Anyone who has known me for any length
of time knows I hate the heat. In fact I have been known to moan
about the heat fairly often in the summer. I may even be annoying
about it given the fact that it happens every year and, like
Christmas, I do know it is coming! So you may imagine my delight in
getting to go someplace that I have always wanted to go....and it is
cooler...like 20 degrees cooler!! I spent the two hottest weeks of
the summer in Alaska!!
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| Great grandad Walter Quint |
Please bear with me as I share the back
story...My maternal grandmothers father
(my great grandfather) Walter Quint went
to Alaska in 1900, at the urging of his uncle
(his mother's brother) Andrew Jackson Meals.
He came home with, according to family legend, a gold nugget he had
made into a ring. He did not become rich, unfortunately for the rest
of us. His uncle though, became the stuff of family legends. 'Uncle
Jack Meals' was someone I had heard of my whole life. He was the
quintessential gold rush guy in my mind and I even had a mental
picture of him that included a pick and shovel and all the trimmings.
Here was the best part...he stayed in Valdez, Alaska! Alaska...home
of Grizzly bears and Caribou and Igloos, home of the tallest
mountains in North America, home of Louis L'Amour novels and stories.
Alaska loomed large in my mind back then, the romance of the 'last
frontier' in the mind of a 'western girl'.
Fast forward to 1997. My Grandmother
was a month and a
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| Walters parents Wm Quint and Amanda J Meals |
|
half away from 85 and she too had always wanted to
go to Alaska. So she did, and she took her 3 daughters and their
husbands with her. They stayed in B & B's, they went fishing for
salmon and halibut, they saw a lot of country, and they went to
Valdez, where they were hoping to find a trace of Uncle Jack. They
stayed in a B & B in Valdez that just happened to be run by a
lady who was a veritable historian of Valdez. She knew the
Meals family...
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| We had this picture of Uncle Jack |
Andrew Jackson Meals went to Alaska in
February of 1898 with another man from Nebraska, George Cheever
Hazelet. Mr Hazelet was a former Superintendent of Schools and was
well educated. He kept a journal, painstakingly handwritten at the
time. The history lady at the B & B had a copy and let mom and
her sisters copy it. There was a home built by A.J. Meals' son Owen that
they got to tour, there were streets named 'Meals' and 'Hazelet',
they got to meet Marie who was a cousin, just a couple of years
younger than grandma! Turned out Uncle Jack and family were kind of
famous! The only problem was they were near the end of their trip
and would have like to spend a little more time.
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| Uncle Jack's Sister Amanda Jane |
My mom spent a lot of time carefully
copying and typing and eventually we all had a typed copy of what we
called Hazelet's Journal. It read like a novel, Hazelet was a good
writer and he told the story well. Mom and her sister kind of wanted
to go back, and I had wanted to go to Alaska forever it seemed. We
had done some more research and found some more family history. Now
we wanted to go there and see it, knowing where they were, we wanted
to trace their footsteps as it were. When mom started making noises
like she wanted to go soon, I shamelessly encouraged her. We decided
on the summer of 2018 in the summer of 2017.
I decided I needed to reread Hazelet's
Journal since it had been quite awhile. I had forgotten it ended
sadly – the last phrase he wrote was “sign yourself a failure and
quit”. I knew though, that he had become successful, and I sort of
needed a happier ending. I went on the internet and googled him
thinking I might get lucky....and did I ever!
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| Grandad had this picture from Alaska |
The first thing to pop
up was a book titled “Hazelet's Journal”, I couldn't believe it
and I raced to Amazon to check on this book, I was so excited when I
read the synopses...it was the same journal, published by his great
grandson John Clark! This journal though, had the family pictures and
some extra information and included pictures of A.J. Meals that we had
never seen. I immediately ordered two, one for me and one for mom.
Of course both of her sisters had to have one as well, and now we were
well and truly 'up for the trip'.
