It was nice to take a couple of days off and visit Bill McNally. Now I was back on the road again. It felt good.
Aboriginal people don’t have a concept called work. They think of sustained exertion as just another body state, like asleep, awake, inactive, or eating. Exertion doesn’t feel hard to them; it feels different. That’s the way it is on a good day of cycling if you can get in the zone. You feel satisfied, not saddled with a burden. (pardon my pun).
I was headed for Seward, namesake of Secretary of State William H. Seward, who bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867. Some called it Seward’s Folly, but they turned out to be the ones fooled.
I thought of Seward as my turnaround point. Marcia and her sister Jane were getting ready to return home too. I called her before leaving Bill’s place and she was cheerful. Jane’s high-school reunion was in full swing. “Everybody” was down at the Legion Club.
The ride to Seward started off with three miles of coasting from Bill’s house down to Seward Highway. The highway at that point was on the north shore of the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet.
The arm was named in frustration by William Bligh of HMS Bounty fame. It was the second arm they explored, hoping to find a Northwest Passage. It ended up as a dead end too, so they had to turn around again and go back.
I hadn’t gone far on the highway when I came to a dozen or so Dahl Sheep. They were on a nearly vertical hillside right by the highway. I stopped and looked at them and they looked at me. A little further along, an Alaska Railway train went by on its way to Whitter where cruise ships land. The climb up into the mountains of Kenai Peninsula started soon after I rode around the end of Turnagain Arm. I camped at tiny Bertha Creek Campground after six hours of riding. The last three miles took an hour. Quite a contrast to the first three miles at the start.
The highway goes through some beautiful, lush country here. I turned off the Seward Highway onto the road to Seward on the second day (oddly enough, the Seward Highway doesn’t go to Seward). The road to Seward is busy and narrow. I coped with the hazard by stopping on the grassy shoulder if two vehicles were going to meet where I would be. I had to do that at least twenty times.
I called Alaska Marine Highway from Moose Pass Lodge. It took quite a while to get an operator. I changed my departure to Aug 1. That ferry would skip Sitka and get in three days earlier than the one I originally booked. It’s a good thing I did because they told me there might not be room for a bicycle otherwise, though I can’t imagine why.
From that point, it was, as they say, all downhill to Seward. I was soon camped in the Seward Municipal Campground. It was nice and a little unusual. There were tourists like me there, and also long term residents. One couple was there because they “…lost everything in Kodiak.” Ray and Teri were back in Seward trying to get started again. She told me, “I just married my daughter (to a groom, not herself) on the 4th of July.” (Ten days before. Anybody can perform a marriage in Alaska.)
Didit.Live 