Chaos Leaves Town

After spending all that time getting ready, it was a pleasure to finally load all the Webcams up in the SUV and tote them out to the venue. This event was a big thing with the entire town of North Pole getting involved with lots of volunteers. Don and I went out on Tuesday to meet with the cable modem techs in our temporary computer room. We had been given permission to set up in the laundry room of the RV park. They are closed for the most part and only have one person staying at the park. The door has a code lock so we felt safe when we set up 3 computers, a cable modem, a router, and a hub. We met with the cable people and verified we had a signal, then on Thursday, we brought and set up the three computers with appropriate script for the cameras. Along with 26 cameras. Go to Ice Alaska You’ll be at site 27 with a view of how the cameras are installed on stands. Since they are all wifi enabled, all we had to do was set up two wifi receivers back at the RV park office laundry room where all our equipment was ready to receive the pictures, then upload the the pictures to the internet.

Thursday afternoon & Friday evening Don & I put up all the cameras. We had waited for the fences and security to be in place:

It seems that easy now, but Don, Rick and I spent from 6:30pm Friday to early Saturday morning getting everything to work.

Here’s Don & Rick working hard Friday night:

The entire system had been working at the Ice Park in Fairbanks when we moved it out to North Pole, but the change of routers and changing from DSL to a cable modem made the Linux box unhappy. It took until 4:30 AM to get it to accept the pictures from the cams and upload them to our host. Then the drive home was another 1/2 hour so I was happy to crawl into bed at 5:15am.

The Christmas In Ice event is a 38 mile round trip to my cabin so there was a definite need for remote computing. I spent a few hours reading up on it and then learned how to configure the Nexland router to allow remote desktop. The WinXP boxes at either end weren’t a big problem, but the Nexland turned out to be troublesome in an obscure way. Took me three round trips to get it working. Now I’m able to configure the webcams from home and have set up the Nexland to allow me to configure it remotely too, even if the LAN it’s connected to is down. Right now I’ve got the Camera Admin computer set to accept and allow remote computing but it won’t be that hard to get all of the boxes set up that way, even the Linux box will allow it.

On Saturday, we did some tweaking amidst the sculptors who were frantically trying to get their works done by Sunday at 3PM, ready for judging:

This star came out looking really good on the internet:

The fogginess of this set of pictures is due to the cold. It was around -5F while we were working out there and I had the camera in it’s padded case stuffed into an outside pocket of my winter coat. Turns out I need to keep it in an inside pocket to keep it warm.

This is a pretty good picture of the artist and eventual winner of the ice sculpture contest. The sculpture is of a prancing deer family and the style is retro from the 1930’s, I believe it’s called ‘rococo’:

Initially, we set up 24 cameras and got them working during the competition. Then on Monday (Dec. 10th) we shuffled some cameras around to show the winners and some shots of the park and the kids section while we left a static picture of the other works on the webserver. So when you go look at the webcams now, 11 are ‘live’ and the rest are from the archive (there are a couple cameras not transmitting just now but we’ll get that fixed soon, but it is a long drive just to unplug and replug in a camera).

I’ve been really busy the last 4 weeks or so getting ready for the big ice carving competition in North Pole. This is the last time I’m going to mention this…North Pole is a little town around 12 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. The national news media usually shows up near Xmas, does a few news pieces from around town (fluff pieces really) and packs up and leaves so the crews can have Xmas with their families. This year is different because the town has worked their butts off getting Ice Alaska and volunteer crews to stage a Christmas in Ice competition at Santaland RV park right next to the world famous Santaland retail store.

Most of my job so far has been prepare the web cameras (webcams or wcams) for the event. We will have 22-26 wcams ready by this coming weekend – Dec. 8th and 9th. I had to upgrade the firmware, swap old cameras with new, set the configurations, set the wcams to upload pictures to the FTP, get the WiFi gear all talking together, etc. It’s been a big push the last two weeks getting all the gear talking together like they’re suppose to, while having to go back and change stuff all the time as new decisions are made about machine & directory names. I only have a couple days to pull all my parts together for the event so I’m trying to work harder then I normally do.

