3 posts tagged “alaska”
I took a lot of pictures in Alaska, 167 total. If you're looking for pictures of Main St. Wasilla, you won't find them.
Because it's not pretty. It's got gravel yards, RV motels, gun/pawn shops, and strip malls. Imagine Miramar Road in San Diego, that's pretty much it.
Just to set the record straight.
The Week:
So as most of you know, I was on vacation in Alaska last week. I took a shitload of pictures.
I went hiking with his family to this lake up in the hills near their town, it's full of low scrub, and you're literally just stomping on pearlberries/blueberries/cranberries/random berries with every step. It's very lush and beautiful there, with beaver dams and houses all along the little streams.
Our second day we went salmon fishing since there were reports in the paper that there's a late silver (Coho) salmon run in the river nearby. We didn't catch anything, but we saw a lot of salmon carcasses, so that means there's salmon nearby. And also there are bears eating them. We didn't catch any fish but we also didn't see any bears.
Then we took off on a 3 day road trip to the countryside, we drove east to see Matanuska Glacier, my first glacier, then to Tangle Lakes to go trout/pike fishing and camping. The river valleys are breathtaking, full of trees turning gold for autumn, streams, and snowy mountains. You drive for hours and hours and you want every single moment of it captured. The next day we drove out to Denali National park, we saw lots of caribou and hunters, and we saw a poor porcupine in a tree on the side of the road. When we arrived at the McKinley Princess Lodge (Tim's birthday present to me, a night at the hotel, not the entire lodge), Mt. McKinley looked glorious in the late afternoon/evening sun. It was very sunny and clear out. We stopped for another short attempt at fishing before our fishing licenses ran out. We didn't catch any fish, but I've always found the act of fishing very zen and calming.
On my last day of being 32, we went to Indian Valley Meats to buy some exotic game jerkys and sausage. It's right by Cook's Inlet and that's also beautiful. We went hiking afterwards and came across a black bear eating shrubs and berries. It didn't come at us, it didn't even acknowledge us, so that's good. It was really close though. We stayed calm, watched the bear eat for a while, and just walked off. We found out later that unlike Grizzlies, which will only attack humans when they feel threatened or guarding their cubs, black bears will attack humans for food. We hung out in Anchorage for the rest of the day, visited with Tim's aunt and then had dinner with his friend from college.
On my last day in Alaska, we spent most of the day packing and then had dinner with Tim's parents and grandparents. Everyone was extremely nice, they sang happy birthday to me. I was really moved, I felt like a part of the family.
The Day:
Holy cow. What a day. When I got back to San Diego yesterday, I used my last day of vacation to run errands and catch up on things when a friend from work text messaged me to tell me that my least favorite coworker was laid off. That was excellent news since hopefully I won't have to see his stupid face ever again. What was waiting for me at work was the news that my group has been disbanded. I'm now working for a different boss in a different group, though it was the group that I was helping out for a couple of months recently so it made perfect sense for me to work there. It was pretty good news, I still have a job, I'm still going to be doing stuff that I know I enjoy. There's going to be a lot of upheaval but for the most part I'm really excited.
But it doesn't end there. I went to my oral surgeon for what should be my last checkup on my wisdom teeth extractions. I had all 4 of them out, just had to keep the sockets clean and make sure they're healing okay. I could feel this little piece of hard bone or tooth near one of the extraction sites, sometimes when I talk it vibrates against the teeth I still have and it's really annoying. But I figured they just left a piece of tooth in there. The oral surgeon looked at it and he was shocked. I mean, WHOA. I have an extra wisdom tooth. They missed it in the X-ray because it's right next to the other one, but they didn't see it during the extraction. So I have to go back in a few weeks to get a 5th wisdom tooth taken out. Isn't that crazy?
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