a very edited-down set of alaska photos are up on flickr now. it was hard work, i think because of the photo-major-hyper-critical-self-critique thing that doesn’t ever go away even when posting vacation photos.

enjoy.

When hiking in bear country, you’re supposed to make a lot of noise so as to not surprise a bear. I’ve been yelling out ‘hey bear! Bear bear!’ Which sounds like the best beer guys at shea stadium, who yell out ‘get-cha beer here’.

Needless to say, this got old rather quickly, so we started playing ‘I’m going on a picnic…’ We started yesterday in denali.

our new mantra goes ‘apples, beers, cans of beers…xavier high school boys, youth, zaxxon’ before looping around to double letters ‘aardvark, berry bubbalicious, coca-cola…xenophobic xylophonists, yelling yeti, zippered zebras.’ This also gets incredibly old but it keeps the bears away… Or so we thought.

As we were walking into town tonight (hope, alaska pop: 150), and mia was going on a picnic (and up to g — grizzly bear repellant) we saw a dog who had cornered a black bear not 10′ away from us. We wouldn’t have spotted it otherwise.

I wish we were better about bears. No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re still a little freaked out when you actually get tested.

We’re in an rv in denali. We dubbed the rv ‘das boot’. All-in-all it’s pretty amazing. Denali is the size of massachusetts and has only one road in it that only runs 90 miles to the west of the entrance. there are school buses that shuttle people into the interior and will stop for wildlife viewing or to pick up and drop off hikers. There is a lot of very remote wilderness here.

You can pretty much hike everywhere in the interior because there are no trails and almost no trees, due to the treeline being at 2000 feet.

Yesterday on the bus, we saw a sleeping grizzly. Thing was big. And kind of sweet looking. We’re really into bear safety now. I’m kind of obsessed with it, actually.

Whenever someone on the shuttle bus spots an animal in the distance (and it can be up to about a mile away), they yell for the driver to stop so that we can all stare at the dot on the hillside and take pictures that won’t turn out. During these moments, I spend my time documenting people taking pictures, which will actually turn out.

I’ll post photos upon my return. Lots of typing because the three other occupants of das boot are sleeping in. I death-marched them to the top of a peak yesterday, so they’re tired and hate me. They’ll probably hate me more when they find out that I’ll be doing it again today.

My first impression of alaska is that it seems like a more intense version of washington state. Longer days (midnight sun!), bigger mountains, a more ethnically diverse population (surprisingly) who are even friendlier than the moderately diverse washington population. Basically, it’s the pacific northwest taken to its logical conclusion.

Also, this is where all of those huge 1970s station wagons came to live out their last days. For all of the above reasons and more, I am already 100% into it.

The plane ride up to alaska was similar in feel to a plane ride to las vegas — that super-hyper anticipatory energy mixed with weird tackiness and incredibly bad hair.

in the midst of the nuttiness, I turned to mia and said: it’s like crazy slipped its meds and decided to go on spring break. To which she added: and forgot to bring its inside voice.

I feel better now that we (and our luggage) made it to the motel. My brother and his wife arrive in about an hour (at like 2am). Tomorrow we pick up the rv and head north. Gas here is cheaper than seattle. Score.

Blogging from my blackberry. Please pardon any typos.