1994 Kodiak, Alaska Hike

 

                                                              Gladie and Barbie

Barbie and I caught the Continental flight at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, July 29, 1994. We were on the way to Kodiak Island to visit her son Bruce and his wife Dana and their two kids. Bruce was in the Coast Guard and stationed on the island. Our trip took at least twelve hours and included four flights – Cleveland to Denver, Denver to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage, and a one-hour flight on a small plane from Anchorage to Kodiak Island. Barbie had triple-A plan the itinerary through Jensen Travel and it cost $850 round trip. When we landed on Kodiak, Dana, Barbie’s daughter-in-law, was there to meet us in the airport that hardly seemed big enough to be an airport – a stuffed grizzly bear loomed over us as we walked through the small waiting area. Alyssa and Tommy, Barbie’s grandkids, ran up to give us hugs, but her son Bruce was still out on the ship. He would be back in Kodiak on Sunday.   

     We were tired and excited as Dana loaded us into her car and drove to their house on the Coast Guard base. I had my large VHS video recorder and aimed it out the car window to record the Alaska scenery as we drove along the one main road on the island. This recording turned out to be totally boring, trees and brush rushing through the picture, and I learned never to do that again. It’s hard to remember what we did the first night, but I suppose we went to bed early on the pull-out sofa bed that Barbie and I shared. It was still light outside because in the summer it was daylight till well past midnight.

    Due to the difference in time zones, Barbie and I were up early and sipping coffee in the little kitchen. Everyone else was sleeping in on a Saturday. The small Kodiak newspaper was sitting on the counter, and I picked it up to read the front page. “Hey, Barbie, look at this! There is a hike to a lake today with the Kodiak Audubon Society. Listen to this: ‘After crossing a salmon stream at the end of Anton Larson Bay, participants will cross a salt marsh and hike up through the high grass to this hidden lake.’ Doesn’t that sound exciting? We should go!”

    Barbie took the paper, read the article and added, “Look, there’s a phone number to call.” She picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed the number. I heard her talking and writing down information. She hung up the receiver. “The guy in charge of the hike is going to pick us up at 8:30 so let’s get ready.”

    I put on jeans, a T-shirt, and my bright yellow Kent State windbreaker jacket and of course my hiking boots. I had bought these rugged, thick-soled boots just for this trip and it was my first chance to wear them. Barbie put on jeans, a sweatshirt with a picture of a sheltie dog, after all she bred and trained shelties, and grabbed a light jacket. We packed some snack bars, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bottles of water into a “Tweedy-bird” knapsack that belonged to her granddaughter. Then we sipped on our coffee and waited for our ride into the unknown Alaska wilderness. I was ready with my new hiking boots. I don’t remember if we left Dana a note. She claims we didn’t and had just disappeared that first morning. No search party was sent out, so I guess she figured we couldn’t get too far away on the small Island.

    Hans Tschersich picked us up at 8:30. He was a little older than us, bald on top with a graying beard, but he looked fit in his shorts and a T-shirt. I liked Hans right away. He was from Germany and spoke with the familiar German accent that reminded me of Max, our exchange student who lived with us in 1989. It was a foggy morning and Hans explained that others may not show up for the hike because of the fog. I said that it was going to lift, and it turned out, I was right. But still it was just the three of us, Hans, Barbie and me, going on the hike to the hidden lake.

    After about a twenty-minute ride, Hans parked the car by the side of a dirt road. We got out and followed him onto a path. The foggy air didn’t dampen our spirits. Barbie and I were ready for this hike. We followed Hans across flat land, the salt marsh then and came to a wide, but shallow stream. Not certain what to do, we stopped. Hans kept going and waded across the stream and called to us to follow him. Barbie and I looked at each other. I took off my socks and boots, held them high and waded across. Barbie took off her tennis shoes and socks and followed me. The cold water was up to our knees, and we cringed but laughed as we made our way over to Hans waiting on the other side. We sat down and put our shoes and boots back on. 

    As we continued walking, Hans explained that he was a doctor on the island and had moved to Kodiak about five years ago. He liked it here and didn’t want to return to Germany. A steep incline loomed straight ahead, and I was dismayed to discover that the path led up the side of what looked like a green mountain. The article was accurate, there was tall grass all around us as we followed the path upward. Barbie and I stopped to rest often, looking around and taking pictures. I was using a throw-away panoramic camera.  Hans was way ahead of us and often disappeared from our sight and then reappeared to check on our progress. Once when Hans reappeared Barbie asked, “We only have one hill to climb, right Hans?”

