I meant to post this yesterday, but I didn’t have time. It was going to be a “Happy Cinco de Mayo” post. Sort of.

May 5th, 2008, marks the three-year anniversary of our arrival in Skagway, Alaska, for our performing gig at Liarsville Gold Rush Trail Camp. That summer would prove to be one of the most pivotal times of my life.

Kat, Jonathan, and I got off the boat in Skagway on May 5th, 2005. Our boss K.C. picked us up and brought us to camp to drop our stuff and get acquainted, and then we went to the Red Onion Saloon for tacos and margaritas. It was the first of probably a hundred trips to the Red Onion.

It’s hard to believe it’s been three full years since I’ve lived in Louisiana. After two and a half years in Minneapolis, I still feel like a newcomer, and sometimes, I feel like I could wake up one day and resume my old life – that the past few years had been a dream.

I’m writing this from a plane, about to descend into New Orleans once again. I’m returning to retrieve my belongings from Kat’s parents’ house. This trip will be far too short, only a few days. I’ll untangle my possessions from those of my ex-girlfriend, sorting through the boxes of what used to be our stuff. Boxes we had packed together before our trip to Skagway. Boxes of stuff we planned to return to five months later -  together - when we thought we’d resume our life. As it turned out, most of those possessions would never again sit in an apartment with me and Kat together.

Hurricane Katrina and several other factors prevented us from returning home and led us instead to Minneapolis. To date, neither of us has lived in Louisiana in three full years. (I haven’t felt a one-hundred-degree day since the Summer of 2004. That weirds me out.) We brought a lot of our stuff to Minneapolis in November of 2005 (our first time back post-Katrina), but there’s still enough stuff in storage at her parents’ house to fill a one-bedroom apartment. Half of it’s mine, and it’ll stay in boxes, now destined to reside in my roommate’s basement.

After I’ve packed the U-Haul, I’ll say goodbye to her parents for the last time, and drive the twenty hours back to Minneapolis. This will hopefully be the last time I visit New Orleans solely for chores and obligations. Next time, it’ll be visiting friends, family, and having fun. Seriously.

(Exactly two years after I last left Alaska.)

“Hi!” Mike shouted into the darkening wilderness as he and I walked down a narrow, gravel, mountain road, “My name’s Mike!”

We had been walking for a half hour and were almost out of daylight. If we couldn’t make it back to civilization when darkness fell, all we would have for illumination would be my phone’s screen. With no cell signal, my new Blackberry would be reduced to nothing more than a very expensive, low-power flashlight.

“And my name’s Clarence!” I shouted in response.

To our right, the forest ascended into the sky, occasionally pierced by streams of snowmelt trickling down the side of the mountain on which we walked. To our left, the forest fell away and revealed other mountains in the distance, only partially obscured by trees at the roadside. The ground rolled almost straight down, and the streams of water from above eventually terminated in a small but violent river below.

Mike continued, “We’re with the National Theatre for Children, and we’re here to present a show called…” We both simultaneously shouted, “Mad About Money! Pay Yourself First!”

It’s late September. Days are getting shorter, the temperature is dropping, and grizzly bears are feeding on the salmon which run through local rivers and streams. Mike speculates that, this late in the season, the bears are getting more desperate to get food before winter arrives. He had just seen Grizzly Man, a movie about Timothy Treadwell, who was a nutjob from the lower 48 who decided to live among grizzly bears. He actually succeeded for years, but he stayed a little too late in the season one year, and a desperately hungry bear decided to eat him. Mike had consequently developed a definite case of bearanoia.

To ensure that we wouldn’t startle any bears, we made continuous noise, just like the Park Rangers tell you. After a little while, our clapping and cries of ”Hey, bear!” gave way to a line-through of our show – the show we were currently missing, because we were stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with no transportation, no cellphone signal, no supplies, no food, and no shelter. I wasn’t even wearing a jacket.

You can probably figure out that we didn’t get eaten. But I suspect that, if there were any bears in the vicinity, they are now aware of how to better handle their finances.

Earlier that afternoon

After standing on the shore, staring in awe at humpback whales breaching in the distance, Mike and I noticed that we still had a couple more hours to kill. Our next school, Mt. Edgecumbe, had two shows back to back that evening. We would arrive between 6:15 and 6:30 PM for a 7:00 PM show. What other amazing Alaskan things could we see in Sitka between now and then? we asked ourselves.

