Alaska Friends,

Winter is officially over in Fairbanks!  Winter is from the first time the snow pack reaches one inch until it is less than one inch.  This year that was from November 5 until April 27, 168 days.  The shortest winter on record was 1934-35 with 133 days and the longest was 1992-93 with 222 days.  Last year winter tied for the second most days of winter at 209 days.

The break up is past.  There were ice chunks going down the river for about a week.  Then the chunks were smaller and smaller and then none.  Now everybody talks about spring.  The trees are budding.  Some rhubarb is starting to push up through the ground.  They say that when the trees start to leaf out it happens quickly.

We went to a fish hatchery last Friday.  It had not been open to the public until then.  It is just a couple years old but they do not have the funding to have public displays and people to explain them.  It was just open a couple days while there was also a outdoor show nearby.  The hatchery has 32 circular tanks, the smallest 365 gallons and the largest 42,300 gallons.  As the fish grow they are moved to larger tanks.  When they are taken to the streams and lakes some are fingerlings and some are ready to be harvested.  Here are the number of fish they have stocked since opening in 2012.

2012     281,792 (this was their first year)

2013     347,124

2014     361,000 (hopefully)

That is nearly a million fish!  They stock a couple kinds of salmon, greyling (a cousin of salmon), and trout.

There was a special display tank with perhaps 50 fish.  You can tell the pictures which are in the production tanks.  The production tanks were separated from the viewing area by glass and the window on the side of the tank was glass so those pictures are through two windows and not real clear.

Another sign of spring is tree pollen.  Birch pollen is very high here in the spring.  The pollen count has already been 95 particles per cubic meter (ppcm).  In the lower 48 tree pollen count of 250 is considered high.  Here the normal spring has about 1500 ppcm.  In 2010 it reached a record 3986 ppcm.  Spruce pollen is also very high but it is not so bad at producing allergies.  Last year an updraft had so much spruce pollen in it that some people thought it was a forest fire!

Have a good spring - have a good time doing all your spring work.

God's blessings to all.

Larry and Elva

Friends   --

The people here are mostly very friendly.  Last evening we were walking along the river looking at the break up (more on that below) and a couple natives started talking to us and would hardly stop.  They had questions to ask and information to share.  They were eager to talk.  One was alone so we may have been his only opportunity to talk.  The other was in a group and gave us her attention and ignored her friends while talking to us.  Several days ago we were on our walk, probably a mile from our apartment, when suddenly someone said, "Elva!"  It was a lady we know from church.  She invited us in to visit.  Even though she and her husband were about ready to go somewhere they visited for about a half hour.  It is nice to be around friendly people.

We have been asked why we came to Alaska.  Basically it was to be a part of something different.  Originally I wanted to live above the Arctic Circle and Fairbanks is at least close.  One cannot know a place with a short visit.  There is nothing wrong with a short visit.  But I wanted to know more of what Alaska is like.  I wanted to see the hardships, the joys, the everyday life of people in a situation much different than anything I had ever experienced.  The sights and sounds have been very interesting.  But it is the people that make Alaska (and all the other places we have lived) meaningful.  We like the scenery and the happenings, but the people make it worthwhile.  I don't think I could stand to be a tourist for a year in any one place.  I would be glad to have you come up here and meet some of the people or to have them go down there to meet you.  Either way your circle of friends could expand.  Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver, the other gold.  Thanks for being silver and gold in our lives.

We mentioned before that the migratory birds are returning.  There is a place here, Creamer's Field, set aside for wildlife.  It is on the edge of Fairbanks, about two miles from the apartment.  We went there to see the birds last week.  The two next pictures show strips of snow and bare land.  The people at the airport come to blow away the snow in strips so that the geese, ducks, and other migratory birds come to Creamer's field instead of landing at the airport.  The water is melting snow.  The second picture has a barn in the distance.  Originally this was a large dairy, but keeping cows here became to expensive when milk became easier to transport with better roads.

There were even a couple swans there.  They are much larger than a goose, which is much larger than a duck.

The rivers are having "break up" now.  That is when the ice breaks up and moves down stream.  Sometimes there are ice jambs that cause major floods.  That has happened the last couple years on the Yukon River.  Relief agencies have come to help in those areas.  There is a dam on the Chena River (the river across the road from our apartment) 20 miles upstream from Fairbanks that is supposed to assure no floods here.  Fairbanks has not had a flood since 1967, so the dam is working.

But break up has been important in the old culture of Alaska.  Rivers are not just rivers as in the lower 48.  Rivers are the highway system of the interior.  Or at least they used to be.  In the winter they were used by dog sleds.  In the summer they were used by boats.  So the period of break up, while the ice was traveling down stream, was a time of far less travel.  It marked a major change in the seasons.  Here are some pictures of break up on the Chena River, all within a half mile from our apartment.

 Some of the ice was very clear, more clear than most refrigerator ice cubes.

