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Alaska 1980

 

ALASKA TRIP, June 12 - July 8, 1980

THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1980: 11:12 am, after being told 11:50 flight delayed to 12:20. Could I have used the time! Slept only 4-5 hours previous 2 nights, working, then Dennis talks to 12:45 last night and suggests getting up at 6. I say OK, may get up earlier. Sleep fairly easily and wake COMPLETELY at 4:05. Figure I'll have LOTS of time and it's STILL a rush, getting 3 indexes to Dennis, washing dishes, having no time to vacuum, and car service I wanted for 10:30 calls and says it must be for 10:20. He rings at 10:15 and I dash about and get down JUST at 10:20 (forgetting my mailing list on my bureau, which I didn't realize until I returned), to airport at 10:50 and STAGGERED that it's $18, so I'm down $20 ALREADY. Then delayed flight? Do my "off with the turtleneck, on with the shirt-short sleeved" number and write this waiting for seat assignments, saying I can STILL get to Winnipeg's flight. Well, OK, now to read at 11:17. Flight leaves at 12:30 and gets in at 1:40 over GRAND circle of Long Island, Hudson Tappan Zee Bridge, swimming lakes along the way, and a couple of the Finger Lakes, though I don't think I saw Ithaca and LAST one was U-shaped. Gets a bit cloudy over Lake Ontario, tan from stream efflux, and then the enormous spire of Toronto that I hope comes out and we fly WAY out over farms so flat it's possible to see old streambed contours in plowed fields. Then turn and land and breeze through customs in minutes and get to next waiting lounge at 2, flight at 2:35, and they ASSURE me they'll have sandwiches on this one. It goes off and plump female metalworker has been traveling from Deer Lake in "Newflan" from 6 am to Lynn Lake 500 miles north of Winnipeg to her first job. Cloudy flight, but still glimpses of those enigmatic areas where you can't tell if you're looking at islands in one HUGE lake or LOTS of little lakes. Jerky shot of built-up city. Pleasant change lady says "Bank of Commerce" gives more, SHE gives 1.125, the Hotel St. Regis gives 1.13 and Greyhound 1.15 (AND says the pass is for CANADA). Took map from desk pack, asked for transportation and it's city bus for 40, exact change, which she gives me for US money. They recommend museums and walking tours enthusiastically, say everyone is friendly, they ARE, and even license plates say "Friendly Manitoba." But this is all that they have to OFFER. Flat tree-lined suburban streets go off to infinity, and downtown is a REMARKABLE hodgepodge of rundown buildings, standalone churches, LOTS of parking lots and 2-3 floor towers, public buildings from Centennial, and huge 30-floor skyscrapers most modern. To BEAUTIFUL Legislative Building for look around and book of hotels, and there's the gay-recommended St. Regis with 4 stars. It's about 75 and HOT in jacket, and I wander streets and take $28 room from sheer FATIGUE. Open suitcase and change to red pants and shoes for restaurant on Boulevard Portcheur, and checked that $99 plan ended May 31, there's 15-day that looks GOOD, YMCA is only $10 says woman behind desk, but it's prison-grim, and there are LOTS of humpy tanned guys bicycling in shirtless shorts. And lots of motorcycles, ugly with helmeted drivers. Long walk to "beauty parlor façade" Grenouillere, and around to Vielle Gare for not-tasty Velvet Hammer with 1/4 oz brandy, 1/2 oz Grand Marnier, 1/2 oz Tia Maria and 1/2 oz cream, for $4. Local French girls break beautiful railroad car's atmosphere. Into restaurant for FILLING sweetbreads that had SAME texture as mushrooms under sauce, and 1/2 Liebfraumilch nicely cold. Filling, and Winnipeg Goldeye is mealy and overcooked, too much broccoli au gratin, but good-flavored Lyonnaise potatoes (ruddy with browning and tasty with onion). Watch LOVELY guy (combo cigarette ad and Ron Miller) extolling his stock prowess to lisping girl, and feel the place TRIES but has nothing to SHOW. FORM of a French restaurant without content: tacky "head waitress" giving out menus like hash-house girl around table: guy, girl, guy, girl; headwaiter's uniform smells of old sweat, and table boy setting and unsetting tables. Walk back at 9:15 to pink sunset, and to room to phone Greyhound and find I CAN fit in "Yellowknife only on Tues-Thurs-Sat midnight getting to Vancouver by 21st." Can't sleep, jerk off.

FRIDAY, JUNE 13. Wake at 7:45, sore throat from immovable cold-air freeze. Sort through stuff and throw lots out, but STILL have to pack boots in plastic outside bag. Out at 9 and walk to station and AGAIN friendly people save day: how easy and good my trip is, lunch at 12:15 in Neepawa and I dash to cafeteria for egg salad and grapefruit juice for 95+30=$1.25 sans tax. Hear 9:45 bus announced at 9:20 and I get on to write and finish this at 9:55, only about 6 empty seats left, one next to me, and bus filled with chatty people. Winnipeg: LOTS of stainless steel-strut bridges to rusticated 18th-century stone buildings! 10:30, 89-car train---how LONG it's been since I counted TRAIN cars! Left at 9:55 and QUICKLY get bored. How SOON some thoughts return: leaving a SPOOR of myself like snail-slime encircling the sphere; myself inking up a map; the predictability of these thoughts! NICE bus, gray-clouded but still BRIGHT enough day. Highway 1 an experience for 20 minutes only. Rent-a-car for $104/week with 1500 free km STILL a CHORE to DRIVE. Speed limit NEAR town of 70 km/hr, outside 100 km/hr, but CHECK gives less than 3 km in 97 seconds, maybe 66 mph. But everything's so FLAT and things change so little it seems to go slowly. Another standard thought: how important WORDS and SIGNS and sexy DRIVERS become! Portage La Prairie: Newman Hotel: Buffet Lunch $1.99, band "Haze," Dancer Lya Lee---HOW elegant! You see the SAME people: cutie gets off at station and we pass him 5 minutes later on the main street, still walking; other fellow gets off and in a few minutes we pass him talking to an autobody parts shopkeeper. Cyclist in striped shirt passes as I cross to Chicken Corral and is eating at a park bench ahead of the bus as I return to find an old woman spread over my two seats. She remains at the aisle and stops at "Theodore." But her brother's not there so she continues to Dafoe, past a lake I'm sure is shallow but she repeats 6 times her son said is "Deep, deep, deep." She says it was 90 in Winnipeg day before yesterday and 80 yesterday and 66 today, and that the wheat that was sown on May 1 should be MUCH higher but there's been NO rain so the farmers are even turning cattle in on them to eat the stubble. Some seemed plowed under but she said the soil is so poor it can only support a crop every other year. SOME sexy people on bus, but they all sit in back to smoke like men. She chatters away (82 years old) about German mother and Dutch father and coming in 1924 and having 9 kids and visiting 4 remaining sons and 4 daughters and finally I close my eyes after Yorktown to stop her chatter. Clouds brightened then darkened and RAIN fell for a bit, and now at 7:30 at Esk the sky is VERY dark with clouds and the bus feels about chilly enough for a sweater. Flat, then hilly, now flat again. Lots of trains pass, lots of bus traffic, not so many cars---but we're on "Yellowhead Highway #16," not main #1. Acneed blond from some foreign country has hamburger for "dinner" at 3:40 in Yorkton and SHE said I missed the best restaurant in TOWN by not eating at the bus stop in Neepawa. Well, Yorkton has omelets that are awful, but hot chocolate seems sustaining, and I'm glad I'm stopping in Saskatoon tonight and not boarding until 11:30 am tomorrow. Keep thinking of my EASE of doing the 99 days and NOW 15 looks ahead as a PENANCE. BUT I'VE NOW BEEN IN EVERY PROVINCE OF CANADA! Only Northwest Territory, Yukon, and Alaska to conquer in the remaining days of my trip. Grain elevators like big wooden, double-level milk cartons marked "Saskatchewan Pool" and city name, like Viscount. Some few mining plants now, but cows, fields, pools, farms, villages, fallow land, tree clusters, roads, rails, and that's about it. Hm, BLOND keeps a log TOO. When we get to Saskatoon as sun sets at 9:15, blond comes over and smiles and stops and I say "Hi" and he's from Denmark, studying agriculture on a farm south of Winnipeg and is off on a tour to San Francisco and Las Vegas for two weeks. Nice smile. I ask for hotel and she suggests King George, but it looks too elegant and I'm back and find there's a Y. Ask SECOND girl how to get there and she says there're no rooms, but the Patricia is cheap and just as clean. $16 for a room, $1 for a sandwich and I find Gay Community Service in phone book and David says they have social from 9-2, so rather than sleeping, as I'd thought, I put on sweater and go to S. 3rd by going wrong way in two directions FIRST, and David lets me in free, saying it's quiet so far, and I buy a $1.75 Black Russian from fat Bonnie and David introduces me to EVERYONE. I might end up with HIS bright eyes and short compact body, but as an afterthought (last person) he introduces me to Peter, with an Oxford accent, and I talk of north and HE talks of fabulous rail trip up to Fort Churchill and flight to Baker Lake for Cape Dorset, Resolute Bay, and other Inuit sculptures. He raves by name of artist and I "fantasize" seeing his collection and he offers, so we walk out at 1:30 and along river with its homes, motels, museums and mixed office-residential towers, and across University Bridge to his new house, plain but bulkily evocative polar bears, Arp seals, shaman shape-shifting pieces, and antler art with narwhal and seals. Drawings and prints and other art, and in basement is hot tank, which we enter and he winds up tug and whale and fish and we PLAY. Bed at 2:15 and sleep easily, he with scarf over eyes to keep out light.

SATURDAY, JUNE 14. Wake at 8:30, bit of lightwork, and out of bed at 9:30 for easy chat, exchange of cards, a boiled egg and toast and juice and coffee, and leave to walk back 10:35-11, out of Patricia and to bus station for Edmonton, writing this as bus leaves Saskatoon---maybe I WILL come back for mines in the north and canoeing and art galleries and the LOVELY air and the PLEASANT gay group. Peter might come to the Picasso in NYC, cancels out of the antinuclear party at Dennis's tonight, and waits for guy to tear down his garage. Pleasant interlude, and I DEBATE staying extra day but think to get AHEAD to NWT and explore THERE while I'm there, rather than "known" south of Canada. Day on bus STARTS cloudy but clears up considerably: pretty fluffy gray-white clouds and SOME nice views over gentle hills and river valleys of North Saskatchewan River (that flows to Churchill River and Hudson's Bay!). He said they had a surprising mild EARTHQUAKE in Saskatoon about a month ago, possibly BEFORE Mt. St. Helens, which hasn't affected them at all. Cutknife, a trying little "planned community": trees down divided "Main Street," VERY square layout, lots more Indians, 2-story buildings are tallest, lots of planted trees and hedges, lots of people lounging beside cars perpendicularly parked to street. Bus seems to symbolize modernity: saluted by kids, waved at by hopefuls, cursed by dotty Indian woman in Cutknife, flinging an angry arm from an angry body and face toward us. Yellowhead Highway boringly constructed: two center lanes and usually two shoulder lanes for slower vehicles to pull over to allow bus to pass. But 30 is BARELY two-lane (ruts in most of sides), but thankfully almost devoid of traffic. I'd hate to drive SMALLER highway! SOLID farmland now giving way to 10% brush, 90% farm. Not many "spring" flowers---few buttercups and daisies, some clover-like purples, some brush-tipped rye, some yellow tiny broomlike flowers, not much more. Ducks and their TINY offspring in most ponds. Road improves a LOT in Alberta. Normanna is a nice couple-farm name; forgot Neepawa's population sign of "just 996,600 short of a million." Starts drizzling the MINUTE we cross the border. Fox lopes out of copse as bus passes. Sunset in Edmonton ABOUT 9:55 pm. SOME pretty hills and valleys along way, but terrain is mostly merely more uncultivated, getting to 40% brush in some areas. Edmonton is HUGE, and everything centered about 100th St. and 100th Ave (Jasper) makes addresses simple but cumbersome. Leave bag checked for 50 to wander to door-open Information Booth to find the door's open ONLY to Underground Parking. BUT on map pasted to wall I find YMCA on 102A AND that the quadruple pyramid of the Muttart Conservatory is open to 9 and reached by #47 and 51 busses. Back to Y, lots of YOUNG, nicely dressed people about, and Y is big and cheap (sandwiched next to 4-5 times more expensive Four Seasons Hotel, and room is only $10.50, but I can use the Alberta accommodations book I picked up for the north). Phone gay number and he tells me cruising areas, two pubs mixed, and the "more gay" Boots and Saddles on 106th. Pick up bag and check into room at 9:20 and sun STILL hasn't set, so I go through NWT stuff and get populations and a tentative itinerary and shower at 10 and to McCauley Plaza for a decent enough Lancashire Hot Pot in the Pub for $3.55 and pint of beer for $1.75 and $5.25 bill verifies there's no tax. Out and there's sign "MacDonald Drive." It's the most scenic view over river (Muttart not lit, though) and few guys cruising but it's not very interesting. Over to Jasper and there might even be a bodybuilding convention in town because there are so many GORGEOUS bodies on street (as in Conservatory, all with girls). Jasper and 104th or 105th has a PARK filled with hustlers (and Pub had the 4 creeps dressed for seduction saying "What's he staring at?" when I looked at waitress behind them). Plump guy at Boots and Saddles says, "Membership only $5 for 2-month membership." No thanks. Get route CHECKED at bus station and they finally tell me Coachways IS Greyhound and ON pass!! Back to Y at 12:30 and leave call for 8. Up at 2:30, 5:30, and permanently at 6:30 and so I'm up at 7:15 feeling OK.

SUNDAY, JUNE 15. Pack and phone only buzzes gently at 8 and I leak and get $3 back for key and to Greyhound cafeteria for $1.25 cream of wheat and 70 hot chocolate. but no tax OR tip (NO one seems to tip here!). Note on menu for $1 minimum at table, which 3 Indians don't read and Wey (Dennis's friend)-type and mother laugh, and the daughter's fat and old and black-dyed---all of whom laugh, smoke, and drink too much. They get "free coffee at the counter" by gruff waitress and they joke "Maybe she thought we was niggers" and when I refuse their offered cigarette they seem to have to make sure it's not personal with a "You don't smoke?" Pancakes pretty good but THIS $2.95 for two fried eggs is lousy. Shape of things to come? Write in empty terminal, few people gathering, and first call at 8:50 and final call at 8:55 as I write this. Everyone has a window, Indian guys in shorts and open shirts cruise white girls and they're all in the back of the bus but for me and a white-haired lady 2 rows in front, in second row, where I sat on FIRST leg and got annoyed with window reflections from front and side, so 4 rows back is perfect, though I at times get sniffs of smoke. Bus starts at 8:57, luggage doors down, revs from outside (driver checking motor?) at 8:58 and he takes a final walkthrough count (checking john!---told little girl "People try to sneak on without tickets") and Indians leave to join his buddy in back so first 4 rows are US two and driver in sporty jacket and we putt out with toot of horn at just 9:01 with two other departures. Touring again unlocks my childhood---well, maybe not MY childhood, but SOMEBODY'S childhood. The Pop Shoppe is ALL OVER Canada! 488 km to Peace River. PERFECTLY clear sky today, as it was last night! 12 on bus. Huge GROUNDHOG colony along road just south of St. Alberts. Huge FIELD of yellow daisies. SOME distant views of infinite farms and copses are rather NICE. Herd of buffalo (woman says BEEFALO) just west of Clyde (scrawnier, she says, than buffalo, though they could be YOUNG ones, she says). Lots and lots of chat, and farms DO vanish into brush farther north. Along bottom of Lesser Slave Lake he tootles along a gravel road out of Faust for my edification. Indians coming on board evince the usual "Yugh" looks and he talks of the ones he had to throw off the bus for drinking. She was 7th oldest child and there were 14 after her and SHE (like the German) had 9 kids. But BECAUSE of ALL the people she had an ENDLESS line of in-laws and cousins and siblings dead of lung and stomach cancer, auto accidents, drowning, war deaths, and even ball lightning that flashed off knives and forks and bounced to the floor of the garage where it ran UP an iron rod, swung it in an arc of TOTALLY burnt wood, and UP out of the roof, blasting wood 1/2 mile away. Seats DOUBLE in movie either ON aisle or against wall---with USED seats! Lots of ADS before "Luna" starts at 8 pm. STRANGE STONED movie of great photographic beauty but strange individual actions: father leaves, husband dies, Luna sings and interminably cares for her attention-demanding son who shoots up and gets masturbated through the pants in a not-very-erotic scene, and her burying his head in HER crotch for a RETURN is merely embarrassing for her as an actress, him as a character and us as an audience. Out at 10:30 to sew buttons on shirt, walk down to make SURE it's 7:30 leaving, better than 6:30, and get to bed stuffed from DELICIOUS crisp fresh sauced egg foo yung from Northlander Restaurant. Bed at 11:10 after leaving word to wake at 7. Trekked uphill to 12-foot Davis's grave for a photo, too.

