Hello everybody   ---

This continues our trip home from Alaska.  This will be day two and day three.  I tried to do day two on day two but the internet connection was too slow.  If I would have done it yesterday it would have continued into today before I finished.  

Yesterday we started at Destruction Bay and stopped at Teslin, both along the Alaska Highway.  This evening we are at Iskut, on the Cassiar Highway.

Yesterday we passed through Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.  The Yukon River goes through there.  From there it goes north then curves around north of Fairbanks and empties into the Bering Sea.  It is a very long river.  The Chena (across from our apartment in Fairbanks) empties into the Tanana River at the southwest of Fairbanks and it empties into the Yukon about 100 miles west of Fairbanks.  The Yukon becomes a very large river.  This is how it looks in Whitehorse.

At Whitehorse there is a dam (second below) so there has to be a fish ladder.  The salmon have traveled over 1000 miles from the ocean before they arrive in Whitehorse.  They cannot go up the dam so they have this ladder for them to continue up stream to spawn.  When we were there there were some salmon there ready to go up the ladder but were waiting until --- no one knows what they wait for.  The female salmon lays about 4000 eggs and if everything goes well two or three of those fish will return spawn.

Want to decorate your front yard?  Here is an idea for you direct from Whitehorse!  This is hundreds of bicycle wheels taped or tied together.  There was also a smaller one behind this one.

This is the town monument in Haines Junction.

Totem pole in Whitehorse

 And some smaller ones in Teslin.

Better weather today.  It did not rain much and there was a lot of blue sky.  Here is a low-hanging remnant of rain clouds.



Today we saw interesting designs on trees burned a few years ago.


There was a black bear just off the road, not more that 20 feet from the van.  It was very content to eat whatever he found there and paid no attention to us.

There continues to be many lovely flowers along the road.  This is a closeup of fire weed.

 The orange-colored flower is new to us.  Here it is beside a white flower we have seen all along the way from Fairbanks and fire weed.

 We don't know what this is either.  Seed puffs that look about like dandelions but they seem to stay attached long term and the plants form in circles or at least close groups.



And there are still beautiful mountains.

 Some with sharp peaks.

 Some with glaciers

Many bubbling brooks, far too many to stop and see very many.

This concludes day three.  So far so good.  God has given us a wonderful creation.  Let us each help make creation still more wonderful.

Thanks you  very much.

Larry and Elva

Friends    ----

We are on the move again, but before we left Fairbanks there were a couple other thing we have not yet told you about.  Every summer there is Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival (FSAF).  Many kinds of arts are offered, from making goat cheese (we know the people who did that) to bagpipes to dance.  We took in a few of the offerings.  One was steel pan drums.  These started in the fifties when people turned metal barrels into musical drums.  A very early one is shown in the third picture below.  The teacher of steel pan drums is shown in that picture and is also in the middle of the first picture.  These have a very unique sound and the same drum can play many different notes by different areas of the surface.  Many well known artists come to teach their expertise.  A lady at church said that when her daughter was nine years old the Boston Pops was at FSAF.  There were a few of the Boston Pops musicians practicing and had this nine year old play along with them.  The FSAF is intended to be fun for all.  The experts enjoy the informal atmosphere in Fairbanks.  In these pictures, anyone who had taken the pan drum class had the opportunity to play in the evening concert

The Red Green Regatta came to Fairbanks.  Local boaters made floatable crafts using empty milk bottles, water bottles, etc. and lots of duct tape.  Unfortunately the water was too high on the river so the boats were judged while sitting in a parking lot.  Some did go down the river, but that was not part of the competition.

 



And, yes, we have now left Fairbanks.  This departing was different.  All other places of significance  we have driven away from we assume we will return again.  We will likely never be to Fairbanks again.  We will likely never see our Fairbanks friends again, except those we will see in heaven.  That encourages us.

And so, we left our apartment in Fairbanks for the last time and headed down the road to the lower 48.  Alaskans refer to travel outside their state as going outside.  So we are now outside.  But we are always  somewhere.  So even though we are now outside Alaska we are inside Yukon.  We stopped for the night at Destruction Bay.

