Coming home from school in Alaska

We’d been in Alaska for a couple of years and the girls were both in school. We lived along a creek, Ketchikan Creek, that literally ran from our house to their school.

The pull of adventure was just too much, they came home every day an hour late and soaking wet. It didn’t matter if it was cold outside, they would be happy, soaking and quivering, and I began doing laundry an extra day per week. I worked full time and already had too much to do without adding an extra chore.

I should tell you that Ketchikan is a resort town where cruise ships from all over the world come to visit in short spurts every day except winter time. The population jumps by 4 – 8 thousand depending on how many ships come in on any given day. The town crawls with tourists, big crowds of them. Ketchikan Creek was on the path of a couple of tours.

I Gave Them an Ultimatum

One Spring I decided I’d had enough of the laundry. I had scolded them too long without results, so I laid down the law: Don’t Come Home With Wet Clothes ANY More! You Will Be GROUNDED! Grounding them was the worst punishment… on me….

They still came home an hour late, but they were dry. I compromised and didn’t harp on the tardiness, at least they were dry. Laundry went back to twice a week, like normal.

One day I got a knock on the door and opened it to find my neighbor. “Have you seen your girls since school got out?” I hadn’t, and she motioned me to come with her. I grabbed a sweater and out the door we went.

Ketchikan Creek has a small bridge that hooked one street to another across the creek. As we approached the little bridge I noticed a crowd of tourists, gathered at one corner and they were ‘awwwwing’ and clapping. I walked a lit faster to the bridge and looked over.

There were my girls, naked as the day they were born, laying in the sun beside the creek. Their clothing was folded neatly beside them. People were taking pictures, which freaked me out and I called down to them.

“Get dressed! What are you doing? Why do you have your clothes off?” The oldest one looked up at me with a puzzled look.

“You told us not to come home with wet clothes, Mommy!” Everyone laughed and ‘awwwed’ again. It was so cute and she was right, I had said not to come home with wet clothes on, and in a seven year-old’s mind, she was doing exactly as I wanted. I had to be more clear in my explanation of why she shouldn’t take her clothes off in town.

     A Great Place to Raise Kids

One of the reasons we chose to raise our kids in Alaska is that kids there are less inhibited and there are fewer people, so more freedom, discovery and such. Some kids got in a lot of trouble because of it, but generally kids learned a lot. The tourism was something we hadn’t known about upon going to Ketchikan and there was a lot to learn from that, too.

As I said, tourists crawled along the creek in groups mostly, and one day the kids came to me and asked if they could stand at the bridge and sing songs for the tourists. They showed me right where they’d be and I said okay. I watched them from the window and the tourists seemed mused and nobody tried to touch them, thankfully. I noticed they seemed to be getting some tips, too.

Twenty minutes later they came back toward the house. They came running happily in the door, asking, “Mommy can we have a big bowl to keep all our money in?”

They had made over twenty-two dollars in those twenty minutes! I asked them to sing the song for me, and it was one they’d made up. It was cute, but Ketchikan has laws about panhandling in a resort town, so I had to make them stop.

I Love Alaska

Alaska is the best place to raise kids, in my humble opinion. We introduced them to the big city as teenagers and now they can’t get enough of the fast-paced, plasticized crowded cities. Not that that’s wrong, but an unexpected reaction, to me. I love the slower pace and kick-back Alaska lifestyle, but I don’t know why I thought they would feel the same. They do grow up and have minds of their own.

While they happily discovered more and more about city life, I was in culture shock and unhappy as all get out, until I learned to find things I did like about living here and focus on those, rather than the crime, overpopulation, rudeness and litter that shocked me in the first place.

They grew into wonderful, fun people who still like the busyness and hub-bub and they’re both starting new career adventures. And, they’ve both said they hope to go back to Alaska one day. Later. You know, some day.