We went to Denali National Park.  Mount McKinley is the main attraction.  Most people who come to Alaska want to see McKinley.  But only about 1/3 of those wanting to see McKinley are able to.  Clouds usually obscure the view.  We kept track of the weather.  The national park headquarters has a web site that allowed us to do that.  We had thought of going earlier but it was cloudy.  Living nearby allows us to go on a clear day.  One disappointment is that one cannot get very close, except by plane or a long backpacking trip.  After more of the road is cleared of snow one can drive closer than we did.  But still, the road only gets to within about 30 miles.  We got as close as 90 miles.  And it was still huge.  Some say McKinley is the tallest mountain, but not the highest.  They explain this way:  If a man's 9 year old daughter is standing on a chair, she is higher than her father, but still not taller.  Those making that claim say that from its base to its summit it is higher than any other mountain.  The others get a higher altitude because their base is higher.

Undisputed facts: it is the highest peak in North America.  It is more than a mile taller than any peak in the other 49 states.

First are some pictures along the way in the park.

 Many of the peaks are very rugged.

 This caribou was looking at us just before we snapped the picture.

And a couple pictures of Denali.  The mountains in the foreground are maybe 10 miles away.  Denali is about 90 miles away.

It was another good week in Alaska.

Thanks for your interest.  We have been asked if others can see the blog.  Certainly.  Anyone who has any interest in Alaska or travel is welcome to use/read the blog.

God's blessing to all

Larry and Elva

Friends of Alaska,

We went out to see the norther lights again last Friday, 4/11/14.  They were not real good.  Partly no fault of the display itself, but because there was a bright moon.

Also the aurora was not so good because the daylight had not yet all gone away, and that was around 11:30.  In the picture above you can see that the sky is not totally dark.  The following picture shows a hill with a bit of cloud going to the right.  But notice how light it still is at nearly midnight!  So we were not so impressed with the northern lights but we were impressed by how long it stayed light.  It is quite light when we go to bed (10:00) and when we get up (5:30).

For much of the past couple weeks it was warm in the lower 48 (Iowa and Midwest) and about normal here.  That meant that it was about 50 to 60 degrees warmer there than here.  Some days were around 20 here when it was 80 in Iowa.  Now we have warmed up and you have cooled down.  Right now, 8:00 p.m. Tuesday evening, it is 45 here, 27 in NW Ohio, 30 in SE Iowa, and 27 in NE Wisconsin.  The geese have started to migrate back.  The warmer weather has brought "breakup."  No, Elva and I still like each other, but the snow cover is breaking up and soon the ice on the river will break up.  The snow is melting, and many places it does not have a place to drain away.  So it just builds up water and slush.  That makes a mess for our walks.  We got wet feet today.  Any four year old would have enjoyed splashing through the water - but it was less exciting for Grandma and Grandpa.

We went to a miners trade show last Thursday.  I wanted this picture of a big front-end loader because it is made by the same company as some farm equipment.  This was inside.  At some mines they have the huge loaders that haul over 70 tons of rock at once, but they are too big for this show.

 We took this picture because Elva's maiden name was Stryker.  At least one Stryker has become famous.

Thanks for your interest in Alaska.

Praise God for Easter!

Larry and Elva

Friends,

I keep thinking that I try to start planting garden before this - radishes, lettuce, carrots, onions, potatoes, and other early crops.  But not here.  The avid gardener here has a greenhouse.  And the greenhouse usually has some kind of heat when needed.  Yesterday and today it is needed.  We had snow Sunday and Monday.  This morning officially the temperature was 2 and this afternoon it was in the upper teens.  This first picture shows the river still frozen and covered with snow.  (This is a fairly long view, the dark line is the shadow of a bridge.)  Fewer people walk across it now, but some still do.  We don't.  The second picture shows snow, our van, and our apartment through some birch trees.

It had been warmer for a week or so.  There was a lot of melting.  It is quite flat here so as ice melts into water it stays put.  This is water in front of the apartment, about 10 feet from the apartment.

And this is how to get rid of the water, an outdoor sup pump about one foot high!  It sucked a lot of water away from under the ice also.  It actually worked fairly good, except that it turned cold again, froze the water, and snowed again.

Some of you have asked about the length of day here now.  Today the sun rose (except that it was cloudy) at 6:41 and will set this evening at 9:06 giving us 14 hours, 25 minutes, and 19 seconds of sunlight.  For comparison, Chicago's (not all cities or towns were listed in the web site I used) corresponding numbers were 6:22, 7:24, and 13 hours, 2 minutes, and 33 seconds.  For the longest day of the year, June 21, Chicago's sunlight will be about 15 hours and 33 minutes.  Here it will be 21 hours and 50 minutes.  Here it will not get dark.

Today Elva and I went to the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame Museum.  This is Elva in front of a scale used to weigh gold 100 years ago.

Very few people pan for gold any more.  This picture is from about 100 years ago.  They run water through the sluice box to wash away the rocks and leave the gold behind in little traps.  Very few nuggets are found.  Most is "placer" gold, very fine specks (about like dust, except wet at first) of gold that are gathered up.

