To continue the report on my most recent “weekend,” Damien kindly dropped me off at the boat that Gabe works on in Whittier (where I had visited once briefly before), then hurried back to make the 3:00-3:15 tunnel back to the highway. Apparently, he made it in time, made it up to Anchorage that night, and caught his flight seeing tour into Denali National Park the next day from a point further north. I wandered around the south end of the docks looking for a boat I had only seen once several weeks ago and finally recognized a face on one of the neighboring boats that was adjacent to it. I climbed aboard and found that I had it all to myself so I poked around to reacquaint myself with it and said hello to a few people who were wandering about the area. When Gabe got back from running errands, he had a bag of filleted salmon in his hands. Oddly enough, I hadn’t had any fish since being in Alaska- is that a sin or what?! It seems that beef and chicken are cheaper than fish, even though it is so plentiful here, and since a fish dish at the lodge costs double as much as our employee meal allowance, I haven’t tried any of the seafood dishes that we serve in the restaurant. So Gabe said that we could cook up some of the freshly caught salmon for dinner that night, which was delicious! I had expected to go out with them on the Sound on a fish run and come back by Friday night, but as it turns out there weren’t enough fish for more than one tender to collect, so only their neighbor was being sent which meant that they (and yours truly) would be staying overnight at the dock. I was bummed since I had been looking forward to seeing the crew and equipment do their thing as well as see more of the coastline with its wildlife and glaciers, but Eric’s boat was full of fish and needed to be unloaded so I did get to see a similar process in transferring the fish from the tender onto shore and into storage containers.   Here’s the video I took of the vacuuming, conveying and icing of the fish.

I was pretty tired from my day hike and lack of sleep, and Gabe had also gotten up at 4 o’clock in the morning for work, so after dinner and a few minutes of socializing with the crew from both boats, we crashed in the cozy bunk beds on board and I slept like a rock until mid-morning, when the generator was turned on again and the radio crackled loudly with fishermen’s reports.  Below, fish in their foamy hold on the boat, vacuum tubes extending down to suck them up, the transfer equipment, the conveyor machine, the belt moving the fish towards the storage containers, a close-up on the fish (red or pink salmon), the fish falling into the plastic buckets, the fish on ice being carted away, Gabe standing next to one of the ice-shovelers, and the view beyond the containers.

On Friday Gabe and I went for a short hike up Portage Pass to get a view of Portage Lake and the glacier, which still runs up to the edge of the water. Going up, we got wonderful views back towards Whittier, and at the top you can see both ways through a narrow dip in the hills to the glacier and lake in one direction and back towards town the other just by turning around in the same spot. The glacier looked like an enormous ice-blue tongue extending down from the mountain and trying to lap up some of the lake water. From where we stood, it looked like there were footprints all over its surface, but I would guess that the texture actually consisted of deep pockets of air from the ice melting in the sun and hardening again overnight like it was on Mt. Whitney in June. To the left, there were several waterfalls cascading down the mountain into a long, narrow stream that ran through a deeply carved out gorge towards the bay. Between the lake, the stream and us was sort of a bumpy, rolling terrain around which you could kind of make your own path. We ran around to explore all the neat features of the area and found a precarious perch behind a huge rock that overlooked the stream far below, the bay to the west and the glacier to the east. There was a thick ground cover that appeared to be holding the earth together and was also quite cushy and comfortable to lounge on while taking in the incredible view.

While we had gotten a ride to the trailhead on our way out, we had to walk a few miles along the road through town on our way back so I got the full tour of Whittier, including a look at The Inn at Whittier which is an upscale hotel and restaurant with prime real estate right on the water with gorgeous views across the bay and into the boat harbor that one of my customers had told me about. Gabe then spotted another friend of his who works on a smaller touring boat, so we went over to say hello and after a while he offered to motor us back the rest of the way! I was so excited that I was getting to take a boat ride after all that he then additionally offered to take us to a wonderful nesting ground for a bird that is related to the seagull. On a huge outcropping of granite overhanging the water, where two parallel waterfalls come off the cliffs (one of them free falling quite a ways into the water), thousands of birds sit and fly around, creating a continuous buzz of activity. The boat pulled up to within 10 feet of the waterfall where I could feel the spray bouncing back up from the surface and if I didn’t know how cold the water was I would have leapt off and swum underneath it! On the way back from this excursion, our captain suggested that I lay down at the front of the boat so that there were no obstructions to my view and then he raced across the water so I felt like I was flying! Although it was exhilarating, I arrived back at the dock an absolute icicle from gripping the metal rails for safety and feeling the cold wind whipping across my face. I warmed up with some hot tea and homemade chili (care of Gabe and the other deckhand Pete), and then I had the guys teach me how to play Texas Hold ‘Em poker since I had been invited by the lodge manager to play one night but couldn’t remember how. We anteed up with M&Ms and ate some of our money along the way. At least now I know the basics and could join a game in the future.

Click here for glacier photos!

That afternoon, the rain returned in full force, bringing back the gloomy Whittier that I had remembered from my first trip there. I hitchhiked back to the lodge that night since the boat was going to leave port again, and pretty quickly found a ride by walking the line at the entrance to the tunnel while people were waiting for their turn to get through. Two nice women (yeah!) fit me into their SUV- one of them was dropping the other off at her car which was parked on the other side of the tunnel and that woman happened to be continuing south to Cooper Landing which is just beyond Summit Lake, so I got lucky again with my ride! Not only that, but I could immediately tell by her accent that the first driver was originally from Boston. She told me that her son owns a lodge up north beyond Wasilla and that I should definitely stop by to check it out if I go up that way. The second woman, a nurse and athlete, had been at Summit Lake Lodge a few weeks earlier with the Ride for Life that had stopped and camped out on the property.

