Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Just making numbers work


Documentary which takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the wonderful world of statistics to explore the remarkable power thay have to change our understanding of the world, presented by superstar boffin Professor Hans Rosling, whose eye-opening, mind-expanding and funny online lectures have made him an international internet legend.
Rosling is a man who revels in the glorious nerdiness of statistics, and here he entertainingly explores their history, how they work mathematically and how they can be used in today's computer age to see the world as it really is, not just as we imagine it to be.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The End of the Road


This grizzly met us on the road in Yukon Territory.

It's the end of the road... for the time being.

We have pulled into the heart of Florida. There are an additional 14,512 miles on our odometer at the end of our journey. Add an additional 4,417 miles we drove our car along the way. Twenty thousand miles is not a bad adventure for one year. But it really isn't about the miles.

So much of this odyssey took us to vistas and worlds we have never before discovered. Texas wildflowers along the 1,000 miles of interstate that hustled us across that vast state... winds blowing so hard we had to put down our leveling jacks to keep the rig from rocking and rolling while we were parked in New Mexico....the bizarre world of Roswell, New Mexico, where alien conspiracies seem to pop up at you around every corner.... The glory of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks in Utah...the crispy clean and antiseptic Mormons who greeted us in Salt Lake City....the re-enactment of the joining of the east and west railroad tracks to make transcontinental travel relatively comfortable in Promontory, Utah.... the spectacular waterfalls along the Columbia River in Oregon.... the snowstorm we drove through in Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington state...the love affair with Vancouver, British Columbia... the endless miles that are British Columbia (so large it's like driving from Miami to Maine)....Yukon Territory and its iffy roads but gorgeous territorial parks.

Then we made it to Alaska, a world unto itself. The people there see the world through a quite different prism from those who live in the lower 48 states. Everything about the state is record-breaking. The mountains, the glacial rivers that are milky blue, the incomparable wildlife. We'll never forget the shivers that went up and down our spines as Denali uncovered her snow-covered peak to reveal herself to us for three and a half hours late one night. We'll treasure the plethora of bald eagles that allowed us to get up close and personal with them at Anchor Point State Park in the Kenai Peninsula. And the glaciers.... ah, the glaciers. They're receding at such an alarming rate that we were both depressed and also elated that we were able to see them in our lifetime. But we do fear for this exquisite part of our world being lost to our children and, particularly, to our grandchildren.

We wept at the awesome culmination and death of the thousands of salmon in a natal stream west of Juneau, as we watched the writhing and dying fish struggle in their final ecstasy to fulfill their hard-wired instructions that, before they die, they must make their way home to spawn and then to die. It was beyond the ability of words to capture this final act as we watched thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of these fish reach their goal and drop their eggs before lying bruised and broken in the shallows of the stream, awaiting the end of their life.

The exquisite joy of watching a grizzly bear pass through our campground on the shores of the inland passage at Haines, Alaska, and then, in the dawn of the next day, to meet the same grizzly as we drove our rig to the ferry for our 1,000-miles journey south. We will treasure our encounters with the Tlingit and Athabaskan Native Americans who welcomed us on our journey south, permitting us to park in their campgrounds and sharing their cultural traditions.

The K’san Indian in British Columbia who offered us a newly caught salmon, along with the outdoors man in Slana, Alaska, who offered us a fully-cooked salmon that had been left over from the wedding of his daughter. We loved so much of the experience and these things will live on for the remaining years of our life's journey.

We've been delighted to have you come along on this journey. I have uploaded a “Best of the Journey” photo album and you are welcome to visit that. Enjoy.

Monday, November 1, 2010

It's All About Serendipity


Federal troops fire their canon at the Creek and Seminole Indians southwest of Lake City, FL.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. We drove across the Florida line on Sunday morning. Temperature was 75 degrees. Full sun. Ah. This is why we're here. We looked down the highway to choose a campground for the night and settled on the insignificant O'Leno State Park, just south of Lake City.

And that made all the difference in the world.

When we checked in (it cost only $9.90 for our slot), the ranger told us about Alligator Days that were about to begin. This is a re-enactment of a battle in the Second Seminole Wars against the Seminole and Creek Indians who lived in the area back in the 1830s.

The battle was scheduled to start in an hour which gave us time to get parked, have some lunch, and wander over to the battle.

Booming canon announced the start of the proceedings. Indians – who looked awfully white to me – whooped and yipped as they crept through the pine scrub, shouting their taunts to the US soldiers, pioneer militia and settlers and reenacted the Sept18, 1836, Battle of San Felasco Hammock. I checked into the demographics of the recent census and Native Americans now only account for 1.6 per cent of the population. But they looked good, with some awesome face painting, superb top hats and lots of rawhide clothing.

The battle pushed back and forth, with U.S. Officer, sucking on his pipe and shouting orders to his men to advance with their muskets, then to report back on the location of the Indians in the hammock. The big gun then opened up and cleared out the recalcitrant Indians. In the meantime, the audience, often made up of the fighters' wives – wearing period dress – photographed the proceedings with their digital cameras.

The festival also included Native American musicians and dancers, a drum arbor with dance ground and tee pee camp, as well as traders selling historic replicas, handcrafted arts, manufactured souvenirs, and food.

All of this was a great way to return to our home base – we still are 322 miles out – and we are delighted to be back. This has been a wonderful journey down the eastern edge of the country. We spent much time in the cradle of the Civil War. We took in the Appomattox Court House in Virginia, where the war ended with the surrender of Gen. Robert Lee.

Farther north in Virginia, we spent a day at the home of that American genius, Thomas Jefferson. Monticello is perched on the top of a high hill, giving views of the Blue Ridge mountains. He had a thousand acres and 200 slaves up on that mountain, helping him grow the crops and even making iron nails. The entryway to his home has a complex clock that run along the front wall and shows not only the time, but the day of the week.

When we entered Georgia, we met up with friends we'd made while living in Cambodia back in 2003-4. Then we connected with one of my proteges from early journalism days. She and her husband now shuttle back and forth to Afghanistan where she created an Afghan news service that supplies unbiased and credible journalism in that beleaguered country for embassies, CNN, BBC, many of the U.S. TV networks, as well as newspapers inside the country. She is rightly proud of her “baby”.

We drove with them to the little town of Jasper, GA, for dinner and visited her photo exhibit in an office building on the main street of this little town. The picture of the Afghan man in his turban hangs in the front window and already had created some trouble for the locals. Someone had called the local radio station to complain about the afront to their community of having this turbaned man's picture in the center of their town!

Lisa decided to replace the picture with one of a fresh-faced Afghan girl because Hallowe'en was a day away and that might prevent the building from being egged or even having the glass broken. Ah, what a wonderful world we live in!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

A Day of Death


President Lincoln meets with Gen. McClellan on the battlefield at Antietam to order a final push against the Rebels. McClellan ignored his commander in chief.


Tuesday morning broke for us, but bleakly. Mist hung in the hollows on the northern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, up in the panhandle of Maryland. The cutting breeze made us wrap an extra layer of warm clothing around us as we ventured out onto the battlefield at Antietam.

It provided a fitting sense of chill at this the site of the ultimate day of death on the battlefield in all of our history.

Twenty-three thousand men died or were wounded on that one day, Sept. 17, 1862. It did not matter whether they were from the North – the Federals – or the South – the Rebels. They came together on that fateful day and faced thousands of cannon balls, muskets and rifles. And they fell in the Cornfield, on Bloody Lane, at the Middle Bridge that crossed Antietam Creek which ultimately joins the Potomac River.

Gen. Robert E. Lee brought his southern troops north, because he'd been winning the war to that point. He wanted to hurt the North and perhaps get the recognition of the European countries – particularly Britain – that the South was a separate country.

Gen. George B. McClellan believed Lee had many more troops in the area that his Union forces. He was wrong. He was a timid man, a good planner, loved by his men, but a lousy leader.

He sat in an overstuffed arm chair, overlooking the battlefield. The ladies and gentlemen of Washington had driven out to watch this decisive battle and they tittered and swooned at being so close to the star of the show. McClellan loved the adulation and played to the crowd while his men fell, and fell, and fell.

More than 10,000 men fell in the first three and a half hours after dawn broke on Sept. 17. By dusk, the battle was over. It was effectively a draw. The sounds of crying and groaning and begging calls for water could be heard all through the night.

The germ theory of infection was unknown back then. Surgeons operated on wounded soldiers in unsanitary conditions with unsterilized instruments. An amputee had a 65 percent chance of surviving surgery - but a 90 percent chance of dying from infection.

