Photos Along Denali Highway-Mary Photography

Mary took this photo of a local "crank" who is making ends meet by being camp host at Tangle Lakes campground.

Mary's photography is exceptional. This is a view taken during our drive along the Denali Highway between our first and second nights there.

This is a nice rainbow captured by Mary at Tangle Lakes

This is the view from our campsite overlooking the Susutna River. The Susutna flows all the way to Cook Inlet.

Vot it mean English, "Go Native?"

Please note that the blog posting "Old Believers" was without photographic content. So here is Nina, the champion separater of tourist dollars from their wallets. She is a cloned personality of my step-mother Alexandra Ivanovna.

Mary and I didn't want Nina to feel like she was dressed for a party without company, so Mary and I hauled out our Russian clothes that we always carry around in our back packs, and helped improve the atmosphere.

And here are Nina, Mary and Nick (hmmm, are those backpacking pants Nick has on? Oh, well, cover is blown)

July 2

McLaren Glacier, 63d 20s latitude, 146d 30s longitude, feeds the McLaren River, and it passes like a sleepy python through an enormous grassy valley, mostly above tree line. We hiked along an ATV road near McLaren pass summit, heading towards Osar Lakes. The weather held up, and we were treated to vistas unknown within our experience. At the end of the hike, Mary noticed a female Willow Ptarmigan in summer colors with three chicks. Ma P looked like she would make a tasty addition to the stew pot.

 

Unsatisfied with our Tangle Lake campground (it kept filling in with RV's until we felt like we were participants in a Boy Scout Jamboree), we drove west on the Denali Highway after our hike. We came upon the Susutna River, and then recalled a comment by an Alaskan we had met, that we should head out an unimproved road nearby to find a camping place. So here we sit, all by ourselves, on a bluff overlooking the Susutna and its valley. Its parent glacier from time to time comes into view. Tomorrow brings another attempted hike. Post Script. We got rained out of the hike since it poured all night long, so we continued on the Denali Highway to Cantwell, where we are now parked for the night. Nice RV facility, showers, clean, good wifi, quiet.

Alaskans

The cigar afternoon at a nice campsite provides an opportunity for the mind to slow, and to consider the many impressions of Alaska and their residents.

 

Alaskans love their salmon runs up select rivers, such as the Kenai. People stand twenty feet apart, casting a limited distance so as not to foul a neighbor. Twenty miles away there is no-one and we get a terrific state campground to ourselves.

 

Alaskans love their RV's, their ATV's, and presumably their snowmobiles. We met a nice family, three girls and a three year old boy, from Fairbanks while we rested at Tangle Lakes. They sported two ATV's and rode around before setting down for the evening. They were first time visitors to this area along the Denali Park Highway.

 

Alaskans are friendly, offering tips to the visitor on where to go. One of these conversations led to our idyllic campsite overlooking the Susutna. As this is being written, an ATV rider stopped to ask Mary about his lost dog, a Chow/Setter mix. He is camped about two miles up the road and may have another family grouping down the road. At any rate he and his friends keep burning gas going back and forth, back and forth.

 

Political candidate signposts are every where. We have yet to see the words Republican or Democrat on any sign, but all of the candidates for State House, Congress, Senate, are pro-Alaska, pro business, pro jobs.

 

According to my boat captain in Homer, Greg Sutter, no-one does value added work in Alaska. Everyone is involved in extracting something, timber, mining, and fishing. Eventually everything will be taken, and Alaska will be in the soup. Maybe, but I see very little imprint of man on this huge state, which makes even Montana look like a study in miniature.

 

Moose may be pretty rare. We finally got a good sighting west of the McLaren River and four vehicles had pulled over to look along with us. Out came impressive tripods, binoculars, and expensive telephoto lenses. We have yet to see a bear, but we are equipped with bear spray and an air horn in case we meet old Oso on the trail. The closest we have been to a bear was at Lake Nerka, where we saw signs of very recent bear grazing. One of the science teams there lost $25,000 worth of measurement gear. A bear had dug it up, and mouthed it thoroughly, covering it in heavy bear saliva. Like a human baby, a bear will test something new by trying to eat it.

