Alaskan Vaca 2022 - Day 3, Part I, Boat Tour on the Chena River

July 14th - today we are scheduled to go on a river cruise down the Chena river and later have a bit of a train ride at a place outside of Fairbanks where there's an old Gold Dredge 8 gold mining operation. Sounds good to me!

I got up around 6:30 to pretty myself up and have a cup of coffee while I await the others to get to the same point as myself.

We needed to be to the boat joint by 8:15, or so the email said.  Truth be told, we could have arrived at 8:40 and would have been perfectly fine but the terrorists who own the place want EVERY.  SINGLE. PERSON. to spend as much as possible in their overpriced gift shop.  We did spend a lot of time in there as that was about the only thing to do!  Rob spotted a dude in an Iowa Hawkeye's coat but we didn't get to talk to him as we were never closer than about 6 people away.  Oh well...

Waiting to board the boat with the gift shop behind us.  I like how this picture gets a bit less blurry as your eyes move from left to right. lol

So they finally open the gates and we made our way onboard the vessel known as The Discovery III of Alaska.  We made our way to the third floor of a four level ship on the port side.  I had forgotten my fleece pullover at the house and it was 52 degrees with a slight breeze.  Had it not been so sunny and lovely out that morning, I probably would have bought a new sweatshirt at the store but I decided against it since I needed to be punished for my dalliance of the morning.  Glad I did!  The weather that day could not have been any more perfect!

We were on the Chena River from up by the Fairbanks Airport on Discovery Dr. down to the confluence of the The Chena and Tenana Rivers.  

Let's look at some pics and I'll pick up the story when it becomes relevant again. 
 

Some of the properties along the river were just beautiful!

So this was interesting...  before we got very far at all, the boat stops and they explain a little bit of life in and around Fairbanks.  They talked about how many pilots there are per capita in Alaska and how the small crafts are used as way of life.  Turns out the dude demonstrating the water take off today was our pilot Sam from the Arctic Circle tour on the previous day.

While these planes look ordinary "Buddy Holly's", they are not!  They are made of aluminum piping and canvas.  They need to be super light to take off in the short distances shown here and that's how some crazy ******** figured out how to do it!

I take pictures like this as it is fascinating to me as to how many square miles of Alaska are untouched!  I really wanted to move there but I think we should probably go back during the throes of winter to make the final decision...

These were cool too!  Plane docks instead of boat docks.

Caleb and I were out exploring our vessel when we saw this.  Dude was making his escape from the boat!  We didn't understand it at this point but I assumed that he figured into the story at a later point.

This is Trail Breaker Kennels.  This is currently owned by David Monson who was married to Susan Butcher, the famous lady from Cambridge Massachusetts.  Some of her stories with her lead dog, Granite, are legendary and you should seek them out to truly learn why dogs are better than cats... as if it weren't obvious.

Squint hard and you can see across the water that there are dogs pulling an ATV (that has no engine in it but still has the braking mechanisms) on the path around the pond.  The dogs in the foreground are all looking in that direction as they're disappointed that they were not selected for the run.

Here we are at the confluence of rivers.  The water do not mix well.

 

This, if I recall correctly is a Salmon trap.  The thing spins and is slanted one way to dump the trapped fish into a holding area.  This is the start of the little village that we visited but I'll be dipped if I can find it again on the fancy google maps...

We're docked and getting off of the boat at this point.

Reindeer.

This young lady gave us a tutorial on the stuff around us and acted as I would have when there was a spider on one one of the items she was teaching us about!  That is to say, freak out.

Another presentation if you can spot a lady up in the door of the raised cabin.  An interesting thing happened on the walk to this demonstration.  There was a dude with a Cyclones coat on.  As a family, we were talking about it when I noticed a lady walking parallel to us who had had a Hawkeyes visor on.  I pointed to her and said to the boys, "See, the rivalry lives everywhere!".  The lady smiled and asked if we were from Iowa.  "Yes, Pleasant Hill.".  She responded that she was from Reasnor, Iowa which is not very far East of us.  The dude in the Cyclone gear caught on to the conversation was from between Ames and Newton.  AND, another person who over heard the conversation walking near us was from the greater Des Moines area too!!!  Crazy! 