Jo and I drove and walked the fields, passing the 96 monuments that have been placed where the men fought and died. Only one monument honors soldiers who fought for both the North and the South. This was erected by the State of Maryland – a border state – because it had men who served on both sides.

It was chilling and sobering to linger along the split-rail fences and feel the presence of the spirits of so many souls. Sharpsburg, MD, would be a difficult town to live even now, I think. There is a sense of endless loss in the place.

We stopped in at a little tavern for lunch but there was no energy in the place. We returned to the field and spent an outstanding half hour with a park ranger who talked us through the strategy of Gen. Lee. He explained the power of the terrain, the way Lee moved his troops, the lack of coordination of the Federals as they came up the hill and were sliced in half by the cannon.

He also told us that five days after the battle, President Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The document became final on Jan. 1, 1863, and gave the war a twofold purpose – reuniting the country and freedom of four million slaves.

Lincoln came here to the battlefield and to the many hospitals that were set up in an attempt to save the wounded. He spoke with men of the South as well as Northern soldiers. The war would continue for another two-plus years because of the ineptness of McClellan's lack of follow-through on that day in 1862. Lincoln replaced him but the blood continued to flow on both sides so that, by the end of the war, 600,000 men had been killed or wounded.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Spinning Across New York


Friend Jody Hyman spins with her drop spindle at the Rhinebeck, NY, Wool Fest.

Here's the scene: Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, New York. Hundreds, nay, thousands of crunchy-looking women in their knitted hats and hand-warmers and shawls and knitted or woven dresses. This is the Sheep and Wool Festival. Surely, men were tagging along. There were even a few men spinning and weaving. But this was clearly a woman’s event.
The women of all ages were there to buy yarn, or fleece, or roving (the cleaned and washed wool). They were there to buy the contraptions that make spinning and weaving and knitting and crocheting easier.
We watched a contest of drop spindle spinners alongside a spinning wheel contest. The object was to spin the longest yarn in 15 minutes. Jo's friend Jody Hyman, a prodigious spinner and basket maker who is a master of the drop spindle, took second place. The drop spindle is the world's simplest tool. It looks like a top that you would spin on a table. But in Jody's hands it came alive as she hanked on a piece of raw wool and set it a-spinning. She produced 15 yards of yarn in 15 minutes. A younger woman pulled out the stops and produced a fraction more yardage in that time.
On the more mechanized section, a buxom lady sat beside her homemade spinning machine and fairly made it hum. It had been constructed of PVC pipe and it vibrated and bucked as she spun her heart out. When her son would put his hand on the machine to reduce the vibration, she would mutter, “Keep tyer hands off!” Across from her was a male spinner with a handsome cherry wood spinning wheel who seemed to be making awesome yardage. And closer to me was a German woman who constantly complained of the low-quality fleece she was trying to spin. No matter. The PVC lady won and the German lady took fourth place.
Dutchess County is in the Taconic range of high hills. They are at their absolute peak in terms of color as the sugar maples take on the scarlet and gold of the last breath of summer. We took up residence in a New York State Park down the road from the festival. We were ensconced in a wooded glade, peaceful beyond belief. But cool... quite cool. So we ran our propane heater in the evening before retreating under our down comforter.
Now, on Sunday, we begin our trek south.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Draco Malfoy is Dead


John carries the captured Draco Malfoy out of the hen house while Cassy recoils from the bird's evil eye.
I bring you great news. Draco Malfoy, the rooster ruling the hen house at grand-daughter Trisha's place in Kent, Connecticut, is dead.

Malfoy (named after one of the evil characters in the Harry Potter series of books) was a bit of a wicked bastard. He pecked me at the back of my knees when I went into the hen house to pick up the daily dozen eggs. He chased Trisha and terrorized her to the point she was unwilling to do the daily chores in the hen house. But his days were numbered when a farmer up the road said he was planning to slaughter 100 chickens and would be happy to include Malfoy in the batch.

Our son in law, John, entered the hen house at dusk on Sunday. He had learned the art of grabbing and controlling the rooster: you lay him on his back and he immediately quietens. He slid him into a borrowed cage and Malfoy, when released, set up an awesome squawk while jabbing his beak through the cage. But it was too late. Now Malfoy's hours were numbered.

The farmer asked Lynn if she wanted the dressed rooster back for dinner. She wasn't that keen. But when the farmer said it would cost $5 either way, she decided she'd bring home the carcass. We ate Malfoy but found him to be a skinny bird... no breast meat to speak of, and dark meat that was almost black. But he tasted pretty good.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

So, How Much Did It Cost?


Our rig, parked in the repair facility in Mobile, Alabama.

A number of our blog friends (mostly those who have an RV) have asked me to share details about the cost of our trip. Even though we have not finished the entire journey (we have about 1,350 miles to go before we return to our roost in Palmetto, Florida, for our winter stay) we thought it might be of interest to you to see the breakdown.

We have pretty exact costs because, first, we budgeted what we expected to spend and, second, we track every expense with Quicken on the computer.

This accounting does not detail costs of eating since we would eat no matter where we are. We do delineate the costs associated with campgrounds for overnight or longer stays.

Repairs were hard to budget - but we guessed we would face fairly extensive costs because we have a 12-year-old rig. I had actually budgeted $2,500, so we blew that budget because our repairs were a bit more extensive.

Travel, by the way, includes loading our rig and car and ourselves aboard the Alaskan ferry system. It also includes costs associated with repairs when we had to leave our rig overnight and take a motel room. It also includes costs of travel to Mayne Island, off Vancouver, when we visited our friends from Namibia.

The cost per mile is the simple calculation of dividing the total expenses by the number of miles driven. I did not attempt to calculate the miles per gallon because it is impractical. When we dry camp we run the generator and that uses gasoline from the fuel tank. So any calculation of mileage would be incorrect because that unknown amount of fuel cannot be deducted from the amount used to drive the rig. I might mention that, in addition to the cost of the gas for the rig, we also bought $330 worth of gas for the car. And we drove 2,500 miles in that car, separate from all the towing miles which, happily, do not register on the odometer. Only the tires and the dings on the front of the car show the real wear and tear on the car.

Journey to Alaska Costs
Gas $4,741.04
Overnight $2,594.94
Repairs $4,829.94
Propane $166.86
Tolls $37.25
Travel $2,735.78
Other $41.67
Total $15,147.48

Miles Traveled 12,413
Cost per Mile $1.22

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

On the Home Stretch

There is nothing quite so pleasurable as stopping and resting after a voyage of many months. And so we are. We have been languishing in Vermont with daughter Stephanie and her family. We're parked in their side yard and at last have found a mechanic who was able to diagnose and order the parts to repair the emergency brake system on our RV.

The miracle, to me, is that I have been able to nurse this rig across the whole of north America, from Haines, Alaska, to here in Colchester, Vermont. It has meant many stops and much scrunching under the rig, pouring transmission fluid into the emergency brake reservoir. This allows the dying pump to activate and release the emergency brake when I put the rig into gear. Without that fluid, the pump would be unable to disengage the brake. Now the parts are ordered and will be installed next Wednesday. Then we'll head south to daughter Lynn's house in Kent, Connecticut.

While we've lingered in Vermont, we have celebrated birthdays of our grand kids, as well as Stephanie's mother-in-law and ourselves. I took our grandson, Graham, to see comedian Bill Cosby at the state fair last Sunday. Graham is a huge fan of the reruns of the Cosby Show. The comedian now is 73 and, as Graham noted, “he's pretty fat.” I enjoyed the show much more than did he because Cosby's 90-minute live show is nothing like his old TV show.

Graham Bertoni (right)
He is a master or the pain of growing up – at least, what growing up was like 60 years back when parental brutality was more the accepted norm. This is so far outside the understanding of an eight-year-old boy today and Graham sat with an unknowing smile on his lips while we watched Cosby's riff on parental beatings, teacher beatings, and assorted other abuses of small people. It's a different era.

Isabella, who has just turned 12, is an aspiring and talented singer. She presented three half-hour concerts at the state fair in which she sang and played her keyboard for the entertainment of the general public. Imagine the excitement when a woman approached after a performance and asked for her autograph.

Isabella

Jo has been sewing, as well as practicing her portable spinning wheel. And she knits like Madame DeFarge, creating socks in many splendored colors.