MONDAY, JUNE 16. Wake at 6:40 and up soon after to put things together and get downhill at 7:10 for two buses standing there, second already 3/4 full for Hay River. Ask to sit near window next to man, put in bag, get half a submarine to go for $1.75 and a can of cold apple juice for 50 and get back on bus to find old man moved across to his old wife. Mostly couples on bus, and some PRETTY men and a squally child pulling on my armrest. Sit to write this and hear people in front saying that RAPE seed is expensive and people farm THAT rather than wheat. Rather taciturn people UNTIL they start talking, then they DO go on. Driver from last night, bound out at 7:15, says it really came down in SHEETS last night, and roadside is still slightly muddy and wet in the AM, though sky isn't quite as threateningly cloudy as it got last night, so I'm glad it didn't storm while I was dining or going to the movie. My spread bag does no good as a fellow sits next to me with a jar of water and even the DRIVER has to move his stuff as the bus is left with only ONE empty seat, yet I still have my ideal 3rd from front right window. Guy next settles down with Titus Groan, so there might be talk this trip too. Two more people get on at Grimshaw and fill last two seats and someone who looks like an Indian who says he's from Madeira gets on and he stands for a bit---can't get fuller! Manning stop last to 9:30 and I get dried fruit in market. Farms come and go, and at one point brush is ALL pine, but then poplars and birch return. Now about 80% brush, with large flat tracts just being cleared. Not a considerably varying land. Flatter way up HERE than I'd suspected, only river valleys to be deeper. Couple dark gray rabbits dash into brush. High Level Restaurant FINALLY gives me liver and onions for $4.50. Good, and fabulous apple pie for dessert and good tomato-vegetable soup, and beer which feels good, so I drop back and give $1 tip on a $5.75 bill. Help us all feel better. Rain let up for stop, but comes down steadily before and after. Almost NO traffic north of High Level---and almost 100% brush, though still relatively flat. Picturesque old wooden railroad bridges. Actually a trailer-size Hudson's Bay Company (and post office) at Meander River. When woman in front of me moves out, I graduate to an UNCRAZED window, not that there's THAT much to SEE. Bus about half full after High Level. Indian wearing bead-appliquéd leather-fringed new jacket. Steen River 10 minutes early on arrival---most of it CLOSED, left 25 minutes before schedule---hope that doesn't happen to ME! Clouds clearing away but road is being fixed and is AWFUL. Soda can says "Raisin" and I think "What a kick to try" and it turns out only to be the French translation of GRAPE. Off at 2:25 after stopping for "15 minutes sharp" at 2:04 at Indian Cabins. INCREDIBLE talk with driver and evening and sunset not BEFORE 10:45 in Hay River. He lets me (alone) off at the border to snap the sign, then everyone's off at the Information Center to pick up a TON of stuff, including a certificate for crossing the 60th parallel. Quick stops at Alexandra and Louise Falls, visible but hardly accessible in a minute, and continue on to Hay River. I'd been talking with Arlin and the driver, Scotty, and Arlin says Fort Smith is MUCH nicer than Yellowknife, so he gives me Jacques Van Pelt's name and escorts me to PWA airlines to get a $39.95 ticket Wednesday between Hay River and Yellowknife, so I can see BOTH. Scotty says he'll take me to Caribou Lodge and I invite him for coffee and he pauses and says he'll show me the town. I get room 43 and it doesn't open, so I get 44 and change to long-sleeve shirt and down to restaurant for a milkshake and in he comes. We chat nicely and his wheels for the tour are the Greyhound bus! I freak! He drives around looking for the two Germans; the Bay is closed for inventory and he starts worrying since they wanted to shop for a canoe there. Look at a few other places, but the garage has only powered boats leaning against it for sale, and they're not there. Out road past airport and across bridge to Old Town and onto Island to Old Old Town and Great Slave Lake Beach and Indian community and flood remains and the Sinker-Life Building and the boats being painted and he drives IN and we climb aboard tender and he takes my picture and I snap place and then him and bus and we're back to Norweta and Arlin's aboard and we find him and have banana bread and coffee with the cook and chat about trip up Mackenzie River in 5 days and 5 months at oil drilling platform in Beaufort Sea. Leave and THERE are the Germans---gear locked in Greyhound office! He gets keys, we get their gear, I take their picture after they tell me of their 2-3 month trek and their souvenirs from their girls. Drat! Back to hotel and he says he'll pick me up at 6:30 am. I get groceries at Red Rooster at 9:10 (no movie in town today) and find the Migrator ALSO charges $35 and eat in Pizza Patio with wastrels and Indians and sexy idle snotty kids, one of whom looks like Luke Skywalker---and he knows it. Full with $5.75 special pizza and back to fall into bed at 10:30 after watching some TV. STILL trouble sleeping with the SUNLIGHT streaming in the windows poorly shaded.

TUESDAY, JUNE 17. Wake at 5:30 and put stuff together for my day in Fort Smith and shower and do a bit of lightwork and leave note I'm staying another day and get out at 6:25 and there he comes! To station and get Fort Smith ticket and Jerry Goodman is CUTE. Guy from Newfoundland is on and helps make outgoing conversation from 7-8 to Pine Point, past mine tailings and to ANOTHER hang-out restaurant, and then to Wood Buffalo National Park in PERFECT day and see a HUGE bull buffalo and a TAN body of a yearling and moan that most of the woods come up to the road so we can't SEE. Scare up two sandhill cranes (when I can't think of name Jacques tells me I say "tan mountain cranes"---CLOSE!) and that's it till we arrive at 10:50. Phone Jacques and he's a bit flustered at the start until he asks the question important to him: "Is this to be a favor or a commercial hiring?" THEN he figures it'll be 15 miles for $35. OK (Do I have a choice?) He'll be there in 10 minutes, he says. Guy who was going to hitchhike to see his brother last night in Fort Smith (and was later seen in town as we tootled about in a Greyhound) finds his brother is leaving on a trip at 1 pm, so he's not interested in sharing my tour and calls a cab. Jacques shows up in a van at 11:03 and says we'll have to rush if I'm to catch the 12:30 bus, and gives me an overview of the river and rapids and pelicans and walks from the RCMP center to the river and sets up his telescope---what looks like a fringe of white on the rocks below becomes a gaggle of feeding pelicans! They dip and scrape and chase seagulls and slow and speed, and then he focuses on another group and shows me COOPERATIVE feeding: they're in a circle and dip from a common center. Some arrive and leave, and some start to soar up in a tight pattern of 10-15, turning and wheeling in perfect unison, black wingtips contrasting mightily with white bodies and purest blue sky. More and more join the wheeling groups until there are four or five independent groups, being joined by more and more strings from the feeders, until about 100-120 are turning and banking in unison, as they fly farther and farther away, seemingly trying to keep their formations, from 10-110, right in my lenses, filling them completely all the time. Reluctantly tear myself away to go upriver to the nesting site, past his self-constructed house, via 1920-1940 wagon-cart tracks, across a definite hill that Mackenzie forded, and to a less spectacular nesting area (black flies, called bulldogs there, gather around, overshadowing mosquitoes, and he has spray we use 2-3 times to keep them away), 4-5 groups of birds sitting on nests, waiting for relievers, rolling eggs, hearing of their vascular feet that keep their feet from freezing on winter ice. and then it's 12:20 and we whiz back to a sales pitch for a 7-day $1200 canoe trip and Jerry is still loading the bus when we pull up at 12:40, and like LOTS of NWT services, he almost INSISTS I take a receipt. Give him a card, as I did to Theodora and Peter and Mrs. Borlee and Scotty, and get on bus to burble to Jerry about my lunch break, which Jacques made sure I didn't need. Fairly boring trip back save for the young buffalo and the greenish-brown center water of the huge sinkhole behind the Angus Tower. He has two children from former marriage in Calgary and a 4-month-old child with his NEW wife (Arline has FORMER wife, too---occupational hazard for bus drivers?) in Hay River, so there goes my fantasy of his tense-muscled legs and narrow hips and pretty mustache-fringed smile. I almost doze on way back but for dust studies, taking some photos, and we get back on schedule at 4:30. I buy stamps at PO and find movie is "Thunder Country" at 8 and back to pay bill and put stuff away and take shower and decide to write Edgardo a letter and eat second can of Vienna sausage (first for lunch on bus with V-8) and cans of juice and box of saltless Canadian Triscuits by Cristie Co., and do some lightwork until 7:45, and decide I'm just too TIRED to go to a movie I really don't want to see anyway, so I go to BED at 8. Recall dream of 6/16 of trying to fix poached eggs prettily on a platter, but some break, so I put them all in cups like snail cups, but bottoms are too raw and runny, so I toast muffins that end up toasted only on one side, so I figure I can put them under a broiler, but I realize MOST strongly and with MUCH feeling of frustration that I'm NOT cut out to be a fancy chef---for one thing I don't have the TOOLS. THAT dream stays in my mind but I can't remember the DETAILED dream---sexy, too---I had LAST night when I woke at 4, then at 5, then at 6, then at 7, surprised that I NEEDED 11 hours sleep.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18. Up and NOW (not before) eat second sausage for BREAKFAST and pack stuff up and get stuff sorted and find to my disgust that I THREW AWAY (or forgot) the MAILING LIST! Remember Edgardo's as Via dei Mille 10, so I write that on and send it off. All ready at 8:45 and take off walking up road and attract a large flock of GNATS that make breathing pesky, and I actually have to cough one up that I sucked down my THROAT. Sweater comes off at bridge and I'm sort of sorry I didn't call a cab, but walking feels pretty good. To terminal at 9:20 and it's 8 minutes late and then it arrives and I board in left front seat and put bag BEHIND, and take lots of pictures on the 10-10:25 flight across Great Slave Lake, land, lake, islands, and mainland, then off plane to grab cab to Con Mines, which one guy says is the only one offering tours, and the UNDERGROUND tour left at 9:30 and I'm at 10:45, so I sign up for the above-ground tour at 3, and back to cab to Prince of Wales Museum, getting receipt for $11.60, and it's CLOSED on Wednesday! Walk through back of town and find library but it's only open 1:30-4:30 and 7-9, so I (glad I left bag at Con!) walk out toward Old Town and Latham Island and past plane rentals and Indian village SMELLY from open sewers and climb rocks on farthest-north island and take pictures, avoiding blue house driveway and walk back to Wildcat Cafe, which looks VERY busy, and up to Bush Pilot's Monument to take more pictures and down for GREAT lunch at CROWDED local place: cream of potato soup with bannock, a hard-coated combination of a muffin and a roll, toasted bacon and cheese sandwich (and I underline BANNOCK in my Watts book this afternoon!), and strawberry milkshake all for $4.50+50 tip. Out at 1:15 and decide to hitch JUST as woman who LIVES in the blue house comes past to see her daughter's music program at school and leaves me off on "10 minute walk" road past lovely rocks and bushes to WRONG part of Cominco grounds, and I walk back up, developing blister on left heel, getting bandaid from girl at 2, and wash up and want to write a bit when they give me brochure on mine that I read till 3, and then I get hard hat and we're off to crushers and evaporators and cyclones and slurries and concentrators and pregnant tanks with cutie from Edmonton and his girl and a couple of Germans who don't understand English. Lots of pictures of slurries and screws of ball-rolling machines and a few of CUTE guide, and out at 4 to get a ride into town to NWT bus, which is CLOSED! DAMN! To library just at 4:25 to leave bag and search out theater that shows "The Rose" and "Tom Horn" tonight at 7, and then I try to find place to SIT that's not a BAR, and end up on a real estate office chair from 4:30-6 with a plump girl with a cough that isn't made better by her smoking and talking to friends constantly on the phone, and I get a cup of water and a copy of the Yellowknifer, which is mostly ads for Mad Raven Days that start tomorrow at 10 pm and go through the Solstice Weekend. Write this all down by 5:40 and have to decide what to do next: bar? wander? shop? And at 7: movie? library? Then eat at 9 and wander MORE till 12, when the bus leaves? NOT a very hospitable town, and LESS to do here than MOST places. Car was $25/day, but hardly any place to GO but for camping and fishing. COULD read, but don't FEEL like it. Silly to see a movie I don't CARE for, however! Fantasized dropping in on woman in blue house and saying "HELP!" Movie's at 7 AND 9, so I can do BOTH! So I stand on a street corner from 6-7 (after pricing some Eskimo stuff for $30 for TINY junk to the $200's for ANYTHING decent, none of which appeals to me), and some NWT guys DO look good: HANDSOME masculine faces, GOOD tanned arms and LOTS of bare chests with NICE pectorals. Not that they look GAY at all, but some are NICE to look at. I have to keep reminding myself of what I want: though OTHERS may treasure polar-bear-shaped NWT licenses and Inuit sculptures, I don't have to! Read my own book 7-8:40, up to movie house to wash my face and see "villanous" Tom Horn 9-10:45, a good time-passer, and have perfectly AWFUL ribs (hunks of bone with bits of meat and gristle attached) and get to finally-open bus station at 11:40 to get on bus with lots of Indians at 12---the sun's already set by 10:50 but the sky REMAINS ruddy through the ENTIRE "dark."

