Anchorage and Kennicott (fail)

So the plan this weekend was Anchorage and then Kennicott on the way back. Plan failed.

I drove to Anchorage on Friday, which is a beautiful but LONG drive. On my way there I hit some road construction and found out two things- their construction crews here are all very attractive, men and women and people must get paid really well to water gravel because that is all they were doing. Needless to say I got into Anchorage and had a reality check… I haven’t been in a town of more than 100 people in almost a month. Holy. Crap. One way streets, traffic lights, taxis… I was so overwhelmed and quickly asked myself why I drove all the way here for this when I could have stayed in the woods. Ben Walker was why. I made really good friends with a Fish and Wildlife Bio Tech student in LaCrosse when I was working for Winona and he was up here for a conference on parasites (riveting!) and I didn’t mind driving to see a familiar face. Accidentally, we got drunk. We decided it was a good idea to try as many of the beers that they made at this one bar as possible and then decided it was an even better idea to go to some of the other bars… we ended up at some weird places with some weird people. The constant daylight tricked us and wouldn’t you know it, it started to get dusk and in my drunk mind I thought that meant it was an okay time… no, idiot, it was 2am. The end of the night included trying to find our way back to his hotel and stopping to take a pee break in the Native Bar. Only white people in there. Cool.

 No matter where you go these days people have to put their names in stuff!! Kind of annoying.

Needless to say I woke up a little late on Saturday morning… as in like 4 hours later than I wanted to. And hung over. I am getting too old to drink- it even hurts my joints now when I get hung over. So I made an attempt to go get gas and find McDonalds breakfast to soak up my internal leftovers. Success and fail. The one way streets tricked me and I gave up on McDonalds… drove my pitiful drive back up north feeling horrible.

Once I finally got towards Chitina I realized that it was late (5:30pm) and for me to get all the way to McCarthy, where the mines are, it was another hour and a half at least. So I bit the bullet and set up camp at Liberty Falls State Park. Cool state park let me tell ya! As I was unloading my stuff some guy literally scared me so good that I pulled my knife out on him (he didn’t notice). It was someone I had talked to earlier in the week at visitors services, he recognized me and I had told him all about the hikes in the area… he couldn’t find the hike here and was wondering if I knew. Something I wish for sometimes is that I was foreign, two reasons, one: no one ever talks to them which is what I would like and two: they get to wear the oddest looking outfits but they always look so comfortable and warm. 

I set up camp and ended up going to be around 8pm. Woke up after sleeping for what felt like forever at 10… am or pm? Good question. I laid there for a while, if it was pm why did I feel so rested? If it was am I am SUPER late for what I was planning on doing. But the sun is out… well it is out for am or pm. I did everything I could to figure out what time it was till I finally dragged my butt out of my tent and hiked back to the car to get my phone. 10pm. Ugh now that my body realized it was actually tired it decided to shut down again and back to the tent I went.

My outdoors skills have proved me well since around 2 or 3am I woke up to a stick breaking… yeah. Something was outside my tent. Luckily I am armed with bear spray and a lot of knives. I didn’t leave any food out so there really was no reason for a bear to be near me… I listened and listened. I could hear a stick break every minute or so and then heard a sound that was slightly familiar. It was a moose. I am 99% sure. He was eating and I heard him knock his rack on the tree… back to bed.

Now I was planning on getting into Kennicott today. It just didn’t happen. The stars weren’t lining up correctly and I had a funny feeling about stuff and decided to drive back home. So I am back in Northway with enough time to do some laundry. Back to work tomorrow.

**ALSO: I drove through my first fire that I can remember. Looks so cool.