Days Fifteen and Sixteen: Fairbanks, Alaska, to Seattle, Washington

Monday and Tuesday, 7 and 8 October --  IT SNOWED IN THE NIGHT!  Just a tiny bit, a dusting, with a few more flakes falling as I walk to the pool.  Alas, I am leaving Fairbanks with no more than a pale glimmer of Northern Lights behind a cloud.  Still, I have really enjoyed the visit.  And finally I have discovered the secret to not watching strangers do strange (okay, not strange, but inappropriate) things in the hot springs, or listen to screechy women who didn’t read the notice about this being a place for peace and relaxation:  get there at 7:00am.  Plus, I get to see some of Aaron Corbeil’s photographs of Fairbanks and Japan.  He’s only been pursuing photography seriously for two years, but he’s very, very good – and he obviously loves it; he’s glowing as we talk cameras and exposures.  He works at the resort, and until he gets a proper website, the best place to see his work is on Facebook.  (If that link doesn’t work, try https://www.facebook.com/aaron.corbeil.1/photos when you’re logged in to your Facebook account.)

Aaron Corbeil has seen the Northern Lights, as he lives in Fairbanks.

 

Pack pack pack, zoom zoom zoom, and short stop to dunk my feet in the West Fork of the Chena River   It’s cold, it’s rocky, it’s very clear, and it is ever so much more rare than the constantly-crossed North Fork of the Chena.  Then more zoom.  Then wonder what was that big brown lump in the Angel Creek?  Then gently brake and do a three-point turn in the middle of this semi-highway, and back to the creek to see the MOOSE!  In fact, IT’S TWO MOOSE!  Thank you, universe, for snow and for my moose.

Brown lump in creek

MOOSE!

And if I'd told you I saw a moose and a bear, and just
used this photo, you probably would have believed me.

My brain suddenly started to try to trick me into thinking my flight was at 11am, not noon, and it succeeded well enough that I didn’t dare take the time to switch to my telephoto lens.  I think this is the first time I’ve been on a trip and wanted to take a lot of photos.  Usually I prefer experiencing my travels fully, knowing they are immutable; permanently part of me.  Thinking about cameras and light and angles has been a distraction.  This time, it feels like it’s helping me focus more on where I am and what I’m doing.  Still, those moose are in my senses forever, regardless of the lack of zoom on the picture.

Happy little airport with no security line; happy little airline that takes off on time even when it’s quite foggy; funny sight from the window:  thick, no-holes, fluffy white cloud cover below us, snowy mountain peaks sticking through the cover all along the southern horizon.  Travel tip:  if you ever fly from Fairbanks to Anchorage and you want to see Denali from the plane, sit on the right side of the aircraft – probably the F seat.  You cannot see Denali from the A seat, on the left side.

Long layover in Anchorage where I get online and attend to a few things.  I drank almost two-thirds of my lunchtime beer, a Midnight Sun Oosick Amber, but then I was sitting in the restaurant for over two hours, as they have a plug.  Now we are starting our descent into overcast, 54-degree Seattle, and I have not had my airplane nap yet.  I’ve got a reservation at a $50 airport motel, and dollars to give the airport car-park valet.  So it seems all’s well tonight.

And in the morning, I pull everything out of the car and spread my belongings over two queen-sized beds and a couple of armchairs, and re-pack.  Long johns away, parka away, lip balm refilled, switch out hiking boots for city-walking shoes.  I did laundry in Fairbanks, so not too much to fuss with there.  Once everything is organized again, and I’m ready to re-load the car, the heavens sunder themselves and dump every drop of ocean ever re-circulated into the clouds out onto the Seattle-Tacoma area, with thunder and lightning.  The locals tell me thunder and lightning are very rare around here, though rain is not unusual.

Damp but un-dismayed, I set out for my godmother’s.  D.N. was a great friend of my late mother, and is like her in many ways.  In the 1950s, living in New Haven, Connecticut, D.N. (per my mother) had broken up with an unsatisfactory boyfriend, and wasn’t liking her job much better.  She went to the movies one evening, and along with the newsreel cinemas used to show before the feature film there was a travelogue about the Pacific Northwest.  She liked the looks of it, so she packed a case, boarded a train, and debarked in Seattle, where she got a room at the YWCA.  She got a job, met a more satisfactory man, found a room at the University Women’s Club and a roommate at the same club who came up with a small house in the Madison Park neighborhood, and so D.N. decided to stay.  About six decades, one marriage, a late-life widowhood, and five sons later, she’s in a high-rise for the elderly with an amazing view of Lake Washington.

In case you, like me, didn’t know about this lake, Seattle sits on the Puget Sound off the Pacific Ocean.  It is also bisected, more or less, by a large lake.  I think you can see just about the entire 34 square miles of Lake Washington from D.N.’s apartment.

We mostly just chatted, about current news and fond memories and local restaurants.  That last was because I was meeting an online friend, from D.B. and K.B.’s magnificent website, The Uncrushable Jersey Dress, for supper.  Her office is in Bellevue, on the other side of the lake, so I got to cross a long, low-slung suspension bridge on my way to Bake’s Place.  The restaurant offered a marvelous cocktail with vanilla in it, and a whole bunch of relatively-local vegetables on top of a couple of ‘smashed’ potatoes.  I flirted with the waiter on the less-than-one-year-married S.P.’s behalf, and he tolerated it very kindly.  We split (S.P. and me, not the waiter and me) a chocolatey dessert, and I had to eat most of the brandied cherries that garnished it, as S.P. cannot have any alcohol when driving her drivers’-ed-teaching husband’s car.  (She ate one by accident.)

And I was happy to do it! because, 1) they were delicious, and 2) S.P. was a sweetie pie who knit me a beautiful twisty scarf in shades of blue and green that I’ve worn most days since.  She has a fascinating job recruiting and training able seamen to staff freighters that go up and down between Seattle and points north, supporting the fishing boats in those waters.  She had to take one trip where she did a seaman’s work, so she’d understand what her charges were suffering.  Apparently she wasn’t great at it – lots of very broad, wet, cold, heavy ropes involved, and the ship’s cook laughing at her.  In a nice way, I’m confident.  She had lots of other great stories, and she’s not 30 yet.  Also, she loves Spokane.  I love Spokane.  So there you go.

The restaurant also had two excellent guitarists playing tricky, fast-fingering jazz music, but I didn't listen to them much, because S.P. was too fascinating.

Waiter-photographer; we tipped well.  Note lovely scarf.