Well, this is it for the trip. I woke up this morning at Angel’s Rest on Resurrection Bay, a little collection of one room cabins right on the water that I highly recommend if you’re ever staying in Seward. The best part is the view…

After waking up, I headed out on a 3 hour tour… but unlike Gilligan and company, I did not get shipwrecked. I did, however, spot lots of wildlife… like this little guy:

… and these guys:

Finally, it was time to go. Before heading to the airport to drop off the rental truck, I drove to near-the-top-of Flattop Mountain at the Glen Alps overlook over Anchorage where I filmed the final Alaska Minute.

Aww… I don’t want to go home.

First, I won the Twinkie Town competition! Thanks for all the votes…
Today was a lot of driving as I had to get from Talkeetna (currently in the running for my favorite town in the United States) to Seward. I splurged on my lodging for the last day and… wow. I’m currently in bed, looking out across Resurrection Bay at the Kenai Mountains. And the bed is really comfortable too!
On the way down, I made two detours. First was to Girdwood and the Mt. Alyeska ski resort. I road the Alyeska tram to near the top of the mountain and hiked the rest of the way. I even made a snow angel at the top! And of course, I stopped and hung the camera on a tree (just at the edge of the treeline) and filmed an Alaska Minute.

My second detour was to Hope. I had heard it was a preserved mining town, but when I got there, I discovered that it was all shut down for the winter. I was mentally cursing myself for going an hour out of my way for nothing when suddenly I spotted a moose — my first Alaskan moose! She was just laying the yard of the old Hope schoolhouse. I was going to take a movie of her, but the camera died — but not before I got the following still shot.

As I drove away from her, I almost found myself needing some of Sarah B’s advice — another moose darted across the road right in front of me! Luckily I was only going about 15 MPH, so I had plenty of time to stop. The second moose was male with some nice antlers. Unfortunately, the camera battery was still dead, so you’ll have to take my word for it!

For the first time this trip, I didn’t use the rental trunk today. That doesn’t mean I didn’t go anywhere — in fact, I flew about 90 miles on a flightseeing tour with Talkeetna Air Taxi around Denali (aka Mt. McKinley), including a landing on the Ruth Glacier. I highly recommend it if you get the chance! I made two attempts at an Alaska Minute from the glacier — the first was cut off because I had taken so much footage that the camera ran out of space. The second is a little longer, but you don’t get to see me fall in the snow (which happened right after the camera stopped recording on the first one!). It’s also quieter because I was trying to sneak it in before we had to get back on the plane.


As an added bonus, here’s one of the handful of videos I took from the air. Because I was a solo traveler and the other passengers came in pairs, I got to sit in the co-pilot seat. This is the advantage of traveling alone!

I’ve spent the rest of the day hanging out in Talkeetna, watching the Twins get swept miserably out of the ALDS in the West Rib Pub with some Twins fans and Yankee haters. It turns out there are enough Minnesota/Dakota ex-pats up here that the Twins are pretty popular — and no one likes the Yankees, mostly on principle. (One of the bartenders, hearing that I lived in Boston, showed me her Hall of Fame postcard signed by Bobby Doerr — not as cool as my Tony Oliva hat, but not bad!)

I saw a bear! A brown bear, to be exact… with her cub… fishing for salmon. And my gut instinct wasn’t to run, but to film it. The staff at the Eagle River Nature Center were quite impressed with the video I got.

Shortly after, I did a full blown Alaska Minute.

And later in the day, I drove up to Hatcher Pass and the Independence Mine State Park, which was blanketed with snow. I came across a family of birds — I know think they are some kind of ptarmigan, probably either willow ptarmigan, which is the Alaska state bird, or white-tailed ptarmigan. I didn’t do a great job getting the birds in the shot for part of this video — sorry about that! You can also see the camera get jostled around when I jumped because a bird took off behind me.

So, as alluded to in my competition post, I’m in Alaska right now. Specifically, I’m at a Bed and Breakfast in Anchorage called Susitna Place looking out over a gorgeous view of Mt. McKinley 150 miles away. Back when Sarah B. used to spend her summers in Alaska, she used to post her daily “Toolik Minute,” named for the site she was living near. I don’t have a single location that I plan on being in, so I’m just posting general “Alaska Minutes,” but here’s the first one!

And here’s a second one taken later in the day somewhere near Portage Glacier (which is the saddest little shrinking glacier!).

PS — Go vote for my blog entry on Twinkie Town: http://www.twinkietown.com/2010/10/8/1738402/competition-3-final-vote

So, I’m currently on this crazy vacation that has me going everywhere and seeing people from all sorts of stages of my life. The first part of the trip involved San Diego, feeding some birds, feeding a gazelle, and finally feeding myself by buying and cooking an ostrich egg.

As the YouTube video demonstrates, we actually managed to save the shell by drilling a hole in both ends and blowing the insides out. By various accounts, one ostrich egg is equivalent to anywhere between 18 and 24 chicken eggs. So, naturally, we made a giant fritatta with about a pound each of asparagus, mushrooms, zucchini, leeks, and gruyere cheese. It was huge, but delicious.

The quintessential California experience: Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge on your way to wine country in a convertible with good friends while the Mamas and the Papas “California Dreamin'” plays on the radio.

Approaching the bridge on the return trip (after Amal realized he may have just bought a 1999 Saab Lemon).

Amal races into the shot just as the camera timer runs out.