Alaska Trip - Day 10 (August 25, 2009)

Last Day in Alaska

We woke up relatively early on our last day in Alaska, despite the late night, because we had to get the RV back to the rental place by mid-afternoon.  While everyone had breakfast and got ready, I walked around outside for a short while.  I wanted to have a look around since it was pitch dark when we pulled in the night before.  We were in a nice forested campground seperated from a very wide and shallow river valley - the same river valley we parked beside for dinner the night before. 

Most of the drive today was amazing - by far the most fantastic scenery we've driven through (other than Denali, of course).  Huge mountains, deep valleys, glaciers, rivers, cliffs.  Just about everything you could ask for. 

Eventually we made it to Anchorage, filled up with gas and propane, and high tailed it to the RV place and just barely made it on time.  Fortunately the rental people were a bit busy, so we finished packing up our stuff and caught a ride to the airport.  But, our flight didn't leave until really late - something like 11pm or later.  We were hoping to find a place to store our bags so we could walk around downtown.  Once we did, we got in a cab and had the nice lady drop us off downtown.

Downtown Anchorage is pretty nice.  There are lots of shops for tourists, but they aren't filled with garrish crap made in China.  I had a lot of fun seeing all of the native art and artifacts in the stores, and we spend hours walking around.  We had all heard about a really nice trail that goes from the heart of the city to a nice park miles outside of town.  Obviously we weren't going to walk the whole thing, but we wanted to see part of it and walk along a short segment in otown.  We found it along the edge of the city by the water.  However, this section wasn't particularly nice, so it didn't take us long to abandon it and go back downtown.  There are several hotdog stands on street corners like you'd expect to see in any downtown of a major city.  Except these were way better - they had reindeer and muskox sausages.  I really wanted one, but it was late in the afternoon and I knew we'd be eating dinner soon.

There were lots of these giant characters on the streets

outside of various shops, so we started taking pictures.

Unfortunately we lost Ed on this trip.  He was attacked and carried off by a giant

deranged puffin who mistook him for a sardine.  He'll be missed.

I had to take this picture because I have

this exact same awesome flannel shirt.

These signs are everywhere.  Ed thought they were hilarious.

I had to take a picture of this place.  It was owned and run by an old native guy who was very talkative.  This is one great example of why I'm thankful for my social ineptitude the owner was very nice, but started talking to Ed and Jeanette and would NOT let them leave.  He talked their ears off, endlessly, about nothing in particular at first, but then he found out they were married, so he proceeded to bring them to the back of the store and give them marital advice.  Thank god I'm antisocial!

Anyway, we walked around a long while and eventually found a place for dinner.  Not a bad place, but nothing spectacular from what I remember.  It wasn't long before we had to get back to the airport, and start our long journey back to NY and Philly.

After a long flight, we were back in NYC.  Everything worked out perfectly.  We landed, got our bags, walked outside, and Jeanette's sister was waiting for us in our car (which was VERY nice of her because it saved us from having to drive an hour or more east to their house to pick it up, and then 3&1/2 hours back home) and her mom was waiting in their car.  We said a quick goodbye because the cars couldn't sit there long, and suddenly we were alone and headed in different directions.  That last half hour was a little wierd - after 10 days of nature, clean air, beautiful scenery, and few if any people, and spending all of our time with Ed and Jeanette, suddlenly we were thrust back into a crowded, filthy, hot, and smelly airport, parking lot, and city, and all alone.  I always have a hard time adjusting to "civilization" after wonderful trips like this.  It was a long, quiet drive back to Philly, and early the next morning we were back at work.

It only took 4 months for me to finish writing about this trip - you'd think we'd walked around the world.

Christmas Press Release

A press release from my Museum just before Christmas.  Dave Parris is my boss.

STATE MUSEUM RECEIVES HOLIDAY GIFT FROM FOSSIL COLLECTOR

TRENTON, NJ - Reindeer didn’t arrive in New Jersey with Santa Claus; they were here thousands of years ago! Andrew Dillman of Hamilton Township, Mercer County has proof, an Ice Age fossil that he found in Monmouth County. It is an antler of a caribou, the wild species of deer from which reindeer were domesticated, and was probably living in what is now New Jersey at least ten thousand years ago.

Dillman, who works for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, knew he had found something important. He showed his specimen to New Jersey State Museum Curator David Parris back in 1983. Parris agreed that it was a significant find and described it in a scientific paper. Dillman carefully preserved his prized fossil and protected it from damage during the ensuing years.

In November, Dillman attended one of the State Museum’s Sunday Science lectures and visited with Parris and other scientists who study the Ice Age (Pleistocene Epoch). He also viewed similar records of mammals of that age, currently on view in the exhibition called Rising Tide: Climate Change and New Jersey. Following the visit, Dillman decided to donate the fossil to the State Museum, so that it would become yet another documented piece of evidence in the Museum’s Ice Age collections.

“The fact that the specimen represents an ancestor of the reindeer makes the timing of this gift especially exciting,” said Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells. “I want to thank Andrew Dillman for his generosity in contributing to the wonderful educational offerings of the State Museum.”

The state’s museum curator David Parris added that nearly a century ago, paleontologist Oliver Perry Hay highlighted that: “In the consideration of the problems of Pleistocene geology and paleontology, New Jersey is one of the most important states.”

On Tuesday, Dillman delivered the specimen to Parris, and the fossil will soon be added to the exhibition Rising Tide: Climate Change and New Jersey. 


Links to some of the stories that came out about this: http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/science-updates/new-jersey-state-museum-receives-ice-age-fossil-gift

http://www.nj.com/news/times/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-18/1262069111165530.xml&coll=5

Alaska Trip - Day 9 (August 24, 2009)

Just to let you know, this new version of Blogger doesn't have a spell checker yet, and I'm tired, so this is probably filled with typos. 

We decided the day before to drive up to Fairbanks and thereby see more of Alaska, rather than spending another day in Denali limited in what we could do by the weather.  So, this morning, we saw the last few things we really wanted to see before we left the park.  For Ed, this included a stop at the dog sled kennels.  It took a little bit of hunting in the rain, but we found it, and the interpretive information they have in one of the cabins there was very interesting.

We also made 1 last stop at the showers for Ed and Jeanette, and while they were in there I cooked us some breakfast and dropped off some postcards at the park's post office.  Then a short stop back into town for Jeanette since they missed some of the stores while they were rafting the day before, and then we were off.  From Denali there's really only 1 way to Fairbanks - just keep heading North and then curving East on state road 3.  Fairbanks is in te eastern 1/3 of the state, but otherwise is right in the middle of the state.

I was just going through our picture from the day trying to remember what all we did - WOW!  I was confused at first because I couldn't believe we did so much in 1 day.  I guess it helps that there's daylight for almost 18 hours at that time of the year.  Somehow we didn't take many picture on this day.

The drive up to Fairbanks was pretty from what I remember.  We passd through some "towns" that seemed to be little more than signs along the roadside.  Most of the towns were inhabited almost exclusivley by native Alaskans.  I forgot how long we drove, but it was several hours.

Finally we arrived in the Fairbanks area.   Before we went into the city, we consulted Ed & Jeanette's guide book and found the northern most brewery in the world - just north of the city.  It looked like a cool place, but unfortunately it was closed.

The guide book also told us that a portion of the Alaska Pipeline was close by, so we stopped there as well.  It was pretty cool to see - bigger than I realilzed.  They had some nice interpretive stuff there too that explained a lot of interesting stuff.

Sarah showing you the diameter of one of the pipes. 

Oh man - Jeanette's going to kill me for this.

Sarah being a spazz . . . again.

While we were just North of the city, I realized this is the farthest North I'd ever been.  So, we took a picture of the GPS to record it - 64.5+ degrees North Latitude!

On the way into the city the guide book directed us to another place called Pioneer Park (http://www.co.fairbanks.ak.us/pioneerpark/).  The description made it sound a little wierd, but we stopped anyway. 

This place was unlike any place I've ever been before, and it's very hard to decribe it.  Essentially, if I understand it correctly, over a period of years the city of Fairbanks moved historically important homes, buildings, businesses, etc. from the town center and brought them here to create a ake "pioneer" town.  It kind of felt like a cross between a living museum / fairgrounds, but it was nearly empty. It was like what I imaging state fair grounds to be like when the fair is not around.  Each house or business was staffed with a volunteer who sits there all day giving interpretive tours to visitors.  There are also businesses there, like unique gift shows, food vendors, and silly things like a place where you can spend $5 to sit in a giant freezer to feel what a -40 degree Fairbanks winter feels like. 

Apparently Fairbanks used to be quite a wild town.  This was the last stop on the way to the gold fields during the Alaska goldrush days, so there were a lot of characters here.  There was the usual "100 - 1 ratio of bars/brothels to churches" type thing, gun fights, etc. 

You could walk inside this huge old paddlewheeler, and the entire inside had minature dioramas of Fairbanks and tiny towns in the area as they looked in the late 19th and early 20th century.  These dioramas were amazing, but very old and you could tell they hadn't been touched in decades. 

This whole place was so bizarre, and just had a weird feeling about it, but it was fun, and I imagine it's packed on warm summer weekend days.  It kind of felt like one of those "Americana" type road-side attractions - things you'd find driving along Route 66 in the 60's, like the "World's Largest Ball of Yarn", or  the "World's Longest Hotdog" - just something cheesey and from another time, but you just had to stop and see it. 

It turns out, only a few days after we left, this is where Sarah Palin gave her rambling, incoherant, "I'm quitting - but I'm not quitting" speech.

After leaving Pioneer Park, we drove around the city quite a bit, even re-tracing parts our trail a couple of times.  It's a pretty small city.We also found and drove through U of Alaska - Fairbanks.  Let's just say it's not as picturesque as Auburn or Syracuse.  Once we went through campus, we felt like we'd seen about as much of Fairbanks as anyone could expect in one day (and probably pretty much all there is to see, although if I remember correctly there was a museum or 2 I would have liked to see downtown if we'd had more time).  So, we started heading out.

Now, on the way up to Fairbanks this morning, we debated on which route back to Anchorage we should take.  We could take state road 2, which makes a gentle arc toward the Southeast and then around to Anchorage.  The benefit of this was that is was another new road - more of Alaska that we'd get to see.  The negative was that we had to have the R/V back by 1pm, or something like that, and we weren't sure how long it would take to drive that distance or if there would be detours.  We decided to take a chance on the new route, and it was a great decision.

Not far outside of Fairbanks we ran into the town of North Pole, Alaska (no joke!).  Well, we had to at least pull of and drive through town. It's by far the biggest town we drove through in the interior, other than Fairbanks of course.  The entire town is decked out like Christmas - but all throughout the year.  Sign poles (even for McDonald's) and lamp posts are striped like candy canes.  Streets are named after Christmas things. 

Then we found this Christmas mega-store, called Santa Claus House.  Outside they have some reindeer in a pen and this huge Santa Claus sign(that's Sarah and I down by his feet).

This place is amazing!  They have every Christmas thing you can imagine. And it is HUGE!  We were there late in the afternoonand fortunately there was hardly anyone there.  We love it and had a lot of fun.  We were there until they closed. 

When kids write letters to Santa this is where they come, and teams of volunteers all write back.

Which of these 2 mammals is hairier? 

It was about 5pm when we left North Pole, and we started heading south-southeast on state road 2.  It was a pretty drive, and after some time, stopped on the side of a mountain overlooking an unbelievably wide valley composed entirely of a very wide and shallow river bed.  Actually, hundreds of anastomozing river channels all criss-crossing each other, with forested islands between them.  It was a really beautiful spot.  It was really nice because Ed & Jeanette cooked dinner while I sat outside taking in the beautiful seen and reflecting on the whole amazing trip, and dreading going back to work and the "lower 48".  Alaska is an amazing place.  I'd love to live here some day. 

We didn't really want to drive at night and miss the scenery, but we needed to get some more miles behind us to make the R/V deadline tomorrow.  This road really parallels the Alaska pipeline, because we saw it many times near the road.  I drove as long as I could, and finally got too tired.  We fund a very nice state park campground and pulled off.  I don't remember what the name of the park was, but there were so many along this road.  It was very dark and very quiet, with only 1 other camper in the park, and we were soon asleep.  It had been a very long, but eventful day.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone!

As you can see, Jackson wasn't crazy about sitting with Santa this year. 

In case you can't tell, we dressed him in his Halloween costume, which was the Gingerbread Man costume Sarah made for him.  This was alsothe day of the blizzard - 13"!!

Alaska Trip - Day 8 (August 23, 2009)

Yes, I know how long it's been.  We've been so busy.  Too busy.  I'll just pick up where  left off and try to catch up over the next week or so since I have some time off.

Don't forget about Sarah's book, which you can pre-order (for a significant discount) here: http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Down-High-Blood-Pressure/dp/1590771591/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261620016&sr=8-1

Also don't forget that this new version of blogger still doesn't allow me to upload video, so be sure tocome back later to these last serval posts once I'm able to upload them.

Today the weather continued to be kind of crappy - misty/drizzly with low hanging overcast skies.  Ed and Jeanette wanted to go White Water Rafting, and we did too, but it wasn't a good idea with Sarah being knocked up and all.  So, we dropped them off at the rfting company headquarters, then went back to the Denali NP "village", where they have a general store, showers, etc.  We each took much needed showers, and felt much better afterwards. 

Then we went back into town to check out the sites.  There were a lot of nice littel stores with unique things, but unfortunately, most of the stores were tourist traps filled with the exact same tainted "Made in China" crap as almost every other store on the strip.  The nice stores were a bit expensive, and we only splurged on a nice glass bowl. 

Sarah was shopping too long.

There were also some cool-looking places to eat in town, and Ed and I sampled some sausages - reindeer and something else, like musk ox or moose, or something.  Doesn't really matter - they were both good.

Ed and Jeanette had a great time rafting, but said they were freezing. 

On the way back into the park this afternoon we stopped at the other very nice park entrance sign to take pictures, and then saw thise cow moose fairly close to the road. 

Once we got back to camp, there was still plenty of daylight left, so we drove on the park road as far as you could go, which is only a couple miles farther in beyond our campsite.  We walked around there for a short while, and again around our camp site, but the weather was dreary, cold, and we were getting close to dinner time.  While we were walking we made a decision about the rest of the trip.  As much as we hated leaving the beautiful park after only seeing such a small part of it, we decided we'd get a lot more out of our trip if we drove the next day to Fairbanks, a few hours farther North in the Alaskan interior, than if we spent another day in dreary & wet conditions here in Denali, and that is what the weather was supposed to be like. 

I don't really remember this, but apparently we had a ramen noodle eating contest for dinner.  Looks like Jeanette won. 

Bringing Blood Pressure Down

Everyone,

  Sarah is now officially a published author.  She co-authored a book on blood prossure that will be coming out in early 2010.  You can read a good review of the book here: http://www.seo-writer.com/writers/

You can purchase the book just about anywhere, as you know, but if you pre-order it on Amazon.com (link below), you'll save a good bit of money.

http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Down-High-Blood-Pressure/dp/1590771591/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251591231&sr=8-1

Please pass the word to you friends, family, and colleagues. We're very excited about this.  Thanks,

Jason

 
 
 

Denali National Park

Denali National Park

http://www.nps.gov/dena/index.htm

The next morning we got up pretty early so that we'd have time to drive the several miles back toward the park headquarter buildings, check into our campsite, and then get back to the campsite before we were picked up for the tour of the park. 

2nd Moose Close Call - This morning we were in the RV waiting on Sarah to get back to from the bathroom.  I was sitting on the bed facing the fron of the RV talking to Ed & Jeanette weh an enormous cow moose trotted past the front windsheild of the vehicle.  I was a little nervous that it was going in Sarah's direction, but amazined that it came so close to us, and that it was so HUGE!  I think I scared the bejezus out of Jeanette when I saw it.

The park really is immense - I can't say it enough. Even at almost 90 miles, that East-West road that you travel on doesn't even extend 1/2 way into the park - not even close. The park is almost 9,500 square miles of wilderness - that's bigger than 5 states, and bigger than New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined. It's also unique in that a large portion of the park still allows subsistence hunting. The park was 1st established in 1917 as Mt. McKinley National Park, but was drastically increased in size in 1980 to its present size and the name changed to Denali NP. Denali is the native Althabascan name for the mountain and it means "The High One", or "The Great One". The mountain its self is really incredible. The surrounding land is only a few thousand feet above sea level, so even though the mountain, at 20,320 feet, isn't nearly as tall as Mt. Everest (29,029' tall), it is far more impressive to look at because nearly all of its height is right there in front of you. Everest is only a few thousand feet above the surrounding terrain.

A little background here: Denali NP is one of the few that only allows you to drive a short distance on its roads.  Actually, there is only 1 road into the park - a basically East-West road that extends about 90 miles into the park from the eastern boundary.  They allow you to drive about 13 miles into the park on this road, and if you want to go any farther, you have to ride on one of the tours (unless you're one of the lucky few who win a lottery for personal cars).  These tours are of various lengths and focused on specific things, like the wildlife or geology, or a general tour that touches on everything.  This is a great idea because it really minimizes the human impact on the roads, the scenery, and the wildlife, but it's one of those things that I'm glad they make everyone else do, but wish they didn't apply to me.  I like to go on my own pace and have some quiet (more on that in a minute).  You can go anywhere else in the park that you want, but you're going to hike to get there. 

We boarded our bus and began our tour ~ 8am.  I wanted to see as much of the park as possible, so we signed up for the general tour that went all the way to the end of the road (mile marker 90) and back, which takes about 13 hours!  It takes that long, of course, because you're constantly stopping to see wildlife, and they make several stops for bathroom breaks, scenic sites, etc.

1 bit of advice - if you ever take one of these tours, SIT ON THE LEFT SIDE!!!!  Sarah and I made the mistake of sitting on the right and were frustrated much of the morning trip because almost all of the sites and wildlife were off of the left side.  We skirted the perimeter of a valley by driving along the edge of a series of hills, so pretty much all we ever saw on our side was the side of a hill right out our window.  So, sit on the left side.  People get on and off the bus a lot, so you can almost certainly get back on the right side once the bus starts coming back.  The only other complaint that we had (and this one we couldn't do much about) is that across the aisle from us was one of those unbelievably annoying doofusses that just had to tell everyone how much he knows about everything and comment on everything the bus driver/tour guide said over the intercom.  And then later on during the day, he had the nerve to ask the tour guide, who was actually telling us important and interesting things, to please talk less so he could "enjoy the nature more".  As soon as he left I asked the tour guide to ignore him because he was an idiot. 

Anyway, regardless of where you sit, you're going to have a good time and see some beautiful things and tons of animals.  As I said, there were plenty of bathroom stops, longer stops at ranger stations and places to take a short hike and take pictures, etc.  The scenery is incredible and the park is just immense.  I really wanted to strike out on a long hike and get away from the road and all the people, but we knew today would be dedicated to the bus tour.  This is the only way to see a decent porportion of the park in a reasonable amount of time.  Hopefully tomorrow we could go on a hike.

Jason & Sarah's Pictures

The wildlife here is fantastic.  We saw caribou, beavers, moose, Dall sheep, lots of brown bears . . . just about everything.  The only thing we didn't see were wolves.  Apparently we missed them by just a couple of minutes, because Ed and Jeanette got some great pictures of some up really close.  (They decided to go on a short hike at one of the stops on the way home, so they hopped on the next bus). 

Ed & Jeanette's Photos

The scenery is equally amazing.  It was overcast today (the 1st time during the entire trip) so we couldn't see Denali, but it was still gorgeous.  Almost overwhelmingly beautiful - the mountains so rugged and the valley so vast, with glaciers on the mountainsides, patches of spruce forest surrounded by seemingly endless tundra that had just begun turning colors for the impending fall.  It was really amazing and one of my favorite parks so far.  I would absolutely love to see this place in the winter as well. 

These are two bull moose skulls and antlers o display at the Eilson Visitor Center.  Apparently these two guys were fightinga nd their atlers got locked together and they ended up dying of starvation like this.  One antler tine pierced the eye of the other moose.  Pretty terrible way to die. 

Sarah and I got back a little earlier than Ed and Jeaneete, so we started our dinner of burgers and noodles. 
It was a long day, but well worth it.  I really loved everything.