Chaos Leaves Town

I can’t believe that I forgot to get my 1999 passport renewed before now. Should have gotten on it back in mid may after I’d moved my RV back here to the campground. I should have but didn’t. I’m an idiot. Today I was reading some old emails from my brother about our trip into Canada that is suppose to start on Aug. 30th and saw a copy of one I sent him mentioning that my passport was expiring this year. It takes from 4 to 6 weeks to renew and you have to send your passport in while they research it and all. Cutting it close I am. Close examination of the passport shows that it doesn’t have to be renewed until October 24th and I expect to be in Walla Walla, Washington by September 14th but you never know, might have a wreck or trouble on the road and have to wait there (in Canada) or something. But as long as I get internet, I’m good to renew in Canada or on the road. Immigration has instructions on how to apply if you’re in Canada. Slick. Hard to believe that I’d be held up for more then a month but stranger things have happened.

There are squirrels that live all around the building, I see them several times a day outside. Lately, I’ve been seeing them inside the building. That’s really neat since they don’t tend to bite me. Cute little guys with a nervous behavior pattern. We were setting out mouse traps a couple weeks ago and got 19-20 mice. Over time, the 8 traps we had were dragged under buildings, into the woods, etc. so we are now out of traps. It’s possible that some squirrels were the one’s dragging the traps. Most of the mice around here aren’t big enough. I’ll have to get on that again. Need new traps.

If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know that someone had snuck back into the depths of the park here and set up camp without paying. I’m certain they were here for nearly a month so they owe us $300. When I picked up all their stuff a few days ago, there a couple things they could do: come in, apologize, pay what’s due and move to an approved spot. Or they could have called the cops and told them someone stole their stuff (not likely). Or they could be sneaking in the park at night looking for their stuff. Don’t think so.

But since they have decided to not come and see us about it so far, I’m going to give their nice mountaineering tent and air mattress to a gal who has been staying at the campground for a week so far. She’s nice, and deserves a nice tent. She’s been living in her car, not very comfortable way to sleep. I’ll let her have it next week sometime. There is another, even bigger tent that seems to have been abandoned by a gal with kids. She was suppose to prepay for more time on her space 10 days ago but so far she hasn’t been in to see me. I left a note on her tent with no response, and I haven’t seen her car here for around that length of time either. Hope she’s OK but things like leaving without cleaning up the campsite happens allot so I’m not terribly worried about her.

Allison is suppose to be back from the mid-west tonight so I hope to go down to meet her at the Big I later this evening. She went back for a funeral, and discovered a couple nights before she left that she has her own little medical problem to worry about. Luckily, with all that family there and with the amazing connections they have, arrangements have been made to see that she gets the proper care, quickly and inexpensively. I have stepped up and promised to kiss her boo-boo after the surgery.

I’m getting soooo fat that I can’t stand it. I feel uncomfortable all the time. It’s not like me to be avoiding the bike but that’s what I did for the last two years up here in Alaska. Mostly because of the very cold weather but now it’s spilled into the short summer. The last week I’ve done more riding then in the 9 preceeding months. Once I hit the road again, I expect to do the 5pm to 6pm bike ride every afternoon. I usually look for challenging routes when I’m biking. Like on the beach of Mazatlan. Early in the morning. Lot’s of fun riding for miles on a beautiful but sparsely populated beach.

So someone finally found the key to the 6-wheel ATV we have here at Ice Park Campground so I’m finally able to drive around the park in a reasonable time, that way I’m not away from the check in desk too long. The owner here just did not want to have a new key made so I’ve been without wheels since May 5th. What that means is that people can over stay what they’ve paid, sneak in and set up somewhere in the park where we don’t see them, and all sorts of other stuff.

Yesterday, I’m driving around the park and remember something. I’m parked in the last row of RV sites, there’s a row of trees, then there is an access road that goes deep into the park that connects to other roads but there are no RV sites on that road. South of that road is a little used area that’s relatively flat, has some long soft grass, and overlooks the pond. What I remember is that several times while I’ve been sitting in my RV watching TV over the better part of the last month, late at night, I’ve noticed one and sometimes two cars driving back towards the access road. I know nobody is suppose to be camping back there, but might be driving back to another part of the park, and when I finally got the 6-wheeler running two, three days ago, I’d gone down that road to see if anyone was squatting. Never saw anyone. But yesterday, I decide to go down to the pond (this park is 27 acres) and check around. Soon as I pass the wall of trees that shields the area I see car tracks in the tall grass. And off in the distance, a large tent. In a ‘no camping’ area. So I run over there. No one’s home.