The trip today (Tuesday, July 29) was cloudy most of the way and rainy much of the way.  I like mountains with clouds, but I also like mountains with sunshine.

 (The specks below are rain drops on the van window.)

So far so good.  Pray for our safety.  We plan to not take the Alaska Highway the whole way but in southern Yukon take the Cassiar Highway which will lead to Jasper and Bamff.

Thanks for your interest.

Larry and Elva

Friends   ---

This is beginning the last week for Elva and me in Alaska.  We plan to head south next Tuesday morning.  This past week saw a lot of activity.  There were two week-long events that we watched a couple times.  The Fairbanks Golden Days is a celebration of the early history of Fairbanks and the gold that was involved in getting the city started.  In conjunction with that is the World Eskimo Indian Olympics.  Many of the events in this are the same as in the Arctic Winter Games a few months ago.

Here are some pictures of the Golden Days parade.

Early gold mining equipment.

Remembering the dresses from 100 years ago.

 There are only a few tractors around Fairbanks, so any tractor is somewhat of an oddity.

Tool used by wildfire fighters (about 18 x 18 inches).  It is used to stir up and stamp out hot embers.

 Bagpipe band

It must be the Klampets!

 Mustang the same year as one Larry had, only his was white.

 A little English car of some kind.

There were a couple Studebakers.

I agree with this guy!

This is probably the most authentic looking oldster.

Smokey must be doing a good job.  Forest fires in Alaska are way down from normal.  Actually, the past six weeks have been very wet.

This is a fire truck for the Fairbanks airport.  The second picture below is a close-up of the front.  That is Elva's maiden name, except they spell it wrong.  It should have a y instead of an i.

Next are some pictures of the World Eskimo Indian Olympics (WEIO.)  There are also some movie clips that do not transfer into blog form.  They will be attached to the e-mail reminder of this blog.  (If you get the blog and not the e-mail and would like to see the clips let me know and I will e-mail them to you.)

 This is a traditional seal oil lamp.  This particular one is about a foot across and is about 400 years old.  Seal oil, moss and a stick to keep it pushed together enough to keep burning.  In the igloos it was generally the task of the aged to keep the lamp burning.  This was supposed to be burning during the entire WEIO.

This is the arm pull.  Sorry for the fuzzy picture but when one started to over power the other they went fast.  Interesting - the little boy is the son of the competitor beside him.  The man had five children and they were all running all (except for the one-month old boy) around as the competitions progressed.

One of the more popular events was the children's clothing contest.

Butt hop competition.

Ear pull.  This is to simulate the pain of an ear with frost bite.

 Knuckle hop - body flat, hop on knuckles and toes.

 Ear pull or seal pull.

 Be sure to watch the movie clip of walking on the greased pole.  Crisco direct from the can slathered on the pole.  It must have been very slick, the woman who was second in the woman's contest only went 19 inches.The man who won went the length of the pole which was about 8 feet.

We did this when I was in high school.  Kick one - two - three, hook legs and try to flip your opponent.

Adult clothing contest.

Too old to be in the baby contest.


Over 3000 beads in the headpiece.  She did it all herself.



WEIO Queen candidates, except the girl on the far right.  She was the out-going queen.  The candidate in the middle won.

 Seal ready for the seal skinning competition.

 There were four seals to be skinned.    The winning lady skinned her seal in a little less than three minutes.  Be sure to watch the movie clip of this.  The lady in the clip was the winner.  She us using an ulu, an Eskimo knife.

 Toe knuckle walk.

 Walrus head push.

 Four man carry - just what it says, four guys all hang onto the competitor and he walks as far as he can.  Each one hanging on is to weigh about 150 pounds.

This is a different event not connected with the WEIO.  This is the potato dance where the dancers must keep the potato held up between their foreheads.  Dancers cannot just stand there but are given dance moves they must do while keeping the potato from falling.

Be sure to watch the movie clips with the e-mail.

I hope to keep sending a blog about once per week for a few more weeks.  That will get us back to the Midwest.  For a couple Tuesdays we will be on the road but I will try to do a blog of our travels.  It will be nice getting back to the lower 48 but we will miss Alaska.

Larry and Elva.