Sunday 20 July 2008

Back in 2 weeks - going to Canada...

First I shall start today's blog with these three adorable pictures of Alaska's favourite doggie - the husky. These ones are miniature husky puppies! I saw them on the way out to dinner, they are soooo adorable. I had to stop to talk to the owners and ask them if I could take photos!


Anyway, I'll tell you about yesterday. We went on a drive called "Hatcher Pass", which is a pass through the mountains - it's a rough road and its only open in the summer.... But it's beautiful! It takes at least an hour to drive through it because the road is so rough. So here are the photos:


I also saw another marmot, this time on top of a rock. It kept standing up as if it was posing for me - and I got loads of snaps of it :-) But this one was the funniest, I think he was in the middle of making a funny noise, but he looks like an angry old man:

Well, that's it for today's news, I was mainly writing today to explain what I'm doing in the next couple of weeks.

Tomorrow I'm leaving to go to the Yukon in Canada for a week, where I'll be camping at the site with a group of other students, and working on an archaeological excavation. On the way there we'll be passing glaciers and going through the mountains.The next week, my aunt and uncle are driving up to join me, and they're taking me on a trip to Dawson city - an old gold rush town - we'll be camping there too, and then... we're going up to the Arctic Circle! I can't wait :-) It's going to be freezing though!

The following week we come back but I might be heading out again with Fran for another sightseeing trip to the National Park.

So I don't know when I'll be able to update my blog again - you won't be hearing from me in the next 2 weeks, but I will definitely be able to post again some time in the next 3 weeks.

See you soon :-)

Thursday 17 July 2008

Only one month left here :-(

Sorry for the late update! I’ve been really busy!
On Saturday, Fran and Jack threw a party up at their cabin – loads of people were invited but not many turned up; Fran was a bit slow in confirming the date and giving directions, and a lot of people were going off to some event out of town. But it was a nice evening. I met some people my age – at first a girl named Claire, who taught me how to row in a canoe – this is us:
I can canoe now ^_^
She invited me out to a rave in Anchorage that evening but I didn’t have any decent clothes packed (we were staying the night at the cabin, it’s pretty much like camping because there’s no electricity or anything), and I don’t think Fran would have let me go anyway!
A little later two guys showed up, one of them was the son of one of Fran’s friends. I think Fran’s friend couldn’t make it so she sent her son and his friend. I think they were expecting a huge party with loads of people, because they were around my age and they didn’t know us. In the end I was really glad Claire and these guys showed up, I was getting a teeny bit bored because Fran and her friends were talking about all this stuff I didn’t understand, so it was a relief hanging out with Claire and Zach and Richard, because we were all the same age. They taught me how to toast marshmallows properly on the campfire... My attempts were not successful, unless you count the invention of a new campfire snack – the flaming marshmallow.

So I left the marshmallow-toasting to the Americans, and they even made me a smore. I thought I’d been enlightened... A smore is a tasty, sugary creation descended from junk food heaven. Step 1: Place a chunk of chocolate in between two biscuity cracker things. Step 2: Toast a marshmallow. Step 3: Insert toasted, melting marshmallow into the cracker and chocolate sandwich. Step 4: Cram into mouth.

Here I am so excited about the smore I’m about to consume I forgot to take my glasses off for the photo:


The next day I was going to go to the Moose Dropping Festival in Talkeetna, with another girl I met last week. Her name is Randi and she’s really cool – she’s 18 and she’s a jazz musician, she plays a lot of paid gigs and also works at the visitor centre in town (that’s how I met her). Anyway she cancelled on me... Although it wasn’t really her fault, her mom was taking a company car so she couldn’t bring a guest. And it was kinda bad weather anyway so I didn’t feel like going much.

