Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier

The weather has been gorgeous lately! Sunshine and warm temps (70s!) has brought everyone outdoors to soak up the sun.  Even though there are a bunch of things I need to get done indoors, I’m not wasting a sunny day to do it.

A few days ago, I was washing up a few dishes and saw a bird fly down to the ground in my yard. I walked out on the deck to get a better view, camera in hand. The bird - a solitary sandpiper - stood up and let out a series of high pitched whistled “weet, weet” sounds. (You can hear the sandpiper’s call here)

She ran in a circle around one particular area, distracting me it seemed. And then I saw the tiny ball of brown striped fluff partially hidden in the grass. A chick. She moved in an ungainly matter, her legs seemingly useless as she rolled onto her back and then righted herself. She must have fallen from the nest.  I learned, in doing a little bit of research, that the solitary sandpiper lays its eggs in the nests of song birds - particularly those of the American Robin (which we have an abundance of in our yard this year).

As I approached the fluffy chick with my camera, I heard the sound of ravens above. Looking up, I saw two perched in the tree branches. Do ravens eat chicks?  I don’t know the answer to that question, but I didn’t want to take any chances with baby sandpiper becoming lunch. I ran inside and grabbed a dish towel so I could move the chick out of the middle of my yard, where there was no protection, and into the treed area.  While I know it is a myth that a mother bird will abandon its young if touched by human hands, I wanted to minimize any trauma to the chick by covering it up before moving it.

I carried the peeping chick to the treed area, while mama bird hopped around me; also following me. I released the chick into the protection of some low bushes and grass, and walked away. The mother bird quickly joined the baby, and the chick climbed under mama’s plump body where she would be safe.

Before I went to bed, I checked on them. They weren’t in the same spot where I left them, so I walked through the yard, listening for her chirp.  When I reached the rear of my yard, she came hopping towards me, whistling loudly again. I scanned the ground looking for the baby, and found her beneath a bluebell plant. She was doing much better with her walking, and I couldn’t help but grin when I saw how long her legs, and how big her feet, were! She was still quite ungainly on her legs, but able to follow mama as she made her way into another wooded area.

Look at this cute baby:

(more…)

We are fully recovered from last weekend’s trip up the Dalton. Steve has gone back to work and the truck has been washed both inside and out. We’re still reveling in the memories of that fabulous drive and look forward to doing it again sometime. I’d like to drive at least a portion of the road in the fall.  I can only imagine the vibrance of autumn colors across such a vast and beautiful landscape.

My last blog entry has drawn quite a bit of attention, and I want to thank all of you for taking the time to leave comments. It is always wonderful to see comments from my regular readers, and I’d like to extend a warm welcome to my new readers as well. I hope you’ll continue to visit.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

We have had so much rain lately! While it is much needed for our wildflowers, and most importantly to keep the risk of wildfires down, it’s not making too many of us very happy. With summer being so brief, I’d much prefer to have sunshine everyday. However, if it’s a choice between rain and smokey air - I’ll take the rain. I don’t melt.

The rain has caused our lawn to positively EXPLODE with growth. We are thrilled about this, but it is in need a mowing - badly! - and we can’t do it while everything’s wet. The fescue and other grasses in the seed mixture have come to life and the lawn is starting to look like a pasture.

My wildflower garden in the rear of the yard is also doing well, but I have no blooms yet. I wonder now if the seed was sown too thickly. I hope not. I would like to see color back there before autumn comes.

Steve’s zucchini and tomato plants are producing now. We have three zucchinis so far. His tomato plants have four tomatoes. I do hope there will be more. I’ve enjoyed watching the growth process, which seems to move in fast forward with the long daylight hours.

I took Sedona with me on errands Friday and, as always, we made a stop at Creamers Field for a walk.  The front field was aglow with yellow flowers and there were about a dozen sandhill cranes visiting. The cranes stop at Creamers in great numbers in both the spring and the fall. I was pleasantly surprised to see them on Friday.