I took a picture of this as they grow local plants on tops of cabins as roofing as it rarely needs to be replaced.

Our ride.

The smoke house where they were smoking...  "things".  I didn't document what they were.

A bald eagle who came out to entertain us.

Once we got back on the boat, they started serving up these crackers with canned salmon and cream cheese on them.  It was FANTASTIC!!!  They also had free coffee and donuts earlier in the day.  By our final count, Caleb had two coffees, 5 donuts, and 21 salmon crackers!  He was trying to get back some of our ticket price...  or something.

  Me and the critters!  I believe Caleb has a mouthful of cracker and salmon dip!

That's the Pump House restaurant that will figure into the story a bit later.

And last, I only show this picture as the lighter colored stuff that you can see thru the breaks of wood on the dock are sections of the pipeline that they repurposed and can be inflated with air to raise the dock or deflated to submerse it.

After this, everyone but Caleb is a bit hungry so we hit up the Alaska Coffee Roasting Co. where Rob and I ordered some wood fired pizza's along with some coffee's and some yogurty/fruity nasty looking thing that mama chaos ordered.  I will admit, it looked nasty but tasted pretty good!

That's it for this section of today.  I'll try to be quicker with part two of today's adventures....

Beautiful Steve!!

Photo Update Of The World Dominating Squash Plant

 

Alaskan Vaca 2022 - Day 2, the Artic Circle

I went to bed around midnight. This pic was taken at 12:05am Alaskan time and I had NO FRIGGIN' IDEA how I was going to get to sleep.  I didn't do well, but I eventually got the job done.

So to continue our story, the extra rest did seem to help Rob! The other 3 of us decided to walk to the Crepery for breakfast and when we woke Rob up to inform him of our plans,  he wanted us to wait until he was ready!  

Rock on!  We're better as a pack of 4 any time so we waited for his 17 year old arse to get ready.

This ol' boy was a neighbor across the street from our AirBn'b.  I was amused by his like of a specific shade of yellow from his sweatshirt to his front door and decided to "make him famous" on our blog that is read by less than 50 people...  He was quite obviously attracted to this color but also obviously, not "all in".  Thank you sir for playing along and I apologize a little bit...

That is a slice of the profile of pilot Sam!  At the top of the photo, I would like to note the level of gas in the left and right wings.  The left is slightly below 3/4 and the right was just at/or a needles width sharp of 3/4.  It struck me as odd right away that they wouldn't both be full, but perhaps Sam knows that we don't need full tanks to make it from Fairbanks to Coldfoot...  Sam want's to make it back home to his family as badly as we want to make it home so I trust him.  He probably also looked at the "bulk" of his passengers (ie, ME!!) and thought he could compensate a bit by not having full tanks...  I don't know.

I'm fine with motion sickness but the other 3 are a lottery when it comes to how they will feel.  Honestly, the back end of our little "Buddy Holly" wagged liked an excited puppy many times.  There were a few times where the back end of the plane waved a bit much with some seemingly huge drops in elevation making a person consider a change in undies..

Caleb was feeling horrible during this flight and was also separated from mama chaos and I due to weight requirements in a Buddy Holly.  Rob after getting ill during our helicopter ride around the Big Island of Hawaii, took him under his wing and nursed him thru it.

The Tanana River & Fairbanks International Airport in the upper right quadrant of the pic.

Not very far into the flight, I noticed that the gas level's had dropped significantly since our blast off.  Nearly a half of tank left in both and this is shortly after getting up to altitude.  I like Sam, but maybe not as much as I think!  I don't have pics of it, even though I thought I did, but the gas tanks were both on 'E' and while we were close to Coldfoot, there was still no airstrips in site.  I was questioning my mortality a bit...