So anyway, the reason Fran had the party the night before was because that day a friend she knew from New York arrived in Anchorage to visit and stay with us for the weekend. So we went out at the weekend and did some cool stuff. Firstly we went to the Native Heritage Centre. It’s a really cool place where you can learn all about the native Alaskans (there are several different types, not just Eskimo!). They had a dance performance, here’s a picture:

I wanted to upload a video but it didn’t seem to work :-(

Their dances and songs are all about real things. Like that one was about hunting for caribou. The actions all having meanings (e.g moving arms to each side rowing a canoe, etc.) The heritage centre was so pretty, it had lovely grounds and all around the grounds are examples of typical buildings of each native group. For example the Athabascans and Inupiat are from different areas so have different landscapes, resources and wildlife, and different styles of buildings. They have some really cool customs. Like when you’re born, you get your own bowl for eating. The bowl is specially carved just for you – if your name is something to do with seal hunting it would be carved into a seal, or if you’re named after a warrior, it would be warrior carvings. You keep your bowl forever and no-one else can ever touch it or use it, because it’s your own special bowl. It’s actually practical too, it helps stop spread of disease ^_^

Anyway, here I am at the Native Heritage Centre with a traditional landmark of a native clan:

They're bones from a whale's jaw :-)


Anyway, on Sunday I’m going to the Yukon in Canada for two weeks – the first week I’ll be going up with a woman Fran knows (I’ve never met her!) in her car. It’s about the same drive as it is from Hastings to Scotland! The first week I’ll be joining an archaeology field school of about 10 uni students, when I get there they’ll have been working on it for 2 weeks already so I’m joining in late. They have a camp set up there and I’ll have my own tent. We went to pick out the tent the other day at a store called “Sportsmans Warehouse” which is this huge store selling camping, fishing, hunting, survival, outdoor gear – everything. Anyway... I took some pictures in the store. I felt crazy doing it but I had to. Let me explain why I had to:

There is something really weird about Alaska that you HAVE to know. They are HUGE on trophy hunting and taxidermy here. It’s normal to go into someone’s living room and see a rug made out of a bear, caribou heads on the wall, moose skulls and racks, stuffed wolves – you name it. It’s perfectly normal here. And it doesn’t just include the living room but also supermarkets, restaurants, hotels... And Sportsmans Warehouse must have had at least 100 dead animal trophys. I even saw a giraffe head. I mean, seriously, they’re not even Alaskan! But as you can see there are animal heads all over the wall and stuffed bears on the aisles and everything:

(I got the pictures from an upper balcony of the store)

And this is the lobby of a hotel we ate lunch at:

It was actually a lovely place to eat :-D The food was good and this was the view out of the window: It might not seem like much but the best part is that the lake is actually an airport. Most of Alaska is unreachable by road, so they have these float planes that can land and take off from water. I was watching them landing the whole time I was eating lunch, it was so awesome!

Oh yeah, and you can get fur here. Its expensive but everywhere. I bought a racoon hat. The main part of the hat is fake fur but the “tail” is real fur.

I shall leave you with a picture of me wearing a fox on my head:


PS It’s not my hat but it is 100% real fox. It was so comfy and warm ^_^

Friday 11 July 2008

American restaurants

American restaurants have totally different rules when it comes to etiquette and serving!

To begin with, you notice that the waiters and waitresses are more friendly. However, I don't really count this as a difference: American people are more friendly in general. (Even if sometimes their Barbie doll smiles seem somewhat false, you can guarantee the smile will be there.)

These are the biggest differences I've noticed at EVERY restaurant I've been to so far here:

1. You don't ask for the bill - they bring it to you at the end of your meal. In fact, sometimes you don't even have to finish eating. They'll often bring the bill even when you're half way through a dish. It might not seem like a big difference, but for someone who not accustomed, it does feel rude - as if they're trying to get your money and get you out! That's not really the case, its just a different custom, and in a way, more convenient. It just feels weird for someone English!

2. If you have food left when you finish eating, they ask you if you want a "to-go box". This happens whether it's a greasy-spoon cafe or an upmarket restaurant. They give you a big polystyrene box to spoon any leftovers you want to take home - salad, fries, whatever it is you want to keep. This can sometimes be really useful: in England, the taking home of leftovers is usually something your grandmother does surreptitiously by sneaking food into a hankie concealed in her handbag. But mainly, I think it's really just another example of American gluttony. To explain, this brings me on to the next striking difference:

3. The portions here are huge, and even the hungriest fat bastard usually has food left at the end of their meal. I've started ordering child's portions, and they're still bigger than usual adult portion at a restaurant in England.

