Today marks the one year anniversary of our arrival in Fairbanks.  Both hard to believe that it’s been a year already and that it has only been a year.  In any case, figured this is the perfect opportunity to rekindle this neglected blog given that wedding planning and travels have come to a close & we have adventures under our belt that haven’t been shared!

It has been an eventful year, we have had an amazing time exploring Alaska and also managed to be surrounded by our incredible family and friends for our river boat wedding in Oregon!  I can’t pretend that we don’t still miss our Oregon family…but love travels great distances.  It has been a year that leaves us feeling grateful beyond measure. Grateful for our opportunities and challenges, grateful for eachother and our families, and grateful for all the adventures in our past present and future.

To cap off this year and ring in the next, we thought that we would share a tale of a river adventure we had a couple weeks ago.

The Chena River flows through town but starts north of town at the Chena Hot Springs. The rivers current is pretty strong, so though it hasn’t always been fun to paddle against current we’d heard that people set in out of town and float / paddle one-way into town; a maneuver that either requires a tour company or two cars.  Well, we have two cars so planned to give it a shot this summer!

B consulted our river book and did some location scouting and found a spot up Chena Hot Springs road where we could enter from a slough without a rough current; figuring that it would take about 4 hours to float down into town along the path we drove.  On a saturday afternoon, we set off in the early afternoon (a bit after 2pm) dropping one car in town with our phones and the other we drove with the kayaks, water and walkie talkies to the set in spot.

It was a beautiful day, and we were excited.

And we were rewarded with beautiful sites, and a few hours of exciting yet manageable currents. Though some parts of the river had small homes flanking the sides the rest was true wilderness.

 

Parts of the river would calm and we could float easily along together.

Once we were going we realized this might not be a four hour paddle, maybe five or six. After nearly four hours we were still ensconced in wilderness with no site of town; aside from an occasional air boat travelling up river.

Around that time, B saw a man walking along a hillside at the edge of the river and asked him how far it would be to town…after a half an hour more paddling, he decided it was time to relay to message he’d recieved:

“How long til town?”

“Well, it’s another nine hours to the dam, but the river is going pretty fast. Have a good float!”

Let’s just say that shocked silence followed. Also, what dam is he talking about?  The only dam we knew of was south (not north) of town in the recreation area near North Pole.  Having no other option, we continued to paddle; occasionally hypothesizing that he’d obviously meant miles not hours.

 In the meantime, we saw beavers working along the rivers edge who would abruptly turn and SMACK their tail on the rivers surface and dive with much to do under water when they’d see you. We saw a couple of bald eagles fly over our heads and perch on the top of adjacent trees along the river.

 We continued our paddle, and six hours in we saw a dam!

And then we recognized it. We’d kayaked here before, in the Chena Recreation Area near North Pole.  A place we had assumed the river went AFTER it went through Fairbanks. We pulled over and got out of the boat for the first time since setting in.  It was a bit after 8pm, and we were certain this river went a different route than we’d pieced together from our book on the river which was broken into pieces.  We found a reference sign, indicating it was another 6 hours to the next boat ramp…and another 6.5 hours from there to the ramp in town where we’d parked our car.  (to be fair, our pace so far was nearly double the referenced time thanks to our paddling)

We debated what to do.

We were in a recreation area, in the evening. We’d been there before which was great. So we knew it was about a 10 mile walk to the park gate (which would be closed) and then another 5 or so miles to a pay phone / store.   There were likely people camping, but how would we ever get a cab to come deep into a wilderness recreation area?   My sandals were not suitable for walking 15 miles, and it was unclear to what end we would be walking. We were hungry but knew that the nearest vending machines would be at the other end of the lake recreation area; nearly 8 miles away.

N said: I can’t believe we are even in this situation!

After a 10 minute break and stretch of the legs, we set off again in our boats. And paddled.  Happily it was summer in Alaska, it got colder but it didn’t get dark.  Our arms were tired, but soon enough realized that pausing didn’t do much to help…so may as well keep paddling.  We continued on, getting second winds for both our arms and our seats.  N might have been singing songs to keep paddling pace. B might have been concentrating so hard to hear sounds of roads or houses that he got annoyed every time a beaver SMACKED his tail and dove under water as it distracted him.

But it was beautiful!  And we got to see a moose and two of it’s calf right along the rivers edge.

 

& Around 11:30 pm we even got to see the pink, purple and orange skies as the sun set for just a bit, leaving us in enough dusk that we finally removed our sunglasses.

It was getting colder. My toes were frozen at the bottom of the boat.  We kept paddling.

At 12:30 there was a boat ramp and we pulled over. Given this pace, we were likely another 4 hours of paddling from our car.  This boat ramp though was right on a road, accessible.   We quickly decided that we needed to figure out getting a ride to our car from here.  We needed to call a cab.  Of course there were no phones. It was now nearly 40 degrees, my toes were frozen, we were cold.

We saw some porch lights on an adjacent block…but no signs that anyone was awake.  We walked back out to the road and started walking. A car approached and I might have waived my arms frantically to get them to stop.

They stopped. I stammered that we really just wanted to borrow their phone to call a cab.

They pulled over.

They told us to get in the car.

We piled into the back seat with their two year old son.

They asked us where we needed to go.  We needed to go…about a 40 minute drive in the exact opposite direction than they were going.  It was nearly 1am, a couple and their child were on their way home from a wedding, and they turned around and brought us back to town, away from their home.

I don’t know their names, I do know that their son had a red light ring that made “shadows” and asserted that his toy truck was a ninja turtle needing to use the potty. I do know that they chatted easily with us, and merely asked that we pay it forward given the chance.  We were grateful.

They dropped us off at our car, we drove back up to where we had set in to get our other car, we drove back to the boat ramp where we had left our boats, we drove it all home. At 3:15am we ate some food and went to bed.   Our arms and shoulders were tired.  The next day they were sore.  We joked that we should put our kayaks away for the season; 3 days later we took them out again…on lovely flat lake water that time!

We had paddled for over 10 hours straight with a 10 minute break. We have since pasted maps together and realized that we likely travelled nearly 60 miles that afternoon. We now sometimes talk about doing it again; starting earlier, bringing food, and doing it all! We will see.

If I had a more literary bent I’m sure I could eloquently tie the experience of this paddle to this past year, but I don’t, so let’s just say it was wonderful, challenging, unexpected, exhausting; we got through it together and were grateful beyond measure for the kindness of strangers.

And we fully intend to pay it forward every chance we have.