THURSDAY, JUNE 19. Giggly gals smoke constantly, all of 13, and I stare at waning light to Rae and Edzo at 1:30, car headlights lighting all the KIDS bright-eyed about at that time---they're healthy looking but HOW? Doze a bit on road, looking at lovely-eyed fellow whose pack had lain trustingly in front of the station, and then there are two buffalo that dash off the road too fast for a picture. Sky lightens and sun comes up before we get to ferry at Fort Providence, where I take a few pictures, and then stare out at gentle hills and woods to Enterprise, where I grab a bacon and egg sandwich to finish on the bus down to Peace River. Looked through schedules standing on corner last night to find I CAN get to Vancouver by 3:15 pm and NOT ride for 24 hours AND take new roads: by riding to Edmonton by 10:45 tonight. Start chatting with Ian Stalker, who makes time go faster as I stare into his hazel eyes and listen to his 20-year-old voice crack and look at his incredibly hairy arms and legs, which he rather tends to stare at like a kid suddenly overwhelmed by an adult body. Talk of travel and firefighting and cigarettes and smoking and families and job opportunities and Montreal and New York City. Forgot: saw a bear, small and brown, run across road in Buffalo Park this morning while Ian slept. Chicken soup for sore throat at Peace River, where I take photo of STATUE of 12-foot Davis, and he looks for Edmonton paper for want ads. It rains a lot, "dampening" his hopes of getting back to fighting forest fires, which training had given him a free helicopter ride in Alberta. Bus is so crowded they have to put on a second one, and the stop at Whitewater is at a Chinese-American restaurant with such an awful menu that I walk down the hill to have a VERY small fish filet in a sandwich that's zappy with raw onion, which gives me no ill effect. Last part of ride is mostly conversationless, as we're tired and all talked out. LOTS of kids on bus making INCREDIBLE ruckus: crying, fretting, shouting, playing loud games, banging on windows and sides of bus, sneezing. Awful! Hope to get in early, but sun sets and we wheel through traffic and some buildings reflect light in west and we pull in about 10:10 and Ian goes off to check messages at youth hostel and we agree to correspond through Whitehorse General Delivery, where he's maybe visiting a friend (girl) of his sister's. Over to Y and they have $12.50 semi-bath (sink and toilet) and $14.50 full bath (and who wants a Y without a common shower?). Shower with GREAT relief (but bath is a disaster: one shower only cold, no shower HEADS, just PIPES) and shave and squeeze 3 pimples and survey single mosquito bite from NWT and get wake-up call in for 7 and bed at 11:45, later than I would have thought. To sleep instantly.

FRIDAY, JUNE 20. Wake at 6 to piss and drink water for my still-sore throat and instantly BACK to sleep and be jarred awake by 7 am phone. Pack and out and on bus (Up early at 7 and out later at 7:35 and to cafeteria at 7:40 to be IGNORED. However, my idleness puts me only 27 on line for the 47-seat bus to Calgary at 7:45 that boards at 7:50 and is finally first-called at 7:52, as I get on to find all right windows taken, so I squeeze in on a woman sitting at aisle and she immediately moves and I'm alone for a moment before another woman joins me.) and BEAUTIFUL rolling countryside down to Calgary, but nothing REALLY to take a shot of. Hawks sitting picturesquely on two fence posts. Nonstop express stops only 3 times: once in outskirts to pick up passengers, once in middle for driver to check tires, once in Calgary outskirts to drop off a woman who refuses to hear driver warning her he wouldn't stop here again. LOTS of cows and bulls and horses of various colors, farms, roads, towns, and ride gets in a bit late at 11:25, my right side chilling from constant air blowing on side that makes me glad I have sweater on. Into cafeteria for a bacon-and-egg and fruit plate that's TASTY, and the seat has a GREAT crotch-level view out over sidewalk and there are GREAT sights of BIG-chested fellows, lots of them tanned and shirtless, lots in shorts, and GREAT jeans and crotches and heads and faces. Out at 11:50 and find I'm 12th in line ALREADY formed for Vancouver and stand and write and keep in front of old man who keeps trying to edge me out and PANIC when they announce they're forming a SECOND line for SOME destinations! If MY Penticton is called LAST after all others have moved UP, I'm sunk for a good seat! But the call is for Kelowna alone and about half move over and my bus is for Penticton and beyond. Whew! Pushy guy gets out of way and they start calling people to desk at 12:20 and luggage slows some down so much that I'm SECOND on bus, choosing 3rd seat back because bus seems NEWER and LONGER (collected three rocks from MacLeod River), though still with 47 seats, and it's WARM inside so I take off sweater and spread stuff over seat next to me and finish with this at 12:25, ready to GO. Used 11 of 20 coupons in bus pass in 8 days, so I MAY need a new BOOK, particularly if I take short trips to Victoria and New Westminster from Vancouver. Family of 3 to left chews potato chips loudly, speaks French, and gurgles drinks from cans and moves from 3 seats to 2 and back and forth and back and forth among them. Did great lightwork session with dome, working with sexual desire and past trauma, and feel good about the way the rest of the trip is structured (Ameripass and north) and free. Off at 12:37, unsat next to! Next stop Banff! The International Building has 36 flavors; cafe "Daddy's Money." GREAT mountains from FAR away. Pictures 15 and 16 TRY to get all the contrasts: busy ugly Banff, beautiful scenery and tourists all jostling up next to each other---missed a FABULOUS chest, hairy, just through plain SHYNESS to snap as he passes in front of my lens. Have to LEARN. Fifteen-minute stop starts 3 minutes early and ends 9 minutes late, more people getting on, so I continue to write and spread as much of myself out as possible, though it looks like ALL seats will be taken. IMPOSSIBLE to get good SMALL picture of hills---either they're wide enough but too SMALL, or high enough and too WIDE to get scope of them in, or too CLOSE to get a vista or too FAR to get details or the sun's not out or trees or poles or limestone mining plants are in the way, and everyone gets on, including someone with the shoes-on-seat guy in family, and there are only about 3 empty seats on bus and I have ONE of them, busily writing in my book. The chests are so DEEP here and the arms and shoulders and pectorals so well developed it'd be a PITY if very few were gay and residents would eat their hearts out. INCREDIBLE muscle builder types, one admittedly softish, the other SWOONINGLY wide of shoulders and thin of waist and narrow of hips and THICK of chest in a purple pullover and not-too-tight pants. There was the red-shirted Adidas guy with the PACK straps pulling back on his arms to show his chest. Shortish guy with FABULOUS legs spreads them as he sits on a fence and sprawl his knees about 3 feet apart, and more people board at 2:35 (this'll be a bitch to type, but worth it if it works keeping people away from my seat), and it seems to work: 2 people thrown off, more on, only woman in front of me (with a choice window, but she's FAT), and one with a space, and at 2:39 it's worked. LOTS of hitchhikers who look like they've been there a LONG time. More and more shaded slopes, one burnt out above, logged out in middle, OK below. Field produces a partner for me, a locomotive engineer from Revelstoke. Road through canyon to Golden is SPECTACULAR. (Record for food freebies in Glacier Park restaurant: 2 cream and 4 sugars for pot of tea; 5 salts and 5 peppers; 2 tartar sauce for fish and 5 butters; 2 for roll and 3 for potato, and 2 crackers for soup!) He's a GREAT informant of old rail routes, ice and snow and rock slides, train disasters, weather characteristics and local color. Pity he gets off at Revelstoke, when I set watch back a THIRD hour. Probably 2 more to go? And I threw out my time-change map, too! Mountains are great to look at as they get lower and lower and are interspersed with almost Italianate lakes which they soup up to look like Germantown. We get in VERY early to Vernon and Kelowna, but they're declared half-hour stops so I sit and sulk and do lots of Golden Javelins in lightwork. Sadly dark on the last lap, but lights show the boundaries of hills and lakes and the precise first-quarter moon lights up horizon constantly. Into Penticton JUST at 11 and across to Three Gable Hotel to try dickering for room less than $24.15, but he gives me an extra $5 in change, I remark "only 10 on the dollar?" and he looks at 1.12 conversion and comes up with 60, which I take to be the ADDED amount, so I'm happy. When I get to my room (after demanding to be CHANGED from in front where 3-4 girls were hollering to passing cars) I find: window broken and letting in breeze around frame, horrendous rumble (air conditioner on roof above me?) and no shower! Hot bath feels good, however; guy PHONES for $5.40 MORE, which he slips under door. Bed at 11:50.

SATURDAY, JUNE 21. (Four GLIDERS soaring in clouds over mountains in Hope.) Wake at 5 (again!) and then at 6 and lay till about 7:15, obviously wanting no more sleep---yet not concerned about day. Jerk off gently and shoot a good deal (first since last Thursday in Winnipeg?) (Good for higher: locomotive engineer as partner to Revelstoke; new bus for Vancouver at Penticton; room with sink and toilet at Edmonton (boo on no Price of Wales Museum) that feels good. EXERCISE, then, and repack and get phone as it rings at 9, then down to station for a real MOB scene: they say you MUST wait inside (after I wait outside 1/2 hour) and there are 3 Vancouver expresses. There ARE, and they announce one for NEW passengers and I'm on SECOND, for third right seat, and we drive past more of lake and LOTS of nice scenery too BIG for the camera, but I take 5-6 anyway! Woman across from me chats at lunch and for the REST of the 3 hours we talk of Amy, travel, the Hope slide, forest fires, "Something happening in 80's or 90's" Mt. St. Helens (she felt BOTH the Hope slide AND MSH in Penticton) and her daughter's and her adventures on an unspoiled island north of Fiji, her good tour and the 5 or 6 Andsonassan Islands "up and to the right," and LOTS of other things. Meet her daughter and her husband at terminal and we chat and they tell me whole thing: airport bus from Hotel Vancouver for $3.50, YMCA down street, information booth where it nicely IS, and they say the dome of St. Helens is building AGAIN 20 feet/day and WILL go, and they can't get NEAR it. I give them my card and they write things for me, as they CAN call me at Y for anything. Get good brochures for great Vancouver (and BC information for the rest) and pass CPAir and ask "Where's Pacific Western?" and they say: "Down five doors, hurry, they close at 4" and I get there and they say flight IS going, but can't call desk for me (which might be good, see later), so I check into shop they mention for prices, and they're ALL too much: $85-400 for prints, $80-xooo for sculptures. Up to Y and he says I CAN check in at 8 am for THAT night for $12, and I see money changer for 1.145, highest yet, so I get $229 for $200 and get to airport to find rate of 1.1605. Lose $3. Ask standing airport bus "Are you next?" and get on and he leaves IMMEDIATELY, city feeling better and hotter than reported 18 C or 66 F. Leave at 4:30 and get there at 4:55, past elegant Granville Avenue mansions, and find NO ticket at counter, but she says Goligers will be here at 6:15. So I sit and write this till 5:30, washing face and hands and glasses and ogling lots of NICE bodies. Let's hope Vancouver is nicely GAY, too. May stay HERE awhile, resting up for more bus by 6/28. Just lovely faces, chests, arms, crotches walking airport and airport johns, though I guess NOT cruising. Flo's into color-numbers on bus: 1=white, 2=black, 3=gray, 4=blue, 5=red, 6=yellow, 7=green or something, and when I say 12 she says "White and black" and I say numerologically that's 23 AND her gray, but I try 15 and she says white and red-pink, and 6 is decidedly yellow for her. Pity. At 5:35 begin to get antsy for 7:15 flight and a LONG night. Read the paper that someone left and there's not much in entertainment going on in Vancouver. Decide to STAND at desk at 6:05. He comes at 6:20, no ticket; returns at 6:30, TICKET, but seats assigned at gate 8 and I'm almost LAST through at 7 pm, getting 3D (on aisle, remarking that it's my ACTUALISM group number), and on plane at 7:10 next to Jim and Vivian Robertson from Nanaimo, who let me change seats over North Vancouver and I KEEP it to Inuvik! Cloudy, then clear, but LOTS of snowy peaks, rivers, roads, straight carved seismic lines for oil drilling, clouds, and midnight sun and really TASTY dinner of char and carrots and mashed potatoes and wine and coffee and cognac and cheese. Land at 11:35 (their time, after 3 hours and 10 minutes) and bus starts at 11:57.

SUNDAY, JUNE 22. Scraggly spruce. Tour: 6-8 foot trees are 120-150 years old. 10-minute flight to tree line. Birches 10-12 feet high. Lovely cloudy sky, sun HIGHER BY FAR than North Cape. TRUCKS for making these seismic lines. Dynamite Hill holds explosives for oil rigs. 16-year-old fire area has in last five years grown 16-18-inch scrub. Sun in our eyes at midnight. Points North trucking takes 19 hours at 50 miles per hour to go the 950 miles from Edmonton to Whitehorse to Inuvik. They're going to make a golf course! Finto Motel like U-shaped barracks. Sidewalks built last year; blacktop's been OK for a year; there are picket fences but little grass. All government housing. Homes are $600-$700/ month; $145/ month for a single efficiency. Swimming in 45 F Boat Lake in July. Permafrost tipped a FULL fuel tank once; now they're mounted on culverts (empty pipes) and four feet of gravel. 3-4" down to Permafrost. 350 Armed Forces personnel here year round. Only 128 kids in HUGE school; their tech schools are in Yellowknife! Pilings driven 12 feet @ $225/foot. Bus stops about 12:45 at shops and I get tempted by a cute Oopik for $39, but I want to get one FROM THE MAKER. 1:40 we're still waiting. Books awful, junk rife, but 6 postcards of Inuvik for 15 and 20 print-Christmas cards for $9 are GREAT for gifts! Mosquitoes "not bad now, wait 3 weeks from now." "Mosquitoes get over, no see'ums take over." Good guy talks to driver: the GREAT change in a city when a ROAD comes in: in Inuvik arrive two guys, broke, robbed, in jail for 7 days, robbed more, sent to Edmonton with $438 in tickets! Seems to load up about 2:10. I douse with Off; lots of mosquitoes around others. Out to dig down to permafrost---sure enough: ICE, in midsummer, 4 inches down. Then, without intro, we're barreling down the road toward the airport! Some mention the gym with the slides and the lectures and the coffee cake; some ask for the reindeer ranch; some moan about the Eskimo village. But we're into the airport at 3:20, with the understanding that the plane leaves at 4:45! (Told to see Kasan Village at Hazelton between Prince George and Prince Rupert.) At least by coming in on first bus we get seats in the smallish terminal, but woman behind says "You know, it's a long time to sit around here." I read a bit, people straggle onto bus, finally at 4:25 someone wanders through announcing officially, "Anyone who wants to get on the plane better get on the plane." I move out, swatting at mosquitoes, and we chat about how most were vaguely disappointed, though it was certainly interesting. Plane takes off AGAIN 5 minutes ahead of schedule, at 4:40, and they say it'll be 3 hours and 16 minutes, going the SAME way. Bumping up through clouds, Jim taking film a BIT too late, and we get drinks and chat and breakfast is good and winy and filling and they fall asleep as I sit on seat-arm and look out, then talky guy leaves cockpit and I go in and chat about clouds and trips and dials and altimeter (above sea level, NOT ground) and altitude warn light and gear lights (red up, green down) and narrow escapes and the COPILOT was copilot on a plane flying over Mt. St. Helens when it BLEW that Sunday, rocking them a bit before the 200 mph cloud rose through the under-haze and rapidly expanded from a column to a globe filling half the horizon with dark smoke, "looking just like an atomic bomb." They'd overheard a flight flying over 15 minutes earlier, saying it was quiet except for a bulge, so when it WENT he knew what it was, and the pilot got Instamatic shots of the explosion that he didn't try to sell. They start down and change runways and change DIRECTION merely by setting in the new course, so THAT'S why the plane rocks over so quickly. Land JUST on time in great gray rain at 7:50 which is 6:50 and off from front and get to airport bus and say "Hotel Vancouver?" at 7 and he goes right out AGAIN. Into Vancouver at 7:20 and to Y at 7:30 and chink (which I INTEND as a term of derision) says they only have doubles left for $22, so I have to wait for 8:30-9. So I go to john and write this by 7:40. I've been up THIS long, what's another hour? Read. Cleaners come in at 8, I say I'm waiting for a single, they say 5 minutes. I bag him at 8:15 and he pastes #253 on key and I'm up to room and strip and go to shower, cold, to be looked in on by a guy with such a beautiful body I get a semi-hard just looking at his chest and frontal hair. He strips and enters, shortish thinnish cock, cut, in a nest of dark hair, but the muscled shoulders and arms and the fabulous broad back and the THICK but perfectly formed ass turns me the hell on. He's from Germany, sorry about the weather, and others come in and I die with want. Try to out-dry a plump blond's shaving, but beauty joins him at lingering so I leave, but can't stand it and return to brush my teeth, BETWEEN them, using HIS outlet. Linger and linger, then HE leaves and I just follow him: Room 226. Back to my room and DIE, but decide I MUST try: over and knock. "A moment," and he opens in short green shorts. "If you like, we could tour Vancouver together---can I come in?" He pauses a bit, but keeps hugging his chest and shoulders: enticing or fending me off? We talk, he says "Nothing to do" a few more times and I reach out to touch his erect nipple, saying "Would you like to---?" He shies away as if bitten: "No, I don't do anything like that." "I hope it doesn't change our plans." "No, I'm liberal." "You have a beautiful body," to which he replies with a smile, "Yes, I'm a sportsman." INDEEDY! He says he'll knock at noon. I get to bed to TRY to sleep at 9, but can't, so up at 112 to put things in drawers and sort things out and look at plans and it's 12:30. He's NOT coming. I jerk off for half an hour to REAL TOTAL orgasm, sperm hitting my NOSE as I tease to last instant and then squeeze the shaft with my fist. Dennis would have LOVED it! Some lightwork, try lying down again, finally out at 2:15. Sun comes out in splotches so I go to BC Tourism and get LOWER ferry information, but bus says Ameripass is good NEITHER for Victoria (so Butchart Gardens would be $28!) NOR Port Henry (so boat is $72.50 or so!), so I wander to Gastown and have food; ham and cheese toasted, soup, strawberry tart and unfizzy uncold Dr. Pepper. Shop a bit but it's mostly junk. Walk toward Stanley Park and pass SeaBus in grand CP station, so I enter at 4:30 and go across, nice for $1, and tape XEROXES COINS for fee and receipt, and back at 5:15 to walk to look for movies and find none and getting TIRED at 6:05, so back to shower and get looked at by tall plump youngish fellow and because he MAY want me I MAY want HIM. Write this and return to piss and get more water at 6:45. But he's gone, I'm depressed and tired, but to make SURE I sleep I jerk off very feelingly AGAIN from 7-7:30, and turn over and go RIGHT to sleep. Not even fantasizing about the gorgeous hunk who wrote "June 22, would love to get sucked off. Any offers?" by the urinal. FANTASIZE, but it's probably some old fat shit. Earplugs shut out all noise: laundry across the way, cowboy boots in hallways, violin down the way, and people cruising back and forth.