Some times they use water pressure to wash away the dirt to get to where the gold is concentrated.  The cliff here would be about 20 feet high and the spray of water is about 30 feet.

 Or they dig it away with a dredge.  The dirt would still have to be run through a sluice box (bigger and better than the one above) to separate out the gold.

In 1909 466,860 ounces of gold, all mined or panned by hand, were produced in the Fairbanks area.  That was about half of all gold produced in Alaska that year.  This area became known as "America's Klondike." From 1928 to 1964 large dredges were used and after that hard rock mining has been used to get the gold.  This area is still easily the largest producer of gold in Alaska.  As of 2013 a total of 13.5 million ounces of gold have been produced around Fairbanks.  At today's prices that would be over $16 billion.  This is 1/3 of all gold produced in Alaska.  I have heard people say they know where they could go in the mountains to certain streams and just pick up nuggets of gold.  I don't know.

All the winter activities seem to be done.  Summer fun is not yet started.  There are a few spring events.  Just a few sandhill cranes and Canadian geese have returned.  

May God bless each of you.

Larry and Elva

Hello Friends,

Three activities to talk about this week.

Friday 3/28/14 morning we volunteered at a Alaska Surveyors and Mapmakers Convention.  We handed out name tags and answered questions.  The interesting thing is that some people were asking about a "3-D Printer Workshop" where they demonstrated making 3-D maps.  The convention coordinator was talking with us about that and thought it sounded interesting.  I also said that it sounded very interesting.  She said I should go to it after we finished volunteering.  I said that I was not registered for the convention and she said, "Well, just tell them that Brooke said it was okay for me to sit in on the presentation."  So that is what I did.  The printer works much like an ink-jet printer except that it puts down a layer of plastic instead of ink.  As it puts many layers of plastic the model or map is built.  Here is the printer, the case around the printer is about a one-yard cube.

The plastic case makes it hard to see the workings of the printer.  Here is a better picture of the print head and the beginnings of a skyscraper being built.

And this is a computer picture of the model.

This is a full size kayak built with a 3-D computer printer.  The different colored sections were printed out and then bolted together.

With better printers metal, wood composite, cloth, and other materials can be used.  Some houses have been built with printers.  Nike (shoe makers) can print shoes that are usable.  They can design and produce shoes with printers in about one-fourth the time if printers were not used.

Here are more models they displayed.

 And a map that does not show up very well in a picture, but it was 3-D.

That afternoon we went to another Native dance demonstration.  This was a small one in a bank lobby.  These were Pavva Inupiaq dancers.  They originate in the Barrow area.  "Pavva" means inland and "Inupiaq" means (people of the sea), so this group was along the coast part of the time and inland part of the time - depending partly on the time of the year.

Most of the time the women danced.  If men danced they were much more active and boisterous, in other words more masculine.

This group also demonstrated the dance style of a different tribe where the men would kneel when dancing.

This is just painted on the chin of the woman dancer.  Traditionally these markings would have been sewed into the chin when a girl was physically able to bear children.  The stitches were put in to demonstrate that the girl was able to bear pain, as in child birth.  So she was not only physically able to bear children but also mature emotionally and mentally to bear the pain.  Then when she was married there were more stitches to both the left and right of the center ones.  That served the purpose of our wedding ring announcing that she was married.

Last night (3/31/14) we were invited to some friends from church, Mark and Denise Wartes.  They served a wonderful meal.  The main meal was caribou roast, it was very good.  They also served muktuk, whale blubber and skin.  The blubber is white, or light pinkish, and the skin dark gray.  To the back right is some that has been boiled and to the left some that is raw.  I actually thought the raw tasted better, but its skin was much tougher.  I was glad they had it for us to try.  It provides a lot of energy to those who eat it.  The rest of the meal was typical "white person" and also very good.

Mark grew up the son of a missionary to the Inupiaq people, in Barrow Alaska.  His formative years were spent with the Inupiaq and he adopted their ways.  He was among the dancers we had seen before.  He is still considered an elder among the people of that tribe.  I would like to have him write the blog some week so I don't want to tell too much of his story.  He can tell it much better.  They have a large house with many Native, mostly Inupiaq, artifacts and displays.  Here are a few.

This is a famous sight in Barrow.  Mark's sister drew it from a photo, she added the bears.

These are Native dolls.  They are about 18 inches tall.  Denise is holding them for me to take the pictures.  They have many more.

Beaded gloves, these are Athabascan, the Natives from around Fairbanks.

 Pelts of black bear, fox, white fox, wolverine, and I am not sure of the others.

 Wolf and fox.

Native masks

Kayak made of walrus tusk (I  think).  It is about 20 inches long.

 This is a bench topper, the picture does not show it right, it is on top of the bench.

It was another interesting week.  They say that there are fewer activities during April and May.  Then it gets busy again for summer.  We shall see.

Thanks for your interest.  If you ever have questions I would be glad to answer them, or at least try to answer them.  You can e-mail me directly with questions if you don't want everyone to see your questions, or you can respond to the blog.

God's rich blessings to all of you.

Larry and Elva