Ready Set Go

Ready! Set! Go! 

Christmas is coming! 

Hooray for family time!

Hooray for sharing the love!

Happy Thanksgiving Week

May all your days be filled with joy and wonder.

May all your evenings be cozy and warm.

May all those that you love know just how much they mean to you.

May the holiday week ahead bring you blessings and gladness.

Happy Thanksgiving!

High Five Friday

High five Friday for peaceful early winter afternoons.  

Enjoy your weekend and remember to be kind, be truthful, and as always share the love with those you love!

Alaska Adventure Planning

Hooray for planning trips! I am so excited to share Alaska with you and would absolutely enjoy handing out some pointers. Truthfully now is the time to plan and have everything booked by mid-March of next year. The best time to visit is mid-summer (of course) and the weeks surrounding the 4th of July are always my favorite time to see Alaska.

Fly into and out of Anchorage – the flights will most likely have you landing in the late evening or early morning so plan to spend the first night or two in Anchorage. Rent a car for the best mobility.

First on the recommendation list would be to ride the rails on the Alaska Railroad and the day trip to Spencer Glacier is just the ticket to purchase. Riding the train from Anchorage to Fairbanks with a stop in Denali is a good trip too. Or even just Anchorage to Denali and back to Anchorage on a bus. The draw back to taking the train on either of these venues is you are locked into lodging just outside the Denali National Park’s entrance somewhere in Glitter Gulch and I do not think any of my friends would enjoy that at all. Glitter Gulch is very touristy, pricey and for the most part is not local people for the lodging.

Drive through Hatcher Pass, start at the Palmer end of Fishhook Road and visit Independence Mine. Hatcher Pass is a fabulous drive and the road will lead you to the Parks Highway at Willow. Some rental car companies do not allow you to drive their cars up Hatcher Pass, so it would be good to check with them beforehand. While in the Hatcher Pass area take a hike on a mountain side and enjoy all the wildflowers in bloom in July. Once at the end of the road take a right hand turn and head towards Talkeetna. In Talkeetna stay at Traleika Cabins, their Sultana Cottage or the Birchcrest Cabin both have good views of Denali, and Whitney is good people. There are places to eat in Talkeetna but you can also pack your own supper and breakfast fixings if you choose. Take a flightseeing tour out of Talkeetna to Denali with K2 Aviation or Talkeetna Air Taxi either will show you a good time. I think Whitney’s husband flies for Talkeetna Air. If the weather is not good they will cancel but when the weather is good it is totally worth the cost. Talkeetna is a quirky historic town that is fun to explore so spend a day or so here.

Drive to Denali National Park – Broad Pass just south of Cantwell has great views. Stay the night at Carlo Creek Lodge mile 224 on the Parks Highway. Eat at Creekside which is right across the street from Carlo Creek Lodge and also up the road to mile 229 at the restaurant called 229 Parks. Visit the touristy area called Glitter Gulch which is just outside the park’s entrance, and is where all the major hotels and gift shops are located; also be sure to visit Denali National Park’s great visitor’s center. Make plans to get up early the next day and take the bus ride back into the park. Get your tickets ahead of time for the first bus that goes back into the park. It will be a full day, and be sure to ride all the way back to Wonder Lake!

Head back south, stay in Anchorage and the next day take the Alaska Railroad ride to Spencer Glacier. This will take the entire day also and is totally worth the time. Another night in Anchorage and the next day drive to Whittier on the Seward Highway. Be very careful on this stretch of road, we have a house rule – no passing other cars on the Seward Highway – EVER! Unless there is a passing lane, of which there are only a few official passing lanes. The Seward Highway is a narrow busy stretch of road and too many drivers get in too big of a hurry which causes accidents.

Stop at the Portage Glacier Visitor Center before you drive through the Anderson Tunnel and once in Whittier take your glacier tour with either Phillips Cruises or Major Marine Tours, both do a great job and Prince William Sound is a fabulous must see area in Alaska. After the tour go to the Swiftwater Café (only open in the summer months) in Whittier for some fresh fish before you drive back through the tunnel and to your lodging somewhere in Girdwood. Explore Girdwood and drive to Seward in the early afternoon. Stay in Seward the night and drive out to Exit Glacier. We have not stayed in Seward overnight in a long while so I do not have any lodging suggestions, but I bet Trip Advisor will guide you to the right place.

Let me know if your Alaska travel plans would be for another part of the state, and I will make other suggestions.

Of course when you are in town we will go to supper together at Glacier Brewhouse or Simon & Seaforts, your choice! Enjoy planning your Alaska adventure!

McMurdo Station

The United States Antarctica Program McMurdo Station Web Cams.

A Message Home from Antarctica

Dear Mom & Dad,

Finally made it to Antarctica! It looks like Barrow but with mountains...

I got the wireless network out at camp set up, which works much better than in town if you can believe that (radio from the comms building in McMurdo, relayed from the Golfball (a radio relay station near the Kiwi wind turbines), to us where we have a wireless access point. Now I can check my email and actually do things!

As I said, we made it to camp. Kay L. (she has been coming to help on this project for a long time) and Don B. (the technician that maintains BOB (our "Big Orange Box" hybrid power station) are going to break in camp tonight. Guy T. and Luke B. (the field techs that I work with) and I will head back to town tonight. We'll pick up our food and run some final errands before we go out to camp for good (we'll come back for showers every once in awhile...).

