Monthly Archives: October 2021

Camping, Off-Roading

UFO’s, Foxes, and a Damn Good Campsite

Day 7

Altitude: 855 ft. Stoke level: 10 Temperature: 79-64 degrees Conditions: sunny, clear, calm

Today was probably one of the finest days I’ve ever had out exploring the desert wastes of California. I finally managed to get the motivation to pack up my campsite and head to town. I had some shopping to do as well as to upload my blog. As cellular signal in town is lacking, I needed to find a place with wifi to upload. I was craving a cheeseburger, so I found this place named Carlee’s that had both wifi and burgers! They had green chilie cheeseburgers (my favorite) so I ordered one. I ordered mine medium-rare and it came out pretty rare, but that was fine by me! It was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had, and the beer-battered fries were top-notch as well.

I managed to get my blog uploaded, got a few groceries and topped off my tank before heading out of town towards the east side of the park. I wanted to find a place to camp close to Font’s Point so I found a dispersed campground called Arroyo Salado close by. I found the campground completely deserted, which is a big reason I love exploring during the week! I followed a trail off to the side which led to a little nook which contained a couple of campsites with fire pits. I knew that this was the camp for me so I parked and set up shop.

Looking west back towards Borrego Springs. The mountains in the background were where I saw the weird light flying around later that evening.

I made a fire and got prepared to grill a steak over the coals. It was a calm clear evening with only the slightest bit of wind blowing. The temperature was perfect, I didn’t need the fire for warmth but it was nice to make a fire for the first time on this trip. It’s a pretty busy air corridor as I’m pretty close to San Diego and a few military bases, so there were a lot of aircraft flying around the sky. They are pretty easy to identify, with their red & green lights blinking and straight flight paths.

Nothing better than making a nice fire out in the desert.

As I was grilling my steak, I saw a light appear over the mountains to the west. At first I thought it was a plane, even though I didn’t see any navigation lights on it. It was flying south to north in a straight line when suddenly it started to make huge loops and move in really odd ways. The speed at which it was making these maneuvers was impossible for a normal aircraft to make. I must have watched it for a minute when I realized I needed to be recording what I was seeing, so I pushed record and filmed what I saw.

It was an incredible thing to witness! It was easy to see with the naked eye but when I reviewed the film, the results were inconclusive. The mountains were set in relief by the light pollution coming from San Diego, so I had a visual reference to see the erratic motions of the craft. In watching the video though, you just see a light in the darkness. The camera can’t pick up enough light to show the mountain range in relation to the unidentified light. As I’m tracking the object with the camera, you can’t see the relative motion. I got on Google Photos and applied image stabilization which helped, but it blurred the light too much with visual artifacts. I then processed it with full brightness which helped see the motion of the object somewhat.

I can see it move around in loops and odd directions, but I don’t know if anyone else will be able to. Still, I saw what I saw, and this is the evidence I gathered. If I see something like this again I’ll stay zoomed out and not follow the light with my phone. It was a really cool thing to witness, that’s why I like stargazing out in the desert, you never know what you’ll see! The lack of light pollution results in an amazing display of stars & the Milky Way at night, so even without UAP’s flying around there is so much to see out here in the darkness.

At the end of the video, I stopped recording and tried to reacquire the light again with my naked eye. Within moments it just vanished, never to appear again. What it was, I’ll never know. I’ve never seen anything so brightly lit up move with such agility. It must have been moving hundreds of feet in the blink of an eye, moving at high rates of speed. There’s no way it was a manned craft to move so fast. The closest thing I can compare it to is an insect flying around a light source at night. Its movements were just so random! Plus it was lit up as bright as an airplane, so who knows what it was? It certainly was an exciting thing to see!

As I was trying to come to terms with what had happened, I saw movement from around the front of my truck. I shone my headlamp on the visitor to find a desert fox staring at me! It turned tail and ran away, I chased after it to look at it better. Every now and then my headlamp would illuminate its eyes with a blue reflection. It would have been pretty spooky if I didn’t know what I was looking at! With the UFO and now the fox sighting, I felt incredibly blessed by my choice in campsites. That, along with the delicious cheeseburger I had earlier and the perfect conditions gave today a 10 on the Stoke Meter without question. Days like this are why I go through so much trouble and expense to do trips such as these. So far this expedition has really delivered, I hope it keeps going this way!

