Season’s Greetings to one and all from one very happy and contented person. I’m running late with my Christmas letter because it has been such a full and happy year I hardly know where to start or what to put in, and because I haven’t had time to settle down and start writing–“But I’m retired so I should have all the time in the world – right?”– Wrong!! My days are so filled with things to do I can’t imagine how I ever had time to work a full time job. Needless to say, I am truly enjoying retirement and appreciate the many good wishes I’ve received.
One of the major joys during this year has been contact by letters, visits, & phone calls with so many dear friends. My cousin Fred Munier & family visited in March with their new daughter, Suzanne, on their way to their new home in Richmond, Va. John & Bonnie Bowyer tried to visit in July, but I was in Alaska. And on that trip Bill Giles & I got to see Morris & Eleanor Dent, Myrian Baker, and Homer Ratcliff in California, and Marienne & Dave Skinner in Wisconsin. I enjoyed phone visits with Jean Hendershot, Marion Holt, Bert Keltner, Bill & Harriet Lovitt, among others, & wonderfully long letters this fall from Carol Bizzell, Terry K, and others.
I lost dear friends, too. Suzanne O’Dell Hunt (no relation) died Dec. 3 last year, I learned my Manhattan Kansas roommate, Jo Clare Mangus died of a brain tumor 2 years ago, & Dick Ewing of Dayton had a heart attack in Oct. They will be sorely missed. I truly believe my decision to retire in ’86 instead of a year later was precipitated by the news about Suzanne and Jo Clare. That made me sit down with a calculator & hard figures to compare retirement income between ’86 & ’87. Let’s face it, a school district that hadn’t passed a levy in 15 years was not about to “buy me out” of even one year. They even laid off 20 teachers in a staff cut, added another teaching bell, & increased student load by 30-50 students a day! (Another big incentive to retire.) The net income difference of $100 per month was simply not worth what I knew the stress and work load would do to my health. One bout with depression, ulcers, etc. was enough, so in January I knew I would quit June 1, 1986.
Soon after, one warm winter weekend, Barbara Sorensen (who went to Greece with me), Bill Giles, Hecuba & I went hiking the woods & hills of Mt. Airy Park. By the end of the hike we had decided to take a driving vacation to California in the summer. Neither Bill nor Barb had been to the SW or San Francisco, so I would have the fun of returning to many places I loved and also the enjoyment of playing tour guide as I showed & shared the wonders of these beautiful places with them. Alaska got “tacked on” later after the night Bill and Barb came over to look at slides & map the sw itinerary. Bill was over in the corner reminiscing with his box of Alaska slides taken when he was in the Army in Anchorage in 1954-5. Well, we were already on the west coast so why not just go on up to Alaska while we “were in the vicinity!” And so evolved our big 7+ week vacation.
I spent the spring preparing for retirement & playing “travel agent” as I planned & booked our entire trip myself. I could write a book on the “Pitfalls of Preparing your Car for Alaska Driving.” Actually, only about 80 miles of the over 3000 Alaska/Canada wilderness highway miles we traveled were simply not paved, although several hundred miles were under construction and as such were a mess. By next summer they expect the entire Al-Can Highway and all major Alaska highways to be paved. In May I joined “Hands Across America” by walking out my back door through my backyard neighbor’s yard – and there was the line – 500 feet from my house! I retired June 1 to the usual reception, dinner, & presentations including my traveling cart bicycle, –all greatly appreciated–and on Friday, June 13, we started west in my station wagon crowned with 2 car-top carriers and a bed in the back.
THREE MUSKETEERS IN ARIZONA AND CALIFORNIA
Barbara Sorensen, Bill Giles & Carolyn Ruth Hunt
LUM AND ABNER (Carolyn & Bill) HEAD FOR ALASKA
Our Southwest itinerary took us to Albuquerque, New Mexico, Petrified Forest, Meteor Crater, Sunset Volcano Crater Nat’l Mon., Grand Canyon (We were there the day of the helicopter/plane collision), Glen Canyon Dam with a raft trip down the calm part of the Colorado River in Glen Canyon, Bryce and Zion Nat’l Parks, Death Valley, Sequoia and Yosemite Parks, and ended up with a 3 day stay in San Francisco as Barbara visited her college roommate, Barbara Hill. Then Barb flew home and Bill & I took a “side trip” to Los Angeles to visit friends before heading north toward Alaska. Along the way we drove through Napa Valley, Avenue of the Giant Redwoods in Northern Calif, saw Crater Lake, Mt. St. Helens & on to Vancouver, B.C. Canada for a day at World’s Fair “Expo 86”.