The Raptor Center, where we could see bald eagles up close, would be closing in minutes, but we remembered seeing brown road signs (you know, the kind that mark “sites of interest”) pointing to Blue Lake Reservoir, a water source for Sitka. Further signs indicated the presence of hiking trails and campgrounds on the way. We decided to check it out. Scenic drives had become a standard passtime on our tour. We would have just the right amount of time to drive up to Blue Lake, look around for a bit, then head straight to the school.

We turned off the highway onto Blue Lake Road, which was a narrow gravel road that wound up the side of a mountain. The views were great, there were numerous waterfalls, and we couldn’t wait to see the lake. We came across several other motorists on their way down the mountain, and we saw a lone backpacker venture off towards the hiking trails and campgrounds. Mike and I wished we had the time and the gear to do the same.

As we neared the lake, the road straightened out and granted us a spectacular view of the mountains across the water. We couldn’t see the water, though, for all the trees. We came around a switchback, and the road suddenly steepened to a near 45 degree angle. There was no room to turn around (there had been a little gravel patch just yards earlier where we could’ve parked or turned around), and we figured there must be a way to turn around at the lake. We were accustomed to seeing little interpretive signs, benches, and parking areas at these kinds of places.

We continued down the incline, fearing that our rented Chevy Malibu would be unable to make the climb back up. We came around another bend to see water. Just water. Nowhere to park or turn around, no alternate routes out of there, no nothing. The road just dead-ends into the water, like a boatslip. This is when we got worried.

Sure enough, the Malibu couldn’t get enough traction on the steep, moist, dirt road to climb back up. We tried for half an hour to extricate our rental vehicle and only succeeded in getting it closer and closer to the water’s edge. We even found two tire-width planks of wood nearby that we were sure would help. We wedged them under the drive wheels and hoped that the tires would gain traction on them, but all we did was burn more rubber and shoot the planks out behind the car.

6:30 PM — Our scheduled arrival time at the school.

We have no other options, so we start walking. We left our set, props, and costumes, and my camera bag and accessories in the car, locked it up, and abandoned it. We started our trek back into town, carrying only my video camera (to document the comedy or tragedy that would unfold), our impotent cellphones, and our NTC binder (which had all of the pertinent documentation related to our show and tour).

The sun had already gone behind the mountains, and we were fast losing the light of the evening sky. Mike was scared of bears. After my five month tenure in a remote part of Alaska in 2005, I felt confident that we wouldn’t have to worry about bear attacks (as long as we were smart about it), but I was scared that we might not make it back before it got dark.

On the way up the road, we had seen a cross and an arrangement of flowers and other items memorializing a local girl who had driven off the mountain and killed herself in 2003. On the way down, it was even more creepy and ominous than on the way up. I thought back to the week we just had, then further back to my time in Alaska exactly two years before, and I thought about everything in between. Strange coincidences, amazing experiences, and a definite cyclical pattern to it all. And hey, the film adaptation of the book Into the Wild, which Foldy had told me about in Skagway, was being released the same time we were out here! I thought it would be quite poetic and dramatically appropriate if we got eaten by bears, fell down a mountain, or died of exposure in the wilds of Sitka. I kept it to myself.

We finally hit pavement around 7:10 or 7:15 PM. There was a large water-bottling facility at the foot of the road. We walked the chainlink perimeter and saw no one. There were a few vehicles, but no people, and the place was locked up tight. We were worried that we’d have to keep walking down the highway to make it to town, miles away. We heard a car door close, and saw a young woman walking on the other side of the chainlink.

“Hey!” we shouted, trying our hardest not to look like lunatics. She came over to the fence, and we told her our predicament. She couldn’t get us into the front office to use a landline, but she offered the use of her cellphone. While mine was still useless, hers had a bar or two, so I tried using her phone to call the school. Someone answered, but the call was immediately dropped. She said we might be able to get inside the complex near the employee quarters around back. We walked back there, but found no means of entry.

Completely furious at our lengthening series of let-downs, we were turning back towards town, when Mike stopped. “I hear a car,” he said. I heard it too, and I looked up to see a glimmer of headlights coming down the mountain.

It was now dark. Actually dark. And it was starting to rain. At least we had found the highway, but we weren’t out of the woods yet (literally and figuratively).