Day 8

Altitude: 855 ft. Stoke level: 9 Temperature: 84-70 degrees Conditions: sunny, clear, calm

I woke up late after staying up most of the night hoping the UFO/UAP would make another appearance. I orginally had intended to go explore Font’s Point while the crowds were away, but I didn’t want to take a chance on having someone claim this excellent spot while I was away…so I stayed put. I drank many beers while watching the video I made the night before. I did everything I could to try and show what I saw with my naked eye on video, but no matter what I did I wasn’t impressed with the results. With brightness cranked to 100% you can see the grain behind the image and that kind of gives perspective to the motion of the craft. In the end I was disappointed that it didn’t show what I saw with my eyes exactly, but it’s better than not having a video at all.

I made my first big blunder of the expedition so far. I noticed that my cooler was having trouble staying below 40 degrees during the heat of the day (it’s set at 32 degrees, actual temperature is 5-7 degrees above what the display reads). This is on ‘Eco’, which is the most energy-efficient setting. Usually this is fine at night and uses very little power, so it’s my go-to setting. I decided to set it to ‘Max’ setting to see how that worked out. At first, it worked out great, the temperature started to drop back down into the 30’s. I then made the critical error of passing out most of the afternoon. When I woke up around sunset, my energy meter showed I had way overblown my energy budget for the day. My solar battery was dangerously discharged. I had used more power than I had taken in during sunlight hours. I have to be careful about discharging my battery more than 50% in a day, it’s harmful to it if I dip below 12.2 volts. I got right to 12.2 at the low point last night because of my flub, that can’t happen again. I’ll have to take my chances at the ‘Eco’ setting and hope that nothing gets too warm & I get food poisoning.

It turned out to be another perfect night condition-wise. I made a big batch of Mi Goreng Indonesian noodles with snow pea pods, mini corn and fried spam. It takes a lot of prep to make such a meal, but it was worth it. As I cooked, I’d occasionally drop bits of food in the sand which I would throw away towards the perimeter of my campsite. At one point I thought I saw movement and shone my light in that direction. It was the fox, it had returned!

This time it showed no fear of me, and I got good film of him. He was running around gobbling up all the bits of food I had dropped making my noodles. At one point it got within 5 feet of me! I had never been so close to a fox before. At one point I thought he might possibly try and bite me, even though he showed no aggressive behavior and wasn’t foaming at the mouth or anything. He was just a brave little fox. I was honored to be visited by this desert animal. The desert appears to be barren but obviously there’s a lot of life out there running around. I take care on where I walk because I know there’s sidewinders and scorpions out here roaming around at night as well. Still, seeing some wildlife so close was a real treat. As I say in the video, it was a real ‘National Geographic’ kind of moment!

As far as sighting any mysterious crafts, I did witness a strange blinking red light going back and forth across the mountain in roughly the same spot as the object the night before. It would jump around a bit, but nothing like the object did the night before. I made a video, but it really didn’t show that much. I reckoned it could have been maybe a search-and-rescue helicopter looking for someone. I stayed out until around 10 o’clock but didn’t see anything else. There were little moths flying around everywhere, they constantly would fly into my eyes & ears. Eventually I got fed up with the bugs and decided to retreat into the relatively bug-free environment of my camper for the remainder of the evening.

As for tomorrow, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. The week is starting to wind down once again and the weekend warriors will soon be back. I really want to explore Font’s Point before the crowds show back up, but when I’ve found such a quality campsite I’m super hesitant to leave. I want to explore new places, but finding new campsites day after day is sort of a ‘hit-or-miss’ proposition. My main reason for coming down here is desert solitude, and not having to drive around having to burn expensive gas is a huge plus. Wherever I’m at on Friday is where I’ll have to spend the weekend though. I’m in no hurry to go anywhere, but if someone shows up at the other campsite here (weekend warriors love to get up in your space) it’s going to totally ruin this spot. It’s such a lovely campsite, free from the human stain. If a bunch of loudmouth yakkers show up it’ll piss all over my solitude. So I’ll see how it goes. It’s great not having a schedule and being able to do as much or as little as I want!

