Day Fifty One: Revisiting the Turnagain Arm

Monday, July 15 was a free day in Anchorage. The Bulls were off doing something–don’t remember what at this point. Some of the group went to a local museum, but I was told that it wasn’t all that interesting. Instead, I decided to head down to the Turnagain Arm once more to see if I could catch a bore tide. If you remember a few posts ago, this area has the largest tides in North America after the Bay of Fundy. I was also hoping that the haze from the wildfire would have improved, as the wind had picked up and was blowing to the south, away from us.

The northern part of the Turnagain Arm is quite near Anchorage. In the map below, I marked the approximate location of the Golden Nugget RV park. It doesn’t take long to take the Seward Highway, which is Alaska 1, down to the coast. I then drove up and down–there are plenty of turn outs with people taking pictures or doing other things.

While it wasn’t totally clear, I did have better luck with the visibility than our first time driving around it. The first time through, I had a few pictures of Beluga Point, but they weren’t great. I thought these were way better. You can see some of the features of the mountains to the south.

As I drove along, I saw some people had parked vans at a few pullouts but weren’t there. Then, I spied where they were–Kitesurfing! It was a great day to do so, given the stiff winds, but I’m not sure I’d want to be out in that water. It had to be cold. They were all wearing wet suits, so that would make it more tolerable. I only had my 70-200m zoom lens, but it sure was fun taking their pictures. I counted 4 of them out there and they were clearly having fun.

That evening, we had a gathering to talk about the next day’s drive to Denali. We were also treated to a fish fry. It was really delicious! They also discussed one of the optional activities in Denali–a white water rafting trip. I had been planning to go, until I found out about Amy’s death. It had been a few weeks at this point, so I thought I’d just stay behind and do something else (I ended up going into the park and looking for wildlife). What I didn’t count on was how much it would bother me hearing them discussing that you had to sign a waiver, etc. I’m sure she’d heard the same spiel, but her adventure turned out so tragically. I had to get up and walk alone for a while, remembering Amy’s smile and her kind and generous spirit. Such a loss for the world.

I went to bed early–I had to get up and go fairly quickly the next morning. My aunt and uncle, Lyn and Cheri B, were also touring Alaska and happened to be in the Wasilla area the same time Jeff, Amanda and I were. We’d decided to meet for breakfast there, so I needed to get up and get going. Thanks for following along!