We ran as fast as we could, trying to catch the truck at the intersection, before it could drive away down the highway. The truck, Mike, and I arrived at the Stop sign at precisely the same moment. We explained our situation to the driver, and he offered to drive us back to our hotel. We had to ride in the bed of his truck, but we didn’t care.

The freezing raindrops and wind battered us as the truck sped down the highway along the shoreline. Mike and I sat with our backs to the mountainside and looked out over the water. We could vaguely make out the other islands and mountains, and remembered how only a few hours earlier, we were watching humpback whales out there. We laughed incredulously at the week we were having.

“Well, we finally got our hiking in!”

“We have officially had an Alaskan adventure!”

The truck pulled into the Super 8 parking lot. We hopped out, thanked the driver, and dragged our wet, cold, angry, and traumatized selves into our hotel room. I was certain we were getting fired.

We called the school and explained what happened. They would get in touch with NTC about possibly rescheduling for the next day. Oh, and great news: Our client had been there! (We’re paid for by corporate sponsors, and the outfit funding our Alaska tour was the Alaska Credit Union League.) Shit. We are so fired.

We called Avis about our rental car. Their roadside assistance could tow it, but I’d have to pay for it, because it’s apparently a violation of the rental agreement to drive a rental car on an unpaved road. Oops. I opted to call my insurance company instead.

My insurance company also said I’d have to pay for the tow myself. Fine, I thought, what choice do I have? They were going to call three local towing companies and call me back. When they got back to me, they said they only found one guy willing to do it — a guy named Pat – but the clutch was out on his tow truck and wouldn’t be fixed until at least 10:00 AM the next morning. In an effort to help me out of this situation, the agent on the phone told me that the car is in a high-vandalism area (!). The last car that got stuck out there was torched — Memorial Day Weekend of this year. Oh, shit! I had vivid images of locals getting their kicks by destroying a rental car that someone was stupid enough to bring to Blue Lake.

The agent went on to explain that, fearing for the welfare of the vehicle, I could call the police. She explained that the police would have a company contracted with them, and that it would be that towing company’s first priority to respond to their request. In a nutshell, if I call the police, they would have their own guy, and he’d have to do it ASAP. And, the agent continued, I could submit the receipts for reimbursement. Wow, I thought, that sounds like a great plan! It gets done AND I don’t have to pay for it? Yay!

But this was Sitka, Alaska.

I called the police, and the woman who answered had no idea what I was talking about. “Yeah, I mean, we’ve got a couple guys we use.” She paused. “Well, no, just one…the other one had a death in the family, so only one of ‘em is runnin’ now.” She gave me his name and number and told me to just call him myself. The going-through-the-police plan was a bust.

I called the guy to whom the police referred me, and he expressed his misgivings about doing it at all. Apparently, he was fairly new to the towing business, and he yanked the bumper off the last car he tried to pull out of that spot. He was unwilling to go out there that night, but he could go out the following day if I really wanted. He also highly recommended I call Pat (the guy whose clutch was out).

After a few more phone calls (the “phone call” portion of this story has gotten too long already), it was finally determined that our guy Pat would retrieve the Malibu once he got his truck fixed, and my insurance company would indeed cover it. Yay! We only hoped that the car and its contents would survive the night. And we were still without transportation. We had a show the next day at 1:00 PM. We didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.

Friday, September 28th, 2007

At 4:23 AM, NTC called me (they were three hours ahead of us) and authorized us to rent a second vehicle for the day. That way, we could do our other shows while we waited for the Malibu to get towed.

Not wanting to show our sorry faces in Avis again until we had the Malibu back, we walked down to a small, local auto service place and rented a fifteen-year-old Honda Accord for a mere $42. It was a beater, but at least it wasn’t stuck at the bottom of a mountain road. We drove the rickety Accord back out to Blue Lake to retrieve our stuff from the Malibu.

Vivid, terrifying visions of a burned vehicle and destroyed NTC set ran through our minds as we retraced our steps from the night before. Anxiety and shame filled us, and I was not only expecting us to get fired, but also to be financially liable for a new Chevy Malibu and a Mad About Money set.

This time, we made sure to park the Accord in the little gravel area before the steep descent into the lake. Incidentally, Pat the tow truck guy told me they used to have signs at the place we got stuck that said, “4×4 vehicles only.” But people kept shooting them, and they got tired of replacing them. Brilliant.

