A Full-time Life

Category: The Whole USA

  • DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

     

    Anybody else old enough to remember penny scales?  

     

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    While Bill registered us for a night's stay at Tolsona Wilderness Campground (on Alaska's Glen Highway),  I was busy taking pictures.   This was a private campground.  There were antiques, including this wonderful scale,  and well-used but now abandoned farm machinery everywhere we looked —  sadly just rusting away in the weather.  

     

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    It was a big place with nice walks along the river  – it even had a flower bed (an old old visual joke that still makes me smile).

     

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    When the owner noticed our interest, she told us the whole place was for sale and the antiques went with it.    But all we wanted to own was the pictures.

     

     

    Linking to Lesley's SIGNS SIGNS (as always one of my favorite places) and to next week's  RUBBISH TUESDAY (a new meme for me; Roan says it is a place to post your pictures of old and deteriorating items, of which I always seem to have a lot)

     

    Thank you to Lesley and to Roan.

     

     

  • A TASTE OF RUSSIA

    I made this post back in June while we were on the Kenai Peninsula, then didn't have a chance to post it in a timely fashion because we ran out of good Internet.   We loved this experience and the memory is part of Our World! 

     

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    P1000729The Alaska Territory was purchased from Russia in 1867.  There is a lot to remind residents and travelers of the State's Russian heritage.  Especially while on the Peninsula, we often saw old-style Russian Orthodox churches, with their distinctive blue onion domes.     This one was open for tours.  

    But our most interesting Russian-related experience was the night we spent in the Old-Believer's village of Nikolaevsk, up a mountain road a few miles North of Homer.     We reserved our RV  space for the night along with a Russian dinner at the cafe  – we really didn't have a choice about dinner.  When Bill inquired about a vacancy for the night, Nina (the owner and chef)  said "yes, we have an RV space.  What time do you wish dinner?"  

     

     

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    Nina's Restaurant and the Nikolaevsk Church

     

       So she cooked a typical Russian meal for the two of us as we watched  – there was only one other table of people (who were tourists from Russia), so for a brief time we felt like we'd had a short visit in another country.    (I didn't get a picture of the first course, a borscht soup, which was our favorite part of the meal — too busy slurping!).  The tea is fireweed tea — made from that wildflower that grows everywhere here in Alaska.  (That's probably not typical Russian tea.)

     

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     That is, of course, Nina Fefelov in the collage above — and after dinner was cooked, she was gracious about answering questions (although she was a little bit hard to understand).  Nina was an electrical engineer in Russia before she met her husband and emigrated to Alaska, where her father-in-law was the priest for the church.     She currently teaches Russian in the parochial grade school in the village as well as running her businesses.

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     It was a rather primitive RV Park — really just a place to park in a vacant lot next to the cafe  (there was an electric hookup).  But there was this beautiful view and we had a completely different and unexpected experience.  We were glad we found this place!

     

     

    Linking to OUR WORLD on TUESDAY.  (Thank you to Lady Fi, Arija, Gattina, Sandy, Sylvia, and Jenn.)

     

     

     

  • MEW GULLS and ARCTIC TERN

    (As promised, still blogging about our Alaska summer trip, even though it ended in early September.) 

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    Above — this handsome bird (I'm pretty sure an Arctic Tern), posed beautifully along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail in Anchorage.    

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    And here's another tern sleeping right through Mother Mew Gull's lesson for the day.  (Doesn't she just look as if she's giving those kids a lecture?)

     

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    If  this brood is any kind of example of how healthy they are, the species is definitely not in 'danger of being endangered.'

    We've seen an awful lot of Gulls in our lifetime, but realized here that we'd never before seen Gull babies.  

     

     

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    They weren't happy at all when mom flew off.  Lots and lots of plaintive baby gull noises.  (Come on kids, I'm sure she's just going out to get some lunch for you!)

     

    LINKING to SATURDAY CRITTERS (thank you to Eileen) and to WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY (thanks to Stewart).

  • WHIMSICAL ALASKA

     

    We found this bit of  whimsy along a road somewhere in Alaska:  

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    Someone had found a funny place for their unneeded land-line phone.  There were several handwritten signs carefully enclosed in plastic.  (I think more than one person had added signs from time to time.)  

    And, as long as we're looking at whimsical signs from Alaska:

     

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    We enjoyed a good meal at this BrewPub while staying in Soldanta.  Too bad, so sad, we couldn't wait until tomorrow, so we had to pay for our beer.

     

    LINKED TO LESLEY'S SIGNS SIGNS  and THERESA'S GOOD FENCES.   Thanks for hosting these  memes —  great places to indulge in a bit of whimsy from anyplace in the world.  