MONDAY, JUNE 23. Wake at 4 after dream of not being able to do something, then again at 5:30. Guess I needed 10 hours AGAIN. Wash and there are people in john ALREADY. Pack and break the pull on the bag, dammit, but it's fairly easy to pull across if it's closed enough. Wear sweater, chilly out. No clouds at DAWN, but soon thick dark ones cover sky. Walk different way to station and FIND two movie houses on Granville Mall and a Capital 6 with almost EVERYTHING playing. Glad I didn't FIND it: have to leave SOMETHING for long boring Alaskan nights. Walk past loading bus, get stamped, board to hear woman saying "Nice day," and driver's reply "Well, it's not raining." Cute guys in ratty jeans on board and a blue headband says he's going to Whitehorse. Much YOUNGER crowd than before, and bus is nicely "window-seat-only" filled as we leave at 7 PRECISELY. Fabulous roses ALL over city, and BLUE hydrangeas against green. New Westminster of course takes me back to Hollywood Hospital, which Flo thought CLOSED a few years ago, and THAT town has crowns and potted petunias on lampposts. LOTS of people get on and ALL go to back. Frazer River plants still smoking, but no particular smell. Follow Vancouver map for streets, then southern BC map for towns, then BC map for DAYS. Sky pretty cloudy. Two jeaned guys speak GERMAN (and all signs are in FRENCH, also). Lots of back roads between Vancouver and Hope, and not very exciting. Starved by the time we get to Hope at 10, but minced ham sandwich, yogurt, and apple juice isn't very good. Tea is tea. Construction on Frazer Canyon highway above Yale causes LONG lines of one-way traffic. How CAN they schedule such work during BUSIEST season? Road is BORING after Frazer and Thompson Rivers. Not so bad as road to NWT, but that was EARLY and this is ON in the trip. Guy who gets on after my fish and wine lunch in Cache Creek did SO want to talk that even when I grunted or answered monosyllabically he STILL babbled on. I slept about an hour through pine-tree flatness and dark clouds. (Incredible TV find: Paul Robson as Umbopa, Cedric Hardwicke as Allan Quartermain, Stanley Holloway as Patrick O'Brien and some woman as his daughter Kathy in an EARLY "King Solomon's Mines"!) Four kids with Grandma going to Terrace are a real pain, though charming in their way. "Wanna change seats?" one asks brightly, and freezes when I simply say no. Then he wants it SO much I switch with him, missing hardly anything. Consistently early through trip, into Prince George at 8:30 rather than 8:55. No maps, no idea of fairly large town, where we seem to be on the outskirts, and Connaught Inn across the way looks expensive. Ask gift shop woman and she says town is THAT way. Go that way past a NO VACANCY Slumberlodge and ask at Goldcaps for a $26 single. She suggests back the OTHER way: the Ranch and Belair. Pass other toting hippies and cars that whistle at all of us. Ask at elegant Connaught and it's $25, last one left, and to Ranch where she says $21, or $22.04 with 5% tax. Into SUITE: living room, bedroom, kitchen, bath, good for 4 people for $30, and RATE for single is $22. Others come in and by morning there's no vacancy. Turn on TV to a Debby Boone special 9-10 with Bob Hope and Mel (or someone) Evergair, cute, and some good skits and then turn to (by chance) old "King Solomon's Mines" which I watch while switching back to see the NYC Towering Inferno at 49th and Park, and news that St. Helens is still venting steam through overcast. Bed at 12 and sleep soundly through the night, DARK at 10:30. Rain.

TUESDAY, JUNE 24. Wake at 7 and up at 7:15 to watch drippy TV, hear Seattle had four small quakes yesterday, exercise, pulling my BACK which pains on the right as I MOVE, like it just TENSES or SPASMS as I move, so I try to relax. Have good breakfast for $3.85+50 tip when BC guy says I was just watching cheapies who didn't tip, 10-15% customary. To bus station at 9:45 where ticket girl says buses aren't usually leaving early, and EVERYONE joins in laughing at wet black mutt that slams into a narrow clear glass area between door following someone out. Finish this about 10 and wait for 10:15 in FIRST day of rain I had to put BOOTS on for. Guy next to me mumbles, "Observations, storytelling" as he drifts smoke toward me and mumbles incoherently constantly. Rush for line, so no windows left and I take right front side seat next to a heavily accented Cornwall farmer with 100 acres there worth $250,000 who's looking at $200,000 farms here for him and his two brothers to work. Chat nicely, ride fairly boring but SOME spectacular scenery and a BEAR at a waste can that runs off quickly. Sleep a bit, look at scenery, listen to driver talk of fire 6 weeks ago, and into Dawson Creek AGAIN outside center of town. To information booth and buy a $9.50 book on Alaska and try one full motel and end at McPherson's for $22 for Jimmy and me. (9 people to Fort St. John, 11 people out) (GREAT graffiti: Life is like a shit sandwich: the more bread you have, the less shit you eat.) (Pink Mountain: segregated tour seating and $2 for scoop of cottage cheese ringed with canned peach slices on a lettuce bed.) (No farms AT ALL; in some places the gravel (save for dust) is AS smooth as tarred. Uphill "runaway lanes" on steep downhill grades! Copper ores: blue is bornite; gold is calca pyrite; oxidized-look is malachite). (Final flurry of planning: DO get the Inland Passage, but Alaska ferries DON'T cover Glacier Bay, so I get an Explorer (shared) plan for $200, and planning is easier if I FLY from Prince Rupert to Vancouver for $84 AND I get a 4-person DORM on ship for $33 in addition to $75 deck cost. So the 7-day final "splurge" will cost about $600, about the price of the luxury tours of HALF that length. It's OPEN how I'll get from Alaska back to Whitehorse for my departure on the 2nd, so I can FLY or bus or maybe even get a RIDE. Bit DIZZY from the times and dates and prices and alternatives, but it takes in LOTS right at the END, when I'm usually loathe to make plans MYSELF. Still 3 (not many!) free days in Alaska, so at least Point Barrow for $229 for one day appears to be set. And "by chance" my $85 flight from Price Rupert to Vancouver takes MOST of my Canadian funds and the REST is all quoted in US$, which are my traveler's checks! He makes a big hit; we get shifted off the highway to a kitchenette for no extra cost. I quickly undress when he's out and take laundry out, getting advice from pretty blonde and ogling two shirtless barefoot jeaned French guys who obviously wash EVERYTHING. Wash and dry and read Alaska book and back to look at map and walk down to 102nd St. to see movies and obelisks. Think "Was there a REASON I decided on 102nd St. and there IS: Here comes Ian Stalker! He found nothing in Edmonton, hitchhiked here, dislikes it and plans to go to Whitehorse, where I should leave not for him and he for me. Forgot till NOW! Kramer vs. Kramer at the movie, take photo of shorted fellow and milestone and then obelisk and it looks like rain, so I decide against Dawson Mall and have a steak at Travelodge across from DYNAMITE muscled blond with an earring who KNOWS he's beautiful in his jeansuit, but I stare anyway. It starts to shower, stops as I walk to hotel, I shower as his Real Estate guy leaves and he goes to eat at 9, and I look through more of book until he comes back at 10:15 and we both get to bed about 10:45, me to sleep instantly despite fast back twinges in certain positions and bed being a bit short.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25. Wake early and loaf and he's up to shower at 7 and I'm out at 7:15 to Travelodge for pancake breakfast for $2.50 and coffee and to bus station for a woman and her daughter to claim the front seat and a relief driver across the way and the NEXT driver in BACK (the first day of the DAILY schedule after a half-time Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday schedule). Windows are dirty, which pisses me, and land is flattish through Fort St. John and almost to Laird. Then mountains start and valleys deepen and clouds add drama and I wash windows at Pink Mountain (or wherever) and look at landmarks that the driver whizzes past: the dry waterfall, the erosion pillars, the unconvincing Indian profile, the spectacular views and wide vistas and incredibly rocky WIDE bottoms for TINY streams. Time moves and moves and moves, segregated seating where I have cottage cheese and soup, the "family place" where I have stew that causes me the farts for the rest of the trip, and my debate on sharing a room erased when all the single guys get off as drivers. Count hours and drivers change and finally we're over border but I don't even get out at Watson Lake, where the baseball team celebrates out on the porch at 11:30, still lighted sky, and full-looking moon helps too. I decide to nap, go up to say "Does it have to be so chilly back here?" thinking of woman's complaint of breeze and driver saying it MUST have a breeze. "What do you mean?" he says, and I say "Just look around, everyone's using sweaters." He stops bus and stares me down and says "What do you mean telling a driver to turn around?" and I fluster and stutter and apologize and watch scenery because I'm too flabbergasted to sleep. Window rattles something awful so I move back two seats, two Chinese kids at LAST asleep from their constant chatter, and I DO sleep from 12:30 to 4:45, awake in time to move back up and watch sun come up over pines and mountains and get into Whitehorse at 6:05 am, seemingly NO time change, refreshed from nap.

THURSDAY, JUNE 26. Next door is "vacancy" Fort Yukon for $R22 and a PERFECT room: single bed, chair, desk, shower, sink, plug for toothbrush: perfect! Wash face and fall into bed until 9:20, then up to get to Information Office and find out about tours, decide NOT to go to Dawson City and JUST to go through, have French toast at Travelodge for $2.75, so I go to Atlas Tours for a ticket for the 9:15 "Frantic Follies" and the 2 pm Shwatka boat trip and decide to see about ENDING tours. Talk over possibilities at Atlas till 1:30, when I go out front to wait for bus to (OH, forget again about going down to GREAT town of Klondike and GREAT walk along river to fish ladder, sexy joggers, hitchhiking a ride back to town. Wynn Nolan, SF in late 50's, Earl "Fatha" Hines in 60's---now in Frantic Follies in Whitehorse!) Miles Canyon (easily walkable) to Schwatka and cute North Dakota farmer on his own till mid-August. Later "Would you like company to Dawson City?" "Rather not" and he turns out to have a mini-camper. Too personal. Great sunny cruise on beautiful waters 49 feet above former dangerous rapids and pines and poplars that yellow in fall. Chat with captain, buy 8 cards for $1 and a copper sample for $1 with gorgeous colors. Turn about 2:20 and glide back at 4, driver drops and picks me at hotel with traveler checks for Atlas Tours and we go at it (with intermission for log skyscrapers and closed log church) till 6:30, me spending $96 Canadian and $359 American and getting rest of trip SET. Looks GOOD---felt JUST GREAT walking nature trail, pressing three posies in book. To MacBride Museum for about an hour for stuffed animals and LOADS of Yukon memorabilia and trapping and fishing lore, then back for shower and to Travelodge for solid non-oily Yukon trout and baked potato and VERY sketchy service in a crowded dining room. Out at 9 to line to Frantic Follies to write some, and show is just AWFUL with no TALENT and somewhat funny and totally outrageous with the spindly tall comedian who only had to take off his pants to be a riot. LARGE crowd, some locals, and BEST laughs came from 3 men performing to "Put your arms around me, Honey," and woman for "I alone love you" quartet of men. Burning of Sam McGee again, lots of Robert Service, and magic and cancan and girls. Out at 11 to incredible sunset from 11:15-11:45 (4 pix) and to bed at 12.

