Fixin' To Agitate The Gravel ONE MORE TIME!

Three weeks is all I have left at my current job and place of residence. Then I'm heading down to Olympia Washington to begin a new job with the Washington State Division of Services for the Blind on June 17. It's another one of those itinerant-style jobs but knowing nothing about the state of Washington, the map my new supervisor sent to me to show my "area" doesn't mean a whole lot to me at the moment--some few counties on the Peninsula. I think my territory is called the South Sound. That might be for Pudget Sound...???  

I did stumble upon this fine piece of paradise in my new territory.


Tumwater Falls

If anyone wants to know how hard it is to move into or out of Alaska, just ask me. Otherwise, I'll keep it to myself for the time being. Well, you know I'm not really keeping it to myself, but I'm not going to burden anyone here with the worn out whine of it at this time.

Howsome-ever...I will say that just getting ready to prepare to get ready to get on the road is another one of those "testing your mettle" kinds of experiences.

I'm quite eager to be there already, though. I was there a couple of weeks ago checking the place out and that was a very happy day. A sunny, happy day, at that. The Pacific Northwest is prettier than I can explain and there's something about living at sea level that helps me be especially happy and content and optimistic and cheerful. Not to mention, some certain lovies from Utah will be joining me VERY SOON!

I had a very uninspiring  deli lunch in a supermarket because it was the best parking place I could find at that hour.  I sat upstairs gazing out over and making up stories about this view.  How's that for something to look at while eating a Safeway Reuben and a bag of chips?

And plus...they grow orange-hued trees there!!  SCORE!

I still have a couple of Alaska entries left to post--Sitka and Juneau in the spring--but it's probably not too early to say "I bid you a fond farewell, dear Land of the Midnight Sun!"

Eight stars of gold on a field of blue -
Alaska's flag. May it mean to you
The blue of the sea, the evening sky,
The mountain lakes, and the flow'rs nearby;
The gold of the early sourdough's dreams,
The precious gold of the hills and streams;
The brilliant stars in the northern sky,
The "Bear" - the "Dipper" - and, shining high,
The great North Star with its steady light,
Over land and sea a beacon bright.
Alaska's flag - to Alaskans dear,
The simple flag of a last frontier.

Prince Of Wales Island--POW. And HOW! WOW!

Ready for another stunning geography/history lesson, kids?  POW is one of the islands of the Alexander Archipelago in the Alaskan Panhandle, the 4th largest island in the US after Hawaii, Kodiak and Puerto Rico.  Another lovely location in the Tongass Rainforest.

POW is home of the Kaigani (crabapple country) Haida and later--or earlier--Tlingit people, who named the island "Sea Lion."  Then even later around 18th Century times, Mexican, British and French explorers overnighted here, too. I think the Russians just sort of waved on their way by.  (Aren't you happy that I'm not your real history teacher?  I'm pretty shabby at this part.  But if you're really interested, you can wikipee it.)

We flew in on an unusually sunny day in May about a week ago.  By "we," I mean the pilot, a woman going home to Hydaburg from her chemo treatment in Anchorage and me in this little B-1RD:  (That means I don't know what kind of plane it is.)  Not the smallest one I've been in since I've been traveling here in Alaska, but small enough to make me smile about getting into it.  That's a big deal, because I seldom smile about flying in planes--you know, the ones with all those people and their elbows.  It's an interminable, crampy, stiff drudgery for the most part.  Ick. 

Flying in these smaller birds is a noisy experience, but this Island Air pilot had some smoothe music piping through these head sets for us to listen to on the way over from Ketchikan. 

The airport is in Klawock which is where the clinic is where I worked for a day.  I didn't take a picture of the eye clinic building at the Klawock mall because, well, BORING.  But I did take a picture of the Dream Catcher B&B where I stayed in Craig about seven miles down the road.



Let me correct myself here.  I took SEVERAL pictures of this B & B. 

Being the 4th largest island in the United States doesn't mean this little sand bar is big by any means.  And being small doesn't mean it doesn't pack a punch with it's abundance of fjords, steep-sided mountains, dense forests, Tlingit culture...bears, to name a few delights of Prince of Wales Island.

I'm still trying to learn how George Vancouver's "Prince of Wales Archipelago" became "Alexander Archipelago" and the island came to be called "Prince of Wales" island.  Something to do with the treaty discussions between Russia and Great Britain, I presume.  And who named the towns Craig and Klawock and Hollis and Thorne Bay and Hydaburg?  

Alaska has some very interesting place names-descriptive, possesive, incidental, onomastic, commemorative, -from a number of cultural sources.  I might just have to do some more research and see if I can share some of it interestingly.  With pictures.  Later.



Oopsie.  How did Pookie Pye get in here?!  You little wascal, why are you always popping up in my head space?!

My View Of Kotzebue

"Kotzebue lies on a gravel spit at the end of the Baldwin Peninsula in the Kotzebue Sound...33 miles north of the Arctic Circle on Alaska's western coast." The population is about 3000, 70% of whom are Inupiat Eskimo. 

 I've been on a couple of spits since having arrived in Alaska about a year ago.  A few sounds, too, for that matter.  Most of my life here centers around the ocean, geographically speaking, which is an interesting item since the area of this state measures almost 600,000 square miles.  That seems like a lot of dry, land-locked land, but more than half the population lives in the coastal city of Anchorage and most of the rest of the state is uninhabited wilderness.

I've been in the Alaska interior, on volcanic islands in the ring of fire, throughout rain forests, on land, sea, air and ice, within viewing distance of gleaming glaciers,  bigger-than-life wild animals, rare birds and huge fish.  It's been extraordinary, to say the least, but it wasn't until I wrote to someone that I was on the tundra above the arctic circle that I got my most notable rush to date of "wow, this is pretty cool!"  I mean just the idea of being ABOVE the arctic circle gave me serious pause.  

The pictures I took probably look very similar to other pictures I have taken over the months, but they still tell some interesting little stories all their own. 

This is a view from my hotel window.  

These boys were "fishing."  They had a broken reel with curly fishing line they were pulling off and throwing into the water.  I dare say they didn't catch much that day.

The next evening I looked out and saw this man walking along the street at around 10 PM or so, a blue child's backpack on top of the rest of his load.

A couple of boys stopped him and he pulled out some junk for them to look at, but they gave it back to him.  Some long strips of something that looked like belts or fabric or rags.  

I had my favorite meal of the visit at this establishment which was owned and operated by a Korean family, and as you know I really dig Korean fare...however, I had a Japanese bento box.

This was the view from my table.

These are stained glass windows in the clinic where I worked for a couple of days.

 

View from the other side of the hotel.

You know I would have to visit the cemetery, which is very different from all the other very different cemeteries I've visited here.

The old hotel.

Looking for the entrance of the new hotel.

Still looking.

Wait.  Is that it?

OK.  Now we're cooking with gas.

It was seal (bearded seal/Ugruk) hunting season while I was there.  On most days, the water looked choppy as in this picture, but one day I looked out and the water was very, very still.  I could see fish jumping and I could also see tiny little white peaks across the water on the opposite shore where the seal camps were set up.  Didn't get a picture, but if I had you would be able to see the camps right there on those tiny pieces of land on the horizon.