Day 9

Altitude: 855 ft. Stoke Meter: 9 Temperature: 90-70 degrees Conditions: sunny, clear, slight wind

Nothing really happened today. No foxes or UFO’S made an appearance. It was a real hot day, and I was just completely drained. Still in high sprits though! I’ve always wanted to watch Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle so I started watching episodes of that show today. I’m pretty impressed with it so far. I’ll definitely be leaving my camp tomorrow. It’s been a great camp, one of my all time favorite places actually. It’s time to make tracks however. I need to let my solar battery recharge, I had another low voltage situation last night. When I’ve got the 12 volt cooler plugged in all day it can’t recharge properly under load. A few hours running off the starting battery should remedy that.

I’ve got a full plate planned for tomorrow. As it is Friday already again, (can’t believe I’ve been here a week!) the weekend warrior plague will be drifting back into town. I need to go do town stuff, as well as upload this blog, check out Font’s Point, and scout out another campsite. It’s going to be a busy day!

Standard
Camping, Off-Roading

Operation Desert Solitude Begins

Day One of Operation Desert Solitude

Altitude: 2905 ft.  Stoke level: 10 Temperature: 71-56 degrees        Conditions: partly cloudy, light wind

It was such a huge relief to finally hit the road at long last! I managed to get out ahead of a run of bad weather hitting the Monterey Bay, which was nice. For at least the next 3 weeks or so I’ll try my best to outrun Autumn weather by heading south. I left town on a good note, actually. I had a great conversation with a captain Bethan referred me to up in Anchorage, a fellow named Thor. Captain Thor told me he’d be glad to take me on as deckhand for the next summer season. The season would run April to August, so at least I’ve got employment locked down for that point in the future. I’m looking forward to getting in some good commercial fishing experience. It’s going to be a long cold winter in the meantime. Oh well, best think about that later.

It was so good to hop on Highway 25 and make the run down into San Benito county. When I hit Tres Pinos I know I’m home, it’s always such a welcome feeling. The trip was uneventful, and it was a nice day weather-wise. I got really lucky on my arrival to the campground, my favorite spot was available! There’s only 6 camping spots up at Laguna Mountain, and my favorite spot has the best views in my opinion. It kind of has its own secluded driveway as well, so it’s the most private. When I’ve got my spot locked down I know I’m gonna have a real good time! I got my camp set up, which took quite a bit of time since I had a lot of new gear to integrate into my camp plan.

Out of all my new kit, my 12 volt cooler has been of particular interest to me. I love the thing, it’s got enough room to fit a couple gallon jugs of water with room to spare. It’s a miracle how something can just sip current, yet still be able to keep ice cold temperatures at the same time. Even though it sips power, it still is a steady drain on my power systems. I can power it by the main truck battery when I’m on the road, so no problem there. The issue is whether or not I can keep it going all day with just the solar battery. With the sun so low in the sky this time of year, it’s hard to get a good charge. Together with partly cloudy skies, it’s gonna be difficult to keep it going. I wanted to make this upgrade in tandem with upgrading my electrical system, being able to charge my house battery via the alternator would be a huge help right now. I had to choose one or the other so I chose to have the 12 volt cooler. We’ll definitely see if this was a wise decision on my part. So far so good though.

My new BougeRV cooler, with and without the insulated cover.

Another upgrade I’m really appreciating is basing all my propane needs off of a 20 lb tank. No more having to deal with those little 1 lb propane canisters! Now I can power my in-camper catalytic heater, my new stove, and this neat little gadget called a ‘Mister Heater’ by merely swapping out hoses. It’s a much better way to do things than the way I was doing it before. The Mister Heater is a infrared heating element that threads on top of my propane tank. Once it is installed, you just light it up and it makes a great heater! I got this for occasions when I want heat at night but can’t make a fire due to restrictions.

I’m really loving my new Coleman camp stove. I’ve always wanted a proper two-burner. Got a new T-Fal 12 inch non-stick skillet to use on it as well!