The weather is almost as good as the scenery: currently +20 F with 9 mph winds from 97 degrees N. The sun is shining through the clear sky and there are huge lenticular clouds over Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror nearby. Here's a picture of the primary vehicle we use to go between town and camp, called a "MAT Track", a lifted F350 with tracks instead of wheels, sitting in front of BOB at camp. Driving the MAT Track is awesome! The steering feels kinda like driving a snow-boat and when the wind is blowing you get the same sort of spray on the windshield. This thing won't get stuck out here!

Anyways, I'm going to go help dig out some gear that overwintered here and then head back into town.

Sun's still up, just like Fairbanks in summer.
Love you!
Drew

Good Better Best

Commercialism is a double edge sword. Since the dawn of time mankind has devised a way of obtaining the goods that were deemed necessary to survive, and to prosper in life. We would trade berries for meat, animal hides for stone arrows, and today we have built almost all of our entire existence on commerce. Our daily lives are built around the buying and selling of goods and services.

In today’s economic world we need to exchange money for goods and services in order for the world to keep turning in the manner with which we have become accustomed. However, and this is a big however for me, we need to think about the quality of the goods and services that we are purchasing.

So the question that I want to put out there is the good, better, or best question. Is a product or service good? Is it a better service? Or is it the best product?

The quality should weigh heavily on the scales in the decision making process, for each and every purchase that we make or with each service we obtain. Most of us will not go back to a place of business when the service that we purchased was not to our satisfaction. If the mechanic shop that changed our tires or performed maintenance on our vehicle does not complete the work to our satisfaction we will find another auto shop with which to conduct business. We will most likely search out the shop that fits in the better or best category. We will do the same for a hair dresser, a dentist, or a veterinarian for our beloved pets, and so forth.

When we are looking for a business or medical clinic that provides a service that will directly impact our health we generally lean towards the better range of quality, if not the best option that we can find in our neck of the woods.

On the flip side when it comes to some of the goods that we purchase daily, monthly, or yearly we have a tendency to lean towards the good range of quality. We think that the products in this or that such and such category are good enough for the price we would pay, so we purchase the couch that is just good enough, because we do not want to spend any more dollars on a new couch. We think that we are saving money by putting up with poor quality. But low and behold that couch is only built to last two or maybe three years. It was manufactured to be disposable. It looks good when you first bring it home but the wood frame is really just partical board and the upholstery is smooth and soft the first few months but the fabric is of low quality and quickly becomes rough and matted down. Before you know it you find yourself couch shopping again in the hopes of finding something you like that will last longer than your last purchase.

In a ten year span you have purchased three and a half couches that have cost you $650 to $1,000 dollars each for a total spent of upwards of $3,500. So what does this tell us? My first thought is that this is a lot of wasted dollars on a product that did not last. So in order to counter this waste of our dollar resources we will be making the choice to spend more money up front to save money in the long term.

The second and almost more important thought that passes through my mind is that these 3.5 couches weigh heavy on the earth’s resources. Our earth has a finite amount of resources and an ever growing human population; I am not sure this earth can take much more abuse and waste.

So next time you and your family are making the choice for the next purchase in your life, large or small, ask yourself the good better best question and is it useful, will it last, and finally do you truly need that product, that thing in your life.

Now Hiring

Anyone?  Anyone?

Noah's Ark

Earthquake ~ 4.54

Wake up! Wake up! No I would rather go back to sleep, and so we did.

High Five Friday for GRAND Adventures of a Lifetime

Could you imagine the distance between 64 degrees North latitude and 78 degrees South latitude? Nope me neither, yet it is doable in today’s modern travel age, it just might take a day or two but that is a very short travel time considering how long it used to take to traverse the miles. Our oldest son is with his Physics research group that is down on ‘The Ice’ to check on their equipment and process some data.

Have a safe trip son and be sure to write home to your Momma when time allows.

Purchase Requisition

Purchase requisition from days gone by when I was the Station Manager for Frontier Flying Service in Barrow, Alaska. During one of the countless days the flight crew was on weather hold and the First Officer had nothing better to do with his time.  Life in Barrow.

No One Cause ~ No One Cure

Every day your body takes a beating, building upon the previous days thrashing which adds up to a hitch in your gait, a sore muscle here, and a creaky joint there. Every day your heart feels joy, love, grief, and despair, the latter binding our emotions into a bundle of haggard nerves, and knotted shoulders.

My neck is stiff and my heart aches. 

All my years of every day adding to my experiences tells me there is no one cause for the pain I feel and no one cure to mend my wounded self.

Project ~ Just Get it Started

It is time to complete a project, or two, from my vast list of to-do projects. But which one do I choose? Once I have selected that first project, of which it can have multiple facets involved in its completion, where do I start?

Oh the confusion, oh the dilemma.

I bet this is a situation that you too find yourself in and to top it off these projects might be those things that are on the ‘must do before winter list’. They make you feel like you are chasing one thought trail after another, like a whirling tornado of ideas. Until finally you give up, plop down on the couch, and stare mindlessly at something else in the hopes of finding a distraction or in the very least a solution in the ether.

This course of action will not get it done. You must get it started to get it done. We all want to do it all, be all, and have everything completed by the deadlines we set in our minds but this cannot always be the case, so today is the day you grab one thought. One idea. One task. Pick it out of the tornado and get to work. These projects may seem formidable or daunting with all their numerous fragments but by seizing hold of one piece of the project and getting started I know a flush of relief will wash over you and you will soon find yourself the master of your project list.

Happy Monday my friends and happy project get it started day!