Traveling Outside Anchorage Mixes Venues and Metaphors

I wrote this essay combining scrapings of story bits off my computer. It describes how Alaskans have a need for all kinds of travel, even buying a new puppy-enjoy!

Last August, husband Dave and I traveled to North Carolina’s Outer Banks for a family vacation. Getting to Duck is like missing two nights sleep flying to Europe. We broke it up with a Mariners/Red Sox game in Seattle. The light-rail from the Airport Hilton to Safeco Field was slow and it was a hike to our seats; but greasy hotdogs and salty fries blended with balls, smacking bats and flashing-digital signage.

The next day we flew to Raleigh and headed for the North Carolina Museum of Art. At their Iris Restaurant we brunched down Oak City Benedict: eggs with fried green tomatoes on grilled sweet potato-scallion-biscuits. Spanning plastic tables is a Patrick Dougherty, stick-works of woven brown twigs. Dougherty contorts dead wood into sculptures, worldwide. In all kinds of weather, retirees to hippies poke and prod branches, as he orchestrates undulating braided vines.

Finally, we drove two hundred miles to Duck, for a week with our five children, significant-others and six grandchildren. Eighteen of us occupied a beach house with pool, multiple bathrooms and no arguing!

Mid-week, Dave and I drove to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, 210 feet and tallest in the United States. This black/white obelisk was built in 1870, warning mariners about the Graveyard of the Atlantic’s shifting shoals.

Before flying back to Anchorage, we spent a few days on Long Island. Dave and I often stay at a Hilton Garden Inn-- convenient but normally not worth mentioning. This one at JFK is truly funky. We checked-in after an airport faux-terrorist attack and torrential thunderstorms had stranded passengers. The lobby was jammed with overseas travelers waiting for beer, burgers and sports bar camaraderie. It reminded me of being a camp counselor in East London 1968, sleeping on WWII army cots adjacent to Eastern European students, my first experience with the perils of Communism.

Long Island’s South Shore is six feet above sea level and was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, with many houses still up on railroad ties. Dave and I found a Friendly’s and ordered fried clams; the salty crunch took us back to our teens. Driving to the North Shore we discovered The Heckscher Museum of Art which openedin1920, when entrepreneurs like Henry Clay Frick and Teddy Roosevelt occupied estates nearby. August Heckscher was a German immigrant turned philanthropist through railroads and mining. On exhibition was Gary Erbe’s Master of Illusion. His painting, Big Splash, 2001, updates 19th century American trompe-l’oeil, by collaging baby-boomer Kitsch: a TV-dinner, a Howdy Doody TV Guide and a black and white television showing Edward R. Murrow, Arthur Godfrey and George Reeve/Superman all hanging together.

In late August, a business trip took us to Fairbanks. The Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum, in a nondescript warehouse, has over eighty vintage automobiles in shiny colors: burgundies, mustard yellows, cerulean blues, with brass and chrome lanterns adjacent to mannequins who wear Downton Abbey attire. Before spandex, clothing was cut on the bias for stretch. Labels from French fashion houses were cut to avoid import duties. Less frequent bathing and ineffective deodorants embedded stains into the most couture of designs. I imagined ensuing conversations as DNA in the clothing might dialogue. Perhaps a frocked coated dandy with his mistress reclined on leather/velvet interiors while sipping bathtub gin from a silver flask-- roguishness in a “1922 Wills Sainte Claire.”

Only Alaskans would think of flying to the Panhandle for more business, then weekending in Idaho. Dave and I checked into Juneau’s remodeled Goldbelt Hotel. Thebar/grill could stand rethinking as burgers were uber-greasy and OJ canned. Take heart, the new Alaska State Museum which addresses the perimeter of Alaska, is a jewel. Native baskets found in creek beds on South Baranof and Prince of Wales Islands have been impregnated with water soluble wax to preserve their many thousand years of inhabiting a river mud. A fully rigged Bristol Bay Double Ender with its sail hoisted is dry docked near a map detailing the myriad of canneries. Neva Egan’s gubernatorial ball gown made me laugh; its boat neck and bell skirt with large bow on the derrière reminded me of dancing school days.

Go figure, it was pouring as I dodged Egan Drive’s vehicular splashes, arriving at Rainy Retreat Books for shelter. Worn floor boards and musty smells from used books is a pleasure in the digital age of e-reading. Hungry, I headed next door to the Rookery Café. It’s like Girdwood’s Bake Shop with aromas wafting across wooden tables. I dried off to Earl Grey tea, a turkey sandwich with applewood bacon and balsamic onions while having a fudgy brownie boxed for Dave whose meeting was in over time.

After flying into Boise and before hugging our new puppy, we dined at the eclectic Barbacoa Grill. Tree root-furniture and a tunnel of wine bottles, shape-shifted with distortions from mirrors and waterfalls. Corn/crab bisque followed by chicken mole was average, but objets d’art were delightful. We imagined ourselves dinner guests in a Dickensian novel. Had “Miss Havisham” decided to rent out her dining room?

Prior to stowing puppy (Uvey) under our seats for the flight to Anchorage, we drove to Sun Valley, developed in the thirties by Averell Harriman to promote his Union Pacific Railroad. Oops-- Dave got a speeding ticket for driving 35 mph through the 25 mph nineteenth century, brick revival mining town. At the suggestion of the traffic cop, we ate at the faux-Austrian Konditorei Bakery and tried their version of eggs benedict on potatoes Rösti. Keep on sleuthing for art.

Jean Bundy is a writer/painter in Anchorage, AICA-USA

Email: 38144@alaska.net