Alaska

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What a difficult state for me to write about

So much emotion and pain

We went there with such joy and positive expectation and we thought we were going to spend a very long time there

People treated us without a doubt worse than you could imagine

From the Archbishop to the members of the parishes

These were mostly very bad people

We were hired to be the Lay Pastor of a parish and two missions

It had a huge well documented history of abusing whoever the Bishop put in charge

We told the man who hired us for the Archbishop in the presence of a new priest about to become a Bishop

that the situation needed to be addressed before anyone was hired

We accepted this position based on the fact that we thought that the situation had been, at the very least, addressed!

It had not and in fact nothing had been done and the people in the Parish where we were to be the Pastoral Administrator's

did not want or expect us to be there and unloaded on us as were getting out of the car!

This man who interviewed us and hired us turned out to be a Boston Priest that had left Boston because he was a sex offender

Looking back, he was a good example of what was ahead of us

Of course we were not told any of this while they were trying to hire us

So many lies from so many people not only the Archbishop but so many others

As a very Holy Man said to the Archbishop, we did not stand a chance and indeed they made short order of us

In retrospect there was nothing we could have done that would have changed anything

So let’s try and remember the state from what we saw

We drove in on highway 5 and stopped at Tok

An example of the road we drove in on is the picture right below and this was taken around noon

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The drive to Tok was mostly wooded covered with snow

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We did not see much in the way of wildlife in and out of Tok

We left Tok in minus 50 degree weather and blowing snow

Somewhere around Chistochina we ran into a ditch

After trying to stop several cars for help we finally flagged a tow truck down

Again after arguing and giving him $100 in cash he agreed to pull us from the ditch

It was only in blowing snow and minus fifty degrees

This was our welcome to Alaska

We stopped long enough in Anchorage to be warned by the Bishop about saying how pretty Alaska was

On the drive to Homer we said our rosary and took pictures of moose and sheep

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It was a beautiful drive into Homer and we saw mountains and wildlife

Homer was set at the bottom of mountains

In order to get there you had to go past wonderful vistas of ocean and volcano

There is a famous spit of land in Homer where a woman fed eagles

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Traveling A1 from Anchorage to Homer you go through little places like Ninilchik

This was the place where we were treated somewhat nicely

We had a mission church there and a picture is included

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We made this drive several times and each time marvelled at the views and wildlife

Once we swerved to miss a moose and did but totalled our Jimmy in the process

A member of the Parish came to get us and let us know just how good of him it was for him to do this

Driving out of Homer there was not much there except the mountain and more wonderful animals

We drove to Seward once or twice and took a sightseeing trip on the bay

We saw seals. Mountain goats in the distance, whales and a glacier

We drove out of Alaska from

Anchorage through Denali National Park where we took a gravel road as far as we were able

We saw a wonderful arctic fox and of course Denali

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We went through Fairbanks and drove to the Arctic Circle where we took our picture

We drove past the Yukon River Bridge and stopped only for a minute at Coldfoot

What I remember most about this was the lack of traffic and how cold it was

The road was gravel but reasonable remember it was April

There were not many signs of spring though

We drove out of Fairbanks through North Pole where we had almost taken a job

We ate at the McDonald's there and people were nice

We drove past an Air Force Base where we could see B2 Fighters parked on the runway

On through Tok and out of Alaska

No question it is a beautiful place but no more so than Yellowstone or Rocky Mountain National Park

Just different and inhabited by mean spirited people who do not think of themselves as living in the USA

Going to the USA is always going outside!

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John