Glennallen to Fielding Lake

Day 25--Monday, August 12, 2002, 2.29 miles

After I posted yesterday's account, we bundled up for the one-mile return from the restaurant to our tent site—plastic bags over shoes and rack pack, shower caps over helmets, full rain gear again. Yes we found an ATM, but no we did not take showers ($5 ea.) and no we did not do laundry.

We had strung the tarp over our picnic table. One end was dry, so we parked and protected our bikes, and then sat under the tarp in the rain and played cribbage until the cold drove us into the tent.

Well, phooey. It's 7 a.m., and I'm lying here snug in the tent listening to the rain rain down. Thank God we had three weeks of good weather. This constant rain of the past four days has dissolved our adventurous spirits, plus we find we're spending too much $$ seeking easy food and dry shelter. At this moment, we're both ready to "be done with it." If the rain continues, we will try to hitch to our Fielding Lake BLM cabin. This will also put us back on schedule and make up the extra day we spent in Valdez. I'll let you know if we were successful at the end of the day.

Yes, success. Here we are in our wonderful little BLM log cabin above the tree line on Fielding Lake. Flying from the cabin roof are the American and Alaskan flags. We have a small front porch almost right on the lake, and inside, a built-in table, a wine bottle candle, a propane lantern, a wee wood stove, dry firewood, an axe, snow shovel, rake, broom, and a shelf full of mags, paperbacks and other things left by previous campers. On one wall are two single bunk platforms over two double bunk platforms.

Internet photo of our BLM cabin at Fielding Lake

But I get ahead of myself. Let me relate how we got here. Stayed in our tent listening to the rain until 9:30 or so when I developed a case of "tent fever" and just had to get out, rain or no. Donned all my rain paraphernalia inside the tent—no mean feat—packed up my sleeping bag and the rest of my kit so that it would be ready to store in the BOB bag when we struck the tent, and then walked to a nearby store where I bought all the ingredients for a chili supper at Fielding Lake tonight, two cans of sardines, and a box of egg beaters (really wanted real eggs but they were selling them only in boxes of 18).

When I got back to camp, Jess was up and had the water on to boil. We scrambled our eggs and had them with a couple of our rice & bean combos rolled in flour tortillas. Really didn't need such a big breakfast as we were planning on hitching.

We loaded our bikes and filled all of our water bottles and our Platypus as we knew there was no water at the cabin. Then we rode our bikes a short distance to the Hub Maxi Mart at the intersection of the Richardson (Valdez to Fairbanks) and Glenn (Palmer to Glennallen) highways.

Jess popped inside to brush her teeth, and I immediately got us a ride when Bill Pike came over to ask how we liked our BOBs. I saw that he was gassing up an extended cab pickup with nothing in the bed. He was a cyclist (had once cycled Paris to Greece), lived in Fairbanks, and said he thought he could give us a lift but would have to ask his partner.

In the meantime, three motorcyclists struck up a conversation. Two were from San Diego and one was from Canada. The guy from Canada was riding with a big gorilla on the passenger seat behind him. The gorilla was dressed in a raincoat, scarf, red Polartec cap (embroidered with "Canada" on the brim), and it was wearing sunglasses. I wanted to take a photo of this guy and his gorilla, but he insisted on taking a photo of me and the gorilla instead. I'm sure it will be very flattering . . . of the gorilla, as I had not showered or even combed my hair that morning.

Bill came back with Marsha, and these two very kind people offered us a lift to the road to Fielding Lake (MP 100.5). In order to fit us in they had to wrap the considerable luggage they were carrying in plastic bags and put it in the bed with our trailers and bikes. They even bought the bags to put it in at the Hub. Bill was a engineer and Marsha a craftsperson. The two of them were returning to Fairbanks from a weekend in Copper Center.

They dropped us off at the road to Fielding Lake and even left us with a bag of Bill's homemade peanut butter cookies. We exchanged e-mail addresses and told them our website address. Thank you again Bill & Marsha if you are reading our site.We had a 2 mile ride on a gravel road (or what passes for gravel in these parts, which is large streambed rocks) to get in to the cabin and lake. On the way in we saw a covey(?) of Willow Ptarmigan, Alaska's state bird. Shortly thereafter, a bald eagle lifted off the ground right near the road and flew to the top of a small tree.

After we got ourselves set up in the nifty BLM cabin (I had been sent the combination for the lock) we took a walk in the rain and saw a tern repeatedly hover and then drop into the many ponds that dot this low-bush, grassy area. I sent my bird book home (too heavy) so we're not sure what kind of tern it is. At first we thought Arctic, but it has no black on its tail, is small, has orange bill and feet, black cap, and a forked tail. So now we're thinking least. Florence? Joyce? Wanna help us out here? [I looked it up after I got home and it was definitely an Arctic tern.]

We stopped at lakeside and read the sign telling of fish and fish take limits. The lake contained burbot, lake trout, and arctic grayling. The pictures of the first and last of these species that I was unfamiliar with, I found interesting. The grayling has a large round dorsal fin.

When we got back from our walk, we were approached by Lewis Rockwood who had seen my OK flag. Lewis, his wife, Harriet, and their collie, Tonga, are from . . . Norman, OK. (For those of you non-Oklahomans, Norman is the home of Oklahoma University. OU (red & white) and OSU (orange & black), where Jeff and I work, are arch football rivals.) Despite this rivalry, Lewis and Harriet invited us over for quiche and wine later in the evening. We gladly accepted. Hmmmm. Quiche and "neighbors" in the middle of the wilderness. How strange and wonderful.

We had a wonderful dinner of wine, green salad, Harriet's beets (which Lewis urged us to eat up because despite their red color, he wasn't a beet fan), quiche, and a dessert of bread pudding with an orange grand marinier sauce. While we were eating dinner, what we at first thought was a beaver swam by. Lewis and Jess decided it was a muskrat. I reeally wanted it to be a beaver (there was a big beaver lodge further down the shore) but just couldn't make that beaver tail materialize. It kept swimming underwater and then emerging and sitting on a rock to eat down the plants it found, cheeks puffed. We also saw seven female shovelers dabbling near the shore right under our noses.

After dinner, Harriet and Jess had a couple of frozen margaritas and we all played dominoes. Lewis and Harriet are petroleum consultants, but they both love to cook and are hoping to partner with a friend (coincidentally, the owner of the Willow Creek CG Jess & I stayed at on our way south on the Parks Hwy—the place with all the rabbits) who is buying a fly-in fishing/hunting lodge and wants them to cook for it. The are looking for a prep chef and asked Jess if she'd be interested. She said she might be, but if not, she could find them "someone they'd love." (Most people have to look for jobs—not Jess. There's something about her that makes people beg her to work for them. No joke.)

Anyhow we had great fun with this gracious, easy-to-be-with couple. We left their tidy, solar-powered RV about 10 because the hamburger had thawed and we needed to cook our chili. Harriet gave us a pile of plastic bags because we were running short and plastic bags have become an integral part of our cycling attire. She also gave us a gallon of drinking water for tomorrow's leg, and told us to bring the chili back in a Ziploc and she'd freeze it for us.

When Jess ran the chili over, they told her that if it was still raining tomorrow, they intended to drive us to Delta Junction. Don't know as our consciences would allow two back-to-back hitches. We'll see. I'm hoping that it will be sunny & nice tomorrow.