It Was So Beautiful / I Couldn't Stop Crying

It's a newbie's mistake.

I couldn't wait to write my first official travel blog, based on my recent travels to Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia. I wanted to travel light and stay true to the spirit of adventure, choosing a notebook over a laptop, so that I'd have room for my new camera and new lenses.

Every night of my trip, I'd write about my day: the things I saw, the things I felt, the people I met.

But somewhere along the way, I got tired of hauling the camera bag. And when I got home, I realized that my old clunker of a PC can't read my brand new camera's software. And then I realized that I left my travel journal on the airplane. All my precious little notes and bits of poetry and wisdom I learned along the way, now gone forever.

I've lost documents before and know you can never recreate them. You can re-do them, but you can't get it all back. I was so devastated about my loss that I just sort of gave up on writing. But that would be a mistake.

Little by little, I'm going to try to piece those memories together, even if they're just bullet points.

And soon I'll buy a new computer that can read my camera's software. In the meantime, I can post some pics taken on my crummy phone and on my partner's iphone, which I sometimes fear takes pictures of identical quality to those taken with professional cameras. We soon shall see.


Bits & Pieces of Paradise

Seattle

• Stayed in a really cool old Sears Craftsman House in the really cool neighborhood of Ballard in Seattle. All the houses sat on steep hillsides, sloping up from well worn sidewalks, flanked by walls of brilliant rhododendrons.

• Walked to a neighborhood tradition, Ray's, for dinner. Drank Columbia Valley wine, local crab cakes, the best oysters I've ever had, local seafood paella, and cheese puffs.

• Seattle neighborhoods--quaint, vibrant, discrete. Tea houses tucked in among houses.

• Puget Sound--every night the beaches were packed full of people enjoying fire rings
• Pyramid Brewery
• Mariners game. Don't understand athlete worship. Never have. Never will.
• Pike Place Fish Market. Touristy. Eh. But, oh if I'd had time to cook! Only tourists take pictures, so I took no pictures. Instead, I'll post some I found online. If I lived in Seattle, I'd stop here every night to pick up food to cook for dinner. Who needs a restaurant in this town?

Olympic National Park

• River Otters
• Crystal River, a river the color and clarity of the Carribean
• Crescent Lake
• Stopping every ten minutes to take pictures
• Waterfalls
• Sol Duc Hot Springs
• Hoh National Rainforest
• Trees so tall and prehistoric, I felt like I was in the Land of the Lost
• Hurricane Ridge. The smell of pure snow and invigorating pine resin
• Sea Stacks Rialto Beach at LaPush
• "Dinosaur Bone" Beach
• "Hole in the Wall." Running for miles on the beach trying to cross the river before the tide came in, afraid I would get trapped on the other side of the island. Remembering how great it felt to run barefoot for so long and so fast. How truly alive and healthy I felt.
• Starfish
• Tide pools
• Symphony of tree frogs singing us to sleep every night in our cabin
• Cascades of giant tropical-looking flowers on every wall
• Cooking fresh local seafood, drinking beer from Portland and wine from Washington
• Salt Creek, overlooking the Juan De Fuca straits
• Dungeness Wildlife Refuge
• Harbinger Winery
• Lavender Fields
• Ferries
• Whidbey Island bridges

Bellingham, WA

• One night in this beautiful harbor town for dinner at locally famed Anthony's. Spectacular sunset over the Pacific ocean as we ate fresh Copper River salmon on Alderwood and drank local beer from Chuckanut.

Alaska

• Chicagohof Island--hired a boat to take us for whale watching. Saw probably half a dozen. Reminded us of the whale we saw in Dana Point, CA, a  year earlier, who was late in her migration, and who seemed to be letting her baby play in the seaweed for a little while. 
• Icy Strait Point, a tiny quaint town that embraces its heritage. "Gary Brown," our Tlingit ("klinkit") guide for the bear trails shared with us language, his heritage, his land, his knowledge of bears. We saw TWO grizzly bears! It was a beautiful day in ISP--sunny and warm. He taught us how they "read" the plants to know the time of year--the salmon berries are red/ripe when the salmon are running. A certain plant flowers at the end of the summer. Showed us the plants that the bears eat after hibernation--skunk cabbage. Looks like a lily. Not poisonous to humans, but if a human eats it, he will not able to talk for days, as the plant contains calcium carbonite, which forms as crystals in the throat. (Humans cannot digest this compound.)  Showed us medicinal plants--Devil's Club, Devil's Thumb. Showed us the Muskeg! Looks like a tall grass prairie, but is actually a vast system of underground creeks and ponds. Mud puddles are actually abysmal mud holes, sometimes over twenty feet deep! The fish come to this area to spawn. If you step in the wrong place, you could actually drown. Trucks and bulldozers have been swallowed hole after drivers ignored warnings not to drive on the Muskeg.Shared typical life of a Tlingit. Shared with us very personal story of his own--how he became an alcoholic and how he overcame it. This was something I wrote about a lot in my journal, as he emphasized the importance of knowing and living your passion--learning and living that has kept him sober and focused. Sometimes people speak with so much emotion that even if their words are simple and the sentiment familiar, you know they have a secret to something. They had a secret pain and and perhaps a very public flaw, and they found a way out of their own prison. After years of hardship, he learned that his passion was restoring and sharing the Tlingit culture. He speaks the language and taught it to his children and grand children. "Sometimes these people with their degrees like to come in and fix a lot of things that aren't broken." After our hike with Gary, we sat on the beach and watched the sun go down on one side of the island and the moon rise on the other. As we sat on the beach, a whale swam near the shore (the shores have an astonishing drop off) and breached right in front of us. Icy Strait Point's gift to us! Lovely day here. No jewelry shops, no tshirt shops, and the tourism industry is operated by the Tlingits.

• Hubbard Glacier
• Hired a boat to take us to the glacier bay to watch the glaciers calve. "White Thunder!" (Sounds like an earthquake.) Glorious blue ice creating tidal waves in giant blue ocean.

• Juneau/Hilbert Glacier
• Patsy Ann, Alaska's best dog ever!
• Helicopter to Hilbert Glacier. Never been in a helicopter. Felt like the most natural thing in the world, just like parasailing felt over the Virgin Islands.

Note--The inside passage and the Caribbean Islands look very similar, only Alaska is more beautiful. In fact, I got misty around the eyes almost every day as we sailed through the hundreds of thousands of islands, atolls, and archipelagos. It was so beautiful, I couldn't stop crying.

• Blue Kennels dog sled camp! We went to a sled dog camp and learned how to drive a team! The dogs were hilarious. I laughed the entire time. Ate some "blue" snow. The snow is pure there that when you step in it, your footprint looks blue. No words can describe this, and I wasn't allowed to bring my big camera, so I'll post some pics from the iphone. 

• Juneau was clean and modern but not my kind of town. A local directed us to a local bar, The Rendezvous. Ordered Alaskan Amber from Alaskan Brewery. Yummy. Everyone in Juneau seems to be from somewhere else. Seems to have its share of junkies and prostitutes. Some come with gold on the brain, others come with nature in their hearts. Perhaps both are quickly disheartened. Since we weren't really enjoying the tourist trap of Juneau we went back to the ship and basically had it to ourselves. Clear blue sunny warm skies, open pool deck, whirlpools. It was one of our favorite days. 

• Ketchikan  
• We hiked the national park here, high up in the tundra and through the ravines, and back down to the city. 
• Fascinating visit to the totem pole museum.