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One thing to keep in mind about Alaska is that view of the world is a little different from here. For example, when people travel to Southeast they are not heading to Disney World. Similarly, what I used to call "out east" is now lumped into the expression "back east" since almost everybody in Alaska is from back east.Juneau is, in many ways, the cultural center of Alaska. Some refer to it as North Seattle because it is the most politically liberal part of the state, which means its pretty moderate. There is never a shortage of things to do in Juneau; besides the obvious outdoor activities there is a great bluegrass music scene, numerous good restaurants, some cinemas that show independent films, numerous art galleries and museums, and even an opera. Numerous sculptures, totem poles, and paintings can be found in the downtown area, which is the old part of the city.
And if you still run out of things to do you can always sit and watch the turistos who swarm the city by the thousands each day during the summer. Fortunately for the locals, the tourists usually don't venture too far from the cruise ships so they're impact on the city life isn't too great. Unfortunately, the money they spend on Persian rugs and Brazilian emeralds doesn't go to the locals.
Life at the moment isn't super exciting; I'm working my tail off on my thesis so that I don't feel as guilty about taking so much time off over winter break. Plus, we've entered the "shoulder" season: it's much too cold for summer activities, but there isn't enough snow yet for skiing. I've decided that for the next few weeks I'll start posting some photos and stories from the summer. I'm not sure if I'll keep updating the ol' website or not. This seems much easier.--------------------Being an Alaskan gives you certain privileges, such as an annual dividend from the government and the ability to go "dipnetting" in the famous Copper River near Chitina (pronounced Chit-na). Dipnetting is so many things rolled into one. But at its core it's basically the "Great Alaskan Get-Together". Alaskans of all sorts drive to the tiny town of Chitina, which is a couple hours from Valdez, which means the middle of nowhere, to stick their nets in the glacially-fed Copper River. And then you wait for salmon to jump in your net.
To get from Chitina to the fishing holes, you have to drive down an extremely rough, one lane dirt road that is on the edge of a cliff. Eventually you come to a spot where the road has been "closed" due to high slope instability. Many people drive right past that spot, others use four-wheelers, or dirt bikes. We had intended to bicycle, but upon arriving at the closed road sign, we were informed that the fishing were running so hard that we wouldn't have to go to the better fishing holes down the road. So, at 12:30 am we scrambled down the steep slope (45 degrees?) to the water's edge, tied our nets to a tree so that we wouldn't have to continually fight the current, and watched the fish come. It was almost like they wanted to be eaten.
Each household is allowed to catch 30 fish per year - if the salmon are running hard you can get your limit in a few hours. By 5:00 am we had caught 64 salmon (for three of us), all of them about the size as those in the picture above. Anybody that's done any fishing knows the work has just begun. We then hauled the fish up the steep slope, drove a short ways to a clear stream and cleaned the fish. After putting them on ice, we started heading home. We rolled into Fairbanks sometime in the early evening, and crashed.
The next two days were spent filleting the fish, and then freezing or smoking them. We figured that we had spent something like $0.60 per pound of salmon. At a store, that same salmon would cost closer to $10.00 per pound. It was a lot of work, but well worth the effort.
The big downside to living in Fairbanks is that its so far from everywhere - except wilderness. Its really an isolated community. Anchorage is 6-7 hours away by car, and there is basically nothing in between. Just getting to the state capital (Juneau) is quite an adventure. If you want to get there you have two options: taking a 2+ hour flight (if you're lucky you can get a direct flight) or driving through Canada and catching the ferry from Haines. That takes about 15 hours, about the same as driving from Minneapolis to western Montana. And if you want to visit the U.S....Of course, the airlines aren't exactly trying to make travelling any more enjoyable. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the airline companies' current plight. About a month ago I purchased tickets to fly from Fairbanks to Minneapolis to Helsinki to Fairbanks over winter break. I recently decided to attend a geophysics conference in San Francisco that ends the day before I was scheduled to leave Fairbanks. Changing the ticket sounded like a hassle, so I asked if I could just cancel one leg of the ticket (2 months in advance). Turns out you can't do that without canceling the entire ticket and losing all that money. Somehow that doesn't make sense: I told them that I would just forfeit my seat, and that they could give it to somebody else (and charge them for it), but the airline wouldn't do it. My only option was to change the ticket - at first "they" tried to charge me $800 to do that, since the cost of the flight went up. The same flights, one month later, cost $800 more. Can you imagine if buses operated like that? Anyway, enough ranting. We got it squared away (minus lunch money for a couple months).I'll be in Minnesota December 11-15 (arriving early on the 11th, leaving midday on the 15th). Leave your calendars open, it's gonna be wild.