We spent a wonderful time in the middle of Michigan with two people Jo and I have come to cherish. Mary and Merve Parsons live in our RV Resort in the wintertime. But they scurry north each year and set about tilling their garden. They raise an astonishing range of crops - from potatoes to beans, to tomatoes of all varieties, to Indian corn, peaches, apples, cherries, squash, watermelon, carrots, beets. And the list goes on. Mary then cans much of this so they have a year's supply of food. Their knowledge base of this natural world is both inspiring and quite awesome. It reminds both of us of the very best of America. They embody that take-care-of-yourself ability that is sliding away with the years.

Then we passed back into Canada one more time to visit with my sister, Rose. She was widowed a couple of years back and it was heartening to see how she is reinventing herself and coping with her new world.

Our journey to Alaska will go down as one of the great adventures of our lives. It was hard work and it was physically challenging for us both. But we are so glad we persevered. We will never forget the encounters with grizzlies, bald eagles, orcas, humpback whales, wolves, caribou, moose, Dall sheep, goats, and a dozen other creatures great and small. But, as inevitably always is the case, it was the people with whom we interacted that leave the lasting memories. So many native Americans, the Russian Orthodox priest, so many settlers who have carved their spot in the wilderness, so many people who lent us a hand of friendship both on the land and aboard the ferries on our way south.

We have another 2,000 miles ahead of us before we park our rig on Florida's west coast for the winter months. So the potential is there for more adventures. But we are already thinking about 2011.

Thanks for coming along with us on this adventure. We hope you have gotten some unique glimpses into a rarely visited land.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Where the Buffalo Roam


Meet Dakota Miracle (left) and Dakota Legend, both are true albino buffalo.

We're in the bread basket of America – Bismarck, North Dakota. You drive across the prairie – traveling in an ocean of corn, wheat, and sunflowers. There's something special about a billion sunflowers lined up to the horizon, all of them facing the rising sun like little soldiers awaiting orders for the day.

We have stopped at A Prairie Breeze Campground and the temperature is 98 degrees. We long ago left the rolling hills of Montana and came on Monday to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota. It's a small national park, with a beautiful campground ($5) and we enjoyed the experience of being surrounded by a herd of 350 adult buffalo and a similar number of calves. On the road into the park, we passed numerous prairie dog towns. These are communities, identified by humps of burrowed out dirt, where the prairie dogs spend their days worrying about being picked off by coyotes or owls, or other wild life.

They usually sit at the highest point of their individual mounds, always keeping an eye open for danger. They set up a chatter when your stop to photograph them and, if they feel threatened, they make a dive for their burrows. They're very similar to meercats.

The buffalo just browse and wander at will. President Teddy Roosevelt lived in the western part of North Dakota (known as The Badlands) back at the end of the 19th century. He was a cattleman and had two farms.

We learned his neighbor was a Marquis de Mores who considered himself a great buffalo hunter. During the winter of 1881-82 this fellow reportedly killed more than 5,000 buffalo in southeast Montana. There must be a special place in hell for this kind of wanton killer. In his memoirs, later in life, he had the decency to write he wished his “aim had not been so good.”

While lingering a moment on this wanton destruction, I learned more about the train trips to kill buffalo. Back in the 1880s, people were invited on these excursions to shoot the buffalo from the train windows. The object was to kill the buffalo for their tongues. That was all that was taken from the dead animals which were left to rot on the prairie. More than three millions buffalo were slaughtered in this way in a single year.

Jo and I attended an evening lecture and slide presentation by a park ranger who spoke about Roosevelt's dynamism and how he overcame huge odds – he was so asthmatic as a child that he could not attend school. His wife and mother died within days of each other of typhoid (mom) and a condition developed at childbirth (his wife). But his sister, after a year, connected him to an equally dynamic woman and he quickly married her and produced five more children.

He was a maverick politically and the Republican Party never did take to him. They thought, stupidly, that they should tuck him away as a vice president to McKinley. McKinley won the election, then promptly was assassinated so Teddy took over the reigns.

He was presented with a brown bear cub by an admirer but he asked that the cub be released. This got some press and a woman made a stuffed bear which she sent to him, asking if he would permit her to make these bears and call them “Teddy” Bears in his honor. He gave the go-ahead and that's how we now have a teddy bear culture.

We struggle with the dichotomy of Roosevelt being a great conservationist and, at the same time, a great white hunter who made numerous trips to Africa and shot elephant, rhino, cape buffalo and many other creatures. Many of these were stuffed and now are displayed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

On our way back to the RV, we walked through the campground and passed a cluster of campers who pointed a flashlight to the ground. There was a sizable rattle snake, coiled, rattling and really angry about being disturbed. Jo and I later sat outside in the rich darkness at our site and watched the milky way, along with the space station and other assorted heavenly bodies passing overhead.

Thursday, Aug. 12
We stopped along the highway to visit the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, North Dakota. This is the home of the legendary white buffalo, White Cloud, born on July 10, 1996 on a private farm in Michigan, ND. She has been certified a true albino buffalo and is revered as a sacred animal by the Lakota native Americans.

White Cloud gave birth to her first calf, Princess Winona, in July 2000. It was brown; she had three more brown calves through the years. On August. 31, 2007, White Cloud gave birth to her fifth calf, an albino! This calf, a bull, was named Dakota Miracle. The herd at the museum truly became legendary on May 31, 2009, when a third white calf was born to one of the herd's brown buffalo.

Unfortunately, it was raining and blowing a gale when we stopped by the museum. We were able to enjoy the exhibits – but the sacred buffalo were hiding down in the hollows and washes. They all are allowed to roam freely so we were unable to visit with these remarkable creatures.

It was a superb opportunity, however, to learn more about the traditions of the Lakota peoples. We learned, for example about White Buffalo Calf Woman. She came to the Lakota people a very long time ago. She met with two Lakota scouts and appeared out of a white cloud on a sunny day. When she stepped out of the cloud they saw she was the most beautiful women they had ever seen.

Then one of the scouts, being foolish, had bad thoughts and spoke them. But the other said, “That is a sacred woman; throw all bad thoughts away.” When she came still closer, they saw she wore a fine white buckskin dress, that her hair was very long and that she was young and very beautiful. And she knew their thoughts and said in a voice that was like singing: “You shall go home and tell your people that I am coming and that a big tipi shall be built for me in the center of the nation.” The braves did as they were told and the people built the tipi and she came in four days.

As she came into the village, there came from her mouth a white cloud that was good to smell. Then she gave something to the chief. It was a pipe with a bison calf carved on one side – to mean the earth that bears and feeds us, with 12 eagle feathers hanging from the stem – to mean the sky and 12 moons. These were tied with grass that never breaks.

“Behold,” she said. “With this pipe, you will be bound to all your relatives. Nothing but good shall come of it. Only the hands of the good shall take care of it and the bad shall not even see it.”

The woman stayed with the people four days and nights. During this time, she showed them how to prepare the pipe.... then she showed the men how to smoke it. Thus the pipe came to our people.

The sacred woman then took her leave, saying, “Always remember how sacred the pipe is, and treat it as such. I am leaving now but I shall look back upon the people,” and she promised to return in time of need.

She walked in the direction of the setting sun, and then she stopped and rolled over four times. The first time, she got up and became a black buffalo, the second time a brown buffalo, the third time a red buffalo, and the fourth time she rolled over she became a white buffalo. This buffalo walked on further, stopped, and after bowing to each of the four directions of the universe, disappeared over the hill.

This story has been passed down by the Lakota (Sioux) Elders.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Going-to-the-Sun Road


One of the most photogenic spots on the highway. The tiny island is Wild Goose Island.

Going-to-the-Sun Road that carves its way through Glacier National Park in Montana is a bit of an engineering marvel. It also is a magical mystery ride that unfolds one vista more dramatic than the next when you travel its 50 miles.

We set out in our Honda (vehicles larger than 21 feet at not permitted on the road and you learn why very quickly). The road clings to a cliff wall, carved in the 1930s. There are rocky overhangs that jut out about 10 feet above your head. This is not a highway for the faint of heart. But those who go are rewarded well.

We wound our way up from the valley floor. At our first picture stop, however, Jo tripped on her handbag strap when she left the car. She cut her hand on the gravel quite deeply and skinned her knees as well as bruised and bled at her eyebrow. The hand wound was the deepest and dirtiest. Her handbag, however, seems to contain everything from coins to screw drivers to wet-wipes and bandages (go figure!). We got her cleaned up as well as could be done, and decided we would stop and talk to a Ranger at the Logan Pass Visitor's Center for some real first aid.