FRIDAY, JUNE 27. Wake at 7, jerk off, sort out stuff and throw LOTS away. (Top of pines SOLIDLY BUNCHED with brown cones.) Repack fairly easily and get out at 8:15 to check ticket to make SURE bus schedule changed from 8:45 to 9:45. Then after packing and throwing lots away (forget I had that rectal pain for about 10 minutes at 3 am) out at 9 to find nothing at PO from Ian (they make exception to 10 am pickup when I say "That's rough if I get the 9:45 bus." I leave letter for him saying I'm back July 1-2, then check out, leave bag with same mother-daughter going to Fairbanks, get a bacon and egg on toast for $2.25 and get on 4th from front, CLEAN windows. Read up and write before we leave at 10, waiting for an old one-eyed fart who smokes in the fifth row, saying "It's OK, it's written up there." Thank God he gets out at Haines Junction, where 5-6 hikers get on and I get a picture of the Kluane under clouds (like their new $2 stamp). Perfectly clear sky clouds up gradually, solid over Kluane, and having done Alcan Highway ONCE, I'll be content to FLY anywhere if I want to VISIT or ENJOY the mountains and streams and forests and wildlife themselves. Leave Haines Junction (NOTHING there) at 12:05, stopping at Mackintosh Lodge for lunch at 12:15, talking to GREAT driver who says company doesn't like his commentary but he does it to keep away boredom. Great pudding-cake for 75. Lodge, sadly, is behind trees that block sunny distant peaks I wanted a shot of on road. Driver says Mt. Logan (highest in Canada) is 45 miles from any highway, not even visible on clearest day from special observation tower. Road BUILT in curves so strafing Japanese planes couldn't hit a ROW of convoy trucks. Pipeline along road had a moveable plug separating DIFFERENT fuels! Closed out when Valdez opened. Fantastic 360 panorama of mountains and forests and lakes and road and clouds. Whole VALLEY was glaciated only 200 years ago. STOP at Sheep Mountain (no sheep) and smell sage grass and look at hill. Lovely filling-in lake. Fireweed blooms in DUST. My book says Destruction Bay, named when a sudden storm blew down Army tents in 1942. Girl asks driver: "I presume it was a hurricane that cause high waves that washed away the settlement long ago." Girl to friend: "Hurricane." Um. Driver says excessive heat (100 for four days!) as well as current forest fire that blue-hazes sky, causes the now-unseasonal clouds. Thousands of acres of Kluane Forest burnt in last five days, affecting 47 climbing parties in the Park. Fire on OTHER side of highway puts Indian trap lines out of work. Glacier melt runoff usually fills such a big stream bed by now, but for some reason they're still quite dry. Ravens called Yukon turkeys here. Pass world's longest horseback ride, Gulf of Mexico to Arctic Circle, in HUGE truck and cars. Spruce very stunted, driver talks of permafrost, yet there are WATER LILIES in the ponds! Past St. Elias Range the hills are merely rolling. LAST STATE COMING UP! Road in westernmost Yukon particularly narrow and twisting and dusty, and vegetation particularly stunted. Then there's the roofed booth ahead and we surge onto the paved road proclaiming entrance to Alaska with stanchion, placard, obelisk, and sign. Then the Immigration Officer comes abroad, checking everyone's identification and at last the driver says I can get out for a photo. Then the couple bubbles out and takes ME at the entrance and steering wheel, and I take them at flags and bus front while driver washes ALL the side windows! Vegetation is pretty sparse to start with in Alaska, too. There are sand dunes (or more likely ASH dunes) in Alaska, complete with windblown ripples! Decided to fly to Point Barrow tomorrow! Tok Lodge brings the four single guys to same table: Philly to NY to Adirondack Express to Montreal and other luxury trains across to Inland Passage. Kansas City FLEW 1 hours with friend for $75 around Glacier Bay, hated Ketchikan and loved the train. Florida got stopped at border and loved passage. Great complete tour of Tanacross: covering dogs, kids on bikes, trailers and blockhouses in block layout with forest surrounding them. Local girl in halter and chiffon scarf, spectacled young man in jeans, trailers and garages and wrecked cars. About 100 lost souls. Odd to see the bridge for Yericon Creek at the TOP of a hill! (Narrative continues in the NEW book. Graffiti: Save a tree; eat a beaver. In Fairbanks told to eat in H. Salt for salmon, same building as other chains. Midnight Sun---120 miles north or 180 feet UP from Fairbanks. Winter: sun rises at 10 am, sets about 1:30-2---"Just runs along the tops of the mountains down there." Last seat on the plane from Fairbanks to Barrow turns out to be between two PERFECT people: guy who lives there three years and tells me what I can't see through the clouds and Randy, the tour guide for Maupintours who'll be on the Explorer with me! Carpenter makes $23.80/hour, 12 hrs/day, 7/days/week, time and a half on Saturday and double time on Sunday! He bought a house in Riverdale, California (80 miles north of San Diego) and plans to buy more. Only liquor in dry "borough" of north of Arctic Circle is at a government post he point out to me, as well as the Naval Arctic Research Lab (NARL) and the dump and processing plant, the Air Force Station and the black lead that splits the ice from the shore, which is still IN. Randy says his is a "good group" and if he's gay, he's gorgeous: working for Maupintours two years, hoping to get to China this year, only second and last time to Barrow, has pretty much his choice of tours and loves his work, getting all the travel he'd usually do, free. His tour is $2000+, Dawson City about all I'm NOT seeing. My flight from Anchorage to Whitehorse is via Juneau! Still ICE on ground, tundra DAMAGE remains permanent as a pond. Tundra stretches 250 miles to Brooks Range. All water and sewage trucked in and out (don't MIX the trucks!). ASRC (Arctic Slope Regional Corporation; Eskimo, Inc) set up a satellite themselves and gets 11 channels of TV and telephone. MUCH more interesting than Inuvik. PERFECTLY FLAT! Arctic longspur: bird. Water 10/gallon. Permafrost melts down 18" in summer. Inupiat THEIR name for themselves. Summer: about 100 miles of water to pack ice, then about 1070 miles to North Pole. 9" tides, only 30-40' above sea level. Ponds, once formed by breaking tundra, GROW as water heats more and more permafrost. 88 million square acres, 160,000 square miles in largest "borough" or county. Birds: plovers, curlews, pintail ducks, geese, Arctic longspur. Natural gas (above-ground pipeline) is fuel. Barrow used to be called Ootpiavik "High place" for looking over ocean for whales---30 feet. Doll of driver-guide from Iowa. Range 78 to -68, which is smaller than Fairbanks with 110 to -80! Interiors extreme. Browersville, northern suburb of Barrow: Brower, first white man in area in 1886. 5" Styrofoam insulation in houses. All over: TRASH---no way to take it out. NARL built in 1948. $14 million incinerator doesn't work---they burn trash---may put up a fence. Cross "Top of the World" bridge, northernmost in America. NARL has 3 Navy men, rest ITT employees. 98 people, down from 600, at NARL. DEW-line site, one of 5 in Alaska---radar base. Pack ice BLUE and BLACK and gray and white, some loom 20 feet high. Piles of antlers, jawbone arch, Indian picking from beach and water---something! OTHERS eat at Pepe's, the northernmost Mexican restaurant. Mukluk-making---they don't CHEW hide with teeth anymore, use pliers! At end "I hope you guys understand what I said, I'm finished with my story." Formal parka: sunshine ruff from wolves, 90 muskrat skins. Parka-putting-in and out demonstration. Barrow Natives Dance Club: drum made of caribou or of the stomach, liver membrane, or diaphragm of whale, frame of driftwood (only source of wood---from Siberia, from another source). 1) Welcome Dance (picture). 2) Invite your friend to practice a song together. They wear GLOVES to dance. Almost Chinese cantillation and vibrato. 3) Displaying her work or craft. 4) Hanging meat up to dry (2 people, as all were save 2)---9 people in all. 5) Exercise Dance: "Men move around any way they want." 6) Blood brother dance---after seeing each other after a long time. THEN, boy playing with yoyo (2 balls on sinew going anti-rotational), and bull-roarer. THEN fundance "warm up yourself," everyone do it; then "God Will Take Care of You" in Inupiat. Caribou hide (base), wolf (hair), Arctic fox (ruff), seal (eyebrows) in my mask. Try to get bag and remember CARDS and squash sides a bit. Then slides on whale hunting. WINDOW seat on the way back. Patchy sea frozen and refrozen; scattered sandy elongated islands. Cloud patterns. Lead lines like roads frozen whiter than mass. Some rippled silt patterns visible under shallow offshore waters. RATHER PAISLEY patterns: LACEY! Really LIKE land and SMALL fields and roads and "county lines"---or IS it land? And lakes and land mixed! ICE, with road tracks, as "different looking" land comes into sure view. First POINT has refinery storage drum towers. Now there are GREEN rivers; lakes covered with fish-scale floes. Layered clouds flowing in different directions hi-mid-low. I get into window LAST seat (farthest past wing) on SHADED left, which is IDEAL! I sit, at first, almost weeping: "I believe, I believe, I BELIEVE." SNOW-drifted land now. It looks SO like trees in valleys that I have to REMIND myself I'm NORTH of trees! Now incredible zigzag patterns in ice. Imagine how THIS "landscape" would look polarized ala 2001? STRAIGHT lines and SQUARE floes in ice. Trails? Like snow-covered parkland set with trees and straight and gracefully curved roads. Then lakes with REDUCED ice cover on 50% of area. But FLAT land still. I BELIEVE!! Feel incredibly joyous! White whispers of forming ice in black lakes. A pingo! perfectly round regular mound. Camps and drill sites off roads now. Clusters of villages. The pipeline! looking like a shining TRAIN with innumerable cars. And I'm OUT of film!! Extraordinary sights! And engine cowling flies back to BRAKE plane! Pipeline (elevated) an INFINITE bridge. WHAT A TIME TO RUN OUT OF FILM! 6:45 at Prudhoe Bay. I'm LIMP from anticipation of "Do I fly?" and of SIGHTS. OVERLOAD; SENSORY OVERLOAD! Randy's up front, looking over his flock, and I WANT him to come back and he DOES, to the john, and he says "You got a whole seat to yourself!" "The best in the plane" I chortle. "Piece of cake," he says with a smile and it IS; how RIGHT. I ask for a glass of water, get it from lovely black stewardess, and as I sip the icy nectar my eyes water: John at Hollywood Hospital rushes back to mind. I sip it as a sacrament. GREAT boots and slender jeans pass beneath plane wing as Prudhoe boards. GORGEOUS GUYS here! NO pots, NICE muscles, GOOD gentle faces, GREAT legs in jeans, just GREAT thighs! At LEAST four empty seats on Prudhoe-Fairbanks flight and one next to me out of Barrow! No problem!! Piece of cake!!! Off at 7:30. (Flight Anchorage-Juneau's GREAT views of low mountains and smaller glaciers and constant islands (but no McKinley) and larger peaks (Mt. St. Elias striated by clouds) and HUGE glaciers mostly covered by clouds and then TOTAL clouds, so thick and high that NO part of Kluane peaks are visible above, sadly. Left window great, right sees mostly ocean. SOME snow peaks poke through clouds toward Glacier Bay (into last third of 1.4 hours flight). Decent breakfast. RUSH to get on flight when Jake tried to avoid road construction and I zap desk at 7:10 for 7:20 flight that takes off at 7:30. A BIT of what MIGHT be part of Glacier Bay. Great blue crevasses and furrows in HUMMOCKS of whiteness between black ridges and peaks. SOLID clouds close in as we begin descent 86 miles out of Juneau. Hot towels and I hold camera at ready in case clouds clear. $3.10 in Juneau airport for regular and $2.75 for fast film; only a 3-minute flight. Eerie descent in featureless gray. Mountains slide by as we land in rainy Juneau and I get off, leaving my carry-on, to buy film and a new notebook, since this is the LAST PAGE LEFT. Get back on and everyone lets me get on, but when I say "Whitehorse?" they say NO. So I go to OTHER plane and THEY say I have to have a boarding pass! So stewardess goes to get that, and as I pick up a newspaper from the carry-on rack, I suddenly remember that my carry-on is on the OTHER plane. "Weren't you here a minute ago?" the stewardess there asks brightly. "Yeah," I say, "This isn't my day---" though it IS, since I REMEMBERED it. Stewardess on RIGHT flight returns to say that she enjoyed the fresh air and exercise and that I can sit in A1 if I want to, though I was assigned somewhat farther back. (START OF SECOND BOOK) New book 10:30 (Juneau time) July 1, 1980. Still VERY cloudy on takeoff---bumpy flight over glaciers, probably still so to Whitehorse, but it's only 30 minutes: 15 up and 15 down!)

FRIDAY JUNE 27 (continued). Stop at Alaska pipeline crossing a river and take pictures, then on rushing bus over frost-heaved roads to get to City Limits and follow roads into town, where driver hands out purple hotel-rate sheets and says Fairbanks Hotel is OK and cheap. Walk there with a couple (he's a gap-toothed Bruce Jenner with nice chest and HUGE legs) who called to find singles only WITHOUT bath for $13. Check in about 11:15 pm and wash face and teeth and get right to bed, deciding to wait till tomorrow to phone Wien to get to Point Barrow.

SATURDAY, JUNE 28. Wake about 6 and phone at 7 to hear the flight is full but the waiting list is very short. Cab to airport through rain (leaving bag in room, which will be switched to one with a bath tonight) at 8 and they say I should wait for a guaranteed RETURN, before leaving. I have a well made omelet in the restaurant that would have been delicious had it been HOT, and stare at green-tighted jock with FABULOUS blond hair. BUY ticket and go to boarding gate where last-minute stragglers leave only 3 seats by 9:10 for me and the Nelsons, and two women come through at 9:20 but they HAVE their boarding passes, so we three get on EXACT last 3 seats! I'm into LAST seat, between two guys, who turn out to be great (see previous). Great flight, great tour of Barrow (see previous) which makes Inuvik look POOR, and wait on tenterhooks to GET on plane (see previous) and FABULOUS flight to Prudhoe Bay and Fairbanks. Another cab to Fairbanks Hotel to wash socks while I soak in the tub, feeling worn out from the tension, and jerk off again hitting nose with come. FABULOUS feeling, and drop off to sleep about 11:15, delighted.

SUNDAY, JUNE 29. Up at 7 to still-damp socks and pack and down debating to phone for McKinley Park reservations from station, but it's SO cloudy and dim that I figure to see McKinley LATER and go through to Anchorage TONIGHT to have a better chance of seeing two of Dennis's friends. Station has NOTHING, gives pains by charging $49.75 for the ticket, and I leave bag with people and go to Steak and Pipes, named for its huge ORGAN, and have a gristle (ham) and cheese omelet for $4 and back to see people BOARDING train, so I dash for Dome in back and sit next to University of Alaska-jacketed 6th grade teacher Doug Toelle (TOLL-ee) who tells me ALL about his life in a coed convent and about what we're passing. GREAT chasm for Nenana River, but constant rain and clouds socks in mountains. No animals, either, except birds. Ride starts to weary about 3, so I'm to dining car for no reindeer steak and good filling salmon and Doug joins me and we share 6 beers and he's CUTE. Back up to dome to chat with Altlands as we pull into Anchorage late at 8:30. YMCA listed in phone book as "Armed Services," but I get to phone (past sullen-faced cutie in jeans and a sexy walk) and guy says hello. "Jake or Mark?" "Jake." "I'm Bob, friend of Dennis Southers." "Welcome to Anchorage, our guest room is best, I'll pick you up in a few minutes." FABULOUS. Everyone else is picked up and I'm back in 9 pm Anchorage sunlight and here's plump walrus-mustached Jake enthusiastically saying this doll Rob's over for the evening so it's sex-night in Anchorage, if I want to join. To their GREAT house on O'Malley and Mark's plumper lover putting on pants. Rob is almost a dwarf, but young and cute and nicely muscled. I shower and shave while Jake takes pants (with MY WALLET in them!) and all other clothes and washes them AFTER he dries my socks (how PERFECT!) and out nude, as directed, for a spinach-salad dinner while watching Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" with a dark-haired Michael York and a reframed nude scene that erases Romeo's buns and Juliet's tits. Jake tries seducing Rob and then me and then goes to bed, taking Rob with him, and Rob's back and TV goes off at 11 and Rob's to bed with Mark, where they do it night and morning, and Jake joins ME, trying to get me hard, but I plead fatigue and we both drop off to sleep.

