Jason and I have been talking about going to Alaska for
nearly a decade now. We finally made our maiden voyage to that last frontier. We
were there for over a week, and like the foxtrot, our trip went slow, slow and
then quick, quick with a diversity of settings and climates.
For someone from a location much closer to the equator,
Alaska felt a bit off. The sun never seemed to go up or come down; it just
moved in a horizontal line from one side of the sky to the other. Plus, the
twilights dragged on forever like a kid that has to be coaxed slowly into bed. The
sun’s unwillingness to descend prolonged many of our excursions past when
excursions should be prolonged, but more on that later.
The Alaska Native Heritage Center includes village sites around Lake Tiulana.
We spent our first 36 hours experiencing Anchorage. It
wasn’t enough time, but it allowed us to see a sliver of the most populated
city in Alaska. In the downtown area, we lunched and shopped before heading to
the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Dedicated to preserving and sharing Native
cultures, the Alaska Native Heritage Center is enlightening and beautiful in
its peaceful, woody spot within Anchorage. We enjoyed dance and drum
performances and architectural portrayals of villages from five diverse tribe
groups. I made a goal to learn how to pronounce the tribe names correctly of
all those represented. It proved a difficult task, but I nearly succeeded.
Afterward, we headed to Chugach State Park, the
third-largest state park in the United States. Chugach is just outside of
Anchorage. It is easy to access but not crowded. We were hoping to do a longer
hike in the park, but the Rodak Nature Trail turned out to be our only option due
to closures caused by the Hungry Bears and Upstream Salmon Annual Fatal Meeting.
Still, the Eagle River drifted unhurriedly beneath peaks grazed into bristly points
by hundreds of slithering glaciers, and we were satisfied.
Though it wasn’t the path we had planned, the Rodak Nature Trail proved tread worthy.
Before calling it a day, we hiked to Thunderbird Falls, an
easy-to-justify undertaking along the Eklutna River. This 200-foot cascade is
only partially visible from its trail and viewpoint, but since it merely requires
a mile to reach, any complaints are unsound. Admittingly, it did leave me
wanting a better glimpse though.
How did we fit these many activities into one day? Well,
it’s not that difficult when daylight extends past 10:00 PM. Of course, that
means eating dinner at 10:32, which is about when we finally consumed our
evening meal. But hey, we could have eaten that meal on the restaurant’s patio
without any artificial lighting.
Though we didn’t get to observe every bit of Thunderbird Falls, we did get to meander through a couple miles of birch forest.
The next day, we were off to Denali National Park after
eating donuts, fried halibut, perogies, corn fritters, and fried potato slices at
the Anchorage Market and Festival, the state’s largest open-air market. Like the
level sun, healthy is a little off in Alaska. Next week, Denali is up.
Members of my family have participated in a canyoneering adventure
every summer for a few years now. I suppose it has become a bit of a squelchy tradition.
This year, we did not one but two slot canyons, plus threw in a coupe plays,
some cliffs, and a little non-soggy climbing. We shoved it all into one packed weekend
in Southern Utah.
All ages and fitness levels were represented in our group.Though not particularly technical or overwhelmingly wet, Kanarra Canyon still provides a touch of adventure.
Kanarra Canyon, which is located just outside Cedar City,
was the first slot on our agenda. You can’t go to Cedar City in the summer
without going to the Utah Shakespearean Festival; it is technically impossible.
If you don’t believe me, look it up. Instead of trying to pull a Don Quixote
and fight the impossible, we went to two plays before doing any canyoneering. The
first was the best version of Hamlet I’ve ever seen, featuring Quinn
Mattfeld. We also partook of the flashy silliness that is Joseph and the
Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Its catchy tunes got stuck in my head like
always. Go, go, go Joe!
You’ve probably seen this scene a dozen times on Instagram, but this picture is totally different because it was taken by me. Slot canyons have a way of making you feel like an insignificant insect lost in a damp crevice.