When I saw the completely intact, undamaged Malibu sitting where we left it, covered in dew and gleaming in the morning sun, I wanted to cry. It was unsettling to be back there again, and it prompted new waves of shame and anxiety, but we were overjoyed that we dodged the vandalism bullet. Things were beginning to work out okay.

We dragged the set and props up the incline and tossed it into the trunk of the Accord. We were a functional troupe once again. Mike turned the key, the engine started, and just as we were heaving a sigh of relief, it died.

The Accord fucking died.

One hundred feet away from the Malibu, we were suffering another vehicular casualty at Blue Lake. Mike and I could only stare and gape at each other. Blue Lake is a cursed, evil place. It didn’t just have a bad vibe; it had a disaster guarantee. We would have to relive last night’s “adventure” all over again. At least it was daylight this time.

Mike tried to start the Accord again. Again, it died.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll give it a minute. So we don’t flood it.” He stepped out of the car and lit a cigarette. He had been trying to quit smoking during our tour, but had fallen off the wagon.

“How long should we give it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It might be fine now. But I’ll do it when I finish this,” he said, indicating his cigarette. “This is a good hourglass.” When he finished the cigarette, he tried again.

And it started. And stayed running. We cheered and headed back into town.

On the way, we spotted two bald eagles perched on trees by the side of the road. We stopped and admired them for a moment. We thought about parking and taking pictures, but got intensely paranoid, and we continued on our way.

Regaining Equilibrium

Mt. Edgecumbe had declined to reschedule, so we only had one show to do in Sitka on Friday: Blatchley Middle School. The show went very well, and the Alaska Credit Union League rep in attendance seemed okay about the lost show. We actually joked around a lot and talked about lots of other things (including Katrina — a friend of his went down to gut houses). He was a cool, funny guy, and I almost wanted to invite him to grab a bite to eat with us. But I didn’t want to seem like we were kissing ass to make up for our mistake.

Mike and I went straight from the school to Pat’s shop to pick up the Malibu, but it wasn’t there. Pat’s truck had been fixed, and he managed to collect the Malibu unharmed, but the other guys in the shop told us that Pat insisted upon bringing the car directly to Avis.

We were happy to hear that it was towed and undamaged, but we needed to fill the gas tank and clean the Blue Lake Road dirt out of it before returning it; otherwise, we’d be looking at hefty fees. We went to Avis, where I begged for the car back. Thankfully, they let us have it back, but we had to clean the dirt out of the carpet or they’d charge us cleaning fees. We eagerly agreed to their terms, and we managed to successfully clean it at a gas station, resulting in no additional charges. We totally lucked out where Avis is concerned.

We returned the Accord, which managed to stay running the rest of the day. After apologizing to the Malibu for what we put it through, we drove it into town to shop, eat, and forget the previous 24 hours. Walking around the shop-lined streets, I found that downtown Sitka reminded me of Skagway, only bigger.

All of the stores were unloading their seasonal tourist merchandise at super low prices, and I took advantage. I loaded up on cheap Alaska souveniers just as I had in Skagway two years earlier. I bought an Alaska tote bag for Kat and filled it with a keychain, a chocolate bar, kitschy Soapy Smith and Klondike Kate soaps, a Raven’s Brew coffee mug to replace her old broken one from Skagway, and moose socks. Mike bought stuff for his girlfriend as well.

We stopped at the Westmark Inn to eat. I remembered the Westmark in Skagway as a grade-A doucheteria, with mediocre food and obnoxious people, but this one was mostly empty. As we pored over our menus, Mike and I realized that we hadn’t eaten at all since lunch at the Bayview the previous day. We had been running entirely on adrenaline and never thought to eat. Now, though, we were starving.

What the hell, we figured. We have one meal to blow our per diem for today. We splurged. I ordered an Alaskan Amber, and we split calamari, an order of beer-battered halibut and huge steak fries, and a pound of King Crab. During my time in Skagway, I never did get to eat King Crab, so this was my first time. The meat we pulled out of that thing was enormous and Jesus Christ, was it delicious. Everything was delicious.

There were a million ways our situation could have gone very, very wrong. I had spent a day operating in focused, adrenaline-fueled, crisis mode, trying to deal with what was happening between us and Sitka and between us and our employer. We were tremendously grateful that everything worked out as well as it did, especially considering how much influence Murphy’s Law had in our situation. I was still nervous about what NTC would think of us, but as it turns out, they still like us, and we will be working with them again.