The journey begins with you looking up in awe at the spiking rocky peaks. Eventually, however, you are driving among them and, when you reach Logan Pass, you are halfway up the mountains at 6,646 feet. This is the Continental Divide. Now you can look across the valley far below and see the glaciers that are receding so rapidly in this part of the world that climatologists say all will be gone by 2030. So get your tickets now. This stuff will not last! During the last Ice Age, of course, there were glaciers here that were 5,000 feet thick with ice. Those days will not return until man has departed this planet, however.

The Ranger at Logan's Pass checked Jo out to understand why she had collapsed. He felt better when he determined the issue was klutziness and not related to an older person having a spell of some kind. He gave her an alcohol pad, neosporin and band-aids and we were on our way.

On the other side of the pass, you descend to a hairpin curve that sucks the air right out of your lungs. One moment you are virtually kissing a cliff face of sheer rock. They next you have reversed direction and you feel as though you are hanging out on the edge of a precipice – which you are! MacDonald Lake, at the bottom of the valley provided respite. Lots of people played in the cold water aboard canoes and rubber rafts. We lunched there and decided prudence dictated that we not reverse our journey on this remarkable road. We decided to drive around the southern edge of the park and out into Blackfeet Indian country.

Many of the neat homes have one or two tepees in the back yards. This would be where the young Indian kids sleep out in the summer months.

On our way south from Alberta on Friday, we passed a little town called “Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump”. We didn't drive the 20 kilometers to the town because we were trying hard to get across the border into Montana. But a check on the Internet showed this is a UNESCO world heritage site. This is where Blackfeet used to drive the buffalo over a cliff to their deaths in the days before the white man came and farmed the prairies and indiscriminately shot millions of buffalo for their hides from the window seats in trains crossing the prairie.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Bad and Good News


If you have a float plane in Ketchikan, you can park it at the municipal lot.

Some good news – and some bad news. We were in a campground in Hazelton, British Columbia, last night and a young First Nation man named Keith (of the 'Ksan people) offered us a sockeye salmon he had just pulled out of the Skeena River. She (for that was her gender) measured about 14 inches and weighed around 7-8 pounds. I initially said thanks, but no thanks. Jo then asked if he would clean it for us and he said he could do that. We agreed on a price of $10 which seems like a pretty good bargain for sockeye ($12 a pound in the local market).

Keith asked for a filet knife which we don't own. I offered him our handy-dandy Ginsu bread knife which he spurned. Jo found a Heinkel knife which was sharp enough to do the job and he cut off her head and scooped out the entrails. I handed him my $10 Canadian and told him we'd think about him when we ate the fish.
We cut it up into six thick steaks so we have three excellent meals in our future. That's the good news.

Bad News is we have developed a nasty drip-drip of brake fluid from our emergency brake system. This is one of the poor pieces of design on our rig. While we were in Alaska, we left a campground with the brake on and didn't notice the warning light for just under a mile. We stopped, re-set the brake and the light went off. But it came on every time we stopped thereafter. In Haines, Alaska, before we boarded the ferry for the first of the five legs of the journey by ferryboat, we found a mechanic who discovered the brake fluid had splashed all over the undercarriage. He topped up the reservoir and the light went out. I thought we were out of the woods. But two days later, the light stayed on when I moved the gear into drive.

Since then, I have spent a fair amount of time on my back under the rig, topping off the fluid while getting lots of it in my hair.

When we arrived in the large city of Prince George, BC, today, we visited the GM dealership and they said they'd have to order the switch that is probably broken from Vancouver and it won't come until Thursday. For that privilege, they would have to charge $99.80 for shipping. The part, they said is $89. I had already found the part on the Internet for $33 so that stuck on my craw. I told them I'll wait until I get back across the border and get the $33 part shipped to me somewhere in Montana or South Dakota. In the meantime, I'll be bathing my head in dripping fluid. Who said this was the easy life?

We thoroughly enjoyed the ferry experience – although I can't say I can recommend driving on and off the ferries at low tide. It seemed that every departure but one occurred at low-low tide. The ferry people do a wonderful job of placing blocks of wood on the ramp so you don't rip the rig apart when your rear end trails on the metal ramp. And they are very good about guiding you when you back up 50 or 60 feet into the bowels of the ferry boat (scary stuff that!).

But the traveling down the marine highway is definitely to be recommended. It was a real treat to get off at these tiny little Alaskan towns like Sitka, Wrangell and Ketchikan and explore the local aboriginal culture. Most of these towns are essentially aboriginal so it is a great way to meet the local folks in their home (and real) environment.

I even was able to help one Tlingit woman replace the flat tire on her tattered old car.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

In Russian Alaska


Arrival of these two cruise ships adds more than a third to Sitka's population.

Sitka's radio station began the morning news with the most important news first – just like a real radio station should. “Two cruise ships will arrive in Sitka this morning, Zaandam and Radiance of the Seas. They will bring 3,645 passengers ashore.” People with money were about to arrive. Get your sweatshirts and caps and Alaskan knives and Russian Orthodox gee-gaws out on the sidewalk. The tourists are coming. The tourists are coming.

We drove downtown on a beautiful Chelsea morning. Clouds wreathed the extinct volcano that is the backdrop to the town. But the sparkling sun showered the harbor with diamonds on the water. Delicious.

And in came the tourists. Sitka is too small to permit a cruise ship to dock. So the enormous ships parked out in Sitka Sound and ferried their passengers ashore. The difference between Tuesday and Monday in the little town was the difference between night and day. Sitka has 8,969 souls and was humming with activity. On Monday, we basically owned the town. We could park and walk at will.

We were able to visit St. Michael's Cathedral because the tourists were in. What opulence! Pretty much every wall was tarted up with silver and gold iconography. This is the former Russian capital of Russian America. The cathedral was consecrated in 1748. It was designed by Bishop Ivan Veniaminov who came here in 1834. This fellow truly was a renaissance man. Not only did he create a Russian-Aleut dictionary while working as a priest in the Aleutian Islands, he started another dictionary for the Tlingit aboriginals when he arrived here. He was a carpenter (constructed his own throne, plus lots of furniture in the Bishop's House which we visited on Monday). He also was a self-taught mathematician. Ninety percent of the congregation in the cathedral today is Tlingit.

The bishop was canonized as Saint Innocent in 1977.

On Monday, we'd visited the Bishop's house, a large but plain structure. It is the best preserved of four Russian structures in the western hemisphere. We then walked through the Sitka's National Historic Park where there is a collection of totem poles. Each tells a story about a Tlingit clan which was explained to us by using our cell phone. There is even a totem with a white man at the top. This totem story tells a story of thievery of shell fish and other goods. It was carved so the wrong could be righted. Was it? Doubtful.

Many of the stories of the poles dealt with the raven, which is considered the trickster who plays with men's lives. There are carving of whales, orcas, bears, frogs, as well as the topmost part which often shows a man in what looks like a top hat. They are actually the watchmen of the clans. The top hat get taller and taller as the watchman gains in stature.

We boarded Columbia for the next leg of our voyage south. Because this was an overnight leg, we got a berth so we could sleep in comfort. Some of our fellow passengers were much more rugged. They set up their tents on the rear deck, holding them down with duct tape.

We awoke in the middle of the night when we docked in Petersburg. Then we were off, through Wrangell Straits, arriving at 7:45 a.m. On time.

Jo was the first vehicle off, aboard the Honda Fit. I was not to lucky. I was the largest rig aboard and the crew had me back up about 50 yards with one inch to spare on each side of the rig. Just a little stressful!

We parked in a Tlingit-run campground to the south of the little town. Wrangell is too small to receive and handle cruise ships and, as a result, calls itself “the true Alaska.” Well, maybe. There were little kids on the waterfront, selling garnets they are allowed to chisel from the rock face across from the town.

The town has about 1,800 people– down from 2,550 in five years. “The young people leave here and never return,” one local woman told us when we visited the petroglyph beach. This is a place where 8,000-year-old petroglyphs (carvings in stone) are lying on the beach between high and low tide marks. They are thought to have been created by the people who came to Alaska before the Tlingit Indians.

Just north of the petroglyph beach is Dead Man's Island. Back in the 1800s, Chinese workers at the local salmon canning factory were taken there when they died. Their bodies were pickled in brine and placed in wooden casks before being shipped back for burial at home in China. All of this is described in great detail by James Michener in his must-read novel, “Alaska.”

