Our first big Alaskan adventure, that didn’t involve driving: WHITEWATER RAFTING. Lindsay had mentioned a desire to do it, and I thought, we’ll hey, why not right? Whitewater rafting always brings back scenes from River Wild… talk about 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon. But I thought, if Helen Hunt can do it, I can do it. So we set up our adventure, with pick up at 7:05 am. We got up, got ourselves layered up, and were picked up in a van by a young guy..I’m going to call him Hickory. Hickory because he’s from Hickory Hills, IL, another fine Midwestern. He referred to us as the “Midwest Crew” Hickory drove us to the rafting center, after picking up some old folks who were also going rafting. Everybody’s crossing things off their bucket list, we’re just doing it earlier, while we don’t have to worry about our knee replacements or our bad shoulders, which were common issues today when getting suited up and into the raft. Hickory was friendly and gave us mad props for our adventure. Alaska is full of these hippie types…they come to Alaska for the summer to get some adventure, do the outdoors thing. He also told us about the Asian invasion that comes to Alaska in the early fall…to see the Aurora Borealis. Apparently they believe that if you conceive a child under the Northern Lights, that child will be a genius. Needless to say, the Asians flock to Alaska around that time to get their groove on in the Last Frontier. We arrived at the center, signed away our lives, and went to the deck to get gear. The Denali Raft Adventures Company provided us with river booties and a dry suit. When asking my size, I replied 8.5, and Hickory replied, you’re more like a 10. Don’t worry, he equally hit on a lady about 70 by telling her her suit matched her eyes. You got to remember they work for tips, so its not surprising they throw around a lot of sweethearts and beautiful. He referred to Lindsay as Wisconsin and told the other guides that we were good Midwesterners. After a demonstration, we got all up in our dry suits. We had to stick our heads through these tight rubber holes…which the guides assisted with as the “birthing process”. They reminded us that “what happens in the suit, stays in the suit” so “if you poot in the suit, and let air out, its gonna go right in your face”. They also recommended that we keep our socks on, since the suit was basically a latex product, and most people frown upon sharing latex products. And that you don’t want a hole in your latex product. We looked like ghostbusters. Lindsay was the winner, fastest to get her suit on, to which Archie replied..winner winner chicken dinner. Life jackets on, than on da bus. When we got to the river, I assumed the duty of “clipboard girl”, checking off that our guide Archie had covered all necessary safety precautions and “in case of flipping”, “in case of falling out” scenarios. Standard liability stuff. Wasn’t worried. There were about 14 of us, so 8 of us went with Archie, and 6 went with Tom. We were by far the youngest members of the raft… I think the next youngest was our guide. We had a very diverse group, a guy from Newcastle United Kingdom, one guy from Sydney, Australia, and a group of old people from New York State. They were quite humorous and one of the ladies challenged Tom, the other guide, to a barcrawl. He said she couldn’t keep up, she begged to differ.
Lindsay and I sat up in the front. Go big or go home. After about 5 minutes, Archie gave us a taste of the Nenana River… in the form of a big blast of Glacier Water to the face… about a nice 33 degrees. My hands were cold and Archie said if they got really bad we could stick our hands in his life jacket…but not the guys, cause that’s weird.What’s whitewater rafting without getting wet…. Just a float trip, the more relaxing option. I got my share of ice water to the face…. But it was a blast. I made some witty comments to the other passengers and we told them about our ambitious road trip. They were impressed at how much land we’ve travelled, that we braved the Yukon, and they found it particularly hilarious that we’ve never been camping before. The guy next to Lindsay, from the UK, kept telling her he was glad she was in front of him.
We hit our first rapid… razorbacker, all of them had funny names like the coffee grinder, cable car,train wreck, ice worm… and we got a taste of class 4 rapids. For the most part, it wasn’t too scary. Just lots of water to the face. Archie was a champion… and led us on the right path… as to keep us on plane. Turns out, he’s only been doing this a week. Really. Well 7 years of whitewater experience, a week in Alaska. He is only up for the summer…before returning back to Atlanta, Georgia, where he is a high school science teacher. But the best part about Archie, was that he sang to us. Now I’m not sure what it is, but we keep getting these serenades. Perhaps because Lindsay keeps catching our guides humming and then asking them if they are going to sing. Seriously wonderful. Now this time it was more of the rock variety….a funny Beck song called Debra. It was really hilarious…. Rafting through a canyon, having our guide sing this song to us in a really high pitch voice. We both looked at each other, like this is great. He showed us all sorts of hydrolics, where the water starts flowing backwards, which basically sucks you in… not a good idea. We went under an old cable car line (hence the name of the cable car rapid), and I swear we were in the River Wild. At some of the more dangerous rapids, there was a safety guy on shore to rescue us in case we fell out and couldn’t get back in one of the rafts.