Mike and I sat in the Westmark, feasting on life-changingly good Alaskan seafood with bags of gifts for our girlfriends at our sides. I stared out the window at the mountains and the pickup trucks driving by with huskies in the back, and missed Skagway. Hard. Our next stop after this meal would be the airport, so I made sure to get a good, long last look.

Our plane was delayed about an hour and forty minutes. We left the airport and spent the extra time driving up and down the highway and looking around — avoiding dirt roads, of course. Night fell. We returned to the airport, dropped off the Malibu, and boarded our plane. I said goodbye to the Tongass National Forest, and we left Sitka. We would stop in Juneau, then continue on to Anchorage. Mike and I would sleep in a Microtel for a few hours that night, then hop a plane from Anchorage to Minneapolis, nonstop.

Night

In the air that night, flying above the cloud cover, I gazed out the window to admire the stars. I cupped my hands around my face to block the glare from other passengers’ reading lights and watched the waves of pale blue clouds roll beneath us. The Big Dipper sat in the night sky above.

As we neared Anchorage, I saw occasional snowy peaks jut up through the clouds. I also noticed a hazy line of clouds well above the cloud cover, and farther away. After a few moments, I began to realize that the haze was not a line of clouds. I cursed myself for not thinking to look for it as soon as we were airborne.

It was the Northern Lights.

It glowed a faint, dull green. Occasionally, parts of it would ripple gently. You had to unfocus your eyes and look slightly away from it to really make it out, but there it was. If I hadn’t already been cupping my hands around my eyes to see the stars, I wouldn’t have been able to notice it at all.

In addition to King Crab, the other thing I never got a taste of in 2005 was the Aurora Borealis. On this trip, due to the cloud cover, Mike and I missed any opportunity to see them. But on this, our last night in Alaska, having risen above the cloud cover, I finally got to see it unobstructed.

The closer we got to Anchorage, the brighter and more active it became. I played E.T. theme music on my iPod and watched the green light and color intensify. A second line of lights appeared behind the main one, and both lines rippled a little bit more. I could see it arc all the way across the sky, from one end of the horizon to the other, curving along the magnetosphere. I tried to get photos using a super long exposure, but they didn’t come out.

Unfortunately for Mike, he was asleep in the window seat on the opposite side of the plane. Had he been awake, he wouldn’t have been able to see it anyway, since he would’ve been facing in the opposite direction. I let him sleep. I looked around and didn’t see a single other person looking out the window. I seemed to be the only person on the plane observing the Northern Lights.

I kept it to myself.

During the flight, I was astounded by the views. We soared over enormous, snowy peaks, which jutted through the clouds. Impossibly vast glaciers sprawled in every direction, abruptly ending in waterways fed by their own melted ice. Large masses of ice that had fallen away from the glacier floated in the water like ice cubes in a punch bowl. The view from thousands of feet up was incredible. On the way into Sitka itself, I had gotten my camera out and snapped some pictures. The climate there is different from Anchorage – it’s in Tongass National Forest, a temperate rain forest — and the plane descended among lush, green islands. I felt like I was going to Jurassic Park.

Shortly after we landed, we drove our Avis rental — a blue Chevy Malibu — to the downtown, touristy area, and ate at Bayview Restaurant. Unbeknownst to us, that was Bayview’s last day in business. This means that, while in Alaska, Mike and I shut down two restaurants. The difference is that Winter Thyme in Anchorage was awesome, but Sitka’s Bayview pretty much sucked. Oh, well. And hey, we were in Sitka for the very last day cruise ships were in! Seeing the elderly tourists meandering through the streets with cameras and shopping bags, seeing the seasonal workers at the ends of their ropes…it felt like I was back in Skagway, Late September, 2005 again.

We had a show that afternoon at a school whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell! It went well, but it was fifth-graders, which is a little young for our subject matter.

After the show was over, we had several hours to kill until our next show, which would actually be two shows: 7 & 8 PM at Mt Edgecumbe High School. Mike and I went out to the Whale Park and saw some Humpback Whales breaching off in the distance. I got some nice photos, but we can thank Walgreens for that fact that I don’t have them here. In addition to the whales, a sea lion swam by right in front of us, but we weren’t fast enough to take a picture, and never saw another one.

