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Alexander Creek pictures (a.k.a. cross-posted picturespam)
This is the exact same set of pictures that I just posted to my personal journal, so if you have me friended at both places, you'll get 'em twice ... er ... sorry.
At the start of June I took a trip back to the ol' ancestral homestead in rural Alaska and took some pictures along the way ... and here they are.
The first stage of the trip was the 6-hour drive down the Parks Highway from Fairbanks to Wasilla. It's a pretty drive that goes through Denali National Park, and I like it. There's a place along the road where there was a bad fire last year, and it's gorgeous with wildflowers.
When I drove down, the only thing that was really out was cottongrass, which I suppose is not really a flower per se, but looks gorgeous under the burned trees -- like snow lying on the ground. There were tons of blue lupine when I drove back up, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it.
I spent a couple of days in Wasilla, attended my cousin's (Greek Orthodox) wedding in Anchorage, and then chartered a light floatplane to fly home.
Flying west from Anchorage, the powerlines are clearly visible from the Beluga power station on the far side of Cook Inlet, marching towards town.
The Susitna River.
Normally the plane would land on Alexander Creek, a tributary of the Susitna that has a number of boat docks where floatplanes can pull in. But this year, the water is at record-breaking low levels, and planes can only land on the Susitna because otherwise the water is so low that it risks damaging the floats and causing a crash. You have to take a boat the rest of the way. Just to make things more challenging, the shallow sandbars in the Susitna make it impossible to pull a plane into land, which means that we had to climb down onto the pontoon and then crawl into a boat. And just to make it even MORE challenging, we were bringing a motorcycle with us (long story) so the motorcycle had to be handed down from the plane onto the pontoon and THEN into the boat ... quite an adventure.
"Home" is about five miles from the mouth of Alexander Creek on a trail like this one. When I was a kid, we used to walk. 4-wheel ATVs are much faster.
I don't have many pictures of my week spent at home, because, well, I lived there for 19 years; I know what it looks like. I did take a few, though.
Squirrel on the bird feeder.
The cabin where we lived when I was a little kid ... going back to nature, now. I did go spelunking inside and rescued a few old keepsakes.
Another view of the cabin.
The creek where my folks get their water.
A scenic little shot of Alexander Creek.
Taking off on the way back to town -- Alexander Creek from the air, with Dinglishna Hill and Mt. Susitna in the background. If you draw a line down from about the middle of the north (right-hand) peak of the mountain, our house is located just about at the point where the mountain is occluded by the top of Dinglishna.
The takeoff was very EEK. It's never a good sign when the pilot tells you that he's taking off upstream rather than downstream because "the trees are lower". My mother, who watched the whole thing from shore, told me later that at the point where it hit airspeed and took off (which is around, I'm not sure, about 100 mph), the plane was tilted with one pontoon over gravel while the other was still in the water ... and then we went over a sandbar ... *shiver*.
A section of the "ice road" that is used by Alexander Creek residents in the winter to haul freight (e.g. fuel, building supplies, groceries) by snowmobile (a.k.a. "snowmachine" to Alaskans).
I got some good shots of downtown Anchorage, which I'd been wanting for art reference.
One cool thing about driving down and then back up the Parks Highway at that particular time of year is that I got some neat before-and-after pictures of the greening. See the following: the first was taken shortly before Memorial Day, the second about a week and a half later, in the first week of June.
At the start of June I took a trip back to the ol' ancestral homestead in rural Alaska and took some pictures along the way ... and here they are.
The first stage of the trip was the 6-hour drive down the Parks Highway from Fairbanks to Wasilla. It's a pretty drive that goes through Denali National Park, and I like it. There's a place along the road where there was a bad fire last year, and it's gorgeous with wildflowers.
When I drove down, the only thing that was really out was cottongrass, which I suppose is not really a flower per se, but looks gorgeous under the burned trees -- like snow lying on the ground. There were tons of blue lupine when I drove back up, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it.
I spent a couple of days in Wasilla, attended my cousin's (Greek Orthodox) wedding in Anchorage, and then chartered a light floatplane to fly home.
Flying west from Anchorage, the powerlines are clearly visible from the Beluga power station on the far side of Cook Inlet, marching towards town.
The Susitna River.
Normally the plane would land on Alexander Creek, a tributary of the Susitna that has a number of boat docks where floatplanes can pull in. But this year, the water is at record-breaking low levels, and planes can only land on the Susitna because otherwise the water is so low that it risks damaging the floats and causing a crash. You have to take a boat the rest of the way. Just to make things more challenging, the shallow sandbars in the Susitna make it impossible to pull a plane into land, which means that we had to climb down onto the pontoon and then crawl into a boat. And just to make it even MORE challenging, we were bringing a motorcycle with us (long story) so the motorcycle had to be handed down from the plane onto the pontoon and THEN into the boat ... quite an adventure.
"Home" is about five miles from the mouth of Alexander Creek on a trail like this one. When I was a kid, we used to walk. 4-wheel ATVs are much faster.
I don't have many pictures of my week spent at home, because, well, I lived there for 19 years; I know what it looks like. I did take a few, though.
Squirrel on the bird feeder.
The cabin where we lived when I was a little kid ... going back to nature, now. I did go spelunking inside and rescued a few old keepsakes.
Another view of the cabin.
The creek where my folks get their water.
A scenic little shot of Alexander Creek.
Taking off on the way back to town -- Alexander Creek from the air, with Dinglishna Hill and Mt. Susitna in the background. If you draw a line down from about the middle of the north (right-hand) peak of the mountain, our house is located just about at the point where the mountain is occluded by the top of Dinglishna.
The takeoff was very EEK. It's never a good sign when the pilot tells you that he's taking off upstream rather than downstream because "the trees are lower". My mother, who watched the whole thing from shore, told me later that at the point where it hit airspeed and took off (which is around, I'm not sure, about 100 mph), the plane was tilted with one pontoon over gravel while the other was still in the water ... and then we went over a sandbar ... *shiver*.
A section of the "ice road" that is used by Alexander Creek residents in the winter to haul freight (e.g. fuel, building supplies, groceries) by snowmobile (a.k.a. "snowmachine" to Alaskans).
I got some good shots of downtown Anchorage, which I'd been wanting for art reference.
One cool thing about driving down and then back up the Parks Highway at that particular time of year is that I got some neat before-and-after pictures of the greening. See the following: the first was taken shortly before Memorial Day, the second about a week and a half later, in the first week of June.
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Glad you're back and back online again.
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It's definitely a different way to live. I really enjoyed growing up like that, and I enjoy going back, but I'm not sure if I'd want to live there permanently anymore. (For one thing, I was in total Internet withdrawal by the time I got back to Fairbanks.)
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The time-lapse of the mountain was a total accident -- I just happened to notice when I was going through my trip pictures that I'd stopped on the exact same pullout to take pictures going both ways, so I happened to have nearly-identical pictures of that mountain. It is just incredible to see how much difference a week and a half made.
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Alaska is high-up on the list of places I want to visit someday and that house looks like it could have been a fun place to grow up.
Thanks for sharing this! (and I'm glad the plane took off okay!)
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How did your parents end up in Alaska? and what an interesting childhood/life you had/have...
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My grandparents homesteaded in Alaska in the 50s/60s, so my mother grew up here. My dad came up in the service during Vietnam and met her up here. After he finished his tour they lived in a lot of different parts of the state and developed a taste for rural living -- they mostly housesat for people or stayed with friends in various rural places 'til the state opened up for purchase some of the previously locked-up rural lands and they bought a parcel out in the middle of nowhere.
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