Kenai Peninsula, Alaska ~ 2002

Good Morning.  Recently, I promised a few of you that I would put up some photos which I took during a trip to the Kenai Peninsula during the first two weeks of July, 2002.  Early July is the high season for catching Coho Salomon, or "silvers" as they are known alongside the rivers.

These cabins overlooked Kenai Lake

Ian (then 14 y/o) and I landed in Anchorage using many of the frequent flier miles I had acquired during numerous business trips to Japan. We rented an old Ford Taurus from a 'mom & pop' operation and drove down to Cooper Landing near Kenai Lake. Initially, we camped.  Then I found some old cabins, one of which I could rent for $35 a night!  The owner's wife was furious with him that he let it go for such an incredibly low price at that time of year.  Ian befriended his son, who'd recently been 'med evacuated' by helicopter to Anchorage after falling out of a tree and having his stomach sliced open to an extent that his entrails were flowing out.  His father had to hold them in on the trip to the hospital because the local nurse was nauseous at the sight.  The doctors stuffed them back in, stapled him up, and sent him home to continue the life of a boy in the Alaskan wild.  His bright red, newly formed scar appeared like an external capillary and he wore it too proudly much to the consternation of his parents. One in four boys, he could (and often did) avoid their oversight.

I took this picture above the plane, where I was hiking. I started from lake level.

He brought home 30 lbs of filleted Haddock on this day

Kenai Lake

Sunlight for 18 hours a day - he spent most of that doing just this

Desolate high mountain lake

Scrounging for garbage at a restaurant just to the right

Very colorful guy made these ~ hated tourists, loved alcohol

Dozens of these unique manifestations such as the above in Homer

He'd been in the water over 8 hours at this point - before this a Gameboy was the only thing which could hold his imagination that long

Rebadged Isuzu

Home Sweet Home

Note "Flush" button

Urinal

Off the road from Anchorage to Kenai

The earth resolutely reclaims what it owns

Ian and I soon went our separate ways, he spending most of his days alongside the river or in the lake fishing and me hiking the many thousands of feet overhead in the mountains where I found high meadows and solitude.


Cheers

Take-off is coming up quickly!

The picture above depicts the 300' sq ft storage locker after a good 70% of its contents had been removed.


The time since my last post has been fraught with tedium (cleaning out a 300' sq ft storage locker and paring it down to 100' and then 50' sq ft), melancholy (everyone of you I look at and everywhere I look), and - of course! - drama (I spent a day in U of M Hospital beginning last Thursday evening as they wrestled down my blood pressure from 179 over 120 to somewhere approaching normal.


I received the $$ for the defective roof top tent which I sent back and for all but loading my car (this will actually take three days as I get it to perfection - no extra weight) and saying "good bye", I am gone.


We're coming on a melancholy season, Fall, and it's just by a hair that my optimism conquers that feeling.  But conquer it it does. So let's get on with it!

I received an e-mail today from one of the owners of the Aurora Borealis Lodge in Fairbanks. It was in response to a call I made to him last week inquiring about seasonal winter help at his lodge which serves Japanese tourists coming in every year to watch the Northern Lights, the greatest light show on earth.  He is all set with seasonal help but gave me the name and contact information of a principal at a package tourist agency in Anchorage specializing in Asian clientele, especially Japanese. I will follow up and keep you posted.


Thanks for your continued interest and I look forward to you joining me later this week as we take off.


Ciao!


Chris

When are you leaving?!!!

It's July 20th and many of you are wondering why I haven't left yet.  It has everything to do with a $1,250 car top tent. The purchase which arrived at the house sometime before the Fourth was defective.  An important floor seam was compromised during shipping. The distributor went round and round with the importer and finally, after many days, offered to reimburse me.  I accepted and just yesterday got the tent out.


In the meantime I have been working hard to compact my 300 sq ft storage locker into a 50 sq ft unit, with great success!! So wen I decide to stay out west I will not be looking back east with guilt every time I think of the money I am spending to store a $300+ Stihl Edger I will never use again, etc., etc.