Barbara especially loved the different wild flowers and Indian archeology. Bill was fascinated by the silence of the desert and could be seen peering thru binoculars at distant vistas, but was often “not seen” as he had taken off somewhere exploring and experiencing. I was struck by the flowers & green of the desert, and the snow and gushing cascades and waterfalls in the mountains. My previous trips had been in late July and August after snow melt when the deserts and waterfalls were dried up. Vancouver B.C. to Skagway, Alaska was the “Ferryboat” portion of our trip. Porpoises played alongside the ferry on the 1 hour ride from mainland B.C. to Vancouver Island. On the drive north along the shoreline from Naniamo were unique flowers, small fishing ports and people out digging clams. Then we plunged into snow capped mountains with tranquil lakes nestled at the bottom of steep valleys. Such beauty and luxuriant green trees were only broken by wide ugly patches of barren, debris filled mountainsides, the victim of mass commercial clear-cutting.
At Port Hardy we accidentally found an entire aerie of bald eagles, one of the highlights of our trip. We watched (and I took pictures) for 45 minutes as they sat regally in the trees, glided majestically thru the air–then swiftly swooped down and snatched fish from the bay, only to lose the fish on the upflight as several other eagles greedily moved in to snatch away the prize. Then they would circle back to the group (about 20) on the shoreline that was fiddling & fussing & fighting at feeding time.
The next morning we boarded the car ferry for 3 days of sailing. First day, B.C. Ferries sailed from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, Canada, then we went on to Skagway for 2 days on the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry. They were more like cruise ships though certainly not as fancy as my Greek cruise ship or the Pacific Princess (Loveboat) which we steamed past at full speed. Bill was fascinated by his first cruise & I managed not to get seasick– until we got on land, then land & walls & ceilings undulated for 2 days.
Sailing up the Inside Passage, for hundreds of miles we saw high mountains plunge sharply down into the sea like fjords, each with several waterfalls and cascades tumbling down the mountainside. Prince Rupert had totem poles (half-face carved & hung on telephone poles). A walk thru Wrangell, Alaska revealed it to be a real frontier fishing town. From the boat we watched whales blow & breach, more porpoises, more & more snow on mountain tops & the rich blue ice of La Conte Glacier. We docked at Skagway at 5 AM in broad daylight. From this point on we had 19-20 hours of daylight; interesting, but it surely screws up your internal biological clock. Skagway is not only a real seaport, but downtown is a Nat’l Park restored to 1898 Klondike Gold Rush times. It was great at dawn with few people and I wanted to stay an hour or so and experience the early Klondike atmosphere 80 years ago before it got spoiled when jammed by tourists later. But Bill was adamant. He wanted to leave immediately, so I had to give in and we drove up the new road into the mountains following the old Chilkoot Trail with views of Dead Horse Gulch across the deep ravine. We drove right into the clouds & over the top of the mountains into the clear sunshine of Yukon, Canada. In a matter of 4 or 5 hours I had gone from sea level to over 10,000 feet. We stopped for a picnic lunch and I started feeling woozy. I got so sick that Bill had to take over driving all the way to Whitehorse, Yukon. By this time I was really sick so Bill got the hotel room and practically carried me up and rolled me into bed. Turns out, I had a severe case of altitude sickness brought on by the contrast from three days at sea to the sudden change in altitude. It took until noon the next day for me to return to normal.
To describe our 3 weeks in Alaska and the Yukon from this point on in a few paragraphs is just impossible. It would take a book. So what follows is a pastiche of impressions, sentence fragments & the pictures to give you a taste of this VAST frontier wilderness as it begins to emerge into our brassy 20th cent. (which I’m not so sure is progress).
