The Median Sib

I’m writing this from the hotel in Anchorage. Our last day in Alaska. We catch a plane this evening to head home - will fly all night and will get home late tomorrow morning.

We got to Anchorage on schedule last Monday - woke up early on Tuesday, got the marriage license, went to Afognak Island and caught lots of salmon. I caught four good sized silver salmon - and boy, can they put up a fight! However, when we got to Camp Denali on Friday we found out that the guy who was planning on officiating at our wedding had needed a copy of the marriage license for his “commission” from the court. No one anywhere had ever mentioned that to us. We thought we had covered all the bases. And when we were at Afognak Island the few days before going to Camp Denali, we were basically un-reachable. So by the time we knew about the complication, it was late Friday - and everything was closed until Tuesday (Labor Day Weekend) - and we would leave Camp Denali early Monday. So no wedding.

We had a great time at Camp Denali, though. Lots of photography, hiking, sight-seeing. And yes, there was an outhouse for the cabin - and I used it… At least until I figured out that the hike to the showers was only a tad longer than the hike to the outhouse, and there was a flush toilet at the showers. So after the first day, I never hiked to the outhouse again. I can rough it if necessary - but only if necessary.

We took a flight-seeing plane from Camp Denali yesterday and flew past Mount McKinley (Denali) and over glaciers. It was incredible. I took over 150 photos during that one flight. Thank goodness for 1 GB memory cards! We still have our Alaskan marriage license. We’re not sure what we’re going to do with it at this point.

It’s our last day in Alaska. Since our flight doesn’t leave until 8:00 tonight, we’ll probably find a park and do some hiking - get lots of exercise before our imposed 8+ hours of imposed sedentary flight-time.

We’ll have most of the day to sightsee around Anchorage. The day is unplanned. We want to do a little shopping. We have a friend who wants some salmon jerky made by the Algonquin. I figure we’ll look around for that whenever we’re in a store during the whole trip.

Tonight (Tuesday) we’ll head back to the airport for our flight to Chicago. It’s an overnight flight - getting us to Chicago on Wednesday morning. From there we’ll take a flight back to Nashville.

Tomorrow (Thursday), it’s back to the real world of work and responsibilities.