Whittier, Alaska

Alaska is full of unique and fascinating communities. Kodiak is one of them. Another is Whittier, a small town on the mainland that I have been somewhat obsessed with ever since listening to an episode of This American Life that featured a Whittier resident. 

Being an isolated Alaskan village (population 220) does not make Whittier unique. It's history, it's accessibility, and it's housing do. 

Unlike most small, isolated villages in Alaska, Whittier is not an Alaska Native village. According to the Milepost, Whittier was created during World War II as a port and a center for petroleum delivery to northern bases. 

View of the tunnel from the Whittier side

Originally, Whittier was connected to the rest of the state via rail and water. Trains traveled through a remarkable 2.5-mile long tunnel through a mountain. Not terribly long ago, this tunnel was opened up to vehicles as well. The one-lane tunnel alternates in being open for trains, for traffic to Whittier, and for traffic out of Whittier. As we learned when we visited Whittier last week, not familiarizing oneself with the tunnel schedule can result in long wait times (for us, 45 minutes). 

Begich Towers

Even though the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel is North America's longest tunnel, it's not even what makes Whittier so unique. Over half of the village's residents, and many of its businesses, are housed in one building--the 14-story Begich Towers. The building was originally housing for the U.S. Army. What I find particularly interesting is that Whittier villagers have a history of living under one roof that goes back further than Begich Towers--the now abandoned Buckner Building played the same role in the past. 

The Buckner Building. If no one has yet written a horror or murder mystery taking place here, somebody should.

We visited Whittier last week on a short camping trip on the Alaska mainland (I'll blog about the rest of the trip later). Most people go there to get on a ferry or to take a glacier viewing cruise. We were led there by my curiosity and stayed only for a couple of hours. We stopped at a coffee shop (the Lazy Otter) on the harbor. Then we walked in the rain and then through a pedestrian tunnel (apparently Whittier is all about the tunnels) that runs below the railroad tracks and links the harbor to Begich Towers. There is a small covered playground beside Begich Towers (Whittier is known for its extreme weather as well), where we let Rainbow play for a while before heading back to the tunnel and waiting for our turn to go back through.

The day was cloudy and rainy, but I think that only highlighted the beauty of the village and surrounding mountains. Would I go back? Yes. There are hikes in the surrounding mountains with closer looks at the spectacular waterfalls that we could see from below. There are lovely glacier tours allowing one to view up to 26 glaciers in one day. Will I go back? Probably not. I got a taste of Whittier, and it only intrigued me more, but the world is great and vast and full of many other wonders I have yet to see at all, and I think their beckoning will pull stronger.

But then again, I said I'd never live on an Alaskan island, so you never know. Maybe I'll end up in Whittier again one day. 

Shuyak Island

Kodiak Island, on which the town of Kodiak is located, is only one of many islands in the Kodiak Archipelago. This large collection of islands is about as big as Connecticut. In addition to Kodiak city, the archipelago has six villages. All but one are located on Kodiak island, and all six are off the road system. 

Most of the archipelago is uninhabited by humans and untouched by marks of civilization such as roads, electricity, and cell phone reception. This includes Shuyak Island, located at the northern end of the Kodiak Archipelago. Most of the island's wilderness is part of Shuyak Island State Park, which T, Rainbow, my parents, and I visited this week. 

So how did we get to such a place? Well, we chartered a six-seater float plane to take us there. Both on the way out to Shuyak Island and on the way back, we flew low enough over the land and ocean that I could see individual seagulls flying over the water. 

It's a strange feeling watching an airplane fly away after dropping you off on a remote island. 

We stayed in Deer Haven, a rustic State Park cabin located about 100 feet from a calm rocky beach on Carry Inlet. We were the first guests of the season and had to do a bit of housekeeping to get the dusty cabin inhabitable for our three-night stay. 

Amenities on the premises included an outhouse (with a door that had rotted off its hinges); an outbuilding equipped with a hanging bucket that could, at least in theory, be filled with hot water for a shower; a stocked wood shed; a metal sink connected to a bucket outside the cabin that could be filled with water; a wood burning stove; and two sets of bunk beds consisting of thin, dusty foam pads glued to wooden boards. The cabin's fresh water supply had been mostly cut off by the local beavers, so we were glad T had thought to bring 10 gallons of drinking water with us.

I suppose we would have been surprised if we HADN'T seen deer from our cabin, given its name.

This picture doesn't do justice to the golden evening light. 

Somehow, miraculously, we had four warm, spectacularly sunny days and spent most of our time on the beach near our cabin. We gathered sand dollars and looked for crabs and jelly fish in the clear water of the inlet. We made a fire on the beach each evening. We cooked our suppers on the open fire and roasted marshmallows while we watched fish jump and listened to Canada geese, oyster catchers, and loons call to each other. 

