Melanie met us at the house at almost the very moment that we arrived home from the parade. I fixed a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, filled up a couple of water jugs, stuffed them into my little backpack along with 100 to 400 mm lens and then we finally left, sometime between noon and 1:00 PM. I had it in my mind that we would hike in Hatcher Pass, but Jacob and Lavina had invited everybody to their house in Anchorage for an evening cookout so instead, we headed towards Eklutna Lake, which is right one the way to Anchorage.
As we drew near to Eklutna, we saw this truck, hauling a bunch of new cars to the north - maybe to Wasilla, maybe to Fairbanks.
No other options, really. It pretty much had to be Wasilla or Fairbanks.
Two trails take off from the Eklutna Lake parking lot in Chugach State Park - one follows the northern shore of the lake for several miles, another heads off up the mountains towards the Twin Peaks. We wanted to climb and neither of us had done this trail before.
The park sign said the trail was 2.5 miles wrong, rose 1500 vertical and was ranked "difficult." That would make it a round trip hike of five miles and I wanted to hike more than five miles. Yet, if we were going to make it to the cookout, five miles would be okay.
And since we would be hiking up a mountain on a trail that was ranked, "difficult," it might feel like we had hiked more than 5 miles at the end, and it might take longer than walking five miles on an "easy" trail. So, off we went.
We pretty walked side by side, but near the beginning, I dropped back a bit so that I could get this picture of Melanie as she walked through the trees in her red rain jacket.
There were many flowers to admire.
;)
I did not believe the hike would be all that "difficult," as it had been ranked. I had been on many hikes that I knew were much more difficult. And I had been riding my bike just about every day, usually ten to 16 miles, sometimes more. I had been taking regular walks.
Yet, in a very short while, I began to feel this hike. It strained my legs and taxed my breath. Maybe because it was my first hike in a year or so. Maybe because I am getting older. Maybe both. Despite all the biking I have been doing, the hike strained different parts of me.
So it was a little more work than I had anticipated.
My first thought was, "if this easy hike is this hard, there is no way I can climb Denali next year. I should just forget it."
My second thought was, "if this is this hard, I MUST climb Denali next year." Well, then, I had better get work on that project right now.
Generally, if I go hiking in a place where the trailhead can be reached from the road system, especially this close to Anchorage, I avoid the weekends and go on a week day, to avoid the crowd. This was not only a weekend, it was a holiday - the Fourth of July.
I figured we would see lots of people on the train - maybe two or three hundred, even.
But we didn't. All the way up and all the way down, we saw maybe 15 people, including these two. It must have been grueling, for them to push their bikes up the trail, but they did it and now they were speeding down.
And the trail was steeper than it looks.
Hanging grass alongside the trail.
After a bit, we reached a good overlook of Eklutna Lake.
Kayakers down on the lake.
Melanie had brought a plastic bag. As we moved up the trail, she plucked the tops off of dandelions, an invasive species.
"It probably won't make any difference at all," she said.
Yet, she stopped the flowers she plucked from maturing into several thousand seeds and those are seeds that now will never grow.
Yet, the dandelions will continue their invasion.
Even so, it looked the only place they could really find a place to grow was right on and along the edges of the trail.
Unbroken country seemed to be inhospitable to dandelions.
We found bear poop on the trail - really big turds. They weren't steaming hot fresh, but were still moist. For awhile after that, Melanie started calling out to the bears as we walked, to tell them we were here and meant them no harm and so they had no need to harm us.
Way up on the mountainside, I spotted what I at first though were Dahl sheep. Upon closer inspection, I think they were goats.
A tiny butterfly - maybe a moth.
These little worm-or-caterpillar like characters were hanging web-like threads from alder trees. They seemed to have taken a hard toll on the alders.
They also found their way onto necks and into our hair. It did not feel good when they did that.
The hiking was much steeper at the end than it had been at the beginning, but my body got used to it and it wasn't as hard. It had rained earlier and the trail was slippery.
This is one of the other 15 or so people that we saw. She came along as Melanie and I were sitting and admiring the country we had climbed over.
And then she took off on a run. Now... Civi has stated that he does want me to take a picture just for him, but I cannot change the fact that when I saw her jog across the mountain side, it looked like real freedom to me, Fourth of July kind of freedom, it looked like the very picture that I had been looking for and I thought about Civi and I took it.
But okay, Civi - this picture is not for you, it is for everybody who reads this blog, taken on behalf of both you and me.
After my first trip to India, I gave a camera that I no longer used to my new nephew, Vijay. He then went out and won an award in an Indian photo contest - that award was this little green backpack. He sent it to me.
Because I tend to carry so much equipment when I travel, I had a much bigger bag but I hated it.
After Vijay gave me this bag, I figured out a way to leave that bag home and just take this one.
It has proven to be an exceptionally good gift.
Thank you, Vijay.
Melanie kept asking me if she could carry it for me. I was fine carrying it, but finally did let her carry it for awhile. She is always looking out for me like that.
On the way down, we found this beautiful Alaska wild rose.
Down at the bottom, we got back into Melanie's car and drove toward Anchorage and the cookout. I have related no details about the climb and the conversation and the company, because it would take a long time for me to that.
But it was good. The company was good, the conversation was good.
I wish we could do something like this every week.