In the evening, we drove and hiked to Nemo Point, south of town. We had the place to ourselves and the perfection of the peaceful scene left us breathless. We sat 2,000 feet above Zimovia Straits and watched the fishing boats shuttle back and forth in the sparkling waters below. There was not a sound to be heard at this height – not even a bird. Jo maintained a soft chatter – mostly to alert bears of our presence - but none appeared.

We managed to get into Chief Shake's House on the waterfront on Thursday morning. This is a Tlingit tribal house. The carvings inside were extraordinarily good (see photo album). Happily, Chief John, a Tlingit who also is of the Wolf clan, spoke with us about the traditions. He also showed us a traditional Tlingit canoe he himself had carved 15 years ago. Beautiful workmanship and lines to this little vessel.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Death in the Afternoon


This female sockeye salmon finds the perfect spot in her natale stream to place her eggs.

The end is near for the hundreds, no, thousands of sockeye salmon in the creek that runs into Gastinaeu Sound, Juneau.
There is something exquisitely sad in the watching of this death and life drama play out. The salmon congregate in the stream, flicking their tails as they burrow to create a safe place to drop their millions of eggs. They are spent. They are surely at the end of their cycle for the dorsal fins are ragged, there are cuts and breaks on their mouths. But there is this sense of divine destiny in the air. They have this final mission: return to the stream of your birth – your natal stream – and lay the eggs that will allow the cycle to continue.
They left this precise stream two to five years ago. They found the great Pacific and wandered through the ocean. This came after they had been born in the stream and absorbed their yolk sacs. After emerging from the gravel they fed on tiny aquatic insects. Chinook, coho, and sockeye salmon spend one to three years in fresh water before migrating to the ocean. Pink and chum salmon migrate directly to the ocean after emerging from the gravel. The young salmon are called “smolts”.
Now the sockeye had made their return. Think about the shock to their system as they make the transition from life in the salt water to life in the clear, fresh stream that roars down from the mountains that make the dramatic backdrop to Juneau. They have long since stopped eating. Now they have one task and one task only: spawn.
The eagles and the gulls stand on the banks of the stream and wait and wait and wait. They surely know from where their next meal is coming.
When the salmon has spawned and the eggs have rested in the comparative safety of the stream bed, the male sockeye moves in and fertilizes. Then they die. It is that sad and that simple. They have completed the life cycle. They gasp on the bed of the stream, they lie on the bottom, letting the fresh water pour over them. And they die. Hundreds of thousands of them just die.
It is moving and sobering to watch this scene play out. There is no joy here. But there is a sense of “mission accomplished.”

The night before we left Haines aboard the Matinuska, the oldest ship in the Alaskan ferry system, we were alerted to something on the beach in front of our RV by a tap on our door. A Grizzly Bear was wandering on the beach. He was young, looked to be about 500 pounds in weight and walked and ran at a frightening speed. He'd stand on his hind legs, rising to an intimidating height of six or seven feet. Then he'd run again. Even though the sun was set, I grabbed my camera and tried to photograph this bear. The result is interesting, to me. Because of the long exposure I was lucky enough the create an impression of the bear.
The following morning, we drove to the ferry and there he was again, crossing the road in front of us. He stopped, gave us a look, then trundled on down the bank at the side of the road. This is one of the things that makes this the trip of our lifetimes.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

It's about FREEDOM


Dave Stancliff and his teenage musicians entertain us with stories about Alaska at the Tok RV Resort.

Dave Stancliff was our entertainer of the evening. He is a guitar-playing-songwriter and story-teller about all things Alaskan. We were in Tok RV Park and his concert was part of the services offered. Tok is 90 miles from the Canadian Border and is a key crossroads since this is where you have to decide whether to head for Anchorage or up to Fairbanks. He was accompanied by three high schoolers - Jenny on the fiddle, and brother-sister team Huff and Holly.
Jenny told us the schools never close because of weather in Tok. But, when the temperature drops below minus 30F, the kids are allowed to skip school without it counting against them. But she said she'd gone to school earlier this year when the temperature was minus 73F. This may explain why she was school valedictorian at graduation this year.
They entertained well enough but Dave's stories were what enthralled. He explained why he has spent the better part of his 60 years in Tok. “No taxes, no law enforcement, no laws so you can't break any. We're free.”
Jo fretted about this after the concert. She couldn't figure out how anyone could live without paying taxes. But it was clear there were no services in Tok. But she persisted. “Who is paying the teachers, building the schools and fixing the roads?” So we decided to stop by the office on our way out on Tuesday morning. The woman behind the counter was quite happy to answer Jo's questions. “We decided not to vote ourselves into a borough,” she said. “So we have no town officials, no building inspector, no police, nobody who wants to 'help' us.”
In answer to the next question about schools, she said the state pays. “But who pays the state?” I asked. She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “The oil pays, of course,” she said. Same goes for the repair of the highways. Because Tok is unincorporated, the state has to maintain the roads. What about the state police? Same answer. State pays.
So if you, by now, are getting aboard your SUV and heading north to live free, I'd recommend against that. While the country is spectacular and the wildlife is unmatched, we're not over-enthused about the run of the mill Alaskans we have met. Obviously there are exceptions, but we have found them to be self-centered and very much looking to pick a fight with anyone who believes the federal government can actually do anything worthwhile. The Alaskans we've met – many of them – remind me of branch office workers I've worked with over the years. When you're cut off from the mother ship an inevitable sense of second-class citizenship seems to built and you are quick to look for slights and the sense that the main office doesn't really care much what happens to you. Everything bad happens in the lower 48 states, from many of their points of view. Finally, they drive with such foolishness, ignoring double yellow lines on the two-lane roads, that it is a miracle there are not more deaths from rollovers. And there's hardly a road sign that hasn't been shot out with bullets.
But life is pretty free. It really does live up to its license plate logo: “The Last Frontier.”

On our way to the border on Tuesday, I was fiddling with our computer navigation program when Jo, who was driving, slammed on the brakes and said, Oh my God! Oh my God. Oh my God.” By the time I looked up, a female moose and her calf were ambling onto the highway 15 yards ahead of us. Jo swerved and brought the rig to a halt. I grabbed my camera. But mom and her calf decided they had enough of this and quickly scooted back down the hill and into the trees.

We decided to revisit Kluane Lake, one of our favorite spots in the Yukon Territory. Amazingly, our first campsite was vacant and we moved in. A Swiss couple and their grown son arrived by van and set up their tent beside us. There are warnings about doing this between mid-July and September because this is bear country and the soapberries are out right now - a favorite of the grizzlies. They had flown into Yukon (Whitehorse, actually) from Zurich and rented the van.

The campground view was just as - if not more - spectacular. much of the snow is off the high peaks. But the wreathing clouds on the mountains made the place mysterious and cozy.

We arrived at Haines on Thursday afternoon. Haines is our departure point on the ferry system. Our car and rig are coated in dirt from the gravel road we traveled for 100 miles from the U.S. Border into Canada. I call this the 100-miles-of-hell highway. It is bone-jarring and hard on the vehicle. The only solution is to drive at 25 miles an hour. And that doesn't keep the dirt down. But it doesn't ruin the rig.
We parked on the waterfront in Haines and licked our wounds. The car didn't start when we unhooked it from the rig: our first real casualty. We jump-started it and then ran it for a few hours to charge the battery.
We head out aboard the ferry on Saturday morning and will make stops at Juneau, Sitka, Wrangell, Ketchikan and leave the ferry when we reach Prince Rupert, British Columbia, on Aug. 1.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Free Fish


The fish wheel spins in the river and scoops up salmon that are trying to head upstream. The buckets dump the fish (lower, center) into a box alongside the wheel.