The following day, we went on to Kanarra Canyon. During the
last 15 years, social media nearly spoiled this hike with its pictures and
praises. Kanarraville’s 350 residents couldn’t shoulder the 40,000 visitors
that trudged through their canyon and water source in 2015. Hence, the number
of permits is now limited to 150 per day. The trail felt a little crowded with just
that many; I can’t imagine how it would have been with 10 times more. Like
waiting in the line at Space Mountain? The temperatures oscillated between too
hot at our outset to too cold as the canyon deepened and tapered, but we were
easily distracted from this discomfort by the lofty walls and idyllic stream. Even
the youngest among us managed the terrain, yet it still felt like an adventure.
The trail through Kanarra Canyon crosses a series of waterfalls, some of them simpler to ascend than others.This seemed like a closed-mouth sort of pond.
After Kanarra Canyon, we traveled to Zion National Park. There, the brave cooled off in a pool along the Lower Pine Creek Waterfall Trail the speedy way, i.e. cliff jumping. Afterward, we had just enough time to finish the short one-mile Canyon Overlook Trail before it got dark.
This notch looked too tiny for cliff jumping, but no injuries resulted.As jumpers’ comfort levels increased, so did their theatrics.
The next morning, my sister and I stayed with a nephew too
young to obtain maternal approval to descend through Keyhole Canyon while the
rest of the group… obviously, they went through Keyhole Canyon. Keyhole Canyon
is reasonably short, about one mile, and unreasonably slim. Pictures alone are
enough to make the claustrophobic panic. Those that went described the stagnant
water they had to wade through as putrid and black in places, especially at the
top of the canyon. We are talking a Death-Star-trash-compactor level of repulsive
here. On the flip side, they said the light filtering through the crimsons of the
Navajo sandstone looked like a subterranean sunset. The group had to do three
rappels and completed the canyon in three hours. In the meantime, my sister and
I completed some window shopping and snack consumption with the little guy.
Keyhole Canyon is not much larger than a keyhole in some spots.Wetsuits seem designed to make their wearers appear dorky, but Jason looks rather fine in one.
Our weekend in Southern Utah was crammed with culture,
cliffs, canyons, and claustrophobia via Kanarraville and Keyhole. At least it
didn’t also include giardia or broken bones because those wouldn’t have sounded
right in my last sentence.
Jason and I hadn’t been to San Diego Comic Con for a few
years until this July. To be honest, we hadn’t pined for it much due to the raging
current of humanity we had to ford the last couple times we attended. This year,
we tried for passes without being terribly committed to the notion of going.
When we acquired Sunday-only tickets the debate continued. Eventually, I
pointed out that we both like San Diego and suggested Comic Con be just a
paragraph in our San Diego visit. What an excellent plan! That paragraph is
below.
We stayed in La Jolla for the first part of our trip. La Jolla is a charming town to walk around with lots of yummy food and cute shops. It’s even more charming when its 70-something weather is nearly 30 degrees cooler than what you left back home. We sampled as many of its culinary offerings as gastrointestinally possible via Puesta, Catania, Cove Point, and NINE-TEN.
Brown Pelicans faced extinction in the 1970s and were only taken off the endangered species list in 2010.
Our wanderings went beyond satisfying our spoiled stomachs to
satisfying our curiosity. We meandered on the shore from Shell Beach to the La
Jolla Tide Pools searching for, you guessed it, tide pools. Predictably, we
found shells at Shell Beach and tide pools at the La Jolla Tide Pools. I
suppose whoever named the beaches in La Jolla had the creative capacity of a
piece of carpet. At the tide pools, chiton, hermit crabs, anemones, shore
crabs, mussels, limpets, little fish, and snails enjoyed their comfy homes in
rock channels as we gawked from above. I find these glimpses into the workings
of a watery underworld typically unseen absorbing.
At the Children’s Pool, we encountered a striped shore crab that agreeably let me take pictures of it being bubbly.
We also spent some time in San Diego proper starting with Balboa Park. In all our trips to San Diego, Jason and I had never explored Balboa’s 16 museums and 1,200 acres beyond the zoo. This time, we took on a tiny fraction of what is available at Balboa through the Japanese Friendship Garden and the Museum of Photographic Arts.