MONDAY, JUNE 30. Up at 8 as everyone dresses and leaves to last me and Rob, who's to show me the town, and he showers and puts on pants and I say, "I'm sorry to see that," and he takes them off and we neck and suck on each other and 69 furiously until he jerks off and comes and I jerk off with great sweat and come LOTS, which he likes. We shower together and neck more and clean up the place a BIT and leave about 10 to view Earthquake Park and the luxury homes STILL above it and to Museum for great tours at 11 through Indian crafts and Anchorage history, earthquake photos GREAT. Out about 12:30, starved, and decide on Top of the World at Hilton Westways Inn and it's only $23 for soup and sandwich for him and GOOD filling liver and bacon and onions and carrots and peas and spaghetti and cacciatore sauce and banana bread and red wine for me until 2, when they hand back my BLEACHED traveler's check that begins to read "VOID!" They finally check that the number's OK, which is a nice service to have. Back in car and see SECOND highest tide receding at Cook Inlet and tromp around mud flats and grab a quick kiss and he shows me all three dirty bookshops but I CAN'T get into glory hole watching and then sucking off in the dark, so we're out to call his mother and pick up a bicycle at Penny's (where he lets a GORGEOUS blushing red-blond in tight jeans from Arco get away without getting his NAME), and he lets me off at Anchorage Arts at 4 with Jake, who leaves, and we drive out to Portage Glacier, PERFECTLY CLEAR after the eternal clouds of Anchorage (where we keep trying, but never glimpse McKinley, so my only sight was on the peak above the clouds as we flew back from Barrow), and we enjoy the 20-minute nature train till 7 and the Bird House for INCREDIBLE card-bedecked ORIGINAL (?) dirt-floor trapper's cabin and HEAD-steaming pickle. Caught in construction traffic till 8:15, when I stand at Turnagain Inlet and watch tide advance about 6" in 10 minutes, 3'/hour, 15-19 ft/day, and get groceries and back to find Mark had EATEN, so good meatloaf-burgers go uneaten as we chat about ballet and opera and arts. Rob comes over to chat, having to leave at 10 to work 11-7 am, tired thanks to me, but he says he WILL write or visit. We're all tired so we're to bed at 10:30. Jake again sucks on me but HE'S so hard that I find it easy to suck him off, and then he lets me sleep toward 11, alarm set at 5:45 for my flight.

TUESDAY, JULY 1. Wake fairly groggy and it takes HIM a long time to get going, then trying to avoid highway construction I race into lobby at 7:10 for 7:20 plane, GREAT flight to Juneau (see previous) and confusion on plane switch, and flight to Whitehorse is ALL clouds until we're down over the Whitehorse Valley itself, when "we've changed runways, so you on the left will have a good view of the city of Whitehorse." I snap two photos and put in FAST film. Off at 12 and there's NO tour ANYWHERE from airport, and onto bus for $2 (with no exchange) to Fort Yukon and he says he can't cash check, so I'm out to find PO and banks CLOSED on July 1, Dominion Day! Into Atlas tours and she says her 10% is the best I'll find anywhere, so I sign up for the 6 pm river tour to Lake Labarge for a barbeque---for $24.95! Find log church still closed and get back to pay $28 for room that I thought was $22---and maybe it WAS since rates MAY have gone up TODAY! In to find my passport (with relief---customs man at airport barely accepted my laundered Blue Cross and AAA cards for my ID) and look through schedule for my final week here and even debate taking a NAP, but I finish THIS to date at 3:25 and determine to do the first LIGHTWORK session since, I guess, Vancouver! (Re-meet Michael and Jay, and LOVELY Rick, who goes home with O-ma, and cool Randy, with a pretty blonde.) Fiddle till 3:55 and meditate till 5:15 and get first to boat at 5:30, watching bulky blond Chris fix boat and pretty Jocelyn let the 6 of us on at 6. Zigzag past sandbars downtown and downstream to Egg Island, past two barking dogs who let us mercifully alone, and shirtless owner who SADLY lets us alone, and I wandered around island, seeing grouse and ground squirrel and the steaks are mediocre and potatoes well buttered and we chat until 9 and get back at 10, seeing a bald eagle on the way: a flash of whitetop on a tree. EXHAUSTED to bed after jerking off at 10:30-11, blocking window with coverlet and ending up coolish.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2. Wake about 6:30, as usual, and lay until 7:30, then shower and pack and get out at 9 to try the PO again, no letter, the bank's open at 10 so I have French toast at the T&M (or something) for 4 AMERICAN dollars and get back to hotel to get out at 10:15 and get to train, getting LAST seat in no- smoking car which I can turn to FACE direction of travel and feel GREAT. Train takes off at 10:50, covering same territory as Schwatka trip for a bit, then rolling hills and desert-like countryside until I fear this will be a BORE. But reflections in Bennett Lake are nice and I walk ALL the cars to find many tours, loud people, smokes, and bored sleepers and readers. Michael and Jay offer me a beer, knocking off two tops as we try to open them, and sharing paper cups, and brown-eyed smiling Rick takes pictures and my heart. (Taku docks at Skagway at 5:58, late.) Train climbs and trees get stubbier and we cross the Yukon-BC border in temperate lands and the BC-Alaska border in Arctic cold and rockiness. Trains pass, waters fall, glaciers loom over black rock, and we snap and snap and snap pictures and talk lovingly and bring his O-ma, Thea Brown, onto the back to watch. Stop at Bennett for lunch and they save me a seat as I go up to photograph snowplow and wooden hollow floorless church, then back for starchy beef stew and baked beans and coffee and decent apple pie and cheese for dessert. We talk and talk and talk of his draft-resisting move to Canada, his draft board's good in not carrying out steps for his indictment and his subsequent complete clearance to enter the US. Also of 5-beat TAtaTAtata, or 7-beat TAta, TAta, TAtata "simple" rhythms and the BENDING stick that strikes RIM of drum first, and then the head later with more force. And I'm most in LOVE with him: his smile and soft brown eyes and thick legs and worry about his camera shots. Scenery gets VERY grand past pass, in last hour (surely do it north to south for best effect---though better is to take the train to Bennett and the road as a roundtrip from and to Skagway), with high bridges, transparent trestles, waterfalls, swaying canyon vistas, roads across chasms, 27-layer falls, and passing trains that make us BACK UP over bridge again. Constant snapping, and finally Lynn Canal and Skagway. Through customs in a walk, say I'll meet them for dinner at 6 in their Klondike Inn lobby, and walk to Skagway Inn to get 9th of 10 rooms (not single $15 porch a bare-chested beauty has) for $25, and up to throw down stuff and snap pictures around town and get information and look through souvenir shops, buying an oosik for $4 and the poem for 25, then pass them on bus, find Cosimo's is best for eating, and get to hotel to PASS him going to room and look at gaudy lobby and they're over at 6:10 and we have FILLING meat and salad bar for $10. I'd bought 4 rolls of film and cashed $100 in checks already. Try to get him to share drink after we go wrong way for Soapy Smith's grave, but he gets pissed at town girl who needs his number to take his claim for expenses in losing their luggage for a day. Morosely I claim my Klondike Tini (2), awful vodka martini, in dimly-lit girl-loud bar, and stagger back to hotel to decline dinner with Michael and Jay and again jerk off 10:30-11 and get to bed AGAIN with coverlet over window.

THURSDAY, JULY 3. Wake at 6:30 and lay till 8, daydreaming about travel and next trips, then shower and shave and brush teeth and pack and get out at 10, leaving bags, and down for walking tour from 10-11, entertaining, and walking to grave when girl who heard me ask for flying tour rates runs up and says "Two of us want to go and we need three." OK. Pay $35 and take off at 11:35 and land at 12:30 TOTALLY fully completely impressed. Let's hope SOME of the 40+ photos convey the glaciers, valleys, rives, snows, views, canyons (onto dock at 6:15), 4-5 moose with mother and calf crossing lake untaken, as well as a moose roiling stream silts, a porcupine loping along lake like a prickly tank, another I didn't see, and no mountain goats or caribou, as he'd hoped. GREAT turning, swinging, looping, soaring, repeating, lowering trip over Chilkoot trail and many hikers, including some up the "classic" ascent. GREAT FLIGHT! Girls suggest health food shop and I have sour cream-potato soup and a cheese-sprout sandwich on rye for $3, and watch guy in shorts coming in later. NOW at long last (sweating at 80!) walk to neat pine-shaded graveyard of about 80 wooden headstones (and one great-legged guy crosses gangplank now, with girl) and then few yards up rocky trail through silent lovely forest for Reid's Falls. Walk back down State Street, completing tour, buying $2 cookbook for Dennis and book for me, more film, and to museum for about an hour, reading NEWSPAPER accounts of shooting of Soapy Smith and the avalanche at Chilkoot Pass on July 8, 1899. To information house at 3:45 to see the 10-minute slide show and 50-minute movie of "Year of Gold, Days of Adventure" with good TINTED slides. Decide to have pea soup and rye toast for $1.85 in the Sweet Tooth from 5:10 to 5:30, and then pick up bags, watch horseshoe throw, first contest of Skagways' July 4 fest, guys tanned and shirtless and lissome STILL working across from hotel. Sit on dock and write this as I watch Taku sail in, and finish STILL waiting to board, and JUST then board at 6:25, letting purser take ticket then though I protest, saying "You can go back and get a proper ticket written out if you don't trust me," so I trust him. Up three decks to map and dorm 31, finding door locked, and swabbie says I have to get key from purser. Around to purser and she announced "Keys in about 10 minutes." Try to get on flying bridge but they're roped off, so down in shade outside to watch about a dozen cars get on. Not much traffic, about 50 walk-ons and MANY more get off than get on. "Last call, non-passengers ashore" comes at 6:35, things moving fast without tenders, and for first time today my red pullover doesn't feel too warm. Dock at Haines at 7:58 to "Town is 4 miles away, be back at 8:20 for 8:30 departure." Delays. Explore ship: dining room closed at 8; snack shop a noisy smelly sweatshop (with cheap prices, however), and lounges about 1/6 full. Find from guide that we'll be PASSING Haines later, and that whales MIGHT be seen off Kezidan (?) River, maybe about 10 pm. It WILL get too dark to see, he says, at some time. And single truck DID have to bring on 6 different loads as trailers. Read paper (Glacier Bay whales gone and boats will be curtailed!) and we leave at 9:09! Hills get lower and lower and channel gets wider and wider. Sunset lasts a LONG time, taking vapor trail about 9:30. The intro by the ranger mainly encourages us to pick up free pamphlets, but the 20-minute film by Taplow on the humpbacked whale is just spectacular, marred by stupid talking and film-overlooking audience. Sit in lounge until talking and smoking gets to be too much, on deck until it's too cold, and by 12 I decide not to sleep. No sandwiches for dinner, only root beer and yogurt and time rather drags and the scenery is not REALLY to be repeated. So much for THIS day. Round Douglas Island closely and majestically, guided by various blinking lights. Sunset color FINALLY fades out of pink about 12:30, but east LOOKS like SUNRISE is immanent. Could read LARGE print all through the trip, see only the BRIGHTEST stars (so sadly no hope for aurora viewing), and can EASILY tell which mountains have snow where. At 2:30 I take stuff from dorm 31, single guy sleeping on other bottom bunk, and we land about 3:15. Dash off for the Summit, full, and she says next is Alaskan, 3 blocks down next to the Red Onion. Walk longish way, past stairways to "upper" city, and get single for $19.54 and get in to leave call for 9:30 and flop into bed without even washing face at 3:30, hoping to get SOME sleep. Seem to toss and turn comfortably all night.

FRIDAY, JULY 4. Wake at 7:40 and THINK I don't sleep any more, but get knocked awake by guy who says "I just woke you" and it's 9:30. Find a GREAT shower, "cold cream soap" putting me back to shampoo. Dress (lost shorts?) and out to reserve for Saturday and find street blocked for PARADE that starts at 11 am! Around corner for cab company, they say "Five minutes" and I begin to panic at 10:35 when flight leaves at 11:20 and they say it takes 35 minutes to get to airport. But immediately a cab cruises by, I shout, "I got one" into office and get into cab which breezes to airport in 10 minutes for $10. Don't tip him and he STILL thanks me profusely: overcharged? Onto plane, seeing Randy and Michael and Jay again (and two girls from the Skagway flight were sitting on Juneau curb waiting to see the parade!) and we board at 11:10 and leave at 11:20, a DOLL of a bored tanned blond in a tan suit with tan hair and eyes and mustache and vest and stripes in blue tie with blue shirt. Silly for regulations that take as long as the flight! Scattered sweeping clouds in sky and I feel comfortable without underwear (since I couldn't find CLEAN ones!). Off 11:26 and land at 11:38, ending with tacky ad for Alaska Airlines to San Francisco. All seems to be LAST: nonsmokers board last; I sit in front and we exit AFT. Flight barely tops lowest clouds, two good shots of Mendenhall Glacier going up, no whales in passage, and lovely HIGH clear snow peaks in distance ABOVE clouds that I can't quite take a picture of. Now: have to separate Lodge passengers from Explorer passengers, and I'm HUNGRY! Tan doll has found a LOVELIER blond up front; must be a lot of unsatisfied YEARNING there, in a steward's job, too (I hope?!). Confusion getting on bus, no real SIGNS, no one seems to recognize their transport voucher. At 11:55 he says we get to Lodge about 12:30 and boat leaves (short walk) at 1:30, no lunch served on ship. Clouds building up over east hills. Nelsons say the boat trip was just fabulous, the last of their trip. Gary behind extols the marine and bird life we'll see. French couple ahead of me exist in confusion. Fare to Lodge is $4.50. Oh: the blond doll was ANOTHER steward: serve Air Alaska and LOVE it. Gustavus Inn, only OTHER lodging, is TINY, about 4 rooms? Stopped at 12:05 by "local Fourth of July festival." Homesteaded in 1918-19; 60 families; individual generators only source of electricity, if they have them. In 1794 glaciers covered WHOLE area and "glacial rebound" lets land RISE above SEA! By 1879, some survey found glaciers had receded 48 miles! Sixteen glaciers, 44,000 square miles; Mt. Fairweather highest at 15,000+, 200 bird species, humpbacked and killer whales, bear, bald eagles "common"; 25' tides here. Channel to Bartlet Bay narrows to a jump across some rocks. Sightings start quickly: gulls and mures and guillomots and mergansers. Arctic terns reflecting the blue of the waves as they soar and dive. An arctic loon with silver-tan head, flocks of phalaropes, and 6-8 harbor seals like wet volleyballs regarding "torn between fear and curiosity." Then bald eagles, at least 20 of them, and one incredible lazy flight toward us, and another, possibly 4-year-old, though still the gold of immaturity (he insisted the goldens live only inland), flies along and along and along with the ship. Four or five porpoises fine, but the view of NO humpbacks for the last few days. Islands NOW growing, changing year by year. (Audrey Gelb, with Bruce Gitlin from 4th and Broadway, sound familiar, but maybe it's because of Barbara and Arthur Gelb. Royal Viking Star, Thunder Bay, and Prinzendam pass the ship in the AM.) Lovely tour, lots of glaciers growing and calving. Out till wine before dinner at 7:30: good frozen halibut, pure white, and fresh salmon and beef roast and carrot cake. Then to climax: Johns Hopkins Glacier, till 11:30, midnight snack of sandwiches and nosh and hot chocolate and rolls and orange slices. Out again for watching, and bed at 12:30, leaving name for 4:30 am wakeup for dawn. COMFORTABLE bed, past ice-swish walls.