The fish wheel is a perpetual motion machine. The Copper River propels it. We received permission from Angus DeWitt, the grumpy Athabaskan native on whose property the wheel is located, to drive through and look at the wheel. As we stood on the bank on a drizzly evening, the river roared through on its way to Valdez. The salmon, heading upriver to spawn and die, have to run this gauntlet. There's an immature – but enormous – eagle perched on a fallen tree halfway across the river. He's waiting to see what he can collect.
The roaring river hits the baskets in the wheel and propels them, scooping up anything that is trying to pass upriver.
I made my way down the slippery bank and looked into the box at the side of the wheel. There were six salmon lying in there. I retreated to the bank and waited two minutes. A salmon appeared in the rotating wheel. It ferociously tried to find its way out of the scoop. He fell, twisting on the way down, and fell onto the wheel support system. It took him a second to wriggle off the wood and back into the river. Whooo! Close call. Two minutes later, the same thing happened. Two minutes after that, however, a salmon ended up in the scoop and didn't move fast enough. He ended up being caught in the box. Another few minutes passed and yet another salmon was picked up but escape death by performing a wonderful leap that took him to freedom.
The wheel is owns by someone other than Angus (which probably accounts for his grumpiness). You are welcome to pick out a fish (you are permitted 250 salmon per year). But you must report to a Ranger station to show a fin, along with the permission you have received from the wheel owner to collect fish. The Ranger will contact the owner to verify you have his permission.
We came here to Slana, in the middle of the wilderness on the road between Glenallen and Tok, on a visit to Brian and Jean Johnson's little cabin. Seven years ago, Brian had bought the shell of a cabin and five acres of land from a homesteader. The cabin housed the local preacher and was one room. He set about living in the plywood box while he strengthened the structure. He added insulation and then added log facing to the cabin. He built an attic bedroom and installed a couple of support beams to carry the load.
Brian said when he showed Jean the original cabin/hut she stood there and just laughed. But they have carved a beautiful little home in the wilderness. Life took a step toward modernity two years ago when the electric grid came through. Till that time, they had been living with a loud and heavy generator. “It was tough to get that started in the morning when the temperature was 30 degrees below zero,” Brian said. They would drag the generator into the cabin and warm it in front of the wood stove. Then they could get it to start. They found if they bought a smaller generator, they could start that after storing it inside the cabin. The heat from the exhaust would then be pointed at the larger generator and that would eventually unfreeze it. So the arrival of the electricity was an enormous boost for them.
The couple said moose wander into their front garden regularly. The female moose have a nasty tendency to snap off the birch trees. They do not bother to munch on the lettuce and potatoes the couple grown.
Brian explained how he and his wife benefit each year from the Alaskan Pipeline fund. He said they each receive around $1,250 per year. This changes, depending on the flow of oil and has been as high as $2,500 per person. You must own property in Alaska and stay in the state for a minimum of six months and a day to reap this benefit.
We parked on a gravel pull-off space at the front of the house and were sitting in the living room when Steve, a neighbor, stopped by. He offered the couple some salmon that left over after he'd married off one of his daughters the previous day. We received a whole, cooked salmon which we chopped up and stored in our freezer. Steve is a trapper and artist. He told me he runs two trap lines, usually between late October and April. “I'll run one trap line one day, the other the next day,” he said. He traps martens, fox, wolf, mink. He says he find the meat of these animals is not that tasty, although he is partial to beaver. “Tastes like high quality beef,” he said. His wife makes hats from the pelts and they make jewelry from the teeth.
The previous day, Saturday, we'd driven to Wrangel-St. Elias National Park. This is a huge wilderness – 12 million acres and the park abuts the Kluane National Park in Canada. The place is pristine with huge mountain ranges and endless glaciers. But it is not very accessible – only two roads lead into the park. One of them is prone to being closed by washouts. This happened to be the case when we headed down the Nabesna Road. It had washed out and was closed.
We hiked through the boreal forest with a park ranger and learned much about this largest organism in the world. It extends across all of Canada,, from Newfoundland-Labrador, crosses into Russia and China and ends in Scandinavia. Many of the trees are white and black spruce. In addition, quaking aspen is a major player in the forest. We learned about the “drunken forest” caused by the tilting of shallow-rooted evergreens because of the permafrost. We came to appreciate the fragility of the permafrost. If you melt it, it can never be restored to the original state. Parking lots, and highways do a great job of destroying the permafrost – hence the roller-coaster ride in mainland Alaska where the permafrost heaves and sags because of the highway heat.

Monday, July 19, 2010
We drove north to Tok, a small crossroads town 90 miles from the Canadian border. We checked at the visitor center and discovered the road farther north, to Chicken, was opened this morning. But we've decided not to push our luck by driving this ragged road after the washouts we'd read about earlier in the week. We'll head for the Canadian border and retrace our route to our favorite campground of the entire trip at Kluane Lake. Then we'll head down to Haines, Alaska.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Land of Giants



These are just a couple of the giants...from the Alaska State Fair.

We're in the Matanuska Valley, northeast of Anchorage. This is the vegetable garden for all of Alaska. But not just ordinary veggies, of course – whoppers. Here's a list of some of the records set for vegetables grown here:

35 lb. Broccoli
28 lb. Brussel Sprouts
127 lb. Cabbage
19 lb. Carrot
18 lb. Leaf Lettuce
83 lb. Rutabaga
569 lb. Winter Squash
168 lb. Watermelon
22.75 inches for the longest bean
16.75 feet for the tallest Sunflower

And it goes on and on. The reasons for this richness in the soil: glaciers. They macerated the rocks and created deep topsoil.

But the real story about this valley occurred in 1935 when President Roosevelt's administration colonized the valley by shipping 202 families from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota here. They generally were farmers on the dole during the Depression. They were suffering through the worst drought in U.S. history. And they had nothing to lose when the government asked for volunteers to colonize this valley.

They came west by train, then north by ship. They initially were housed in tent villages built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. They were allowed to draw lots to receive their 40 acres of land. The deal included a house with between one and three bedrooms (depending on the number of children they brought with them), piped in water, a chemical toilet, and a repayment schedule that seems like a bargain to us: 30 years to pay back the government $3,000.

Amazingly, only 40 per cent of the families stayed on. Many buckled under the wilderness conditions, and the lack of medical support when their children began to die of measles and pneumonia. Eleanor Roosevelt eventually pushed hard for a hospital to be built for the colony. It's an interesting story of pursuing the American dream. There now are three of the original colonizers who continue to live today.

While I'm writing about records, you might as well indulge in some others about Alaska:
Alaska's coastline total 33,904 miles.
The U.S. Bought Alaska from Russia for 2 cents an acre... total cost: $7.2 million.
Alaska contains the northernmost (Point Barrow), westernmost (Amatignak Island) and easternmost (Semisopochnol Island, across the International Dateline) points in the U.S.
And Alaska's capital, Juneau, is the only capital in the U.S. With no road access; a boat or plane is the only way to get there.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

A Map at Last



In response to requests from our travelers, here's a map that shows our route through Alaska. We headed north to Fairbanks, came down to Anchorage, spent much time in the Kenai Peninsula. We sailed out of Seward and are now heading north and east. We arte in Eagle River, northeast of Anchorage.

If you click on the map, you'll enlarge it. If that doesn't work, Right click and choose "Open in a new tab". That should allow you to enlarge.

You might be interested to know we have had to have a major change in route on our way to Haines, Alaska. We'd planned to drive to Tok, then up to Chiucken and across the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City and down to Whitehorse, Yukon. But the road beyond Chicken was washed out in numerous areas after the river rose 20 feet on Saturday. There are a number of RVs trapped up there right now. So we will go to Tok, then head down to Haines Junction and on to Haines, where we are booked on the ferry system. It will cut 550 miles from our adventure.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Laughter in the soul



This Humpback calf came alongside to entertain and explore before we came up close and personal with the Northwestern Glacier.

We were floating in the very center of Northwestern Fjord, in the Gulf of Alaska. The captain of our vessel, Alaska Explorer, had taken the engines out of gear. Now he put one forward and one in reverse and the vessel spun on her own axis. As he did this, I held my camera and recorded the majesty of the scenic panorama as it passed in front of my lens. I was laughing inside...laughing in the soul, you might say, for this was a wondrous moment. He allowed me – and the 121 other passengers to experience that sublime moment that comes but once or twice in a lifetime. This was that time.

The mountains surrounded us. The sky was cerulean blue, not a cloud was to be seen. As the boat pivoted, one glacier after another appeared in my viewfinder. The peaks were coated in snow and ice. Behind the peaks lay the Harding Icefield, all 334,485 acres of it, concealing mountains that lie under several thousand feet of ice. The glaciers, even though they are retreating at an alarming rate, are sky blue. And they are always on the move.

The captain, when we had pulled up alongside Northwestern Glacier, stopped all engines and said simply, “This is the time when I let the glacier speak to you.” And she did. She groaned, she rumbled, she belched and she let go of her ice which came crashing down, calving into the fjord. The kittiwakes, floating on the bergy bits teetered and floated along unperturbed. The harbor seals, great sausages of sleek fur, lay basking on the floating ice, the sun warming them, they in all their glory on this perfect day.