The weather here has been nice and cold, running around 20F during the days, and dropping to the -5’s or so at night. Today it hit a new low, -20F when I got up, and hasn’t changed much since then except to drift upwards. It’s now -13F @ 9:34pm local time. Tomorrow should be the same. Since I had to head out to Santaland park today, I got to wear all my cold gear. I have some new LaCrosse 1600gram winter boots designed for -60F. Everything else I have I found at the local thrift shop. My coat is good to -50F, then I have insulated pants, thick gloves, a couple insulated hoods, ear muffs, a few sweaters, etc. It hasn’t gotten cold enough to require thermal underwear yet, but I do have some. Anyway, today Don and I went out to the Park and delivered some pipes to make camera stands with. At the same time, we waited for the cable company people to arrive and install cable internet services for us in the parks office where we’ll set up our servers. We should be testing wcams by Thursday, Dec. 6th and have the whole system running with 26 wcams by Saturday morning at 9am. If we’ve done our jobs well, after spending a few hours at the park making sure everything is working, we will be able to come home and adjust the cameras from our desktops. We’ll only need to go out to the park if a camera’s pictures stop updating. Cool, huh?

You’ll find the pictures, updated every 5 minutes if everything goes as planned, at this address: Ice Carving at North Pole!

There aren’t any wcam pictures up yet but should be by Saturday. Meanwhile, go check out the shots of last years Ice Park sculptures.

Here’s the trip I take from my cabin to the Ice Park:

Just a couple miles later I arrive at the Ice Park:

This is the driveway…really:

Here’s the building where I do all the computer and webcam work:

And down one of the park roads, it’s actually around 11 AM in the morning and most days it’s a little brighter:

The building is quite big, I’d hate to have to pay to heat it:

I think the Chinese sculptors carved this dragon in one day. I didn’t notice it until late in the day, I’ll go back and get a better picture soon:

Today, we drove over to Santaland RV Park to get set up:

Over there is the building where we’ll set up the web server and wcam server, I’m standing where the ice sculptures will be:

Those wooden stands will hold all the web cams:

One of several carvings already here, this one was provided by the city of North Pole. Most of the carvings are being done by a team of Chinese ice sculptors. These guys are good. One of them is China’s best carver:

The raindeer look much better then they did during the summer when they were shedding:

Here’s Dick Brickley on the left, the Chairman of the Board of Ice Alaska, Inc., and Andy, long time member, the ice logistics expert:

Connie, long time member, also author and scientist, I’m reading her book, “The Mesa Site: Paleoindians above the Arctic Circle” at this time:

That’s all for tonight. I’ll try to stay current over the next few weeks, time permitting.

The day after we went to the theater, we headed up to Chena Hot Springs. This place has been frequented by Fairbanksians for over a century. Since shortly after it was discovered that there was hot water bubbling out of the ground and flowing down a small stream here. The springs are and hour and a half out of town averaging 60 MPH so it was quite the hike for people years ago and for many years. And because of that fact, there are many buildings here that are filled with rooms for rent. If you hiked, buggied, took the public carriage, or rode a horse out this far, you wanted to stay for a while and rest before you had to hoof it back. These days you drive a car on a blacktopped highway at 60 MPH so it’s not as important to stay a few days. The hot springs themselves are upstream a ways from the swimming pond, we did hike up that way for a bit but turned back since there isn’t much to see anyway. Plus there were signs about the bears in the area everywhere.

