The following account provides the detail behind the trip that I took with my wife to Alaska, most notably to that part of Alaska which is still wild and largely untouched by human hands: Lake Clark National Park. The most notable thing about Lake Clark is a little watched PBS special which relied heavily on film shot by a long-time naturalist and survivalist Dick Proenneke who had built a cabin by himself on the Twin Lakes north of Lake Clark and lived alone for 30 years. We had no idea about all the heritage of this National Park when we left Ohio, but now that we have experienced this area of Alaska for ourselves it is much easier to understand why people sometimes never leave their vacation to Alaska. It is an amazingly beautiful place, and certainly one of the best kept secrets about the United States. Now, on with the show...

Alaska 6/13/07: Arrival Day

The airport in Anchorage was no larger than the Dayton, OH airport, which is a regional sized airport. The airport was also largely deserted as it was already past 11:00pm at night, and most of the workers had already gone home for the day. Since we would be leaving early the next morning for our backpacking trip from Merrill Field we had already planned on taking a cab to our bed & breakfast location, Susitna Place. (We had the Iliamna room as listed on Susitna Place's website.) Our cabbie, an older man who was probably in his early 50's, was listening to talk radio with a host talking to some nutjob who was going on and on about aliens. We knew it was going to be a different experience having daylight in the middle of the night, but it was still disorienting to see kids and parents walking down the sidewalk and riding bikes at 11:30pm as we zipped through the largely car-free streets of downtown Anchorage. The very late evening sun had a beautiful fall sunset hue to it that seemed to last forever which made for a lovely introduction to Alaskan lifetime in the summer.

Our room at Susitna Place was wonderful, and the second story family room provided an incredible overlook of the bay. The proprietor was a sweet woman who was also originally from Ohio like us, and who, like many other non-native Alaskan residents, had visited Alaska on a vacation and decided to never leave. We were especially impressed with the cleanliness of the bathroom - and you know that's what matters most in any overnight accommodations that you are looking for when on vacation!

Alaska 6/14/07: Day 1

The breakfast spread at Susitna Place was also just as wonderful as the room! There was plenty of coffee, OJ, and tea that was ready when we were finally up and ready to start our day at 8am Alaska time. There were also fresh bagels, danishes, fruit, muffins, and plenty of cereal and oatmeal mixes to choose from during breakfast. We decided to sit on the deck in the cool morning sun as we slowly made our way through the breakfast hour. Even by 9:30 the sun still only shown with the rays of an early morning sun. In Alaska, sunrise and sunset at the height of the summer can take 4-5 hours each, so the light that far north in the summer is simply stunning and a refreshment from the hot summer days that we are so experienced to in the lower 48 states.

Our hostess at Susitna Place was kind enough to call a cab for us, and we were once again on our way to another flight to our next destination. Our cabbie, Quentin, looked like a young mountain man, complete with slightly mussed hair and a nice full beard to complement the typical mountain man outfit that he wore; however, Quentin was a totally cool guy, and we had a wonderful 15-minute ride to the airport with him as he shared a little bit about himself with us as he drove. He admitted freely that he used to smoke too much pot and was too into drugs, but that as of several years ago he had given drugs up. He explained his new "high" was now based on flirting with good looking ladies at the various bars around town. What a trip!

When we arrived at Merrill Field we met two of the passengers that would be on our flight. Both were pilots (something we found to be an all too common occurrence amongst Alaskans), and the woman who was in her mid-30's had her PhD in Artificial Intelligence and flight navigation routing. What a cool topic of study! Both her and the older guy that was flying with us were completely friendly people. In fact, all of the Alaskan natives we met were really kind, gracious people with a genuine joy for life. The trip was already turning out to be a good one. The picture shown here is a shot of the process of loading up the plane prior to takeoff - it's quite a bit smaller than the airliner we flew into Anchorage on!

My wife was a bit nervous about flying on such a small plane, but having flown in a three-seater Cessna before when I was only 14 I was looking forward to this flight. Once our pilot, Dave, had loaded all of the gear into the plane we climbed in and began to taxi to the runway. Takeoff was short and sweet, and we were quickly climbing over the city of Anchorage as we headed west towards Port Alsworth. While over the bay to the west of Anchorage our flight companions spotted a herd of beluga whales heading back out to sea from their inlet nighttime feeding. Dave banked hard to the left so that we could all get a better look. As we did a 360° turn on the left wing my wife could hardly move for fear of looking out the window. For me it was quite exhilarating to be whale watching from 2500ft. at a 60°+ bank in a small plane.

We continued on towards the town of Port Alsworth, our overnight stopping point before our backpacking trip, through a long canyon of runoff streams, glacier filled cavities, and towering, rocky Alaskan mountains. The views were beautiful, and we all had our cameras out snapping photos at everything we saw from the cabin windows. As we neared our destination I began looking through the front windows of the plane to see if I could locate the runway where we would be landing. I spotted a runway as we descended, but as we got below 200ft. something seemed wrong. We seemed to not be turning towards it, but rather, heading straight for the forest (or what I thought was forest) to the left of the runway! Fortunately for us, Port Alsworth has two runways, and we were soon landing on the larger of the two runways. It was funny to see more runways than there seemed to be town to support two runways, but this is how it is in Alaska sometimes.

When we had disembarked from our plane at Port Alsworth we met Andy, our guide, who showed us to our cabin for the evening, and gave us some instructions on the order of events for the rest of the day. We would take a short 2.5 mile (one way) hike to Tanalean Falls to see and taste some beautiful water, and to begin exercising our leg muscles for the backpacking trip which would begin the next day.