So, with any luck the next entry will see me on the road!

A Pacific Northwest Morning

The temperature is 73 degrees, humidity is 90 per cent, cloud cover is 75 percent and the UV index is 1: we are enjoying a perfect Pacific Northwest morning here in Michigan.

After the withering heat and humidity of the past ten days it is most welcome.

CD

An Early AM Call

Edy Kizaki called me from Seattle this morning sounding as though she were still in bed (the three hour time difference) and began to lecture me concerning Feng Shui as it relates to relationships. I 'zeroed in' on what it might inform me about my items in my storage locker and made a dramatic decision as to how to dispose of my things in there: they are gone! I will keep only that which is TOTALLY necessary as regards personal items.

This is an exciting development for me. I have been churning this concern over and over in my mind for quite some time now and the thought of throwing away most of my belongings has not been an idea I favored. Afterwords, I called the Salvation Army and arranged to have a truck meet me at my the storage facility before noon this Monday.

I may yet get out of town by next Wednesday if I can get my tent problems taken care of. The folks at Mombasa USA in Texas are sending out two new hinges. I have little confidence that will solve my problem of a separating floor but am willing to work with them (or the moment).

Thanks Edy for the unintended consequences!!

Edy and I met in Kitakyushu, Japan, in 1987 at an English language school were we were both teaching ESL. The name of the private, for-profit school was PLADY House. Not quite sure the genesis of that name. She had come in from California with a fellow teacher, Jake. Not sure why, never really asked, but she and Jake presented themselves as a married when they arrived. Jake quickly disabused people of that notion as he began to 'date' many of the very interested students. We Westerners were quite exotic to the locals in this small southern city 1 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitaky%C5%ABsh%C5%AB). Soon after, Edy met a great guy, Hidenori, and in a very short time they had a beautiful baby daughter, Ami. Within a year I followed suit with my own son, Ian Touma.

The trials of an international marriage were shared freely and frequently between Edy and I and a very few others in town. International marriages were a rarity in this most homogeneous of nations and the social microscope was on every one of them. Fast forward, and today Edy and Ami are both successfully selling real estate in Seattle. Hidenori visits for about two months of every year and remains the stable rock in the vortex of activity which is and has always been the character of Edy's life.

Edy is very encouraging of my interest in moving to Seattle ~ very positive about job prospects! It will be a challenge to decide what direction to go in when I have to decide between Anchorage, Portland, Fairbanks, Vancouver and Seattle as to where to put my stake.

CD

An Extended Preparation

In mid-May of this year I made the decision to leave Michigan. This decision was taken rather quickly, but had been building for some time. It was a simple matter of means ($) meeting desire.

The decision took place during an early-morning walk with my dog just outside of Ann Arbor proper. When the idea first came to me its simple beauty and balance took me by surprise. I will get into the genesis of this idea later in this blog and the travels it will chronicle. My plan at this time is to travel to Alaska after which I will go to a city in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle is the leading candidate at this time) where I will set up home.

Tomorrow is July 4th and I have yet to leave: preparation has taken me infinitely longer than I imagined (I guessed it might take all of two weeks, from May 14th when the plan was first hatched!!).

Please join me as I prepare my new blue 2005 Michigan State Police Interceptor, with roof top tent and all kinds of camping & communication paraphernalia on a journey which will follow the path which I hitchhiked in 1975 through Canada, the Yukon, Anchorage, and on down to Seward in the Kenai Peninsula!

Postings should be about the length of today's and will include daily events as well as reflections on the changes both physically (no, not planning on reporting any geographic changes save an odd glacial flow!) and culturally. I speak a little to personal changes but promise to keep them brief.

Departure is set for Wednesday, July 14th. I'll let you know when/if anything changes there. In the meantime, thank you so much for the number of "well wishes" I've received thus far.

I am looking forward to the journey and want to thank you for joining!

CD