Before we had reached the fjord, we'd come down the Gulf of Alaska and had come upon a mother humpback whale and her year-old calf, “a 2010 model” our captain called the calf. The calf was exceedingly curious. He leaped from the water and then made his way over to our stopped boat. Mama lay back, allowing him to explore. He gave us such a show, rolling, breaching, popping straight out of the water, newly-grown barnacles on his jaw.

We poked into one cove after another, each a treasure trove of wildlife and birds. /a mother otter lay on her back with her baby on her belly. Sea Lions basked high on a rock, the bull surrounded by his harem. He bellowed his displeasure as we stood off at about 50 yards while the sea lions basked in the building tide. Black oyster catchers, with enormous red beaks nested among the pebbles on one beach. Horned puffins, as well as tufted puffins fluttered like bats. They both are members of the Alcid family. This species come to land only to nest. Then they produce their young and head out for three years . They propel themselves through the water with their wings which are quite different from other species of birds. Their wing bones are solid to provide more strength for “underwater flying.” When they fly they always flap their wings. The moment they stop flapping, they begin to fall.

Jo and I befriended an Indian couple aboard our vessel, he from Mumbai, she from New York City. They had two delightful daughters and had flown to Anchorage and then rented a small motor home. He worked at Microsoft in Seattle and she was an independent entrepreneur who had started her own wholesale and retail business on the Internet. He was determined to catch salmon and/or halibut and to fly to Kodiak Island to see the Grizzly Bears catching their salmon.

The weather deteriorated as the afternoon wore on. We were back in the Gulf of Alaska and the waves rose along with the swells. The captain did a fine job of minimizing the impact by working toward the windward shore so we were less subject to the unpleasant effects of the sea. But it also was good to return to the harbor, tired but uplifted by the extraordinary experience with nature at its best.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Close Encounters with Eagles...and Finding Glaciers


Jo stays warm in her arctic parka while viewing Exit Glacier in Seward.

Next to messing about in boats, there may be nothing quite so enjoyable as lingering by the banks of a river, watching fishermen casting for their fish. And it matters not whether the fish are there or choose not to take the bait. We sat by the side of the Russian River, on the Kenai Peninsula, watching this scene and transported by the dreams of all the fishers who lined the banks and who took to dories. This is the time the salmon will make their run upriver. The salmon are downriver in Soldotna, a fisherman told me. But they haven't found their way up the icy turquoise-colored glacier river yet.
We'd planned to stay the night alongside the river. There's a primitive cable ferry here that will haul you and your gear to the other side of the racing river – it flows at around 6-7 knots and the ferry is hauled back and forth on its cable while the skipper strains at the wheel to keep the boxy vessel pointed into the roaring stream.

We had come up from Anchor Point, the most westerly point in them North American continent that is serviced by a highway. The point is at longitude 151.83746 degrees west of Greenwich, England. We had come to that place not to check off the “most westerly point” but to spend time up close with Bald Eagles. We were not disappointed.

Jo and I first wandered through the underbrush, alongside the Anchor River. We rounded a bend and there was the river. More importantly, there were the eagles. They had caught their own salmon and they took turns tearing at it and gulping down the rich meat and roe. They were surrounding by a haranguing retinue of gulls and crows, all of them hollering and yakking trying to claim their piece of the action. The eagles were silent since they owned the salmon. And they had no intention of sharing their catch. I walked the bank and they watched me. I tried to get close so I could capture the moment. The eagles worked with me and I was able to capture the feeding frenzy.

After supper, we wandered to the beach and found a whole new batch of eagles cleaning up the halibut guts that fishermen had left on the shore.

I worked my way along the stony beach, closing with a particularly handsome bird. He just stood on the sand offering himself to me. It reminded me of years ago in Africa when a klipspringer, a small antelope, stood in the cleft of a red rock face. He waited for me to work my way up the rocks so I could photograph him in the cleft. When I showed that picture to one of the reporters later and told him how the klipspringer had awaited me, Christoff Maletsky looked at me and said simply, “He offered himself up to you, Robert.” Christoff, of the Damara tribe, had grown up in the area where I'd been photographing and he knew the animal life intimately. So I experienced the same sense while working with the eagle.

He permitted me to gently approach him. I had started out 50 yards away. I edged slowly up the beach, trying not to disturb him. He looked at me with those awesome eagle eyes. He projected the sense that he could see me from 50 miles away. When I stopped about 10 feet away, I sensed he was getting a little nervous. Perhaps I was pushing into his personal space. Ten feet, though, is close enough. When you are that close, you can see the enormous talons. You can see the hooked beak. You can sense the massive power of the bird. I never felt in danger. But I did sense he could do with me what he wished with those talons and beak.

He allowed me to photograph him so his entire head filled my viewfinder. And then he turned his back and waddled along the beach for about 10 feet before opening his wonderful wings and lifting off with the greatest of ease. Now that was a moment as close to perfection as I have ever experienced.

Sunday, July 11
We've moved again, this time to Seward. What a drive this was. You come south between jagged peaks that are part of the Harding Icefield. There are too many glaciers to count – and all of them receding at record rates.
We parked on the edge of Resurrection Bay, in the city of Seward, and immediately set out for Exit Glacier. This is one of the few that are reachable on foot. We hiked into the Kenai Fjords National Park, passing many Japanese tourists who seem to take great delight in always photographing themselves at every outlook area. There must be something in the national character that demands to record their presence. We watched a father endlessly shoot his wife and two precocious children. When I offered to take his camera and photograph him with the whole family, however, he said, “No thank you.” Whatever.

Because we do not expect to come this way again, we have booked passage on a boat tomorrow for a 9.5-hour journey to Northwestern Fjord.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

On Wings of Eagles


This is a composite picture of the many Bald Eagles flying over the Ninilchik River area.

Hello. Ting Lee here. Just wanted to give you the lowdown on what I've been doing during the past seven months.
Today will be one of the more memorable of my life. We are, I'm told, on the banks of the Ninilchik River on the Kenai Peninsula. I got my first exposure to the giant bird you know as the Bald Eagle. Not just one.... but seven of them flew over, swooping and looking very menacingly at me. Now, I'm no fancier of bird flesh – I mean, I always get excited when I see birds chattering away – but these birds are 'way out of my league. They are huge. They have enormous talons. They do have a funny cheep that they make and it seems too small for their size. They were drafting on the uplifts from the cliffs at the mouth of the Ninilchik River. I'll never forget these birds.

Robert and Jo went into a church in Ninilchik that had been built by the Russians back in the 1800s when their fur traders sailed this coast. They met up with a man dressed in black, with ringlets hanging from his head. I didn't get into the church – unseemly for a cat to be in a church, the parental units said. But the man explained why the Russian Orthodox cross has two crosspieces on it, the lower one tilting up to the left. “This is pointing to the good thief on the cross beside the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said.
Robert asked about the congregation and the man explained there are only 20 people now who worship in the church. The services are mostly in English, although the older members like the Slavic tongue to be used, the priest said. “But all who lived here in the past come and are buried here when they die,” he said.

Robert said he noticed there were three new graves, in the cemetery. The cemetery is completely overgrown with weeds, so the 20 members of the congregation seem to have lost their need to maintain.

The man explained that the church leadership now resides in Long Island, New York. There are no ties to Russia since the Communist Revolution of 1917.

The parentals left me in the evening and returned to the mouth of the Ninilchik River. There, they spent the evening photographing more Bald Eagles. They said the eagles land on their prey like lions. All the gulls makes way for the eagles but are not happy to do so. They skulk around in circles and cry out their annoyance – very similar to hyenas at the water holes of Namibia, Robert says.

Two juvenile eagles and their papa landed together on a spit of land off the river mouth. They worked at tearing the discarded entrails of a halibut between them. Then, they split up and the mature adult flew off down the stony beach where he landed and offered himself up for a great portrait.

In the meantime, the fishermen, in their sturdy aluminum craft, headed back toward the mouth of the river. There were more than 65 boats crowding the mouth of the river, waiting for enough water to permit them to enter. A couple of boats edged in but immediately ran aground. One smaller boat came through, creating a giant wake and he rocked the stuck boat off the bar. But mostly the others had more patience and just waited for the tide to rise enough to permit entry around 10:30 at night.
There they unloaded their catch – halibut and salmon – into plastic containers. These were weighed then iced at the dock and loaded into a truck for transportation. The young girl who shoveled the ice and moved the boxes seemed to have the hardest job in the world. Her dad ran the forklift.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010
This morning we arrived in Homer, Alaska. This is on the most southerly spit of land on the Kenai Peninsula and is the halfway point, more or less, of our journey. Now we will head north and east after a few days.
We now have traveled 7,055 miles.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Slip Sliding Away




This bergy bit is a breakaway piece of the Portage Glacier on Portage Lake, Kenai Peninsula.