When you stroll the grounds, you find these antiques about. They were all brought up here in the early 1900’s and the placards all say these machines were here to work, used until they couldn’t be fixed anymore and left where they broke. The new owners have tried to bring them out of the woods and from behind buildings and spruce them up:

This is a very old home made snow machine, now called a snowmobile:

At the back of the property, this large heated pond where you can soak your ills away:

Here’s the improved stream that comes from the hot springs. What they did years ago was to join the hot spring and a cold stream to mix the water and lower the temperature. Now they have a pipe run up to the hot spring and can store the hot water and use it to run turbines to generate electricity. There’s still enough hot water for the pool:

This carriage is used for weddings here, and has been for nearly a century:

Out front is a runway and these planes live up here:

This is a look southwest towards Fairbanks, those clouds are pretty typical many days of the summer, but we do get sunshine as well:

This old Cat type machine was kind of interesting:

After we wandered around for a couple hours, we bought tickets for a visit to the ‘Ice Place’. This is a year round freezer kept at either 20F or -20F, (I can’t remember which). This is the first year where the sculptures didn’t thaw. Took them a couple years to figure out how to insulate and cool the building efficiently. The biggest help was to start generating their own cold using hot water from the springs instead of using the typical refrigeration machines you might be use to.

This is just after we entered the building. See the chainsaws there on the wall? That’s what they use to start carving the sculptures. This area is the work area of the staff sculptors:

Then there is this table with glasses made of ice used by the folks that pay extra for a drink at the ice bar:

The whole building is made out of ice blocks like these (except the outer shell):

The fireplace:

The place is very large so my flash disappeared into the distance. If you look carefully, you might see all those people sitting at the bar (on the right) and the other sitting at the tables scattered around. This is where you would get a nice cold drink:

An ice sculpture:

Close up of the fireplace:

Hard to see but those lights are on the sculptures:

Here’s a very large knight sculpture attacking another knight:

There are rooms you can rent here if you want to spent the night in a big igloo. they provide all the furs you can use. There is even an ice ‘loo’ if you’re brave:

This was one of the igloo ‘rooms’ where you can spend the night, they aren’t very high and they’re round so it’s hard to get a picture that explains the room. This is the table and lamp:

An Ice Queen, I know some of you are saying, ‘Looks like my wife, same warmth too’. Stop it:

Last antique, outside the door and across the lot from the Ice Palace:

That’s our visit to Chena Hot Springs. I’d like to run up there one of these days and soak in the hot pool…maybe next week. See ya on the road!

Back in August Dan and I roamed around Fairbanks checking out the sites and visiting tourist destinations. One of the places we went is presented here today. A little late in time, but not on the cosmic scale. It’s now November 15th and the temperature here is -10F. It’s nearly noon and that’s probably going to be the high today. There is around 6″ of snow on the ground and shrouding the trees so it looks nice, I’ve got the winter clothes you might imagine, and I’ve become use to the cold so although my cabin is only 64F right now, I’m very comfortable. I am a little worried about how the RV will survive the winter but I see lots of them parked around town so if other people aren’t worried, I don’t suppose I should be either.

Across the river from the RV park where I had been staying at this time, I’ve mentioned that there is a nice park named Pioneer Park. It has reconstructed many of the original cabins built by the pioneers who had moved here in the late 1800’s. Most of the cabins are now used as small stores with tourist trinkets. The park also has two theaters, an art gallery, restaurants, a large dry docked paddle wheel boat, etc.

So, we were wandering through the park and noticed a playbill for a comedy revue that evening. Bought our tickets and returned later. I asked Dan to take pictures since I’d forgotten my camera, that’s why they aren’t very good. The cast came out on stage and told us they liked people taking pictures of them so we could flash away. The revue was funny, most of the jokes were a little dated but this is Fairbanks not New York so we didn’t cause any trouble. They even did the old ‘Who’s on First’ bit. The cast worked hard to entertain and for the most part didn’t fail us.

