From Glaciers to the Sea: An Alaskan Road Trip

Jackets zipped, hoods up, cameras clenched in cold fingers, we stared at the waters as our boat chugged into the cold July wind blowing over Resurrection Bay. The boat captain had announced a pod of humpback whales ahead, and we weren’t going to miss this.

Whale watching wasn’t high on the list when my family members and I started talking in January about visiting my nephew in Alaska. Sean, age 22, has been spending every summer for the past five years in Healy, Alaska, volunteering his time with a Christian ministry. We decided to visit him and tour Alaska at the same time.

So on July 9, five of us (my parents, Sean’s mother, Brenda, and Sean’s oldest cousin, Hannah, and I) flew from Philly to Seattle. From Seattle, it should have been only a few hours north to Fairbanks, but our connecting flight was canceled, no reason given, and we had to spend the night in Seattle. The next morning, we got up early to take a shuttle back to the airport, went through a long security line, and flew to Anchorage, and then on to Fairbanks.

Their first plane trip disillusioned Brenda and Hannah. Besides the canceled flight, there was TSA: “They searched Grandpa’s suitcase and X-rayed his peanut M & Ms!”, and boredom: “How many hours did it take you to fly to Cambodia, Susan? I can’t imagine.”

But we finally arrived in the 49th state, by means much speedier than the 49ers miners, or for that matter, much faster than Sean did when he and a friend drove from Pennsylvania to Alaska in May. At the Fairbanks airport, we collected our rental minivan and headed south on Route 3 to Healy.

Healy

Healy exists because surveyors found coal in the mountains in 1902. The coal mine is still open, and coal and tourism are the town’s biggest businesses.

Sean showed us around Healy— the church where the ministry is based, and the school he’s helping build. He took to us to gift shops and a scenic river walk in Denali National Park, but also on back roads high in the mountains, overlooking the town of Healy.

In Healy, we stayed in a “dry” cabin that had electricity and running water, but only an outdoor toilet. Sean explained that because most of the state doesn’t have public sewer, dry cabins are much easier to build.

Whittier

Much further south, our first big stop on the Kenai Peninsula, was the port town of Whittier. In this of part of Alaska, the snow and ice never thaw on the high mountains, forming ice fields and glaciers. Sean answered a question I’d had about Alaska— “The reason there’s no glaciers in northern Alaska, even though it gets colder in the winter, is because the mountain ranges aren’t high enough.”

You can get to Whittier by boat, plane, or driving— through a one-lane, 2.5 mile long tunnel that’s shared with a train track.

The tunnel closes at night, so if guests stay too long, they are stuck in Whittier, without many options for where to stay. Options for living in Whittier are even more limited, most of the town lives in this apartment building below.

Then again, during the long Alaskan winter, I’d take this apartment building over a dry cabin.

We spent the day in Whittier hiking and exploring several coves, and made sure to leave town before the tunnel closed.

If you want to learn more about Whittier, AK, and life in this building, you can watch this Peter Santenello video.

Seward

Like Whittier, the name Seward varies just one consonant sound from a common word, so you spend the whole visit there correcting each other’s pronunciation. The town is named for William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State who signed the treaty to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867. The deal was mocked as “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox”, but eventually people realized that the frozen icebox held gold, copper, coal, natural gas, and oil. The state also has nine military bases.

Seward’s trade deal cost us $7.2 million, or $125 million in today’s dollars.

Here we bundled up for a six-hour boat tour on Resurrection Bay. Since Alaska’s long winters and lack of development keeps most humans out, wildlife thrives in the Last Frontier, especially in the oceans.

(When we were planning the trip, Brenda suggested going fishing. After looking at charter boat prices, she changed it to, “Maybe we can buy a nice fish dinner in a restaurant.”)

The humpback whales we watched were bubble-net feeding— a cooperative group feeding behavior observed only in humpback whales off the coast of Alaska. As our boat drew near, we could see and hear the whales breathing. The whales dive down and the lead female blows up a curtain of bubbles to stun a school of fish, and then all the whales come up to the surface, mouths open to feast.

Overhead, sea gulls joined the fishing frenzy.

Our boat captain said that in all the years she’s been piloting this tour, “This was the best day of whale watching I ever had.”

Soldotna

There’s several Mennonite communities in Alaska, and on Sunday we visited the River of Life church in Soldotna. Actually, we first drove to the church at the address listed on the website and sat in our van, waiting for the congregation to show up. The white church, gravel parking lot, and outhouse looked like an Old Order Mennonite church in Lancaster County if you ignored the blue shutters, floral wreaths on the double doors, and weedy landscaping.

Finally, after realizing that even in Alaska, not every single person would be so late to church, we checked the door and found a sign saying that the church had just moved to a new building in Soldotna.

We drove to the new church, a former snowmobile shop being remodeled , and marched into the church in time to help with the singing.

The lay member taking his turn with preaching that day turned out to be Matt Snader, a Lancaster transport whose books about Alaska have made him well-known in Mennonite circles. His sermon compared the Body of Christ to parts of a car.

We stayed for the fellowship meal, and after days on the road and too many tourist traps, a haystack dinner and warm conversations made us feel at home. I know it might sound like a cliché, but preparing dishes for fellowship meals and being friendly to visitors are important parts of being the Body of Christ. Maybe the gas tank and heater.

Homer

Lupine blooms all along the Homer Spit, a narrow, 4.5 mile point of land reaching into Kachemak Bay. Dad and Mom drove the van to the end of the road, while Brenda, Sean, Hannah, and I walked. Snowcapped mountains rose above the fog on the other side of the water. Long-abandoned, wooden boats sat in the mud. Near the end of the road, a large bell hung from a yoke with the words, “This bell tolls for all the souls set free upon the sea.”

At the end of the road, we walked out onto the rocky beach. I saw a dead starfish— the largest I’ve ever seen. Fishermen were catching fish, a harbor seal bobbed in the water, sea gulls were flying, and the fishing boats were going out to sea.