Up and out to get the trail to Denali.

The Alaska railroad runs from Seward at the southern tip of Alaska to Fairbanks and beyond. Today, I rode the train for almost eight hours from Anchorage to Delani National Park. I love trains - I can look at the scenery, walk the aisles, spread out, read and even close my eyes. What mode of transportation allows all those options?

The Alaska railroad services both passengers and freight. It has several cars, economy and first class. The first class sits up high with glassed-in dome, for better visibility. But with the economy class, we can go up to our own glassed domed car. In addition, tour operators, like Holland-America cruise lines, hitch their train cars to the Alaska railroad. They wouldn't want to mingle with the likes of us, would they?

A train hostess, Lisa, kept a running commentary of what we were seeing along with a little Alaska history. She told a little of her young life. She was 19 and spent most of it in Alaska.  She loved this job and was so enthusiastic about it. I asked her what she does in the winter.

"Whatever comes up. I'm like a bird. I go with the wind."

To the left is Hurricane Gulch, one of the many trail sights. Finally at about 4 P.M., we reach the train depot at Denali but we are not technically in the Park. 

We got back to the Visitor Center as soon as we could after checking in. All the lodges and other services are "downtown", a strip that they call Glitter Gulch. It's more tacky than Gatlinbug, TN because they have to make their money in four months.

We had time to take a short walk to Horseshoe Lake (above) and check out the bookstore. Tomorrow, we go to Camp Denali.

Finally Alaska!

I'm in Anchorage Alaska very jetlagged. We got in last night after a long, long set of flights. It took us much longer to get to Anchorage from Asheville, North Carolina than to go to Europe.

Greenville-Spartanburg, SC to Dallas

Dallas to Anchorage. Seven hour flight.

This morning, I woke up before 4 A.M. We walked through neighborhoods in Anchorage that seemed so new, so fresh, so bright that I felt I was in Christchurch, New Zealand. I better remember that I am in the U.S. especially when I'm supposed to be tipping. (There's no tipping in New Zealand.)

We went to the Saturday market, full of food stalls, stuffed toys, jewelry and art. I bought a bottle of birch syrup, similar to maple syrup, but not as sweet.

The Polynesian theme continued with a man using a "eskimo yoyo". It consisted of two pieces of stuffed toy, each attached to a string. You have to keep each  toy twirling. This is similar to a Maori poi.

In another booth, a woman was playing a ukelele, the Hawaiin musical instrument.

This is Captain Cook country. Captain James Cook, (1728-1779). the famous sailor who sailed to Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Alaska. He sailed right into what is now Cook Inlet.

A National Park Service ranger did a history walk of Cook places in downtown Anchorage. She took us to see sculptures of the three ships he captained, pictures above.

The end was at the Cook Memorial, where she described how he met a sad end in Hawaii.

After dinner, we walked on the coastal path. The long days, the sun lowering into the inlet, the filtered light defines Alaska.  

Come to America's Great Outdoors Listening Session in Asheville - tomorrow 

Thursday, July 15, 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm    High level folks from Washington, D.C. want to hear our ideas on how to protect our public lands and encourage more people to enjoy the outdoors. It is amazing to me that they're having this in Asheville, which is so much smaller than the other large cities they visited. This shows what a powerhouse of outdoor activities and concern this area has.

The details

That's Ferguson Auditorium

Representatives from DOI, USDA, EPA, and CEQ will be present to hear your thoughts and to participate in a conversation with you about land conservation, recreation, and reconnecting Americans to the great outdoors. Those include:

Jon Jarvis, Director, National Park Service

Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife Service

For more details and to enter your comments, go to www.doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors.

Hannah and I are now back from Family Summits, her in Ohio and me in Asheville, North Carolina. We had a chance to process the trip, though I don't know if "process" is the right word with a seven-year old.

She had lots of fun and made friends. I asked her what she thinks she learned this week. She comes from a family that is very aware of ecology and the environment so I wouldn't expect her to say that "she shouldn't throw trash on the ground." She summed it up as  "we should leave nature alone". I didn't want to push it by having her reconcile that with making a mouse house. Shouldn't mice be able to make their own house? 

For me, the purpose of the trip was fulfilled. Hannah had a good outdoor experience - hikes, swimming, friends, seeing the workings of a bear trap and the magic of the baby stellar jay close up. She also met a real live park ranger in uniform and for me, that might have been the most important. It might just expand her experience as to what adults do beyond teachers, librarians, doctors and shop keepers.

