Postcard from Alaska: Chena Hot Springs

The last few days of our trip were spent at Chena (CHEE-na) Hot Springs, located north of Fairbanks.  It is a popular destination for viewing the Northern Lights because it is out in the wilderness, so it is very dark, yet close enough for a day (or night) visit from Fairbanks.

We were there during their off season so the place was pretty quiet.  Winter, when the Northern Lights are most active, is their busy season.  We bundled up in our jackets and ventured out the first night to see the lights but, despite hanging around until 1:30 am, they didn't do much of anything.  Fortunately, we did see a decent show when we were in Denali so we yawned and trudged back to our warm room.

The next morning we woke to heavy frost everywhere.  It had dipped into the mid-20s overnight and the frost pretty much killed all the flower beds.  The flowers in the back of an old truck were still okay though.

Rather than soak in the hot springs, Brett and I went for a couple hikes.  We walked up the side of the hill to an aurora viewing area.  I was impressed with the fall color.

Brett was quite taken with the outhouse.  I have no idea why.

We also took a pretty trail that followed a gurgling creek.

Brett visited with one of the rental horses.

We visited the goats, and the chickens and the reindeer.  Reindeer, in the US, is the name for domesticated caribou.  In the rest of the world, both domestic and wild are called reindeer.  Reindeer sausage is big in Alaska, appearing on every breakfast menu.  It looks, and tastes, like a hot dog; not bad, just not very interesting.

After our restful time in Chena Hot Springs, we headed home.  It was a wonderful trip, but it's also wonderful to be back home.

Postcard from Alaska: Inside the Arctic Circle

Tuesday morning I put a teeshirt on under my hoodie sweatshirt and wore my faded red barn jacket as we headed out into the cold drizzle of dawn to catch our plane.  At home, a sweatshirt and this jacket keep me comfortable working outside in the winter, down to the 40s.  In the low 30s or high 20s, I switch to a heavier, fleece lined jacket.  I left that one at home because the weather forcast, at the time we packed, called for temperatures in the mid-60s.

A week after our arrival, a cold front moved in.  It dropped rain over Denali and Fairbanks.  When our small plane landed in Bettles, it was 42F with a stiff wind.

We ducked inside the lodge, had hot coffee, eggs and bacon -- and then bought more sweatshirts.  Brett pulled his over his teeshirt, under his lightweight wind breaker. I added my sweatshirt over the top of the other, struggled into the jacket, which now fit so tight that I looked like the Michelin tire man, and put up the hoods from both hoodie sweatshirts.  I was ready.

The rain had coated the mountains with snow, and they looked stunning.  The owner of the lodge gave us a tour of Bettles, population 12, located inside the Arctic Circle.  It is only accessible by plane in the summer.  In the winter, there is a road across the ice that connects the town with Fairbanks.

In the summer, when the tundra isn't frozen, the land is a soggy, sodden, squishy, marsh.  Bettles is 250 miles north of Fairbanks, with a single gravel runway, a pond for sea planes, a gas pump for planes, and the Arctic Circle National Park Visitor Center.  The community peaked at 65 residents a number of years ago and a large, beautiful school was built for the 16 or so kids that lived there.  There have not been any kids in town for many years now, and birch trees have reclaimed the playground.  We walked on the tundra, eating the wild blueberries and cranberries that ripen in the fall.

Walking on the tundra was strange, it felt like walking on a sponge, with our feet sinking with the tufts of plants, and then springing back as we walked on.  In the winter the sponge is frozen solid; in the summer it's like the sponge in your kitchen sink, while you're using it, full of water when squeezed.  Hiking is impossible; well, maybe not impossible, but certainly not easy.  The animals traverse the land by following the gravel bars left behind by glaciers.  They also have big wide feet; their very own snowshoes.

After our tour, we clambered into a raft for a three hour float down the river.

We pulled ashore at the original site of Bettles and explored the town.

There were a number of log cabins, originally built in 1890 when the town was founded.  Many of them were sinking into the tundra, with the windows at ground level and the front doors half buried.  It was hard to imagine life in these cabins, with no electricity, no plumbing and no running water.  In the winter the temperatures routinely reach -50F.  The record low is -73F.  For the two weeks on either side of the winter solstice, the sun never comes up over the horizon.  There is some pre-dawn, grey light for a few hours; but no sunshine.  It's a harsh, but beautiful, life.

