rest and relaxation in anchorage

ever so slowly i will start to unwind from this trip, but i'm starting to think its going to take a long time. the first couple days after the trip ended were filled with dinners, cancer themed movies and visits to local cancer hospitals where we visited with patients, painted mugs and made puppets for use in alternative therapy for kids. i also got to make the 999th paper crane for a project a university of alaska student was working on at providence cancer center. daniel c. made the 1000th. i felt like someone had planned art therapy sessions for me as a present. i really enjoyed what we were doing and meeting all the staff that worked at the hospitals.

yesterday i was waiting for a phone call from someone so we could figure out our roadtrip back to texas. i never received one, so i got in the car and started driving to whittier, a town on the ocean about 50 miles from anchorage. i saw portage glacier and several other glaciers for that matter. i didn't realize that to get to whittier you had to go through a tunnel. well, the tunnel was a trip. it was 2.7 miles long and one lane wide. yep, one lane wide. down that one lane cars, rvs and trains travelled. there were schedules for when you could get into and out of whittier because they changed the direction of traffic through the tunnel every 30 minutes. i got into whittier, found a small cafe and my cup of tea and i found a cozy corner to sit and read. i was right on the water. after a couple hours, i got up and moved myself outside and sat back down and continued reading. being by myself all day with a book was exactly what i needed. i hope to have a few more days like that in the near future. its rejuvenating.

i was reading a book called refuge by terry tempest williams. i bought it because the author was supposed to write like barbara kingsolver, rachel carson and other naturalist writers. the book turned out to be perfect though because it actually focused on the author's struggle with her mother and grandmother getting cancer. she wrote about this story in conjunction with all the changes in water level and the subsequent destruction of habitat that was occurring at the same time in the Great Salt Lake (the book takes place in Utah). i became more excited as i read her descriptions of the lake and surrounding areas and wildlife because we are planning on roadtripping back to texas via utah, namely so we can visit zion national park.