The Real Trip Begins

Day 3

Today’s agenda was to finish up panning, pick up Kevin back in Acnchorage, and head south.  Panning went smoothly today with no repeat of Alaska life lesson number 1.  I finally met up with an old timer who showed me how to pan properly and found a few small specks of gold.  I was glad to have a day job to return to, cause if I had to rely on panning to eat I would be one thin mountain man.

Said goodbye to some really cool folks at the mine prior to leaving.  The last night we were standing around the fire talking about the odds of a lady coming to Alaska and finding a man.  One miner said the odds were good, but the goods were odd.  That about summed up my new friends.  Thanks to Andy for being a great host, and to Bill and Ken for teaching me to pan up my two flakes of Alaska Gold.

Kevin arrived, but his luggage didn’t.  However Alaska Airlines was right on the stick and had it in hand within two hours.  This gave us time for Kevin to get the Moho driving orientation, me to learn how to dump black water (a nice term for poop), and to eat supper.  We ate the best pizza I have ever had at the Moose Tooth Pizza.  If you ever go to Anchorage, go there and get a Santa’s Helper.  Side note.  Me, a Seminole fan, 4,000 miles away from Tallahassee, and they sit us next to a Gator Fan with full gator apparel.  God has a sense of humor.

Heading out of town we passed one unusual sight at the Portage Glacier turnoff.  I thought it was a traffic jam, but there were over two hundred native Eskimos with 10 feet long dip nets lined up in the river dipping fish.  It was a mullet looking fish by the name of “hulligan”.  The fishermen would dip out up to 20 or more fish with one swipe and dump them into 5 gallon buckets or coolers.  It was like a big party, with campfires on the shore and families grilling out.  Ended the day pulling into a rest area inside a huge bowl of a valley with snow capped mountains all around us.  What a beaut.  No internet here in the boonies, so this post will be delayed.

Still trying to get used to the daylight.  We were stuffing cardboard in windows,  blankets across doors, anything to make it dark so we could sleep.  Still up at 4:00 every morning for the sunrise.  

Bill and Kevin's Self Portrait

Hauling in the Hulligans

Long Net/Cold Water

Lining up for fish

One Scoop

Day 2- Gold Panning

Alaska – Day 2

Alaska Life Lesson #1

Gold is not easy to get;

Gold is panned in water

Glacial till on rocks is slippery as owl ____.

Glacial runoff is Cold as ICE.

It is hard to breathe when you are submerged in glacial water.



That's Me



Woke up to a beautiful cloud free morning and spent the first real day doing a combination of gold panning and photography, and yes, I personally learned Life lesson #1.  I was being soooooo careful, and WHAM, I am on my back in this ice cold stream trying to breathe.  It was like laying in a bathtub full of ice water.  The only saving grace was that I had a backpack on so I didn’t smash my head and that there was no one around to laugh at me as I lay there like an upside down turtle.  After returning to the Moho to change clothes and dry out everything.  I turned the heat to 85 and put my belt, wallet, and socks in the oven at the lowest setting.  I was sitting on the floor in front of the oven rotating socks and leather goods so as to dry and not burn.  Anyway after warming up and drying out  I headed back down and had a good, safe rest of the day.   I truly look forward to getting Kevin tomorrow in Anchorage.  You really need a buddy up here to share the experience.  However, the people I have met here at Crow Creek Mine are great folks.  If you ever get up here, you definitely want to spend a night or two at this place.

Do NOT step on this rock!!!!!!!!





Diehards with dry suits dredging the creek

Crow Creek

The Adventure Begins (sans Kevin)

5/26/2011

10:30 p.m. Go to bed

11:30 p.m.  No sleep

5/27/2011

12:30 p.m.  No sleep

2:00 a.m. Wake up/ toss /turn

3:00 a.m. Might as well get up

4:30 a.m. Shelby drives me to the airport (what a sweetheart), it’s so early there are no kiosks open to even sell us breakfast.

Goodbye Tallahassee, Hello Anchorage.

That’s how my day started.  Now its 3:00 a.m. EDT, 11:00 p.m. local and still daylight outside.  Alaska is just so cool. 

I arrived in Anchorage today at 3:30 to a balmy 70 degrees and sunny.  A few photos are attached  to highlight my long but quick day.  I am staying tonight at Cross Creek Mine to do a little gold panning and nature viewing prior to Kevin’s arrival.  One bear already spotted on the mountain tonight.  When I got here I found that the Gold Prospectors of America organization is here camping for their kick off weekend for the summer.  I hung out with some Alaska "good ole boys" listening to tales of prospecting and seeing collected gold.  Tomorrow I’ll be surrounded by professional gold miners, my slim chance of finding gold just got slimmer.

Oh well, good night, I mean good morning.

Those are snow capped mountains and glaciers

First Night Stay in AK

Old Mine Shack - Bear Viewing on the Hill
Photo taken at 11:00p.m.

The Moho - Still smells new

Hank Williams, Rosa Parks, & Shakespeare

Alright, what in the world does this have to do with Alaska?  I don't know, I guess I'll need to start another blog for thought flatulence, but right now this is all I have and regardless of what I'm doing, the Alaska trip is coming up real fast and soon you'll get to read outrageous stories of toilet usage in the MoHo, chasing bears, and hearing Kevin say "Chootem Troy", oh, wait a minute, that's next year when I go aligator hunting (That was one long sentence).

17 days from Alaska liftoff and I'm in Montgomery Alabama for a couple of days at the ADEM UST tank conference.  Today was about exciting as a tank conference can get.  Just as things were getting interesting (yawn), a fire erupted in a bathroom and required evacuation of the entire building.  I'm talking two fire trucks, firemen in full turnout gear, axes, fire hoses, the whole shebang.  I did smell smoke when I headed out the door, I just hope it wasn't a chemical reaction with that giant burrito I had last night.

With my unexpected free time, I have discovered that Montgomery is quite a city. They have a minor league Rays team called the bisquits (seriously), and they have quite a history (hence the title of this blog).  While walking downtown I was drawn into the Hank Williams Museum by the sound of  "Hey good looking, what cha got cooking, how about cooking something good for me?"  Add some twang to it and you get the message.  Any way, it turns out that Montgomery is:
Birthplace of Hank Williams
Birthplace of Rosa Parks
First capital of the Confederate States of America
and home of the Shakespeare Festival.
We are talking country music, historical events, redneck roots, and culture.  If I wasn't already settled in the big metropolis of Wakulla County, Florida, I would probably move here,  uhhhhhh, maybe not.

Anyway, I ate supper tonight in a Bar B Q joint downtown.  Glancing around, about 1/4 of the tables had a mixture of white and black patrons eating, laughing, and enjoying each others company.  Amazing changes in just 50 years for this birthplace of both the confederacy and the civil rights movement.

A Landscape Changing Event

You may have heard about the tornadoes that hit Alabama and Georgia last week.  As I was living my normal life of work, exercise (believe it or not), eating, and sleeping, 200 miles away in Georgia, my sister, her oldest son, his wife and four young children were hunkered down in a bathtub as the house shook so hard that it set off the alarm clock while a tornado ripped through their yard.  The next morning, they said that the landscape had changed.  Trees that had stood longer that I've been alive were broken like matchsticks.  There were trees through the son's roof and neighbor's roofs up and down the street (although surrounded by broken trees, my sister's house, which they had all sought shelter in, was miraculously untouched). The mailbox was gone.  Trampoline probably sailed like a Frisbee for miles, as the storm destroyed houses, schools, and disrupted peoples lives all around.  Kevin's daughter's experience was not as close, but a tornado touched down only a few miles from her house in the series of storm's which wrecked havoc across the state. 
The good news for us personally is that all of our family ended up safe. You can repair a house and replace a mailbox, but you can't replace family.  We thank God for protecting the lives of our family and friends and ask him to comfort all that did loose family and friends during these horrific storms. 

The landscape changed for all those affected by the storms and puts our future trip into a different perspective than before.  When the trees blow down, it gives you a clarity and depth of vision you did not have before.  Regardless of the pain, appreciate the vision after the storm, with all of it's changes.  It will help you to see what is valuable and what is temporary.   Make the best of a Landscape Changing Event.

One Month Out

One month from now I hope to be packing my bags and taking care of last minute business to prepare for the flight out to Anchorage.  Every day reality settles in that this trip may actually happen.  When you plan a trip two years in advance you never know if it will actually come to pass.  Crazy thoughts enter your head, like, what if I stub my toe, get a MRSR infection and they have to cut my leg off.  If that happened four months ago, I might could get use to an artificial leg and still make the trip.  If it happpens now my leg is going to be real sore, and if Kevin and I get chased by a bear, he will be able to outrun me and the bear will get ME.  Oh well, welcome to my brain.

This trip qualifies as a bucket trip.  A few years ago I saw the movie Bucket List and knew that on my list had to be an Alaskan trip.  Talking with Kevin awhile back, he told me of a trip that he and a friend made years ago similar to the one we have planned.  We kidded about doing another one ourselves, but didn't really think it would ever happen.  Well, two years ago we decided to do it.  He had a grandbaby that came into the world last summer that he couldn't miss (who could blame him), so we planned it for two long years away.  Well, those two years flew by and now it is summer 2011.

Kevin and I go back, well, to the beginning.  His mom and my dad were brothers and sisters and we were born about a month apart.  We grew up in the little communnity of Chalybeate Springs, Georgia, where we fished, hunted, worked, and played.  My funniest memory of Kevin growing up was when he and his brother went fishing one day.  I was working at a small country grocery store that our grandfather owned and looked out the door in time to see Kevin and his brother coming back from the lake.  It was unusual to see Kevin riding his bicycle using only one hand with his fishing rod in his other hand.  However, this was explained when I saw that his brother was riding in front of him with a fishing lure in his head, connected by fishing line to Kevins rod.  I guess the fish weren't biting (and I plan on not getting too close when we are fishing).

Our plan is simple.  Fly to Anchorage, rent a motorhome, travel for two weeks, get very little sleep, and fly back home exhausted.  We have no big plans or destinations except to fish for some halibut and salmon, see Denali, and have some fun.  We plan to taking some photos, seeing some really pretty county, and maybe even try to meet Sarah (as long as she doesn't talk too much).  I am going up a couple of days before Kevan and picking up the Moho to do some gold panning at a little place called Crow Creek Mine in Girdwood.  I figure with the price of gold, I can pan up about three ounces and pay for the trip.  Hey, I am a geologist, I should be able to find some gold with all of the learning that I have.  If not, my parents sure wasted alot of money on that education.

Next post should be from the Great State itself.

Stay tuned, this is going to be fun.

Four Months Out

January 26th......According to the countdown timer on my computer, its four months from launch of the SS Alaska.  Collecting supplies and going crazy thinking about the trip.  Kevin is calling or emailing weekly with anticipation, Shelby is tired of hearing me talk about it, and my Lab is tired of me calling her mini-bear. 

I checked the weather in Anchorage, zero degrees tonight, of course tonight lasts about 18 hours up there...crazy.  I guess I'm kind of glad its four months away.