But just attending Family Summits one week a year is not going to keep the love of the outdoors going. Of course, she goes out on short hikes with her family and grows plants in a window box in school. Maybe she should join the Girl Scouts but will they actually get outdoors and camping? And she has so much else to do after school, like soccer, swimming, music ...

Oh well, looking forward to Family Summits 2011 in the Ozarks.

The last day of Family Summits.

I  had signed up for Dick’s Lake, another hike in the Desolation Wilderness. It was supposed to be the third hardest hike on the schedule but much, much easier than the first two on the difficulty list. But several people that I hiked with the first two days had second thoughts. So the nine hikers who remained were the few who were not dissuaded by the ruggedness of the hike.

It was steep, made more difficult by the fact that these were strong hikers; I was no longer in the first half of the group. The trail climbed on rocks for 2,000 feet; this was not a horse trail, that I usually associate with western hiking. We passed a view of Eagle Lake and several sign posts. It may be a wilderness area but it was less marked, though not blazed. We were on the Pacific Crest Trail for part of the hike.

We reached Dick’s Lake at 11:30 A.M., earlier than we figured – the joke was that it wasn’t very big but it was cold. Even John, our leader, who had jumped into Susie Lake, just put his feet in the water. If you want to continue the sexual innuendos, he jumped Susie but not Dick. 

On the way out, we met a seasonal forest ranger with full pack on. In park terminology, he roved the trails and looked for hikers in trouble and also for permits. As we climbed down, we saw hikers coming up. The closer we got to the trailhead, the more unprepared the hikers were. The last mile, hikers were carrying a pint of water in hand, sometimes for the whole group.

We had a hiking boot incident. Chris Blank, the president of Family Summit, was the sweep. The soles of his twenty year old boots came apart, first one, then the second. I lent him my emergency shoe laces which he tied around boots but that didn’t last long. Then I remembered my small roll of duct tape. Wrapping the tape around his boots worked the problem, at least until we reached the van.

We arrived back at the resort at 3:30, exactly the same time as the Chickarees. Hannah and her group had gone down to Lake Tahoe beach, for a second swim after spending the morning at the river. So the only obvious way to spend the next hour was to swim in the pool. The sun here, is fierce. It is hard to find a piece of shade at the pool.

The last evening in any camp is the same. Campers talk about the great times and the funny moments. And there are skits, of course. The Chickarees performed a jumping song about “Chickarees jumping on a bed".

The slide show group had put on an amazing slide show, with music. Hannah was featured several times, with her group, with her beaver teeth and even with me.

Then there are goodbyes and more goodbyes. Here, Hannah is with Amanda, one of her Chickaree counselor. Terry, the childcare person, below, was also an important part of Hannah's stay.

What is different about this camp is that it moves location. No one seemed to wait with baited breath to learn about the next location. Even I knew, though unlike most in the know, I only found out on the hike today – the Ozarks in Missouri. I am thrilled because it is an area I was interested in but would not vacation in with Lenny.

No one seemed to know exactly what public land was there – the national park, forest, state park? In fact, I couldn’t even find out what national parks the Summits had been in. It’s like for all the educational aspect of the program, Summitters don’t really care where they are. Maybe I should offer a trip, next year that takes them to a national park, forest and state park. I wonder if these three things are close to one another. 

We're on the backside of Family Summits. As Hannah said, "Only two more days. I'm sad." It's a bit of a fantasy land here, with more activities than I could do in a month, great meals and fantastic weather. I was supposed to go on a tough hike but it was so tough that the leaders decided to leave here at 7 A.M. I couldn't push Hannah out the door that early - though there is childcare. Ask the birders; there's childcare 24/7. So I switched to a history walk.

Hannah and I had "breakfast with a ranger." Brian Burton, a high-level California state park ranger, talked to us about the challenges of being a ranger today. He's a law enforcement and interpretive ranger; he does it all. He talked about too many problems of the city are brought into the park. Not enough money for staff and ranger program. But he was still very enthusiastic about his job.

Hannah asked him what all the gadgets around his belt were. Brian described all his stuff but somehow overlooked the gun. Brian (and the rest of the California state park rangers) has a "baseball card" with his picture, his qualifications and interests.

I went on the Sugar Pine Point State Park field trip. The park has a summer mansion built by isaah Hellman, a banker from San Francisco. Hellman was the quintessential German Jewish immigrant. He emigrated from Bavaria at 16 and became the first president of Wells Fargo bank. Dave, a park aide, was a wonderful park guide.

Every successful rich family of the times needed a summer home, so Hellman bought land on Lake Tahoe and built a house in 1903. The Hellmans entertained a lot and had an army of servants. This story is almost exactly like that of Moses Cone on the Blue Ridge Parkway. By the third generation, the family no longer wanted the estate, so they sold it to the state park system in 1965.

