Fireweed and honey ice cream!

A Brief Update from Girdwood

We just arrived in Girdwood and are waiting to get some ice cream before we hike Winner Creek! We've been pulling over about every 5 minutes and hiked up mchugh creek to try and see bears or moose. No luck but we did see a bald eagle eating on the mudflats.

Video Postcard: Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass

Hatcher Pass

Hatcher Pass is a mountain pass road that goes through the Talkeetna mountains.  The preposition "through" isn't that accurate for most of the year though, as some parts of the year different parts of the roads were closed.  In our case we ended up as far as Independence Mine and then had to turn around and go back.

We first pulled off to see the "Little Su" river.  The pictures don't do it justice.  The water was literally aquamarine.

We pulled off to go to the Gold Mint trail and to take pictures in their scenic parking lot.

This was about the time that we decided not to go hiking here.

We drove a little further up Hatcher Pass and finally made it to the Independence Mine historical site.  Due to the snow (6 inches) we couldn't see any of the actual mine stuff, but we did get some nice snow pictures!

Then we had to turn around because the rest of the road was closed.  We stopped back at a Little Su turn off point again to grab some last pictures before we headed up to Talkeetna.

Wasilla

In Wasilla we found a drive-through soft serve place, so we had to stop so we could all get ice cream.

There was a little snafu in our plan to go to Independence Mine next and we ended up at Finger Lake instead and having to cut the Iditarod Headquarters out of our itinerary.  It wasn't a bad oops though because 1) we had to pass by the above ice cream shop and 2) it was GORGEOUS.

The next part of our plan was to go to the Palin's house, meet the Palin's and take them out to lunch/dinner.  The Palin's recently bought another house and moved to Arizona, but I had a feeling that they were back in Alaska.  Although we didn't get to meet them or go up to their house (they had a million "do not enter" and "no trespassing" signs with video cameras on the gate to their house), we did see their house from none other than the Best Western's dock. I went inside the hotel to get a map first and came out to my three fellow travelers staring at their house from the dock out back:

Creeps.

 

 

Lake Lucille was gorgeous.  Snow covered mountains to the right, Todd Palin's plane to the left.

The Palin houses

Then we had to stop for gas and touristy pictures:

...and we were on our way out of Wasilla to Hatcher Pass!

Thunderbird Waterfall

Our first stop on our roadtrip north was to the Thunderbird Waterfall located in Chugach state park.  The trail follows a gorge and then eventually ends at a waterfall.  The autumn colors were stunning.

Video Postcard: Nagley's General Store in Talkeetna

My First Moose

I've eaten moose, cooked moose, fed dogs moose...and now I've seen a real live moose!  I was VERY excited.  I have been to Maine lots of times (New Hampshire too), lived in places that had moose nearby, went to a zoos with moose (they were always at the vet) and never had seen one.

First I did a half hourish walk around the Coastal Trail and Earthquake park.  No moose, but lots of trees!

Then later this evening I drove down a road that goes behind the airport and on my way back I thought I saw the back end of a moose, so I pulled over and investigated.  Sure enough it was a bull moose munching away.

Anchorage: Day 1

First of all, thank you to all of my Bethel friends who take such good care of me!  I owe you all big!

I flew on the morning jet into Anchorage this morning.  Figuring out what time to get to the airport was like some bizarre math problem, but luckily I got it figured out and someone was nice enough to bring me to the airport.  It was snowing when I left Bethel!  It didn't stick, but it was blowing pretty hard.  Because of the snow there wasn't much to see from the plane, but right before Anchorage the clouds broke so you could see mountains and glaciers and lakes nestled in the valleys.

You can't really see it, but that's a glacier under the clouds!

After we landed I got my bags and a cab and then the car and dropped my bags off and went over to my VISTA umbrella's office.  My position is under the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development umbrella, and myself and fellow "team" VISTAs are all working on projects that have to do with building economic development, stability and sustainability all around Alaska.  I got to see my VISTA leader Cassie again, the office dog Bex (who as you can probably imagine is now my good friend), and a number of people who work in the office.  It was really nice to meet people face to face and talk to them more about my project.  I got some good ideas for it too!  A bunch of us from the office went to listen to a (sociologist!) author speak about his fieldwork and experiences with the "working poor" and poverty in general.  The talk was interesting, but it was more focused on Anchorage (which was relevant since we were in Anchorage) and there wasn't a lot that applied to Western Alaska.  Always nice to see Sociologists and Anthropologists that have jobs though!

Cassie and I ate lunch at Taco Bell, and then we went for a walk with Mr. Crow (who works in the UACED office) and Bexley at the dog park/university lake.  It was gorgeous.  There were bridges and birch trees with yellow leaves and mountains in the background.  One of the most surprising things was firm ground- I'm used to sinking down into the tundra or the edges of the dirt roads in Bethel.

 I also went to Wal-Mart.  That was an experience!  I can't get over how much cheaper everything is here.  There are a couple of Walmarts here...the one I went to is a super Walmart with a package store and McDonald's inside of it!

The view from the parking lot isn't that bad:

Finished off the night with some Anchorage area VISTA's at a pub.