    Hans answered, “Ya, we only have one hill to climb.” 

    The day grew more luminous as the fog lifted. The length of time we spent hiking up the hill was infinite, an hour or two is a guess. Reaching the top of our incline, Hans reappeared and led us further along. Then, just as he had promised, a hidden alpine lake came into view, a clear mirror of water reflecting the blue cloud studded sky and green hills all around. The sun was shining on our faces as we stood and admired the majestic hidden lake.

    Hans decided to go swimming and I shivered at the thought. Barbie and I sat down on a grassy spot by Cascade Lake and pulled out our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. All we could see was Han’s head sticking out of the water in the distance. We watched to make sure he didn’t disappear. After all, he was our guide. We didn’t want to lose him.  Hans came out, dried off, and sat by us. He brought out his lunch and shared it with us.

    It was time to hike back down. This should be easier I thought. Hans had a little video camera with him and filmed Barbie and I as we waved to the camera and started our descent back down to the salt marsh and salmon stream below. Hans filmed us as we crossed back over the salmon stream, laughing joyously as Barbie splashed me with the clear Alaskan water. Hans was busy recording the salmon swimming upstream. They reminded me of wind-up toys as they wiggled side to side with all their might. What a joy to watch.

                                   Looking back down to where we started at the salt marshes

    Our spirits mingled with the land of Kodiak during the hike. Our feet had traversed this ancient island that had originally been inhabited by Alutiiq natives for over 7,000 years. We had traversed through a salt marsh, over a salmon stream and up an old bear trail on the side of a small mountain - fortunately not encountering any bears. We had reached the shores of an alpine lake. Our lives were enriched from this adventure.

            A look back at the old bear trail we took up the "mountain" (aka tall hill) that we climbed

    Hans drove us back to the Coast Guard base. Dana was glad to see us, and we had lots to tell her. Alyssa was glad to get her Tweedy bird knapsack back in one piece. The story of our hike doesn’t end here. Unbeknownst to us, when Hans had disappeared ahead of us, he was secretly recording our progress on the hike. That evening Hans came over and presented us with a VHS tape that he had made. It was and still is amazing for that time period in 1994. Hans added Enya music to the video and caught the joy on our faces as we crossed the salmon stream and discovered Kodiak Island firsthand. We were thrilled. Barbie sent Hans a bottle of wine from Amish country when we got home.

    We will never forget this amazing day on Kodiak Island and so thankful to be able to revisit this memory.

    The tape from Hans was not lost. I kept it for years and later transferred it to a digital format and placed it on YouTube where you can watch it now. The link is below. 

https://youtu.be/TpJ6qXWFhTU

Before We Traveled

 

Barbie's Graduation Picture

“Traveling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” ~ EBN Battuta

 “Hey, Kid, do you want to go to Alaska?” This question came up during a phone call from my best and oldest friend, Barbie. It was the year 1994.

Without even thinking about it, I answered, “Are you serious? Yes, of course, that would be great. When?”

 “Good. I’ll call triple A and get our plane tickets. I want to go and visit Bruce and Dana on Kodiak Island in June. Tom doesn’t want to go so I figured that I would ask you if you can get off work for a week. I knew you would want to go.”

 Oh my gosh! We were going to Alaska. Although I didn’t know it in 1994, this was the beginning of my many travels with Barbie. For the next twenty years, we continued to share adventures by land, air, and sea until the covid 19 pandemic put an end to our travel fun. I want to tell the stories about our adventures, but before I begin, the reader needs to understand my deep connection to Barbie and the story of our friendship that has remained unbroken throughout the years.

 In the 1940s and 1950s, Barbie and I grew up in Bedford, Ohio where we lived on the same small street. She was an only child and lived with her mom who had diabetes, and with her dad, who was a bartender. They lived in an upstairs apartment in a two-story home right next to the railroad tracks. Barbie’s whole house shook when the steam locomotives rumbled by on the tracks. Barbie was three years older than me, closer to my sister Betty’s age, but for some reason decided to befriend me instead of Betty. She said that she liked me better and I became her little sister. Still to this day, I don’t know why I was so lucky.

 Barbie was, and still is, energetic, a real “go-getter.” She participated in many school activities like Girl Scouts and Rainbow girls. She loved animals and had a little dog named Mert, a skinny terrier that she dressed in a coat and little rubber doll boots in the winter before taking it for a walk. Barbie was perky with short blonde curls and an unending supply of laughter. She had a slim waist that curved into two wide hips. Later she said these hips were perfect for when she had her twins. She could rest one on each hip. But I’m getting a little ahead of the story.