Marshmallows!

We went for walks in the woods and saw lots of signs of bears but, luckily, never came across one. It wasn't quite the right season for fishing in that area, but my dad still gave it a try for the first time in his life. 

All in all, the trip was everything a vacation should be. T and I were delighted to get to see the more "wild" side of Kodiak and to share that with someone else. 

On the beach with all of our wilderness gear, waiting for the plane to pick us up

My backpack

As I was driving this morning at the beginning of what was my first day of full-time employment since my daughter was born nearly two years ago, I looked over at my backpack in the passenger seat. I started thinking about all of the places that backpack has been. 

I don't know exactly when I bought the backpack, but I know it was when we lived in Wyoming (at least six years ago, but probably more.) I think my backpack would be very interesting from both an anthropological and a microbiological perspective because of everywhere it has been and because of all the things it has contained over the years. It has been in the dirt on countless mountains in Wyoming and Montana. It has sat on the floors of waiting areas and bathrooms in a dozen airports. It has been deposited on the "fragrant" ground in souks and marches in Morocco. It has gone sightseeing in Europe. It has contained bags of cheap, fresh produce in Morocco; textbooks in Kentucky; and my work computer and iPad in Alaska. 

My backpack is, I think, the only possession that I have made such consistent use of over so many years and in so many places. Germophobes reading this blog post are probably cringing at the thought of what must by growing in my backpack at this point. I used to be one of you. But now I just feel sort of...well, wistful thinking about all of the microbes my backpack has come in contact with. I feel like it has lived many lives, and that I have, too. Since getting married over 13 years ago, I have lived the lives of graduate student (twice!), hurricane evacuee, professional college teacher, world traveler, mother, and (now) speech therapist. The backpack hasn't been with me through all of this, but it's been there a good chunk of the time. 

I just can't help but wonder what its next adventure will be. 

Kodiak Camping

The approaching end of summer (yes, it's coming) and a lot of gloomy weather prompted us, when we saw the sun peeking out of the clouds, to go camping one night each weekend these past two weeks. Both times, we chose Fort Abercrombie State Park because of the relatively low risk of bear encounters (more on that below) and because of its proximity to home, in case things went awry (it's on the edge of town and less than a 10 minute drive from our house).

I have been there so many times that I sometimes forget that the place is spectacularly beautiful. The State Park is quite tiny but still boasts great diversity: tall seaside cliffs from which whales and puffins can be seen (although, sadly, not by me); beaches with tidepools filled with crabs, starfish, anemones, and urchins;  wildflower fields; mossy spruce forests; springs and a lovely calm lake and military bunkers so old and overgrown that they have become part of the landscape.

We went to the beach at low tide, allowing us to walk far out into a rocky area that is usually underwater and encounter these rocky "steps."

This is where we walked--a little tricky with a squirmy toddler on your back.

The only downfall of our trip was sharing a two-person tent with a toddler who hasn't (successfully) shared a bed with us in nearly a year. She loved being in the tent and fell asleep in it by herself quite nicely, but things went south once we crawled in there with her. It didn't help me to get sleep the second time we camped when a park ranger visited our campsite to warn us there was a young bear prowling around the area. We never saw or heard any sign of him, although since then I've seen multiple pictures of the bear on Facebook. 

Despite the lack of sleep, all three of us felt rejuvenated by our

quick 24-hour forays into the "wilderness." My child stuffed herself with salmonberries, we roasted marshmallows and cooked fish in a fire and made pancakes with a camping stove and sat lazily on the beach and rarely looked at our clocks. It was life as it should be.

And now, without further adieu, a ridiculous number of photos of my child:

If your kid sits in a puddle, just take off her pants. Who cares? You're camping! Oh, and she's pointing to a tuft of grass saying, "That's a sea anemone."

She kept asking, "Where's the other one glove?"

Taking the ferry (take 2)

About three weeks ago, we tried to combine business and pleasure by taking a trip to the mainland to take Rainbow to an allergy specialist in Anchorage and to visit T's parents in Anchor Point. This meant taking the ferry again, something I was not looking forward to. My already fairly strong sense of foreboding increased when, the day before we were scheduled to leave, I was struck by an illness so awful that I thought I must have The Flu. (I didn't. At times I thought I had something worse.)