Here’s the stage just before curtain, the piano player has begun to play a few melodies from the late 1800’s:

One of the cast played a little:

A little ‘Can-Can’ to keep our interest…the dancer in the middle is one of the guys:

The gal there in the purple was a real beauty, good actress, good voice, big expressive eyes, etc., she has it all:

And a big finish after an hour and half of fun, comedy and music:

Back when my brother visited, we drove the RV down south to Denali Park, where Mt. McKinley is. The forest service doesn’t allow cars or big rigs to drive the roads inside the park except occasionally so when we got there we signed up for a bus tour into the park. Since it was to late in the day for the trip up to the turn around to get a view of Mt. McKinley, there was only one tour we could take that would work out for us and give us some hiking time. We also signed up for a bus tour the next day.

The drive down from Fairbanks was uneventful except we missed our turn into the park and went an extra 13 miles down to some little town before we discovered the mistake.

Here’s a shot looking south toward Denali. It is around 1 & 1/2 hour drive from Fairbanks.

We spotted this old restored Model A Ford at a little cafe.

Our trip into the park on the bus passed vistas like this:

Here’s where we got off the bus and began our hike up stream:

We were joined by several folks from the bus, and ended up talking while walking to these gals since we tended to be hiking at the same rate:

The weather was fine with ample places to take pictures:

Time for a rest & a visit:

After a couple hours hike, we head on back to the bus on the opposite side of the creek:

Bunches of these birds hanging around here:

Back on the bus, heading back to the Forest Service Headquarters we spotted this elk:

We spent the night at a nearby RV park and watched a little TV, resting up after the days hike. The next day was an all day bus tour into Denali Park in order to get a picture of Mt. McKinley. The bus goes to the only place on the road in the park were you can get a good view and a good picture. We didn’t have the time to go clear over to the base of the mountain but we hoped the bus trip would be good enough. We were wrong. Mt. McKinley is shrouded in clouds for most of the year so it wasn’t unusual that the next day we woke up to very cloudy weather. It stayed that way all day and sprinkled the entire day.

Here’s a few pictures from the bus or at the stops we made along the way to the turn around:

At the turn around is a visitors center and this picture is what Denali (Mt. McKinley) would have looked like had the weather cleared up for us:

On the trip back to the FS Center, we spotted this bear, it’s hard to see but it’s there, there were other animals but they were always to far away for pictures:

We got back to the FS center early enough in the day that we just headed back home to Fairbanks.

At the RV park where I was volunteering, the office manager and I discussed the possibility of me staying here in Fairbanks through the winter. There are several reasons I’d like to do that. The first is that I’ve always wanted to test myself in very cold weather…I have an internal furnace that really is spectacular…and over the years, I’ve applied to work at McMurdo Station in Antarctic many times. I’ve not gotten hired yet and the last time I applied was just last year. I’m very interested in doing something like that. I’m hopeful for my chances if I show up in person at their main office. Just sending in applications hasn’t done anything except get me a couple nibbles by HR. Fairbanks is my next choice as a cold place to live and work. It has a reputation as being one of the coldest cities on earth…getting down to -70 F in mid winter and staying at -20 F during the day for weeks at a time. Another reason I’d like to stay is I like the people here a lot, I like the community, and if I find a income property to buy here, I just might stay for years. Then there is the Ice Sculpture contest that will be running from Feb. 26th thru March 23rd. Art is cool, and this art will be downright cold…can’t wait to see the ice sculptures in person. Last year they ran over 45,000 visitors through the park to see nearly 40 sculptures, and those don’t count the kids park sculptures. And I’ll be putting pictures here of the whole thing since I’ll be volunteering to help out with the Web camera system. Meanwhile, you can check out last winters sculptures at Ice Alaska

Anyway, she (the office manager at the RV campground where I’m volunteering – her name is pronounced ‘Wa’) and her husband had bought a cabin about 2 miles from the RV park as a rental and she offered it to me to stay in over the winter. I’d given up on my plan of living in my RV as not workable, so the cabin was a good offer. I’ll have to pay rent but anywhere I’d be staying would cost something. During the summer I helped get it fixed up, I changed some bad plumbing and replaced the hot water tank. No more leaks.

