Two Duhs and a Ruh-Roh

March 29, 2008

Filed in: Alaska

I imagine Alaskans, especially those in the tourism business, spend their long dark winter months drinking and swapping tales about how incredibly stupid people from the Lower 48 can be.

I am still months away from setting foot on Alaskan soil and already I have committed a couple of whoppers. I only assume the list will grow:

1) emailing Larry, proprietor of the inn we’ll be staying at in Homer, I ask him if there’s anything doing around town on July 4th, since we will just happen to be in town that day. Stuff like, you know, fireworks.

He emails back there are plenty of things to do but no fireworks because it doesn’t get dark in Alaska in the summer until midnight.

Oh right! I knew that…

2) emailing with Jordan, who runs the wilderness lodge we’re booked at for 3 days and nights of remote hiking, kayaking, etc., I’m trying to figure out how the food and other provisions work.

He’s being friendly but not super-specific ("You’ll love our food!” he keeps saying, without actually ever mentioning exactly what that food might be. What if it’s like moose hash or fish flakes or something?)

Thinking of T, and yes of myself, and our little Chardonnay problem, I ask, “and what about alcohol? Does anybody bring liquor? Does anybody drink?”

Uh yeah, he writes back, people drink in Alaska.

Of course, when he says it like that, I stop imagining super-fit, polypro-clad outdoors freaks rising at dawn for 12-14 hours of continuous physical endurance training, followed by a Spartan supper and early bed, and replace that with a mental picture of toothless old pan-handler-types in ripped flannel shirts with little black X’s over their eyes from too much moonshine. (It’s important to traffic almost exclusively in stereotypes, don’t you think?)

Separately, here’s my little Ruh-Roh moment, which I am now busily ignoring: 

Describing the atmosphere of the Kenai Peninsula in June and July, when we will be there, my 10-years-out-of-date Frommer’s, which I simply refuse to return to the library (it’s now 2 months overdue and counting) has this to say:

“The peninsula … exerts a powerful magnetic force on RVs, those road-whales that one finds at the head of strings of cars on the two-lane highways. The fishing rivers, creeks and beaches…become sheet-metal cities of hundreds of Winnebagos and Itascas parked side by side during the summer.”

Oh, dear. Not to be a snob, but: I do not like Winnebagos. I do not like the whole RV culture thing at all. So is it smart for me to plow ahead with a staggeringly expensive and complex vacation to a place where RVs are so plentiful they constitute cities unto themselves? 

That la-la-la sound you hear is me singing with my fingers in my ears. Must. Ignore. Warning.