I had a really good first night out here at Laguna Mountain. I stayed up till probably 4 AM drinking wine and enjoying the nice clear evening. At one point I turned on my new survival radio to run through all the available bands. About the only thing on was really maniac strange Mexican music and Christian rock. Radio around here really sucks, ha ha! It’s fun to play around on my new Kaito radio. I’ve got a 25 foot wire antenna to put on the thing, so maybe after I do that I’ll pull in some interesting stations, who knows.

Day Two

Altitude: 2905 ft.  Stoke level: 7 Temperature: 72-59 degrees  Conditions: partly cloudy, moderate breeze

My stoke meter slid 3 points due to a massive hangover. I’m still in really good spirits though. The cooler ran like clockwork all night and into the day. I don’t know what kind of charge I’m going to have left come sundown. I might have to pull the plug tonight, only time will tell. I’ve got only some ham, cheese and mayo that can spoil. I kind of saw this thing coming so I intentionally left out a lot of fresh food until I can see how this cooler situation pans out.

Not really doing too much today at all. Before I left, I downloaded ‘Squid Game’ off of Netflix and have been watching that all day. It’s a pretty messed up series, but wildly entertaining! I’ve got to get up early for the journey down south tomorrow, so no partying tonight. It’s going to be a 8 hour run down my least favorite stretch of road in all of California…I-5. Plus I’ll have to skirt nasty LA traffic, I’m not really looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to being at my destination however!

Day Three

Altitude: 3292 ft. Stoke meter: 6 Temperature: 73-61 degrees Conditions: mostly sunny, clear, windy

Well, the cooler barely used any power at all last night, and it held barely above freezing the whole time. I don’t think I’m going to have any problems keeping it on 24/7, especially now that I have arrived down at Anza-Borrego. The forecast is for clear sunny skies the next few days. I should be able to get a pretty decent charge for my battery on a daily basis while I’m down here. Gotta love that desert sun!

It was a taxing trip down from San Benito county. I left a couple hours later than I would have liked, for starters. It was a pretty good trip until I got to LA county. From Pasadena to Temecula it was nasty. I spent 4 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic, it was pretty rotten. I took the most direct route, but next time I think I will drive out of my way to completely bypass the outskirts of LA. Other than the insane traffic, it was a good drive. It’s been a while since I’ve driven such a distance. It feels good to get some miles under my tires!

Since I left so late, my arrival time here in Anza-Borrego was due to be right around sundown. My cardinal rule about desert camping is to set up camp no later than two hours before the sun sets, so I was nervous about my late arrival. As I made my way into the home stretch of the park, I remarked on how similar it is here to Joshua Tree. The rocks are smaller (but still have that Joshua Tree look to them) and there’s no Joshua Trees, but other than that the scenery and vibe is the same.

The sun fell behind the mountains a good 30 minutes before I arrived, so there was barely any light when I got to the campground. I chose to camp at one of the free dispersed campgrounds since I wouldn’t have time to scout out a place in the desert. Anza-Borrego has miles of off-road you can camp off of, the only limitations are that you can’t park more than a car’s length off the road and can’t set up camp 100 feet from a water source. After this first night I plan to camp well away from the public, but for now I’ll have to deal with being around people.

This being a Friday night, I was well aware that the weekend warriors would probably be infesting my chosen campground. Indeed they were doing so, I found out upon my arrival. All the spots were taken, but I managed to find a little nook that had been overlooked. I had enough room to back up my truck to a private space, and that’s all I needed. I set up my stove and heated up some canned menudo for dinner. The wind was gusting and made setting up camp difficult, but I’ve been through worse out in the desert. I’m surrounded by people, this seems to be a pretty popular campground. I want to be far away from people as possible, for tonight I’ll just have to deal with it though. 

Tomorrow I plan to hit up the visitor center and see what they have there. I’ll probably focus on finding a good remote camping spot way off of the beaten path. I can wait until Sunday or Monday to actually start seeing the sights. With so many people around, I imagine a lot of the good spots to go check out will be totally inundated this weekend. I don’t mind staying out of the way until the crowds have passed. I’ve liked what I have seen so far, can’t wait to fully explore this place!

