1980 5 of 10
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 spinkly 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!). 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.