It was a 2 hour adventure down 11 miles from Denali to Healey, well technically UP, since the river runs north. Kind of odd, sort of like the Nile. We got plenty wet, and the frigid water surely woke us up. We didn’t have to do any work, Archie handled it… oaring like a pro. We went under this big bridge called Windy Bridge that has winds so strong, it could knock a semi off of it. Scary. Our rafting group was a blast…and like I said, so diverse. I got awfully close to the Australian old man sitting next to me, but there was no chance I was taking a swim in the glacier water.
We saw a goat on the top of the mountain, heard the best part place to spot bald eagles is the dump, and if you hit your raft on a rock, the guide has to buy all the other guides beer. Archie took us passed the power plant and to our final destination, and he missed our spot so Bryan the bus driver had to chase us down the river and throw us the rope bag, which he failed terribly at. The power plant is located strategically next to one of the biggest mines of coal in North America. Not so strategically is the fact that the plant is not equipped to burn the type of coal that is found in that such mine. Great work miners.
They helped us get out of our suits, making crab hands to slide our arms out of the wet rubber. Back on the bus…where all of us sat with our hands under our arm pits like Sherry O’Terry from Superstar. Back to de-suit and then the bus ride back to the Grizzly Bear. We were the last 2 on the bus…Archie asked us if we were staying with them, and I said, yes I’d make a great rafter don’t you think? Bryan chimed in that I might have trouble with the loading/unloading of the rafts… I told them I had some big guns. Lindsay begged to differ. We said goodbye and thanked them and they told us to enjoy our summer. Archie had told Bryan about our road trip as we made our way back to the Grizzly Bear.
We finished tying up our stuff on the top of the car and headed back to Denali to pick up our rafting photos that needed to be printed. I had this great expression on my face so it was worth the splurge to remember our rafting experience. We went to Subway, next door, cause I had giftcards. A flipping footlong was $9.25. Yo Alaska, haven’t you heard about $5 footlongs?!?!
We got back in the car, heading south for Anchorage. We ate our sandwiches as we drove. The ride down was through the mountains, passing Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain in the US. Problem is, we weren’t quite sure which one it was. We have a pretty good idea, and took some pictures of said mountain..but if it turns out that is Mt. Reagen or Mt. Taft, wouldn’t be surprised. Along the way, Lindsay fell asleep and I stopped to get gas. Some guy at the pump next to me asked me if those were Wisconsin bugs on our rubbermaids. I said yep. He asked about our trip, and I told him about our plans. He told us to make sure to know what time the border closes since its in the middle of nowhere. Thanks for the tip kind stranger, making friends everywhere we go.
Anchorage was about as exciting as Fairbanks. We stopped downtown and checked out the visitor center and a “sign post” that symbolized that Anchorage is the air traffic crossroads of the world. We decided that we had enough Anchorage and headed further south towards Seward, passing a Walgreens on the way. The drive to Seward was about 2 hours, but a few miles in we saw the ocean! WOO! We pulled off in a place called “Beluga Point” so Lindsay could look for whales…and we could switch drivers since I’d been driving all day. No whales. But a cool view. Lindsay climbed this rock mountain, but I opted for the smaller option. It was a little too steep and I wasn’t feeling like being sporty spice. Lindsay did her good samitarian deed of the day by helping a little girl down the rocks. We got back in the car, and headed to Seward, passing a glacier on the way.
When we passed the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, Lindsay quickly turned in. That’d be like me passing up a Dairy Queen on a hot day. She insisted we go, and I knew it was no use fighting so we paid our money and went in. This was similar to Bear Country USA, except you could walk around if you so choose and the animals were all in fenced in areas. There were some cool bears, eating their honey baked hams and playing in the water. There was a coyote in the same pen, and he ran up, stole a ham, and retreated quickly. Not messing with brother bear. We drove around, Lindsay took a jizillion photo and I did a quick survey of the animals before returning to the car. I’ve been permanently cold since arriving in Alaska… haven’t been able to get the chill out.
We made our way down to Seward, searching for a place to camp. We found a campsite with an oceanview. This could do. We decided to take a jaunt up the road to find where we had to go for tomorrow’s dogsled adventure. We passed a Safeway so we decided to go get some quick dinner, since we didn’t feel like starting a fire/didn’t have any firewood. We ended up getting a chicken sandwich for me and some turkey salad for Lindsay, and a piece of New York Cheesecake to share. When we got to the campsite…we found it to be very windy. Still cold, I told Lindsay I was going to sleep in the car away from the wind. We decided that we didn’t want to fight the tent in the wind….so we reclined our seats, got our pillows, and camped right there in the front seats, passing our cheesecake back and forth and laughing at ourselves. I am sure to quite sure that every other person in the campground thought we were nuts. But listen folks, all these said people were “camping” in big luxurious RVs. Tell me whats rustic about that. So we were essentially doing what they were doing…except we were sleeping at 60 degree angles and they had beds. I read for a while, enjoying my oceanview and the benefits of the midnight sun.
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