SATURDAY, JULY 5. Wake at 4:15 and get knocked at 4:45, dress quickly and out to CLEAR sky and GOOD shots of mountains, but sun hides behind mountain till 5:30, going to new channel. I go down, VERY cold, and sort things out in luggage. Up for good breakfast at 7, thank God everyone taking the same seats, and I feel very OUT of it: moody and silent and detached and, I guess, wishing I were home. Four more days. Back to pack, out to see porpoises and three orcas spouting, then slide show and final "sermonette" by Jeffrey, a sweet guy but sometimes a bit throat-stopping. Find bear, at the crowd's request, and in at 10:05. I knock at 6, no answer from Michael and Jay, and take off for BEAUTIFUL forest trail, getting AWFUL urge to crap, and back to do so in blessed privacy. Have lots of water, leave card for Michael and Jay, and board bus (back one again), but only 7 of us, and Jeffrey strikes up quick conversations with an Aussie-accented trekker. Off at 11:20 and looking for ending last legs. Jeffrey keeps right on chatting enthusiastically and "interviewing" on the bus: retired couple from Seattle seeing bears from yachts, driver, me camper. Into jammed airport for a needed piss at 11:45 and get outside on clump for the plane at 11:50, really early for a 12:15 departure. Two 2/3 full busses exchanging places with us, and Jeff said boat was about 2/3 full. Idea of another 4-week trip soon seems remote: I think two weeks is about the limit of my current endurance unless it'd be for something like Australia or South Pacific. Just TIRED, I guess! Karen from Skagway followed me to ferry to Juneau and Jeffrey follows me to Juneau TOO, then returns to school in Miami---Ohio. Window seat, clouds, great short flight again. Share cab into town for $5.50 with English girl living in Arizona, and my Alaskan room's not ready, but walking map cab driver hands me tells me my day: stop at information booth to verify the House of Wickersham isn't worth it and the Governor's Mansion is in USE. Shirtless wonders on lawn sunbathing, museum large and QUITE good, State Building closed on Saturday and I find myself outside Indian Village. Have chicken dinner and a SECOND shit in Alice's Restaurant at 3, then start up Mt. Roberts at 3:20, passing BEAUTIFUL MEN and fantasizing about devil trying to seduce my soul by shape-shifting as I wish: to 20-inch cock and to 8 and 10 and 12-foot tall with lovely eyes and body and how he tries tempting by ASSURING me he's in love with me for SUGGESTING this! Lively fantasy, replaced by hairy chested shirtless shorted fellow who's just BEAUTIFUL. Log on photos. GREAT forest just MINUTES from town! TRIED to go to top but TIRED and FOOTSORE at 5:20, so I start down, clouding and cooler by 7:20 on streets. Wearily into Red Dog Saloon for two beers and two postcards and get into room and fall into bed at 8, then up to jerk off to 8:15.

SUNDAY, JULY 6. Wake at 12:05 and piss and drink water and then girl knocks at 2:35. Shower and pack and brush teeth and out at 3 to walk alone into Malaspina, which leaves PROMPTLY at 3:30. I'm alone in the room at least until Petersburg, NICE room with shower and toilet and SPACE and sink, up to cold deck to watch Juneau recede under heavy clouds, then to observation deck to bumble of Georgians chatting and sleeping, and take a chair and watch clouds lower. Great breakfast at 7, hungry, and back to write this at 8:10, one hour time change already. Pass northbound Cunard Princess, brightly lit, and lightless Taku, and woman shouts "Whale!" when two porpoises curl past. Down for raincoat for cold legs, camera for whale pictures near Five Finger Islands, and this to finish up to date at 8:15. See a few more killer whales' spouts, some porpoises, and I talk with tour people. Frankly cloudy and dull between Juneau and Petersburg, and Petersburg is too far to walk to in the half-hour the ship is in. Wrangell Narrows aren't that narrow, and everything is so FLAT there's almost no snow. Coming into Wrangell at 2:55 the islands are scattered and green and pretty in a sort of Thousand Island-Adirondack way: gentle and undulating and wild and untouristed. Garnets are the thing here: women come away with nickel and dime-sized crystals for $1 and I get five chips for $11. Looks ABOUT to rain but it doesn't. At least a 9:15-11 tour of Ketchikan totem poles is scheduled for $4. No one added to room in Petersburg and after Wrangell I almost feel like sleeping. But front and center seat is open and catch up with this at 3:50. Only two FULL days left. Eager to get home. But scenery is boring and I'm talking to no one, so I leave my room number for a wakeup call for Ketchikan tour and undress for bed at 4:10. Toss a bit and look at watch at 5:30, too late for the kid's program at 5, and jerk off with soap to good feelings and doze and get up for the film on Glacier Bay at 7:30, getting a good seat and seeing the battle for seats continue, though not with its former intensity. Group from Atlanta AND from Macon, Georgia. Finish these few lines at 7:05. Black clouds still cloaking low hills; only one or two DOTS of snow to be seen on slopes, raining in various directions, as it has been doing all through the day, but never HERE. "The Grand Design" film on Glacier Bay; kids squabbled and 25-minute film runs from 7:35 to 7:45. Eat fish without chips and another delicious bowl of $1.25 fruit, and we sail into Ketchikan at 9, on bus for $5 at 9:15 and back at 10:10, driver remarking about "good hour and a quarter." Times are DIFFERENT here! Hope flash shows off totems and colors. Neat book of stories, but shop closed. Ketchikan even cliffier and stairier than Juneau. NOW I don't feel like sleep---still alone in 182---great! But sitting in relatively empty lounge is no fun either, so I'm down for a lovely shower and shampoo and shave and bed at 11. Change mind, dress, watch lights of Ketchikan vanish and hear a true observation; "Looks better at night than durin' the day," and watch hypnotic varied lights of red (left) and green (right) in the channels. Not crowded, kids chatting with parents, couples sleeping side by side, youngsters flaking out, and I go down to still-solo room at 11:20 to sleep.

MONDAY, JULY 7. I think "Maybe I'll get up at 3 to watch the last of the scenery. Anyway, they say they'll wake us at 4." Well, I wake to hear, "Foot passengers may now proceed toward customs" and I blearily look at watch to find it's 5:10! So much for a lot of the problem of what to do until my 9:05 airport check-in! Dress and get my door unlocked TWICE by people about to fix it up. Out totally alone at 5:20 to LONG customs line, though scattered bicyclists join the line later. At 5:30, someone says it's 6:30. Another hour gone. But it's not. Clock in immigration says 5:55 as I'm eased through. They say take a limo to town: none. Cab is $3.45 and I'm glad I had Canadian dollars. Rupert Square mall is closed, so the family of 4 I ALMOST asked to share a cab with, who have a flight this AFTERNOON, sit with me in the chilly entrance as I start reading at 6:30. At 7:15 CPAir people open waiting area and we check in at 8:15 and get bus at 8:45 across on a ferry ($4) that travels us BACKWARDS on the school bus, which seems oddly undignified. No chance to shoot a picture of Prince Rupert (about as chillily unfriendly as Prince George: expensive, closed, unhelpful, aloof) with some big cruise ship docked and one entering. Also indignant that ferry to airport leaves right where I had to get a CAB to the closed mall for $3.45. But then I sound as negative as the drab cigar smoker, still feisty at 79, and the gruff-voiced independent who "has a demon working against me" (it's he HIMSELF!), and the querulous family of card handlers from the Malaspina. Can't take eyes off lovely self-possessed fellow who LOOKS about 6'5" because of PRESENCE (equal to that of Bob Dukes) but is 5'9" and of a lovely build in athletic socks, slacks, and a milk-chocolate leather jacket. Into terminal in a complete wilderness of pine and ferry and swamp, totally out of sight of Prince Rupert, debating seeing if there's a flight to NYC from the Vancouver airport NOW, saving two transfers, the YMCA, assorted lugging, and not-much-to-do in Vancouver. Only duty: get stamps from PO and send a few more cards. Leave stuff for water intake and outflow and get back to see doll headed for gate one as announcement for boarding is made. Also undignified is the manual luggage grub when they didn't have an X-ray machine. Then the pre-boarding takes children and the infirm and I just get annoyed that these days people will take the best seats: right windows, despite the fact that I'm first at the door. Doll turns out to be (he says) working with the police force taking lab samples to be studied, and while neither child nor infirm gets on first. I get more and more hassled and not even the shy smile of another pretty blonde mother breaks my anger. Get on at 9:50 to find plane is FROM Terrace and is already half full, though there IS the desired right window JUST ahead of the jutting jet in row 6. Gotta process! Clouds for the first part of the flight---4 or five layers of them. Glimpses of islands and then, after three lovely hot pastries and two cups of coffee and five packs of sugar, Port Hardy area clears at 10:30 and I get great views over "Norway in reverse": hillier in north and rather flat in south, but rich, green, river-filled and lovely. Huge mountain off to south and haze to east of that which I take to be St. Helens. Land early and take a BUS into town for 50, with a transfer in the hot clear afternoon, and get to YMCA to reserve a room (as I leave the next morning the dread "NO VACANCY" sign is on the door) and get to flesh-strewn information area to locate post office which was printed on the map and buy $46+ worth of stamps for 14% change for a $20 for $12 room and $2 key deposit. OK. Drop things in 228 and go to john and find I'm in 226 so I get maid (who forgot TOWEL in 226) to open for me. Walk along Albertini to Stanley Park, decent lunch of fish in Dining Pavilion, then LOVELY roses, decent zoo of which the CHIEF inhabitants are Homo erectus shirtless, just LOVELY pair of bodybuilders and others who make even MEN stop and turn and stare. Zoo has sleeping bears and baby harbor seals and otters and LOTS of birds of bright plumage, and a poor guinea fowl type whom I send a beam of love to and he promptly comes to MY corner of the window and ululates piteously. Another one sounds from three cages down: heartless! But tanned guys are the BEST. Across to miniature train for lazy bison, active Arctic wolf kits, rabbits on trail, goats, deer and peacocks spread as we get on train. Later walk around the area and then around recommended Beaver Lake, here to be met with shirtless tanned sweaty handsome joggers and runners and bicyclists. Having exhausted this (and flamingos and water birds and more sexy guys) I pay $3.50 for aquarium and at first go to viewing windows for 2600-pound 13-year-old male white beluga whale Lugosi, who gets an erection from the pillowy slit near his tail. VERY testicular rugosities but no LUMPS for balls, and a VERY sensual tube about forearm length which shows red vascularity under the milky skin as he pushes it into the upper right corner of my window. Some laugh, some fall silent, some say "Let's go see the seals" to their amazed children. A few "Is that his---?" and an amused silence when it OBVIOUSLY is! He nips at her and makes sounds and swings around and I snap breathless shots. Later there's a harbor seal "show" and a sea otter show and the PUFFINS are dreams floating-flying through the waters. Killer whale is so beautiful and leaps so high I have to shoot him, too, paying $3.18 for slow film. Awful film, surprisingly made in Tokyo, on the Art of Japanese Cuisine, lots of tropical fish in tanks, amusing mudskippers, a wide-jawed gasp from the crocodile, and Japanese exhibits of koi (colored carp) and sales things that DON'T move. Out about 8 to wander brilliantly sunlit shore for totem poles and shirtless frisbeers, then walk back along Georgia, eat awful Dennyberger for dinner, and find to my relief that shuttle bus starts at 5:30, so I don't have to try for city busses at 5 am. Tell clerk to buzz me at 5, but there's no door knock if he fails. No towel! Wash face and dry with pillowslip, leaving maid a note, and fall into bed at 10, earplugs in against awful noise of slamming doors and radios in hall, drapes open to wake me with morning light, covers off afterwards because it's too hot (24 C today and PERFECTLY clear for the first time in months, they say; roses BLEW MY MIND with color and smell), but still toss and turn and look at watch at 10:50 and 12:15 and 2 and 3 and 4, not nervous about FLYING but about waking up and making my connections!

TUESDAY, JULY 8. Up at 4:40 to shower and brush teeth and get $2 from key and wait a bit in CLOUDLESS dawn for shuttle bus, off at 5:30 exact and watch sun rise from hills at 5:40. Short wait at Air Canada check-in for tour groups' luggage fuss, but GET front left window 7A and am CONTENT. To lounge to find NO Lisa Malsin OR Hollywood Hospital in phone book; drink water; find we DO stop in Calgary so it's NOT one long flight, and have breakfast immediately on boarding. PERFECT. Finish this at 6:40 and will lightwork before boarding. "That point" of neck and shoulders ached a lot late yesterday and to a lesser extent now, but except for a half-day of shits and 1 days of strained back muscle, these 27 days have been VERY healthy. Board at 6:45 and move at 7:06. Clear skies ABOVE but misty clouds over far hills. Pollution from St. Helens? Off at 7:15 and 1 hour 14 minutes to Calgary. Coast "range" really a MASS of mountains! Clouds over Rockies but some nice views over a thin Columbia River. Clouds scattered but there's a HAZE over the whole place, and since it's reddish, it's probably dust, which tinged the peak-snows pink. Lovely flight. Poor Japanese fellow next to me would love to have my seat, but it's nice he's so polite not even to ASK. Land at 8:30, 75 minutes reduced to 55 minutes, down over 26%. If only the four hours to NYC could be now cut to 3! Looks even clearer from ground in Calgary than it did in Vancouver. Put watch ahead to 9:18. Breakfast had at 10:30 am NYC time, normal, and my 4:40 waking transforms to a fairly early 7:40, but not IMPOSSIBLE. Early to bed tonight. Off at 9:57, 4 hour 10 minute flight. Grain and storage silos in each town over flat Alberta and Saskatchewan look like ROCKETS about to take off! Clouds fairly general, save it's clear over Portage le Prairie and Winnipeg. Thin clouds over Ontario and Thunder Bay and beautifully featureless (thus pollution free) Lake Superior. Mackinaw Bridge sadly off to right. Finish lunch at 12:30: full! John for second time, three fags staring up at me from next to last row; paper stuck in both toilets; Toronto on right: NYC is one hour from 2:45! Cloudy thereafter: high, puffy, fluffy clouds. 76 in NYC. Six women now standing for FRONT john---back closed? Yep, NO line there! 3:05 head down slightly! Definitely down at 3:10. OVER JFK at 3:23! Over sprawling Garden City, cemetery that Bruce later says is in Elmont, and land at 3:17. Home at last! Rip off bus of 8 when I only have 52 for 60 bus ride; Dennis isn't home, so I unpack, leaving him note, and he phones and comes up and treats me to dinner that night and we have GOOD sex, too!

Addresses: Bill and Sandy Altland
Box 3341
Soldotna AK 99669
work: 262-9368 (TRAIN)

Viv & Jim Robertson
2860 Staffordshire
Nanaimo BC V9S 3R1
758-7161

Ian Stalker
General Delivery
Whitehorse, Yukon

"Trapping Is My Life" good book about NWT by John Tetzel, from Arlin/D15 good oil.

Get Prudhoe guide Scott

Fairbanks good restaurant: Ranch

see NASA satellite stations (phone for hours; 15 miles out)

good stop: Arctic Traveller.

Richard Hereld
3-1290 Beach Drive
Victoria BC V8S 2N3
(604) 598-6277

Mrs. Thea Brown
720 West End Avenue (95th/Salvation Army Home?)
NYC
864-6915

Stephens Passage near Juneau best place for spotting whales.

466 pictures taken on 22 rolls of film---and this is only SECOND camera trip!

Spent $397.52 on Visa; $453.04 to Michael; $1700 in Travelers checks, and $20 for cab, for grand total of $2570 for the 27 days of the trip, or over $95/day!

So I filled IN the last provinces of Canada, the last state, and now I know that I only have British Honduras/Salvador/Nicaragua/Costa Rica/Panama in Central America and Bolivia/Columbia/Ecuador/Venezuela (Angel Falls) /Guyana/ Surinam/ Guinea in South America to see before I've seen almost every place in this hemisphere, except more ISLANDS!

