Ester Dome & Creamer's Field

 

 
Another day while the men were away fishing, Heather, Susan, and I drove to the top of a hill, the Ester Dome, which is capped by the satellite dishes and aerials serving Fairbanks. It was stunning, and made real the knowledge of how vast yet how unpopulated Alaska is.
 

 

 New Zealand has an area of 268680 km2 (103737 square miles) while Alaska's area is 1518800 km2 (586412square miles) yet New Zealand's population is around 4.4 million and Alaska's is about 710,000.

We then went on to Creamer's Field for a walk through the Migratory Waterfowl Wildlife Refuge. Originally it was a dairy farm,but competition from the lower 48 states forced it out of business in the 1960's.

Sand Hill Cranes

Ice  forming in the ground in winter, then melting, makes the ground less than supportive! Trees fall, houses sag in the middle - if foundations aren't built correctly, permafrost melts from the warmth of the houses - which don't have to have building permits etc. (Sadly, the saggy house photos were amongst those I accidentally deleted.)

Native wild roses

 native wild iris

Susan and I also visited the local Farmer's market where we met up with Rebecca, whose husband Ray was away fishing with Steve and Mac.

Rebecca and Cally (photo by Susan)

Abandoned Gold Mine

 Alaska is a pretty new place in terms of colonisation. The big thrust of Europeans came with the gold rush, which happened at the same time as New Zealand's gold rush: in both cases people came from California when numbers meant the claims there were all taken. Their historic places are the same age as ours.

 

 Heather and I didn't go to the tourist gold mine (I can do that in New Zealand if I want) and instead went exploring to find an abandoned mine some one had told her about. It's a huge, rusting dredge, abandoned to rot. In one way it is a blot on the landscape, but it also made me hope that mankind will one day abandon all such foolish enterprises: gold, in those days was purely about money and adornment - it had no real use.

  

 It also gave me hope to see how hard nature works to slowly recover land exploited by man.

 

UAF Large Animal Research Station

While the men were gone and Susan was at work, I spent some time with Heather doing things she hadn't done before either. Although Fairbanks is a small city, it has a large university which is involved with a lot of research in areas of concern to Alaska. The Large Animal Research Station studies musk oxen and caribou / reindeer. These are the same species, so can interbreed - the difference is that caribou are the wild 'version', whereas reindeer is the term used for the domesticated version. We (a large group of visitors) were given an informative talk by a staff member.

Musk oxen are not actually oxen, and are, in fact, more closely related to sheep and goats. They have been around for a long time - they were contemporaries of the woolly mammoth. As with most animals, the babies are very cute.

 The caribou were looking a bit tatty as they were loosing their winter coats. They are unusual in that both males and females grow antlers.

Mac's Fishing Trip

The plan was to go out for two days and a night on a fishing boat, fishing mainly for Halibut. That got reduced to one day, and on a different boat from the one Steve usually goes on, which was out of action. They didn't catch many fish, and the trip was not very comfortable, but a great experience nonetheless. While Mac was having a turn driving on the way home, he had to break for a grizzly bear that stepped out in front of the car, reared up and then ran away - unfortunately no photo of that.

The trip to down to Valdez - it's a very beautiful country:

On the boat:

Back on shore:

Steve and Ray:

Then it was off to Chitna, where they set Ray's fish wheel in action before sleeping. In the morning they harvested the salmon from the wheel before heading home.