Maximum photos minimum waffle . So breathe easy and take in the sights……

Moose Boy gone wild.

Reindeer 4X100 metre relay at the Alaskan Olympics

Home Delivery Table. Awesome!

The one on the left is the real stuffed bear.

The Alaskan Stature of Liberty

Bec’s Favorite

Reindeer Rodeo

Moving House

Facial Mask.

I’ve been everywhere man, breath the Alaskan air man, I’ve been everywhere. I’ve been to ………………….

Hey Yeowie! (ex. partner Bill Yeo)

Rudolph’s Last Ride

The Last Round Up in the Last Frontier

Mt. McKinley 1919 by Sydney Lawrence

Tusk ,Tusk.

No Aurora tonight, too cloudy.

The Girls are Back, the Girls are Back in Town.

You would think that since the Boston Tea Party and the substitution of Coffee for traditional English tea as the drink of choice, that America would have nailed the coffee business.

Try to order a flat white and the barista (for want of a better word) will more than likely give you a look of total confusion and ask….”is that something like a Latte”.

 So you order your Latte and discover that it is possible to produce a coffee based drink that not only has a head like a glass of beer but also tastes remarkably like one.

 But perhaps I’m too harsh this was in Seattle after all, not New York or Boston where coffee I am assured has reached a higher level of evolution. Judging from the Starbucks ads we now need the “Pumpkin Spice Infusion Latte on Soy” to be able to face the trials of the day.

God help me, I’m a simple soul I just want a coffee.

 Then again I would like a nice Arabica extracted just right with proper milk not too hot and served in a glass with a napkin. I am perhaps becoming a “coffee snob”.

It could be worse. I could go to a Bar and order a glass of Cabernet and they might bring it out in a whisky glass…. Oh wait they did that already. Does that mean I’m a “wine snob” as well?

Fancy Seattle Underground Coffee Machine Display. From Seattle’s early coffee drinking era.

The Seattle Underground was a product of the 1860’s and the rapid development of the United States associated with the push to develop the west and the Yukon gold rush.

Seattle Above Ground seems to be the product of the 1960’s. The Seattle Space Needle, the Monorail, pictures of Elvis and JFK at the Armoury (part of the 1962 World Fair site) add to that feeling. That’s not a bad thing in fact Seattle is a great city full of interesting things to do.

The EMP museum, currently running a special exhibit on Jimi Hendrix (another product of the 60’s) was great. Other exhibits including the history of Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies were equally fascinating.

Jimi Live

The Guitar Tree

Space Armaments

Full Wooden Dalek

Captain James T Kirk’s Chair

Monorail and Commuter

Our dining spot for the evening. Read the neon.

The Chihuly Glass Sculpture gardens next to the space needle were special and one could purchase scaled down versions of the art on display for as little as $6500 for a dinner plate sized version.

The Space Needle through the glass.

The Glass Ceiling

Defies Description

Reflective ball.

Reflective ball 2.

The Flame Garden.

The Space Needle 2

Pike St. Market the oldest continually running Community Market in the USA was also great with everything from fishmongers to a steam-powered microbrewery.

Seattle Backblocks

Fishmonger

Who Knows?

Previous Sled Dog Trader

Steam Brewery

It sometimes rains in Seattle

My Favourite Seattle story is the guy who made a fortune out of the sled dog business. During the gold rush years in Alaska sled dogs could not be had at any price. Our man, who had the finest and best-trained sled dogs in Seattle, would sell his dogs to the highest bidder and because he cared about them so much he would always go to the dock to watch them sail off to Alaska. Once the ship was far enough off shore not to turn back but not too far for the dogs to swim he would just whistle the dogs up and they would jump over the side and swim back for lunch. The next day, and the day after, and the day after…………. they were back on the market.

25-28 September 2014

Arrived at luxury resort type hotel wilderness lodge at 15.30 hours (3.30 pm) a balmy 38 degrees F. the hottest part of the day.

Booked in, paid money, saw Reindeer, had alcohol. Not necessarily in that order.

Tonight with the clear skies and with a bit of luck we may see the Northern Lights. We just need to stay awake long enough. If not, well, we have another 2 nights and there’s always the drinking.

