up) so we decided to get a headstart so we didn’t have to drive the whole thing the next day. We drove for a while until we found the Matanuska Glacier Park.
We were both very tired, and the idea of pulling out the tent was exhausting. Plus it was again cold and damp. I told Lindsay that if I hadn’t slept so bad the night before, I would have no problem sleeping in the car again. She told me she could fix that. She pulled out the cooler and made room for me to sleep on the backseat. Ofcourse that violates Bear Safety…. But there was nothing too smelly in our cooler and either way, we were safe in the car. I got in the back and found it less comfortable than I imagine. Perhaps because the seats were folded down, so it was like sleeping on a 2 by 4. I got adjusted and went to bed…on my rockhard 2 by 4 piece of ground. Lindsay had taken my space in the passenger seat…away from the dangers of the horn. Our lives sometimes…fell asleep laughing at ourselves.
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