I call and check with Hoa (Wa), she hasn’t given permission for anyone to camp there. So I begin to break camp for whoever is squatting. There is a nice, very large mountaineering tent for 6 with one of those two person air mattresses, two large bags with personal effects, two camp chairs, a fishing pole, ground covers, and the like. I transport it all over to a storage area and dump it off.

So now we have a large bundle of stuff that belongs to some jackass that thought they could sneak into the park and squat without paying. For several weeks. If they want their stuff back, it going to cost them $300. But it’s now the day after I picked it all up and nobody has been by asking about a missing camp. We’ll see how long they can be without their stuff. HAH!

Last night I went on down to the Big I (my favorite bar) for a couple, and I was lucky enough to end up sitting with the most beautiful woman in the world getting her drunk and taking the occasional drag off her cigarettes while we talked about how hard it is to be a raging liberal in a red state. Talking about gun control here might get you shot, for instance. 😉 Or like when I criticized Sarah Palin a few months ago, a guy nearby said in answer to one of my low key criticisms, and he was serious, “Well, how pretty was your last girl friend”? That stopped me short. How can you fight that argument? Instead of discussing how much of a stateswoman she might be or should be, etc., the conversation devolved into who was prettier, Palin or my last girlfriend. Dumb. (B-t-w, my last girl friend wins hands down).

Anyway, after getting her soundly drunk, she needed to get home, works on Saturdays and all, so I did the old glass of water and two bags of peanuts thing and viola! I’m good to give her a ride home so she doesn’t have to take a taxi. Course it helped that I generally nurse my beers. She says I’m a very, very bad man for talking her into having, “Just one more” several times. But the conversation was stimulating and challenging and suits me fine. Love to talk to her. One thing I found out last night was that she was this close, -||- , to being a Rhodes Scholar. Had three interviews and everything. She says that during those interviews, they are all sitting around a table and the selection committee just asks her questions, the nature of which now escapes me, but I recall they were not that challenging. Apparently, character is more important then smarts once you’ve been selected to apply, not to imply she doesn’t have character because she does. Just saying that the committee is looking for more then brains in their selection method. See, you’re not even invited to participate if you haven’t already accomplished allot in your scholastic endeavors. She did very well but just missed being chosen. An almost Rhodes Scholar. I’m really impressed with that.

Today is a big day in Fairbanks, this entire weekend is filled with festivities. This is like the official yearly birthday celebration of the founding of Fairbanks (1902). There are parades, Palin is officially handing over the governorship to someone else here in town on Sunday I think, there are several music venues, lots of places to hang out and have fun, and nice coolish weather (70-75°F). I’m here at the park office now but plan on getting on my bike and enjoying some of the fun as soon as I’m done with this. I’ll take my camera so I should have some pictures for you guys sometime soon.

Talk at you later.

I haven’t been doing much lately so I haven’t posted much. I went out on a date a few days ago, that was fun but ultimately frustrating when the interest I had in her wasn’t reflected. Now she’s moved on and I probably won’t ever see her again. So I’m listening to opera today. Oh, well. Such is life.

The park (where I volunteer as a camp host) has been super slow for several weeks and then we hit July 4th weekend and got almost full up in our water and electric sites. Still had a ton of tent, tent with electric, RV sites with electric and dry sites. It’s been very slow now for 3 days (July 6 thru July 9) so I’ve been running around looking for items I need for the RV, and groceries of course.

I ran out of propane last week and ran over to the fueling station to get a fill up. I do most all my cooking, most of the water heating and sometimes run the refer on propane. I was a little surprised I was out this early (I had a full tank when I parked the rig at the cabin last winter – or so I think) in the season. So I got 2 months out of 25 gallons or so. If that’s what I started with.