Beautiful, Scenic Alaska

It all started around 5:30 am…

Our first days in Alaska were as adventuresome as you can imagine, with the bears. They say you have to make a lot of noise when you walk in the woods, and the locals choose to sing. So, if you’re in the woods in Alaska and you hear singing coming from somewhere off in the distance, you know someone’s trying to avoid surprising a bear.

Black bears are just as scared of us as we are of them, but the fear on our part is mostly unfounded. We didn’t know until after we’d lived there for a while that black bears don’t eat dogs, cats or children. The few stories we’ve heard on the news about black bears attacking are not the norm. They’d just as soon avoid us as look at us. But, like I said, we didn’t know.

Bears are a lot like cats in the sense that movement attracts their attention and they like to chase things that run. So if you ever come across one in the forest, don’t run. Try to look big, put your arms up and sing as loud as you can, and they’re likely to run away.

Free Food in Alaska

I’d learned that sea cucumbers were very good to eat and I wanted to get some. You have to go at the extreme low tides to get them because they’re offshore a bit, deeper than you’d want to wade in. They’re bright orange and reddish and they’re easy to see under the water; you take a yard rake and pull them in so you can pick them up and put them in a bucket. And I do mean a bucket, I learned that a plastic bag doesn’t work. Those slippery suckers slither around and escape!

These animals are so helpless that their only line of defense is to puke out their eggs, and sometimes some guts, to try and repulse their attacker.

The extreme low tide was coming at 6am, so I got up real early and drove out to the south end of the road. I got out my bucket and walked through the woods via an animal trail to the shoreline and realized I’d forgot my rake. It was still dark and I was a little scared. Who knows what creatures roam around in the darkness of Alaska? I decided to run down the trail, it was a lot darker in the woods than on the beach, though it was getting slowly lighter.

     Alone in the Dark Forest

As I ran I thought I heard something behind me, so I stopped and looked. I didn’t see anything and the night was very still so there was no noise at all. A little leery, I started to run, and about a quarter mile into the woods I thought I heard something again, and again, I stopped. I noticed a strong stench of a musty, moldy smell and wondered if that was the smell people had told me about. There’s a certain scent that an old boar (male bear) has and it’s unmistakable.

Right behind me I heard a deep, gutteral grunt and it scared me so bad I instantly and involuntarily spun around on my heel. There, not four feet from me was the biggest bear I’d ever seen in my life! Of course, running into bears isn’t that common to most people and that bear was twelve feet tall if he was an inch, in my frightened eyes.

I Nearly Wet My Pants!

Without even thinking about it I let out a blood-curdling scream and the bear stood up on it’s back legs, looking even more huge! I screamed again and took my coat and held it wide open above my head, trying to look bigger, and the bear turned and took off up the hill. Daylight had begun to creep in and I could just barely see him go over the fallen tree and up and over the hilltop.

Suddenly I didn’t know whether to wet my pants or continue on. Of course I did continue on, there was no other way out of that place, and somehow I hadn‘t wet my pants. I made it to the car and got my rake and felt a little safer having something I could use for a weapon, if I needed it. I know I’ll never forget that smell.

Getting back down to the beach I raked the little creatures up until I filled my bucket, keeping an eye on the woods the whole time. I have to admit, I was afraid to carry the bucket back down the trail, I’d heard stories of people having to defend their fresh-picked berries or their freshly caught salmon from bears. I figured if the bear wanted my catch I’d just drop it and let him have it. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. I got home safely and had a great story to tell my husband when he got up. He was jealous he hadn’t gone with me, and you can believe me when I say that I invited him every time after that!

When it’s a nice day in Alaska, there’s not a nicer day anywhere!

Travel to Alaska was easy enough, and less expensive than we’d thought. We drove to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada and caught the early morning ferry to Southeast Alaska. Cruising through the narrows between the islands, we passed what we thought were the beginnings of villages. Run down, dilapidated buildings dotted the coastline as we went by, and we soon learned that these were the homes of peo

ple who lived away from the villages. Some had docks with skiffs tied up and some had milk goats on their land.

