Hope on Summer Solstice

High alpine wild flowers collected in a "Solstice rainbow challenge"

SUMMER SOLSTICE. A holiday mostly passed by in the Lower 48 but celebrated with vigor here in AK. A whopping 19 hours of bright light here on the Kenai Peninsula, before the sun sinks just below the horizon for 5 hours of dusky twilight. We slowly build up to it, so in some ways it doesn't seem terribly dramatic. All the same, we find ourselves having conversations that would never happen in the colder months:

8 PM - J - "I'm going to run up Mt. Marathon, okay? Any plans for dinner later?"

11 PM - Indigo - "Let's go out for ice cream for dessert! ...what do you mean it's closed?" 

1 AM - Kim - "I know it's the good part in the movie, but shouldn't we get to bed?"

Midnight on the Summer Solstice

HOPE. This year we decided to head to the tiny town of Hope, Alaska to celebrate the Solstice with a crew of friends. We camped out, went to hear Reggae legend Clinton Fearon in a grassy outdoor venue, walked the mudflat trails along Turnagain Arm, and hiked up the Palmer Creek valley through wildflower fields and over snow fields quickly melting into raging creeks in all the light.

A town of under 200 people, Hope is a hidden gem of kindness, historic intrigue and wild beauty. The sort of timeless spot that perfectly fits these secular holidays.

Classic front porch in Hope, Alaska

This sweet message inspired me to pick up old toilet paper on the public bathroom floors!

About as simple as you can get - the main drag in Hope, Alaska

THE CHERRY PIE MIRACLE. So Indigo's one request for this three day adventure was to get a tasty baked good - preferably, a slice of cherry pie. (Forget the gold panning, epic Alaskan vistas or incredible music, right? Just give the American girl some pie!) Hope does have a few good bakeries so it seemed a reasonable request. Indeed, the first night Indigo scored a miniature cherry pie for $3 inside the Creek Bend's music venue. Delicious, but just a taste... and the more we talked about it as a group, the more everyone got excited for pie!

The next day we explored a few bakery counters and cases but they were empty; the Solstice shenanigans had turned Hope a bit upside down. That evening, we sat around the campfire and our friend Chris got ready to walk to a second night of music. 

Indigo: "Chris, if we give you some money, and they have one of those little cherry pies left, could you please buy it for me? We could stand on the other side of the fence and you could toss it over?"

So Chris, Indigo and Ty headed off down the dirt road on a pie mission. They figured with $20 and some luck (it was late in the evening and very likely that the food trucks had sold out), they might get a few little pies to enjoy.

A half hour later, Indigo and Ty returned, hands full of little cherry pies! The little pies had dropped to $1 per pie and Chris had bought everything they had! Imagining a torrent of pies raining down over the fence as they were chucked over, I learned that Indigo and Ty received a pie hand-off at the venue gate in civilized fashion. A cherry pie miracle!

Home of the Cherry Pie Miracle