Alaska

Returning to work is the toughest thing after vacation. Especially when you return home at 2 AM midnight. But I had to go to work today because my computer wouldn’t let me login. There was a ‘change password’ notification I kept getting, which I ignored and by the time I returned from vacation my password expired and I couldn’t change my password because I wasn’t connected to the internal network. Real world problems eh?

That’s why I had to come to work, just to check my emails, to confirm nothing ground breaking happened while I was gone and no one was waiting on me. Good employee! But after coming to work I only saw few cancelled meeting notifications and compliance training notification emails :/

Anyways, today I am writing to share my Alaska travelling experience. I wasn’t very excited to see Northern lights, I am not a science/space person, so it didn’t excite me much, though I hyped about it on Instagram posting pictures etc..just because it’s a onetime thing, you don’t get to see it every day.

So, this trip didn’t fit in any of the vacation idea category which interests me – it didn’t have beaches, no sun, no greenery, no amazing food..though I did think that I would get amazing seafood when I first heard about the trip from my husband.

Route of Dalton Highway to Purdhoe Bay

We headed out from Chicago to Seattle, husband’s friend lives there and he was going to join us from Seattle to go to Fairbanks, a small town in Alaska. After 7-8 hrs of flying, we reached Fairbanks at night 2:30 AM or so..and woke up next morning to drive to Coldfoot, as the name suggests the place will give you cold foot if you aren’t prepared and the name was derived because the truckers who’d go north for mining would usually turn around when they get cold feet and stop here, hence the name coldfoot. There’s only one highway that goes north or North east and the rest is forest. After driving all day, we reached coldfoot at night.  People didn’t live here, only the truckers stop every 250 miles and there was a camp kind of a setup which had small rooms, initially when I heard we’d be staying in camp hotel I was very worried about the cleanliness of the place, but surprisingly this place was well maintained and it looked like it had lot of tourist coming, specially Asian students, so they had sign boards everywhere written in mandarin. The hotel had the tiniest rooms, enough for a person to crash at night and take a shower and get going the next day.

Our car after all the driving on the gravel highway. The worst part was it would ruin my clothes every time I get in/ get out.

The sun did not set until 9 PM, I expected that we can see the lights from the camp but because there was some light from the hotel..we walked to some distance where there was absolutely no light, we did not know where we were going we just walked, it looked like a frozen lake with 3-5 ft of snow on it. We talked to the middle of it and husband and his friend set the camera. We did not know what to expect, we knew the aurora would come between 10 – 2 AM at night. We set the camera at 10:45 or so and kept waiting, we kept seeing stars till the lights started appearing. So, like I mentioned we were on a lake in snow..so we had to create a small patch stable enough for us to stand and for the tripod to fix the camera, we just stomped the snow to make it a smooth surface for us to stand, so that we don’t go inside the snow as we take a step. The boys did that work, I was just standing to be honest.

We didn’t know what to expect, but we were able to see some weird patterns in sky, an orange spot started appearing and on the other side a dim streak of pattern appeared in the sky, just like how it would be if a rocket would go in the sky but wide enough, we were confused, if this was it. We set the camera and there it was , the camera was able to catch what our eyes weren’t able to..the sky had green color patches as if someone painted it green with a brush. The lights did get a little intense and we were able to see it with our naked eye after sometime. But, the patterns kept changing every few minutes, they were just moving.

We kept watching the changing patterns for few hours, we were outside for 3 hrs or so..our legs freezing, hands freezing. We used the hand warmers and toe warmers, it was so hard to even take off my shoes and use the toe warmer, my husband did it for me. Once I was warm enough in hands and toes, my feet started freezing, we decided it was time to go back to the hotel and call it a day.

The next day we came to know the place where we set our camera and stood to watch the aurora was a frozen pond, I got scared when I heard that.

If you notice my style of writing changing at this point, you should know I am continuing to write this blog after a few days. The next day we went to a hot spring, a natural hot spring, I love hot showers, so there was no way I wouldn’t like it. It was amazing, it was a small pond of hot water, the hot springs are big, atleast the pictures of hot springs I have seen for the hot springs in Italy and other places, but this one was small, but good enough to relax us after all the crazy driving for 2 days.

Arctic Circle

Savage Lake and us :)

The last day before we ended our trip, we planned to go see Denali mountain range, I was excited. I fell in love with the mountains and snow on them when I saw the mountains in Seattle, so I was expecting something similar. But, the snow here had started to melt. I looked up a river to go – Savage river, after going there I found that you need to climb a mountain and climb down to see the river, I wasn’t ready for it, not just mentally but physically – meaning not trained to go on a mountain nor wearing the proper gear to go on it, but husband and his friend had their climbing shoes on and the jackets etc..more than the gear, I think mentally they were ready, unlike me. I was wearing my city snow boots bought from Kohls, they were wearing some heavy boots, I was wearing Jeans, they had their gear from Patagonia/Rei. I wonder if it was pre-planned, maybe not. I didn’t run my mind after that, I was trying to convince myself to do it. I did it, walking uphill was a little tough, I am not a fan of elevation or cardio. But walking downhill was fun and scary, there was a lot of stones and we literally had to scramble through it, but I liked the challenge and I learned the tricks from my husband’s friend, who is passionate about going on mountains etc. The tricks helped make the whole experience better and took it to a different level, that’s why they say, ‘experience matters.’

At few points during the downhill, I felt like I would lose control and fall, but I just kept my calm and kept going, kept telling myself ‘you will be down the mountain soon, you don’t do this every day, so just do it!’

The river was beyond describable when we reached there after the hike. We spent some time there and it doesn’t end here, we had to walk 1 hour to get back to our car, just because the roads were closed because it was winter.

While driving back to the Airbnb, we saw a moose by the creek, one more wish of mine was fulfilled, to spot a wild animal.

All in all, it was a good trip, but was more of an active/ adventure trip and not a vacation/relaxation type of a trip. But, hey I am not complaining – I got to go to the hot springs and I saw the moose AND we saw the Northern lights and we went by the arctic circle!