Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Hiiiiii.  There are lots of boxes and bags happening right now.  And allergies (I still love you, Michigan).  How about an indulgent interstitial post to transition from Alaska to Antarctica?  And how about we include lots of unnecessary interrogative phrases and marks?

That drive up the Dalton Highway?  Not too shabby.  After reading warnings of basketball-chomping potholes, my already vigilant eyes and white knuckles shifted into DEFCON 2, and though my giant SUV got totally covered in mud, it wasn't hurt a bit.  But you don't want to hear about paranoid parallel pipeline propulsion, do you?  (Disclaimer: this is not the highway, but you can see the pipeline pretty well, right?)

Now you've seen what it looks like by the Arctic Circle.  Also, there were crazy auroras shimmering iridescent green and purple spanning the entire Milky-Way-bedazzled sky.  What, iPhones don't take great pictures in low light?

Chris and the crew at Coldfoot made me very welcome, complete with raging 20-foot bonfire, tour and talk with local off-the-grid-subsistence-hunter-log-cabin guy, and my first (last?) time shooting a revolver (guns are fun?).

A nice 12-hour train ride gives one plenty of time to contemplate the past, present, future...really, any thought you've ever had swirls through your brain when trying to pass the time.  To be fair, one hour was pretty spectacular, taking in the gorge near where I worked.  Isn't that nice?

Now, what trip to Alaska would be complete without a jaunt in a small plane to some remote locale?  More than twenty years later, I still have a healthy fear of living out the story in Hatchet, where a kid crash lands in a bush plane and survives alone in the wilderness thanks to his hatchet.  So I went on a small jet to Dutch Harbor, America's answer to Scandinavia's charm-packed, mountainous fishing outposts.

Is that a picture of an ancient Greek temple?  No, it's the view of Captain's Bay halibut processing boats from inside a WWII concrete bunker.  I'm sorry, what?

Let's move on, then, shall we?  The last leg of travel took me south to Cooper's Landing and more good company.  With little warning, Cat kindly hooked me up with my own tent, got me fed and watered and sauna'd and river dunked, and guided me to one of the prettiest hikes this side of a waterfall as well as to the Exit Glacier toe.  See how much it's receded since 2010?

And that's going to have to be enough Alaska to be getting on with for a while.  A new era has begun: I purchased a new backpack today.  How many dirty bus station floors will you scoot across, New Blue?  How many tiny travel bottles of shampoo will ooze into your pores?  Will you be too young to remember your first trip to New Zealand, innocent and free of invasive plant materials?  Reader, tune in to the next post to find out.