pictures-- soon to have more

these are picture that we took on the drive up to alaska. in this one, if you look closely, you will see that there are melt carverns in the glacier. the ice is around the caves is actually blue but my camera didn't get the color quite right.

what you are seeing is the very edge of a glacier in the Jasper/Banff Park in Canada. at the very bottom of the glacier is a Lodge that most likely costs ones sould to stay in. It was quite cold here because there is a semi-permanent chill wind that blows down and off the glacier right to where Tracy and I were standing.

a duplicate photo i hadn't realized i'd uploaded.

much of the "snow" you see on the mountains, specifically the narrow bit at the very top, is actually glacial ice that has yet to melt or fall off. the bird is what i believe i spoke of in an earlier post as a GRD, or ginormous raven of doom.

here is a closer picture of the GRD. this thing is just a few inches short of knee high, think walmart parking lot ravens, but twice the size. they are about the same size as a hawk. it is hard to see but there is a cigarette butt to the right of the picture. it is my only visual size comparison.
this is the black wolf that came up to the suburban as we were crossing the border back into alaska. it had obviously been fed. the car didn't scare it in the least, neither did we, and it was cowed-- the tail is tucked in if you will note, and was clearly looking for food. this is what happens when people feed whild animals. they begin to act sort of tame, which is dangerous to people who think they are safe to approach, and they lose the ability to hunt and care for themselves, making them dependent on humans. since this was a highway i suspect he was living off people's scraps. i wouldn't be surprised if he either starves during winter or gets hit by a car. *sigh* he was still a fantastic sight and one i will never forget.

here he is from farther away.

 

i will post more photos as soon as i can get them up. ta ta.

plane crashes and blueberries

the best way to open this is to say that everyone is fine and no one got hurt.

now for the fun part-- Tracy and I were in a plane crash! yup a plane crash. i still find it hard to believe.

two days before i was set to come back to bozeman tracy's dad took us to his cabin out in the alaska swamp. the area is not all swamp, it really depends on how high the ground is and how wet it has been. there were a lot of flowers and devil's club (which i think tracy has a personal vendetta against). anyhow her dad has a small prop plane. since the only way to get to the cabin in summer is to either hike several miles through swamp, not fun, ride in four wheelers, which they don't have, or fly small planes, such as the one her dad has and is liscensed to fly, we he flew in. it was a very short flight, 5-10 minutes at the most. we landed safely and had an excellent 24 hours doing hard labor and playing about-- we moved a sidewalk block by block and then put it back, tracy did most of the work so i can't complain.

then we went to the beach and looked at anchorage which is directly across from the swamp. it is a great view. tracy found an old "sparkling pepsi-cola" bottle and i found see glass. we distrubed a moose on the way to the beach which thankfully took off in the opposite direction.then we all packed up and got on the plane to leave.

we took off fine. we were going up and going up, tracy snapped a photo so i could show everyone what the swamp looked like from the air, and then not going up anymore, and then we went on this nice gentle arc downward. tracy's dad said "shit" and the next thing i know we have hit the ground and flipped over. it happened really really fast. there was a quick round of "is everybody okay?" and we got out of the plane.

it took me a few seconds to find my seat belt buckle. i must say in, my defense, that i am not use to unfastening one when i am dangling upside-down from it. i am very glad we were all wearing them.

anyhow, we all remained surprisingly calm and started pulling our bags from the plane, we carried everything but some boxes of nails which everyone agreed were just fine left behind.

then we proceeded to hike the 300 feet or so back to the landing strip, which is right in front of the cabin. we were hiking though swamp so it was like hiking through extreme mud, it kept trying to steal my shoes, and water and spungy plants that were about knee high and had roots and limbs everywhere. i highly recomend that no one goes hiking in the alaska swamps.

tracy did find blueberries in the swampy patch though. that was nice.

then we went back to the cabin, got into dry clothes and contacted neighbors. fortunatly we had eaten with them the night before so we knew they were there and that they had 4-wheelers and a vehicled called an argo. and that they were super cool. they also happened to be leaving that night.

so we contacted them and they took tracy and me with them out of the swamp, which was also an adventure. We ate some more of the swamp blueberries on the way out and then they drove us back to tracy's mom's house.

i made my flight back to bozeman and everything. all in all it was the best situation one could have gotten for a plane crash. not many people were involved, all came out without notable injury, and we were within close reach of a cabin and helpful neighbors.

if we hadn't landed in the swamp things could been much worse. the plants kept us from sinking and having too hard a landing. if we had gone much farther we would have landed in a small lake or trees which would have been much worse. and we also happened to be very close to the worlds largest small plane airport (merril fields) and within about 15 or 20 minutes, before we'd made it out of the swamp, there were several planes swooping close over head, either to check out the crash or to see if we needed help-- probably both.

and there were blueberries. how cool is that!

freakin' cool!!!

woot! i love wacky things.

the other day i discovered the TV here was possesed. this means that when you pressed power it did this weird silent whitescreen kinda thing. you could see the image but it was shadowed but it was with white not black.

then today i was channel surfing trying to find PBS and found a channel i couldn't understand. after a few moments-- and some foreign writing popping up i realized that the channel was korean. all the people were korean, they were speaking in korean, and the writing was korean.

and they were showing the korean nightly news.

then they started showing a three day old soccer match.

it was so cool. i love it when wacky stuff happens.

EATHQUAKE!!!

ok-- first off it wasn't strong at all and i am fine, i just really wanted to title the entry that way.

next- this is the second, count that, second, earthquake i have been through since i have been up here. this is so cool! it was a 4.7 16 miles NW of Willow, AK. we are still getting really faint after shocks. i know bozeman is supposed to be geoseismically active but i have only felt one earthquake there that i can remember. i slept through one when i was a child.

this is really cool. small earthquakes are fun. to me at least. i am not too eager to go through a large one but as long as people and most stuff comes out of it ok that would be cool to experience too.

i can't wait to go through more earthquakes.

he he. i am silly.

write more soon.

p.s. i love you dad. happy father's day!

camping

yesterday we decided we would go camping. the sun was shining, people were in good moods, so on. then it rained and we stayed in. it was disapointing. *sigh* at least we have all the stuff packed so we can go at a moments notice next time.

we had pork covered in kraut and corn on the cob. the woelfels were really really cool and remembered that i didn't care over much for pork so they made me some hamburgers. i love these people.

talk to you all some more soon.

nancy.

wahoo!

i would like to say that i never thought that alaska would be windy. it is. very windy.

the other day we played tag in a large public park thingamy. i smacked my head and got bruises in many places. it was a fantastic game.

earlier in the day we had cleaned and organized the woelfel family garage-- well some of it, the thing is huge. i organized the largest tool box i have ever seen and found a really sweet set of chisels i plan on playing with soon.

then we went to an old abandoned mine. there were some walkways and a lot of collapsed old buildings. it is now a state park site or something but we had a lot of fun. there was a small hike where we got to see all of the areas of it-- it was founded sometime in the 30s and continued production of gold until sometime around 1947.

yesterday we drove to the edge of the denali park and tried to see mount mckinnley. it was too cloudy around the mountain. i kept looking and thinking "i don't get what we can't see. there are mountains and they don't look that spectacular." then they drew my attention to a sign (where i was promptly glad i hadn't opened my mouth on my thoughts) which had a picture of a mt mckinnley. in frount of it was what looked like foothill mountains-- a range about half as tall. that was what we could see. they looked like normal mountains, nothing to sneeze at but about what i was used too. they were decently large. mckinnley is huge.

alaskans also seem to be a little overly proud of the spiffiness of there mountains. they keep saying that theirs are more impressive and larger and more majestic and are very proud of the glacial cut that most of them have.

i have given up politely telling them that while their mountains may seem pointier the rockies are nothing to sniff at. some of them are very impressive yes, so are many of the rockies, we also have pointy mountains and glacial cut mountains and volcanos and high mountain towns. we have mountains that are awing to look at and to look off of. they are not the only people with nice mountains.

and bozeman is at a higher elevation than they are so niner niner boo boo. (had to throw that in)

that is all for now.

Day 6: May 22, 2006

today opened with a discussion of the flaws of bras and the unpleasant uniboob created by sports bras.

Porcupine! I just saw my first porcupine. It was attempting to cross the road. It changed its mind and we did not kill it or a tire. Woot!

Gas is expensive. Very expensive. Just thought I would share that with ya’ll.

We are back to green highways. It is very pretty. And now to the gravel. I hate gravel. I really hate gravel. It is such a pain in the ass.

There is something Tracy and I have been chuckling about for some time and I think I will share it with you. While in Watson Lake. We saw a sign in our hotel’s lobby. It said "Attention: water will be flushed Tuesday, May 23rd. Water will be discolored– do not drink." We have mocked Watson’s icky water for some time.

We also mocked Watson’s hotel lobby bathroom. As far as the "Gah!" factor goes it outdid even the outhouses– with one very notable exception I am desperately trying to forget. The floor was so uneven it is best described as rippling with the occasional divet. The stall door was covered with linoleum. There was a gaping hole in the wall over by the mirrors. We could see one of the pipes– fully exposed. It was green and had some padding. There was a full sized closet door covering the supply cupboard. It wasn’t locked. Tracy checked.

The road here is rather bumpy. It sorta rollercoasters. Tracy called it the bouncy road cause we were bouncin’ a lot. We got air time a couple of times. Air time in a Suburban, a loaded Suburban.

We just crossed into Alaska. It was interesting. The Canadian border crossing was 30Km back. There was a rest stop between the two.

OMG! WE JUST SAW A WOLF! HE CAME UP TO US! A WOLF! OMG!

It was young, judging by its size. And it was black. It had black fur. We saw it, stopped, it got onto the highway and trotted after us. We turned around to get a look, he stayed and watched and came closer. We turned again and he followed and watched and waited beside the car. He looked like he was hoping for food. We didn’t give him any as we both knew enough about wild animals to know that doing that never ends well for the animal. We snapped photos and drove off. Wow. (Sorry for any incoherance I wrote this shortly after the sighting and was still in awe)

The road is now pink/orange. The power lines here are very old school. They are short, they are use insulator caps. The frost heave has caused them to fall in every direction they can. Some have sunk into the swamp. It is cool. Not black wolf cool, but still cool.

And we are here. I am tired and I am going to crash. I will write more at some point. Ta.

Lists we have made:

alternate road-trip titles: ridin’ the pink highway, ask and ye shall receive, why we hate tourists on horses, maybe Alberta’s just wack, riddin’ the rainbow road (the colors of the highway which we saw– pink, orange, green, black, mud, grey, white-ish, mauve, yellow, almost purple)

misread sign: goat-lick park as goat lick"ing" park

cities we’ve had issues with: Calgary– scary traffic, Jasper– disturbingly touristy (quote from Tracy), Kitwanga– invites mispronunciation, we saw it as both kittywanga and kitangwa.

Wild animals spotted: elk– too many to count, insects– plenty on the windshield, bear– 5, otter– 1, birds– lots, ginormous ravens of doom (GRD)– 7 or 8, fox– 2, moose– 9, porcupine– 2, carribou– 1, gopher– 1, wolf– 1, rabbit– 1.

Day 5: May 21, 2006

Nothing special so far. We woke up and left the mildly skeezy hotel. (It had a behavior expectation guide on the board where we went to check in).

We just saw a sign that amused us: "50Km/hr when children on highway." My questions are: why are the children on the highway and do we not need to slow down for adults in the highway or do the adults never go on the highway and if not why do they put the children on the road? Is it some weird right of passage? If it is some weird right of passage– why are we slowing down? Wouldn’t it "test" them better if we were going faster? Or are these folks being kind and slowing us down for our own sakes so we won’t go "GAH! CHILDREN-ON-ROAD!" and drive into a tree? Canada is wack.

At the turnoff from highway 16 W to 37 N to Alaska is a big wooden sign that says "North to Alaska." I hope the picture turns out. It is 724 Km until the end of the Cassiar, which we are on. Tracy’s family wants us off the Cassiar today. Tracy drives sanely. It is not likely we will make it that distance.

We just saw two blackbears. They were young from what we could tell by their small sizes.
Woot! There goes a third, this one is older. It is likely a mama bear and her cubs. The bears are awake and they are hungry.

An otter! Yay! First otter sighting! Woohoo! I love the Cassiar.

Another bit of information you might find interesting. As we have traveled North the seasons have been changing. In Bozeman it is clearly summer. In West Glacier it was spring. In Jasper it was the end of winter, very beginning of spring. Somewhere near Stewart it was just break-up. I knew this would happen but I didn’t really get it until I saw it. I also didn’t realize it would be so blatant.

Bear 4 just popped up. Did you catch that– bear 4. Wow. Am I privileged.

We just got a solid bug wacking the windshield. It was about an inch in diameter and made (after long discussion we decided upon) a light but dull thud or thwup instead of the normal splook. It didn’t even leave the traditional splook mark. It was either one solid little bug or we wacked a hummingbird.

Woot! A holy bridge. It sang for us. How sweet of it.

And there goes a fox. At first I thought, is that a cat? No, a dog? No– a fox. Pale and scraggily and trotting on the side of the highway, but a fox all the same.

We just had fun with an outhouse. It was a cement structure with a metal door. Tracy shut the door and then it wouldn’t open. The door knob did not work. After fiddling with it a bit Tracy realized it was a "totally defunct" doorknob. It wasn’t attached to the door at all thus was not what was keeping the door shut. She put a shoulder to it and smashed it open. I was looking at the doorknob at the time and Tracy did not think to call out a warning. She nearly got me but a combination of my spider-sense and lightning quick reflexes managed to get my head out of the way in time.

I think my arch nemesis Tracy has discovered my secret identity and is trying to take me out so that I cannot thwart her plan for world domination. What do you think? Hmm? Has the vile villain Tracy of the Deviant Stick People got it in for me? You decide next week on "The Adventures of a Silly Girl in Alaska."

Sorry about that I got a little goofy and couldn’t resist.

Now we have arrived in winter. We are almost at Dease Lake. The land here looks like it has yet to wake up and looks like it won’t for a while. It is rather desolate her. Tracy describes it as "Swamp-on-a-mountain." There are Black Spruce everywhere and a little bit of underbrush which has yet to show any sign of life. It is grey and overcast. It is ugly. It creeps me out. I will be glad to be through it.

The highway is now a dirty orange shade. Now we have pretty trees again and I am glad for them.

We just passed a sign for Chucky’s towing. What is it with this place. It seems to be groaning "B-horror flick." I just wanna be gone.

We are in pretty country now. The highway is now green, the asphalt is green. Friccin’ awesome. This place may be weird but some of it is cool.

Day 4: May 20, 2006

Jasper national park is gorgeous (I would italisize gorgeous if I could). We saw a lot of glaciers, mostly small ones which were clutching the side of the mountains. We also saw a lot of glacial runoff. I did not know water could come in that shade of green. It is amazing. Tracy also mocked bottled "glacier" water. Real glacial water is opaque and full of minerals. It might not be bad for you but mud is not known for its tasty-ness even if it is pretty.

Oh– we also saw an ice field– or what was left of an ice field. It was enormous. And the mountains it had carved and terrain made it clear just how massive it once had been. Some of the "glacial gravel" were these rocks that were the size of VW beetles...

Last night we stayed in a hostel. We realized Jasper was out of our price range when we saw the hotel prices as ranging from "one of your limbs," to "an internal organ," to "your soul– immortal or otherwise."

The hostel was a "rustic" hostel in bear country (as the signs kept telling us). This meant that the only electricity was in the main cabin where you had to store all of your food and brushed your teeth. There was no running water, but there were outhouses available and fortunately did not smell too bad.

The rooms were "dorm" style, which equates to six bunks per room. The rooms were also co-ed. Tracy and I got to share ours with a random Frenchman. We slept in our clothes despite the fact that our scuzz tolerance levels had just taken a drastic hike. He snored but other than that we were good.

It is really weird thinking of gas in cents per litre rather than dollars per gallon.

Today hasn’t been all that exciting. It has rained a lot. Not that interesting but it is informative.
Gas is prohibitively expensive here. One of the stations we stopped at did amuse us though. It had the tank above ground– looked like it had come right of the train or truck. This station had one antiquated pump. Came directly off the tank.

It amused us.

Tracy and I just had an argument. We were both emphatic that we were right. We have not reached an agreement. We were passed by a car of an interesting color. Tracy insists that it is "bronze tomato," I say that it is "celebrity tan." (That weird spray paint kind)

I am right of course. I am always right. Tracy is obviously wrong. *scoff* It was silly of her to argue with me really. Silly Tracy.

Day 3: May 19, 2006

Got up, left motel 8 or super 8 or whatever the hell it is called here. Went to the Royal Tyrell Museum. Mocked it being "royal" for a little while. The signs to the museum were poorly marked. Fortunately we only got lost once and figured it out and how to get there pretty fast.
The museum itself is fairly nice. Not as impressive as I was expecting but nothing to sniff at either. They had live animals, a tarantula, some cockroaches, and an impressive living garden, with huge koi, set up to look like what the cretaceous would have looked like. A lot of their displays had old or inaccurate data, and many of their statues had horrible posture– tails were dragging and heads were up, *sigh* If you have been unfortunate enough to hear it I have quite a rant about poor dinosaur posture in "scientific" settings where they are supposed to bring you the "correct" information. Although I must give them some room for error as five years at the Museum of the Rockies gave me a good idea what a pain in the ass fixing and/or changing displays can be.

Then we left and took highway 1 back through Calgary– this time through the downtown. Having experienced the edge of Calgary during rush hour we had planned in advance for this misfortune. We got there at about 2– before rush hour. It was still hectic but not as bad as it could have been.

We made it through Calgary and lived. We did dub Calgary "Crazy Town" and highway 1 as "Pschizo Road," as they were. So we survived Pschizo Road in Crazy Town.

Oh the beauty of mountains. The beauty of the Rocky Mountains. After the plains they almost make me weep in relief and gratitude. I am a mountain girl.

Woohoo! We just saw an undercover cop shoot after a joy rider on a bike. I am glad Tracy likes the speed limits. Here it is about 110Km. Most people are going at 120+. We were curious what it would take for someone to get pulled over for here as speeding is apparently isn’t enough. From what we just saw, joyridding, is what’ll getcha.

Mountains make me happy. Have I mentioned that.

Day 2

may 18, 2006.

Possible trip titles– part two: why we hate tourists on horses, maybe Alberta’s just wack....

My camping skills are a bit rusty. There was a heater in the cabin we were in. Did I remember it– not until I woke myself up at 5:30 from the cold. *sigh*

We got to the Park just before 9am. Turns out they don’t open their booths until 9. But there were no road blocks and people were driving through before hand. So we did too. Got into the park for free. Woohoo!

Turns out the roads aren’t fully cleared until at least July. The man monitoring the road block muttered something about there being 35 feet of snow somewhere up ahead they were working to remove. We got 14 miles in before we had to stop. It was a beautiful ride. I hope Tracy’s pictures come out. I definitely wanna come back someday when the roads are fully open.
I would like to mention that tourists who rush about in the parks irritate me. There are few times you will have the opportunity to see things this stunning. Take time to appreciate them.
Parts of the highway are still pink. It is really cool.