This is your final warning: Get to the Kenai Peninsula as quickly as possible. Please don't wait another year. It might be too late.
We are on the northern edge of the peninsula – just a hop-skip-and-jump for Anchorage, 50 miles to the north.
We drove alongside Turnagain Arm, perhaps one of the prettiest drives in all of Alaska. It was named in 1778 by William Bligh of HMS Bounty fame. Bligh served as Capt. James Cook's Sailing Master on his 3rd and final voyage, with the aim to discover the Northwest Passage.
Upon reaching the head of Cook Inlet, Bligh was of the opinion that both Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm were the mouths of rivers and not the opening to the Northwest Passage. Under Cook's orders Bligh organized a party to travel up Knik Arm, which quickly returned to report Knik Arm indeed led only to a river.
Afterwards a second party was dispatched up Turnagain Arm and it too returned to report only a river lay ahead. As a result of this frustration the second body of water was given the disingenuous name "Turn Again".
The place is just crawling with glaciers. But the end is in sight. The glaciers here are in full retreat and what we saw will not last much longer. But what we saw is simply incredible.
We arrived on a dank, dismal day with low clouds shrouding the snow-covered mountains. We camped in the Chugach National Forest amid alders with their fluttering leaves. The mountains rise up in front of our RV through the mists.
We made our way by car to the nearby visitor's center and became immersed in the world around us. When we watched the movie of the Portage Glacier, we were inspired – but, at the movie's conclusion, the screen rose up, the curtain parted and we all sat before a glass wall that looked across Portage Lake. The glacier which had been visible when the center was built just a few years back, and which was designed to be the star of this presentation, has retreated around the side of a mountain and is out of sight.
We were a little depressed at this. But after a good night's sleep we decided to investigate. We hiked two miles up a path, gratefully wearing our anti-mosquito equipment. We arrived at Byron Glacier which, while retreating, also is a spectacular sight. The blue ice is a thick carpet for the underwater stream that pours down the mountain under the ice. We trekked onto the snowfield and photographed the beauty of it all.
Then we headed by our car through a tunnel that had been built in 1942 to permit supplies shipped into the port of Whittier to get inland. This tunnel, which run 3.5 miles through a mountain, now has been modernized so cars, RVs and trucks, as well as trains share the passageway. Trains go first. Then east-bound vehicles, then trains heading west, followed by vehicles. It's a toll road that is actually paying for itself. We arrived in the little town of Whittier which isn't much to write home about. There is an impressive harbor with lots of heavily built sailboats and powerboats. Many fishermen come through the tunnel, dragging their boats behind them. And the fishing is just beginning as the salmon is beginning to make their run back upstream to spawn. They are running two weeks late this year for some reason. So we are just at the start of this wondrous journey.
As we returned through this tunnel, the sun welcomed us on the Portage side. Not a cloud in the sky, spectacular visibility. We again visited the visitor center and listened to the recordings of the aboriginal people, telling about the subsistence lifestyle. We also heard recorded stories of a gold miner who was attacked by a Grizzly Bear. He was badly mauled but managed to roll away while the bear collected her cub. But then the bear made one more attack on the old man before leaving him. He then had to walk 20 miles through the mountains to Seward to get medical help. They don't make 'em tougher than that.
We listened to a geologist who had been walking and taking measurements on Portage lake when the massive 9.2 earthquakes his Anchorage in 1964. The quake continued for more than four minutes – a lifetime in quake history, since they normally last around 30 seconds. He said the frozen lake began to buck under his feet. Water disappeared under the ice, then returned and pushed through the frozen lake. He and his men scrambled for their lives and were rescued later in the day. In Anchorage that day, the quake was so violent that a subdivision on the south side of the city fell 30 feet and hundreds of homes disappeared. We had walked the path to this subsidence. There is a cliff there now and low wetlands where homes used to sit.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

On Seeing Denali...The "High One"


This Grizzly sow and her cub seem to have found some tasty treasure in this tree.

And on the third day of our visit, our patience was rewarded when Mt McKinley – or Denali, as she is known to the Athabascan people who refer to her as the “ High One” - allowed the cloak of clouds that almost always cover her to fall away. There she stood, all 20,320 feet of her. She rises more than 18,000 feet above the lowlands of Wonder Lake – a greater vertical relief than even Mount Everest.
But, on Friday afternoon, three days after we had arrived at Denali, she showed herself to us.
In the meantime, we had not wasted our time for we had the privilege of seeing five Grizzly Bears, a Lynx, Moose, five Wolves, a Coyote, a Golden Eagle, Snowshoe Hares, Caribou, too many Dall Sheep to even count and, perhaps, the most amazing thing of all: dozens of tiny Arctic Squirrels that are quite unique among all the animals. In the numbing cold of Denali's winter, their body temperature drops to 27 degrees F. Their hibernation is so complete that their blood actually freezes. But they return to life in the spring. Quite remarkable.
When you come here, you are not permitted to drive through the six-million-acre park on your own. This place is so huge it is larger than the state of New Hampshire. This is a preserve, created in 1917 to protect the Dall Sheep. It is necessary to travel on a shuttle bus or to walk into the wilderness. The road is 92 miles long. And the place only begins to yield wildlife when you go beyond the first 20 miles.
We packed our lunch, took a bus,and headed out. Our driver, John, described the park's history, as well as the flora and fauna. He mentioned Lynx but said it was highly unlikely we would see one of these reclusive animals. It was the first animal we saw! Passengers are asked to shout out “Stop” when they see an animal. One man did and when John stopped the bus and asked what he'd seen, he said, “I think I saw a Lynx.” I thought to myself, “Sure you did.” But there she was in the underbrush at the right side of us, slinking along, not that happy to be in our sight. I was unable, in the crush of people aboard, to get a picture but we both saw this massive cat.
But that was just the beginning. We watched and photographed a sow Grizzly and her two or three year old cub as they collected berries about half a mile from us. She even did something John said he'd never even known a Grizzly could do: She climbed a tree to get something that appealed to her. The Grizzly is not designed to climb trees like the Black Bear. Her claws are just too massive and long. But there she was.
We had been warned not to expect Dall Sheep to be too close to the road. These creatures are at their happiest when they cling to an almost vertical face of rock. But we came upon a bachelor group that had decided they'd take up residence on a knob of rock that was ridiculously close to the road.
Moose languished in ponds. They are so large, it would take the pelts of five Grizzlies to cover their bodies.
An Arctic Timber Wolf loped onto the road and looked at us insolently before jumping down the bank and making its way to the Savage River where he joined his mate. What an experience we had. Caribou were everywhere, the bulls and their enormous antlers are still covered in mossy fuzz for another five weeks while they continue to grow.
The next day, we visited the kennels at the park where a ranger explained this is the only national park to have teams of dogs that pull sleds in the wintertime. When the Denali road is closed with the first snows, the dogsled is used by the rangers to cut trails in the park for snow-shoers and skiers. They also are used to haul garbage out of the park – garbage that was placed there by miners back in the 1900s. A twelve-dog team can easily pull 1,300 pounds of material. We were invited to pet the Alaskan Huskies – very friendly dogs that are mutts in that they are a mix through the years of wolf, and all manner of other dogs so that they are bred for long legs, narrow feet and great stamina.

I found this Inuit myth in the kennel:

“The earth split in two and the men and the beasts were separated by a profound abyss. In the great chaos of creation, birds, insects, and four-legged creatures sought to save themselves in flight. All but the dog. He alone stood at the edge of the abyss, barking, howling, pleading.
“ The man, moved by compassion, cried, “Come”, and the dog hurled himself across the chasm to join them. His front two paws caught the far edge. The dog certainly would have been lost forever had the man not caught him and saved his life.”

Later in the day, as we made out way south by 100 miles, we decided to make another foray to view Denali. And there she was in all her pristine glory, with wreathes of cloud moving down upon her. A UFO-type cloud, with a mushroom top, hovered off to her south and the majesty of the moment was breath-taking. We lingered for three hours as we watched the weather work its way back and forth around the mountain and we were able to photograph the mountain and her surrounding foothills with the setting sun until 11:30 at night.

Sunday, June 27
The rains came in the night and that wrapped it up for Denali. We drove south to Wasilla, Alaska. This is the home of Simple Sara, the former governor of the state who has the remarkable ability to see all things in terms of black and white.... no grays.