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A brief summary of the last week, with pictures
I want to write up more detailed notes on all of this, but since there's a good chance I won't get around to some/all/most of it, here's a brief summary of what I've been up to for the last week.
My mom and stepdad live in an off-grid cabin in the middle of nowhere and have been snowbound all winter due to a combination of equipment malfunction and age-related ill health. They're fine, it's how they want to live and I respect that, but as they're getting low on supplies and I wanted to get out of Fairbanks for a while, I drove to the town nearest them (Wasilla; it's a 6-hour drive from here), shopped for a helicopter load of food and misc. supplies for them, and combined it with a much-needed vacation (my first actual vacation since 2022) which involved a few days of hiking, lounging around the rental place reading, and scoping out interesting restaurants.
I drove out of Fairbanks in a freaking May BLIZZARD.
Luckily most of the drive was much nicer.
I stayed in an absolutely stunning lake house that was surprisingly affordable at off-season prices (as opposed to absolutely out of my reach during tourist season; I just happened to score it on AirBnb and realized later that I would never have looked at it twice at summer prices).
The lake had loons and swans, so I got to hear the loons' eerie cries at all hours of the day or night, and watch airplanes taking off outside my window.
And I rode in a HELICOPTER ♥, which I think ranks right up there with the coolest things I've ever done in my entire life. (If you get a chance to ride in a helicopter, do it. Also take dramamine beforehand, because it moves on all axes simultaneously and is a deeply weird feeling. It's nothing whatsoever like riding in an airplane and basically like nothing else I've done.)
While that was definitely the high point, I also saw beautiful scenery and watched a gorgeous sunset from a glacial river sandbar.
I also hiked on a trail made from an old railroad bed.
At a completely different location, I hiked across a railroad bridge in pouring near-freezing rain ...
(Note the "no horses allowed" sign. LMAO.)
... and on the far side of the bridge, I wandered down a gravel bar between two converging rivers and investigated icebergs piled up where the rivers come together and create a sort of vortex where the ice gets trapped. Since icebergs were jostling down the thawing rivers, I would sometimes hear two icebergs crash together with a sound like a refrigerator falling off a cliff. (Okay, I don't know what that sounds like, but it was a really unique sound, and loud. Not really a sound you expect a river to make.)
The rain then changed to snow. ALASKA WHY. I took a picture of a train in the snow passing me on the same railroad tracks where I had crossed the river a few hours earlier.
But the next day was beautiful! I drove the Denali park road, which is only open to non-tour bus traffic for a couple of weeks in the spring. I have been on it exactly once in the '90s, so I thought this would be a fun side trip on my way back home.
And I got back last night.
This is a time of year I don't normally travel in Alaska - "breakup", the extra season between winter and spring - and as well as really needing a few days of vacation, I found it a cool, interesting time to be wandering around. The tourist rush hadn't hit yet, everything was deserted and laid back, prices were cheap, and the seasons were in a fascinating transitional phase where I never knew if I'd hit snow, rain, or green growing things, especially as I traveled in and out of different biomes in the mountains. All the migrating birds were out and about, and I saw loons, swans, and many kinds of ducks, as well as our summer seasonal songbirds. Lovely trip, A+, would travel again. I hope you enjoyed coming along on the tour with me!
My mom and stepdad live in an off-grid cabin in the middle of nowhere and have been snowbound all winter due to a combination of equipment malfunction and age-related ill health. They're fine, it's how they want to live and I respect that, but as they're getting low on supplies and I wanted to get out of Fairbanks for a while, I drove to the town nearest them (Wasilla; it's a 6-hour drive from here), shopped for a helicopter load of food and misc. supplies for them, and combined it with a much-needed vacation (my first actual vacation since 2022) which involved a few days of hiking, lounging around the rental place reading, and scoping out interesting restaurants.
I drove out of Fairbanks in a freaking May BLIZZARD.
Luckily most of the drive was much nicer.
I stayed in an absolutely stunning lake house that was surprisingly affordable at off-season prices (as opposed to absolutely out of my reach during tourist season; I just happened to score it on AirBnb and realized later that I would never have looked at it twice at summer prices).
The lake had loons and swans, so I got to hear the loons' eerie cries at all hours of the day or night, and watch airplanes taking off outside my window.
And I rode in a HELICOPTER ♥, which I think ranks right up there with the coolest things I've ever done in my entire life. (If you get a chance to ride in a helicopter, do it. Also take dramamine beforehand, because it moves on all axes simultaneously and is a deeply weird feeling. It's nothing whatsoever like riding in an airplane and basically like nothing else I've done.)
While that was definitely the high point, I also saw beautiful scenery and watched a gorgeous sunset from a glacial river sandbar.
I also hiked on a trail made from an old railroad bed.
At a completely different location, I hiked across a railroad bridge in pouring near-freezing rain ...
(Note the "no horses allowed" sign. LMAO.)
... and on the far side of the bridge, I wandered down a gravel bar between two converging rivers and investigated icebergs piled up where the rivers come together and create a sort of vortex where the ice gets trapped. Since icebergs were jostling down the thawing rivers, I would sometimes hear two icebergs crash together with a sound like a refrigerator falling off a cliff. (Okay, I don't know what that sounds like, but it was a really unique sound, and loud. Not really a sound you expect a river to make.)
The rain then changed to snow. ALASKA WHY. I took a picture of a train in the snow passing me on the same railroad tracks where I had crossed the river a few hours earlier.
But the next day was beautiful! I drove the Denali park road, which is only open to non-tour bus traffic for a couple of weeks in the spring. I have been on it exactly once in the '90s, so I thought this would be a fun side trip on my way back home.
And I got back last night.
This is a time of year I don't normally travel in Alaska - "breakup", the extra season between winter and spring - and as well as really needing a few days of vacation, I found it a cool, interesting time to be wandering around. The tourist rush hadn't hit yet, everything was deserted and laid back, prices were cheap, and the seasons were in a fascinating transitional phase where I never knew if I'd hit snow, rain, or green growing things, especially as I traveled in and out of different biomes in the mountains. All the migrating birds were out and about, and I saw loons, swans, and many kinds of ducks, as well as our summer seasonal songbirds. Lovely trip, A+, would travel again. I hope you enjoyed coming along on the tour with me!
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