Imagine driving hundreds of miles thru wilderness, scrawny lodgepole pine, beautiful fireweed everywhere along roads and in fields; what we called “Bill Grass”-12″ tall with a beautiful 3″ wine/rose feather tuft floating & undulating in the wind; tundra & other unique flora. Broad endless valleys of swamps; rushing (or sluggish) rivers colored grey/ white from tons of glacial silt suspended in the water; hundreds of lakes-or were they wide sluggish rivers, it was hard to tell. Hundreds of miles of high, impressive snow covered mountains, often with glaciers snaking down valleys they are carving out themselves.
Portage Glacier on Kenai Peninsula has retreated 3 miles since Bill last saw it in 1954. Homesteads along the road look much like backwoods cabins in W.Va. (including abandoned cars & junk in the yard!) Along the highway is a gas station and homespun place to eat about every 30-50 miles. All cooking is truly simple home cooked dishes. Most places the owner’s family is the entire work force and you are treated and chatted with more like a visitor than a customer. A large home generator grinds away out back to furnish power. And yet in Pine Valley, Yukon, in the middle of nowhere, we had TV in our rustic cabin! We had no problem finding places to stay; we preferred and tried to find mom & pop motels – less expensive, more genuine & more interesting.
We also had the bed in the back of the station wagon. When we drove with Barbara, whoever was in the “back seat” had to lie in the bed. There were five windows in the station wagon and before we left I made screens to go over the windows so that we could leave the windows open to have ventilation and be safe from the giant Alaska mosquitoes. We also had a tent packed in one of the car top carriers, and by the time we could use it, in Bellingam, Washington, we were both too tired to pitch it. The car bed was so convenient and comfortable that we never did end up pitching the tent at all during the whole journey.
In contrast to our rustic stays, Anchorage is a very modern city of 250,000 (All of Alaska only has a little over 500,000 people). Airplanes are everywhere. Alaskans are more likely to own a family airplane than a car. 01d citizens of Anchorage bemoan the loss of the frontier atmosphere in their city — but that atmosphere still exists in Fairbanks. Ft. Richardson had changed so much Bill could hardly find anything, though he did spot the theater building where he acted in a USO play “Boy Meets Girl” directed by Sgt. Gubitosi–better known now as Robert Blake of TV/movie fame. Bill found his other Anchorage haunts of 1954-5–Episcopal Church, Servicemen’s YMCA, the 515 Cocktail Club–had not been destroyed by the 1964 earthquake and were in fact little changed in 30 years. An interesting spot near Anchorage is Eklutna, site of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church which we visited twice. The 2 simple wooden churches hold 15th century icons brought from Russia 150+ years ago. The cemetery is most unique, filled with spirit houses 18″ to 30″ high, wood carved & painted with bright multi colored decorative designs.
It was pouring rain in Denali on our way up to Fairbanks, and at the time we were planning to come back to Denali Mountain and State Park. There was a fairly steep hill under highway construction and the hill was littered with cars that got stuck in the mud. Bill looked at me, and I looked at him, “Do you think we could make it?” “If anyone can make it, you can” said Bill. So I took a good running charge up the hill and Bill coached: “keep it going! don’t let up!” as we drove past all of the other cars. We guessed that the tent we had carried for the whole journey without pitching it once came in handy as extra weight for the car to get up that hill. When we reached the top of the hill, we took a big sigh of relief. I knew then I’d never get back to Denali, but I also knew that I did not want to test fate and drive that mudslide again on our way back, so we decided that after Fairbanks, we would just get on the Al-Can Highway and head home.
