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Palm trees and swans in the harbor may not seem possible in England, but in Cornwall it is. Its temperate ocean climate is the mildest and sunniest in all of the United Kingdom due to its position at 50.503632 degrees (Anchorage is 61.217381 degrees) with the Gulf Stream wafting warm air from the south. The region shares a literary mythical relation to Alaska. Considered a magical place, Cornwall is home to the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, and notably his sister...
Vermont is all about maple syrup and that's just fine with me. Here in the springtime, smoke fills the air from sugarhouses busily boiling the sap from sugar maple trees in vats over wood-fired boilers. But much has changed in this cottage industry as maple-syrup-making hit the 21st century, and nowhere have the leaps in technology been so evident as on the Smith Maple Crest Farm in Shrewsbury, Vermont, where maple trees seven generations old twist toward the sky. Jeff and Mary Smith continue...
Every year before the early March start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, longtime but now retired Anchorage Daily News photographer Jim Lavrakas goes to South Peninsula Hospital's Long Term Care Unit in Homer and shares a slide show of his times covering the Iditarod. "I covered the race nine times, four times from start to finish, all 1,049 miles from Anchorage to Nome," Lavrakas told his eager audience at last year's slideshow. "At first, I flew in a plane from checkpoint to checkpoint, but...
Just a week in the sun makes Jack much easier to live with. Truly, the lack of sun in wintertime does tax one's sanity in Alaska. I was of the mind that I was a true Alaskan and didn't need any stinking winter vacation - until I took a week in Kauai. Before I went, someone said to me in Utqiagvik, "warm sand between your toes." The image almost made me break down as I looked around at the minus-degree scenery and blowing snow while I waited for a bus. Heeding the call, winter slipped by easily...
This column has talked about riding the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS), and that it is an experience many Alaskans revel in and more should try. It will be especially so in 2018, when AMHS hopes to roll out its two Alaska class ferries, now being constructed at Vigor Alaska in Ketchikan, that will serve as day boats. At 280 feet long, they can seat up to 300 passengers and stow 53 standard vehicles on their car decks. For speedy loading and unloading, they will have bow and stern doors,...
As the centennial year for the National Park Service comes to a close, I want to share some of my favorite parks in Alaska because this state has the most parks, the largest park and the most varied geologically. With its 54 million acres in the state's eight national parklands, add on top of that national historic areas. Alaska has 15 prehistoric landmarks that are archaeological sites dating back to pre-European (also called pre-contact) time and 34 historic landmarks detailing the state's pas...
Thanks to the inherent isolationism of Brits, Americans can benefit this winter from the country's vote to leave the European Union. The pound has fallen to levels not seen since the mid-1960s - now at $1.30 as of the last week of September. If you're an Alaska Airlines frequent flier, do go with British Airlines for a mere 65,000 miles for coach. The spaciousness of BA's seating will leave you to forever grumble. The play's the thing I was lucky enough to have spent 1997 to 1998 in London...
I'm not watching the Olympics in Rio this summer. And yes, I know that these athletes have trained and competed since childhood to be able to represent their country and gain lasting glory. I understand this because as a child I wanted to be the next Sonja Henie. That is, until I understood what her sympathies with Hitler and Nazi ideology meant. I still have routines and costume designs playing in my head. Recent Olympics have caused massive inequities in host countries that have affected...
In railroad parlay, "foamers" are those who literally foam at the mouth at the sight of a steam engine. If you are one, take the 18-hour road trip to Skagway in Southeast and take a ride on one of White Pass & Yukon Route Railroads' steam engines. The 3,000-foot climb over the historic White Pass and into a sliver of Canada's British Columbia is filled with great vistas from mountaintops to deep valleys with rushing rapids and places where a ledge for the narrow-gauge tracks has been blasted so...
We've all had them, those that hit the road for long stretches. And naturally in Alaska, where drives can stretch for days, scary road trip experiences are something we all share. Like that night at 2 a.m. in a blizzard traveling the windswept road across Kluane Lake in the Yukon, and through frighteningly named Destruction Bay in British Columbia, where my night was spent at a motel with no proprietor, just an envelope and keys to the rooms (chair up and under the door knob for security, thank...
When you travel to Anchorage, yes, you can stay downtown at the Sheraton, Hilton or Captain Cook, but why not try something with more of an Alaskan flavor? This year the Historic Anchorage Hotel turns 100 - that's a big deal in a state that's only 57 years old, although Anchorage did celebrate its centennial last year. Like the state and the city, the hotel has a colorful past. The original hotel building was built in 1916 but torn down some years later. The current hotel, an annex to the older...
There was a generation of women who grew up without heroines, without much hope for fulfilling their wildest dreams, but then there were those women who changed all that by sheer will and determination. They thumbed their noses at "girls don't do that" and went on to do precisely what they said they would. Dr. Nancy Elliot Syndam is one. And she was honored for that grit at the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Anchorage Museum on March 3. She grew up on a 60-acre farm in...
Go south-way south, to Alaska's little visited Dutch Harbor on the Aleutian Chain. The Aleutian Chain, including Unalaska and Amaknak Islands, began about 40 million years ago when the volcanic action and movement of tectonic plates thrust up the jagged mountains to form part of the "Ring of Fire" of volcanic activity that spans the Pacific. As recently as this March, Pavlof Volcano, 166 miles north of Dutch Harbor, erupted and sent ash 20,000 feet into the air. Dutch Harbor refers to the...
Native corporations, cruise lines and state ferry bargains bring Alaska to you on the cheap this season. First off, get a Puffin Pass through Cook Inlet Region, Inc.'s travel subsidiary CIRI Alaska Tourism by applying for it online at www.ciritourism.com/puffin-pass. I know, many of you may not have access to a computer, and although they used to mail a Puffin Pass card out, it's paperless now, with newsletters sent to your email. The good thing about the pass is you can use it for visitors and...
I remember the morning of 9/11 when I woke out of a deep dream that my truck was in the emergency room for repair but it was so full of people I had to abandon it, then there was a long stairway that dropped to nothingness so I popped into a bar on one of the floors and the bartender said, "Last call," as the ceiling began to lower. Really, no fooling. That day changed America, but it was in Alaska and the small town of Skagway where it seemed most apparent. Pre-9/11, you could cross the border...
The currency exchange with Canada has gotten even better – now it's 72 cents on the U.S. dollar. Oops, that was a couple of weeks ago when I first started on this column, but as of Jan. 20 it was 69 cents on the US dollar. Reminds me of the time in 1999 I bought a 24 x 28-foot timber frame package, complete with structural insulated panes and windows for $18,000. At that time in 1999, the Canadian dollar was 75 cents. With the exchange rate this low, there are bargains to be had! When I lived in...
When I was about 10 years old, my dad took my sister and me on a camping trip up the New England coast from Massachusetts to Quebec. It was memorable to me for what we ate all along the way: Chef Boyardee ravioli and corn on the cob. I cannot look at a can of Chef Boyardee to this day. However, the memory of the crepe breakfast on the wide stone plaza across the street from the Hotel Frontenac delights me still. "Quebec City, So Europe. So close" is the apropos motto of this city with Old World...
One of the favored spots of Alaskans looking to avoid winter and live on $30 a day, Chiang Mai, the capital of Northern Thailand, offers great food, warm, welcoming people and cultural sites. It's Asia without the huge crowds - and Alaskans are not used to large groups of people except at the state fair in Palmer. My cousin Tom, who's in Chiang Mai, now advises Americans to keep a cool head. Thai people are relaxed, polite and non-confrontational. Remain calm and never resort to the pushy,...
I like to find places that have an Alaska connection, and Portland, Oregon is one. A favorite old dead guy of mine, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, spent some of his early years in Alaska, but left behind a mighty legacy in Portland. In early 1877, when an infantry officer, he joined an expedition that had requested a military escort to climb Mount St. Elias, but after the group left Sitka, and without approval from superiors, Wood set off for Alaska. Ranging along the Southeast coast, he stayed in...
I have traveled with my mother when she was sighted and then not, and I wish this book, "Planes, Canes and Automobiles," had been available to me after she was hit with temporal arteritis, a rare autoimmune disease where the temporal arteries are destroyed, often causing blindness. The author, Valerie M. Grubb, first started traveling with her mother when she was 64 and continued for the next 20 years. It's true that as we age we become more set in our ways, so making travel plans with someone...
Yes, the termination dust is telling us that it's time to think winter and how to avoid it. You could go to Hawaii and blend in with all the other Alaskans wearing the same swim suit from Eddie Bauer. Or you can put on your winter gear and head off to London. You will be treated like a celebrity there because you're from such a romantic place, as the Brits think – who forget their oh so many ill-fated forays into the arctic, complete with cannibalism, useless overland treks, and the peculiar B...
On a 6-hour layover in Seattle, we took the train into downtown. I've wanted to see the historic Arctic Hotel for a long time. And in my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants traveling style, I didn't look up to see what stop that might be or the actual address. So I looked at the city map, remembered it was Cherry Street and maybe, Third, and took a stab at Pioneer Square. As the escalator rose to street level, I looked up and there were the extraordinary walrus heads, once terra cotta now fiberglass,...
Honorary plaque in arms, retiring Skagway Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Carlin "Buckwheat" Donahue regaled a crowd of well-wishers at the Red Onion Saloon on May 1. After 16 years in the position, Donahue can look back at countless plaque presentations to cruise ship captains on their ship's first docking in Skagway, years of seeing hundreds of thousands of visitors using the visitor services the bureau provides, but most importantly, 29 years of the Buckwheat Ski Classic, a cross...
Summertime means road trips, and no Alaskan can call themselves a true Alaskan if they haven't done the Haul Road. Yes, you may have done the Alaska Highway to the Lower 48, but it's not so gnarly now as it once was, no longer gravel and mostly paved. But the Haul Road, also known as the Dalton Highway, is a gravel road - another animal entirely. Gravel roadways have a decidedly different impact on your vehicle, most notably rocks and huge, thick clouds of dust. So if your windshield sports a...
San Francisco, where the city's port ships out hundreds of thousands of tourists north to Alaska on cruise ships, has another Alaska connection nearby, a literary one – Jack London Square in Oakland just across the bay. Jack London was the author of such Klondike Gold Rush-era literary sensations, "Call of the Wild," "White Fang" and "The Sea-Wolf." The site has London's relocated Klondike cabin, and it's open all the time for people to visit. It will remind you of the first dry cabin you ever r...
