Hello from cold Alaska,

Yes, this past week has been cold, close to 20 degrees below normal for the highs  And we have had snow.  I even have pictures to prove we had snow.

This shows snow falling and on the cars

Snow on crab apple tree next to our steps

Interesting picture from daily paper.

Elva and I went to the start of the Equinox Marathon last Saturday (9/21/13).  A thermometer near the start said 18 degrees.  The paper said it was not quite that cold, but it was plenty cold.  It is one of the toughest in the nation because it goes up a big hill or small mountain.  Runners ascend 1500 feet up Ester Dome Mountain and then back.  It started on the campus of University of Alaska.  There were nearly 1000 runners this year.  We have a few pictures of the start.  The first thing they do is run up a very steep hill.  Interestingly, a man from Iowa City won the marathon.  Nearby army base supplied a cannon to start the marathon

Almost ready to start.

Starting up the hill

Some are at the top of the hill while others start.

A community theater group is doing "Odd Couple - Female Version."  We walked about  a mile in the snow last Sunday afternoon to watch it.  It was good for many laughs.

The mountains/hills around Fairbanks are mostly deposits from glaciers many years ago.  These are the White Mountains.  The mountain the marathon ascended was one of these.  South of Fairbanks on a clear day the Alaska Range mountains can be seen.  Denali or McKinley is a part of this system.  These mountains have been pushed up by shifts in the "plates" deep underground.  This system of mountains start in Alaska, go through Canada, through the United States, through Central America, through South America and end close to Antarctica.  So the Alaska Range mountains are more like those in Colorado and in the Andes in South America.  They are high and rugged.  Mount McKinley is the highest peak in North America.  It is one of the main attractions for tourists who come here.  Most of the time it cannot be seen because of clouds, even if you are close to it.  Fairbanks is over 100 miles from the Alaska Range.  If a person is high enough around here and the weather is clear those mountains can be seen from here.  One day we were at the University of Alaska, which is on a hill, and got these pictures.  One of these is McKinley but we are not sure which one.

West end of Fairbanks in foreground, and a bit of the river that runs through town.  That is the river that is across the street from our apartment.

Elva started volunteering today at Anne Wien Elementary School.  She helps in a kindergarten/first grade combination class.  It is the same school where Ellen Axmear (from English Valleys) is a speech pathologist.  She gave us a tour of the school last week and helped get things rolling for Elva to get started.

We continue to enjoy ourselves.  Time is going fast.  It is already time to pay the rent again!

God's blessing to all

Larry and Elva

9/17/13

Friends,

Hello from Alaska.  We pray this finds all of you well.  We are fine.  But we are also getting cooler.  Today the high is in the mid 40's.  There is a possibility of snow over much of Alaska.  We are probably too low in altitude but the mountains around are to get snow today/tomorrow.  Ear muffs, gloves, and lighter winter coats feel good today.

We recently took pictures of a couple things tourists usually see.

This is the antler arch.  It is a bunch of moose antlers.

Fountain celebrating 25 years of statehood, erected in 1984.

An interesting bit of information about the Anchorage Mennonite Church.  It was started in the late 1980's.  There have been two pastors.  Neither one has had a funeral for a member.  The first pastor had a few funerals for community members.  The second pastor, who has been there 12 years (if I remember correctly) has never done a funeral.  As a former pastor that sounds almost unbelievable.

Around the Arctic Circle there are nine nations/states/provinces that participate in the Arctic Winter Games.  These are Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Alberta North, Nunavut, Nunavik-Quebec, Greenland, Sapmi, and Yamal.  I had never heard of some of these places either.  They are being held in Fairbanks this year in the middle of March. To host the games they need about 2500 volunteers.  We have both signed up to help.  We have already helped once.  Last Friday they had a rally to get more volunteers.  We handed out information and directed people to various events going on at the rally.  You can find out more about the Arctic Winter Games by going to www.awg2014.org  At the rally was Holly Brooks.  She is a member of the USA Olympic cross-country ski team.  She is from Alaska and was here to promote the AWG.  We talked with  her for a couple minutes and got her autograph.

People often talk about prices being higher here.  Last week Elva bought a can of Wild Caught Alaska Pink Salmon.  She purchased the cheapest can and it was $3.69.  She thinks for the same salmon it would be about a dollar higher around Wayland.  Washington, IA might have a cheaper salmon but it wouldn't be pink salmon.  This was very good salmon. The next priced canned salmon at Fred Meyer was about a dollar higher.  So far Elva hasn't found farm fresh eggs for sale.  Eggs in the store start at about $2.60+.  Also the eggs are not from corn fed chickens making the eggs look pale.

Last Saturday night was supposed to be a fair chance to see the northern lights.  They were supposed to be out from midnight to 2:00 a.m. Sunday.  So we set our alarm for 11:15.  Got up.  Drove about 10 miles north of town to a dark spot.  Unfortunately the moon was shining.  We stayed for about an hour.  Unfortunately we saw no northern lights.  We have found what we hope will be a better spot to look for them.

God's blessings to all

Larry

Friends,

Sorry this is late, our internet was not working properly yesterday and I was unable to get to the blog.  Turns out that with our new internet connection we were not working it quite correctly.  At least it was easily fixed.