I wonder how many homes we have in the various park systems - of course, Carl Sandburg home and in Death Valley.

Hannah had a hiking trip to a view. Now she's watching a live animal program - beaver, owl and turkey vulture by Wild Things.

I don't approve of all these animals kept in captivity and being shown like in a circus but the kids love the program

The counselors at Family Summits are angels and have the patience of saints. The children were going to King's Beach Park to play in the water. So Hannah put on her one piece bathing suit. I was sure that she was going to have to get undressed and dressed several times when she had to go to the bathroom, but the counselors were OK with that.

I went to Ellis Peak, a  simple hike (6 miles) made difficult by snow that obliterated the trail. From the start, we had to search out the trail. Like Hansel and Gretel, we left cairns and sticks on the trail so we could find it again.

Everyone had an opinion of where the trail was but I was uncomfortable with that. Leading a hike is not a democratic process - that's why we have leaders. That's Tina, one of our leaders, on the left, surrounded by snow.

We reached an amazing view in the morning (see the top photo). We had lunch on Ellis Peak, where we could see Lake Tahoe on one side and Ellis Lake on the other. This is western hiking at its best.

Moles had created tunnels 0n the few stretches of trail not covered with snow. They were large dirt tunnels that looked like big turds. Going back was not as difficult though we still had problems finding the route. I was very cautious going downhill on snow and slid on my bottom much of the time. We reached the van at 3 P.M.

Hannah spend some of the afternoon building a mouse house on the trail built by Family Summits on Granlibakken property. After dinner, we went to see it and she wanted to put the finishing touches on it. It was a bunch of sticks, leaves and fungus decorating a large tree stump. This way, mice could be protected from snakes.

Today was going to be a nonhiking day for me. I was seduced by the Donner Pass field trip. I read it as a moderate hike but looking around at the 50 people in the group, I surmised that it was going to be just a walk.

The Donner party, from Iowa, tried to cross the Sierras. They were unprepared for the snow conditions in 1846-47, and resorted to cannibalism to survive. Everything around now has the name "Donner" - Donner Lake, Donner Pass and lots of Donner roads.

What is not so well known is that they were not the first group to attempt to cross the pass with wagons. The Stephens party had crossed it successfully a couple of years before. But with the drama of the Donners, everything got named that way.

An amateur historian,Mark McLaughlin, gave an introductory slide show and took us to Donner Pass. We then walked up to the railroad that finally connected the east with the western part of the U.S. in 1869. He said that it was the first time nitroglycerine was used in railroad construction.

While I was learning history, Hannah went to the Truckee  River with her Chickoree group. When we came back at lunchtime, I found her wearing a hot long-sleeve shirt. She had either fallen into the water or jumped in but the upshot was that she got wet from head to toe. I brought her dry clothes and followed them for a short while.

The Chickoree group went to work with beekeepers while I volunteered at the Summit store for a couple of hours. But nothing could beat the drama happening right at our back door.

A baby stellar jay had fallen out of its nest too early and was hopping on the ground on our porch. The mother kept screeching up in the tree but was too scared to come down. The baby felt trapped by the benches and maze of the porch.

I walked away while it finally figured out how to get out and onto the pavement. A resort employee came by to ask us not to touch the baby bird  because then the parents would abandon it. Hannah and I watched in amazement while the mother came down and hid under the porch; the baby was still clueless. Drama, loss, parental responsibility right in the parking lot.

On our first full day of Family Summits, I managed to sleep until 5:30 A.M. My jet lag is going away, slowly. After breakfast, I walked Hannah to to Jr. Naturalist. She is in the youngest group, the Chickarees, named after a small squirrel of the area. Then I met my hiking group off to Susie Lake.

The drive was long but certainly not boring. We followed Lake Tahoe for a while, stopping at Emerald Bay State Park and Vikingsholm, one of the finest examples of Scandinavian architecture in the western hemisphere. It includes The "Tea House" on Fannette Island, the only island in Lake Tahoe. We stopped for a photo and continued our challenging drive. We're packed into vans, not driving our own cars.

At about 9:45, we started our hike from the Glen Alpine Trailhead, first on a gravel road and then on rocks. We're in the Desolation Wilderness, the most visited Forest wilderness in the country.

Susie Lake (8 miles, 1,200ft.) was tougher than its numbers. We passed the site of Glen Alpine Spring, an old hotel built on the side of a soda spring. Then up, up, up to the lake. None of us stopped to identify flowers but we all stopped to take pictures on the ice. We also came upon a snake and several lizards.

