Boyz Trip 1

I'm going to have to break the description of my recent trip to Alaska up into a few installments - this, obviously being the first.

So, the Boyz Trip. Every year, a group of friends of mine take some kind of adventure trip - backpacking, canoeing, cycling or kayaking, generally. This was the twelfth year that they've done it, and I've been along for four of them now. Past trips that I've been on have been backpacking in Wyoming's Wind River Range and Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and kayaking around Catalina Island.

It's a really good group of guys that come along - most know each other from growing up in the area around Trinidad in Northern California. There are a few other relatives and friends thrown in also, like me. I'm there because of my college roommate Karl, who has invited me along since college. There are an interesting mix of guys as well - a lawyer, a city planner, a Montessori teacher, a librarian.

This year we decided to finally make it to Alaska - we'd been talking about it for a few years, but it always seemed like too much time and expense. We made it happen, though - here's how it went:

We all met in Anchorage - some of the guys got in on Friday night, Karl and I cam in on Saturday around noon, and the last straggler came in around 5. Once Karl and I got into town, we stored our gear at the hotel the first group had been staying at. They let us use a closet:



To kill some time until our last guy showed up, we went bowling - split into two teams and got a little competitive.



We then had grabbed a bit to eat at a downtown restaurant, where the late arrival showed up, then collected our gear from the motel:



And caught our shuttle to Whittier:



We stayed the night in Whittier at June's B&B, which is most of the top floor of the Begich Towers - the largest building in Whittier. Apparently something like 85% of Whittier's population live in the building - it pretty much dominates the town. Pretty nice place, actually.



Here's the view outside the window, looking down on Whittier. The tan warehouse at the middle right of the picture is our outfitter, PWS Kayak Center. YOu can see some of the boats lined up outside.



OK, that's day one - I'll continue on in another post later...