A couple hours later, we still had time to kill, so we decided to drive up Blue Lake Rd. The road goes up a mountainside, has hiking trails and scenic overlooks, and eventually terminates at the Blue Lake Reservoir, which provides water for Sitka. If we had any idea what would happen to us next, we would have gone straight back into town and stayed there…

To be continued…

Problem! The school thought we were coming the following day, so they weren’t prepared for our arrival. We got started a little late, and we had to present a hardcopy of our contract to prove that we were right, but it all worked out really well. In fact, they gave me and Mike little Wasilla Middle School pins and a thank-you note. Yay!

During our third sketch, when Mike asked the audience for “the most boring, uncool town you’ve ever been to” as a suggestion, a girl shouted, “Juneau!” We used it. A teacher informed me later that the girl was the Governor’s daughter, so she associated Juneau with getting dragged to her parents’ work. Interesante! Also noteworthy: We got mobbed for autographs for the first time.

We spent the afternoon doing some more free sightseeing. We walked a short little trail to Thunderbird Falls, which was a pretty, but underwhelming, waterfall. We drove out to Eklutna Lake in Chugach State Park, which feeds a power plant and provides Anchorage with drinking water.

Mike and I skipped stones for a little while and enjoyed the scenery. We visited the Eagle River Nature Center, where we saw a salmon run. On the way there, we came upon a moose and its calf in the road. Real, live, wild moose!

That night, we ate at an Anchorage restaurant called The Moose’s Tooth, which has amazing pizza. There was halibut on the pizza, and the halibut was great. Like, we could’ve eaten it as just halibut. But atop an also great pizza, it was just…super great.

I drove out to a ski resort in Girdwood and rode a tram up the mountainside. Trust me, the views were awesome. The pictures will eventually reveal just how awesome. Man, who’s gonna care about Alaska pictures if I post ‘em weeks after the fact? Fucking Walgreens. But hey, I saw Marmot from the tram!

While on the tram, I overheard a guy telling someone that he saw Beluga whales while riding down the Seward Highway one time. He described them as little white bumps that’d come up out of the water occasionally. He initially thought they were white caps, just waves.

I had this in my head as I drove back down the Seward Highway toward Anchorage, and I occasionally glanced out at the water, idly wondering if I’d spot something. Sure enough, I saw the little white bumps just when I came upon an overlook, so I swerved off the road, parked, and spent an hour snapping pictures of Beluga whales – probably almost a dozen of them – as crowds amassed around me. I got lots of pictures, but they all look like little white bumps in the water. There were two whales that came super close, but I wasn’t fast enough to capture them.

Mike was jealous. He had been wanting to see wildlife the whole time. The first time he decides to stay in, I go up the tram and see Belugas off of the Seward Highway. Figures.

This is me at Hurricane Gulch on the way to Denali National Park & Preserve. It was taken mid-pose, which is why I’m inexplicably holding my telephoto lens as if I’m using it to shake martinis.

I’m sitting in the Sassafras Coffeehouse in the mall in downtown Anchorage. Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies” is playing. Minutes ago, I dropped off four rolls of film at Kits Camera and bought a couple cards at Hallmark. The cashier at Hallmark, upon seeing my Minnesota ID, asked how things were going down there now and if it was okay, “with the bridge stuff.”

Exactly two years ago, I was in Alaska answering cashiers’ Katrina questions after they’d seen my Louisiana ID. “How is it down there?” Of course, no one has asked me yet why anyone would want to live in Minnesota or told me that God smote the bridge to punish us.

I must have looked tense leaving the Hallmark (though I wasn’t), because an Asian man asked me through an intensely strong accent if I would like a massage, gesturing at the chair massage kiosk. When he first spoke, I assumed he was a shopper asking me for directions or something, but when I figured out what he was saying, I realized he was an employee of the kiosk. He gently put a hand on my shoulder and said what I’m pretty sure was, “give full body massage.” I emphatically declined and went on my way.

The school this morning was a well-behaved Catholic school named Holy Rosary. Our first show in Alaska was a good one, though a portion of our audience coming from another school didn’t make it.

Right now, Mike is back in the hotel room on a conference call with his writing partner and a producer they’re courting. I helped him write the end of a script treatment in the car yesterday, and we’re pretty proud of it. His movie is getting closer to getting made every day.

One more show today, then the tourism fun resumes!

During both shows, kids had written “Alaska” as a suggestion on the slips we hand out before the show. Are kids in Alaska so intensely aware at all times that they’re in Alaska? It would never have occurred to me to write down “Louisiana.”

