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Still not eaten by grue.
Sep. 2nd, 2003 05:51 pmHallo hallo. Currently I'm at the Second Story Cafe', above Gulliver's Books in Fairbanks, Alaska. My butt is sore. My feet are somewhat sore as well. I do not care. Today I rented a bicycle and rode over to Fred Meyer to buy a camera - I left Mom's wonderful telephoto camera at home by mistake, realising this fact as my father was driving me to the airport. Oh well. Bought a camera with limited zoom capability for $20 but I'm not putting a lot of faith in its ability to convey what I'm seeing; it's been my experience so far that even the best of cameras has an uncanny tendency to diminish whatever you photograph. Still, worth taking pictures if only to show other people.
From Fred Meyer I rode the bike over to Creamer's Field Bird Sanctuary. I should note that there are Bicycle Route signs everywhere I've been so far; most of them say 'use sidewalk'. A few don't. As I started back towards the hostel (the road that runs past the hostel eventually runs past Creamer's), I noticed a bikes-only paved road that ran alongside the local expressway. After checking the map I took that. Some lovely scenery along the way, although a lot of it was shrouded in fog and cloud - see, it's been raining something like 45 out of 60 days here and the forecast calls for more of the same. Blah. Fortunately my Red Cross jacket is quite warm and my Aussie hat keeps the rain off nicely, so between that and my jeans I was fine, if a bit drippy.
Creamer's used to be an operating dairy; it's named after the family that owned it, rather than the function. It is a popular stop for HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS of sandhill cranes - big grey birds with red foreheads, or big light tan birds that grow up into big grey birds with red foreheads. I do mean HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS, by the way. There were several hundred there today, if I was judging correctly, and they've started migrating south - so there were hordes more last week. Lots of Canada geese, too, which cross the trails in single file like something out of Make Way for Ducklings. Also saw ravens; they don't have crows here, just ravens. The ravens sound... well, they sound like a human being, possibly a slightly drunken one, doing its best to imitate a bird. They also make plunk! noises like frogs - according to the Alaska Bird Observatory volunteers I talked to, the 'frog' noises were definitely ravens. I am also told that the ravens enjoy imitating the sound of ringing cell phones. I assume the human reaction amuses them.
Found a moose hoofprint on one of the trails. Thought at first it was someone's weirdly placed boot print - it was perpendicular to all the other tracks - but not even the most 'cut' boot bottoms look actively cloven. It was the size of my hand. The lady at the gift shop / educational center said 'yep, moose' when I showed her the size.
One of the trails through Creamer's passes a number of streams. In one of them I encountered a young woman in a red jacket and hip waders. She was a volunteer for the nearby Alaska Bird Observatory, and she informed me they were mist-netting today, and if I wanted to see a bird banding there was a white tent at the end of the trail. I had no idea what mist netting was, but I knew banding, so I went. Turns out it's when they put up long nets that are taller than me across places birds are likely to fly, then disentangle the birds and record their vital statistics, putting bands on their feet before releasing them. Today they had a couple of fox sparrows and grey-cheeked thrushes. They let me hold the birds for a moment, then release them. Tres cool.
No skeeters worth mentioning. They don't like the rain, I"m told.
Got back to the hostel around one-ish, made lunch (mac & cheese). Eventually trundled over to the University to see their museum. Very, very impressive place - lots of natural history, lots of just plain historical stuff about AK, a fairly disturbing exhibit about the forced evacuation of the Aleutian population of the Aleutian islands during WW II and the internment of the 200 Japanese-Americans in AK at the same time. Steppe bison mummy, bowhead whale skull (w/big sign reading 'touch me!'), etc. Quite a few writeups on women of the gold-rush days throughout the museum. Any one of 'em would make an excellent RPG character background.
I wound up finishing around 5 PM local time and called my folks to check in, reckoning any later would wake someone up (it's a four hour difference to NJ and my dad goes to bed early most nights). Tomorrow I'm going to see about visiting downtown Fairbanks (esp. Pioneer Park) and arranging for a fly-up-drive-back trip to the Arctic Circle. Maybe visiting Mary Shields' Tails of the Trail sled dog kennels. Was going to go to the gold mines at some point but I'm told 2 out of 3 local mines closed down on Labour Day. Oh well.