4. This next difference only counts for cafes and restaurants with a breakfast menu. The concept of a "proper" cooked breakfast does not seem to exist in America. There are lots of options: pancakes, muffins, waffles, even eggs with bacon and hash browns. Yes, I know that the breakfast I have in mind is called an "English Breakfast". But I was sure they'd have it here... They don't :-(

I tried to order the closest I could to an English breakfast and this is what I got: firstly, the waitress stared at me as if I was an alien and asked "you want bacon and sausage!?!" Then, when it arrived, it was not how I imagined... The egg was there, fine. The bacon was there, crispy - fine. The hash brown... well, the hash browns were kind of huge and thin. Then my sausage arrived (on a seperate plate, after the rest of my breakfast). It was basically what I would call a burger! Now I've been to Scotland, where the sausages are square, but they still taste like sausages. This "sausage" looked and tasted like a burger. And burgers don't go with breakfast! Some of these Americans need to do a google search on sausage:


(Don't forget to make sure SafeSearch is on...) See! Even "The Sausage Queen" has the right idea! How can it be that hard to come up with a genuine sausage when a cooked breakfast is in order? Oh yes - and while I'm at, beans! Beans! There are NO beans! You can get baked beans here, oh yes, but for some reason, they are excluded from breakfast! And don't get me started on the availability of tea!!

When I get back to England, the first thing I want to do is to stop at a REAL greasy spoon and order a full English! With Tea!


I'll update again soon when I have some real news from my holiday :-) I'm worried about my internet connection at the moment though - so updates may become less frequent if I lose internet access at home and have to start using the library in town.

Monday 7 July 2008

A beary good weekend...

Well, well, well... I thought I'd already had enough excitement with the bear-territory archaeology and the guns and the bug bites...

On Friday we drove up to the cabin again to spend the 4th July holiday weekend there. It was a nice, warm evening on Friday, and on Saturday morning I woke up to another reasonably hot day in the Alaskan wilderness. Relaxing a while before breakfast, Fran and I sat on the porch looking at the view of the lake, and Jack stood a few yards away beside the car, looking out with a pair of binoculars, at the Loons on the lake (a Loon is a type of duck here).

I turned to look at him, wondering if he had seen anything interesting through the binoculars. It turns out something incredibly interesting was actually right beside the car to his left, apparently in my blind spot - yet at first I thought it was a joke when Fran said calmly "Jack, there's a bear beside you". I turned to look at Jack's reaction to this joke when I noticed that he was edging slowly to the passenger side of the car, and only then I noticed that there was a black bear standing right beside the driver's side! Ever the photographer at times like these, I grabbed my camera.


As you can just about see from that first photo, it was a reasonably small bear, probably around 1 or 2 years old. This age is the most dangerous - if it was 1, it would be under the protection of its incredibly dangerous mother, but if it was 2 - it would already have been thrown out by its mother. In that case, it would be at an age where it does not know the rules of the forest (leave humans alone unless attacked, etc.).

Jack got into the car for safety and Fran & I moved into the cabin and watched from the window. It approached the cabin, and started to walk around the perimeter. It sniffed around at the dead campfire...

And then at the deck (where all of our food was, and where we had just been sitting).


After this, it disappeared around the corner of the house, so I ran to the window on that side to watch his next movements. I couldn't see him. We looked out of all the windows, and he wasn't there. Jack had got out of the car and he was trying to tell us something. So Fran opened the door of the cabin, and at this point we realised he was right on the deck all along! The noise of the door opening took him by surprise, and he charged away from the door, leaped off the deck, and charged straight towards my uncle!

Jack was prepared, however, with a can of bear spray he found in the car, which he promptly unloaded right into the bear's face. The bear backed away but didn't leave! The bear spray defended Jack, but overall it did not deter the bear from their property.
I went back inside the cabin and the bear walked straight past the window I was at. He stopped right in front of the window - which was open. There was only a mosquito shield between me, and the bear. It looked straight up at me, made eye contact, and I took his photo:

I must say, its a very flattering photo. You'd never guess he had the potential to turn into a brutal attacker at any moment. So small (for a bear), so cute, so dozy. But don't be fooled, these bears plod around slowly but can run at 40mph if they want to. My most daring photojournalism yet ;-)
Fran came out of the cabin again, and she too unleashed a load of bear spray in an attempt to scare him away from us (high strength pepper spray, effective against bear attacks 82% of the time). I went over towards the car for a better view, where Jack had previously confronted the bear. Bad idea. The pepper spray was still lingering in the air, and I got more than one lungful of it. Nowhere near full strength or impact, it still hit me like flames in my throat. I convulsed with coughing and made my way into the car. Even though I was now breathing clean air, the pepper spray wouldn't leave my lungs and I grappled in the back seat of the car for some water. There were bottles in there, but they were all empty. I found a purple drinking flask which sloshed when I kicked it, so I opened it and drank the lot - I didn't care whose it was or what germs they might have. It helped, but I was still coughing periodically for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, the bear was still mooching around curiously.