The story though is about the cost. It came to 18.8 gallons this fill up, usually it takes 25 gallons, and when I went in to pay I just handed her my card and didn’t really think about looking at the $86 they were charging me. Later when I was putting it in the spread sheet, I noticed it was $4.59 per gallon. Wow. It’s a waste product! It costs them very little to process it and tank it. Well, what ever, not much I can do about it other then bitch.

Three, four weeks ago I bought a new kitchen faucet for the RV. Mine was pretty much shot. Leaking whenever it was used. So I got a cool shiny one with a vegi washer built right into the handle. So I can either just use it as a regular faucet or pull out the head and rinse my vegis. It has one of those buttons you push that turns the stream into a gentle spray. Very nice. I still haven’t been able to find a tool I can get into that tight space under the sink and really reef down on the big nut that holds it in place. So for now it twists and turns when I pull the head from one sink to the other. Might have to buy another tool just for that.

I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity last week to spend several hours talking to my favorite artist. She wants to go to Japan, specifically Tokyo, because her works are reminiscent of Japanese style works and she thinks she could be a artistic rock star there, among other reasons. I strongly agree with her. I was able to entertain her with some stories I have of Tokyo, having spent time there. A delightful evening of stimulating conversation with someone who has the same political mindset that I do. I had almost given up hope of finding any democrats in Alaska before I met her. Now I know several others, but they were closet dems before Obama won so can’t trust um. You know, now that democrats are in power, many democrats seem to be a little more brazen in their evaluations of the republican ticket. Specifically here in Alaska, the home base of Sarah Palin, I often run into people that think she is just the greatest thing since baked salmon, it’s nice to have met  someone (and I continue to meet others) who can tell what a poor choice she would be for any higher office.  This is the week that Sarah quit her job as Governor of Alaska. With nearly two years left. I can tell you that several of the people I hang with were supporters of hers before that happened and now could care less about her. Or her aspirations of higher office. The people up here know her better then I do for sure, and if they are turning on her, I see her support slowly eroding over the next two years. Higher office is probably not in her future. Or so I hope.

It’s near the end of June and I’ve had to work the last 10 days straight, or I did it as a favor really. Anyway, now I have two days off so I thought I’d shovel, er, write some more prose and let you guys have it. Kapow! Right in the kisser! Off we go…………………………………..

Since I was working, I did miss another Solstice Celebration here in Fairbanks. The whole town is set up for stuff, plays going on, lots of music venues, booths, midnight baseball games etc. Mostly outside venues. All to celebrate the longest day of the year – June 21st. I missed it last year too. But, the morning of the 21st, cloudy and rain. Heavy at times. It wasn’t until around 2pm that the weather cleared. So I wasn’t that unhappy about having to stay inside. I was a little disappointed that I missed it again though, two years and I have no idea what it’s like. I really wanted to go to the midnight baseball game but I got lazy around 10:30pm when it starts. Touted as being the only ball game that goes into the wee hours without any lighting. When Hoa (the office manager where I volunteer) asked me to work my day off, I didn’t realize it was on the 21st. Damn.

The last several days it’s been either been light rain, or totally overcast, but last evening then this morning, heavy rain. I sold another computer so I had to run over and install it today stopping at Wal-Mart. The parking lot was packed. These people up here don’t mind the rain. Even when it’s heavy.

Several days ago the sun was beating down on my RV without mercy, so I packed up (this involves getting everything loose tied down, everything stowed, jacks up, etc. – takes over an hour), moved to a spot that doesn’t have water but does have lots of shade. While moving I filled my water tank with water from the park but I used the hose that was connected to the faucet. Medium sized mistake. The hose is for gardens and the fresh water in my tank, 60 gallons, tasted like crap because of it. Nasty. Since it’s such a trial to disconnect, drive over to get water, come back and setup, etc. I kind of put it off until yesterday. Finally got it emptied by dumping it on the ground, drove over and refilled using my drinking water hose, got set up again and all so I’m a happy camper right now.

It has been a little disappointing not having any sunshine to speak of over the past 2 weeks or so. Might have well stayed where I was to begin with, at least I had water at that site.