One of the wildfires that we had heard/read about before leaving home!  Cool to see it from the air and also cool to see how small of an area had actually burned in contrast to what you hear on the local news.  I am in NO WAY saying that it's insignificant!!!  It is, but if you super impose Alaska over the top of the midwest, you get an idea of just how enormous Alaska is and what has burned.  It was also cool to learn that Alaska has it's "burn season" from June to early July and a cold front usually comes in that stunts it to whatever degree.  The 2022 cold front even brought with it, according to local weather reports, "a significant rain event", meaning that there would be flash flooding and that the rain would persist on and off for the next 10 to 12 days.  They were not kidding, but more on that later... 

So, where the heck were we going?  Fairbanks to Coldfoot is that answer.  If you were driving, it would be over 6 hours on the Dalton Highway.  As we flew?  I don't recall, but I think just over an hour and some change.

On the ground in Coldfoot Alaska!  If you've watched Ice Road Truckers much, you will recognize the name of this joint as the Northern most truck stop in America.  You can read more about it here if you're so inclined.

Once we landed in Coldfood (see photo above) we had another drive to get us up into Wiseman.  Super cool scenery on both sides of the highway as you head further North and you're also driving alongside the Alaskan Pipeline too as this highway was built to support the pipeline.  God Bless America and our problem solving ways when the government gets the heck out of the way!!!

Into the van we we go on to the Kamakazee trail as it was originally known.

After the plane ride to Coldfoot, you continue on the Dalton Highway up towards Prudhoe Bay until there is an exit onto a gravel road that leads you into the metropolis of Wiseman, Alaska.   We learned early on that all of the roads up North on built on top of permafrost and therefore, you have dips and whatever else that may surprise you from time to time.  This fact figures into the story later on as well.

We stop at this fella's house as part of our tour.  Every now and again, I think I might be a man, but then you run across a person like this and realize that I am merely a pimple on the arse of a real man.  This guy is a badass, and I don't mean that in the way of Cobra Kai.  I mean that that this dude kills a bear and moose every summer for his families winter meat.  He has figured out how to grow a pile of carrots and potatoes (and more) in the two months that his Lord and Saviors weather allows!  That is badass!

Jack is the one in the pink shirt.  Not the wiring on the outside of the walls.  There is no need to have any violation of the walls to the outside winter weather when you can simply run it this way!

This is outside of Jacks place.  The solar panels are pretty unique as well.  The 3 panels with the rustier color he explained are some rare panels that aren't built commonly but he says they're indestructible.  Also not part of his garden to the left of the pic.

More of his garden...  Inside that window in the photo is where Jack was standing as he let us tour his house.

Jack's wife's store, the Twisted Willow.  The 12 peeps that are year round residents up here have to have multiple ways to earn some cash.  This is yet another of her fam's way of raising some funds.

This is the old chapel where Jack's mom would hold Sunday service when she was alive and well.

One of the "guest cabin's" for when their kiddos return home and need a place to crash.

Same...  guns in every corner of every room as you never know when you'll be the subject of the next "encounter".

Firewood...

Skeeter net over the bed in the guest cabin.

I truly don't remember that this was but I think it might be the Bed and Breakfast that some youngsters opened more recently upon moving up here.  If that is the case, Jack spoke of them in high fashion!

What the heck is the name of this river?  Dunno...  you figure it out.  Google maps apparently has a job opening for mapping these roads and rivers this far North and I'm open to accepting that job!!!

What does Wiseman look like?  Well, a bit like this.  I can tell you that it looks MUCH larger on Google maps that it does in person!

When we got back to Coldfoot, I was talking with the driver of our van while peeps used the the bathrooms in the Northern most truckstop in America.  This truck was carrying something that he named by name and that I cannot remember, but they are used to lay over the roads when the oil companies are transferring rigs from one location to another.  The rigs/equipment are so heavy that they devised this system of protecting the roads by laying down these "pads".  

Alaskan Vaca 2022 - Part I - Travelling To Fairbanks

July 12th, 2022...  currently sitting in the Minneapolis / St. Paul International airport alone with all of luggage while Mama Chaos took the critters to B-Dubs to do some grazing.  I figured that I'd use some alone time to do some writing.  It is 4:05pm CST and our flight takes off at 6pm.

We got up around 6:30am to get prettied up, finish packing too much crap, water the garden one last time before my neighbor takes over and other various  and sundry stuffs.  Once the car was loaded, I had EVERYONE come out and verify that their bags were included after last years fiasco.