After six hours of looking in awe at the bald eagles, porpoise and orca whales that seemed to be escorting us in, we came to a real city. It had a large post office, a McDonald’s sign and a grocery store that we could see from the ship.

We docked, and the first thing to do was find a place for our two dogs to relieve themselves, which they did in the parking lot as soon as they got out of the car. We’d talked to some locals and found where the nearest campground was, and we went on our way.

We found a campsite and unloaded everything we had. Realizing we needed more ice, my husband went to the store while I tried to organize our things.

Our First Adventure in Alaska

Slam! Slam! I heard the two car doors shut and I turned to see our kids, Katie who was six and Jess who was four, in the car looking at me. I walked over to see what they were doing and tried to open the door, but it was locked.

“Why did you lock the doors?” I asked through the closed window. They pointed behind me so I turned to look and saw a big black bear sauntering down the road toward our camp. I turned back to the car in a panic. “Open the door! Let me in!”

“No! There’s a bear!” they retorted simultaneously.

“But let me in!” I yelled as I tried the handle repeatedly while pulling on the door handle. Again, they refused. I turned to see if the bear was getting closer when a white SUV pulled up behind the bear. A husky sort of woman got out and began yelling and waving her arms, and as she’d expected, the bear took off into the woods. She got back into her car and drove closer to us.

“I don’t think he’ll be back for a while!” she called from her car, waving and smiling as she passed us. I didn’t know much about bears, but I didn’t believe that bear wouldn’t be back. I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I tried to pretend I wasn’t scared (for the kids’ sake) and went back to organizing our belongings while keeping an eye out for more bears. The kids seemed happy to stay in the car and watch until their dad came back with the ice for our coolers.

The Adventures Have Just Begun

We had a habit of putting our kids to bed when it got dark. That had to change immediately, as it didn’t get dark until almost 10:30pm! The kids were exhausted, as we were, so it wasn’t hard getting anyone to sleep that night.

I woke up because of the bright light in my eyes, coming through the vent at the top of the tent. I sat up and looked at my watch.

“What? Everyone wake up! It’s nearly three o’clock, we almost slept away our first day in Alaska!” Everyone seemed groggy, but I wasn’t surprised after the trip we’d just taken. We got everyone dressed and got into the car to go to town and find a restaurant for breakfast. The town was dead, not one car passed us on the five mile drive there. Everything was closed and the entire town seemed asleep, still. We passed the grocer that had a digital clock on it, and we found out it was three AM! We forgot that Alaska is the land of the midnight sun! In summer dawn comes in right around 2:30am, we learned. We were in Southeast Alaska so it didn’t stay sunny around the clock, there were three to four hours of night each day.

We did some sight seeing and learning about our new home and finished setting up our camp. With small kids like ours and long daylight hours, we tried to tire the kids as much as possible so they’d sleep through the sunlight of the night.

Again, I was awoke in the night, though, this time it was still dark. Our dogs began barking and whining, and we heard things being tipped over outside. Some big breathing sounds and a few grunts told us what was going on; there was a bear going through our things!

My husband got up immediately to take care of the situation like a man – he unzipped the tent door and let the dogs outside!

“No!” I screamed, waking the kids. “He might eat the dogs!” My husband just chuckled at me.

“Bears don’t eat dogs, silly!”

“How do you know?” The question was quickly forgotten when it became clear the dogs had run off into the woods after the bear. “What if they get lost? What if the bear turns to fight them?” I was very frightened and my husband seemed far too calm for my comfort.

“They’ll come back, don’t worry.” But, worry I did, and I did it for the whole twenty minutes they were gone. I was so relieved when they came back and I checked them over for any wounds, finding none. My husband chained up the dogs outside the tent to ward off anymore curious camp robbers. I had to get the kids back to sleep before the sun came up.

We had many, many more adventures living in that tent in Alaska. I’m going to write about all of it here, so bookmark my hub and don’t miss my next entry!