 During the summers off school, I liked to sleep in, read a book or do nothing – the opposite of Barbie. She would come up to my room and shake me awake. “Come on! Get up, sleepyhead!” she coaxed as she dragged the covers off me. “We’re going for a hike. It’s a beautiful day.” I moaned and groaned but always crawled out of bed and went with Barbie. I didn’t want to miss out on whatever adventure she had planned. Often, we walked along the railroad tracks picking wild strawberries, hiked in the Bedford Glens, and dug clay out of the creek banks. We jumped rope, double-Dutch in the middle of the street. We played games like hopscotch, badminton, and jacks. Barbie introduced me to a multitude of active skills. If I understood the concept of admiration at that age, I might have said I admired Barbie. As a kid, I only knew that I wanted to be around her.

 When I was about five or six, Barbie taught me how to ride a bike. She started me out on her tiny two-wheeler bicycle with no training wheels. I was wobbling along just getting my balance when a car came around the corner on our street and almost ran me over. That scared me, so Barbie tried another tactic. She took me to the top of a hill on a paved street and told me that if I rode down the hill the bike wouldn’t fall over, and I would be able to ride a bike – very easy. I believed her, took a deep breath, and pushed off down the hill, or maybe Barbie pushed me off. But she was right, I didn’t fall over, and then I could ride a bike.

 When I was in ninth grade, Barbie and I both went to Bedford High School. She was a senior and ready to graduate that year, while I was a mere freshman in my first year in high school. We walked together to school each morning and had to pass a gas station where two young men watched us sashay by each day. One morning, one of the guys wolf whistled as we passed the station. Barbie stuck her nose in the air and ignored them, but I looked to see which guy whistled. That day at school Barbie passed me a note and wrote how she thought the one guy was so good looking. 

Now remember I was a fourteen-year-old teen, so did not put a great deal of thought into what I did with that note. For whatever strange reason, after school, I decided to go to the gas station and sell the note to the guy who whistled at Barbie. He paid me fifty cents. That note led to him asking Barbie for a date and the fifty cents led to me buying two butterscotch sundaes.

 Barbie continued dating the gas station guy, who turned out to be Tom Richards from West Virginia. On Barbie’s graduation day, she surprised me with the news that she and Tom had run off to West Virginia and gotten married, by changing the date on her birth certificate. They didn’t want her parents to know until she turned eighteen. After her graduation things changed, Barbie’s dad left her mom for another woman. Barbie’s mom then went to live in southern Ohio by her mom, Barbie’s grandmother.  At the same time, Barbie left our neighborhood to go and live her life with Tom as a married woman. What happened to that note, you wonder? Well, Tom kept it in his wallet till the day he died. By then it was worn thin and barely legible. After all, they were married for over fifty years.

Our lives moved forward, and I grew up. Barbie and I always kept in touch with each other. Barbie had four kids in two years. A two-year-old daughter, Little Barb, and a one-year-old son, Mitch, were waiting when she came home from the hospital with fraternal twins, a boy, Bruce, and a girl, Amy. They were living in Aurora when Barbie decided to take her kids and move south to Uhrichsville to live by her mom and grandmother because it was cheaper to live down there. Did I mention how independent Barbie was? She told Tom he could come live there too if he wanted to, so he did. Tom got a job working on the railroad. They now lived ninety miles away from me.

 Meanwhile, I married at age nineteen and tried to keep up with Barbie by having four kids, two girls and two boys, but it took me five years instead of three. The fact was, I could never keep up with Barbie, not even today. My life followed a different path. Instead of staying married, I divorced my husband and started a new chapter in my life. None of that mattered to our friendship. Throughout the years we continued to stay in touch. Barbie continued to teach me new things and still wouldn’t let me sleep in. I can’t imagine what my childhood, or my adult life, would have been like without her, less exciting for sure, as my life was never boring alongside Barbie.

Back to the year1996, when Barbie and I were planning our trip to Kodiak, Alaska to visit her son, Bruce and her daughter-in-law, Dana. They had fraternal twins too, Tommy and Alyssa. Bruce was in the Coast Guard which was the reason they were living in Kodiak. I was super excited about taking a trip to Alaska, especially with Barbie. I knew we would have a good time and wasn’t wrong. So began “trip one” of my travels with Barbie.