Chaos Leaves Town

A couple weeks ago a moose was wandering around the park munching on new buds on the low trees. These animals are huge! The one that’s hanging around this year looks like a two year old that was hanging around with it’s mom last year. Every year someone up here in Fairbanks gets attacked by a mother moose protecting her calf. And running doesn’t always help…they get mad and chase people all over, even attacking buildings to get inside or vehicles. But the vast majority of attacks end with the mom moose losing interest and wandering off as if nothing happened. While the intended victim of a brutal stomping needs to change their underwear.

Because of that, I don’t rush out with my camera and try to get up close because they’re too unpredictable. Better to hang at the building for some protection while I use my telephoto.

First shot without telephoto...you can see the moose standing there in the road in the center of the picture.

This was on April 13th and we still had lots of snow and ice left. Still freezing at night but the days were relatively warm.

Now the telephoto shot. He/she turned when I whistled.

Continue reading →

The BP World Ice Carving event has come and gone and it’s time for me to post some pictures of the ice carvings. It was quite the event with 10’s of thousands of visitors this year but since it’s likely we’ll loose the land the event is hosted on, kind of subdued for the hundreds of volunteers like myself that know the situation. The railroad has rights to the land we sit on and have been trying to push us off for 5-6 years, but to their credit have given us breaks on the rental, keep pushing the drop dead date into the future, and try to work with us. They have a mandate to maximize income from any lands they control (they don’t own it, the people do) but have been asking twice what it’s worth, based on assessments, for 3 years now. Anyway, the CEO told me 15 minutes ago that he’s made an offer of $2.25 million for the land. That’s what the RR is asking, though that is $1 million over one of two assessments. I recommended he get 5 assessments (I was a licensed real estate broker in Oregon), toss out the high & low, average the other three and offer that amount. Don’t think he’s going to do that, but it’s his money.

Anyway, here’s some pictures of the Ice Art we had this year. If you’ve been wishing that you could visit them in person, it’s possible there won’t be a world class ice carving event here next year, or the year after so you may have missed your chance. But then again, if the RR does sell the property to the CEO, we’ll be open again next February.

A couple weeks ago, I wandered around the park and took these pictures for your enjoyment. You can see them and more complete bio’s of the artists at http://www.icealaska.com

Continue reading →

It’s a nice sunny day…so I thought I’d get some pictures of what’s right outside the building. But first, some other stuff. The gal in this picture is a heavy equipment operator here during the Ice Carving event every year. Her career is as an archeologist. She wrote the book about Alaska’s now famous ‘Mesa’ site which pushed back paleoindian habitation of interior Alaska to 12,000BP. Google her name for several links like http://www.ele.net/arctic_artifacts/arctic_artifacts.htm The people that occupied this site preceded the Eskimo by thousands of year. Being an amateur interested in archeology, I enjoy getting to talk to her about the Mesa site and other archeological questions that interest me. Like pre-clovis sites, Kennewick man (who’s grave I probably walked over as a kid because I grew up in Kennewick and played on the beach where he was discovered), the Monte Verde site (which is pre-clovis but was discovered in almost pristine condition), etc.  She’s also the one I go to to borrow books. I’m grateful she had so many of David Weber’s books and I’ve been greatly enjoying them through 5 volumes so far. She also loaned me her Christmas present, ‘First Peoples in a New World’ by David Meltzer. Scholarly to be sure, but written in a lay style so that even I can enjoy wading through it. She’s planning on reading it when she goes on a field trip this summer, probably to that cave above the arctic circle that has all the dinosaur bones. I’m thankful she loaned it to me. I’m half through it all ready after just 5 days of reading during my spare time here at the park. This link will download the PDF of her book: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ak/aktest/ofr.Par.6519.File.dat/ofr86.pdf

Connie Adkins B'day party.

If you read through that PDF, note how primitive the points look. Few have the typical clovis features.

Across the street from the building, the ice maze.

I seem to have forgotten to turn off the date stamp on the pictures. Oh well.

The train station.

Some of the incidental artwork for the crowds.

Ross and Ralph working on an ice lens.

Heather out there taking pictures & getting background info for the web site.

I got curious so I wandered over and check out their work.

One of the incidental peices.

OK, enough for now, I’ll put up more soon.

Here’s a few pictures of the ice park in January 2011. We do get sunshine but you can see from the snow not every day.

My little Subaru...outside my room.

Inside the building. This is where I do most of the computer repair and configuration. See that stack of computers against the wall? I get to return those to usable shape.

We were given a bunch of used but newer to us Dell computers around this time so I spend many days installing parts and WinXP so they’d be ready for the crowds of volunteers that use computers during the event. Then at one of the meetings we gave away all the old 750MHz machines.

