May Day in Alaska

Well, this past week, April got over so you would think it would start warming up a bit.  But no, of course not.   May 1st was one of the coldest ever recorded up here and of course it snowed.  Not a lot but it was definitely white stuff falling from the sky.

On May 2nd, I had a BBBS activity with MP.  I picked her up from school and we visited the local animal shelter.  There was one dog there that I would have been very tempted to bring home with me but fortunately there was a tag on her cage that she had been adopted.  There were also "I'm adopted" signs on most of the other cages so it was nice to see people are taking care of the dogs.

Then I decided we were going to drive to Ester.  I had never been there and rarely even thought of this little "town" just south of Fairbanks.  All I knew about it was that on Thursdays in the summer they are supposed to have a farmer's market (so may have to check that out this summer) and they had a post office where you could mail packages without having to stand in line for 30 minutes.

We headed south and came to the turn off to Ester.  After that there wasn't any signage as to which way to go.  There was a huge volunteer fire department on the corner and a cute little park but no sign of a town.  We headed up the hill and saw a lot of houses in among the birch trees.  Finally we decided there was no town so we came back down the hill and turned on one of the roads and saw the post office.  Other than that, we saw this:

A closed Golden Eagle Saloon - not that we would have stopped.

The closed Ester Gold Camp - I guess they did tours or something.

The closed Malemute Saloon and a bunch of blue buses - they could be the buses that will be moved to Pioneer Park for the summer to shuttle people from their hotels to the Salmon Bake - only time will tell.

It would be fun to hear someone reciting some Robert Service poetry but ...

So, I finally made it to Ester to find a town that is not only mostly closed but also "For Sale".

Earlier this year, I decided that I was going to Valdez for the first weekend of May.  On Saturday morning, we got up early, made a couple of roast beef sandwiches and grabbed our snack bag and headed south.  It was kind of cool and a cloudy day.  The weather forecast had said rain in Valdez so we packed our rain gear.  John took his hunting stuff because he had been told he might see a bear near Valdez.

The Alaska Range just looks so majestic as you drive south of Delta Junction.

We stopped at a viewpoint to get a picture of Mount Drum in the Wrangell Mountain Range.  The clouds didn't help the picture much.  To the left of Mt. Drum is Mt. Sanford which is actually taller than Drum but because it is further away it looks smaller.

We stopped at the view point where we could see Mt. Wrangell.

At this viewpoint, there is a big lake which was still frozen and covered with snow.

Further south we drove through the Chugach Mountain Range.  We saw Mt. Billy Mitchell:

Because of all the snow, there were a lot of snow machines and we also saw a couple of snowboarders (the dots in the center above are actually 2 people and 3 dogs).

And we stopped by Worthington Glacier.   There is a parking area nearer the glacier but it wasn't open yet - I think May 15 is when things "officially" open.

We wound through a narrow canyon on the final few miles into Valdez.  There were a few water falls including Bridal Veil but it was extremely windy.

Right before entering Valdez, you can see the tanks at the end of the pipeline.

I've heard of a bottle brush bush but how about a homemade bottle tree.  It wasn't until I looked at the picture that I realized it was not an actual tree decorated with bottles.  John didn't stop very long because he thought it was a bit silly that I wanted a picture.

A road out of town towards the rifle range was snow packed on both sides.  I loved the way you could see blue coloring in the cracks of snow.

Large piles of snow in town.  They got dumped on this winter so kind of ran out of space to pile the snow.   Outside of town, the snow was at least 4' deep in areas that hadn't been plowed so I knew I wasn't going to be able to hike any of the trails I had planned - we'll have to try those again this summer.

One thing that surprised me is that you really can't see the open water from Valdez as it is a very sheltered cove.  Another thing that will wait for summer when we spend one day fishing for halibut and one day on a glacier cruise.

It was about 1:30 by the time we finished the sandwiches I had packed for lunch.  We couldn't see a lot to do at the time and since we both hate to just sit around a hotel, we decided instead of spending the night, we would go on home.  Sun doesn't go down until about 10:30 so we knew we had plenty of daylight to get there and it shouldn't take more than 6 hours.

John filled up the truck with gas - it was about $4.60 a gallon.  Although the pipeline terminates here and there is lots of crude oil, there is no refinery so gas is hauled in from Anchorage.

John started the drive home and got tired so turned the driving over to me.  About a half hour later, we ran into a military convoy.  The stryker brigade had recently returned from Afghanistan so I don't know if this was their equipment coming home or if someone was out for the weekend.  There were about 35 vehicles driving around 40 MPH.  There weren't a lot of passing zones so it took quite awhile to get around all  of them.

The white balls in the picture below is ice or snow.  We got into a bit of a squall for a while which further impeded our progress.

Finally we got back over towards North Pole.  We first saw the rainbow near Eielson Air Base but because of all the "No stopping, no parking and no picture taking" signs, we had to wait to get a picture of it.  Of course at this time, John was driving and he told me if I wanted a picture to just take it cause he wasn't stopping.  I had to forgive him though because there really wasn't any where to stop as we were in a construction zone.

We got back to Fairbanks and stopped by Subway for a sandwich to go as we both just wanted to get back home - mainly we were ready to get out of the truck for the day.  It was a quick trip - we drove about 800 miles.

We saw lots of snow and tall towering peaks of the mountain ranges - well tall is relative because one summit we drove through, the elevation was 2678 feet which would be pretty low actually if we were in the lower 48.

We saw lots of wildlife.  We saw a majestic bull moose slowly step up on the bank of a frozen river to view the area and then walk on.  We saw a cow moose and her yearling eating near the bank of a small pond.  We saw a porcupine making it's way down the side of the road.  We saw caribou walking along the roadway where the walking is easier.  I saw a wolf walk across an area in no apparent hurry.  We saw swans in a small area of the river where the water was open and later heard and saw trumpeter swans circling over the frozen lake.  By choice, we didn't stop near any of these animals for pictures as we didn't want to disturb their peaceful morning.  There will be other times for pictures when there is less snow and conditions aren't quite as harsh for the animals.

 Hurry up summer - we are ready.