So last Friday (Oct. 5th) I moved over here to the cabin. I drove my RV and one of the guys helping at the RV park followed in my car. As I was backing into a spot next to the cabin, I see I’m leaving a trail on the road. Jump out and inspect and find that I have a fuel leak from the engine. Now I have a new problem with the rig. Damn. This thing has cost me $10,000 in repairs in just 3 years. When is it going to end? When I sell it? Probably.

On Saturday morning, I wake up to find 2″ of snow on the ground. I timed that just right, I didn’t have to drive the RV in fresh snow. Now it’s the next Tuesday and I’m pretty well moved in, and the snow is still on the ground, with no signs it will be melting, until next spring.

I built a stand for the TV I bought at the local thrift store and made cushions for a hide-a-bed and sectional sofa I’d found at the dump, both in excellent condition, except they didn’t have cushions. Wa and I had spent a lot of time making the cushions with material I’d found on 1/2 price sale. It was worth the $60 for the material because the hide-a-bed was in such good shape. I’ll be sleeping on it and I appreciate the fact that the mattress looks brand new, as though never used.

We dump our own trash from the RV park at the public dumps and since we were there so often, we’d get a good chance at the usable items dropped off by the public. If you’re lucky enough to be there when it happens, you can get some good stuff. So far, I’ve gotten a nice stuffed chair, a computer table, 10 computers I’m fixing up to sell, the hide-a-bed and the sectional couch, and a few small items like pots-&-pans.

Here’s a look at the cabin before it snowed:

And a shot of the new to me car I bought…it’s a Subaru with 207,000 miles on it. Runs great, has all wheel drive, all power accessories, sun roof, etc., hopefully, it will give me good service into next year:

A look at my ‘rescued’ hide-a-bed, these things are $900 new and I needed something exactly like this in this 3 room cabin so I feel lucky to have found it at the dump in such good condition, it’s clean and the bed is in excellent condition…doesn’t seem like it was ever used:

Here’s the sectional piece:

And here’s what it looks like now that I’ve replaced the missing cushions. There weren’t any back cushions either but I was lucky enough to find three clean & large pillows at the dump that work fine, and one of the RV parks renters gave me her blanket when she found an apartment:

Here’s a few shots of inside the cabin after I’ve gotten a lot of stuff moved in-my computer station and the TV stand I built out of scrap lumber:

The cushy chair that was given to me:

The kitchen:

The only closet in the cabin:

Then the only corner in the cabin where I could fit a chest of drawers, it’s a little bigger then I need (there are two empty drawers), and it’s a loaner so if I find a smaller set, out it goes…:

And the bathroom, there’s the water tank, that seafoam colored thing, though you can’t see it here the pump is next to it on the left, and the hot water tank is on top of it:

A look out the front door, snows going to stay:

And a look at the neighborhood:

More of the kitchen, see the water jugs? This cabin doesn’t have city water, just the water tank and a pump setup in the bathroom, the tank holds about 200 gallons I think. You can pay a service to bring you out a couple hundred gallons of water, or you use a friends water tank, you see them all over Fairbanks in the beds of pickup trucks. Buy the water at a local supplier and pump it into your tank at home before it freezes:

And a shot looking at how everything will be for the next 6 months, except the snow will get deeper:

I’ve been living here a few days now and the neighborhood is nice and quiet, no barking dogs, no kids, no teenagers, or people speeding down the roadways nearby making a racket. Only complaint, and it’s a minor one, is the business right behind the cabin leaves a large parking lot light on all night, and it casts it’s light into my windows. I’ll need to get a bigger curtain to block it.

My brother came up here to Fairbanks to visit after he spent a week hanging around the southern part of Alaska. He hiked the Chilkoot pass, visited Juneau and other towns nearby and then flew up here. There are tons of things to do around here…it’s a tourist mecca. The first day we rode the bikes into town and visited the Visitors Center trying to get a handle on what we should visit by perusing the brochures. Outside of the center was a giant statue of the ‘First Settlers’ so we had a passerby take our picture. We also rented a pedicab ride around town visiting some of the earliest buildings around downtown. It was great fun, especially since someone else was doing all the work peddling us around.