La Jolla’s cliffs are cratered with caves and other scenic gaps.
The Japanese Friendship Garden is peaceful and aesthetically
balanced making use of a steep ravine to create layers of living display. Its koi
pond contains the biggest koi I’ve ever encountered. These “show-quality”
specimens make other koi look like Goldfish crackers. Did you know that koi are
a symbol of longevity because they can live over 200 years? Nope, I didn’t know
that either.
La Jolla Cove is a marine refuge area. Apparently, it gets quite fetid at times due to an overabundance of bird feces.
Being a photographer and photography nerd, I loved the
Museum of Photographic Arts. Its collections aren’t extensive, but I found the
exhibits on Contemporary Photography from Australia and Hidden Worlds fascinating.
The section on spirit photography, a popular form of shooting back in the 1800s
expressly for capturing the images of ghosts, was particularly intriguing. You’ve
got to give those photographers props for successfully tampering with negatives
and using double exposures to create fraudulent phantoms over a century before
Photoshop could turn fat rolls into nothing more than apparitions.
The Japanese Friendship Garden fuses San Diego’s climate with traditional Japanese garden ideals.
One evening after dinner, we hurried off to the Torrey Pines
Natural Reserve to do a short hike on the Guy Fleming Trail. In true Sabin
fashion, we finished this one right before darkness set in… with maybe a little
running at the end to beat the state rangers locking up for the night… maybe.
The U.S.S. Dolphin had a crew of 27. It felt too cramped for even one me.
The rest of our evenings, we spent back in La Jolla in the
company of a cozy fire as waves hurled themselves onto shore boulders with
crushing repetition. Those booming breakers, the sharp call of seagulls, and
the grainy gusts of the ocean followed us throughout our stay in La Jolla.
The Star of India, the oldest merchant ship still sailing, began her career as the Euterpe.
For one last pre-Comic-Con outing, we visited the Maritime
Museum of San Diego. The Maritime Museum contains nine boats and two
submarines. Its collection of vessels is diverse and pleasing to board. The U.S.S.
Dolphin, a submarine with nearly 40 years of service and the record for operating
depth, was the first we embarked. I barely survived 10 minutes in its constricted
passageways. I guess I can check sonar technician off my list of possible occupations.
The San Salvador, the first European vessel to reach America’s West Coast,
may be a giant by historical standards, but it certainly wasn’t a giant by
dimensional ones. A full-size replica of this, the first Spanish galleon that
sailed into San Diego in 1542, left me in awe of the big things that can happen
on small boats. The Star of India is the star of the Maritime Museum. It
is the oldest active merchant sailing ship in the world. It was built in 1863
and is still taken out at least once a year. In its 150 years, this craft has
circumnavigated the globe over 20 times and accepted such diverse roles as
carting immigrants to New Zealand, transporting lumber, and functioning as both
a salmon fishing vessel and cannery. Ships ahoy!
Our transporter experience was fun, but I’m not convinced it was worth the opportunity cost.
That brings us to our San Diego Comic Con day. This year was Comic Con’s 50th anniversary and something like our fifth time attending. Traditionally, Sunday is a bit slower day at Comic Con, but it was breaking down conventional barriers with human bodies this time. We waited in line over an hour and a half for a transporter experience, which was maybe worth the wait? I’m still not sure. Somehow, we bought a significant number of items for only having hours in the exhibit hall, like a special-edition Halloween hobbit hole and an articulated, 1:6-scale Picard action figure. It’s common knowledge that everyone needs a Halloween hobbit hole and Picard Barbie. As soon as we got back to our room, I fell asleep on the couch as determined to avoid any further human interaction as the Loch Ness Monster.
Going to San Diego for more than just the most famous comic
con on the planet meant we were bombarded by the saline and sweaty nearly
equally. Since I got a Picard Barbie out of it, that’s an equivalence I can
live with.
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