Contributed by Paul Mitchell Johnson
If you didn’t get out and about on Memorial Day Weekend, you missed it! Even as far North as the Susitna River, above Talkeetna, there were hundreds and hundreds of Alaskans enjoying Alaska to themselves. Denali National Park is open to personal vehicles, nearly 30 miles in, no permit required. Watch your speed though; the speed limits are strictly enforced within the Park. Better a mile per hour under than a MPH over, a word to the wise. The road has been intentionally wash boarded to keep the speeds down too, so be prepared for some rattling and jarring. Still, this is an opportunity of a lifetime, since this has not been allowed since the very early 1990s. The bears are out, the Caribou are out and we even saw a rather grizzly, pardon the pun, encounter between the two. Alaska at its finest! The weather wasn’t all that great but you should have seen the mile wide smiles on everybody’s faces, regardless. I swelled with pride knowing this was exactly what I had in mind when I wrote “Letter to Governor Dunleavy” two months ago, Alaska for Alaskans! There were very few people wearing masks but most were practicing social distancing fairly well and I’ve never seen a cleaner bunch of Alaskans. Almost everyone appeared to have just showered and were well groomed. Way to go on the personal hygiene folks! Keep it up. I believe that if we keep up with those two things, and don’t invite the Wuhan Corona Virus back into Alaska through tourists and outside fishery workers, we have this deadly Virus beat, here in Alaska.
That brings me to something that wasn’t so attractive, all of “the right side of the Parks Hwy.” is closed. That’s where all of the Princess & Holland America Lodges are. Since they couldn’t rail road the Governor into letting them stuff THEIR world wide clients onto THEIR train cars and shuffle them off to THEIR lodges, screw you all. We’re not going to open up just for the locals. Therein lays the problem with the State’s “relationship” with them. One, I believe, deserves some serious scrutiny. The only way they were able to build those grand lodges on the most prime property in the area, was with the blessing of the State. You or I couldn’t have been able to purchase that land for any amount of money. But they dangled the tourist dollars and fell right into it. Now comes the time no one could foresee, when Alaska had to close its doors to outsiders, Did the tour companies understand? No, they just pulled the plug on all of their operations across the State, leaving the locals with no opportunity to enjoy their facilities, most of us for the very first time.
That’s only the tip of the proverbial ice berg though. Those closures have had a devastating effect on the local economies through lost local revenue, lost local hire, by the hundreds and lost local Artisan incomes & shop spaces. The local food suppliers, utilities and fuel suppliers are out of luck for their revenue too. And the State isn’t getting their cut of those tourist dollars either. So why should Alaska give them the sweetheart deals we have for all these years? We shouldn’t, at least without some guarantees. Alaska has always been a trusting, almost naïve place and that’s how we get taken advantage of so often (i.e.: Oil Companies, the pipeline, Exxon, etc.). This has got to change! Please lobby the Governor and your local representatives to re-examine the State’s arrangements with the international tour groups. If they don’t want to play the game the way Alaska wants to play it, we should buy them out. We should probably buy them out anyway, or terminate their leases. Something has to be done so this never happens again; Alaska is not the mattress back to the rest of the world. We live here because we’re damn proud of the product we have to offer. The thing is, it’s OUR product and we shouldn’t diminish its value for the benefit of outsiders of any kind.