If you have read my blog for awhile you
might remember that my mom and her sister Aunt E met at my house a
couple of years ago and then headed up to Glacier National Park, in
Montana and Canada, drove the frightening “Road to the Sun” the
day after it snowed, and then drove all the way back to moms in
California. So when mom said she'd like to spend our inheritance and
take my brother and I and our spouses to Alaska, oh and Aunt E is
coming too...the question was not "will these two old ladies be OK" but
– 'will us 'young ones' be able to keep up and not embarrass
ourselves!"
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| Here we are in Anchorage ready to start! |
We did keep up, I think and we are hard
to embarrass so we had a wonderful time, covered a lot of territory
and accomplished our goals and more.
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| We needed to stop here! |
We all met in Anchorage at the airport,
picked up our 15 passenger van with a row of seats taken out in the
back for luggage and we were off. We ate that night at the number
one restaurant in Anchorage overlooking the Cook inlet, the first of
many seafood dinners! The next morning after a stop at Wal-Mart
(obligatory) for food, drinks and an ice chest we headed north to
Denali. Denali was amazing, we went to the park and spent time at
the visitor center (very nice center) and then took the 'Tundra
Wilderness Tour' (about 120 mile round trip) mostly gravel with a
tour guide to tell us what we were seeing and about the history. We
saw Caribou, Red Fox, Doll
Sheep, Moose, Willow Ptarmigan and two
Grizzly bear mamas with two cubs each. We left there and drove to
Fairbanks and got there late but it's ok because it just
didn't get
dark!
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| Denali was spectacular! |
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| It is hard to describe the immensity of it |
We went to museums in Fairbanks and
then headed for Tok (Pronounced toke) which is the first stop
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| This riverboat went up and down the river to Fairbanks! |
in Alaska on
the Al-Can Highway. We spent the night in Tok, the motel was a
little 'rustic' but the people were nice and we had wonderful food at
'Fast Eddy's'... seriously, it was so good we went back for breakfast
in the morning and had reindeer sausage. Up until now we had been
over new territory and were doing the tourist thing, and really
enjoying it, but now we got out our copy of Hazelet's Journal, set
out the maps and started down the road that would lead us to the
places where we could say “Uncle Jack could have stood here” or
“Granddad might have walked through here”. We were going to be
seeing the mountains they saw in the distance as they came over
glaciers,
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| We went to North Pole Alaska |
worked streams and rivers, or took a break and gazed out
over the landscape comparing it to home. This love of family history and the desire to know more, comes from Aunt E and my mom so I was in good company!
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| There was a lot of this going on all the time! |
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| The sign says "trail of 98" |
We stopped a lot of places, read
historic markers took pictures. We saw the river they went up to
stake the first claims, the trading post town that existed only for
the miners, we stopped at a roadhouse and took pictures of a building
that had been there since the gold rush. I ate pancakes that were
purportedly made from 100 year old sourdough starter.
(I even bought
some of the starter!) We spent the
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| This was one of those "They could have been here" places... |
night in Glennallen and started
out ready to find even more of the route. We went to Wrangell- St
Elias National park, which is the size of Yosemite and Yellowstone
and Switzerland together. We were constantly amazed by the shear
immensity of Alaska. We got close to a glacier on the way south, saw
trail markers for the 'trail of 98', and finally got to Valdez where
we would stay 2 nights. Our hotel was directly across the street
from a museum – heaven!!
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| Mural on Main Street |
Valdez - the first night was a meal on
the wharf – wonderful seafood again. And we drove around just
looking at the town. It's not that big – a little less than 4000
people.
(About the same size as my hometown) Getting a feel for where things were. The next day we did
two museums – and both were full of stories and memorabilia from Uncle Jack Meals and his son
Owen Meals and their contributions to the area. Owen was an aviation pioneer in Alaska among other
things. We were just tickled at how much information we were finding
on the family that we didn't have before. By lunch time we needed to
eat and Mom and Aunt E and I were the only ones who wanted to go out
to the old townsite
(pre-1964 earthquake) and the cemetery. Having
watched the videos and read
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| The original township |
stories in the museums about the people who were killed
in the earthquake, the old site was kind of eerie. They moved the
homes that could be moved and burned those that were left as a safety
hazard. The Meals and Hazelet families donated land for the new
townsight of Valdez
(where it is now), going to the museums in the
morning made the old site much more meaningful. We continued on to
the cemetery.