Day 4

Altitude: 1013 ft.  Stoke level: 7.5 Temperature: 82-64 degrees      Conditions: clear, sunny, strong winds

After a good night of sleep, I got up around 9 AM and broke camp. My mission today was to check out the town of Borrego Springs and get myself acquainted with the place. I also wanted to see what the park vistor center had to offer. I had to descend from the top of the mountain down to the valley floor where the town and the rest of the park was located. The winds continued to blow unabated. I got to a vista point and took a couple of pictures, the winds were so strong I had to hold my phone with both hands to keep it from blowing out of my grasp!

Great views of Borrego Springs and of Anza-Borrego from the highway vista point.

When I got down into town, I saw that they were having a small festival going on called ‘Borrego Days’. It was set up inside a small park in the middle of the town’s only roundabout. It looked pretty fun, they had all kinds of festival food stands and live music. I had a lot to do so I didn’t stop to check it out. The first thing I went and did was get gas. Gas is extremely expensive here, I put in 50 bucks worth and it gave me a little more than a quarter tank. Now I remember why it costs so much money to explore the desert! I checked out a few shops for various items and they were just as expensive as the gas. Things are even more expensive here than they are in Alaska! Cellular internet was pretty crummy so I got a 10 dollar margarita at a local Mexican restaurant to use their wi-fi. It wasn’t much better than cellular, but I was able to take care of internet stuff.

It’s good that I don’t use diesel! Eight dollars a gallon is insane!

After I got fueled up, I made my way over to the Anza-Borrego Visitor Center. I was pretty impressed with it, they had some nice exhibits. Probably the highlight was the mammoth skulls and fossils they had on display, as well as a replica of a tortoise shell that was the size of a 4-wheeler. I guess back in the day the desert was more like a savanna. There were many species that lived here, including sloths, saber-toothed tigers, mammoths, camels, and zebras. Before all the megafauna existed there was an inland sea here so there were a lot of ocean fossils on display as well.

I asked a ranger where a good place to get away from crowds would be, and he told me to head up to the north end of the park to a place called Coyote Canyon. As it was getting rather late in the day I finished my business in town and proceeded to head that way. I only made it about 45 minutes up the road when I saw an inviting turn-out that looked to be a good place to camp for the night. I didn’t want to be fumbling around in the dark for a campsite so I decided to stop for the day. I’m right off the road (which is the only legal place to camp) so it’s not as private as I would like. Still, it’s a far better spot than I was at last night. Other than the occasional Jeep roaring by it’s pretty isolated. I even have a bit of 4g Internet here which is a bonus. The wind keeps on blowing steadily however. All night long my truck keeps rocking back and forth. It’s warm though, and inside my camper shell it’s pretty cozy.

My landing spot for the night. It’s soothing to hear the wind blowing the ocotillo branches around.

Tomorrow I plan on driving further up the canyon and check out what’s further up the road. There’s a 55% chance of rain on Monday so I need to keep an eye on these washes to make sure I don’t get stuck in a bad spot anywhere around here. Flash floods can get pretty crazy out here in the desert. After Monday the weather’s going to be nice so I’ll start checking out some of the more popular spots then. As for now I’m going to continue my exploration of this canyon and hope a lot of the weekend warriors start filtering out tomorrow.

Day 5

Altitude: 1013 ft.  Stoke level: 8 Temperature: 84-60 degrees  Conditions: sunny, light clouds, light wind

All morning, traffic streamed out of the canyon. I didn’t leave my spot until around 11 as I wanted to give the weekend warriors time to filter out. I set a course on my new OnX off-road app and headed up the canyon. I made it up a couple of miles, and in that time I had to pull over to let traffic by several times. The road narrowed quite a bit once I got past my camping spot so it was really aggravating having to let people pass. Not only was the road narrowing an annoyance, but the road became really rocky and sandy. Even with deflated tires and 4 wheel drive engaged it started to get challenging to drive. If I didn’t constantly have to dodge traffic it would have been fine but with so many other vehicles coming the opposite way it got really annoying really fast. Driving a big truck like The Beast off-road is hard enough without having other people to dodge! After a couple of miles, I got fed up with the situation and returned to my camp of the previous evening.

This was mounted to a rock at my campsite. Turns out back in 1775 this spot was the route used by Lt.Col. Juan Bautista de Anza to deliver settlers through this region.

