Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Flightseeing

I went for flightseeing for free! Excellent excellent, because we got to go on a day when it was clear (cloud tends to obscure the peak of Mt McKinley very often, its so high that it creates its own weather). Since no one seems to know what flightseeing is, I shall elaborate.

Definition: the practice or business of transporting tourists to otherwise inaccessible wilderness areas by plane/helicopter, for viewing the areas by air or for organized hikes

Yeap. The tour that I went on usually costs about 300USD! Unfortunately there wasn't a glacier landing but its free so I shouldn't be picky. The horseback riding costs 100+ USD too. More free stuff that I haven't done: rafting and the husky tour (already went last year so no rush) and the ATV ride. Serious perks of the job!

Pictures as usual will do the talking. Obviously cannot capture the grandeur of the whole place. For that you'll have to see it for yourself. Doesn't help that the windows were kinda unclear and lotsa dead bugs were splattered on the windscreen. I did luck out and get to be the co-pilot though (my duties were to not touch anything), so good views abounded!

-Deluge of Pictures-

Glacially carved valleys tend to have braided rivers.

The Alaska Range

A lot of the park is turning green

Mt. McKinley (Denali is the Native name)

The bunch of small dots is the base camp for ascent to the peaks of Mt. McKinley. If you look carefully you can see the tiny trails heading upward from the camps.

Love the texture of the snowy mountains

Fascinating crevasses

Our pilot

That's Marlo right at the back, and Dan, her boyfriend

Beautiful ridge

I'm pretty sure this is the best thing I've done in my life (the other thing is probably UCSD). Meeting many new and interesting people, including an Irish guy who works for Greenpeace and has been to all the places I want to go. He spent February on an icebreaker cruise to the Antarctic to go after a whaling ship and now he's in Alaska after the International Whaling Commission in Anchorage. He met Hayden Panettiere from Heroes too! Amazingly he didn't think she was pretty.

A lecturer from UCSD came too! And on the day that I was wearing my Revelle shirt. Coincidence? FM, she said she teaches American Culture. Her name's Mikaela something. Heh.

Morning Mountain Hike

Pictures from when the only two Singaporeans to visit so far this year were here. Shanqing and Ying Chiang! Ying Chiang was Peiya's schoolmate in St. Nicholas and we kinda all knew some people in common. Singapore is very small.

Still very early, knee deep snow halfway up the mountain.

Me, Ying Chiang, Peiya

Walking back to the main road to get back to the hostel for dinner.

All pictures courtesy of Shanqing. Thanks!

Friday, June 08, 2007

Hikes, Old Friends and a Birthday

Work is tiring me out. And whenever I get offdays I go to Fairbanks or Anchorage so no rest on those days either! Anyway, still quite happy. Wish I had more time to spend not working.

Horseshoe Lake

Abandoned beaver dam.

Railroad tracks

View of Savage River from rocky outcrop

Seagull with injured wing

Pictures with New Friends, and Old Ones Too

Chris, me, Sue. Chris is uber cool and I have a place to stay in Colorado now!

Ed, Wilson, me and Marc in Snow City Cafe.

Steve's Birthday

Steve thought I forgot his birthday but I didn't! We made him the shirt he's always been joking about. It says "looking for wife" on the front, and "you'll do" on the back. Think he was very touched. He said its the best birthday he's had in ten years and I'm sure that's not true but it was still nice of him to say that.

Dan and Steve with his new shirt

Crazy Steve

Nice picture. Dan, Marlo, me, Ed, Steve and Bill.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Post

Hello hello hello. Ok I know some of you have been waiting to see pictures. I'll try to satisfy those inquisitive eyes now. Its very hard to do a proper blog post because the place where I live has no internet access and the only way for me to do it is to blog at work, which is not very easy, as you can imagine.

So here goes! I'll try to make it have less words and more pictures. Life here is such that you spend your time talking to people, drinking beer around campfires, working or playing, so that doesn't leave much time for computers...

Anchorage

Outside Ted Stevens International Airport

Picture taken from outside Spenard Hostel, which my boss also owns

Denali Mountain Morning Hostel

View from outside my camper

Those cabins you see on the right are part of the hostel. Campfires, smores and beer by the creek!

Carlo Creek was initally dry and frozen

My humble abode, affectionately called "the Palace". I can hear the pitter patter of raindrops right above my head when it rains.

Horse Riding

Dave, Steve and I went horse riding on my first day off. Everyone said you'd be sore after the first time but luckily an Israeli girl who has 5 years of horse-riding experience taught me the right posture beforehand so I didn't suffer any ill effects at all. Horse riding works the back and legs muscles!

Dave the sweetheart and Steve the crazy pirate

Me and Dave

Beautiful horse, not the one I rode :(

Actual pictures of me on the horse will have to come later because they're on Steve's camera.

Fairbanks trip

As I might have mentioned earlier, I went to Fairbanks, a city 2 hours drive north, on my second and third off-days with an English guy, Ed, and a German guy, Sandor. Going somewhere with two ang mohs, hot springs, no less, might sound risky, but a Japanese girl that had been travelling with them for a while told me they were really good people so I was more reassured. It was fun!

First stop was lunch at a Chinese restaurant that was run by some Hongkongers who had migrated to Alaska. Spoke to them in Cantonese, it was really nice. Food wasn't that good actually, but they were very hospitable. Free tea, chinese cookies, hot chocolate, Coke refills etc.

Very cute baby at the Chinese restaurant. He's called Caleb, and his older brother is called Aidan. Love that name...

Chena Hot Springs

Sandor, or as we call him, Mr Ritter, met his German friend who joined us for the hot springs. I didn't have a swimsuit so they gave me 15 mins to buy one at the store. Best! Some more I couldn't fit into the adult sizes (too big) so I was shuttling about the adult, junior and kids departments. -_-" Sorry, no swimsuit pictures though English guy really looked cute in them. He wore the England shorts and momentarily looked like Michael Owen :p

Mr Ritter and Ed

Ed, Leo (the other German) and me

Leo being himself = a daft bugger who chases skirts and alcohol

Here's the pug from the hostel we stayed at. I think its cute but Ed thought it was just ugly.

Next stop was Pioneer Park, termed by Lonely Planet as "Fairbanks' guilty pleasure". Basically a really crappy place that would only amuse kids 5 and under. See bored faces for proof.

Looks promising!

...but its not.

University of Alaska, Fairbanks Museum of the North

This was the next stop. Just a modern-looking museum. I don't mind museums but am not the kind to read everything in detail.

Cool-looking art called Raven: In the Pink by James Schoppert

Ed, Mr Ritter and me with real stuffed bear. Imagine facing that thing in real life. Not fun.

Dedicated to Lynn Koh!

Denny's

Dinner was here and Ed stuffed his face. Not a pretty sight to watch. He called it the Denny's principle. PS. this Denny's is the Northernmost Denny's in the world.

Breakfast for dinner. Denny's serves breakfast all day long. It was good.

Stuffed Ed and me

Random shots

From road, just outside hostel

Baked blueberry muffins

Cute kid, forgot name

Second Fairbanks trip

Went to Fairbanks with Steve, Peiya and Ed again. Basically did nothing much, let Steve visit the bank, we went to Chena River and at Peiya's insistence we went to Pioneer Park. Never thought I'd set foot in that place again. I was wrong... haha.