The weather rain out for Mt. McKinley and Denali Nat’l Park was the big disappointment of our trip, but the wildlife we saw during our full 7 weeks was a real thrill. Besides Bald Eagles, porpoises and whales, we saw pronghorn antelope, prairie dogs, marmots; ravens, clark’s Nutcracker and other birds; Beaver and dams in the wild, many moose (including a cow & her calf that stopped traffic at the main gate of Ft. Richardson near Anchorage), herds of Stone Sheep, bighorn sheep, Wapiti Elk, a porcupine, Ptarmegans (Alaska’s state bird), and herds of tame horses on open range wandering back & forth across the Alaska (Al-Can) Highway. Oh, yes, I can’t forget Alaska’s unofficial state bird – THE MOSQUITO!! Note picture of Bill on a RAID ATTACK!! (Many, many times a day! )
In Fairbanks the main campus of University of Alaska looks no different than any campus here on “the outside.” (That’s how Alaskans refer to the lower 48 states.) A 2 mile long junky suburban commercial/mall strip and a modern J.C. Penney store downtown are also like “the outside,” but a frontier atmosphere still pervades the rest of the town and area. The old gold mining “town” of Cripple Creek (now called Ester) still has its original bunkhouse hotel in operation. Across the “street” (read “a muddy space”) sits the Malamute Saloon of Robert W. Service fame. The original burned down 20 years ago but its exact replica was rebuilt. 3″ of sawdust on the floor & people smoking during the show we saw scared me, but no fire happened and the show was worth it.
So now we were in Fairbanks, Alaska, our farthest point north and west, and 5,000 miles from Cincinnati. All we had to do was drive straight home!! The 1500 miles down the Alaska Highway from Fairbanks to Dawson Creek, B.C. Canada is a trip and vacation in itself. But by now we were getting weary of driving & sightseeing and couldn’t appreciate it fully. 80 miles of unpaved roads & several hundred miles of gravel topped seal coating & road construction, making for hard driving, didn’t help. The magnificent Canadian Rockies revived our spirits a bit, and we left the Alaska Highway headed for Jasper & Banff Nat’l Parks. The biggest surprise of the trip was acrophobic Bill riding the Jasper Tramway cable car to the top of Whistler’s Mountain (over 8000 ft.) The view from there, and then the drive down the Icefield Parkway through the breathtaking beauty of Jasper & Banff made a perfect climax to a true fantasy vacation that really happened.
We left Banff and drove across the Canadian and North Dakota Plains then angled down to Beloit, Wisconsin, where we had a wonderful visit with Marienne Kruse Skinner and her family. After that wonderful visit Bill and I got home the first weekend in August, did a one week turnaround and took off in his Subaru for 8 days in New York City before he had to face going back to teaching. Really crazy after driving 12,032 miles plus our coastal cruise, but I didn’t care — I was retired!
I have spent the fall in my usual summer job of slowly “pushing back the frontiers of clutter” in my house and working on other projects like the 1600 pictures I took on the trip. A day in April & October were spent participating in an Ohio State Univ. research study on retirement and attitudes. Their probing questions offered much food for thought and could even change the thinking of some participants during the course of the study (2 years). I haven’t completely stopped working. I still teach my Univ. of Cincinnati speech class and this fall I took the speech coach contract at Oak Hills to help train my replacement through the intricacies of Ohio Speech League rules & practices. I love UC teaching but am glad the speech team job will end this year.
Hecuba, my bulldog “puppy”, now 2 years old & 50 lbs, is still energetic and assertive, but has calmed down and become sweet and loving. 8 weeks this summer with professional dog handler Nancy Hiles, plus my being with her most of the time have solved my problems with her. Captured by unusual or animal sounds on TV, she will stare intently and quizzically at the screen images. Johnny Carson’s dog singing contest and nature shows are her favorite programs! We love to tromp thru the woods at Mt. Airy Park–or on my Indiana farm where she can run free.
In August, fortunately the week I was home, my father had a fall when his feet got tangled in the hose as he was watering his garden – at age 95. He bruised his hip but is recovered and doing fine. He listens to ball games, eats out several days a week, and goes to church and on social visits regularly. He and Faye even drove to Tulsa, Okla. in May and take trips to Cleveland to see Faye’s daughter.
My Christmas present from me to me this year has been a new Smith-Corona 6500 electronic typewriter and I am learning to use it on this letter. There should be few typographical errors (a first for me!) but please overlook places where the lines don’t quite ‘match up’, wierd right margins, etc. That’s also another reason my cards & letters are so late this year. Anyway, early or late, you know my thoughts and best wishes are with you for a healthy, happy year in 1987.