I called Creamers Field Visitor Center to inquire about those gorgeous yellow flowers, and was told that the plants were safflower. Amazingly, the crop was planted many years ago and continues to come back every year (when not mowed down or plowed under). The contrast between the yellow flowers, the green grasses and trees, and the blue skies was stunning.  Add in the rusty brown color of the cranes - with their bright red crowns - and I couldn’t resist the photo op.

(more…)

(Warning: This is a very, very, very, long entry!)

Steve and I left Friday morning on an adventure that would begin about 90 miles from our house - at the start of the Dalton Hwy. The James W. Dalton Hwy (known informally as The Haul Road) is a 414-mile road that begins at the Elliott Highway, north of Fairbanks, and ends at Deadhorse near the Arctic Ocean and the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. It was built as a supply road to support the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1974.

Taken from the BLM website:

The Dalton Highway stretches 414 miles across northern Alaska from Livengood (84 miles north of Fairbanks) to Deadhorse and the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay. Built during construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s, this mostly gravel highway travels through rolling, forested hills, across the Yukon River and Arctic Circle, through the rugged Brooks Range, and over the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean. Along most of its length, you’ll see no restaurants, no gift shops, no service stations—just forest, tundra, and mountains, crossed by a double ribbon of road and pipe.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages a swath of public lands along the highway from the Yukon River to the north side of the Brooks Range. Within the Dalton Corridor, the BLM maintains campgrounds, rest areas, interpretive panels and a visitor center.

I borrowed this map of the Dalton Highway from the BLM website, so you can see the route we drove, and the various places we explored:

Quite a bit of preparation went into this trip. The highway, which directly parallels the pipeline, is one of the most isolated roads in the United States. There are only three towns along the route: Coldfoot (mile 175), Wiseman (mile 188), and Deadhorse (mile 414).  Gas is available in only two locations along the way: the Yukon River bridge and Coldfoot. It is also available at the end of the line. Unless you want to pay extremely high fuel prices, it’s always a good idea to carry extra gas with you. We carried an extra 25 gallons of fuel for the truck (which only gets about 13mpg). We topped off our tank in Coldfoot, both coming and going, and paid $3.57/gallon.

(more…)

The cottonwood trees are shedding. Actually, the trees are Balsam Poplar and not cottonwood, although we refer to them as such because of the fluff that falls every summer.  This cottony fluff is annoying for most, and causes allergy problems for many.  When I take Sedona out for her walk, I try to avoid breathing in the fluff, but I’ve been waking up with a stuffy head most mornings so I don’t think I’ve been very successful.

I took these photos yesterday, so you can see our ’snow’ in June:

(more…)

Six years ago today, we arrived in Fairbanks! Officially though, our arrival in Alaska was six years ago yesterday - when we crossed the border and set up camp in Tok for the evening.  Here is some of what I wrote in my Alaska Journal about our first impression of Interior Alaska:

Fairbanks is like any other big city. Immediately upon entering the outskirts of the city (and while passing through North Pole - which is just east of here), we began to see businesses we haven’t seen since leaving the midwest: Blockbuster Video, Wendy’s, etc. It is also congested here - especially after visiting towns boasting populations under 500.

We found our campground (Chena Marina RV Park) and set up. Just then a float plane landed on the “water runway” in front of  us. This continued all day and I enjoyed watching each time. Later on this evening, Steve and I met a couple from North Carolina and ended up sitting in their RV chatting until 11:30pm. It was impossible to tell that it was late - the sun was still visible on the horizon.

************************

…we took a drive through “downtown” Fairbanks. It doesn’t really feel like Alaska to us yet. (I know it will when the cold weather comes) It was comforting to see some of the establishments I am familiar with. But I also saw many businesses and small shops that aren’t a part of the big nationwide mix. I look forward to exploring some of them.