Since I wouldn’t be going anywhere, I decided to get uproariously drunk. I decided to assemble this grill I got so I could build a fire in it, but never got around to making the fire due to wind. I felt like talking to somebody so I gave my nephew a call and had a really nice conversation with him. During the call I fell out of my chair and dumped a full Solo cup of wine all over me. I got pretty scraped up from this, all in good fun though. The last thing I remember is flopping into my bed sometime around midnight and I passed clean out.

Sunset of my wine-soaked evening.

Day 6

Altitude: 1013 ft. Stoke meter: 7 Temperature: 77-59 degrees Conditions: sunny early/rain late, strong wind

Another morning, another hangover. This one was pretty rotten. I woke up and couldn’t find my glasses anywhere. I looked for like 3 hours and couldn’t find them for the life of me. After searching all over my camper and cab, I decided to check my campsite. I found them buried in the sand a few feet from my camper door. I must have been wrecked to not have noticed that they fell off of my face last night! I washed them off and they were fine, no scratches on them or anything. No harm, no foul! I was pretty banged up from falling over last night though, my elbow and knee were scraped up pretty badly. All par for the course when I’m out on expedition!

I had a decision to make. Should I stay and rest up from my debauch the previous evening, or should I hit the road and start seeing more of the park? I was torn, as I wanted to do both things equally. After much debate, I decided to take it easy and not deal with the aggravation of packing up camp and rolling back through town. I would need to stop at the market in Borrego Springs and I just couldn’t handle the thought of grappling with civilization today. I’m not in a huge hurry, but weekday time is precious to me. The time outside the weekends are prime exploratory time. I don’t like to contend with the weekend warrior crowd so I prefer to roam around during the week.

The weather was another factor to take into consideration. The remnants of the storms that pummeled Northern California were making their way down to the desert in the evening and I wanted to be in a good spot in case it got bad. So the rest of the day I just recovered and waited for the rain to arrive.

Storm clouds rolling in.

The winds kept picking up as the evening wore on. Soon my truck was rocking and rolling from the gusts. The temperature dropped and I started up my heater. Rain started to fall eventually, but it never got too heavy. Eventually the storm blew through but the wind never died. It’s been steady the whole time I’ve been here actually. It makes building a fire or even using my stove almost impossible. Hopefully I can find a spot with more protection, this wind keeps things cool but is a huge annoyance.

I’m going into town tomorrow to resupply and then go to this place called ‘Font’s Point’ that has been called “California’s Grand Canyon.” It’s the most popular view in the park. Hopefully there will be some good spots over there for camping. The road over there has been rated a 3 out of 10 on the difficulty scale, so The Beast should be able to handle it without issue. It’s been nice hanging out in Coyote Canyon but the show must go on!

Standard
Alaska

Return to Civilization

In regards to my featured photo, I wanted to show the joy I experienced being at the end of the rainbow! A perfect rainbow was formed right over the lodge in the last week we were there. I’ve seen a lot of pretty rainbows at Yes Bay, but this one is the best. I just wanted ya’ll to see me experiencing it.

Well, I finally did it! The season is over, and I’ve returned from the bush. The way it worked out, I left three days earlier than expected due to our last couple of groups canceling. The coho run ended suddenly, and that along with really bad weather finished our season. At first, I was pretty annoyed at losing out on the extra pay I would have made. Also having to reschedule my flights and the extra money that would cost was another aggravation I wasn’t really keen on experiencing. After thinking about it though, I decided I was glad to leave early. I was just completely done with the whole thing. Instead of changing my flights around I opted to stay the extra three nights in Ketchikan and ease my way back into civilization. This really worked out well and I’m glad I did it.

Before we all made our escape, we had a wedding to attend. Captain Pack Rat and his lady Party Wolf were going to tie the knot out at the lodge. Everybody pitched in to make the hitching a success. My task was to clean and cook a whole bunch of Dungeness crab for the reception, so one last time I got the ‘ol crab pot out and boiled up a mess ‘o crab. We had the wedding down on the dock, and one of the office girls made a nice little wedding arch placed on our fish-hanging rack. Captain Snapper officiated the ceremony, and it was a great success. It was raining and cold that day, we were all in our raingear and Xtra Tough boots. I must say it was the most unique wedding I’ve ever attended! After the ceremony, we had really nice reception/final dinner with the crew. The boss gave us some great compliments on having a stellar season and said that he’d hire any of us back. It really made us all feel pretty good, and was a great way to end things.