Continue reading →

After Whitehorse, the roads turned really nice. Light traffic and most of the frost heaves I had to contend with in ’07 were fixed. The big construction project was almost done so it didn’t take anytime at all to get to Tok. In fact, I was there by 3:30pm the afternoon I’d left Whitehorse. I still had some travel left in me so I headed on to Fairbanks. About 5 miles out of Tok, I picked up a hitchhiker from the side of the road. He’d been working at a gold mine outside of Chicken, AK, had a fight with the owner and late the night before had just picked up what he could carry of his stuff and walked into Chicken. Found a floor to sleep on that night, and got a ride the next day into Tok. He was trying to walk to Fairbanks when I picked him up. Him waving that $5 bill helped me decide to stop for him. Tho I thought it was a $20. Anyway, I got into Fairbanks around 7:30pm and stopped at my favorite bar to say hi to everyone. Got to the Ice Park Campground around 10pm on May 21st.

After I arrived I was invited to be the camp host again so I settled in and took over that job. 2010 was a slow tourist time in Fairbanks for every business us included, so the work was light and I spent most of my time just hanging around the office and checking people in and out occasionally. Got my bike out and rode around town 3-4 times a week to keep fit. We had a beautiful and serene summer without overly hot days. Seldom got above 75°F.

A friend that I’d met here at Ice Park (Dorthy) was staying in one of the upstairs rooms and she had taken a couple shots of moose along the road up…something I’d failed to do this trip…so I got copies from her. Thought you might like to see them. They were taken around 50 miles outside of Tok along side the Richardson highway.

Moose! Come here little moosie!

Same moose, different angle.

A long lazy summer took all of my time. Saving money was a necessity this year since I’m getting low on funds but I’m now doing computer consulting so that is helping take the edge off. I’ve got 10.5 months to wait before I officially retire and my 401K kicks in so I’m looking forward to that. I’ve gotten my expenses down to around $600 per month and if I can keep that up for several more months, I’ll make it to retirement in good shape. Then it’ll be time to buy a newer RV and spend more time on the road touring the country. I’ve never been to much of the east coast except on quick day runs so I’d like to do that. I’d also like to find someone with a ocean cruiser and sign on as a deck hand for some ocean touring. Ya only get one trip through this life and I’d like to do as much as I can before the grim reaper appears at my door. After several uneventful months at the Ice Park, it finally got cold and snowed. I was out of my RV by this time living in one of the rooms in the parks main building. It’s small, but it’s free and the I get free food all the time. Many businesses around town are in the habit of donating food to us for the Ice Carving event in Feb. – Mar. and they don’t stop after the event. And to turn them down could mean that the channels would dry up so we continue to take food all year ’round. Not as much as we do in Feb. – Mar. but enough to feed the few people that are here as volunteers all year ’round.

Moon over Fairbanks, Nov. 2010

Then in late Nov. the Chinese carvers start showing up to do ice sculptures around town for various businesses and they do most of the cooking. One thing about this particular group of Chinese is that they use far to many sweeteners in their cooking for my liking. I saw one of them pouring around a half cup of sugar into a traditional Chinese soup! I don’t care for sweetened entrees so all that sugar in the food helped me avoid eating to often or to much. I did do some of my own cooking but it’s easy to fall into a routine of eating what’s offered when other people cook and clean up.

Continue reading →

Finally, I’m approaching Whitehorse. It’s May 20th, 2010 in this travel saga, and I spend the day not thinking about much of anything. Didn’t bother to get around to taking any pictures since I was getting road weary. I get to the Hi Country RV park in Whitehorse around 5pm. It’s a little chilly, down in the low 50’s F. The weather had been clear most of the day. The RV park is only 3 miles to town, but being so tired, I decided to stay in again. It’s great having your own food and drinks aboard. And a place to pee. Spent a little time zoning out in front of the boob tube, since they had cable and all, and even wandered over to the common room and played a little pool against myself (park wasn’t that crowded). Checked out the facilities, very nice, and bought myself a candy bar for desert at the store.

Parked at the Hi Country RV park in Whitehorse.

That evening, I got on-line and checked the diesel prices around Whitehorse. When I’d arrived, I’d gotten a 1/4 tank of diesel because I thought I’d get a better price up the road 2-3 miles, as I’d done in the past. This was a RV park after all. But when I checked the internet, turned out they had the best price in town. The price was even better then in Tok, Alaska, which I expected to be my next overnight stop.  I’d gotten up at around 5:30am, very early for me, but the picture above was taken at 5:42am, so it’s proof I do occasionally get up early. Had to wait for the office to open at 8 so I could get fuel, but I had time to have a nice breakfast and lounge around for a while, and time for checking RV stuff like the tire pressures and oil level. Then with re-fueling out of the way after 8, I was back on the road by 8:30am.

