Weiserman

I was lucky enough to be able to go to Nome and Kotzebue right after Sage left AK and right before we moved into our cabin. I went to both the Northweat campus in Nome and the Chukchi campus in Kotzebue to recruit Native students for the Resilience and Adaptation Program, of which I am coordinator. I went with one of our students who had lived and married in Kotzebue and knew everyone!

Nome is known as the end point for the Iditerod Sled Dog race

, famous for the burled arch that all mushers ride under to finish. Nome is not a Native village and seemed quite established. It is about as far west as you can go in AK.

Here is the main street.

Nome was a major gold mining town

Wyatt Earp actually came to Nome and started a business supplying miners. We visited the remains of his house way out in the "country"!

My favorite restaurant in town was a combination laundramat and Mexican restaurant. We did not eat there since it was a bit funky!

Notice the washers and tables!

We were lucky enough to go with someone who lives in Nome to pick blueberries. There are fields and fields of blueberries. Yummy! AND...there are musk ox among the blueberries. The woman we were with loves to gather quiviat, the underhair of the musk ox that is highly prized as very, very soft and very, very warm hair which is very, very expensive). She is allergic to the stuff so she gave it to me! How lucky am I. I will spin it and make it into a scarf for David.

Nome is part of theDEW Line, not necessarily needed at this point, but still active.

There are also remnants of bunkers from World War II!!!

Nome had great wooden statues looking out onto the sea!

And some quirky ways!

Only Barge Fresh Beer for me!

A reasonably short plane ride away was Kotzebue, a Native village which was quite different from Nome.

Notice the prehistoric bone just parked in someone's front yard.

The weather is usually cold and cloudy and the one main street is right at the sea! Kotz. is on a spit in the Arctic Ocean.

and is quite poor.

This is the new nurses' home at the hospital. Notice that it is made of ATCO trailers with frame over them!!

These are the traditional fish camps that folks go to in the summer to prepare for winter by fishing and then drying the salmon.

It certainly is not cheap to live in Kotzebue.

The people in both Nome and Kotzebue were wonderfully friendly and made us feel quite welcome. We met many students who were interested in continuing a discussion about enrolling in RAP and and I started learning about bush life. I was certainly glad I went.

As a Bar Mitzvah present to our grandson Sage we brought him to Alaska for two weeks. Even though it seemed like a long time before he got here, the time flew by and we all felt that we could have easily done another two weeks! What a great guest.

The first thing we did on Saturday was to build our raft for the Red Green Regatta that took place on July 25, Sunday. In keeping with my theory that it does noy take much to entertain us here in Fairbanks, the RedGreen Regatta participatns create rafts of all kinds using red and green ducktape.

One entry was a man in a wet suit with milk jugs strapped to his arms and legs with red and green duck tape who floated freestyle down the river. Some of the rafts were quite elaborate and some were quite slap dash. But it does not matter, The object is just to have lots and lots of fun on our slow moving and shallow Chena River as it wends its way into town.

Our raft was called the Couch Potato and, as you can see we afixed two couches to three barrels each with a plank in between them. We put a barbecue grill on the plank and grilled 80 hot dogs as we floated down the river. We gave them out to all our fellow rafters, even the judges. Despite the bribery, we did not win any prizes, but had a great and silly time

Love those paddles!

Here is some of our competition.

Another highlight of Saturday was another BIG event in Fairbanks...the RubbyDucky Race. (There are photos of this on our blog from last year. Looks the same as this year with the same results. Our duckies did not win). As a fundraiser for the town, we buy $10.00 duckies and the first duck to reach the finish lines gets lots of money for its owner. Poor Sage was quite worn out from the long flight and jet lag.

But he woke up in time to cheer his duck to the finish.

His was one of many.

that did not win.

We also went to the Golden Days parade where Sage met the Storm Troopers

That night, with no rest for the weary, we went to WEIO, the World Eskimo and Indian Olympics where Natives competed in such events as arm wrestling, high kick, ear weights (where they run with about 16 pounds of lead hanging from an earlobe) and dancing competition. The high kick, where they kick at a sealskin ball with one foot and land on the same foot was amazing.

The arm wrestling was a great show of strength.

We were all having a great time!

until they passed around the muktuk....raw whale blubber that is quite oily and chewy and not at all what Sage and I enjoyed. Although David ate his all up!

However the highlight of the evening came when the announcer called for about 30 men to help with the blanket toss in which a whale skin covering of a kayak is held by the men and used as a trampoline for some high flying Natives. So, of course, David jumped right in.

Sage and I spent the rest of the week doing the sights in Fairbanks, including a tour of the Chena River on the Riverboat Discovery

and a visit to El Dorado Gold mine where Sage panned about $40.00 worth of gold.

The week culminated in a visit to a working gold mine, Fort Knox where we got to see the BIG equipment and Sage actually held a bar of gold!

The following weekd David, Sage and I worked our way down to Valdez, camping along the way.

Our first night we stayed on the Stampede Road and Denali blazed away right in our view!

We made a second attempt at the Gulkana Glacier, our first being the 4th of July when it rained and rained. We never even saw the glacier on that trip and ended up leaving early. When Sage came, the weather wasn't great, but we stuck it out and had a great and long hike to the glacier. Sage was determined to wack off a piece of the glacier so he brough a hammer along to accomplish the task. Fred didn't come because the first time we went he refused to cross the rope bridge so we left him in the car.

It was definitely cold and rainy and we were very glad for our trusty tarp!

We had planned to kayak and fish on Tangle Lakes but the weather was pretty nasty so we headed for Valdez, staying for 3 nights at Blueberry Hill campground. Sage was quite tired and could sure use a break!

Fred was right there with him!

Once we settled in we took a great hike right onto Worthington Glacier, where Sage, once again tried to collect piece of glacial ice

Valdez is a great fishing spot and we were really lucky to fish in a spot where there was a 14 year old boy who took us under his wing and helped us get about 45 pounds of pink salmon. For those salmon snobs in AK, pinks are pretty low on the list, Kings, Reds and silvers all more desirable, but it was just fine and fun for us! We had them flash frozen and filled our freezer when we got home.

Mostly Sage and I fished and David bashed and stored! Great fun!

The next day we joined David's company for a Glacier Cruise in Prince William's Sound.