  • Learning GOLD RUSH HISTORY from the train

    This is Part 2 of our White Pass-Yukon Route train ride.  Here is Part One if you misssed it.

     

    P1020458This is the White Pass Summit, about 20 miles into our railroad trip.  At 2,865 feet above sea level it is the official border between the United States and Canada.   (I showed this photo in Part One, but didn't talk about the history of this spot:)

    During the Klondike Gold Rush (1897 – 1899), there was a contingent of Royal Canadian Mounted Police stationed here to ensure every man, woman and child had a year’s worth of supplies before they continued on their arduous journeys.  Quite a few US citizens weren't able to get that much together before starting their hope-to-get-rich trek, so they took an even more arduous route from Valdez in order to by-pass Canada completely (many of them died trying and few got rich even if they made it).

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    About 20 miles past our stop at Canadian customs, we reached the town of Bennett BC, our lunch stop for this journey.   As we neared it, we could see beautiful Bennett Lake from our train window.  

      

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     The town  of Bennett was built  during the Gold Rush — it is  located at the end of the White Pass and the Chilkoot  Trail.  Gold prospectors would pack their supplies over this mountain trail from the port cities of Skagway and Dyea.  

    For a while after the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad was completed, wealthy tourists also took the train to Bennett and beyond.  But the gold rush ended and interest in the town faded.  By the early 1900s, the town was deserted.  It is still an abandoned town today except during the summer season when the rail line has renovated Bennett Station House in order to provide a  hot meal to modern rail-riding travelers.  

     

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    After our delicious lunch (and a chance to visit with people from other cars on the train),  we had a couple of hours on our own to walk on part of the Chilkoot Trail  (a very small part) and explore some of the abandoned buildings in Bennett.   

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    The train than continued to the town of Carcross, Yukon Territory.  Once a hunting and fishing camp for the First Nation Tlingit and Tagish peoples,  the town became a key stopover and supply center during the Gold Rush.  From there they would build or buy rafts to take them down the Yukon River to the gold fields near Dawson City.    (The name of the town is a shortened version of Caribou Crossing — it is near a major migration route for these animals.)

    Tourism is the major part of the Carcross economy today.  Some of the passengers on the train spent the night there to return by rail the next day.   Others were from one of the cruiseships in port in Skagway and their Cruise Lines had a bus waiting for them.

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    We had, of course, made our reservations directly with the railroad and they had arranged a van for our return trip.   The sixty-seven-plus mile journey went a lot faster by van than it had by railroad.     The scenery seemed to go by in a blur and we didn't learn as much.  But we were glad to be "home" (back to our camper van) for the night.  

     

    SHARING WITH:  OUR WORLD ON TUESDAY.  Thank you to Lady Fi and the rest of the OW team:  Arija, Gattina, Sylvia, Sandy and Jen.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • THE CORPSE FLOWER

     

    We visited Seattle's Volunteer Park Conservatory earlier this month while   spending a lovely day with our brother-in-law and  sister  (mine, but after more than 57 years together, it all kind of blends together).  

     

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    There were some beautiful orchids and ferns.  But we really went to see the Corpse Flower.  This odd — and rare — plant  bloomed in early September for the first time since the Conservatory acquired it in 2006.   (It takes from seven to 10 years for the plant to make a flower.)

     

    Seattle Sept 2014

     

    The Corpse flower (Amorphophallus Titanum) was discovered in Sumatra in 1881.  It grows from a large tuber which can weigh more than 150 pounds.  It is said to be the world's largest flower.  Technically it is an 'inflorescence' or a cluster of flowers.  

    All of the above information is from the Conservatory.  The information sheet also said "Yes, the flower does smell —  like rotting flesh."  –  But we didn't need the handout to know that.  It smelled awful!

    I hate to end a post on a stinky note, so below is just one of the beautiful orchids grown in the Conservatory.  I'm sorry that I don't have any information about it.  

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    Linking this post to TODAY'S FLOWERS and I HEART MACRO. and NATURE'S FOTOS BLO-MA (on Tuesday).   Thank you to Denise and to Laura and to Monica for hosting these wonderful sharing opportunities.

     

  • THE WHITE PASS TRAIN

    Trains are a big thing in Skagway.  The town is  headquarters for the White Pass-Yukon route.  That's the same route that the Klondike goldrush stampeders followed in 1898.

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    We traveled that 67 mile route — from Skagway to Carcross (Yukon Territory Canada) — much more comfortably than those intrepid adventurers.  Our trip was on a train like the yellow and green one in the photo above.  The red train has a huge snowplow on the front (scary to think about the tracks that would need that) and the black one is a steam train that also makes the same trip we took.)

