BCBC

Several weeks ago, the cream of the local citizenry took up the call to attend the Bootlegger's Cove Bread Congress. As should be evident from the photos, here was a body that made no time for demagoguery or partisan in-fighting! Huzzah, congresspeople, approval ratings are high! 

BCBC swag

Congresswoman Lebo

Congresswoman Kelly

Congressman Histand

the minority whip

Congresswoman Lebo slits the pasties

Dogs and Whales and Friends

(What more could you want?) Last weekend we skipped town and spent a few days in beautiful Kasilof. We had great visits with some of our favorite people, dogs, and woods - below are a few photos from an early-season dog run (for the dogs, the 40-degree temps made it a hot day for pulling the 4-wheeler). 

On the drive back to Anchorage, Laura spotted a pod of belugas way up Turnagain Arm. It was the first time either of us had seen them in at least 3 years. We pulled off and got to watch them surface and blow for a few minutes while traffic zoomed by. There's nothing like impromptu whale-watching! Now I'm wondering why some whales (e.g. humpbacks) breach completely, and others (e.g. belugas) don't... I took a little video of the whales, though with no zoom you'll have to take my word they're actually there.

Denali Road Lottery

We had a great trip to Denali last weekend as the happy bearers of a road permit (given to us by a friend who had won the lottery but couldn't attend). For a 4-day weekend each year, the NPS gives out a limited number of permits for visitors to drive into the park in their own vehicles. (Normally you must ride a park bus, so it was a real treat to be able to travel the park's 90 mile-road in style in the Subaru.)

We drove in just as the sun came up above the mountains to the southeast, and already Denali was in view. Huzzah!

Our first wildlife sighting was a bull moose.

At Polychrome Pass, we joined a line of cars for a port-a-potty stop and a look around.


Later we came upon a mama bear stretched out on a hill while her 2 cubs (estimated 2-3 years old), one blonde, one dark, romped around the slope.


Though clouds had begun to move in, we still had a fabulous view of the mountain when we made it further into the park.


We lunched at Wonder Lake Campground, where we discovered we'd forgotten to pack our sporks. The leatherman made quick work of a couple of willow sticks, and soon we were free to eat our mac and cheese.


I did some snoozing as we began the return drive, and later we spotted a rainbow. Dall sheep and more bears awaited.


All in all, a lovely way to spend a September weekend.

Week 4

We started our week in the Yukon Flats in the friendly village of Circle. We took showers and passed a happy afternoon sitting in the Washeteria while our laundry spun.


When the river reaches the Flats, the current slows and the river divides into endless channels and sloughs. Navigating them is a new challenge for the paddler. Fortunately, the current stayed swifter than we'd expected, and apart from a few slow sections, we were able to make decent mileage. We crossed the Arctic Circle near Fort Yukon on the summer solstice itself.

One evening halfway through the week, we pulled off quickly onto a sandbar, needing a break after paddling into a light headwind all day. We expected to wait out the wind for a couple of hours, then continue.

Two days later, we were finally able to set off. The storm had the unexpectedly pleasant result of providing us our first real full day off - we slept and read in the tent for a day and a half, occasionally venturing out to confirm that the wind was still too strong to paddle in.



When we set off, we knew we had to make the most of the window of clear, calm weather. We paddled 70 miles the first day, 60 the next, and made it all the way to the Dalton highway bridge - to the next phase of the journey.

Week 3

We spent two pleasant days in Dawson, doing laundry, eating pizza, mingling with the well-dressed locals, taking the ferry back and forth across the river, and enjoying the newly-arrived sunshine. We even attended a free yoga class, which inspired us to continue doing sun salutations throughout the trip (nothing feels quite as good to a tired paddler as stretching out the olde spine).


When we set off from Dawson, though, we soon found ourselves in the worst conditions of the trip thus far (a phrase that would repeatedly be put to use over the next several weeks). We made it through the heavy rain and winds, and pushed on after the weather cleared to make it 60 miles to a camping area where our new friend, Alex, was camped. Alex, a paddler from Germany, was on the same itinerary and timeline and we encountered each other throughout the trip.

A couple days out of Dawson, we passed the U.S./Canada border, marked by a razed clearing in the trees stretching for hundreds of miles.


We knew we must have arrived in our home state when we saw that the official flags had been taken down and replaced with an Alaska flag and a pirate flag zip-tied to a birch pole.


A couple hours later, we passed through Eagle, and picked up our resupply box from the post office. After a quick, heavy thunderstorm, we set off. The t-storm set the tone for the remainder of our week in the Yukon-Charley Preserve: frequent, violent storms followed by briefly clear skies. It was a wet week.

At the end of the preserve, we passed through an abrupt weather front into sunny, clear weather, and gratefully took a half day off at a pleasant gravel bar.

The forest fire

The forest fire we passed through between Hootalinqua and Carmacks is best described in Ben's dispatch here:

http://www.adn.com/2011/06/20/1927201/up-close-forest-fire-is-hard-to.html

But here's a short video as well...

Week 2

From Carmacks onward, the current was generally swifter (when paddling, we make anywhere from 5 to 9 miles an hour; the current here varies from 5 to 7 miles an hour - it will be slower further along). We've had an incredible range of weather already, and the conditions seem to change constantly - within a few minutes - from one extreme to another. We had our first patch of unpleasant weather this past week, with several days of overcast skies and cold, paddling in and out of rain in our warm jackets and hats. Happily it cleared in time for our final push to Dawson last night - we arrived around midnight in time for a nice sunset.

We had several big mileage days this week, trying to get a bit ahead of schedule if we can (in anticipation of much slower going on the lower river). One day we did 69 miles, and yesterday was something like 72 miles. But it varies a lot; earlier this week, wind grounded us on shore for much of a day, and the day we passed through Five Finger Rapids (better than expected) was very tough going in the wind as well. Those days we did more like 35 miles. But we've had a couple days of beautiful sunshine too, and our hands and faces are rapidly browning. My fingers have toughened up in the last couple weeks - I think I now have the hands of a Klondiker. We're working on cutting down the time we take packing up in the mornings - it's usually about 2 hours. We're much busier than we thought we'd be in this section; so far, lazy afternoons of reading in the sun have not materialized. But we're still working out the kinks and trying to get into a routine that works for us.

Wildlife highlights: 2 brown bears on a cutbank; a fox on a bank at sunset; what I believe to be a (lone) Pacific loon; moose(s) with calves; butterflies; and many many mosquitoes (I try not to think about that), mergansers, and swallows everywhere.