6/21 posted on 6/24

6/21

Friday was another travel day. We woke up ate breakfast and headed back on the road to Anchorage. The teenagers and I were dropped off at the airport while Tony and Jean returned the cars. The plane to Cordova was under an hour long, we had all just taken our ipods out when we were told to put them away for landing. The Cordova airport was teeny, they pushed steps up to our plane, and the airport was one room with ‘security’ being a doorway and baggage claim being a hole in the wall they pushed luggage through one at a time. We were greeted by the warden, Joy, and junior warden, Neva, from St. Georges and with one little complication. There had been a mix-up with the vans that were rented to get us from the airport – 13 miles out of town – to town. Fortunately, Cordova is small enough that everyone knows everyone, and the wardens chatted and hitched us rides with a variety of townspeople who happened to be at the airport anyhow, including the Baptist minister. We arrived at the Red Dragon Hospitality house to be greeted by Barbara, a retired Episcopal priest who is leading St. Georges. The Red Dragon is the oldest building standing in Cordova, built in 1908, it was standing 11 years before the church was built and its original purpose was a ‘safe’ place for the railroad workers to get away from the saloons. The Red Dragon is a one room cabin, with a loft over the kitchen. It’s extremely basic, but I love it. The boys are sleeping up in the loft, and there has been much giggling over the rickety ladder. St. Georges is right next door to the Red Dragon, and it is a beautiful old church. Everything is wet, and lush and growing, and there are lots of slugs and crows and climbing trees in the yard Cordova is an ‘arctic tropic’ or a ‘sub arctic rainforest’, so everything is extremely green and damp chill in the air. The whole ambience is very romantic, in a very gothic, Alaskan-fishing village kind of way. The youth groups from St. Christopher’s and St. Georges made us dinner, possibly the best pasta I’ve ever had. It was nice to see some familiar faces. Their joint group has been here for a week, but fortunately left us a lot of work to do. Last night they went for a night hike after dinner but we instead came back to the Red Dragon and went straight to bed, we were all exhausted. Despite the cramped quarters we all slept soundly. We had a leisurely morning, Sarah G, Cameron G, Tony, and Sarah E all took early morning walks down to the harbor (which is around the corner and one street down). It’s unbelievably beautiful. Everyone keeps joking that the surroundings are so beautiful we’ve all become professional photographers, because every 2 feet is something beautiful and it’s impossible to take a bad picture. At 9:30 we were picked up in a blue van that smelled suspiciously of gasoline and drove out to Childes Glacier to worship with the 30 person congregation of St. Georges. The glacier was, you guessed it, indescribably beautiful, and bitterly cold. Alice says it was the color of a frozen chlorinated pool, and Sarah G points out that in a way we have no idea how big it really was, because the size and space here is so vast, our perception was that the glacier was just a couple of hundred of yards away, but in reality it was the length of4 football fields away. The glacier was ‘calving’ when we were there which sounded like thunder followed by large chunks of ice falling off. Afterwards the congregation grilled us hot dogs, salmon, and halibut, which we ate shivering around a fire in the shadow of the glacier. Afterwards we drove over the ‘million dollar bridge’ with a chorus of screams. Then we had a driving tour of the surrounding area, and saw seven bald eagles in the trees right above our heads on the side of the road. Then free time, where cards were played, 34 slugs were caught, and dinner plans we made. The Red Dragon has a speaker which connects to our ipods so we’ve all been taking turns sharing our music. Jeans team is making macaroni and cheese for dinner, and we are all excited to start work tomorrow at 9:30.

Notes from the Teens:

Sarah G and Cameron and everyone else wish Eva a very very happy 14th birthday. Lauren is surviving the spiders. Alice’s wants to tell her parents she wants to make sure they bring her sister to the airport to pick her up; she wants to be greeted by her whole family. Alice, Ian, and Skyler want credit for catching all those slugs. Sam loves his parents and wants them to know he has gone through 4 cameras already. Tony misses his girls and promises Emma he isn’t embarrassing her (he’s not, he’s been really great, we’re really lucky he is here. Thanks for lending him to us!). Chelsea is marvelous and fixed Jeans computer after I messed it up. Jean loved the pick-up from the airport – the taste of this close-knit community life.

Everyone is missing our pets, and want all our family at home to give them extra scratches.

*None of our cell phones are working, and the only internet in town is at a little taco place so we won’t be very reachable the next couple of days. If you need to reach someone the number for St. Georges is in the packet. We are all safe and happy and will update more soon*