The happy couple.

The next day was our departure day. I was initially supposed to head out by boat, but at the last minute I got bumped to the plane for which I was glad. All season long I had daydreamed what it would be like to finally leave, and when the moment came I was ecstatic! Climbing into the back seat and taking off was one of the finest moments of my life. It was a really nice plane ride into town, the weather was perfect and you could see for miles. The boss had left a little before us in the Water-Horse, transporting some of the crew and all our baggage. Trevor got down to about fifty feet over the water and we buzzed the boat on the way in, that was fun!

Some shots from the floatplane on the way back to town.

When we got back to town, Trevor took us around in the company van to run errands. I mailed off a box of gear at the post office and then a bunch of us got dropped at a hotel in town. We all made plans to meet up later that night at the local Moose Lodge for drinks and I checked myself in. It was absolutely decadent having a nice hotel room to myself, with a great view of Ketchikan harbor.

Nice view from my room. A bit noisy from the traffic however.

Fortunately, there was a dispensary right next door so I didn’t have to go far to get myself some smoke. Afterwards, I had a crazy appetite so I treated myself to a nice seafood platter at the best restaurant in town. It was an awesome first meal back in civilization! When I was finished eating, I met up with some crew members and we made the rounds of the bars downtown. At some point I made it to the Moose Lodge where almost everybody showed up and we got sauced! I don’t remember too much about the rest of the night but I know we all had a real good time. It was a great last hurrah with the crew.

Almost everyone flew out the next day, and I moved from the hotel to a nearby Airb&b I had rented out. The Airb&b was right on Ketchikan Creek about a quarter mile from downtown. Supposedly the writer Richard Bach had stayed there before, it was in a really cool 100 year old house. Being so close to the creek there was constant white noise which I really loved. It was ironic that my waterfall white noise app on my phone helped me sleep while at the lodge, and now I had the real life version! It worked out great as a base of operations the next three days I was in town. My co-worker Mary Ann was flying out the same day as me, so we hit the bars and hung out in the interm. The weather was pretty bad the whole time so I mostly stayed indoors. I did a bit of walking around checking out the sights though. I managed to make it to the town museum and check out the exhibits. I’ll never pass up a good museum!

A view of Ketchikan Creek from my Airb&b window.

Some shots from around town.

Some old pics from the museum. That king salmon in the picture weighed 87 lbs. What a monster!

An example of what the native people used to catch halibut on. Also, the skull of a famous grizzly named ‘Old Groaner’. The wire around the skull showed the size of the massive beast. It was cool being face to face with such a legendary creature.

The day finally arrived for my departure from Ketchikan, and I hopped on my flight bound for Anchorage. I had been really looking forward to seeing Bethan again, but a day before I left Ketchikan she told me she was sick! She didn’t know if she had COVID or not, but she didn’t want to spread whatever she had to me. I was really bummed about this development but decided to go anyway. I told her we’d just play it by ear, if she felt better we could get together. I figured that in the worst case scenario I’d just take it easy and rest up. I was still super exhausted from the season and laying around doing nothing sounded like a good time to me!

I arrived back into Anchorage and took an Uber to my Airb&b. It was in a pretty good spot close to a liquor store and good restaurants, so for the first couple of days I just laid in bed drinking whiskey and started to get caught up on all my shows I’d missed while out at the lodge. On the third day I had booked a night at the Historic Anchorage Hotel downtown. It’s known to be haunted and I got the room that was said to be the most haunted in the hotel. I love staying in haunted hotels so I was interested in seeing if I could experience any paranormal phenomena while I was there. Fortunately, Bethan wound up not having COVID and was feeling well enough to hang out. She wanted to see if any ghosts were around as well, so she came over and we had a nice reunion. She recommended we walk this trail that went from downtown to the shore of the Knik Arm that lies to the north of the city. We went and had a good little hike with some really pretty views. Everyone says that Anchorage is an ugly city, but the views around town are incredible I think.

