Upon arriving I had a few things on my tourist check list. Eat any and all native foods/dishes that Alaska had to offer. So far I've had reindeer sausage/pizza/burgers haha (love it and for those who don't know reindeer is just domesticated Caribou) I've had elk burger, Kale chips, fresh salmon from the grill, bison burgers, fiddle head chips (this peculiar plant in the fern family that must be eaten before it sprouts) as well as a whole slew of Alaskan beers of which the Alaskan Summer is my favorite brew. I even had the pleasure of having a margarita made with ice from a glacier in Prince William Sound. Not worth the price flavor wise haha but the experience was worth it. I hope still to pick up some cooking skills, see the Northern Lights, hear some wolves/ arctic coyotes howling at the moon... see the moon for that matter haha, this 15 hours of sun is strange and yet awesome! Considering day time drinking is one of my new favorite hobbies. Most of all though I just want to take advantage of all the outdoor activities available while I'm here. Granted Corpus has a ton of outdoor activities as well, it's just usually too darn hot to be motivated to do any of them. I find that my constant need to get in shape is often in direct conflict with my love for food. Ah such is life I suppose.
So let's talk more about the 26 glacier cruise I took in Prince William Sound. To get to the area of departure me and a few roommates (Jeremy, Kat, Kara and Nicole who I will be describing in later posts) had to drive through the longest tunnel in America (or at least it was, I heard Boston may have built a longer one now) 2 1/2 miles through a mountain to get to Whittier, where the weather is always shittier or so I'm told. Whittier is a small town, honestly more like a village if I had to be honest with about 150-200 residents who all live in one giant building... yep. that's right. One building!!! This building is smaller than the Galleria in Houston, Texas to put some perspective on the matter. Apparently at one time the town was maintained by the army with two buildings in which everyone lived but when it came time for the military men to leave they offered the people one building to live in and the other now remains nothing but broken down remnants of a time long passed. It all looks very Jurassic Park. Anyway we arrived in Whittier where the weather was fairly nice (not raining and about 40 degrees with partly cloudy skies, that's pretty darn perfect for Alaskan spring weather) and we grabbed a few cups of coffee and the Lazy Otter before boarding the tour boat. "You Otter Try the Coffee" haha. The boat was a roomie two stories of carpeted dinning area along with a smaller third story observation deck. Complete with indoor bar; not too shabby. The tour itself was a 6 hour calm ride through PWS through several fjords of glaciers. We saw mountain goats way up in the most dangerous looking cliffs just grazing on grass with out any fear. There were otters by the hundreds just floating on their backs and lounging on icebergs curiously lifting their heads as we sailed by. We stopped at Surprise Glacier where we were able to witness immense chunks of the glacier plummeting into the icy depths below with loud crashes heard from several hundred feet away. Finally as we were returning back to land, glacier margaritas in hand trying to protect ourselves from wind burn (which I just learned existed haha) we caught a quick glimpse of a Humpback Whale! It was brief and yet beautiful. The whale only submerged to blow but that's all I needed to see to send me into a frenzy. I'm hungry for more, but I'm patient. An attribute I've been working to perfect for quite sometime now.
Perhaps now you'd like to know a little bit about where I'm working and living for the summer? The Alaska Wild Life Conservation Center is one of Alaska's most visited attractions, in fact I recently heard it was the most visited, but that could be area bias hehe. Anyway we (I can say that now being a part of this great project) are a non-profit conservation center that sits on 200 acres of land in Portage Valley. We are part of a town so tiny that it was completely destroyed in a 1969 earthquake (9.1 on the rector scale I believe). The center takes in orphaned, abandoned, injured and over populated animals from around Alaska. This summer alone we've bottle raised two Musk Ox (Walter and Hammond) who were born late winter and were at risk of freezing to death as well as a baby moose (Sullivan) who had been abandoned and attacked by dogs! While he is the most difficult to care for he is also my favorite. Something about his enormous ears and adorable face remind me of Marley which just melts my heart when I see him. Here at the center we have 4 brown bear (one Grizzly, and 3 coastal brown bears. All Grizzly are brown bears but not all brown bears are Grizzly) Hugo, Joe Boxer, Patron and Toguka (pronounced To-Go-Kuh). 2 black bear, Ully and Kuma as well as 3 grown moose. Jack the oldest moose of 4 years now can be seen in several movies including Into the Wild :) Gilly and Nelson are our two younger adult moose and they all loooove bananas! We have two Lynx, two Great Horned Owls (Hooty and Snappy haha) as well as one Bald Eagle Adonis who is incredible to see and really awesome to feed. Jewelie is our Sitka Black-tailed deer and she is just the sweetest animal here. There is also Snickers the porcupine who is something of the Justin Bieber of Alaska. Snickers the man, the porcupine (click it to see the little dude, and yes I have pet him with out gloves and hand fed him, he really is like a dog). We have Elk, Reindeer (not Caribou because they are domesticated for the most part now) Musk Oxen and the crown jewel of the center Wood Bison! We hope to raise about 150 Wood Bison in Captivity and release them in three areas far North of Alaska where their traditional stomping grounds used to be in groups of 50 or so and observe if they can sustain themselves. The Wood Bison had been extinct in Alaska by the late 1900s and wasn't until about 2004 did anyone begin to think to bring them back. Ours came from a small group in Canada. Since I arrived I've seen (not the actual birthing process) over 20 bison babies born. The first bison to be born since their extinction was in 2005 right here at the center. Larger than the Plains Bison of the lower 48 they are the largest terrestrial mammal of North America and they are a sight to see my friends. I'm actually planning on getting a tattoo of my rendition of one in honor of being able to run with them.
Finally I want to talk about the incredible bike rides I've been on while here. First with Jac through the Knowles Coastal Trail in Anchorage which was a rather difficult up and down hill ride through thick woods along the beach. Saw wild moose and several water fowl. Then yesterday I took a 12 mile bike ride from the center to Portage Lake. We biked a steady pace through the Chugach National Forest with snow capped mountains on either side of us. The streams were fast moving and the water was exactly the same color of Gatorade Icy Glacier Freeze (my favorite flavor). Just as I and another roommate Kate wanted so badly to turn back because our bikes were hanging on by their last threads the others urged us to keep going and then a short 3 minutes later we had arrived! Though very much frozen the lake was beautiful. We threw black stones onto the water and laughed as it made a nose much like breaking glass once it hit the thin ice. Well I must be off, going into Girdwood to send off some mail. Yep even the nearest post office is a good 20 minute drive to another town haha.
Stay Frosty Friends!
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