Travel Trails: The Road Home Alaskan Adventure Part II

My friend Sherry and I began our departure from our Alaskan home of Whittier, known by the locals as a “quaint little drinking town with a fishing problem,” via a train ride to Anchorage. If you have a coupon, you can ride the train to Anchorage for $50. We thought the price reasonable for the experience. As soon as we boarded, we knew we made a wise investment. The train ride eased the pain of leaving our Alaskan home.

The beautifully clean and spacious train came complete with a humorous conductor. I find myself using his statement, “I said this, but I meant that. Wink. Nod.”

As the train rolled along, my travel partner, Sherry, and I had our eyes set on the scenery from a different perspective. We remembered some of the details our host, Brian, had told us on our way to Whittier. Having stayed in Whittier, we now had a personal connection to the stories and facts of the area.

Our easy-going conductor stopped the train in order for us all to see a family of mountain goats climbing on a straight up and down incline. The goats moved with amazing ease, scaling the mountain side as if they owned it. They did, of course. The family of four were in a group. A little one stood on a ridge below the family. Clearly, the baby had not followed Mama. Mama mountain goat came stomping down the incline and firmly nudge her reluctant baby up the mountain. After we had witnessed this interesting interaction of nature, the train started moving us closer to Anchorage.

Houses started coming into view. Again, our conductor stopped to explain the small airplanes with similarly sized runways in the back of houses. He explained the runways were grandfathered in from wartime and still actively used by the homeowners. This certainly was another sight I had yet to see in my life.

As houses and buildings became more plentiful, we saw the culturally different neighborhoods which we could identify by the restaurant names. Note to ourselves: if we should come to Seattle again, we must take in this area with its varied neighborhoods and all they had to offer, including what looked to be excellent authentic restaurants.

For now, we stayed on the train, which took us to the Seattle Airport. We checked our luggage. A decision we later found to be brilliant. We figured out, from fellow travelers and locals, how to navigate our way to downtown Seattle. The journey took us on a winding, seemingly endless, walkway from the airport to what my friend dubbed as “The Belly of the Beast.” I think I have found myself in stranger places, but I do not remember when or where. We hopped on the Southbound rail, which dropped us off in downtown. We had wanted to eat at an uncommon place; however, we were starving and a bit disoriented. We popped into a Subway of all places. We filled up and re-energized on all too familiar food and coffee.

Despite being approximately three city blocks from the Space Needle, we called a taxi to take us to the area. The taxi fare was $6.43 with the tip, giving away our exhaustion and our age. Nonetheless, we had indeed made it to the Space Needle. I had visited the Space Needle way back in the day when it was the only attraction. The 'Big Blue Bouncing Bus' is a travel tale for a later article.

We emerged from the Belly of the Beast finding ourselves surprised and greeted by a pleasantly sunny Seattle day. We strolled leisurely enjoying the live street music, sculptures, and eateries. Clearly, the area had changed greatly since my first visit. We sat and took in the ambiance of people and activities until our time arrived to venture up the Space Needle. The views from atop the iconic attraction did not disappoint. They were spectacular from every direction. When our time came to go back to the airport, we concurred we needed to come back someday to Seattle.

We made our way back through the Belly of the Beast. This time ignoring instead of wondering what was making our steps so sticky. Our taxi driver was a woman who had lived in Alaska. It still amazes me how much information a traveler can get from a taxi driver. Our driver amusingly told us her lively experience of living in Alaska. Her attempt to hang black-out sheets to her curtains in order to get some sleep had us laughing hysterically. She had thoroughly thought through her plan. For an entire week she perfected her plan of attack on mother nature’s Alaskan sun. She purchased Velcro strips along with the black-out sheets. She spent the majority of a Saturday carefully measuring and cutting. When her perfect plan failed miserably, she told us she said, “Well. Crap. That didn’t work.”

After having thanked her for entertaining us while driving us to the airport, we remembered the seemingly endless walkway to the airport gates. We did not hesitate to hop on a conveniently located cart to be driven to the gates. Once inside the airport, we bellied up to a bar for something to eat and a refreshing adult beverage. Afterwards, we found ourselves sitting at our gate extremely early.

In my way back in the day travels, arriving early was truly one of my guilty pleasures. With no cell phones, my travel buddy, Beth and I would sit and people watch. We would play a game in which we would ‘hang baggage’ on people, merely as a means of passing time. We simply made-up innocent stories about people regarding who they were, where they were from, where they were going, and why. Now-a-days, with cell phones and devices, our game is a lost art of imagination. I did manage to get several people in a couple different gates to put down their devices to help to find my own ear pods. There was a silent round of applause when my red ear pods were located.

Once our flight arrived, we boarded, completely unaware how horrible both our flights home were about to be. On our first flight, we sat in front of four screeching children accompanied by a pregnant mother whose only parenting strategy was to scream and whack her unruly children. Resulting in, of course, more ear-piercing screeching. When the flight landed and we exited the plane, one of two young men said, “That was a flipping nightmare!” We laughed. I began humming Meatloaf’s “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth.”

At this point on our road home, our feet were not the only thing throbbing. Our heads hurt from having not slept in two days. Our ears still stung from the screeching children and our bodies ached in places we did not even know existed. Our feet were so swollen we did not think we would be able to get our shoes back on after we went through security. Sheer adrenalin pushed us to our gate to Indianapolis.

On the long eastward bound flight to Indy, we sat behind a person who was at least a week beyond us in having had a shower. We literally sat with our shirts pulled over our noses for the entire flight. Even after we were off the plane, we knew that smell would be staying with us for quite some time.

After landing in Indy and picking up our baggage, I called my husband, Scott, to ensure he was picking us up as scheduled. Of course, he was running late. Having found two unoccupied cushioned benches, Sherry and I stretched out our aged bodies with loud sighs and crashed, not concerned in the least with what time Scott would arrive. My ringing phone startled us awake. Our ride home had arrived.

Despite how our bodies were feeling, we both started talking simultaneously about our entire trip. Only having one good ear was a blessing to my husband whose head may have imploded from the 40-minute drive of endless tales of our trails to Whittier, Alaska.

As we passed the sign welcoming us home to Hope, Indiana, Sherry and I both were mentally envisioning sleeping all weekend. We did just that with dreams of our road to Alaska and our road home.

Thank you, Barb, Brian, and Jude puppy, for providing us with an adventure of a lifetime.

** In memory of Beth Sayre.