Heading Home

Life doesn't always turn out like I plan it. Maybe that's a fortunate things; maybe it's unfortunate. Unfortunately, I ended my internship 1 week early, because the working environment just became to unhealthy for me. It's a hard pill to swallow, but I know there's much to be gleaned from this time. It casts a cloud over my Alaska experience, but I'm going to do my best to bounce back. I have the whole adventure of the roadtrip back to look forward to.

Well, Wendy is here. We pick up Zach at the airport today. The weather is cool and cloudy here, so we won't make the sidetrip north as planned because Denali will be hiding today. It's luck of the draw. Zach drew a bad card. Me? Well, I've had 7 days that I could have viewed Denali and it was only willing to play with me 1 of those days. Wendy, however, has had great weather everywhere she goes, so she saw Denali and had sun even while on wet, wet Kodiak island!

We'll start the trek east today already. The photo option is not cooperating right now, but I'll try to add them as my circumstances allow.

Above: The bull moose we saw in the park, right after Zach arrived! We were pretty stinkin' close!

Below: The beautiful Anchorage coastline.

Above: Our 1st campsite!

Below: Zach and Wendy at the "beginning" of the AK Highway in Dawson Creek, B.C.

Denali National Park: Oh! the sights, the flora and the fauna

Pictures from my first Denali NP trip over 1 month ago now.

Day #1:The sled dogs. The coloring on this one was so intriguing.

Above: They really love to run, so much, in fact that they pulled this park employee over gravel. There's nothing louder than the dogs before they start running and nothing quieter than when they begin running.
Below: I went for a hike near the entrance to the park up Healy Mtn.

Before I even got to the trailhead, I encountered this female.

So I followed her from a distance, because she was going my way.

Below: The only other wildlife I encountered on that hike...

Above: Don't confuse that critter with a rabbit. Alaskans will adamantly tell you it's a 'snowshoe hare.'
Below: The view from up top.

Day 2: I took a bus the 90 miles out to Wonder Lake and back. You can only drive 20 miles or so into the park after that it's by foot, bike, or tour bus. The trip was 11 hours long!

Below: A glacier. The snow and ice is covered by debri, i.e. the glacier is the black stuff in the middle and upper 1/3 of the picture.

Below: Dall sheep

Below: Area known as Polychromatic because of all the colors. It's less pronounced because of the clouds, but beautiful. The clouds/rain gave us a rainbow.

Above: We had the good fortune of seeing a wolf, right along the roadside. FYI - that's very rare.
Below: The craziness trying to get pictures when the viewing was a really popular target, as in said wolf.

Above: Me at cool, mosquitoey Wonder Lake. Denali is in the background. Unfortunately, the clouds hide that fact.
Below: The skies cleared up in the afternoon on the drive back, but we still couldn't see Denali. Over a years time Denali is only visible 1 out of every 3 days. I have had 5 days to see it. It's only been 'out' one of those opportunities. At least I've seen it and I'll have more chances in the next week.

Below: A sign warning hikers/backpackers to avoid this particular area. The sign happens to have been chewed on the bottom by bears. Yikes.

Below: A cow and calf moose.We saw the big 5: bear, moose, wolf, caribou, and dall sheep, so it was a good day. The caribou and bear were too far and I didn't have a telephoto lenses, so I decided not to post pictures with dots in the middle of them.

The Arctic Circle

Hello. Sorry that I'm departing from chronological order with this update, but this way you can hear some of the latest. I had a rough week at my clinical last week. (It was mid-term week). Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation! Would you like some more feedback, Liz? Thankfully I had something to look forward to that weekend apart from the break in performance review.

I was booked to do a "Fly and Drive" to and from the Arctic Circle. I can now say that I've been to the arctic circle! It was fun. We flew up to Coldfoot and then drove back on the Dalton highway which is a mainly gravel road ruled by the big rigs servicing the pipeline that drive back and forth from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay (on the Arctic Ocean). If I had had more than one day, I probably would have been crazy enough to want to go all the way up the 500 miles of gravel road. I had previously contemplated driving the Supersube up to the Arctic Circle but people told me I would need to bring along 2 spare tires, be prepared to have my window cracked or smashed, and yield to the semis flying right past me. I wised up in time.

Here are some photos from the 12 hour trip.
Here I am feeling good before take off.


A lake that looks like a music note - an 1/8 note, I believe. It's been a while since I read sheet music!



45 min into the 1 hour and 10 min flight and I was no longer feeling so good. Thankfully for me and those travelling with me, nothing made it's way up, but it sure was threatening!

What the "towns" look like up that far north. Not pretty that's for sure. It's all utilitarian and recycled from the housing units used by pipeline construction employees in the 70's

The proof that I was at the arctic circle.

The proof that Alaska is a wild place.

That was only 2 days before my tour!
Below: Me and the pipeline

Above: The pipeline is zig-zag in shape to allow for expansion and contraction from the wide ranging extremes of temperature that the area experiences (nearly 200 deg different from winter to summer). The pipe moves on teflon strips on the horizontal supports. The engineers had to calculate the amount it would move and which direction. This one was miscalculated because there is no bumper between the pipeline and the vertical support and the pipeline just happens to be resting right up against it (that's not supposed to be the case, if you were wondering).

Below: The Yukon river and some explorers travelling the length of it in an epic journey in there motorized and man-powered canoe. Just FYI, if you stop on the bridge in your vehicle you willed be yelled at via LOUD speakers. It is considered a terrorist threat because the pipeline travels right along it.



Below: Fireweed, a wildflower that proliferates particularly after wildfires, covered the countryside.


Thanks, Mom and Dad for making this possible!

Fires Follow Fairbanks

Fires are a simply a part of Alaskan summers. You don't hear about it in the lower 48 because there's so much land up here that no one flinches if 100,000's of acres burn. That is, until it gets close to a community. On my way to Fairbanks after officially ending my roadtrip in Seward, I encountered a fire just after Denali NP and 50 miles from Fairbanks. I had heard of it word of mouth and there was some concern as to whether I would be able to get to Fairbanks in time because the fire had jumped the road at numerous locations and at times the smoke cut the visibility down to nil. What follows are glimpses of my first close-up encounter with an active forest fire, how the sky went from bright blue with scattered clouds to a dense, surrounding canopy of smoke and how the landscape was newly scarred. It was 45,000 acres at the time. I was on my way to meet my new friend, Dave, of LDP a year's prior to my year, who happens to live in Nenana. His living quarters were threatened and his boss lost his home.

So it depends on how the wind blows how smoky Fairbanks is, but the sun has had a hard time getting through because of clouds and smoke. Fairbanksans just have to deal with it. I can't say they've gotten use to it, but they cope. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/09/alaska.wildfire.ap/index.html

That's what the fire looked like June 11th. One week and one week later on my way back from two days in Denali NP. The fire had moved, but was still raging here's what it looked like then. Again it was all blue skies until...(and no, those are not storm clouds...it's smoke!)

The Parks Highway fire is now at "115,500 acres at 60 percent contained.This fire is one mile southeast of Nenana in black spruce, tundra and grass. Numerous residences, native allotments, recreational cabins, commercial property and utility infrastructure remain threatened. Fire activity was minimized due to favorable weather conditions." (http://www.nifc.gov/fireinfo/nfn.html)

It's too bad this fire began because someone dumped out there fire barrel before it was cool.

Two years ago there was a huge fire just Northeast of the city in the Chena Hotsprings area (home to the hotsprings and the ice hotel...yes, you can live in a room entirely made of ice, using a caribou hides to separate you from the bed of ice...interested? well you better have a credit card ready and be patient because there's a long waiting list and the price hurts).