After the show, we drove down the Seward Highway again, this time in much better weather. We toured a wildlife conservation center, where I saw my first moose, caribou, and grizzly bears (which walked up to the fence right in front of us — kind of freaked us out). We also drove up to Portage Glacier, which was incredible, of course. We got a lot of pictures, which will hopefully be developed soon. On the drive, we rounded a corner to see a rainbow right in front of us. The entire arc of the rainbow was visible over the mountains and glaciers in the background.

This is getting ridiculous.

Pictures to come.

Tomorrow: Three shows in a row in Palmer, then back to Anchorage.

The drive in itself was gorgeous: a never-ending array of fall colors and sweeping vistas of mountain ranges stretching hundreds of miles in the distance. We stopped at every scenic overlook we could find, and a few times, we just pulled over to the side of the road even when there wasn’t a turnoff.

The four hour drive stretched into five or so. Our first glimpses of Denali (a.k.a. Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America) were shrouded in clouds, only tiny slivers of the enormous mountain peaking through. The further north we drove, the clearer the weather became, and eventually, we had a clear, blue, sunny sky.

Sadly, we just barely missed the end of tourist season, so everything, and I mean everything, is closed. We might not have been able to take bus tours or anything, but the drive and the overlooks were plenty. Once we got to Denali National Park proper and turned back toward Anchorage, we saw Denali in its entirety. Words cannot express the enormity of everything we’ve seen. Pictures don’t do it justice, because you just don’t get the depth and detail.

We got back to the Anchorage area around 10:30 and grabbed burgers and a beer at North Slope Restaurant in Eagle River. Our bartender was a wacky, middle-aged woman who had moved to Alaska 14 months ago (We didn’t ask why). We should’ve gotten her on videotape.

Wow. I still can’t believe we drove to Denali. We saw some of the most awesome, beautiful sights a person can see. Seriously, Alaska is always a life-changing experience. It’s mind-blowing. We’re lucky guys. Thanks, NTC.

(Pardon the unpoetic nature of my blogs and descriptions of what we’re doing. I feel like I should write something weightier than what I have been. Oh, well.)

Northwest Airlines has found a way.

Mike and I landed in Anchorage, Alaska, Saturday afternoon, and so did all of our stuff save one item: Mike’s suitcase. Apparently, the ticketing agent with whom we checked our baggage in Minneapolis slapped Mike’s tag on someone else’s bag and vice versa. Mike got their bag here in Anchorage, and Mike’s suitcase traveled to Honolulu. Fortunately, it was tracked down and delivered to our hotel the following day. Northwest gave Mike $50 for the day his luggage was lost.

It’s strange and exhilirating to be back in Alaska exactly two years after I left it. Even though we’re in Anchorage instead of Southeast Alaska, I’ve experienced all the familiar sights and smells. The air has a very strong, sweet, spicy smell which I think must be spruce, and enormous mountains surround us.

Anchorage itself is an unremarkable, even drab, medium-sized city (about 300,000 people), but it’s surrounded by an incredible landscape. The first thing Mike and I did was drive down the Seward Highway and take in the views of the water and mountains. It felt like going home again. Every river and creek looks just like the Skagway River, complete with gray-green glacial silt clouding the water.

Our home for five nights is the Clarion Suites downtown. There’s a living room area with its own TV and phone! There’s a microfridge and a kitchen sink! It’s luxurious.

We had a late dinner at a downtown Anchorage restaurant called Winter Thyme. As we approached the door, we saw a sign announcing that it was their very last night in business. Good timing.

Mike flipped through a local, free newspaper and learned that there were eleven rape reports for that week. Shocked, he asked our server, a thin, emo-looking guy with hornrimmed glasses, if that was normal. Our server said that yes, it pretty much was. “People are fucked up here,” he said, “Alaska is where people go to escape the lower 48 states.” Mike and I have not stopped talking about rape since.

We shared a prawn chowder, a King Crab and tomato salad sandwich on a croissant, and salmon, and I enjoyed an Alaskan Amber, and all of this was wonderful. Joseph Arthur’s “Honey and the Moon” played on the radio. Things were going well.

Hearing that it was supposed to be an active night for Northern Lights, Mike and I ventured out of the city to catch a glimpse. Unfortunately, it was extremely overcast. Not even the tiniest bit of sky could be seen. Plus, we were getting very sleepy, so we called it a night.

Sunday: Our only entire free day in Alaska. On the docket: Adventure.