met before. Eddy just happens to be sitting two bar stools from me at Rayâs seafood restaurant in Seward, which just happens to be one of the hot towns on the Kenai Peninsula.⦠Eddy wears a big cowboy hat, smokes big cigars, and has a small airplane. He lives in Wyoming and frequently flies north to sportfish. Heâs crazy for Alaska, so much so that he wouldnât mind dying here. Apparently, the perfect way to go is to be devoured by a grizzly bear.
âThatâs gotta elevate you to a higher plane,â declares Eddy, smitten by the prospect of traveling first-class to the hereafter.
To each his own demise. I can appreciate the basic wisdom of Eddyâs travel logic, though. Alaska is Big Country: Colorado on steroids. You canât let it intimidate you. Donât be spooked by tales of campers who get filleted by a grizzly. Donât be cowed by cold air or bug bites. Venture out of your car and off the tour bus. Get dirty. Break a sweat. Indulge your curiosity.
The Kenai Peninsulaâknow simply as âthe Kenaiââcouldnât be more user-friendly. Itâs the abridged version of Alaska: just an hourâs drive south of Anchorage, packed with postcard views, seemingly endless riffles of snow-dusted mountains, rivers that roil with spawning salmon, an abundant supply of moose, bears, eagles, and those comical puffins that look to be wearing false noses, four active volcanoes, and one gigantic, otherworldly icefield.
I encountered Eddy the Advice Man five days into my trip. By then I was already immersed in the Kenaiâs many delights. In fact, I had just spent the day shoehorned into a kayak, silently knifing through frigid Resurrection Bay. Tom Twigg, an architect turned guide, took me and three other novices out for a ten-mile spin. We embarked from a sliver of beach on the outskirts of Seward under a blue, late-summer sky.
The beauty of a kayak isnât portability, but rather its idiot-proof buoyancy. Twigg gave us an orientation on paddle strokes and weight distribution, reminding us of the 50/50 rule for cold-water survival (âThe average person has a 50-percent chance of surviving a 50-yard swimâ). On that sobering note, we shoved off, Twigg in a solo kayak, the rest of us doubling up.
I hoped that a little low-key kayaking would provide an antidote to the assembly-line adventure Iâd experienced the day before, when I cruised the bay on a 150-passenger sightseeing ship. It zipped along at twenty-three knots, looping into a fjord that dead-ended at the glistening lip of Holgate Glacier.The wall of ancient ice thundered as house-size chunks cleaved off and crashed into the water. Passengers gleefully shouted at the glacier in an attempt to induce even more calving. During the six-hour excursion, cormorants and red-necked phalaropes darted overhead, plump sea lions sunbathed on exposed rocks, and a pod of orcas cavorted in the boatâs froth. Splendid sights all, but diminished by the cattle-car viewing conditions. I later learned that this ship had accidentally rammed a humpback whale a few months earlier.
Now, skimming around at sea-lion level, I felt sprung from a cage. In kayaks, we were part of the actual show of the bay, not gawkers holding admission tickets. Horned puffins gaped from nooks in the cliffs we paddled under, tucked tight in their holes like letters in post-office boxes. Bald eagles lazed overheadâthey seem as common as crows hereâriding the thermals and oozing majesty.
Twigg led us up a side creek that was barely knee deep, yet running heavy with pink and chum salmon. Hundreds of them, hyperkinetic as jumping beans, wiggled beneath us, driven by the strange hormonal explosion that propels them ever onward to spawn and promptly die, their bodies providing food for bears and other forest critters. âDogâ salmon the chum are called, suitable mainly for pet food, since their flesh degrades quickly as they near
âThatâs gotta elevate you to a higher plane,â declares Eddy, smitten by the prospect of traveling first-class to the hereafter.
To each his own demise. I can appreciate the basic wisdom of Eddyâs travel logic, though. Alaska is Big Country: Colorado on steroids. You canât let it intimidate you. Donât be spooked by tales of campers who get filleted by a grizzly. Donât be cowed by cold air or bug bites. Venture out of your car and off the tour bus. Get dirty. Break a sweat. Indulge your curiosity.
The Kenai Peninsulaâknow simply as âthe Kenaiââcouldnât be more user-friendly. Itâs the abridged version of Alaska: just an hourâs drive south of Anchorage, packed with postcard views, seemingly endless riffles of snow-dusted mountains, rivers that roil with spawning salmon, an abundant supply of moose, bears, eagles, and those comical puffins that look to be wearing false noses, four active volcanoes, and one gigantic, otherworldly icefield.
I encountered Eddy the Advice Man five days into my trip. By then I was already immersed in the Kenaiâs many delights. In fact, I had just spent the day shoehorned into a kayak, silently knifing through frigid Resurrection Bay. Tom Twigg, an architect turned guide, took me and three other novices out for a ten-mile spin. We embarked from a sliver of beach on the outskirts of Seward under a blue, late-summer sky.
The beauty of a kayak isnât portability, but rather its idiot-proof buoyancy. Twigg gave us an orientation on paddle strokes and weight distribution, reminding us of the 50/50 rule for cold-water survival (âThe average person has a 50-percent chance of surviving a 50-yard swimâ). On that sobering note, we shoved off, Twigg in a solo kayak, the rest of us doubling up.
I hoped that a little low-key kayaking would provide an antidote to the assembly-line adventure Iâd experienced the day before, when I cruised the bay on a 150-passenger sightseeing ship. It zipped along at twenty-three knots, looping into a fjord that dead-ended at the glistening lip of Holgate Glacier.The wall of ancient ice thundered as house-size chunks cleaved off and crashed into the water. Passengers gleefully shouted at the glacier in an attempt to induce even more calving. During the six-hour excursion, cormorants and red-necked phalaropes darted overhead, plump sea lions sunbathed on exposed rocks, and a pod of orcas cavorted in the boatâs froth. Splendid sights all, but diminished by the cattle-car viewing conditions. I later learned that this ship had accidentally rammed a humpback whale a few months earlier.
Now, skimming around at sea-lion level, I felt sprung from a cage. In kayaks, we were part of the actual show of the bay, not gawkers holding admission tickets. Horned puffins gaped from nooks in the cliffs we paddled under, tucked tight in their holes like letters in post-office boxes. Bald eagles lazed overheadâthey seem as common as crows hereâriding the thermals and oozing majesty.
Twigg led us up a side creek that was barely knee deep, yet running heavy with pink and chum salmon. Hundreds of them, hyperkinetic as jumping beans, wiggled beneath us, driven by the strange hormonal explosion that propels them ever onward to spawn and promptly die, their bodies providing food for bears and other forest critters. âDogâ salmon the chum are called, suitable mainly for pet food, since their flesh degrades quickly as they near
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