Re: Patti - Onale - Re Alaska Stories

[Guest guest]

> > Don't they get black flies in the summer???

>

> Mosquitos - GIANT mosquitos.

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One of my favorite Alaska stories happened when we were there in

either 1984 or 1985. Seems that this big motorhome from Florida

pulled into the Chevron gas station in Valdez. Out hops the little

old, pot bellied, bald grandpa on the one side to gas it up. Out

hops the little old, purple haired grandma on the other side - with

a pink ribboned, yapping little Fifi dog. The dog just set up a

constant, " yip, yap, yip, yap " .

About that time, the attendant over by the door spots the Eagle in

the tree down the road take to the air. Before anyone could even

guess what was about to happen, down swoops eagle, grabs Fifi, and

off they go. Fifi now has real reason to go " yip, yap, yip, yap " .

Purple haired grandma on the one side of the motorhome goes into

hysterics. No haired grandpa on the other side of the motor home

does the bent arm, closed fist, pumping " Yeah! " gesture.

This story was in the Anchorage Times newspaper. About a week

later, I just happened to be in Valdez on a business trip and

stopped at the same station to gas up my car. As it turned out, I

ended talking to the very attendant that witnessed all this the week

before. His comment was " Man, for his sake, I sure hope they make

it out of state before she reads that article. "

[Guest guest]

> That's funny.

> Robin

>

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The other story that cracked me up also happened in either '84

or '85. We took off on a long four-day weekend car camping trip up

north of Anchorage. The first night (Friday) we camped in one of the

campgrounds at Denali National Park. First thing Saturday morning,

here comes one of the Park Rangers - chasing every body out of the

camp. They closed our campground and the one a mile or two north of

us because a sow Grizzly took out a Caribou at the upper one during

the night. There are a few things you don't do with brown bears.

You don't go anywhere near one of their meal stashes, you don't get

between a sow and her cubs, and you never turn your back and run.

At any rate, we took off and spent Saturday and Saturday night in

Fairbanks. I picked up a copy of the Sunday Anchorage Times before

we left town. As we were driving down the road Sunday morning, we

were listening to the news on the radio. Seems that a tourist, just

outside of the main park headquarters, had been walking along the

railroad track the day before and crossed paths with a different sow

Grizzley. You guessed it - she freaked and took off on a run.

Well, this is just saying " catch me if you can " to the bear. It

could and it did. It didn't do serious damage to her, but it was

enough to ruin her day and put her in the hospital. When we finally

made camp later in the day, I got the paper out and read through

it. The Travel Section that weekend had a special feature article

about Denali National Park. On the top of the first page, they had

two pictures. In the upper left hand corner, they had a mug shot of

a sow Grizzley. In the upper right hand corner, they a similar shot

of two really cute little brown bear cubs.

But what was funny about the story (and impeccably bad timing) was

that right in the middle between the two pictures they had a caption

in capital letters that said " THEY'RE WAITING FOR YOU. "