 

The Denali Park Highway contains a few lodges, several of them closed even in the midst of summer. The romance of trying to make a living by attracting people to a beautiful area during an eight week season is irresistible to some. The reality is the odds of success are extremely low. Better is to have a run down lodge at the intersection of a major highway, especially if it has gas, hamburgers and toilets.

Old Believers

June 29, 2010

 

Mary and I drove east of Anchor Point ( on the Sterling Highway north from Homer) ten miles to the end of the road and found Nikolaevsk. This village is one of the homes of Russian Old Believers, a persecuted Russian Orthodox sect (tens of thousands were killed during Peter the Great's time). This is a conservative people, still dressing in Old Russian costume and obeying Slavonic church rituals that are unchanged for centuries.

 

Nikolaevsk has a beautiful three domed Russian church, St. Nicholas, guarded by Archangels Michael and Gabriel. We had read about a Russian restaurant in the village, the Samovar, and found it. It was run by a dynamo woman named Nina Felkikov, who is excellent at making the tourist part with his money.

 

She reminds me of my step mother Sandra in many ways. She is forward, orders everyone around, and puts on a great feast of borscht, piroshky, and pelmeny. We ate Russian style, meaning that Nina put Russian costumes on us, and took many photographs with our cameras, then sat us down for the excellent meal. She bustled around taking care of us and another two couples who showed up around the same time. Her English is good but accented much like many of my Russian relatives. Her speaking is staccato, "two minutes until food, thirty seconds until you take this picture, two minutes to get this garment on and take more pictures, thirty seconds to sit down and eat."

 

Nina's restaurant is chocked full of bric-a-brac, and we walked away with two lacquered Russian soup spoons as well as some good memories. Nina played a CD with Russian music and I promised to send her another CD with Sandra's singing of Russian gypsy music.

 

Nina is an electrical engineer (Norwich University) but spends most of her time running her café in the summer. She came to the US after being born and raised in Khabarovsk. She met a widower in Nikolaevsk and married him about ten years ago. There is a picture of a very old woman who must have been her mother. The picture reminds me of Sandra's mother.

 

Nikolaevsk is a pretty basic place. There are several ordinary looking houses, but a few have lace curtains and blue roofs, very much in keeping with Old Russian custom. In the long winters people come to snowmobile in the area. For all I know, Nina keeps them warm with borscht.

 

After this experience Mary and I had difficulty staying awake with the short drive to our campground, and this was so even with no vodka at the meal. We took two pounds of frozen pelmeny with us and dined on some of them at our camper dinner this evening.

Gone Fishin'

Nick had a great day fishing the Homer tuck with a fabulous boat captain. Nick is standing over his King salmon limit (only person on the boat to catch a King). Everyone limited on halibut. You are allowed two kings per day (five in one year) and two halibut per day. Thirty seven pounds of salmon and halibut are on their way to San Francisco.

Greg Sutter is a hell of a boat captain. Tim, one of the three clients with him on our day, stands next to Greg. Greg had us out in terrible, windy weather, trying to get all of us our fish. We were one of the most successful boats.

This was an early morning shot before the rains came. A bit of Milt's head (the second of the three clients) shows on the right. It was a hell of a good time.

Aleknagik Smolt Sampling Day

The above photo is a kitchen shot taken at the Lake Alekgnagic station. Jackie, station manager, has been there for seven years. She holds a master's degree in biology. She is an expert field researcher and also has cooking skills! We feasted on pork ribs and chops the second night in the station.

This is a typical view of Lake Alekgnagic. All four interconnected lakes in this system are very large. It takes two hours by fast boat to get between the two stations (Aleknagic and Nerka).

This was the mother lode of smolt, taken from one of the beaches sampled on Aleknagic. Other beaches just had a few. Consider that tens of millions of smolt escape the system every fall to try their hand at becoming adult sockeye salmon. The Bristol Bay commercial fishery takes around thirty million sockeye a year, without affecting the health of the system.

This is a photo of a typical beach sampling scene.

Here is the crowd on the day's sampling. Jackie and Rachel are the managers of the sampling effort. Owi is an intern for the summer. Mary is supervising the entire effort while Nick is photographer for the day.