On Saturday morning we hiked back from our campsite at Tonsina and piled into the Element for the return trip to Anchorage. We were pretty raunchy after 2 nights of camping, hiking, and sweating in the moist coastal air, and the inside of the Element needed a good air-out session… which was impossible, because it was raining. We arrived in Anchorage in the early evening and laid out our gear, hung up the sleeping bags, and pitched our tents in the garage to dry out. It was the weekend of the Solstice, and Anchorage was gearing up for the festivities.
Alaskans are fairly concerned with the Solstice. While the longest day of the year seems trite to most lower48ers, up here it marks the pinnacle of the “fun season.” Locals endure 9 months of bone-chilling cold and itty-bitty days: in the winter it can be dark for 22 hours a day, and the thick clouds usually diffuse what little daylight there is into a dusky grey. Sunlight allows your body to effectively metabolize vitamin D, a crucial endocrinal component of emotional well-being, so folks get SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. People in Alaska have developed many ways to handle this deficiency. Towns string Christmas lights all over to brighten the mood. Some people have tanning beds in their houses, or visit them regularly to “trick” their bodies into thinking it’s sunny. Many people drink heavily all winter… but that doesn’t mean they stop in the spring.
A band named Flyleaf was playing a free Solstice concert in downtown Anchorage on Saturday night, so we headed over to the Midnight Sun Brewery to fill up a few growlers. A growler is a reusable ½ gallon jug of beer, and we’d already purchased a pair of them and visited the brewery for refills several times since we’d arrived. Mason had several of his own. At the brewery we saw a man lugging a crate to his car. Inside were half a dozen growlers- about 30 beers worth. “I told the wife I was running out for a sixpack,” he told us, deadpan. We loaded up on Sockeye Red IPA, Kodiak Brown, and Old Whiskers, foregoing the more creatively-named ales on tap: Panty Peeler, Gold Digger, and White Collar Crime, among others. Thus sated, we headed downtown to the concert.
The crowded town square in Anchorage offered an interesting core sample of the state’s young and restless. Many Alaskans have dangerous jobs. Prominent scars were not uncommon and many men walked with a limp. People work hard, but outside of Anchorage there are few outlets for them to play hard or otherwise re-channel all of that creative energy. Thus tattoos were common, as were black clothes, wild hair and extraneous piercings. It became patently obvious that firearms aren’t the only department in which Alaskans opt for the larger gauges.
Flyleaf played HARD. I had never heard of them, but one of their songs sounded familiar- they certainly put the effort in, and I enjoyed the show immensely even though my tastes didn’t quite align with their tunes. The stage covered a fountain in Anchorage’s town square (Mason: “They put the stage on top of the bum shower!”) and a man was throwing up in the flowers as we struggled to find a safe spot away from the mosh pit.
We retired to McGinley’s Irish Pub after Flyleaf had finished their set. A pirate brushed past me as we walked in, and Mason greeted him by name. “Holy crap, a PIRATE!!” I exclaimed. The pirate, a lad named Hunter, was Natalie’s boyfriend (Natalie is Mason and Isaac and Marilynn’s sister. Emily is another sister, but she’s in California). Hunter played drums for the Rogues & Wenches, a pirate band with his dad (who sported a truly epic mustache), his accordion-playing mom (whose ample breasts were clearly too much for her 16th century bodice) and several other pirates. They launched into a plunderingly-awesome dirge about rum-soaked wenches, rough seas, and the nuances of a long… mainmast.
On Monday we paid a visit to Humpy’s, a local favorite, for Alaskan King Crab Legs. Mason and his friend Michelle joined us. Man vs. Food had been there, and although the Kodiak Arrest Challenge looked delicious, we were forced to decline- 7lbs of king crab leg, a footlong reindeer sausage, dozens of salmon cakes, and a plate of every side dish on the menu appeared manageable, but the dish of raspberry cobbler for dessert would have pushed me over the edge. Nevertheless, Madison and I each destroyed a full portion of crab legs. To call them delicious would be an egregious understatement. We tore through the succulent flesh with great enthusiasm, leaving nothing but splintered bones and wet-naps in our wake.
The rest of the day was spent preparing for our camping trip in Denali National Park. Denali (native for “the tall one”) is Alaska’s premier national park. It’s bigger than Massachusetts. Mason and Isaac will be joining us, and it promises to be nothing short of phenomenal.
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