Memories

My memory for today comes from my adventure in Alaska this past summer. My roommates Jessie, Shirley and I went on a sea kayaking adventure down in Valdez. We left Sunday afternoon after church and began the 7 hour journey. The scenery was breathtaking, of course, because everything in Alaska is undisturbed and beautiful. The Alaska Pipeline was visible for a lot of the drive down, and it was neat to see how great a distance the pipeline travels. We saw several glaciers and hundreds of lakes. And my roommates are AWESOME and so the drive was a blast! Sometimes road trips suck the energy out of me, but this time it was just pure fun! We had a little bit of a scare on the drive down with our gas levels. We were about 100-120 miles outside of Valdez and passed a gas station, but we still had a little over a quarter tank of gas so we thought we would drive a little farther and then get gas. Well, silly us, that was the last gas station until Valdez. Our gas light went on about 50 miles away from Valdez. Luckily, it was downhill for a good portion of those 50 miles. We ended up making it to a gas station, and then we went out to eat at a restaurant along the pier.
Let me just say here that Valdez took my breath away. It is what I imagine heaven to look like. I called my parents and told them they didn’t need to come get me because I was gonna stay and live in Valdez. (I was 75% serious… if my parent’s didn’t come to Alaska to drive back down with me, I probably would have stayed). The port was surrounded by steep mountains that looked a lot like the mountains in Hawaii—very green and beautiful. There were waterfalls streaming down the crevasses and snow covered the peaks. Soft, white clouds floated along the middle of the mountain. Then you had the sea in between the mountains, with all the goodness that goes along with that. It was your typical fishing port. The air was super crisp and fresh. I loved it!
After dinner, we went and found the campsite that our other 2 friends from Wasilla (I think) were at. It was about 11:30 or midnight by now, and the coolest thing was it was dark! Since we were about 400 miles south of Fairbanks, it actually got pretty dark at night! It was amazing how quickly I got used to the sun being up most the day, and it just being dusky the rest of the time. Anyway, we set up our tent and went to bed.
The next morning, we got up and had some leftover pizza and cheetos for breakfast and then drove to the pier again and met up with the rental place that we were getting all of our kayaks and gear from. That took FOREVER. We get all our waterproof gear, our sea skirts, our dry packs, our kayaks, etc. We were camping at the glacier that night, so we had to stuff our tents, sleeping bags, food, etc. into the dry packs, which lemme tell you… that was an adventure. Only so much stuff could fit into the kayak, so we had to take only 3 sleeping bags and not all of the clothes we brought.
We finally got onto the water around noon I think. Shirley and I shared a kayak, Jessie and Rosie shared a kayak, and Megan was a pro and had her own kayak. Thank goodness for Shirley! I know I look super strong, but I’m really not. I was exhausted after the first 5 minutes. We kayaked out to Shoup glacier, which was ten miles away. TEN MILES!!! My poor little arms were not too happy when they found that out. I had to count out 150 strokes and then take a 30 count rest, then 150 more strokes, then a 30 count rest just to keep myself going. Again, thank goodness for Shirley. She was a kayaking machine!
Despite the fact that my arms hated me, it was amazing! It is the coolest feeling in the world to be paddling along the ocean (not really open ocean, we were still in Prince William Sound), with the fish jumping all around you, sea otters popping up every now and then, and beautiful scenery all around. We kayaked past all the fishing boats out there doing their thing, which was awesome.
It had been raining the whole day, but not too heavily so it wasn’t a big deal at first. But then about an hour into our journey, I started to feel wet—like I was sitting in a big puddle. Keep in mind that I had on basketball shorts, waterproof pants, a T-shirt, sweatshirt, and then heavy-duty rain gear (pants and jacket). I also had a sea skirt around the opening of the kayak that I was sitting in. So despite all of my waterproofing measures, I was getting soaking wet. Apparently my sea skirt had worn away in some areas and water was leaking in. We stopped after about 3 hours of kayaking to eat lunch and I was already soaking wet, clear through to my underwear. No bien.
Well it took us about 6 hours to get to the glacier, and by this time it was raining fairly heavily. Our plan was to camp out by the glacier, but the forest service had built 3 small, basic cabins out there that you can use. We didn’t have a reservation for one, but we were hoping that the rain had deterred some people from making the trip to the glacier and that one would be open. Unfortunately, that was not the case. By this point, I was very cold and exhausted. Shirley and I stopped at a cabin right by the glacier and stripped down on the porch. One of the other girls had some extra clothes that I changed into and that helped. The people who were in the cabin were not there, so we just hung out on the porch for a while. The rain was coming down very hard by now. After much discussion, we decided that we that we better stay where we were and not go camp closer to the glacier. We got out the food we brought and made dinner on the porch. They had given us emergency flares, and a walkie-talkie radio thing and so we tried for about an hour to get a hold of someone to come and get us because we did not think it was a good idea for us to stay the night at the glacier and we wouldn’t be able to make it back (it was about 9 o’clock now). We didn’t have any luck with that.
Eventually, the people who were staying in the cabin showed up and were very nice about the fact that we had been chilling on their porch for a few hours when they had some very expensive equipment inside. We decided to get camp set up and get ready for bed. We found a patch of wild grass that would be semi-comfortable for us. We had a 3 man tent and we decided that it would be best for all 5 of us to sleep in the one tent for 2 reasons: (1) body warmth. (2) We were worried about bears and thought it would be best for all of us to be in the same tent because the fishermen in the cabin had given us a pistol. A pistol would be pretty useless against an attacking bear, but it was nice of them to let us use it anyway. Shirley was put in charge of it because she was in the Marines for quite a few years. There had been numerous bear sightings in the area, and there was semi-fresh bear poop near where we were set up, so we were very concerned. Needless to say, there were numerous prayers said throughout this journey of ours. We only had the 3 sleeping bags and most of our clothes were wet, so we had to strip down and do what we could to stay warm throughout the night.
Some funny stories during the night… apparently I started snoring (lightly, of course) and it scared the crap out of the other girls because they thought it was a bear. Another time Jessie scared us to death when she let out a scream… luckily it was because water was dripping on her. Not very fun for her, but a relief for us.
Well, we made it through the night alive. We had some bagels and granola bars for breakfast and started the ten mile journey back! The trip back was much easier because I knew I was headed back to a nice warm car and dry clothing. Shirley and I spent a good majority of the trip singing away, mostly Christmas songs. It was quite an adventure, and at numerous points during the paddling I wondered why I was doing this, but now that it is all over, it was AMAZING and I would love to do it again!
Ironic side note—that same week some girls from Utah were attacked by a bear up in Alaska, and my brother in law found the article in the Salt Lake Tribune and was very worried!