AND I know that four weeks too long for a trip, though two weeks to SOME places might be a bit too short. But 15 days to Mexico sounds better than 13, AND it can be at the bargain rate AND I can "get back" before Dennis returns from California AND Andre will probably come along with me for relief from planning and spending money. My second-most expensive trip---which probably NO one would have wanted to equal me in spending, so it was BEST done alone.

53 pages for 26 days---EXACTLY 1 page/12 hours!

16 flights:

1) NYC - Toronto
2) -Winnipeg
3) Hay River - Yellowknife
4) Vancouver - Inuvik
5 - Vancouver
6) Fairbanks - Point Barrow
7) - Prudhoe Bay
8) - Fairbanks
9) Anchorage - Juneau
10) - Whitehorse
11) Sightseeing - Skagway
12) Juneau - Gustavus
13) - Juneau
14) Prince Rupert - Vancouver
15) - Calgary
16) - NYC

SUMMARY

DAY-BY-DAY LOG OF TRIP TO ALASKA AND NORTHWESTERN CANADA: June 12-July 8, 1980

THURSDAY, JUNE 12: Fly over New York, Toronto, and Winnipeg, snapping photographs. Talked to plump female metalworker traveling from "Newflan" (Newfoundland, to non-Canadians) to Deer Lake, in northern Manitoba. License plates state "Friendly Manitoba" and it certainly is: more advice from people in bus, in hotel, on street than really needed. Wander town and cross river to French section of town for Winnipeg Goldeye (fish) after a Velvet hammer (brandy, Grand Marnier, Tia Maria, and cream, which didn't taste as good as it sounds), in a converted Canadian Pacific railroad station named, appropriately, La Veille Gare. Walked back to hotel in pink sunset at 9:15 pm, north already.

FRIDAY, JUNE 13: Buy $195 "Travel anywhere" Greyhound pass, travel to Saskatoon, Sask, talking to Theodora, old German grandma with 7 children who'd lived in Canada since the early 30's and told me all about Canada's past and what it was like living on a farm in changing weather, mostly bad. Phoned the Gay Community Service, found a social, met a Britisher who taught me all I needed to know about Eskimo prints and stone carvings, shared his hot tub in his new house near the university, and shared a bed AND THAT'S ALL.

SATURDAY, JUNE 14: Peter serves me breakfast and a wonderful conversation, I bus to Edmonton, talking to driver about driving in the incessant PLAINS in this part of the world, take a city bus to the glass pyramids of the Muttart Conservatory and revel in flowers, check in at the clean, cheap YMCA, right next to people paying $60 for their single rooms in the new Four Seasons Hotel.

SUNDAY, JUNE 15: Introduced to "Indian" problem of drinking in Canada (they have piles of oil money and nothing to spend it on), talk to old woman who was one of 21 children in Canada, and bus driver goes out of his way to show us the south shore of the Lesser Slave (Slave was the name of an Indian tribe, nothing to do with slavery) Lake. Peace River, Alberta, has nothing for tourists except a statue of 12-foot David and his grave on a hill, which I climbed up to before seeing "Luna" in the movie house, only show in town.

MONDAY, JUNE 16: Bus through Grimshaw, Manning, and High Level, then across the 60th parallel into the Northwest Territories, bus driver stopping to let ME out to get a shot, and everyone piles out at Alexandra Falls and Louise Falls, spectacular, and I chat with driver until Hay River. When I offer him coffee, he offers me a tour of Hay River. In the Greyhound bus! Look at the Old Town destroyed in a storm on Great Slave Lake, the New Town, and that's all there is. Motels getting expensive: this one $40 for a single per night.

TUESDAY, JUNE 17: On the bus driver's advice I change my plans to bus up to Yellowknife, buy a plane ticket there tomorrow, and bus across to Wood Buffalo National Park with a super-great driver who lets me off whenever I want to get a picture of a buffalo on the road, a bear, or a sinkhole. Yet another driver told me about Jacques Van Pelt, pelican researcher in Fort Smith, and he gives me a telescopic tour of the pelican feeding and mating and flying and nesting while the bus refuels, and then we ride back to Hay River---this doesn't SOUND exciting, but it was a great day indeed!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18: Fly across Great Slave Lake, delighted to be seeing so much of Northwest Territories, the largest hunk of Canada, and walk Yellowknife all day, stumbling into the Wildcat Cafe for lunch, VERY native, and get a tour of the Con Gold Mines for the afternoon. Sit in library and in "Tom Horn" until midnight, which is when the ONLY bus (3 days/week) leaves Yellowknife!

THURSDAY, JUNE 19: Sun sets at 10:40 pm, but it's never really DARK. Board bus and see lots of Indian villages and giggling kids at 1, 2, and 3 am. Take an old ferry across the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence, roust more buffalo, and have breakfast in Enterprise, striking up a conversation with Ian Stalker, from Montreal, out looking for summer work before returning to college, and we talk all through the day until hitting Edmonton at 10 pm; back to YMCA.

FRIDAY, JUNE 20: Beautiful bus ride down to Calgary, across to spectacular Banff under the fluffiest clouds in the world, where a railroad engineer who knows everything there is to know about the mountains, rails, weather in this part of the world gives me lessons on everything until he gets off in Revelstoke. Lunch in Glacier Park produces a series of photographs of a snow-into-rainstorm moving off the glaciers on the hills. Duck in the beautiful Okanogan Valley and drop asleep in the tacky Three Gable Inn in Penticton.

SATURDAY, JUNE 21: Bus to Vancouver talking to Mary, who heard both the Hope Slide, and Mount St., Helens, and who saw many forest fires through here. Her daughter, who studied natives in islands off Fiji and invited her mother there for two weeks, which I heard all about, and son-in-law met her and me at the airport and told me all I needed to know about Vancouver. Checked into the YMCA and then bussed out to the airport for my flight to Inuvik (you need a good map for this trip!). My tickets were delayed, was among the last to check into the plane, distressed by my aisle seat, and Jim and Viv Robertson, from Vancouver, insisted I sit at the window because they'd seen all these mountains before. Fabulous flight, but Inuvik, even though it WAS sunny at midnight on the longest day of the year, was crummy and boring, though it was fun to dig into Permafrost and buy genuine Eskimo handmade prints on burlap that were sold as Christmas cards---only thing worth buying.

SUNDAY, JUNE 22: Tour of Inuvik in school busses, but we got in at midnight and there was so little to see we were back at the airport at 3:20 for the 4:30 am flight back. Oh, yes: the Arctic char (fish) for dinner on the flight up WAS delicious, and all the wine you wanted helped lend a festive air to the tourists. Breakfast on the flight back started with cognac, which was nice, and I spent the rest of the flight in the pilot's cabin, listening to what it looked like when one of them had flown over St. Helens when she blew the first time. It really affected this whole part of the continent. Into Vancouver at 7:30 am and back to Y, sleep a bit, but Vancouver is cloudy so I take the Seabus across the Bay and sightsee a bit and get to bed early.

MONDAY, JUNE 23: Still cloudy, so I decide to continue, bussing up the Frazer River to Prince George, which ONLY had Paul Robson and Cedric Hardwicke on TV in an ORIGINAL movie version of "King Solomon's Mines"; I get more sleep. (Also TV coverage of NY's "Towering Inferno" on Park and 49th---good TV night!)

TUESDAY, JUNE 24: Seattle had four small earthquakes this morning---I worried at times that this whole section of the continent would explode! Pull my back for the only discomfort of the whole trip. Sit next to Jimmy from Cornwall who's looking to buy a farm here for him and his two brothers, so we share conversation and a room in Dawson Creek---the start of the Alcan Highway! Wander down a side street and run into Ian Stalker again; nothing much.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25: Bus across border to my LAST Canadian province or territory to visit: the Yukon! Mountains clouded but still spectacular; bus still comfortable even though the schedule requires that I spend nights on them.

THURSDAY, JUNE 26: Into Whitehorse at 6:05 am, fall into bed until 10 am, tour a riverboat, take a boat ride on the Yukon River, see a campy "Frantic Follies" until 11 pm and take sunset pictures until 11:30 pm. Pleasant frontier town.

FRIDAY, JUNE 27: Continue bussing Alcan Highway to Fairbanks, chatting with mother and daughter from Newport, first glimpse of Alaska Pipeline, and great talk with driver, who recommends a decent-enough $12 Fairbanks Hotel, far better than the $80/single Fairbanks Inn, where a rider I spoke with was staying. Lots of pictures at the Alaska border, my LAST state! Everyone who lives in Alaska just loves it, but Fairbanks doesn't have much going for it.

SATURDAY, JUNE 28: Decide to fly to Point Barrow---want to see the northernmost tip of the North American continent, and it's "only" $280 for flight and tour. Suspense waiting for LAST seat on plane, between carpenter who MOVED to Barrow and tells me all about it, and Randy, a tour escort who tells me about his group's tour, and I'm doing almost EXACTLY the same trip, but from independent plans made in Whitehorse. Great guy, Randy! Ice still in at the Arctic ocean shoreline, Eskimo show of dancing and crafts very interesting (pity the hall was too dim for photos!), and the place was totally fascinating: tundra, plumbing, government research, papooses in parkas, reindeer soup---and then a flight along the rim of the continent to Prudhoe Bay and the unearthly sight of the start of the Alaska Pipeline: looks like an infinitely long railroad train from the air, but from the ground it's enormous! Arctic ocean ice has patterns like roads and parks and cities, extraordinarily beautiful, and I have a window seat even though they almost guaranteed I wouldn't get on the plane. FABULOUS! Fly back to Fairbanks and catch my only glimpse of Mt. McKinley before landing. Collapse into a hot tub (not bad, 55 in Point Barrow) and sleep.

SUNDAY, JUNE 29: Socks damp still, damn! Train down to Anchorage a day earlier than planned, scenery rainy and romantic. Talk to Doug, who lives in a coed convent, teaches in Univ. of Alaska, and knows all there is to know about Alaska. Great traveling companions! Phone friends of Dennis in Anchorage and am heartily welcomed to the first Anchorage orgy! Nuff said!

MONDAY, JUNE 30: Dennis's two friends go off to work and Rob shows me the town, including Earthquake Park, where an exclusive community sank into the ocean, currently fringed by ANOTHER exclusive community NEXT to sink into the ocean! Treat Rob to lunch (it was the least I could do!) in a hotel-top dining room looking over the bay, then he drops me off at Jake's at 4, and HE takes over to drive me to Portage Glacier: Anchorage is cloudy and weather at glacier is TOTALLY clear and blue and sparkling and breathtaking. Back to find that Mark's made dinner for us four, and I ring down the curtain.

TUESDAY, JULY 1: Jake wakes me at 5 for the 7 am plane to Juneau along one of the most incredible mountain-bay-glacier landscapes in the world, and I then fly back to Whitehorse, which sounds backward, but I wanted BOTH to take the ENTIRE Alcan Highway, so I wanted to go from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, where it ends, AND I wanted to take the narrow-gauge railroad SOUTH from Whitehorse to Skagway. Glad the same cheap Fort Yukon Hotel was still available right next to the bus station. Toured the local museum and took a boat the OTHER direction on the Yukon River with 6 crew and 5 other tourists for a picnic on an island---a steak barbecue, liberal wine, GREAT weather. Bed.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2: Train down with Rick Hereld and his O-ma (grandma), who lives on W. 91st St. in NYC (Rick's in Victoria, having escaped to Canada to avoid the draft), and lots of shots of the Chilkoot Trail of the 98er's, and a really spectacular last hour going over the British Columbia-Alaska border (not too far after the Yukon-British Columbia border---I SAID you need a map!) in a jumble of mountains, glaciers, streams, bridges, and camera-angles. Roar into Skagway, one of the neatest tourist towns I've ever seen, and join those two for dinner and have some drinks and enjoy my good cheap room.

THURSDAY, JULY 3: Tour the town and two gals collar me for Flight-Seeing over Skagway: $35 for an hour. INCREDIBLE!! Glaciers and moose and PORCUPINES (yes, we DID fly low enough to see porcupines VERY clearly!) and rivers and forests and bears and the Chilkoot Trail with hikers following the Trail of '98---the best hour of the trip. Onto the ground to find the local cemetery, the museum, another tour, another meal, exhausting the charming community, and then it's time to board the Taku, the Alaska Inland Passage ferry, at 6 pm. Stay up watching waterfalls and fjords and mountains and a glorious sunset---boat not at all crowded, very nice---

FRIDAY, JULY 4: until we get to Juneau (yep, again) at 3 am. First hotel is full (only time that happened on the whole trip) so I go down the street to the Alaskan, VERY colorful (read: cruddy), and sleep till 9. Out to find the town gathering for the July 4 parade, pass all the floats, and cab to the airport for a short flight to Gustavus, which is ALSO having a parade, this one in trucks and on horseback and with everyone (all 70 of them) in town there. Bus for an hour out to Glacier Bay Lodge and fall in love with it---the only woodsy place I've ever seen that's NICER than Hemlock Hall---I wanna go back THERE, I tell you. Lunch with Randy, then out with his group to the Glacier Bay Explorer, a 70-passenger yacht, and out into Glacier Bay at 2, totally unseasonably clear and sunny. Gulls and mures and guillemots and mergansers and terns and loons and phalaropes and harbor seals and bald eagles and porpoises and killer whales. Glaciers and clamorous waterfalls and calvings of glaciers with huge waves and gunshot-sounds for the July 4 something-different festival. (The glaciers broke off with gunshot sounds, there were no guns.) Fabulous fresh salmon and halibut dinner, great people in Randy's group, more glaciers as the sun sets about 11:30, and then a midnight snack of gargantuan proportions---totally sybaritic!

SATURDAY, JULY 5: I wanted waked for dawn, glorious, but then clouds moved in and the day was more "typical": overcast and gray and drizzly. Still no sight of humpbacked whales, which they think the tourists drove out of the bay. Pity. Back to lodge at 10 am, lovely forest trail through rain forest, then to flight back to Juneau, where I cabbed back to Alaskan, got lunch in the Indian village, climbed the Mount Roberts that Juneau is smack up against (it's GOT to be the most picturesque village of ANY state capital---sad that it's being replaced in a number of years by Talkeetna), and stagger into the Red Dog Saloon for two beers before collapsing into bed at 8 pm.

SUNDAY, JULY 6: Waked at 2:30 am and got onto ferry Malaspina, which leaves at 3:30 am, and I'm alone in a cabin for 4. Join a bunch of retired Georgians in the lounge for a chat (getting a front-row chair in the bargain), and spend the day talking, eating, looking at passing towns along the coast, and deciding this was nice, but not the best part of the trip. More porpoises, killer whales, lots of passing ships, Petersburg and Wrangell colorful, and we get a tour of totem poles in Ketchikan at 9 pm. Bed exhausted.

MONDAY, JULY 7: Woke at LAST call just before leaving Prince Rupert at 5 am, and town is dead, so I read in terminal and get to airport at 9 and fly to Vancouver by 11 am, for the BEST, CLEAREST weather that cloudy town's had all year. Get to Stanley Park and enjoy the zoo and aquarium and restaurant and OUTSTANDING roses, see more totem poles before dinner, and to last YMCA bed.

TUESDAY, JULY 8: Wake at 4:40 am for the 7 am flight from Vancouver to New York, great views over Calgary, the Rockies, the Great Lakes, and finally New York at 3:15. Rip off NYC transit system by having only 52 (how was I to know they'd raise the fare to 60 while I was away?) for the exact-change bus, and get home to unpack and get greeting from Dennis, and dinner, and during the next week send off my 20 rolls of film for my 450+ photos!!