Looking west/northwest towards the Knik Arm.

The Chugach Mountains to the south and east of the city are magnificent.

The Historic Anchorage Hotel. It’s one of the oldest buildings in Alaska, and one of the few to survive the destruction of downtown Anchorage back in the earthquake of ’64. This place has a lot of history (and ghosts).

We came back to the hotel and settled in, but no ghosts made an appearance that night unfortunately. It was still really cool to be in such an historic building, and the room was pretty nice as well. I definitely recommend the place. The next day was my last day in town, and I really wanted to hit up the museum before I left. After a seafood Benedict breakfast (I needed to get my Eggs Benedict fix after a long while without) we made our way to the museum. I was really impressed with it, it took around 3-4 hours to see everything. They had all kinds of cool exhibits and art. Bethan and I had fun playing on all the interactive exhibits meant for kids. There was even some live animals in there. I really connected with this little black rockfish that was hanging out in the tank with a king crab. I emailed the museum after my visit to see if the fish had a name but they never got back to me…so I guess I’ll refer to him as Blackie! They also had a snapping turtle in there for some reason and a nice tide pool tank. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the museum and I’m glad I got to check it out with such lovely company.

The Anchorage Museum from the outside. Also, Blackie the rockfish and his crab buddy.

After the museum, Bethan suggested we go to this place called ‘The Crow’s Nest’. It’s at the top of The Hotel Captain Cook which is the tallest building in Anchorage I think. She warned that it was pretty pricey but the views were amazing. The hotel itself was set up like a sailing vessel with a lot of dark wood paneling and was sort of a tribute to Captain Cook himself. There were a lot of portraits around showing his travels around the Pacific. When I lived in Hawaii I actually went to the place where he was killed by the natives. It was a haunted place for sure. What a bad end he came to! Anyways, we went up to the restaurant and had some food and drinks. She was right, the views were incredible! It was a little pricey, but it was definitely worth it in my opinion.

Great views in all directions from top of Hotel Captain Cook.

After we were done eating and drinking, we tried to go to this native museum but it was closed unfortunately. It was getting dark, so at a lack of things to do we got some pizza and headed back to my Airb&b to hang out for a while. Unfortunately, when we got back to where I was staying, the lady of the house yelled at me for having guests (I guess there was a no-guest policy, I wound up getting my first negative Airb&b review because of it) so Bethan couldn’t stay. As it was late anyway and I had to get up early for my flight back to the lower 48 we said goodbye to each other. I hated we couldn’t have spent more time together, but sickness can really throw a monkey wrench into things. Oh well. We still had a real good time.

I really miss Alaska. Hopefully I can get a job doing deckhand stuff up there next season. I hope it works out. I thought I’d post a couple more videos from Alaska. One is of my first (and only) bear sighting. Needless to say I was excited about it. The other is of a school of salmon coming real close to me by the dock. Enjoy!

So I’ve been back in California for the past few days getting geared up for my next adventure. It’s been really difficult getting back into society down here. While it’s been great being reunited with The Beast, I just feel overwhelmed. All the traffic and people everywhere has me crazed. Also the whole society seems to be crumbling around me. When I left back in June things seemed to be getting better, but now it’s just chaos. I’ve not really had time to clear my head and think about what I just went through. This being the case, I’m heading out to the desert for peace and quiet in the desolation. I’ll name this upcoming expedition ‘Operation Desert Solitude’ I think. It’s gonna be a good one. I’ve invested a couple grand in truck repairs and gear so I’m ready to go.

In the morning I plan to go out to one of my favorite places, Laguna Mountain down in San Benito county. Since I’ve got a lot of new gear I want to have a familiar place to stay and test everything out before I head down south. I’m going to check out Anza Borrego, which is a huge park down close to the border, about an hour east of San Diego. I’ve long wanted to go exploring down there. After that I’ll probably head up to Joshua Tree and the Mojave National Preserve. After that, who knows? I’ll figure it out after I get down there. Anyways, really looking forward to getting off road and in the backcountry. It’s all I could think about when I was stuck up at the lodge. It’s going to be a great expedition, I can’t wait to be on the road!

Standard