Postcard from Alaska: Denali National Park

Sunday morning we boarded a green school bus in Denali National Park for an eight hour tour.  Unlike Yellowstone and Yosemite, which are jam-backed with cars and people, Denali has very strict access rules.  You cannot drive your own vehicle through the park.  You must ride one of the shuttle buses, you cannot hang out of the window and call to the animals, and you cannot go off chasing bear and moose ( don't laugh, people do it in Yellowstone and they don't often live to talk about it).  We loved how wild the wilderness remains.  Our shuttle bus stopped a few times to pick up hikers, backpackers and campers on their way in or out of the park.  You can do all those things in the park.

Clouds increased during the day as we rolled along the gravel road.  Eight hours, on a gravel road, in a school bus wore us all out.  If I had it to do again, I would take a shorter shuttle tour and spend the rest of the time hiking.

The fall colors are about over, snow is expected tonight and tomorrow.  But, the the birch trees are brilliant yellow against the dark green spruce.

And the tundra is a carpet of orange, yellow and red.  I loved the tundra.

Denali was shrouded in clouds all day so we didn't get another view of it.  We did, however, see some wildlife.  The caribou are migrating to the west for the winter and we saw a couple small groups, picking their way across the gravel glacier beds.  They were too far away for a picture; binoculars were required to see them well.  We also saw Dall sheep up on the steep sides of the mountains, they looked like little white bits of cotton on a field of brown.  On the way out, we saw a grizzly bear in the distance.  On the way back in, we saw another.  The grizzly bear like the tundra, where the landscape is wide open and the berry bushes plentiful.  They are busy filling their bellies and building their fat reserves before retreating into their dens for the winter.

The closest animal we saw (other than the Arctic ground squirrels that ran in front of the bus) was a moose that was making its way through the forest.  Moose don't like the open tundra and prefer to be in the forest and shrubby areas where they can eat their fill of willow.  I wasn't quick enough to get a picture though.

Today, we woke to rain.  We put on our rain jackets and went for a long walk -- I was determined to get in my "hike" in Denali.  This afternoon, we board the train again and head further north to Fairbanks.

Postcard from Alaska: Talkeetna

Friday morning we boarded the train and headed north.  The train wound through thick groves of birch and spruce trees.  We also passed by stumpy black spruce trees -- looking like a Christmas tree farm gone bad -- and learned that the trees, although short and sparse, were very old.  Their stunted growth was the result of growing in the shallow layer of crushed stone that covers the permafrost.

After three hours we arrived in Talkeetna, a small town of a couple hundred people.  It was established during the Alaskan gold rush but now serves tourists and mountaineers.  Small planes fly mountain climbers to the base camp, for the climb up Denali.

We have been traveling with our friends, George and Nancy.  They lost their son, Brian, in an avalanche up on the mountain almost ten years ago.  They wanted to take a ride in one of those small planes, and see the spot where searchers found his last foot prints.  And they wanted us to join them on the flight.

Brian was a geologist, a licensed pilot, and a mountaineer.  He trained people to mountain climb and was a careful, cautious climber.  When he and a friend came to Denali, they delayed their climb up Barrell mountain by a few days because they were concerned about an avalanche. Sure enough, one did occur, as they expected, and then, after it was over, they started their ascent.  Unfortunately, there was an unstable area that they couldn't see; it broke loose; and carried them both about 3,000 down the side of the rock, to their death.  Our friends have pictures from Brian's camera, which was recovered with his body, but they wanted to see the mountain for themselves.  Barrell is one of the many peaks jutting up around Denali.

We were fortunate to have an absolutely clear day, no clouds, and no wind.  Denali is only visible 30% of the time; it is usually shrouded in clouds.  George settled into the co-pilot seat, Nancy climbed in the back, and Brett and I settled in the middle.  Our pilot pulled a sweatshirt over his head, started the prop engine, and took us up the mountain.  He followed the path of the glaciers that flow from the snow covered crags, then turned up the steep granite canyons, their rugged sides topped with snow.