In the end, he plodded off. Yes, he definitely mooched off, not ran. Totally relaxed, not put off at all by the faceful of full strength pepper spray he'd just recieved. We knew he'd be back - and surely enough he returned less than 20 minutes later. Another circle of the cabin, another sniff around, and he left, slowly at first, but then ran when he heard our footsteps. This reassured us slightly; maybe he was finally coming to his senses and deciding to associate humans with danger! However, Jack still suggested we didn't stay at the cabin a second night. Being a Vietnam war veteran, I'd say Jack is pretty savvy when it comes to danger and defence. He has incredible sight and hearing (especially for a man in his 60s) and he really does have good judgement. But Fran insisted we didn't "let the bear win" and was determined we'd stay. I kind of enjoyed the excitement and I was having a good weekend, so in truth, I was glad to hear her say that.

After a while with no bear appearences, Jack and I went canoeing in their lake. It was fun and relaxing! Here are some pictures:




So after a while, we landed back at the edge of the lake, and Fran came down from the cabin to help us out of the canoe. We went back up to the cabin, all of us still had bears on the brain so I was looking out for it as I walked back up. And there it bloody well was, again! It then must have done roughly the same routine as before at least two or three more times. Here is another good picture I took of it (sorry, you can probably tell I'm pretty proud of these!):


In the end it mooched off again and went into the bushes beside the driveway. I watched the bushes a while, but lost interest, while Jack was still watching the bushes constantly. No movement for a while, when suddenly the bear came running out from the other side of the driveway to which it had originally disappeared. Now, Jack had his eye on it the whole time so it couldn't have switched sides. Throughout the day of bear appearences, Fran and Jack had also been questioning whether the bear was the same size each time. On reflection, we don't think it was.
One explanation is that the bear we saw at first was a young bear cub, and the larger bear we saw further from a distance was his mom, looking for him. Upon finally finding him on the other side of the drive, she ran towards him happily. It would make sense, since the whole time the bear seemed unusually disinterested in the food we had lying around - yet still wandered around curiously. He must have got separated from her when we unknowingly disturbed them by approaching in the car, and they then spent the day searching for eachother. That's the only explanation we could think of.

Anyway, after that, we thankfully didn't see the bear again. The whole think was very exctiting. I got closer to a bear than most Alaskan's would hope to or want to! And I got some very good pictures too! I even took two videos! I tried uploading one to Youtube but I'll have to wait until I get a stronger internet connection because it takes so long.

I hope I haven't bored you with this long post. If bear stories don't interest you, at least the pictures might have.

In other news, I'm really missing home this evening! I just listened to A Day In the Life by the Beatles and it reminded me of being dozy, happy and tipsy with friends. I sometimes moan about their repetitive "Beatles nights" but now I think about it they're some of the best nights I've enjoyed in my life! I miss my friends, I feel like I haven't appreciated them enough in the past year. But I guess we were all so bent on exams... I miss my dogs. It's nice having the company of Scrapper the cat, but you can't get the same joy you get from pouncing on a hyperactive, smelly Springer spaniel for a tickle. Also, I feel stupid and judged if I sing or talk nonsense at a cat. Scrapper just gives me a droll look if I pounce on her and say "oodgy boodgy woodgy hoodgy kitty!" In fact, I just miss being at home and being with the people, pets, and food I'm used to!

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a fantastic time. I just feel I'm going to be missing all of these things a lot more in the coming weeks!

Eh, I guess it's just tea withdrawl!


(P.S. This is me beside the cabin)

Friday 4 July 2008

Bugs - I hate 'em!

Did I mention that this place is just infested by mosquitos and other biting bugs?

Even if you wear gallons of bug spray, you still get bitten two or three times. I've been having a bad reaction to blackfly bites, but not as bad as this reaction when one bit my eye:


I can't even open my eye! You can't see so well from the photo but it is swollen up like a big red water balloon. Now I only have one eye left. If one gets me on the other eye, I'll be blind!

Hopefully the swelling will go down soon. I took some antihistamine tablets and if that doesn't work I'll try some antibiotics.


