so... been back for a while now. about 2 weeks. i've been crazy busy with no time to write since my return. work's been quite a bit better, actually. being able to step away for a while was really helpful. i realized, on my last night in alaska, that i'd wanted to gain management experience with this job... & i'd lost sight of that amidst all the madness of day-to-day work. so, some of the other crap that was bothering me before isn't such a big deal now. even my relationship w/ the guy i don't get along with seems improved. maybe it takes me 6 months to settle into a new job? ...or a new job where i work at break-neck speed all day without much supervision... anyway, things have improved & i'm so glad. sorry to everyone i bitched to about it. thanks for listening :)
s & c's street - the house in the center is theirs.
d & i posing at the turnagain armMORE PHOTOS OF OUR TRIP
alaska was pretty great & i recommend going, even in the spring. it really wasn't that cold. about 32 degrees, fahrenheit. lots of huge, beautiful mountains. lots of snow... i definitely enjoyed the slow pace of life in alaska. no one seemed to be rushing around - not even in the airport (which felt like a cross between a mall & a hospital... w/ dead animals around). you can't rush mother nature, i guess. if the visibility is zero & the roads are icy, you damn well better slow down. one afternoon, we were driving around with our friend & his brother (in a large 4-wheel drive truck) & we had one accident (slid into a plow-truck) & one near-accident (the truck slid sideways into the oncoming traffic lane & kept sliding down the road a ways). safe driving is no joke. we took some nice walks/hikes in borrowed Xtra Tuffs (insulated rubber boots you can wear tramping through tall snow & water). saw lots of avalanches (after they'd happened). we saw Matanuska Glacier & stayed in a cabin in the mountains (most amazing sunset & moonrise i've ever seen). did some super fun sledding in Matanuska Valley. enjoyed delicious meals (including a seafood feast w/ king crab legs, shirmp & mussels) & good company. our alaskan friends happen to be tour guides, so we learned quite a bit too. got to hear all manner of sensational tales of life in alaska - people dying in avalanches (or narrowly escaping them), people falling in crevices & surviving, a guy getting his face bit off by a bear (a guy our friends know). our friends have run into bears several times too. scary. and moose. we saw neither... alive. wish i'd been able to stay longer. d got to see the northern lights, took the tram up into the Chugach Mountains & walked on the flats (the fjord our friends live on - turnagain arm - drains completely when the tide is low & nothing's left but huge chunks of ice).
i recommend checking it out, if you can. it was weird to think, when we were there, that we were much closer to japan than baltimore. alaska is 4000 miles away. it was a great adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment