Forest Fair

Forest Fair.  So this is a new concept to me.  Shortly after landing in Alaska, Girdwood residents Sharon and Dave took me on a tour of their home town.  Sharon was already looking forward to the annual Forest Fair.  "What's that?" I asked.  She explained that it's a weekend affair, a bit of an Alaska Lollapalooza if you will, with hippies, in the woods, and sometimes ice cream eating bears and mushroom eating humans, bound to be an interesting mix.

A few months passed, and then it was time...Forest Fair, 2015...taking place 4th of July weekend.

photo by Sharon Vernon

Forest Fair is a gathering.  There are little tents everywhere, and people come to sell their crafts.  There are food tents....even a Canadian Food tent, although I am not sure how Canadian corn fritters are.  I went with good old American comfort food...mac and cheese.  They gave me two choices "Small, or large, but only large comes with the goodness."  "Goodness?" I asked.  "Yeah, you don't get goodness with the small."  So I went with the goodness, assuming it would be a layer of baked cheese.  Turns out goodness in America means topped with a sliced hot dog and handful of crushed potato chips.  Oh well...when in Rome....

Forest Fair is also about music.  There are several stages, the main one has music playing all day and late into the evening.  The smaller stages had a lot of hula hooping, or is it hula hoopery, and other shenanignas going oh.  There was good music.  Local bands, travelling bands, but no big rockstars...the mainstream is taboo at Forest Fair, so they aren't flying in trendy headliners...but again I say there was some darn good music.

Sharon volunteers as a DJ at the Girdwood Radio Station,  88.9 Keul FM is the the local bandwidth, and they play everything from bluegrass to death metal...tune in if you are near Girdwood while travelling on the Seward Highway.

88.9 Keul FM, Girdwood's Station -- photo by Sharon Vernon

When my coworkers asked about my weekend plans, I said I was going to hippiefest, since Sharon said Girdwood is a hippie town.  I was mostly kidding.  But...it really is kind of a hippie fest.  There was tie dye and bright colors, some good old hippie mantras like this one on the sign below

photo by Sharon Vernon

And some good old hippie ideals like this one!  In the spirit of sharing and and hippie neighbourliness, Sharon handed me her fancy camera, since I left mine in the car when I saw it was going to be raining all day.

Photo by Sharon Vernon

Sharon also shared most of the photos for the blog today....the signs are all not only her camera, but her eye...capturing the ideals of Forest Fair Folk.  Speaking of the Forest Fair Folk, now THAT's a story for another day.  Hopefully tomorrow

Water from a Stone

The boat captain had eagle eyes.  He spotted a newborn seal pup and its mom from several hundred feet off shore.  I had to use zoom to even find them on the rocks.  He took caution to quiet the engine and not approach any closer but quietly go past out of respect for this precious little baby.  Apparently an approach could cause the mom to abandon the baby, so I was happy to take long distance shots once I trained my eye to which specks on the shore that they were.

The babies, er pups, are funny looking little things!  This little pup was quite happy to rub noses with mom, who even though we tried to float by quietly had noted our presence and  rolled/wobbled a little closer to her baby.

Here we see seal snuggling.  I haven't seen many seals, and to be honest I didn't know harbour seals were spotted.  I guess i thought leopard seals would be the spotted seals...so I learned something new on my adventure!

Anyway, took a few snapshots of these neat little creatures on the home stretch back to Seward.  The baby was quite young.  Apparently they will be weaned after about 6 weeks, and can swim and dive at birth....so was nice to see them sunning themselves in the spring light.

I think mom may have been sending us the evil eye here.

 And here she is sure we are finally floating out of range...glad we didn't disturb them much.

After that it there was enough time to enjoy a fresh from the oven warm chocolate chip cookie that the crew had prepared for us, and round a few more bends getting back to Seward.

Back in town we went for an excellent meal at Ray's Waterfront.  Alaska salmon and Alaska King Crab legs...absolutely delicious!  We finished it off with an ice cream cone from across the road, like typical tourists, and enjoyed an early evening drive back to Anchorage.

Turnagain Arm was calm and relaxed, and in honor of a rare Thursday off work, so was I!

There was also time to do something else I had been meaning to do...get a nice, cool, refreshing drink of ultra filtered water...purified by the rock itself.  Right along the road, there is a little pipe that comes through the rock...water from spring melt high up in the mountains makes its way here, and seeps throught the porous rocks, popping out right here.  I often see people filling jugs of water...so decided to pull over, run across the road, and try a mug of water.  Excuse my rather dishevelled experience...after a long day of wildlife, glaciers, and wind on the boat deck, well...this is the end result.  But that water was taaaaaasty!  Note the moose mug...I am shamelessly still a tourist-resident and buying all this bear moose and wolf these days.

And that was the end of a great day in Seward :)  Til next time...

No Papparazzi!

Well, the blog has fallen terribly behind.  And so on this lovely July Sunday listening the the latest Seether album while I wait for some more furniture delivery here in Alaska, I will pick up where I left off...aboard the Orca Voyageur, near Seward Alaska...back in May.  We were on the homeward stretch, and a keen eye picked out the sunbathing sea lions.  I realized the abundance of gulls on a rock predicted the presence of lazy napping lions.

I was sure these ones were dead, or gored, due to the reddish brown patches that looked like blood...but that's just what a wet sea lion looks like I guess.

Even if we hadn't seen all of these animals, the scenery would have been worth the cruise!

We came upon one sea lion who had a whole rock to himself.  But it turns out he was a bit camera shy.  Even though we were several hundred feet away, he stood up as soon as our boat hit that range.

He gave us a long sideways look of disdain...

....turned his little nose up at us...

...then picked up his flippers and started running...

I was kind of impressed...pretty sure he went up those rocks faster than I could.

He gave us one more little look....

...positioned himself...

...and then took the high dive!  No sliding into the water gently from the bottom for this little guy.  A sea lion after my own heart...

Bye little guy!  And then he swam around the corner and joined his friends on another rock.  And that was the end of my sea lion viewing for the day.

Just Lion Around

And so we had passed the half way point of our cruise.  The glacier had unleased a bit of fury, and it was time to head for home.  I got to see Humpback Whales, flying Orca's, and a glacier, plus some puffins that were out of lens range.  As we started to motor away from the glacier, we even saw a mountain goat just hanging out by the glacier.

 

We passed a few more whales, who even took the time to wave goodbye.

We had a few hours to cruise to bet back to Seward. I sat on the upper deck, while most of the saner souls stayed inside where it was warmer, and looked back on my day, quite literally.



The closer we got to the mainland and Seward, the more green the little rocky outcrops got.  We finally got a hint of blue sky too.

The upper deck...a little chilly in this day so everyone was crammed inside.

I thought this rock was really neat, the stark white face of it with the bright green trees covering half of it, while leaving the other side barren.  Well, almost barren.

Closer observation that instead of a little copse of trees, there was a little copse of sea lions sunning themselves!

These are the first sea lions I have seen outside of an aquarium.  I was a little nervous because some of them looked a little, um, dead.  The captain said that they often fight, bloodying themselves, and I thought a few of them looked like fat little blood soaked murder victims.  But really, their thick fur takes on the darker color when wet...so some were just a little less sundried than the others.

Sea lions are actually a type of fur seal.  If left alone and not brought to an early demise by humans, orcas, bears, or boat propellers, they will live 20-30 years in the wild.  So this little group is enjoying just another start of summer in Alaska...except the baby...if you look closely you will see a little pup.

I suspect this is the mama...she was biggest and barking orders.

And in this shot the little baby lets out a little cry to let her know where he is hanging out...which is on top of another sea lion.

A bit further away, left alone, appeared yet another fat, possibly dead motionless sea lion, belly exposed to the sun.  I swear I saw it smile just a little as we went by, and vowed to spend at least part of my summer the same way...happily sun tanning and remaining intentionally oblivious to the chaos of the herd.  Smart little fella!

Aialik Glacier

The next stop on the cruise was to go see some glaciers.  This is the sure thing of the cruise, if you don't see the Humpback Whales or the Orca's like we did, the glaciers have been a constant for longer than the cruises have been running, and despite their retreat, the are still likely to hang around for another couple of decades.  The glacier we visited was the Aialik Glacier, not surprisingly it is located in Aialik Bay.

One of the cool things about Alaska is all of the names.  Kenai, Knik, Eklutna, Aialik.  There are a number of dialects that the indigenous people of Alaska use.  Inupiaq.  Alutiiq.  Yupik.  Aleut. Tlingit.  Eyak.  Athabaskan.  Haida.  Tsimsihan.  And that's only if I have it right...I am sure there are others, and in some cases the spelling of those listed may not be traditional.  As someone who loves words...these are beautiful words.  I love the sound of Eklutna, and Aialik.  I wanted to know the meaning, but these are dying languages.  A google search will not tell me what Aialik means.  Finding out will have to go on my to do list.  If the words are Inupiaq there are roughly 8,000 people left who speak the language.  If it comes from Tlingit, my odds drop considerably as there are only 500 people estimated to speak the language today.  What a shame it would be to lose the meaning of these words.  If I find out, you can be sure I will spread the news.  (Update from a reader, Joseph Peterson  " On the Kenai Fjords tour last week, our Captain, Chris, told us that Aialik means something along the lines of "dangerous, fearful, place to be respected." He said that no matter what is happening on either side, Aialik point will have rougher seas as you turn the corner."  Thank you Joseph for sharing that!)

To the left of the larger Aialik Glacier sits another glacier.  One might wonder how old these glaciers are.  Again, this is not common fodder on the internet.  I am sure that samples exist in the geological ice bank (which is located in Denver, Colorado if you are interested), and those samples are likely dated.  But the tours do not state how old this ice is.  They know it was here, and much more far reaching as far back as the 1600's.  But that is all I can find documented.  It must be ancient.  I did find that the Antarctic Ice Sheet dates back 40 Million Years.  So this is somewhere between 400 and 40,000 years old.  They really need a better brochure with more details!

As a size perspective, here are some of the heads that were in my way as I tried to photograph the glacier.  We are several hundred feet away from the base...so basically, it's pretty big.

 A happily headless shot of the Aialik Glacier.  It was really hard to bring out the shade of blue that you could see in the deeper crevices where the ice is more compressed.

Not exactly Titanic, but there were loads of mini icebergs surrounding the boat.  They fished one out so we could feel glacial ice.  Pretty much like an ice cube but bigger...but there is something to be said for having an authentic experience so it was a little more special than just an ice cube.

We did get to experience that fabulous moment where the glacier "calves."  Usually the warmer water erodes the base of the glacier below the surface of the water.  The weight of the overhanging structure eventually reaches a point where gravity take over and it shears off the face of the glacier.  You hear a loud crack and a roar as some of the ice gives way and rushes down the front of the glacier.  The experience is captured perfectly below, where you can imagine what it looks like if that head were anywhere but directly in front of me.  Have I ever mentioned that I hate crowds?  And yes, it really was cold enough to mittens and toques in May at the Glaciers...that is eons of cold you are standing in front of.

Once all the action was over, the heads went inside where it was warm and I got a couple of nice, quiet, sadly uneventful pictures of the glaciers before we left.

So this was the halfway point of our journey.  And now it was time to retreat from the retreating glacier, and return to Seward.