On my todo list for this trip was going hiking somewhere far from civilization with trees and mountains that made the scenery different from what one generally sees in Australia. The problems with this plan (besides the vagueness) were getting to such a location for one, and also, since I’m travelling alone there is some danger going somewhere so isolated. Unbeknown to me, my trip to Alaska would solve all of these problems.

This is a tale of incredibly good fortune in the face of terrible planning (on my part), which I am entitling:

Everything went better than expected

Before arriving in Alaska, my plan was:

1. Arrive in Anchorage
2. Go north

After doing a little research, I found a city called Fairbanks, the second largest city in Alaska, which is north of Anchorage. I decided I would go there, and so upon arriving in Anchorage I started looking for ways to get there. The only options seemed to be a train which would take 12 hours to get there, and 12 hours to return. I wasn’t thinking about this when I booked my flight out of anchorage about a week prior, so it would have meant I had 12 hours - between 8pm and 8am - to spend in Fairbanks. I came to a compromise: Denali National Park, which is about half way between the two cities.

So at this point my plan was:

1. Go to Denali (by bus)
2. Check into hotel
3. ???

I booked a return trip on a bus, and made reservations with a hotel (in a town named Healy, the existence of which I was unaware of until I arrived). I was told that the hotel is 12 miles from the park entrance (where the final stop of the bus was), but I was given the number of a shuttle service that could take me there.

The next day I took the bus to the park entrance as planned. The stop is at a service station/convenience store. While I was there I met a girl who had arrived in the same bus. She was in Denali to work as a white water raft instructor, but couldn’t contact her people to pick her up. I gave her the number of the shuttle I was planning to take. We both called the shuttle and sat down to wait.

This is the point at which things got interesting. A girl pulled up in her car and asked if we wanted a ride. We weren’t going far so we figured why not. We cancelled the shuttle and hitched a ride. As we pulled out our new friend announced that she wasn’t doing anything today and asked if either of us wanted to go hiking. The girl I met at the bus stop said she had to start work right away, but I realized that I had no plan for the day so I agreed. On the way to my hotel, we picked up another hitch hiker.

The trail we were walking went to the top of Mt Healy. The view from the ground was amazing; in every direction there were snow capped mountains. The view only got better as we climbed higher. Each time we came to an opening in the trees we would stop and admire the view. My camera has loads of photos that look pretty much the same:

…and the view from the top:

I’m still amazed that such a random chance encounter could lead to exactly what I had hoped to get out of my trip north. My good fortune was not quite exhausted yet however.

The next morning, after I checked out of my hotel, I needed to get back to the bus stop (some 12 miles away), so I called the shuttle again. It turned out that all their vehicles were far far away, and could not get to me that day. It was now 12pm and I had to catch my bus at 1:30pm so I had a bit of time to figure this out. There was a diner close to my hotel (which turned out exactly what one would expect to find in a small country town), so I grabbed some lunch, considering the possibility that I might run into someone headed my way with whom I could hitch a ride. I found out from the waitress that there is a bus that runs once an hour that would take me where I needed to go. The nearest stop was about a 10 minute walk away, but according to the schedule the bus would be there before then. As I left the diner, thinking that I would have to hitchhike back to the bus stop, the bus I was trying to catch pulled out of a road across from the diner. I ran towards it, waving my arms, and it stopped. I spent the trip back to the bus stop catching my breath and enjoying the feeling of relief.

The next tale of interest happened while I was in New York. (Pardon the lack of order of these stories. They are in order of how interesting I think they are, not the order in which they occur.)

I almost had to sleep on the street

Because of my lax prior organisation of where to stay, I ended up having to hop between three hostels/hotels while in New York because of the days that they had no vacancy. One day, while at the first of these, I sat down and booked my stays at the other two. I was using a sheet of paper with a list of hostels and phone numbers that I got from the first hostel I arrived at. (I didn’t stay there because although I thought I had made a reservation, it turned out that I hadn’t and so I had to call the first hostel I stayed at from the lobby of this one using numbers from the sheet on the morning of the day I would be checking in. I arrived in NY that morning by bus which arrived at 7am and had had very little sleep being on a bus all night. But I digress.) So I pretty much went down the sheet until I found a place that had some vacancy and ended up making reservations at the Broadway Hostel and the YMCA’s Hotel. Everything went smoothly for the former.

After checking out of the Broadway Hostel, I made my way to the Urban Oasis hostel in the really busy area near the Empire State building and the famous part of Broadway. See my mistake? Maybe the two places appeared next to one another on my list of hostels. Maybe I had dreamt of making reservations at Urban Oasis. This hostel does not advertise much, so arriving at the address one would not assume that it was there. It turned out that it was on the 10th floor of one of the buildings and you had to buzz in to get them to unlock the front door. Of course, when I got there I was told that I had no reservation. Being New York, they were full.

I was a bit concerned at this point. I definitely had reservations somewhere. I went to a nearby Starbucks to use their internet to figure this out. My original plan was to use my credit card history to see if someone had made a transaction that looked like a hotel, but they hadn’t billed me (some hotels bill for the first night when you make the reservation). Luckily, there is an online service that does reverse phone number lookups. I remembered calling them once to find out that they had a vacancy but were a little pricey, then a second time to make my reservation when there were no vacancies anywhere else. I found the number that I had recently called twice and googled it, and it lead me to the YMCA hotel. I called them to confirm that I actually had a reservation, and breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out I did. Problem solved.

Or so I thought. I arrived to check into the YMCA hotel. I went to pay and my card was declined. Embarrassed, I checked my balance on my phone and I had enough money on my card. I told them I would go and get cash from an ATM and come back. No ATMs would accept my card either. I couldn’t even use them to check my balance. This was a new development, as I had been successfully using ATMs in New York for several days. When I got back to the hotel, I had an email from my bank with the subject: Card Fraud. Well that explained a lot. It turned out that someone had made an unauthorized deduction of $1.22 and caused the bank to block my card. I called the bank and started resolving it but then my phone ran out of credit. I couldn’t top up the credit, as it required me to use my card (see Catch 22). I got some quarters from the guy at the desk, and used the payphone in the lobby to call the bank again. International calls are expensive and of poor sound quality, but I was able to get the international reversed charges number for the bank, so I called that. This put me through to a Telstra operator, to whom I told the number of the bank and she connected me, asking them first to accept the reversed charges. Then I was able to sort the mess out (where by “sort out” I mean unblock my card and hope for the best (see Ostrich Algorithm)). So everything is working again, but one of the first things I do when I get back to Australia will be getting a new card.

Anchorage

The first morning in Anchorage I rented a bike and rode around the city. Anchorage is great. There is always a view of mountains and pine forests, and the people respond when you say “Good Morning”. I spent the entire day riding along the plentiful bike trails.

As I rode through the Alaska Botanical Gardens I was constantly reminded that I was in bear country. My favourite thing was a message at the end a Bear Information sign that was to the tune of: If you are attacked by a bear, play dead so it sees that you aren’t a threat. If it doesn’t stop biting you after a few seconds it is a predatory attack. Fight back vigorously!

But I didn’t see a single bear…

A neat novelty of being so far north is incredibly long days. This photo is of a phenomena called Alpenglow which occurs at sunset. This photo was taken 10:45pm. (See the orange strip along the bottom of the mountains.)

New York City

I traveled from Montreal to New York via Toronto by bus. In New York, everybody is in a hurry. I forgot to get photos of Central Park, but it is huge and has a really impressive forest. I also saw Wicked on Broadway.

Empire State Building

WTC Memorial