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| The Cemetery has signs for famous people! |
Alaska is famous for it's mosquitoes. There is a joke about the state bird being the mosquito. The
cemetery was full of them and we were walking up and down the rows
looking for Uncle Jack's headstone and swatting bugs,
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| Our new cousins! |
when this nice
woman came up to Aunt E and asked her who she was looking for - she
might be able to help. When Aunt E told her, she asked if we were
related and we said yes, turns out she was a descendant as well and a
cousin of ours. She was there visiting her mother's grave as it would have been
her Mother's birthday and she had passed away not long ago. She called
her cousin
who lived in town and she met us at the coffee shop with an envelope
full of pictures of Jack Meals – some of which are in the book
Hazelet's Journal! We sat and visited until the coffee shop closed,
traded emails and swore we would stay in touch. It was such a treat
to talk to them and it really was like we had known each other
forever, they were both so comfortable.
By the time we got back to the hotel my
brother and his wife had decided they wanted to go for a
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| Mom, Aunt E and our new friend Mike |
helicopter
ride over the glacier. Mom and I and Hubby decided not to
(I was
sure my vertigo and a helicopter would not be a good combo!) but Aunt
E thought that sounded cool and she would go along too. They made
reservations and Mom and I agreed to drive them to the airport. The
road to the airport wound up toward the Valdez glacier and we decided
we had time to drive up the road a little ways. We ended up going all the way to
the lake at the foot of the glacier and it was amazing how
cold the breeze was, just blowing over the lake. We went back to the
airport and met the guy who worked there, a pilot, who asked
the innocent question “what are you doing in Valdez?” and got the whole 'Meals connection' story. He then told us that Owen Meals was his hero and he
used to visit him at his home and feed bluebirds.
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| Kind of small huh? |
Owen was the
reason he learned to fly and that his dad and Owen had been friends and
told us some stories about them. The helicopter ride was enjoyed by
our intrepid 3 but we all agreed that meeting new friends and
relatives was by far the high point of the day! Our new acquaintances had
managed to lift Uncle Jack and his son Owen off the pages of newspaper
articles and out of the museum displays and make them real people, people we think we would have liked.
The next day we had to leave Valdez,
and of course we've decided we need to go back there. But our
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| Braving the deck in the chill. |
Alaska
trip wasn't quite over yet. We drove onto the ferry in Valdez and
rode the 'Alaska Marine Highway' to Whittier and then drove south on
the Kenai Peninsula to Seward where the famous Iditirod dog sled
trail
(not the race) begins.
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| The tunnel from Whittier to the highway to Seward |
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| The Sealife center rescues and studies marine life |
On this day we had our first clouds and
rain which was something of a miracle since Alaska tends to be kind of
rainy in the summer, but it was a soft rain and seemed to fit the
locale. We ate at another marvelous seafood restaurant, got up the
next morning and set out on our last day in Alaska. We went to the Sealife center in Seward, drove north through beautiful scenery, a drizzly/misty day, Kenai Fjords National Park, Chugash National
Forest, and didn't run into real rain until we got back to Anchorage
completing our lopsided circle of an Alaskan tour.
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| Beautiful flowers everywhere - anyone know what this is? |
We flew out the next morning together
to Seattle and then to our homes in California, Idaho and Missouri.
We had a wonderful time, beautiful weather, great company and we left
wanting more which I have been told is the best way to end an
excursion.
I will end this post by mentioning that
it is probably a good thing slides are out of style – I would
probably want to inflict them on my friends. I have come home to
heat but the end of summer is near and you can kind of feel it in the
air – of course that could just be wheat dust and mint harvest!
