Alaska: a spot of latte

When the dotter first moved from Northern Arizona to Alaska last year, what was the biggest change in the scenery that she noted? No, not moose. Certainly neither mountains nor conifers. No, it was the espresso shacks. Everywhere. In the city. In the burbs. Along the highway. In the woods, yet. I don't have nearly all my Alaska photos home with me (hint, hint, dotter), but I certainly had enough photos of latte stops on my flash memory stick to illustrate this post.

I am a naif about many current crazes. Do expresso shacks proliferate on the Left Coast like mushrooms in rainy weather? Is Alaska a special case or does it share certain characteristics with California (along with union power)? I wouldn't know; I haven't been on the Coast for a good 15 years.

I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. With only 5.5 hours of daylight (of sorts) in midwinter, a lot of folk are commuting in the dark. A good zap of caffeine would be in order on the way to work.

What surprises me (and the dotter) is the contrast between fancy-dan lattes and the frontier image so carefully cultivated by Alaskans. In all the sound and fury about Sarah Palin, not one of the legions of intrepid reporters bothered to note this curious cognitive dissonance.

I think the only place there was a notable absence of latte shacks was in the immediate vicinity of McDonald's stores. But then McD is serving up fancy coffees these days and exercises enough muscle to keep any competition at arms' length.

If you think I'm making a mountain out of a mesa, bear in mind that we have but one -- count 'em -- one drive-up espresso stop here in Prescott (above). At least as far as I know. The contrast with the Anchorage area is astounding. Based on our population, we could support anywhere from 25 to 50 of those little shacks. But then we have a bit more sunshine on the solstice.

Later Note: Out of curiosity, I went to The Google using the phrase "latte shack". Guess what I turned up: a Flickr page from an Anchorage resident who, at this point, has photos of 169 such java joints, from Juneau to Homer to Fairbanks. I'm truly outclassed!

My Alaskan adventure: echoes of Russia

So I wasn't surprised to see a pair of babushkis the day the dotter took me and GD to the stream where, last year, her husband had simply reached in and lifted out a salmon. (Not so easy this year -- there's been a lot more rain.) No, I wasn't surprised; after all, the Russians had settled Alaska, hadn't they? I was not aware of the numbers --only 800 Europeans at most. And few of them elected to stay once the USA had title free and clear. So I should have been surprised!

So what is it about the Russian influence that lingers to this day? Credit the missionaries of the Russian Orthodox church. According to Wikipedia, the most visible trace of the Russian colonial period in contemporary Alaska is the presence of nearly ninety Russian Orthodox parishes with a membership of over 20,000 men, women, and children, almost exclusively indigenous people, including several Athabascan groups of the interior, very large Yup'ik communities, and the quasi-totality of the Aleut and Koniag populations.

The cemetery at Eklutna is a prime example of the melding of Christian and native traditions, in this case the Athabascan. The brightly painted sprit houses for the dead have been erected by native parishoners since missionaries arrived in the 1840s. (Of interest to Arizonans: the local Navajo and Apache are the only Athabascans in the lower 48.)

The houses are built in the shadow of the onion dome of Russian Orthodox Old St. Nicholas Church (above).

As a tourist, I presumed that there should be a commercial echo of Russia -- and so there was, in the multi-story downtown mall in Anchorage.

Shawls for the babushki and matryoshka (nesting dolls) galore...

Plus highly decorated samovars. (And I saw one Harley Tshirt, BTW -- it wasn't very exciting to look at, hence no photo.) However, this brief account of Russians in Alaska is not finished. Arriving in 1968 were world's most obscure community of Russian outcasts. These are confined to a handful of small villages: Nikolaevsk, Voznesenka, Razdolna, Kachemak-Selo, Port Graham and Nanwalek - no more than 2 or 3 thousand people altogether - in the south-west of the Kenai Peninsula, writes Vitali Vitaliev. And quite fitting: these villagers are descendants of schismatic Old Believers who fled Russia at the time of the 1917 revolution. A state with only 11 numbered highways is certainly an excellent place for an small ultra-conservative congregation to thrive far from any limelight.

Wasilla: Thanks to the upcoming election, the media is suddenly all agog about this small Alaskan city and every commentator appears to have an opinion. So do I, as this was one of the places I visited during my stay. Let's start right off with the fact that at least two of those numbered highways go through or originate in this Anchorage bedroom community. Not one but two Thai and one East Indian restaurants, a WalMart and Target. Northern Exposure it definitely ain't. (Even though moose do show up almost everywhere. So they say -- I didn't see a single moose anywhere I went in Alaska.)

You can bet...

...that these pictures weren't taken in Arizona. No, they were taken in Anchorage. I hadn't realized how thoroughly unionized it was, but I should have guessed. On the Pacific Coast, after all.

Arizona is a "right to work" state, which means, in effect, that the jobs that would have been performed by union labor are instead filled by the "undocumented".

Geography lesson

Ever since the LH and I moved to Arizona, I have obsessed over maps, especially topos. A good map is one of the coolest ways known to man to convey huge amounts of information on a single page. And so I have been wearing out the dotter/SIL's topo book of Alaska.