Continue reading →

Sorry for the long lead times between posts. No excuse. Just ‘Sorry’. I have several days of nothing important to do so I’ll try to hurry things along. In real time, it’s now a couple days before the holidays in 2010. I’ve been here in Fairbanks now since May 21st staying at Ice Park, which is the venue for the International Ice Carving competition. I’m staying in a room they provided me with since I spent 1,000 hours working this summer as a camp host. I haven’t taken many pictures this time up here, and those I did I already, or mostly, posted in previous posts.

Some of the things that have happened up here this year aren’t really worth mentioning either. Pretty much went the same as in ’08 as far as running the RV park except this year I was also asked to help with the rental rooms they had upstairs in the main building. We had some deadbeats and I cleaned them out. Except for one guy, I kept missing the fact that he wasn’t paying. I thought he was current but he wasn’t. Really nice, personable guy but I missed the fact that he was a thief. Adding what I let him get away with, with what the other manager did amounted to $750, counting late charges. A very slippery guy, I found out. Something like that didn’t & won’t happen again. That is, if the RV park is even open next year. The Railroad has rights to the land, and they’ve been trying to push us off. But the state owns it and we’re petitioning the state legislature to allow us to stay here. It’s a great venue for both the winter ice carnival, and for an RV park.  We won’t know until the legislature convenes in January. They only have a 90 day session, by law, so with all the other pressing matters they have to attend to, we might not get a hearing. Or a bill passed to grant the city the land, which would mean that a 22 year tourist attraction will cease to exist. No more ice sculptures. And I’ll not have a free place to stay so will probably head on back to the ‘Outside’. Maybe Idaho. Dunno at this point.

Well, Xmas is over. A total bore I’m afraid. Then New Years came and went. Stayed home and read a book. Did get an invite out but didn’t feel like it much.

Continue reading →

It’s now May 19th and I’m still heading due north through Canada. It takes 5-6 days from the Washington border to Fairbanks. As each day on the road passes, the traffic gets thinner, the towns smaller and further apart, and it seemed on this trip, the weather got worse.

Still passing lakes, only these are covered with ice.

My dash heater still isn’t working, (there’s a vacuum pump that doesn’t seem to be working), so I had to drape my coat over my legs to be comfortable. Wasn’t all that bad, but I will have to get the heater fixed eventually. I enjoyed this countryside and the remoteness very much. I’m use to traveling by forests that have been harvested so to get to enjoy pristine and uncut forests was a treat. I did see some clear cut patches but not often.

Continue reading →

8am the next morning. A little rain to contend with.

The next morning, May 18th, I leave Clinton around 8am and head on to Hixon. The countryside is reminiscent of the western section of Washington, before you cross through the Cascades to the west slope. The weather was comfortable, with plenty of sunshine.

Heading north to Alaska, 8am.

You don’t see much traffic in this part of the country. But that suits me fine. I like long lonely roads.

Several miles later, more of the same, with a drop of water on the landscape.

Not far to Hixon...

I passed through this little town just before 9am. Didn’t see any reason to stop but I suppose it has it’s charm. Only 179 kilometers to Hixon. And 239 to Prince George.

Continue reading →

It’s now May 16th, and I leave Oroville on my way to Alaska. I’ve made this trip a couple of times and this time I’ve planned and timed a route that will  take me to some different towns along the way.  If it all comes out as planned, I should be in Fairbanks in 5 or 6 days. The first couple days of the trip will be over a new route and should afford an opportunity to see some new sites. The rig has been running well and I don’t have any worries about breakdowns, but it’s always something I need to think about, so  I’ll stick to what passes as main roads.  When you get about half way through Canada, you’re in really remote areas. There are places where I didn’t see any cars or trucks for an hour or more. And there are even fewer homes or business.

I took US97 up into Canada, through Osoyoos, and on the north end of town, was the border crossing. I handed them my sheet of excess alcohol, which I thought they’d need, but after a couple minutes they just handed it back and waved me through. Didn’t even come aboard the RV. That’s why I like crossing at small border crossing stations. Less hassles. The first leg of this part of the journey passes by lake Osoyoos.

Just outside of Oroville, Washington.

The weather was looking like it might rain, but it held off and later the sun came out.

Now in Osoyoos, Canada. That's Osoyoos Lake over there.

Continue reading →