27 AUG 99

On our last morning in Whitehorse, we looked for the time trials of the Yukon River Bathtub Race. They have a three day, 400+ mile race from Whitehorse to Dawson City in bathtubs. I guess the time trials were postponed due to rain. Instead, we went to Haines Junction and Silver City. Silver City is an abandoned mining town next to a lake. I took the opportunity to splash around in the lake. It was cold.

Luckily, on our hiking day, the weather cleared and we went for a nice walk into the mountains of Kluane National Park. We saw three grizzly bears on the other side of the valley and watched them for a while.

After the twelve hour drive back into Alaska and over to McCarthy in Wrangell-St.Elais National Park, we had a free day for hiking. I started up a mountain with a few passengers. We got to the bottom of the clouds, where the views ended and they turned around to go look at the foot of the glacier. I continued up to the Bonanza Copper Mine. The fog was pretty thick at the top of the mountain, but it did clear long enough for me to see the mine buildings for a few minutes. I read a bit of a book and then came back down the mountain.

On the way to Valdez, we had a pretty clear day and made a lot of photo stops. The next day, in Valdez, we wanted to go hiking up in the mountains, but it was too cloudy to see where the mountains were. Instead we took a small walk above the sound.

It is the middle of salmon season up here. We went down to the edge of the water and saw hundreds of dying salmon. Salmon are born in freshwater, eat the bacteria that live in their dead parents, swim to the ocean, return a few years later to lay eggs and then die. So, salmon season means hundreds of dead and dying fish lying around. The seagulls were able to pick and choose what to eat. They only ate the eyeballs.

We still had a few hours left in the day, so a few of us took a helicopter ride. We flew over the Columbia Glacier, landed next to the Shoup Glacier and saw a bear from the air. I have taken helicopter rides before, at the Grand Canyon, but there they are not allowed to go into the canyon, so it is pretty much the same as an airplane. Here, on the other hand, I got the full pleasure of cruising up mountainsides and back down the other side. Also, the Columbia Glacier is huge and incredibly impressive.

Very early the next morning, we got onto the ferry to go to Whittier. I was just getting into my book, when three very strange people sat down next to me. Ed, who was doing some doctoring in Alaska, his daughter Sally (whom I call 'That Girl', after the Sally in my favorite Gucci Crew II song by the same name), and her friend Kibbles and Bits started video taping me and being generally silly. I think they were not used to people being silly back to them and we spent most of the boat ride having a good time. Sally is a graphic artist and made a very nice drawing of me in the dirt on the side of the van.

From Whittier, I drove the van (fully loaded with passengers) onto the train. We sat in the van for the 40 minute train ride to Portage. It was cloudy and we did not see the glaciers. We spent that night in Kenai looking for Beluga whales, but did not see any.

We passed through Ninilchik and drove to the end of the road - Homer, Alaska. We camped at the end of the Homer Spit. It rained the entire next day and I read a book. After a stop at Portage Glacier, we went back to Anchorage and they did a bit of last minute shopping.

At times this trip was a bit difficult for me because my Spanish is not so good. Eventually, many of them learned which words I knew and spoke slowly enough that we were able to have conversations. I have enjoyed my last two special trips. Travelling with thirteen people from the same country is almost like visiting that country. I probably learned more about the daily life of people in Taiwan and Spain here, as a guide, than I would have as a tourist in their countries.

Between four and six in the morning, I shuttled them to the airport and the trip was over, except for taking down their tents. I spent the better part of last Sunday waiting for them to dry. Every three hours, just before they were dry, it would rain for about five minutes. On Monday, I got the tires changed on the van and ran into my friend Sue. She was having work done on her van at the same place and I hung out with her for a few hours.

The rest of this past week has been spent answering e-mail, reading books, cleaning equipment, planning my next trip and sleeping.

I meet my new group tonight. I also get my first hotel room since the third week of July.