Just a shot of Dan next to the RV before we left:

Then a shot of us at the statue, this thing has a history, seems back in ’67 there were all sorts of big shots here, including the president, celebrating Alaska’s statehood. This statue was part of all that. And then the whole town flooded after days of heavy rains:

A shot of the Chena river, very picturesque:

Here we are on the cab:

Pretty girl with friendly guy, note she is wearing a sweater in the middle of August:

You can’t really see it but every car has an electrical cord hanging out of the front that caught Dan’s attention, they power the oil pan heaters, battery blankets, etc. so the rigs will start during cold weather:

One of the older pioneer cabins still in the downtown area:

And a bunch of other pioneer cabins scattered all around Fairbanks:

This one is unique in that it’s not only a pioneer cabin but it’s also the only place where there is still a section of the boardwalk that use to be all over town before the roads were paved:

Some of the millions of flowers that are all over town:

Dan enjoying the weather:

This church use to be on the south side of the river but the town had changed enough by that time that most of the people were living on the north side (they have since shifted back to the south side). Not wanting to pay the fortune the moving company was asking ($3,000), they waited for winter and had a bunch of volunteers push the building over to where it is now using skids and skis:

Flowers at the church:

And the little park there:

Another of the things we decided to do was to take a van up to the arctic circle. Just to say that we’ve been there. Although my goal has been to visit and work at the Antarctic Circle for 25 years or so, it looks like I’ll have to settle for just visiting the Arctic Circle. I have friends up in Barrow Alaska now so maybe I’ll get up there someday but I doubt it, except maybe to visit but not to live and work.

Anyway, we hired this tour guide to take us up there. He has a large multi-seat van and since it was only four of us with the guide, I had a full bench seat to myself. First stop was just 9 miles out of Fairbanks where we stopped at an Alaskan Pipeline viewing area, like a rest stop but with a giant pipe overhead.

One evening, I was sitting on my couch and I glanced out the window to see a moose, eye level with me. She was interested in the good munchies near my RV I guess. She stayed around long enough for me to quietly get a few pictures but then a women up the street screamed when she saw the moose so it trotted off. Note that we are only 2 & 1/2 miles from city center here:

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I was told that this one was the mom and her baby was nearby. Also that it is very dangerous to get between the mom and baby.

I’m staying at Ice Alaska RV Park & Campground here in Fairbanks and it is one of my favorite campgrounds. It’s not all that beautiful, but I like the fact that it’s centrally located within biking distance of Pioneer Park, downtown, several places to eat, a couple nice bars, etc. There’s plenty for me to do since I’m the ‘office staff’ now. I check people into the park and once in a while have to get tough with people to get them to pay up or to keep quiet. Lots of fun. Anyway, I thought you might like to see what the park looks like, so here are a few pictures.

This first shot is my rig up against a felt backdrop that is used to provide a dark background for the ice sculptures that will be here in March:

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Here’s the view looking west, it’s near sunset but it hardly gets dark this time of year (taken in middle of July):

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There’s the office. I get my WiFi from over there and it’s kind of weak but usually good enough, I’m also able to use the office computer most of every day:

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Here’s the view looking east, note that the park is so big, I hardly have any neighbors this direction:

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This is a picture of Hoa (pronounced Wa), she’s the office manager and runs the park. We hit it off right away and I’ve been working in the office since the 2nd week I was here. It’s her helpful friendly personality that convinced me to spend the winter here in Fairbanks, oh, and the offer of some spending money and a nearly free place to stay. She has a thick accent (she’s Vietnamese), but we manage to communicate. The guy is named Don, he is a volunteer and on the board of directors. He’s helping Hoa make a vinyl sign for the park: