Destination Hope

Pictured above is the main street of Hope, Alaska--actually, that's the whole town. A historic, still existing gold-rush town.

Woke to the steady, light dripping of the rain against the wet street outside. It wasn't very heavy but the overcast sky and the clouds had the nearby mountains obscured. We hurried through breakfast consisting of fruit and cereal in the hotel room and scurried outside already donning our rain pants and jackets. By the time we got into the car and took the short ride over to the small boat harbor I noticed the rain stopped and I had some optimism for the hours ahead. Today's adventure was a guided boat tour through Kenai Fjords National Park with the promise of spectacular views and ocean wildlife sightings. We arrived a little early and grabbed our boarding passes and after a short wait went down the gangplank to find our boat had been cancelled. Turns out our 10 o'clock trip was scrubbed because the the 9 o'clock nearly capsized in rough sees and more than half of the riders were tossing their cookies into the sea. So the tour company thought it would be good to warn everyone that the sea was rough and that they would only run one noon tour for the day and everyone from the 10, 10:30, 11, & 12 o'clock boats would all ride togetether (oh, wet and overcrowded sounds great!). After careful consideration I decided not to stay tough and go out on 20 foot seas with my fellow travelers to be rained upon with all of the good scenery in a haze of grey. Wonder how close you need to get to a sea lion to see it in the fog. We had been looking forward to this tour for weeks and the level of disappointment was high. I turned in my tickets for a full refund. Nevertheless we were in a beautiful place and the rain and clouds have their own ambiance and we would find something good to do. We walked around and did some downtown Seward gift shopping and enjoyed sugar-free vanilla espresso (Alaskans love espresso; there are espresso shacks in parking lots all over the state.) before heading north back out of town. Within a mile or two we turned left onto Glacier Road and went through Chugach State Park back into Kenai Fjords National Park to visit Exit Glacier. This one you could also drive very near and we took an easy trail toward it for about a half mile. As we were driving into the park and walking closer and closer to the glacier area, there were signs stating the year that the edge of the ice had reached that particular spot. It's amazing how far this glacier had receeded in the last 50 years in particular. There was a trail (7 miles, 3000 foot climb) that ran up the side of it but we couldn't top the experience of yesterday's ice trek at Matanuska. We stripped off the rain gear and headed north out of the park being careful not to speed through the sinkhole craters in the road that nearly flipped us over on the way in. Just before we reached Seward Highway I spotted another bald eagle perched in a tree. What a wonderful sight to see this bird so close. Our next destination was something we planned to do next week--visit Hope, Alaska. Why? Well for its namesake of course and it is nearly 100 uninhabited miles from anything or anywhere. It has a couple of great little cafes and it sits on the southern bank of Turnagain Arm. We stopped into the Discovery Cafe for lunch. H and I indulged in a really hearty homemade lentil soup along with a homestyle grilled cheese and ham sandwich. Followed that up with some awesome banana pecan pie. Whew, six meals in Alaska and I need to loosen my belt already--the fat feeling is back. After leaving the cafe we took a walk near the Arm and drove to the end of the road, literally. Hope Highway ends soon after the cafe. We soon hightailed it out of Hope to try to reach Bird Point to catch the Bore Tide. At the BP rest stop, we walked up the stairs as some people came down, saying If you came to see the tide you just missed it." And that we did, by about two minutes!! Looking east, we could see it flowing away in the distance. Since it only moves about 15 mph we could have backtracked ahead of it, but we were too tired and had another 100 miles to go in the rain to reach the Anchorage Ramada. Once we got there we ordered some Papa John's pizza, delivered directly to the room and quickly passed out. It was still raining and probably would still be raining tomorrow, Labor Day, but our plans would be less detered by the rain.