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    Above, some samples of the beautiful scenery along the route.  

    Although the day started off overcast, the skies turned blue about the time we reached the US/Canada border.    

      

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    I really like looking out the train window as the train goes around a curve and seeing the engine up ahead.  So here is my obligatory photo of that event.    We went through several tunnels and over several bridges which I am sure were safer than they looked.   (There actually had been a derailment earlier in the season … and we knew about that, but still took the chance.  Call us crazy!)

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    More scenery and me standing on the platform between cars.  It was a great spot to take pictures  (if you could do that with one hand on the rail — it was a little wobbly).  

    The journey was narrated by an excellent guide, but you couldn't hear him when standing on the platform.  So it was a hard choice to make.  Shortly after Bill took this picture and went back to our seat, the train entered another rather long tunnel.  Of course I didn't hear the announcement (and nobody remembered to come get me.  How quickly they forget!).  That was a little spooky.

     

     

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    The train entered Canada at Fraser BC and stopped for a welcome rest stop.  The actual border (in the first picture above) is several miles from Fraser, but it gets so snowy at that particular spot that both countries have their stations in a lower location.

    (This is Part One of the rail trip — more on Tuesday)

    I am linking this post to SKYWATCH FRIDAY (thanks to Yogi, Sylvia, and Sandy) to Gemma's SCENIC WEEKENDS and to Judith's MOSAIC MONDAY.  Thank you to all the hosts for these great memes.  

     

  • NO SPITTING in front of my fence!

     For  SIGNS SIGNS  and GOOD FENCES –  two memes that I've been away from for too long.

     

    Views of a pretty little yard in an 'off-the-beaten-track' Skagway neighborhood.  (We were looking for a place to walk that was away from the hordes of tourists — pretending we weren't part of them.) 

     

     

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     The people who live in the home are probably one or two of the 900 year-round Skagway residents.  The population of the town doubles in the summer because of the seasonal workers who are employed to help with the influx of tourists.  The town has over 900,000 summer visitors!  Those cruise ships bring a lot of people (this post).

    I'm pretty sure the sign was meant to be funny.  Although who knows how much sense of humor those 900 residents can maintain during the summer season!

     

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    Thank you to Theresa at the RunARound Ranch for GOOD FENCES and to Lesley for SIGNS SIGNS.

    I've missed these memes.

  • MAGPIES

     

    We saw Magpies all the time when we were growing up in Eastern Washington.   Bill even remembers (sadly) that there was a bounty on them when he was a child — for some reason ranchers thought that the birds harmed cattle. 

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    After we moved to (western) Oregon in 1971, we never saw these birds except when we went back to Washington to visit family.    A year ago, we made a trip to our old hometown for the first time in years and again we saw a lot of these striking birds.  We talked about how they are so common in that part of the state but you never see them in western Washington or Oregon.  I didn't get any pictures then though.

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    But this summer we saw them everywhere in Alaska.   This one posed for me at Blueberry Hill Campground near Valdez.   He wasn't a bit afraid.  We were the only people in the Campground, so I don't know whether he was used to people or just didn't know enough to be afraid of them (us).  

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    Not the loveliest place to pose, but somehow the light made his feathers look so beautifully greenish-blue, I just had to include it.  (All photos are the same bird, taken within about half an hour — and I didn't mess with the pictures at all, except to add the borders.)

     

     

    Shared with WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY.  Thank you to Stuart.

     

    Magpies are a member of the Crow family (Corvidae) and they sound very much like crows.  But I think they are prettier.

  • POSTCARDS FROM WASHINGTON

    Greetings from the State of Washington!  

    We are back in the lower 48 after our summer adventure.

     

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    MT. RAINIER, near Tacoma

    Sunny weather — beautiful views — lovely visits with family!  Nice to be back.

     

     

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    Foss Waterway, Tacoma

     

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    Our kind of place!

    I got my postcards all mixed up — those above are from Tacoma, those below are  from Seattle.  We visited Seattle first of course — shortly after crossing the Canada-US border near Bellingham.  Tacoma is South of Seattle.

     

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    Two views of the iconic Space Needle … beautiful Seattle!

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    There will certainly be more posts about Alaska — I have to do something with all the pictures we took!  And besides, blogging helps my memory.   But I wanted to do a closer-to-real-time post to let you know that the trip has ended and we are back to normal (or as close as we ever get to it).

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    SHARING WITH OUR WORLD TUESDAY.  Thank you to Arija, Gattina, Lady Fi, Sylvia, Sandy, and Jennifer, the hosts of OW.