Ak holic

I just got back from a two week visit to Alaska. I suppose I'll bore you with an essay entitled "what I did on my summer vacation". Guess how many pictures I took. None. I like it when somebody else takes the pictures, and has the camera. Alaska is beautiful. So beautiful in fact, that there are lots of wonderful pictures of it all. You all know what it's like. I wasn't in the cold part, like Fairbanks. I was in the balmy area, Anchorage. I had been to Anchorage a few times before, back around 94. That was when I was a First Officer on the 757. I knew everything back then. All I saw though was Anchorage airport and the hotel where we were laid over, and a bit of the town. The flight from Seattle took about 3 plus hours and you saw nothing at all on the way except frozen tundra. So this recent visit was really seeing Alaska for the first time. I ate salmon almost every day. I saw a moose right by the house I stayed at. I worked on a log cabin, mostly stripping bark. I soloed in a small power boat. I soloed in a canoe. I got a ride in a big Grumman amphibian airplane called an Albatross. I got a ride in a "float plane", a bush plane called a Piper Super Cub. I helped tow logs across the lake to the cabin. I stayed in a tiny log cabin for a few nights. I slept in the Albatross one night. I slept in a beautiful luxurious lake house most nights. On clear days I could see Denali more than 100 miles away and her sister peaks, snow capped. I went to the town of Wasilla several times for supplies. I went to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. At the fair I watched loggers do some pretty crafty chain saw art with the long mufflers on their saws to protect the ears of the crowd as they carved beavers and bunny rabbits out of logs. But their skill was no better than the expertise of my buddy that I watched free- cutting notches in logs for his cabin. The lake was so clear you could see the bottom details and the fish. The sunsets were so bright you couldn't even look at the reflection in the lake. The nightly campfires were large and fun and kindled by birch bark and fed by birch and spruce logs. I got to sing a bunch of ballads by the fire. There were three guitar players at the fires. I was the third best. There was an amphibian fly-in at the lake on Saturday the 4th. It rained all day. Two Grumman Wigeons flew in. And a Grumman Goose. A couple of Cessna 180's on floats. A couple of Super Cubs. Our hosts provided food and drink for every one. And T shirts. The day after the fly-in the weather improved and we did it all again. Then the weather became clear and sunny for four days and I was back to stripping logs and clearing brush. When I got back to my truck in the pay lot at BWI, the bill was $114. It had taken me 20 hours to get home riding space available. Now I get to go to two fly-ins here in the Md, Pa area this weekend. And I get to hang out with my son before he leaves for California. But I just can't get back on east coast time. And when I close my eyes I still see the log and the hatchet and the bark. And I've got that good kind of ache again. LLITTY :::::_:::::