Alaska or Bust!

Washington, D.C., April 1, 2024  - "Do you really want to leave on April Fool's Day?" friends have asked. I find it a fitting metaphor. Driving 3,600 miles to Skagway, Alaska, and traveling six hours on a ferry to Juneau with an 85-pound, working-line German Shepherd, who howls and barks at the first sight of open country, to go work as a naturalist, something I have never done before, is adventurous enough I reckon to merit leaving on April Fool's Day.

       This is my travelogue -- updates and observations on the cross-country trip with Eiger, living in Juneau for the summer, and working for Gastineau Guiding Company as a naturalist on whale-watching tours and hikes to the Mendenhall Glacier.

      I invite you to join our adventure into the great wild beyond.

 No strangers to adventures. Here we are after Eiger won the highest scores in IGP2 at a Schutzhund trial. (Little secret: we were the only ones competing at that level that day.) I figure if we can succeed in a sport in which I had neither experience nor interest, why not Alaska?