Our main activity this past week was a trip to Circle.  It has that name because its founders thought it was on the Arctic Circle, but they calculated wrong.  It is actually about 100 miles from the Arctic Circle.  But it was an interesting one day trip even if Circle is not on the Circle.  It is on the Yukon River.

This is an airplane about 100 feet from the right side of the road.  The interesting thing is that the airport is on the left side of the road and there is a sign saying "Caution - airplane crossing."  At first I assumed it meant that planes would fly low overhead, but that was wrong - the  planes actually taxied across the road from the runway to the place it was kept.

These are pictures of the fall colors between Fairbanks and Circle.

Strangely, this wooden bridge along the Steese Highway is in a very new section of pavement.  I don't know why they have a wooden bridge with new pavement.  Further along the road they had good cement bridges for dirt roads.

This is either a sooty grouse or a spruce grouse.

This is the welcome to Circle, Alaska.  It really is the end of the road.  If you would not stop you would drive right into the Yukon River.

This is the one church we found in Circle.

MDS (Mennonite Disaster Service) is building this house in Circle.  The project manager for this project is Wilbur Litweiler, whom we know, from the Wellman area.  It was nice to see someone we know.  We saw him there and talked to him  little bit.  He was busy.

It is at the end of this street (?).

 We saw a herd of perhaps 40 caribou.  They were on different sides of the road and not close together so we could not get a picture of that many at once.

 

We've been looking and looking for moose. This is close!  A few hours earlier there was one here.

Not a blue jay, but a grey jay.

Grass roofed hut in Circle.

Yesterday (9/10/13) we rode the bus to the University and walked around there.  This is a dwelling which would have been common in southwest Alaska 100 to 200 years ago.  And they were perhaps used further back than that but no one knows that for sure.  It was moved to the University a few years ago.  It is about 15 feet across.

My GED class is going well.  The students are in the class because they want to be.  No one tells them they have to come.  So they are more eager to learn.  Last Tue I had one student, Wed I had two, this Tue four, today three.  They are personable and respectful.  Yesterday we had an interesting mix: a black, a hispanic, a native Alaskan, and a white.  All we were lacking was someone from Asia.

Elva and I had a pastoral visit yesterday.  The pastor from the Mennonite Church in Anchorage stopped by.  This is the first pastoral visit we have had in over 20 years.

The weather has been rainy.  It seldom amounts to very much.  Locals say there is more rain this time of year than normal.  August usually has more rain than this year so we are getting August's rain in September.  The temperatures have been a little above normal.  The record high is 75, record low is 18, and the average high is 58.  We have mostly been in the low 60 this September.  The average amount of snow by this date is 0.3 inches.  That one does sound strange for so early.

God's blessing to all of you.

Larry and Elva

Amen, come Lord Jesus

Friends,

Things continue to go well in Alaska.  The weather has not been as much different from Iowa the last couple days since your cool front went through.  At 9:00 pm there this evening (Tuesday evening) it was 66 there and 68 here (of course at the time it was 6:00 here.

Last Wednesday we went to Murphy's Dome.  It is a mountain claimed by the military for a radar installation.  We were there to see if it would be a good place to watch the Northern Lights.  It would be very good.  High with few trees and little light pollution.  The trouble is that it is a 50 mile round trip.  But while we were there we discovered that that is a good place for blueberries.  We picked about a cup and a half.  Don't laugh.  That is a fair amount of work.  These wild blueberries are small and very low to the ground.  Few of the bushes are more than 6 inches high.  Most of the berries are lower than that.  If we had been at one of the blueberry farms in Indiana we could have picked several gallons in the same time.  The berries were THICK!  We probably stepped on more than we picked.  It was not usual but one time I picked 9 berries all in the same grab.

This is the result of about 30 minutes picking

This is a wider view of where we picked berries.

The berries were not this thick everywhere but neither was this uncommon.

There were patches of these vibrant red leafed weeds

This is what I tried to show you a couple weeks ago.  This is my foot resting on the spongy ground.

This is putting my weight on same spot.  

My foot disappeared, sinking in about 6-8 inches.

Walking was very difficult.

Compared to the sinking ground all around, I call this picture "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand."

Saturday we went to Pioneer Village.  For those of you from NW Ohio it is about like Sauder Village.  It has many shops fashioned like like those of 100 to 150 years ago.  Many of the buildings are actual log cabins from that era.  It also has a children's playground, merry-go-round, and a train. It is about a 2 1/4 mile walk from our apartment.

Monday we tried to find a closer spot to see Northern Lights.  We think we found one about 10 miles north of town.  It is near Gold Mind Dredge #8.  That is on some maps of this area.  It is not high up but should be dark.

Along the way we saw these trees turning.

Pictures of Fairbanks from the White Mountains, my guess is that these are about 5 miles from town.

Today I started volunteering at Adult Learning Center of Fairbanks.  Basically its purpose is to help people pass their GED test.  I will be teaching a 1 1/2 hour class twice a week for four weeks.  That much will cover all the topics on the math part of the test.  The test has four units and each week I will cover one of those units.  If it goes well I will repeat the process each month.  The workers at ALC say that nearly all people who don't pass the test have trouble with the math.  You can pray that Elva will find some good volunteering to do.

God's blessing to all

Larry and Elva