In the process of poring over the maps, I discovered many un-maplike names for features such as mountain tops and glaciers. As Exhibit 1, above, I present the Five Bs: peaks named, in order,
Bold, Bashful, Baleful, Benign, and Bellicose, with Peril Peak close by.

Maybe you'd like a quick visit to Scandanavia -- here's an easy way to see every place from Denmark to Finland, if you are equipped for glacier climbing. Nearby, also in the Chugach mountains you could continue your Nordic adventure by climbing Thor, Valhalla, Siegfried -- or even Fafnir (below). These mountains are near the science cluster, which includes Fermi Peak, Mount Edison and Mount Halley plus the namesake, Science Glacier.

If you looked carefully at the picture atop this photo, you may have noted Columbia Glacier. While it's a really major one that doesn't empty into College Fjord, you will find most of the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters moving ice to the sea though this outlet. Take your pick of the larger Harvard and Yale ice streams or smaller Dartmouth, Amherst or Williams. As for the Seven Sisters (minus one), they are all short steep glaciers across the fjord: Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Vassar, Barnard, Radcliffe and Smith. Why such oddball names (and there are more)? My guess would be that Alaska is so immense (20% of the land area of the Lower 48) that settlers really had to stretch to name just some of the many geographic features.

And, by the way, you may have been noting all the glaciers -- these are quite near Anchorage, which has a maritime climate. All the ice fields are near the Gulf of Alaska, starting only as far north as the Alaska Range and hugging the seacoast further south. The country inland above Denali is in the rain shadow and comparatively dry, with no glaciers -- much to my surprise. Apparently this included the Bering Strait land bridge across which the first American settlers arrived during the Ice Age, according to the SIL

The sun shines bright on Denali

The dotter was excited when she awakened me this morning. "The sky at Denali is clear," she said. "We have to go before the clouds close in again." And so we set forth on today's adventure to see the Big One.

Would you believe that the 20,000-foot-high peak LOOMED before us 50-60 miles away? Difficult to capture that overwhelmed feeling in the standard snap shot.

And so I took advantage of the telephoto effect to show just how we felt as we gazed at North America's tallest mountain. Cheating, I know, but emotionally correct.

Many miles later, we found the first Denali overlook, giving a fine view of the ice-covered Alaska Range.

I supposed that the panorama painting at one end of the overlook was to compensate (in a small way) the thousands of visitors who have been thoroughly disappointed by cloud cover at least 75% of the time, which causes the real peaks to disappear totally for days on end.

Of course, I couldn't resist this very, very jaggedy set of dark peaks to the front of the heights. The Alaska Range, as well as the Aleutian Islands and Range plus other mountains, are all the result of the Pacific plate grinding smack dab up against the North American plate, creating much of the Alaskan landscape (and, literally, land). Not to mention those earthquakes and those volcanoes that might cause my flight home to be canceled if the wind shifts in the wrong direction.

Nor could I resist the picture of the picture takers. Which reminds me -- the SIL has been following me around, snapping shots of GrannyJ snapping shots.

The granddotter takes advantage of the fixed viewing scopes to close the distance to the high peaks.

And as a parting shot, the dotter and GD in front of Denali (Mt. McKinley to some of us old folks).

Aviation Alaska-Style

After nearly two weeks in Alaska, I have realized the reason so many Riddle students head north once they graduate. To rack up their experience hours. There's just one helluva lot of general aviation going on up here in a state where the capital cannot even be reached by road. Remember, only 10 numbered highways (actually 11) in the 49th; you've heard of Nome ... of Barrow? No such thing as a road or railway heading in their direction. Boat, yes. Plane, the fastest route. Usually a single engine puddle jumper.

Often it's what's called a float plane up here in the land of much water (back in Jax, we called them seaplanes, but I doubt that these pilots would or could land in the rough seas hereabouts very often). Fairbanks Intl. Airport features a lagoon almost as long as its jet runway for the large numbers of these planes to land and berth.

This picture was taken at a flightseeing facility near Talkeetna; such planes may be chartered to get a view of Mt. McKinley (Denali) on those rare days when the cloud cover breaks. More likely they will carry tourists wanting to see the elusive grizzly bear. Below, another float plane charter business.

And what do those planes do in winter, when there's very little open water? Probably what they did in the old days -- trade in pontoons for heavy-duty skis.

Yesterday the SIL took me and the granddaughter out into the countryside to see the aeroplane graveyard. But first, we stopped across the road where the cheap tie-downs invite several line-ups of private planes (below). Note the spare set of pontoons.

At first, we didn't realize that the drive we were on led to a runway and we had to quickly move out of the way for this machine heading for a take-off.

Among the planes at the tie-down was this carcass and the former flyer below, in the midst of weeds. I'm guessing that there still was a future for them, since someone was probably paying the rent. Of course, perhaps the parts were being salvaged.

I wonder how often the gas-guzzler above unfolds its wings to take to the skies ... as a former US Navy plane built for aircraft carrier landings, it should work well in the Alaskan bush with its many small airstrips.

Once every useful part has been scavenged from yesterday's planes, here's where they might finish their days -- as hollowed out husks.