It felt like I could reach out and touch the side of the mountain as we banked and climbed.  After circling Denali, we dropped down to Barrell.  There we circled the peak twice, and the pilot tipped the wing so George could get an unobstructed picture of the mountain.  Denali and its surrounding peaks were an awe inspiring mix of rock, whipped cream snow frosting above, blue glacial ice and tumbled piles of snow below.  I could feel the power and pull of the mountain, and understood why it draws so many mountain climbers.  I also felt awe, looking down into the deep fissures, and was thankful to be in a plane and not climbing below.  Nancy was quiet behind me, while George peppered our pilot with questions.

George needed to know and understand; Nancy needed to quietly bear witness.  And I sat between them, with tears in my eyes, thankful for God granting us a brilliant day and praying that it brought them some measure of peace and comfort.

Postcard from Alaska: Prince William Sound

We arrived in Anchorage Wednesday afternoon, got settled into our hotel, and walked around town a bit.  Anchorage is a big city and, well, big cities aren't my thing.  The city has a lot of big square buildings, noisy traffic, and tourists from cruise ships crowding the restaurants and gift shops.

Thursday morning we got out of town, going an hour or more south and then taking a cruise around Prince William Sound on a small catamaran.  There were 40 people on board, with a an open deck on the second story outside the cabin where we sat.  It was warm in Anchorage, guys were wearing teeshirts and shorts and girls were in sleeveless tops as they drove around town with their elbows sticking out of the windows of their jeeps.

The temperature dropped as we drove south, and when we emerged from a single lane, two-mile long tunnel with a railroad track down the middle it was cool enough to need a sweatshirt.  Once on the boat, we headed around the fjords in Prince William Sound.  We were out all day, a day with brilliant sunshine after a month of rain.

As we neared the glaciers, we zipped up our jackets and I put up my hood.  People donned ski hats and shivered in the stiff wind.  We drifted for awhile in front of Surprise Glacier and were rewarded with a huge calving -- pieces of the glacier breaking loose and crashing into the sea.

We saw salmon swimming, churning the water as they followed the tide.

Otters floated on their backs in the water, then turned and dove as we came close.  Seals slept on ice burgs.  Bald eagles watched us from the tops of trees.  And whales dove in the distance.

It was a magical day.

Random Friday

1.  The chick, christened "Dixie" by Camille (get it?  Dixie Chick), is still very much alive and running at top speed around the hen pen.  Every so often, a grumpy hen will peck it on the head when it tries to get a bite of the extra yellow squash I toss over the fence.  Other than that, it is well tolerated by the flock.  The rat zapper traps have been very effective -- seven or eight big rats so far.  The first few days we caught one or two rats each day.  Now, the traps are most often empty and, more importantly, there have been no more instances of rats dropping from the garage roof onto the ground next to me and scurrying away.  Talk about giving you a start!  It reminded me of Willard.  Eek.

2.  My foot is doing so much better.  It has been almost four months since it was crushed under Finessa's foot.  Last week I tried (again) to get around without my walking cast.  I bought some stiff leather work boots and my foot was pretty comfortable in it so I'm wearing them all the time now. I'm even wearing them to work; not exactly corporate attire -- but better than clomping around with a boot that looked like Darth Vader. We are going on vacation next week and I'm planning to leave the big walking cast at home.

3.  Yes, we are going on vacation.  This is the first vacation I've taken -- other than long weekends here and there -- since I started this job three years ago.  We are going to Alaska and we are going to be gone almost two weeks.  We went on an Alaskan cruise a number of years ago and loved the quiet grandeur and raw beauty of the bits and pieces we experienced then.  This time, we are taking a train inland, spending a few days at Denali, and going up to the Arctic National Park.

4.  Brett has been busy with his new project -- creating an obstacle course in the second arena.  We rarely use the arena and Brett would like to incorporate sensory work into his rides with Flash; since the two of them love (and excel at) them so much.  Earlier this week, Brett bought a big blue barrel to use.  He told me that Flash watched him unload it, and then started vigorously nodding his head as Brett took it into the barn.  (Tex watched from a safe distance, non-too-sure about the whole thing).  Brett said to me, "Flash sure seems happier, perkier and more engaged since I rode him the other day."  And I replied -- "of course, he does.  He's catching all that happy energy from you and he knows something is up."  Brett can't see it, but the way he is interacting with Flash has changed.  He points at him, in the manner of "you're next; I pick you" and Flash knows that signal well.  And Brett's energy is about "doing" something, instead of just "howdy and hello."  Flash knows.  He hasn't been Brett's partner for 16 years for nothing.