Amusing side note: have been mistaken for a Canadian once and met at least two Canadians so far. Did not ask the province of one. The other was Anglophone Quebecois. Awful long way to come to retire, if you ask me.
All right, I"m going to go see what's for sale now - this is the used book portion of the store and I only brought a couple of anthro books and one copy of Hogfather. It might be nice to have a battered ol' novel as a souvenir from up here.
From Fred Meyer I rode the bike over to Creamer's Field Bird Sanctuary. I should note that there are Bicycle Route signs everywhere I've been so far; most of them say 'use sidewalk'. A few don't. As I started back towards the hostel (the road that runs past the hostel eventually runs past Creamer's), I noticed a bikes-only paved road that ran alongside the local expressway. After checking the map I took that. Some lovely scenery along the way, although a lot of it was shrouded in fog and cloud - see, it's been raining something like 45 out of 60 days here and the forecast calls for more of the same. Blah. Fortunately my Red Cross jacket is quite warm and my Aussie hat keeps the rain off nicely, so between that and my jeans I was fine, if a bit drippy.
Creamer's used to be an operating dairy; it's named after the family that owned it, rather than the function. It is a popular stop for HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS of sandhill cranes - big grey birds with red foreheads, or big light tan birds that grow up into big grey birds with red foreheads. I do mean HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS, by the way. There were several hundred there today, if I was judging correctly, and they've started migrating south - so there were hordes more last week. Lots of Canada geese, too, which cross the trails in single file like something out of Make Way for Ducklings. Also saw ravens; they don't have crows here, just ravens. The ravens sound... well, they sound like a human being, possibly a slightly drunken one, doing its best to imitate a bird. They also make plunk! noises like frogs - according to the Alaska Bird Observatory volunteers I talked to, the 'frog' noises were definitely ravens. I am also told that the ravens enjoy imitating the sound of ringing cell phones. I assume the human reaction amuses them.
Found a moose hoofprint on one of the trails. Thought at first it was someone's weirdly placed boot print - it was perpendicular to all the other tracks - but not even the most 'cut' boot bottoms look actively cloven. It was the size of my hand. The lady at the gift shop / educational center said 'yep, moose' when I showed her the size.
One of the trails through Creamer's passes a number of streams. In one of them I encountered a young woman in a red jacket and hip waders. She was a volunteer for the nearby Alaska Bird Observatory, and she informed me they were mist-netting today, and if I wanted to see a bird banding there was a white tent at the end of the trail. I had no idea what mist netting was, but I knew banding, so I went. Turns out it's when they put up long nets that are taller than me across places birds are likely to fly, then disentangle the birds and record their vital statistics, putting bands on their feet before releasing them. Today they had a couple of fox sparrows and grey-cheeked thrushes. They let me hold the birds for a moment, then release them. Tres cool.
No skeeters worth mentioning. They don't like the rain, I"m told.
Got back to the hostel around one-ish, made lunch (mac & cheese). Eventually trundled over to the University to see their museum. Very, very impressive place - lots of natural history, lots of just plain historical stuff about AK, a fairly disturbing exhibit about the forced evacuation of the Aleutian population of the Aleutian islands during WW II and the internment of the 200 Japanese-Americans in AK at the same time. Steppe bison mummy, bowhead whale skull (w/big sign reading 'touch me!'), etc. Quite a few writeups on women of the gold-rush days throughout the museum. Any one of 'em would make an excellent RPG character background.
I wound up finishing around 5 PM local time and called my folks to check in, reckoning any later would wake someone up (it's a four hour difference to NJ and my dad goes to bed early most nights). Tomorrow I'm going to see about visiting downtown Fairbanks (esp. Pioneer Park) and arranging for a fly-up-drive-back trip to the Arctic Circle. Maybe visiting Mary Shields' Tails of the Trail sled dog kennels. Was going to go to the gold mines at some point but I'm told 2 out of 3 local mines closed down on Labour Day. Oh well.
Amusing side note: have been mistaken for a Canadian once and met at least two Canadians so far. Did not ask the province of one. The other was Anglophone Quebecois. Awful long way to come to retire, if you ask me.
All right, I"m going to go see what's for sale now - this is the used book portion of the store and I only brought a couple of anthro books and one copy of Hogfather. It might be nice to have a battered ol' novel as a souvenir from up here.