I’ve started watching ‘Firefly’ on Hulu lately because my daughter is always raving about it. I don’t have cable so I didn’t notice when it originally came on, never saw any trailers for it, and didn’t know much about it other then what she said. Boy, what a great Sci-Fi program. With four babes! And need I mention tight and intelligent writing, excellent performances, great special effects, and on and on? Wow. I’m hooked like most of the rest of you. Just wish I had a faster computer connection.

Well, that’s all for today. I’ll get some more pictures when the weather clears up soon.

Yesterday, I noticed a babe hanging around the park. Didn’t remember checking her in so when she came into the office, I expected her to rent a spot for the night. Turned out she had hung around all night already. Lost her home somehow. Has a thick eastern European accent. Turns out she is Bulgarian. There are two guys her age here already and she had been talking to them at 2 in the morning and they offered to let her stay at their tent site. Then Wa got involved and made them an offer that somehow rased the guys rate from $110 a week to $140 a week while the gal would be paying $10 per day when it’s usually $17. I could see them raising their eyebrows at that but Wa chatted away until they finally agreed to a totally unfair rate increase based on totally lame reasons. Now the three of them are occupying a large tent site, her in her van, the guys in their tents. All three of them have jobs, but she is the only one with money. And the only one so far that has paid us. The more I talk to her the more I like her. Thought she might be a doper, junky, call girl, etc. but it seems shes just down on her luck right now and likes to play the angles to save money and is use to that from growing up in Bulgaria, or so it seems. Like I said though, she has a job. And had no problem paying her portion of the rental fees without complaint, unlike the two guys. Their story was they rented an apartment with a third guy and just the two of them paid the deposit. Then the 3rd guy bailed on them and they still haven’t gotten their deposit money back and don’t expect to, one of those deals where the owner turned other potential renters away. Both just got jobs so they’re waiting for pay checks to pay us. We are allowing them to stay here for 5 more days without paying. Then they pay up or get out. The gal just told me that they’re moving out soon, so I expect them to run without paying…I’ll be watching for that anyway.

Although it’s now June 1st, I thought I’d put up a few more pictures of the Ice Carving event from March. Then follow that with a few pics from downtown Fairbanks during the sled dog races in mid-April.

Happy B'day Alaska

One of the kid slides...

The log cabin slide. Very popular with the kids.

Entrance to The Maze...

Snow covered sculpture. We had a lot of snow last winter so this kept happening. We have the equipment to blow them off, just have to find the volunteer that wants to stick with it for the whole season...

Another Maze sculpture.

Waiting...

Wow!

Mirror image.

Musk Oxen.

Huh?

Dinosaur Attack!

I still have lots more and I’ll put them up later. These are just teasers.

After the ice carving show, I wandered downtown in early April and hung around while a dog sled race got started. The route began and ended in downtown Fairbanks and was a 20 mile long loop around the city. I didn’t see many of the teams as I got there late and left early. But I did notice one thing that was really strange…a fur auction. Here they had all these dead animal furs hanging on racks or stacked in piles. They’d hold one up and people would bid on them. In some cases, hundreds of dollars.

On the way to downtown, I stopped and took a picture of the Chena river looking West.

The main street all set up for the dog sled race.

More of main street, showing the 'start - finish' line.

This is how they haul the dog teams around up here.

Soapy Smith was a famous trouble maker. Place is just named after him. Yawn.

Fans wandering up and down the street.

Can you believe it? A fur auction in 2009.

Here's a guy with a full wolf head hat. Whew, really? Yes, really. That's his forehead peeking out from under the wolf's fangs. Strange when you first see him face on.

This skin went for a couple hundred but I've forgotten what animal it's off of. Red fox?

That’s the last of the pics for today. I have more of the ice carvings to put up. I’ll try to get them up soon.

Meanwhile, I was able to move back to the campground in my RV the first weekend of May. Since then I’ve been volunteering as a camp host here. We had a nice warm week in mid-April so I was able to shovel off the top of my RV. Then it got warm, up into the high 40’s F and that melted much snow. But I was stuck at the cabin with a 3 foot deep pile of snow all around the RV. Took many days of warm weather to even be able to think about driving it out.