Happy 4th of July!

Out in the wilderness again!

Hey! It's the 4th July tommorow - Independence Day!

Anyway, at times today, I have been feeling devestated, bitter and sorrowful - because missed my 6th form prom! I really am upset about it! I've already got everyone's pictures from facebook and I wish I was there. I even dreamt the other night that I flew back to England for one day, to take one last exam and to go to the prom, and then flew back again.

But still, I did have fun today!

We went out into bear territory again. This time it was a different place, over an hour's drive from home, and the forest was much worse. When I say worse, I mean we were hiking through denser, thorny bush that was nearly as tall as me. We were surveying - looking for any potential sites, but we didn't see anything (you have to look at the shape of the ground, anything that looks like it may have been an old foundation, wall, or storage pit).

This time I didn't ride out in Fran's car, I went with a girl that has just started working for Fran, because she was driving up in her own car - and that way I got to meet her, sit in the front of the car, and also she didn't have to drive up alone. Her name is Ginger, and she's awesome! Ginger is her real name too. (And she's also ginger.)


That's Ginger and I: you can see that she is carrying a gun: she has this massive shotgun for bears because she goes camping and hiking a lot. So we were equipped with a shotgun, a handgun, and about 4 cans of bear spray!

Here are a couple of other pictures from the today and the hike:


Ginger with her shotgun, Dan with a shovel and a handgun: (I reckon we gave some people a fright when we emerged muddy from the woods equipped with shovels, guns, and canisters of pepper spray...)

On the way home I taught Ginger (on her request) some British swearwords. She said she'd heard of "bollocks" before, but she mistakenly thought the word only has the same meaning as the more American "bullshit". So I explained that if a man gets "kicked in the bollocks", it really hurts, and I also taught her that the person who did it would be referred to as a "wanker". She did attempt to learn that one, but I had to teach her the correct, English pronunciation.

I also gave her a lesson on the various uses of the word bollocks: e.g. if something is bollocks, it is not very good. However, if something is the dog's bollocks, it is excellent. I think she found it all very informative ^_^

P.S Do you like my new hat? I'm going for the Indiana Jones/Australian/Cowgirl look! ;-)

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Pretty places ^_^

So, on Sunday we went up to the cabin. It's beautiful! Fran and Jack own the reasonably large area of property around it, they even own half the lake it looks out to. The cabin itself is pretty bare and Jack hasn't finished insulating it, but we spent most of our time outside. Jack made hamburgers on the grill and I made a campfire with Fran. Somehow, food tastes better outdoors!
Here's a view of the cabin from the lake below, and that's me sitting by the fire ^_^

On Monday morning I stayed in while Fran and Jack were at work, and in the afternoon when they got home we went out for a drive back up to the mountains - the one we had dinner on when it was the solstice - but this time it was clearer so I could take better pictures of the valley:

On the way back down I saw a marmot! They're like ground squirrels, I think:

Cute or what? Here's some more information about them, it says they could potentially be the black death carriers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot

Yesterday Jack and I drove back out to the cabin to drop off a big tank of water for the weekend - we're staying there for the 4th July (but on our way we're going to drive through the mountains, hopefully I'll see a moose!) And yesterday evening Fran and I ate some sponge cake with glazed strawberries and fluff, so then we both felt bloated and stuffed, so we went out for a walk around the corner to the lake. I stitched together three of the pictures I took (I didnt do it very well, you can see the lines) but you get the idea how pretty the lake is:

It's pretty much a one minute from Fran's house. And that photo was taken at 11pm at night, believe it or not! I told you it's always light! In fact, most of my pictures were taken in the night, but you wouldn't guess it!

When I've been at home in the morning I've been reading and stuff, and I also have Scrapper - their cat - to keep me company. Now I know why they say curiosity killed the cat. In my room, she's always nosing through Fran's stacks of junk and trying to get into the wardrobes. This is what she looks like (she's stuck in between stacks of pictures and frames):


And this is what she looks like when I'm looking for the trousers I was planning on wearing that day:

Anyway, she's okay but she's nowhere near as fun as a dog. I miss Moby and Maisy!

Sorry today's blog post wasn't very interesting :-) I'm not feeling very creative today! I'll leave you with another Alaska photo...

Yup, its from the Simpsons movie! Here, it really is as prettyful as Homer's poster ^_^