Straits: Financial and Bering

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I’m in Sitka Alaska, the Russian capital of the Americas until the U.S. purchased Alaska (19 cents per acre) in 1867. 150 years ago there was regular ship traffic hauling payloads of otter pelts between here and Russia. At that time it was, of course, impossible to cross the Bering sea by plane, these days it’s quite a trick to cross without a flying.

Ten days of “shaking the bushes” up and down the Alaskan coastline, and we are well oriented with the challenges of floating to the Orient. It’s like this: After 9/11 cargo ships have very stringent security mandates and only a handful of freighters in the world are licensed to carry passengers, exactly zero of these visit Alaskan ports. Occasionally cruise companies run trips from Alaska to Japan, but these are prohibitively costly, and long gone by late September.

I made my best effort to leave no stone unturned (no number uncalled), but every time the search would slam to a stop against someone’s utterance of the word “impossible.” Nearly at my wit’s end I finally caught word of a fishing company out of Dutch Harbor (the port from the show “Deadliest Catch”) that dry docks a couple of boats in Yokohama, Japan after the Aleutian Cod season. I managed to reach them by phone and was elated when the crew manager enthusiastically suggested we hire on for the trip across Pacific.

The Cod season lasts through October, so those boats will cross in early November. The thought of waiting for more than a month is a bleak one, especially as the first snows are falling. The year’s last ferry to Dutch Harbor from mainland Alaska (a four day chug) leaves right away, so waiting in Anchorage (land of friends and warm coffee shops with internet) is not a possibility.

I was busy getting my courage up for a bone-chilling, lonely, expensive month in Dutch Harbor (wondering if we’d be able to find work on a fishing boat in the mean time) when the crew manager emailed me. They were already overstaffed so the owner regretfully said he wouldn’t be able to hire us. They, like freighters, are not insured to take passengers, so our invitation was withdrawn. This was our last good lead. Upon receiving the news we surrendered and decided to fly. The relief to not be spending a grim October in Dutch Harbor took the edge off of the disappointment of having to fly.

I reckon what we wanted to do could be done. But especially this late in the year it’s no longer worth the time or money to us. However, we were close, both figuratively and geographically: We visited Sarah Palin’s home in Wasilla and were able to catch a glimpse of the Kremlin from the veranda. Haha, I mean that kindly though. If anyone is sympathetic with her for that statement it’s me. Alaska and Russia are dang close. We drove the Sunbeam to Denali Park’s Wonder Lake, where we were only about 600 miles from Russia. Private vehicles aren’t allowed in Denali; that’s another good story.

Visitors to Denali are prohibited to drive their own cars into the park, they must climb aboard clamoring Park Service buses and take in the sights through little glass rectangles. We unwittingly arrived at Denali’s gate too late in the season for tourist buses. The tourist season had already ended. They told us we were out of luck, but they also told us about the Denali CarPass Raffle. For a few short days the whole park was open to winners of that raffle. All we needed was to win a raffle that had taken place months earlier.

Evie (the dreaded girl from the last blog ) was still with us in Denali. Back in Seattle, when she had joined us, I remember wondering if her arts and craft kit (markers, giant drawing pad, and even ceramics for us to paint) was really a necessary item considering there were three of us (two of us quite tall) traveling in one compact car in which we planned to sleep. I remember expressing my concern as I was wedging myself into the driver’s seat while simultaneously performing a churning act with my legs in an attempt to unearth the accelerator so we could go. Evie is too sweet to discriminate against any of her belongings, so she brought all of them, but this time it payed off. The craft kit included everything we needed to get our raffle pass. We began sign production.

The signs were to ask for people’s raffle passes as they were exiting the park. “What rhymes with “pass?” we asked ourselves, trying to come up with clever lines for our ad. We tried hard to think of how donkeys were relevant to Denali park, but in the end we went with a great line Jeremy thought of. “We’re low class, give us your pass!” And it worked. We gained full access to the park and had a great day among the moose and grizzles in the shadow of North America’s grandest peak, Denali (20,320 ft).

From Denali we headed to Anchorage, the last leg of the trip for both Evie and the Sunbeam. We pulled into Anchorage thanking God that our little $800 car had been such warrior. Jeremy listed the car for sale on Craiglist.

Jeremy, a horse trader at heart, had seen online (back in California) that cars sell for a lot more in Alaska than they do in California. This was part of our reasoning for buying the car, we hoped to offset some of our costs by profiting on its sale. We sold the car (on the way to church, incidentally….our ass was in a ditch) for twice what we payed for it. The profit from the car covered, nearly exactly, the cost of the gas we burned between Los Angeles and Anchorage. We actually underestimated what the car would be worth up here. Jeremy hasn’t had time to remove the Craiglist ad so he’s still getting calls everyday. The girl we sold it to offered us more than we were asking and flipped out with glee when we finally made the exchange.

We are over budget for the trip, but between Jeremy’s horsetrading skills, the generosity of friends, family, and our “store” visitors, we’re still crossing our financial straits (all but the Bering). Church members have been forthcoming with meals, beds, and cheerful smiles. Two Alaskan brothers, who we met on the way through Columbia, gave us a free ride from Anchorage to Haines (where I, of course, changed my underwear). Some kind folks payed for our auto insurance, and more recently a very gracious couple bought us ferry tickets all the way from Alaska to Washington (all the flights to Asia go through Seattle anyway, so flying from Seattle is cheaper and means we’ll only fly once).

We’re sitting on the ferry now, a few hours south of Juneau. We just saw a pod of humpbacks, one narrowly escaped being struck by the ferry. Some Dall porpoises are chasing us. I love it!