Susie Lake (above) is magnificent; an iconic glacier lake with snow-dotted mountains all around.

John was brave enough to jump in. No, I didn't rush to take a picture.

The group was slow going down and we didn't reach the vans until past 3:30. I worried that Hannah was not going to be happy in "Childcare" but she had a great time.

Her highlight was the black bear expert. Carl has a bear trap, used to trap nuisance bears. Though they didn't find a real bear to illustrate the trap, one of the boys volunteered to be trapped in there to demonstrate.

After dinner, we had a Green Fair. Several booths had been set up to encourage a green lifestyle. Hannah made a box and envelope from recycled material and learned the difference between seeds, fruit and flowers - not always obvious. We didn't get to all the booths. She flopped into bed at 8:30, exhausted. I followed her soon after that.

The Sierra Nevadas have a typical desert climate. It's hot during the day and cool at night and early morning. Hannah and I were seriously jetlagged. I woke up at 4 A.M. and Hannah at 5 A.M. We managed to stay in the room until 7 o'clock; it was cold when we went outside for breakfast.

I knew it would warm up quickly so we took shorts to walk down to Lake Tahoe. The Lake is about a mile downhill from the resort on a fire road. Lake Tahoe is part of Tahoe National Forest, though there are many private businesses and condos on the lake. At least people owning the condos can't shoo us away from the shore front because we're in a national forest. On the right, we're shown still bundled up, but not for long. We soon changed into shorts and stripped down to a short-sleeve shirt.

Tahoe City, the town on the northwestern part of the lake, is a tourist honky-tonk, very much like Gatlinburg. But this is California, after all, so its cafes serve good, healthy food and its craft stores offer high-quality goods. We wandered in a gallery but more important to us, we found a great playground on the beach. 

After lunch and an extended stay at the pool, we fronted up for Family Summit registration. Unlike the resort which was disorganized and confused, Family Summit is well organized and helpful.

Volunteers spend the whole year planning this week. Everyone get scarves based on the number of years they've come to the Summits and we got our yellow scarves, because this is our first year with the organization. We signed up for our various hikes and programs and received a t-shirt and the now ubiquitous waterbottle.

By dinner, Hannah had found her friend, Alexa and two teenagers who played with them. These older girls, dressed as "goth", were very gentle with the young children. They made sure that they stayed around the restaurant area, while running around and singing away. I seem to have gravitated to the bunch of adults from Ontario, mostly birders.

After dinner, we had the "welcome to Family Summits" meeting. They proudly announced the number of people who had come to many Summits. Many adults had been first been taken by their parents so, for example, there was a young mother of 33 who had been to 25 Summits. The organization had been running for 40 years old, first under the auspices of National Wildlife Federation, now as its own non-profit.

By 8 P.M., Hannah and I were so tired that we went back to the room and flopped in  bed - ready for the first full day of camp.

I'm at Lake Tahoe attending Family Nature Summits with my granddaughter. For a week, we'll be hiking, looking at bugs, flowers and trees and partaking in evening group activities. It's a real family camp with activities for all ages.

Yesterday, July 4th, we arrived in Reno, From the moment we got off the plane, we were immediately hit by slot machines. Talk about in your face! We had to wait an hour for our shuttle and I would have put a few quarters in the machines but Hannah was so adamantly against gambling that we played cards together instead.

Family Summits moves around every year and this year, it's based at the Granlibakken Resort at Lake Tahoe. You notice, I said "at Lake Tahoe", not on Lake Tahoe. We are at about 6,300 ft. above sea level and a mile from the Lake.

The resort is very swanky but has a lot of annoying problems from accounting to electronic keys. It took us over an hour from the time we got to registration to being able to get into our room. The mix-up started when I first made a reservation so they upgraded us to a studio apartment from a room. We have a kitchen, small living area where Hannah has spread out her books and drawing material and a porch where our pool towels are drying.

Because of July 4th, the resort had a complimentary barbecue.

As soon as we got to the barbecue, Hannah was greeted by Alexa, the girl on the right in the picture at the top. The girls started a parade with American flags and got over 10 people involved. Alexa is an experienced  Family Summitter from Ottawa and about the same age as Hannah. Her parents are hard-core birders; her father is the birding leader. He already led Hannah and me to a white woodpecker. 

We managed to stay up until 9 P.M. (midnight body time) and still I woke up at 4 A.M. Hannah slept until 5 o'clock. Tomorrow we'll make it to 6 A.M. Today, we're going to explore the lake and maybe put our feet in it. Then we'll meet the rest of the Family Summit gang.