We left the house at 9:20am and after a quick stop at Scooters for some coffee and a smoothie, we were on the road!  After two stops, we arrived at Mama's cousins house where our vehicle will remain for the next many days.  We chatted for a while before our Uber arrived.  He was a fine fellow named Jamal, and did a fine job getting us to exactly where we needed to be.

While we are on the way to the 50th state for all of us, we don't fly very often and when the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit gets into an airport, that fact becomes blatantly obvious!

Going thru the TSA check was my first of what will likely be many screw-ups.  The good lady is checking our passports and Caleb still had on his mirrored sunglasses (got to look good for the ladies!).  The lady asked him to remove them and he didn't hear her.  She repeated it and both Mama & Rob said, "Remove the sunglasses!".  And like Caleb and I do at home about 10 times a day,   I said, "Geez, Ya terrorist!".  Whoops!!  Like I said, we call each other that at home ALL OF THE TIME, but home we are not!  Luckily she either didn't understand what I said or flat out didn't hear it, or I suspect that we still might be there...   whew.

Now, we sit and wait.  This is where that first paragraph comes into play.

Loading our tiny, tiny bags of sun chips!!

Caleb, like myself, likes looking out the window at the planes taking off and landing, as well as keeping a keen eye on what is happening with our own bird!

Currently, it is nearly 11pm CST and we're about 45 minutes from landing in Fairbanks.  Our flight was about 10 - 11 minutes late taking off and they had oversold the flight by roughly 13 people.  How does this happen?  I have zero ideas, but they announced that they were offering people $1000 cash, plus free hotel and meals to delay their flight by 24 hours.  Not many takers at first but they went to $1100 pretty quickly, and eventually up to $1500.  We decided that if they got to $2000, we'd take the deal.  When they were at $1500, our section was called to board so no decision was to be made.

The outside temp is -72 degrees and we're traveling at 505mph.  It's 8:03pm in Fairbanks currently and it bright up here in the clouds as if it were noon!

I'm excited to be out of the plane as my butt and low back are starting to hurt!  However, the only part of flying that is worse than boarding the plane is disembarking the plane!  But, flying is what allowed us to do this vaca so I'll tolerate it as best that I can.

After successfully getting off of our bird, we divided to conquer both the baggage claim and our rental vehicle.  I took the job as official rental car securer as Mama and the varmints went to stare blankly at the baggage carousel. 

I learned quite quickly that if I was the only one that showed their license that I was the only person who could legally drive this vehicle.  Not a big deal unless I broke a friggin' ankle hiking or something ridiculous like that.  I called Mama over so that we could have two drivers in the event of emergency as I am known for doing stupid crap.

Once I got all of the paperwork signed and handed over a weeks salary,  I turned around to my peeps with our checked bag!  Things are going smoothly so far!  We load all of our crap into our Hyundai Santa Fe and board the vessel to embark on the journey to find our first AirBn'b. 

This picture doesn't have much to do with anything but if you're going to photograph the lad, you've got to sneak them in sometimes!

Our vessel for the next several days.  More on this thing later!

Turns out that it wasn't very hard to find and therefore wasn't much of a journey either, which is fine!

We pick our rooms and get stuff situated.  Rob is feeling super bad and the descent of the plane had him feeling miserable!  When he knew which room was his, he laid down and was OUT!!  Caleb and I ran out to find some food and ended up at a grocery store for a few things and grabbed some sammy's and sushi.  We had to wake Rob up when we got back and he got up to eat a bit and was back in bed in about 15 - 20 minutes with some food and meds in his belly.

A (bad) pic of the sun being shaded by all of the smoke in the air.  The smoke had my eye's burning and sinuses jacked up.  Thank goodness we woke up to rain on the first morning, I believe which took a bunch of the smoke down with it.

Luckily, we didn't have to be anywhere until about noon so we let Rob sleep.  It helped, thank God.

Day 1 is in the books...

The Squash That Took Over The World

Two of our squash plants decided to die.  This guy decided to take over the world!

 

Midnight Fire With Our Critters