Next Stop: Alaska

John left for Alaska this morning. I am happy that he gets to go, and I am sad that he is going to be gone for 9 days.

I didn’t go with him, because the kind of adventure he wants to have is the kind of adventure that does not sound fun to me. I would enjoy a lodge in the woods with a water view and an on-site restaurant. I would enjoy 1-hour kayak excursions in flat water, and 2-hour hiking excursions along sun-dappled trails, soft with pine needles. That’s not what John is going to be doing.

Originally, John had joined a kayaking and camping tour. The group would kayak for a few hours each day and then camp on the beach. It sounded fun, but still too difficult for me. I encouraged him to sign up for the trip. Unfortunately, the tour did not get enough people signed up, so they canceled it and refunded his money. John had already bought his plane tickets and had his heart set on an Alaska trip, so he decided to go anyway.

I hoped he would get a room in a nice lodge and sign up for fishing and kayaking day trips. But no. For some reason, he has decided to rent an SUV when he arrives, and car camp. He has not even reserved campsites. He plans to just wing it, living out of a car for 9 days, hiking in the woods alone in Alaska with the grizzly bears. I am less happy with this idea, but he wants an adventure.

I have never fully understood what he means by adventure, but I gather it includes a certain amount of difficulty and not knowing exactly how it’s all going to turn out. Life is not hard enough as it is?

He has only a rough itinerary. He is flying to Juneau tonight and then up to Anchorage in the morning. He may ferry to Kodiak Island and back, and then drive up to Denali State Park or possibly the other way around. He says he may see Kenai Fjords from either Homer or Seward, before or after Denali. He might do an all-day kayak trip in Kenai Fjords instead of the ferry to Kodiak Island. The reason for the vagueness is he is trying to optimize for weather – he may be getting a lot of rain.

I tried to tell him that in that part of the country, when it rains, it rains everywhere, for days at a time. It’s not like the desert where you can drive half a mile out of the downpour and not get a single drop of rain. I also tried to tell him all about grizzly bears. And moose! He has been very patient with all my objections.

Now it’s evening and he just arrived in Juneau.

The bits of pink in the above weather map is light wind, not precipitation.

Here’s to a great trip!

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Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals