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Well, we made it to Cozumel, arriving in a down pour, and it didn't let up for two days. Monday things were looking up, and we had intermittent blue sky, which was really nice. The WiFi in our room was not so good. I was unable to send a large message, and it kept bombing on me when I tried to go to another page on the Ameriprise website. It also appeared several times that someone was trying to hack into my connections, so I killed more internet sessions than I successfully accessed trouble free. But now back to the Fairbanks adventure. There is a place near Fairbanks called The North Pole, and everyone except me went there for a visit. I’m sure they all had a great time, at least from the photos on Pete’s camera.
Santa’s slay without all the presents for the GOOD little boys and girls. I assumed his elves are all busy in his workshop.
I think Pat was the biggest kid there. Christmas is her holiday and she’s beaming like a little kid. Isn’t it great to see that? And just in case you need to send Santa a letter with all your requests, here is how you’ll need to address your envelope.
There is even a countdown clock giving the amount of time until Christmas, down the the tenth of a second. ;o)
Santa’s knees are getting a workout here. I’m told that he insisted, but I don’t think so. Who wouldn’t want to sit on Santa’s lap? Next we visited the Antique Auto Museum. I was amazed at how beautifully restored these old cars were. It was like seeing them on the factory show room floor of the period. I took a photo of every one, along with the sign with the name and stats.
There were a lot of old cars, so I won’t bore you with all my photos. But if you are a real antique car buff, let me know and I will send you the rest of the photos. We walked back from the Antique Auto Museum and relaxed on the balcony before going to dinner.
Dinner was at the Silver Gulch restaurant, where the food was pretty good, and they served a great dark beer. The next day we did a road trip to Denali National Park. The mountains were beautiful, and the road was really quite good. There were only a few times we had to stop for roadwork, and the waits were not too long.
We hooked up with Donna and Sparky at a crossroads near a spot on the map, which Pete thought should at least have a diner, since they put it on the map where Pete was certain there would be a place to have lunch. But there was nothing but a gas station, so we headed back to Denali where we knew there was a restaurant. Salmon Bake turned out to be a great place to eat.
After eating, we drove to the Visitor Center for the park. They had quite an elaborate museum, with lots of interesting stuff. Sparky and Donna Cindy and Pat
Some Dahl sheep, prevalent in this area, and a beautiful eagle, bringing a rodent to her young in their mountain top nest were static displays in the Visitor Center Museum. This stone structure is an Inuksuk. For centuries the Inuit people of Alaska, Arctic Canada and Greenland stacked rock in human form to create the Inuksuk, a steadfast guidepost that provided direction across the vast horizons of the North. Inuksuit were employed as hunting and navigation aids, coordination points, message centers, and to indicate migration routes.
Joey drove up a very long, windy and steep road to a grand hotel and restaurant at the top. The views were spectacular. The mountain has many names. All who lived or explored here were compelled to name the mountain. Early Russian explorers spoke of Bulshaia Gora, the “Great Mountain”. American gold-seeker William Dickey chose the name Mount McKinley a tip-of-the-hat to the presidential candidate from Ohio who championed a gold-based currency. Koyukon Athabaskans have long revered the mountain as Deenaalee, the “Tall One.” Present-day Alaskans scan the horizon for Denali while mapmakers write McKinley, the mountain’s legal name. McKinley is the tallest peak in North America, standing at 20,237 feet. The next day we went to lunch again, before visiting the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), which was a very nice campus, with a very nice U of A Museum of the North. Inside, the mysterious “listening room”, really piqued my interest.
The architecture of the Museum of the North was very modern. Cindy is seated in the Listening Room, recording the music and the rumble of the earth. In this room, set against a screen washed with colors that change as the sun moves across the sky, you hear chords that change with the movements of the sun and moon. These changes in the light and sounds are, by nature, slow and subtle. Sensors located at sites around Alaska pick up seismic activity. Whenever the earth shakes, deep and resonant notes are generated, seeming to shake the room. And, when the aurora is dancing overhead, both in the winter when you can see it and in the summer when you cannot, “aurora bells” announce its presence. Every thing you experience in the place where you go to listen is driven by real-time conditions in Alaska, all channeled into this room by computers.
Displays in the museum, Alaska brown bears, huge mammoth tusks, bison, were all magnificent to behold. And here is a polar bear, with it’s favorite food, the Harps seal. Below are examples of Inuit attire and some primitive tools.
Making leather soft and pliable is not as easy as one might think. But with no television or iPhones, the Inuit people in earlier times had plenty of time on their hands, and their hands created real works of art
These tiny glass beads are very colorful, but I can’t begin to imagine the patience it must take to sew them on like this. We are winding down and making ready for our return home. Poor Joey and Terry have a 1:30 AM flight, so there’s no point in going to bed. Our flight is at 6:30 AM, so it will be a short night. All things considered, it was a fun trip. Many and more thanks to Cheryl and Melody for having a well planned schedule of activities for us to do. The only boring thing in Fairbanks were the mosquitos that kept boring into my hide.
Pete and I are enjoying our Alaska coffee mugs. Thanks Cheryl and Melody. The little bag of Forget-Me-Not seeds we gave to our neighbor Chris, because she’s always so nice to us, and besides, if we tried to make them grow, our cats would have eaten them before they had a chance to bloom. ;o( I hope Chris can grow some blooms as nice as these. The Forget-Me-Not is the Alaska State Flower.
And so ends my report on our adventure north to Alaska. It was quite a learning experience. In 1959 I was in the Navy, and for a time I was stationed on the small island of Shemya, very near the end of the Aleutian Island chain. It was a PanAm refueling stopover, and the folks who ran the station also provided meals for the military personnel based there. Those were some good memories. I was there with my flight crew over Christmas in 1960, and we flew missions to photograph the reentry of Russian space craft launched from Vladivostok. The photographic information we gathered was sent to labs in Washington, DC for analysis in an effort to determine what sort of materials the Russians were using for their reentry vehicles. Spectral analysis of the light as the craft reentered the earth’s atmosphere could provide us with the materials they were testing. This was a time when Nasa scientists were well into the Apollo Program where such information was vital to it’s success. I’ve got hundreds of stories about my 3 years in VQ-1, the Navy’s cloak and dagger squadron stationed in Japan. That assignment was the true highlight of my Naval career, and I’ll never forget it. We were stationed in Japan, but our missions took us all over the Pacific, from Shemya Alaska to Johnston Atoll, located some 717 miles southwest of Hawaii.
Shemya Island wasn’t a very big island, and it was pretty barren. Johnston Atoll was even smaller, but the water |
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