Another nice change is seeing foothills on the horizon, rather than tall buildings. And knowing that only a short drive away is some of the most awesome scenery in the country. We still feel like tourists (and have been told that we aren’t truly Alaskans until we live through our first winter), and I’ve picked up countless brochures highlighting activities and sights for the entire state. We hope to see as much of Alaska as we can while we’re here. I am glad that Steve and I share that love for getting out on the open road and driving until we can’t go anymore. And I look forward to delving more deeply into my photography.

I’m also looking forward to experiencing some of the local events here in Fairbanks. This month (next week) is the Midnight Sun Festival and the Annual Midnight Sun Baseball Game. By the way, I think I saw on the news that the recent sunset was at 11:35pm and sunrise was at 2:28am. On June 21st, it will be the longest day of sunlight and then the days get progressively shorter again. Although the long days of sunlight were a bit disconcerting to us at first, we’re finding that we are able to sleep through the night without any problems. We did put a piece of cardboard on the front door window of the camper and I stuffed some cardboard in the skylight over our bed and that helps a lot.

I’ve often written about how thankful I am that the Army brought us here, and I’m going to say it again - how fortunate we are to live in Alaska! Happy Anniversary to us!

(more…)

As we approach June 21st and summer solstice, the sun barely goes below the horizon. Even when the sun does go down, darkness does not fall. There are no stars in the sky, and the moon is a white orb against blue-gray dusk.  I find myself staying up later… midnight, 1am, sometimes 2am and later, because I lose track of time.  However, I’m sleeping much better, which some might find odd considering darkness never comes. Gone is the insomnia of winter; I feel well-rested and rejuvenated.

With all this sunlight, everything tends to grow faster and bigger than what home gardeners in the lower 48 states are accustomed to. Steve’s tomato plants are doing well, as are the zucchini plants we got from our friends Gip and Carmen.  But the best proof of our fast growing season has to be our new lawn. I’ve been taking photos of the grass almost every day to document its growth. See for yourself what has happened in six days:

There are a few patchy areas that we’re going to have to re-seed, but we were told to expect that many bags of seed have some that are ‘duds’.

(more…)

The recent combination of rain and sunshine has made the prickly rose bushes explode with shades of pink and magenta.  We’re letting the area beneath our birch trees develop naturally, and at this time of the year, we are rewarded with showy roses and abundant bluebells. Yesterday, I saw the first clumping of dwarf dogwood as well. I love the way that Mother Nature gardens!

My wildflower garden in the rear of the yard is doing well. The seedlings are now several inches tall. I just wish I had saved the bag, because now I can’t remember what was included in the mix. I suppose I’ll just have to wait and then be surprised. I do hope everything grows well and blooms.

(Click to enlarge the first photo)

My wildflower garden:

(more…)

A few days ago, Rod Boyce from the Fairbanks Daily News-miner emailed me, and asked me if I objected to this blog being featured in the newspaper. Of course I didn’t object; in fact I was quite honored to have been asked!

Today, in Section C - the “Our Town Plus” section - there is a photo of me and Sedona (the one that Steve took of us up on Murphy Dome) with an excerpt from my blog. The link to my blog is also included. Since this morning, I’ve been periodically checking the stat reports to see if there’s been an increase in traffic - and there has been.

So, if you came here by way of the News-miner, I’d like to welcome you. I hope you enjoy my writing and photographs, and will continue to stop by. My husband and I are soon approaching our sixth anniversary living in Alaska. While 6 years is only a drop in the bucket when compared to a large majority of the population, I believe that the love we have for Alaska is just as strong.

I have been privileged to meet many wonderful people since our arrival. I have never lived in a more friendly and welcoming community, and this is one of the reasons we decided to make our home here when my husband’s military service was complete.

New readers:
My writing here is about the day to day life of living in Interior Alaska. I don’t profess to be profound in my writing, and I rarely write about anything controversial or political.  There are plenty of writers out there who do a good job of that already. Instead, my focus is on my family (to include my furkids), our travels, local activities and events, and the beauty that surrounds us.

