7:30 a.m. I’m sitting across from the Alaska Railroad depot, which doesn’t look even remotely like what I expected. I imagined a quaint village depot. No, it’s nothing like Grand Central Station, but it’s more like a small white office building than a train station. Until I saw “THE ALASKA RAILROAD” on the front of…

7:05 a.m. Hard to believe that by the end of today I’ll be back in Anchorage. Five days ago, the thought of being in Anchorage was thrilling. Today it just means that my Kenai adventure is over. Yesterday on the road to Hope along Turnagain Arm, we stopped to check out the bore tide coming in.…

8:55 a.m. I gave up on waiting for sunset last night and was asleep by around 11:00. Full 8 hours of sleep — felt great!

5:00 a.m. Well the serenade of the creek was drowned out by the torrential rain pummeling the metal roof of our cabin. Finally, unable to sleep, I got up at 4:00, took my shower, got dressed and packed up. Turns out the downpour is just a light shower, amplified on the metal roof, and the…

7:20 a.m. Last night at the campfire the staff people were looking at the clouds in the west and saying that rain was coming. This morning it’s here. Kind of a Seattle-style rain. It’s grey and drizzly. Well, a little more than drizzly. I thought I packed my rain pants to bring to Fox Island,…

7:10 a.m. Thank you Mary for giving me the night mask. It was still broad daylight when I got to bed last night at 11:00. I woke up periodically during the night and had to look and see how light it was. At 1:30 it was kinda dusky. At 3:00, it looked like dawn. Mask…

Prologue Sitting on the back deck of my house. The painters are finishing up, so it seems as if I might be able to leave on this trip with a sense of calm and all the stress of the past week behind me. I’m not feeling excited, though. Not sure why. A couple of weeks…