The last few days of April and first few days of May it got really warm and the melt sped up. I did dig a little of the snow from around the RV but mostly just let it melt. Then on the 2nd of May, with the snow from in front of the RV mostly gone, I turned the start key, with my fingers crossed, and she roared to life. Very little white smoke, purred like a kitten and not sounding at all like a rig that had spend seven months in a deep, deep freeze. I had to drive over a little snow berm of 8-9″ but it wasn’t a problem. Then I parked in my front yard where I could load the rig easier and spent the next 3 days getting all my stuff out of the cabin and back into the RV. On the forth day, I drove it over to the tire center and had them put the tire I took off last spring back on. What had happened was it was soooo cold the winter of ’07-08 the bead on the tire broke and it lost air. I had a friend help me put the spare on and I was now removing that spare and putting the tire that belonged there back on.  Now with all the tires the same size, topped off with air, and plenty of fuel, I called Stacy and invited her to join me for a shake down trip. I hadn’t been more then 22 miles since July of ’07. She was all for it and suggested we head down to Delta Junction where she had worked the summer before. Then we invited Dorthy so soon the three of us were heading south on the Alcan highway. Past North Pole (a small town south of here) and into the wilderness. It was about Eielson AFB where we all realized we’d forgotten our cameras! An hour and a half later we stopped for ice cream at Delta Junction and some shopping at a thrift store. Stacy showed us where she use to hang out and drive her Jeep in the river bed for fun. The trip was nice and it firmed up my feeling that I really wanted to get back on the road. So I decided that, yes, I’d be leaving Fairbanks for points south in August. The rig ran fine, brakes felt good, made a couple funny noises at times but nothing that seemed too bad.

We’ve had some pretty nice weather for many days since then (it’s now June 1st) and some light rain and cloudy, cool days. Spotty weather I’d say. Very light RV traffic into the park and we’re seeing the 30-40% drop in RV traffic that was predicted. Since we expected it, and now we’re seeing it, we’re going to open more rentable rooms in the building. Just to see if that works. Need to make money somehow.

Well, that’s all for today, I’m going to ride the bike down to Pioneer Park and hang out for a while. Maybe take some pictures. Talk to you later.

Haf Canadian took me to task today with a comment about how I haven’t posted in a month. It’s worse then that, I haven’t posted since Apr. 24th, so a full 5 weeks. Sorry everyone. I’m very pleased that you all follow my adventures. I noticed that yesterday, after 5 weeks of no new postings, ten of you still stopped by to see if there was anything new. Well, I have no excuse. I do have more pictures of the ice carving competition, lots more, that I want to put up, it just seems difficult to bring myself to sit here in front of the computer and just do it. Then this summer I plan on doing some exploring around Fairbanks to places I haven’t been yet so stay tuned for that.

I promise I’ll get something up this evening. I’m not planning on going anywhere, there is nothing but reruns on TV, so later today I’ll get some more stuff up.

In the news, I’ve firmed up my travel plans. I’ll be leaving Fairbanks and heading to the lower 48 on or around Aug. 30th. My brother Dan is flying in, we’ll head on down to Haines, stay a couple days exploring, then take the ferry over to Skagway. Dan will then climb the Chilkoot trail, maybe I’ll join him, that takes 5 days. He’ll have his camera so I’ll post the good ones. Then we’ll head up into the mountains and into Canada. We will enjoy an extended trip so all together we’ll be on the road for two weeks. Ending the trip in Walla Walla, Washington where my kids are now living.

After a few days or weeks with the kids and my sister (she lives in Walla Walla too), I’m heading east into Idaho and North Dakota to have a look around. I’m thinking that I should also make a trip over to the east coast. It’s crowded, I know, but there is a lot of history over there I’d like to see and visit.

So, keep checking back, there will be many more exciting adventures to come.

It’s a couple days later, not in real time mind you but in picture taking time, and I’ve gotten more pictures of the event so I thought I’d put them up for you today.

The weather sometimes changes in minutes and my work varies so I get out to see the art and take pictures when I can. There are nearly 20 acres with artwork on them so it’s a hike too. Good for me I know but when it’s -20F sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.

Artist impressing the cartoon into the ice...

An abstract family.

It’s a couple days later and the carvings have been viewed by thousands, a winner has been picked and awards passed out. A good time had by all. So, here’s some more pictures…

You can see even better photos at www.icealaska.com.