PROLOGUE TO OUR ALASKAN ADVENTURE

After returning home from our extended trip to the Southwest and Mexico in March, 2004, our attention turned to preparing for a long anticipated trip to Alaska.

In June 1953, after Ken’s discharge from the army, we planned to accompany his father on a gold prospecting trip into the Yukon Territory where we fully expected to find our fortune. We were very young and I still believed in my “knight in shining armor".

By the time we arrived in Arizona, “good sense” had descended upon Ken’s father. Our “great gold prospecting trip” had been downgraded to working an old abandoned mine on Spruce Mountain in Arizona. Accepting the wisdom of our elders and with no other choice before us, we joined Ken’s family at the mine site where we spent the summer
camping out in a tent and enduring the summer monsoons from on top of the mountain.

Our daily dose of storms soon became a less than perfect break in what was an otherwise tranquil lifestyle. After three months, enthusiasm was replaced by discouragement and fatigue. The final straw occurred one morning when Ken returned from inside the mine with his shirt hangingin shreds. His shirt had become caught in the jackhammer and it had truly ripped the shirt off his back. We accepted this as a final omen of truth. Ken had lost his shirt. Our dream of great fame and fortune in the form of gold dimmed.

Now, our memory of that incident has faded, our disappointment overcome and we are about to finish the dream adventure that we first shared as a young married couple, over fifty years ago. There will be no gold prospecting, but we do expect to find gold in the beauty of the great Northwest. We hope you will share with us this long time dream.