(more…)

The wildflowers are starting to bloom all over the state. Along the Richardson Highway, we have sweet pea and lupine growing. I saw goldenrod sprouting on Fort Wainwright yesterday. In my yard, I’ve got high-bush cranberries blooming, as well as one lone salmonberry. I don’t know where that came from, as it’s all by itself - unless I can thank the many birds who visited my yards this spring.

This past week was rather dismal. With overcast skies and morning temps in the low 40s, I felt like we were back in April. I also worried about our new lawn, as there was no germination whatsoever by day 8. However, my wildlflower garden in the rear of the yard had been showing tiny sprigs of green for several days, so that gave me a ray of hope for the rest of the yard.

Yesterday, we were back to sunshine and warm temps (70s), and by yesterday evening, I saw tiny green shoots in parts of the yard! Yes! This morning, there were even more. With 24 hours of daylight, and 21+ hours of sunshine, things grow very quickly here. I’ve often said you can see things grow before your very eyes. It would be a good time to try out some time lapse photography - if I had the equipment to do so.

Here are some photos I took around the outside of our house:

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

On Sunday, Lisa and I took another scenic drive. This time our travels took us up the Steese Hwy to Davidson Ditch, and then into the White Mountain Rec Area and Ophir Campground. The drive was spectacular as always, despite partly cloudy skies. In fact, the overcast skies made the colors pop even more vividly. There is so much green now, and we love it!

In the higher elevations along U.S. Creek Road, an abundance of alpine flowers bloomed and waved in the breeze. We saw mountain avens, alp lilies, alpine azalea, and an amazing variety of moss and lichen.  There are several places to stop for scenic views, and one in particular overlooks layers and layers of rolling hills that go off into the distance for as far as the eye can see.

The only blight on the landscape are the large pockets of dead spruce and birch, a result of the 2004 Boundary Fire. The 2004 Alaska fire season was the worst on record in terms of area burned by wildfires. The Boundary Fire destroyed more than 6,600,000 acres, and consisted of approximately 700 different fires.  It was a terrible summer that year.

(more…)

We have had the most wonderful weather lately, and I’m hoping that the sunshine (and the continual watering of our lawn) will bring green soon. I’m so impatient. I want to wake up and have a carpet of grass. Germination should take about 7-10 days, so that means I’m going to have my eyes peeled for a tinge of green on Saturday! *grin*

While I’m talking about growing… a couple of weeks ago, Lisa and I drove by the Fairbanks Community Garden here in Fairbanks. I read about it in the newspaper, and talked to several folks who had plots there, but never knew where it was.  When we were there, several families were working the soil.

I found the history of the garden on the website above:

The Fairbanks Community Garden started about 1979 when The Alaskan Federation for Community Self-reliance, Inc. received a free lease of land from Fern Palfy, who owned the land where the present Borough Office Building sits. The Community Garden sprouted and flourished in this location for several seasons…

… In 1983, we moved from Pioneer Street to our current location in Hamilton Acres, where our present 2.5 acre site is leased to us free from the Borough.  We did receive a one time State Grant of $20,000 which was used to clear land, install electricity, put in the well, buy the fence, and generally prepare the gardening site for use. Today, the Fairbanks community Garden is an entity in it’s own right. When the original 10 year lease was up, the gardeners got together, formed their own nonprofit organization, and re-leased the land. The Garden is currently run through 3 elected officials and is funded by the collection of plot fees each spring.

The average growing season in Interior Alaska is 90 days. Many folks garden in raised beds and use plastic or weed barriers to help increase soil temperatures. The folks who use the Community Garden may live in a place where there is permafrost or no running water. Some live in apartments and can’t have their own garden. Church groups use their plots to feed the hungry. The gardeners come from all walks of life, are all ages, and speak many languages - a direct reflection of the Fairbanks community.  The Alaska Cooperative Extension has all kinds of free handouts on gardening in Alaska. You can find them here.

(more…)