In other news: we took a slight detour meant to keep us out of Browning but to abut the Park and keep us going in the right direction. Very quickly we came upon a herd of tourists on horses blocking the road and about 12 cars behind them. They took, at least, half an hour to get off the road and by the end had about 45 cars behind them. We were hating them, cursing them, and I think I saw Tracy give them the evil eye at least once.

The adventure of the day, however, turned out to be the "other through highway" #49– a mountain pass with truly stunning vistas, deep gorges, steep cliffs, a narrow super-twisty road, and— NO GUARD RAILS!!! None. I grabbed the "oh-shit bar" about half way through.
We lived courtesy of Tracy’s amazing driving skills. Thank you Tracy.

I saw a glacier! A real glacier. It was at the rear-end of the Park and we weren’t even in the Park when we saw it. Amusing. Very amusing.

Calgary... deserves cursing. Nothing suffices. Nothing yet invented.

We hit the blasted city at rush hour. This alone accounts for the animosity. The city itself may be quite lovely– we skipped it altogether.

Tracy hates the fact that Alberta doesn’t seem to understand the concept of four leaf clover ways of getting onto the highway and instead use "OH MY SOUL!" normal intersections for the *grumble* HIGHWAY.

Alberta has messed up road systems.

Day 1

possible titles for this trip-- part 1: ridin' the pink highway, ask and ye shall receive

misread signs: goat-lick park as goat-licking park

the entry:

The day started off well. Tracy picked me up from at 7 like we agreed so that we could go and have the axle boot repaired. Then we went to the Capt’s house to load the spare tires and rearrange the load to Tracy’s likin’ (she’s better at it than I). We quickly stopped at Aspen’s where I got my shiny graduation present. It was a very pretty Inara pillow. Thank you Aspen.
We left Bozeman at about 11:45. My map came in handy after Great Falls where Tracy’s memory got a little fuzzy due to the fact that we went a different route. I was able to navigate and I didn’t get us lost!

As we drove it became clear that taking highways was a good idea. It was a smart choice as we avoided the interstate ails. High speeds, no cops, few (if any) other cars, and enough farms, homes, and small towns to make us feel comfortable. The highways were in good condition. We only hit two construction sites and they were small.

We noticed some cool things on the way. The first was that much of the highway was pink. It varied from light pink, to grey pink, to a blackish pink– not read, pink.

Then we noticed that a lot of the area is, or was, volcanic. The area around the highway had these lovely conical hills and rimrocks. There were also these bodies of water which were suspiciously clear, ponds, and rivers lined with limestone. There were also patched of limestone which had clearly bubbled up from underneath. It was really cool.

On one of the rimrocks there were the three crosses of the crucifixion. I suspect an allusion to Calvary Hill.

Tracy also decided she liked the way we commemorate car accident deaths on the highways. The small, subtle, and unostentatious crosses are nice but don’t distract the driver. I believe I once saw one that was a Star of David. Hmm... time for thought.

I wish I could say Browning was not as bad as its rep. It leaves a lot to be desired. There were wrecked cars dumped off to the side of main street. Paranoid and rather angry looking Native Americans were glaring at us. Not horrible, but not comfy. We didn’t stop.

East Glacier was... unimpressive. Some cabins, a micro-grocery, and some sort of diner.

We drove past W. Glacier (ye gods the cost) and stayed at the KOA. We also mocked the KOA name spelling, K for Camp, and went onto a tangent involving pronouncing it with a German accent– "Kampfground!" I suggested changing ground to grund which I don’t think means ground in German but it certainly sounds it.

I then informed her that "kampf" means struggle in German and thus the word meant struggle ground or battle ground. This is rather accurate as the word camp has changed in meaning from "war camp" to "leave it all behind and roast smores" (Tracy quote).

Then we laughed at ourselves for our lit-erliness and creating a mock etymology and history of linguistic shift for a faux word.

That’s all for the day.

Oh and we happily squashed skeeters and wore eau-de-bugspray (another Tracy quote).