Since I had made final arrangements to pick up a used rental car from the guy in Soldatna that my Girdwood ride had referred me to last week, I got up “early” Saturday morning and got back on the southbound side of the highway. After several waves of cars, a single woman stopped to get me and was heading exactly to Soldatna to visit her elderly, housebound mother. She said that she didn’t usually pick up hitchhikers but that I had looked safe, or different from the others somehow… I was wearing clean jeans and a wool sweater and was hiding my caramel latte behind my sign so that I didn’t look like such a yuppie and make people wonder why I was thumbing for a ride in the first place! But I guess that helped me in this case, rather than dressing the part of a wayward backpacker who hadn’t showered for days. So in one straight shot, I was dropped off right at my car rental place, which was located amongst the sprawling commercial district of Soldatna along the Sterling Highway. Several teenagers greeted me at the little desk in what looked like an auto body shop otherwise, and told me that Richard, the guy I had spoken to a couple of times on the phone, wasn’t in. They didn’t seem to know what to do with me without his direction, so I decided to check out the liquidation store across the street while waiting for him to get back. At noon, I returned to the storefront and while Richard still wasn’t there, there was a different teenaged boy behind the counter who started processing my reservation as if he was the guy in charge.

Although I had bargained with Richard both times I had previously called, getting him from $500/month plus tax (which was $100/month cheaper than any of the places in Anchorage I talked to) to $1,000 maximum for both months including the 15% worth of taxes, I decided to try one more time to get a better deal. I had mentioned paying in cash as an incentive as well but since the kid I was dealing with didn’t know that, I asked him if he could do any better for cash paid in full up front. He called Richard to run that by him and was told that I could have a minivan (instead of the Ford Escort or whatever other compact vehicle he had) for $900 total. They pulled up a blue-gray Plymouth Voyager with room for 5 plus a good-sized luggage area and I just started laughing- I have a minivan but no kids to fill it up! It has the ubiquitous Alaskan windshield crack in an unusual pattern but is mainly out of the driver’s sightline, so I think I can deal with it. My biggest concern was a spider that somehow got into the gauge display area and then couldn’t get out so died, dried up, and is now permanently stuck behind the plastic partition. It is perfectly intact however and makes me squirm every time it catches my eye, but apparently there’s no easy way to pop the plastic off to remove the carcass so I think I’m just going to stick a piece of tape over that area to shield it from my view. Creepy! I’m sure the gas mileage will not be great, and I feel silly riding around in a big empty car, but I could certainly sleep either on the back seat or make a nice bed in the trunk and figure that I’ll have room for whatever friends decide to come visit, plus it will have to hold my several months worth of luggage when I leave Summit Lake next month. So, I think it will be a good vehicle to live out of for the rest of the time I’m here. I ran a few errands in Soldatna, tested out my new Wells Fargo ATM card, stopped for lunch, and then drove myself back to the lodge just in time for my Saturday night shift. Oh, and I involuntarily stopped to pick up a hitchhiker on my way out of town, who was luckily only going about 10 miles up the road…I think I’ll make it a policy to only stop for women myself.

My beauteous automobile!

Well, I’ve worked three nights already since all of this happened and a few changes have taken place. We now close at 10pm instead of 11pm, since business is tapering off, so I got out tonight before 11 o’clock, which seemed incredibly early! I’ll basically be working shorter shifts with fewer customers for the last 3 weeks, and although that means I’ll be earning less money than anticipated, I will also have more time to unwind after work and not get to bed as late as I have been thus far, which I’m hoping will lead to me getting up earlier more frequently to do local excursions in my van! Also, instead of the expected last day of waiting tables being September 14^th, I just found out that our last day open to customers is actually the 9^th, after which whomever of the employees are left are supposed to help clean and close up the entire property for the winter, which means several days of minimum-wage only pay- do you have any idea what an insignificant paycheck that yields?! I don’t know how people do it… Over the last few weeks, several of the staff have left sooner than their contracts stipulated, two of them just recently, getting a ride from friends or family usually at night, foregoing their security deposit on the cabins and leaving others to pick up what little slack there is at this point. Others have been sick, but either way the kitchen has been hurting a bit, with the cooks that are left working extra hours and being tired and testy, and hostesses are starting to get scheduled for split shifts to cover both busy periods of the day instead of just one or the other. Everyone is tired of working here and those that remain are apprehensive of being left in the lurch by more early departures. The night I got back with my minivan, one of the young cooks from North Carolina asked me if I was planning to take off in the middle of the night, and another coworker who overheard that comment said “I wouldn’t tease about that!” I guess the owners have been pretty put out with these employee desertions, but I’m also told that when some people have given the owners the courtesy of a two week notice, they have turned spiteful on them, so in her opinion it was better to just sneak away unannounced. For my part, since I still feel like I just arrived and am amazed that I only have a few weeks left, I’m trying to focus on how to accomplish all of the things that I’d like to do before mid-October, and I’m looking forward to having some company for those things when I finish working. So far, Dennis and Krista are fairly certain to come, and Franco and Shannon have also expressed interest. Any other takers?

Bragging rights for my job!