However, thanks to frequent and generous doses of acetaminophen, calm seas, and a selfless husband (he shared a tiny bunk with Rainbow who was so excited to be sleeping "next to Dada! Next to Dada!" that it took over two hours of squirming, talking, and singing before she fell asleep), this ferry trip was much, much better than the last. Once she was asleep, Rainbow slept fairly well on the nighttime ferry to Homer, and she was in good spirits during the day time ferry on the way back to Kodiak at the end of our trip. We even saw a few sea otters and several humpback whales.

While I spent the first half of our vacation sick in bed, T and Rainbow got to spend some quality time with Grandma and "Paka." T went halibut fishing with his dad twice and, as a result, filled our freezer with fish.

Rainbow and Farley were fascinated by each other.

 Once I was better, we did a little exploring of the beach at Anchor Point and some of the sights in nearby Homer.

Beach view in Anchor Point

Rainbow posing with a life-sized sea lion statue at the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center in Homer

Walking through the Beluga Wetlands on the edge of Homer

Sandhill crane--a bird that links my home state, Nebraska, to my new state. We also saw several moose and a porcupine on the mainland--animals that we don't have in Kodiak.

While in Anchorage, we did two very important things--got some specialty medical services that we can't get in Kodiak (maybe that deserves its own blog post) and went shopping. We hate shopping, but the absence of sales tax combined with a large number of big stores (Super Wal-Mart! Target! And Cabela's! Oh, my!) compelled us to spend a chunk of our vacation pushing carts down aisles.

Sunset in Anchor Point

I love Kodiak and still think it's one of the the most beautiful places in the world, but it was nice to have a change of scenery for a while.  We're already discussing our next "escape." But every means of it--boat, kayak, ferry, plane, four-wheeler, etc.--costs money, something that has been in somewhat short supply for us these last few years (yes, because of choices we have made).   

T and I still don't know how we will handle the challenge of island life long term. A lot of people--even those who have money to get off-island regularly--can't handle it. But we remain determined to enjoy life in Alaska as fully as we can and hopeful that we can keep calling it home for quite a while. 

Taking the ferry

Alaska is big. Like, BIG. Sometimes I forget this because I live in a small town and can't drive much longer than an hour in any direction before I run out of road. But even the island on which I live is one of the biggest in the country, and the town of Kodiak is really just a little pinpoint in one corner of this vast island.

One's sense of space and distance changes when one lives in a state with a relatively low population. When we lived in Powell, Wyoming, we joked that people would drive for four hours just to have lunch in Bozeman. Well, in Alaska, sometimes you have to take an airplane just to visit another town. Any town.

Or you might be able to take the ferry.

That's one of two ways to get to any other town or city from Kodiak, and I needed to get to either Anchorage (by plane) or Homer (by ferry) to take a national certification exam as part of completing my degree in speech-language pathology. I chose Homer because I could visit T's parents and give them a chance to spend a little bit of time with Rainbow.

T was already out of town for a conference, so alone with baby and her teddy bear stuffed into a baby carrier, I boarded the Tustumena last Saturday night. 

Did I mention that I hate boats and tend to get motion sick? And that I had to spend eight hours on the ferry?

Well, I got off the ferry in Homer the next morning with stomach contents and sanity intact, thinking to myself, "That wasn't so bad." I took my exam two days later, passed it by a good margin, and got back on the Tustumena in Homer that same night feeling pretty positive about the whole experience.

And then the things that had caused me to be apprehensive about taking the ferry in the first place happened. I boarded the ferry oblivious to the fact that bad weather was in the forecast, and also oblivious to the fact that the ferry crew already knew that the ferry would get into Kodiak four hours later than scheduled (making for a 14 hour ferry ride). 

I don't know if this will mean anything to you, readers, but that night we had 19 foot seas rocking and rolling that vessel. I found out the next morning--after a long, wakeful, and queasy night--about the arrival delay. No, I didn't vomit, but neither was I interested in eating or drinking much, so by the time we docked in Kodiak, poor Rainbow had a sleep-deprived, dehydrated, low-blood-sugar mama on her hands. 

She, of course, handled it all quite well. She's a great traveler. Dare I say that she actually enjoys it. I, on the other hand, found myself swearing that I'll not set foot off dry land again for quite a while.

Little adventures

It seems like things might actually be coming together for us here. On Saturday, we signed a one-year lease on an apartment with just about all of the features we wanted, including a view of the ocean and three bedrooms (one for us, one for Rainbow, and one for you when you come visit). We can't move in until February, but that's probably okay since none of our belongings have made it here yet. So we're staying in a little furnished one bedroom apartment for the month of January.

We haven't found a car yet, but T's parents, who live near Homer, were able to send a truck over on the ferry for us to borrow until we find something to buy. And that brings me to a discussion of our first little adventure here.