10 pm just returned from long soak in springs totally exhausted from doing nothing. As Rob the Council Worker (sorry Rob, employee) would say, “I’m just to tired to move”.

No sign of Aurora yet but best viewing, if it’s on, is around two to three in he morning…. could be a long night.

The Aurora made a brief appearance about 23.30 and photos are attached.

Day 2

Mush You Huskies

Up at the crack of lunchtime for brunch.

Not much to do until the next threat of the Northern Lights so it was a quick trot to Bear Paw Butte. Bear Paw Butte is not shaped like a bear paw, there are just lots of bear paw prints in the snow. As a result of afore-mentioned prints it took considerably less time for the return journey.

Later in the day it was the “Sled Dog Experience”. Had James stayed any longer the handlers would have thrown a harness on him.

Black Dog

White Dog

Mush Dogs

Is it cold in Alaska? We left swimming clothes on the veranda last night today we had cloth Frisbees.

More Aurora

Day 3

The Nature Trail, Charley Dome Trail and even more Aurora.

The Nature Trail, from what I see is so-called because this is where the owners of the resort have decided to tear nature to bits with a 30 tonne excavator, quarry for rock and build ski trails. This is mining for the new gold rush. Tourists.

The Charley Dome Trail Is a “moderate to strenuous” hike up a ski trail to a 360-degree view of the Alaskan wilderness. Here you can play in the snow, commune with nature, look in awe at the majesty of your surrounds, dine in one of the large demountable yurts (if you’re on an organised tour) and wizz into an eco-friendly plastic bucket. Bec very sensibly decided to stay at the resort and do her washing.

Snowball Fight

Snowball Fight 2

Alaska!

Track to the Top

Under the Aurora

Blah Blah Blah

Joanna Lumley.. Eat your Heart out!

Day 4

Perhaps I have painted a less than glamorous picture of Chena Springs.

Well it is less than glamorous. It’s rough around the edges and a little unsympathetic to the wilderness in which it resides. But hey, this is Alaska, The Golden Heart, The Last Frontier and we all have to make a dollar. To their great credit the owners have embarked on a series of ecofriendly initiatives making use of the hot springs, recycling, use of alternate energy sources and even growing their own produce in green houses. My general feeling is that Chena is evolving and in a few years this could be a model resort.

Yup

Thursday 25 September 2014

Farewell to Seattle and Puget Sound we’re off to seek (or spend) a fortune in Alaska.

Currently flying over Canada at some ridiculous height. I don’t know why the pilot tells you how high you are… anything above a couple of metres your pretty much going to die if the plane decides to no longer defy gravity. Maybe the higher you are the closer you are to god. Personally I think the extra height just gives you more time to realise that you have most likely wasted your life. In case you haven’t noticed I hate flying. It’s not that I think I’m going to die I already know that, it’s just that I’m not in a hurry to get there. Yes I know, I have a bigger chance of being killed in a car accident but no one who has never flown ever died in a plane crash, if you follow my logic. I’m ranting; I always rant when I think I’m going to die. I think I’ll finish this after we land… no point continuing until I know we have survived. After all a landing is really a controlled crash right?

Well it’s all good we landed in Anchorage. Next problem is flight to Fairbanks, which is by aeroplane with rotating mechanical bits or propellers, as they were once known. I am certain that these older types or flying machines to use their period nomenclature are even more prone to cataclysmic failure than the one we just got off. If we’re going to crash I just hope it’s on take off that will save another hour of stress.

Well I don’t know what all the fuss was about we landed without incident (obviously) and saw some spectacular scenery from twenty something thousand feet.

Anchorage to Fairbanks is like a, um, kind of, well just look at the pictures….

Seattle, gateway to the Yukon Goldfields, was originally  built on a mud flat and as a result was a pretty hard place to live back in the early days. If you survived the trip west on the Oregon Trail and became one of the towns new residents (of which 98% were male) then you stood a good chance of getting swallowed up in the ooze and slop that always results in new government-funded developments.

A variety of corrupt and misguided government initiatives during Seattle’s early years left the city very vulnerable to fire, and guess what, that’s right, a fire of enormous proportions burnt the city to the ground in less than twelve hours.

This gave the towns founding fathers an opportunity to rebuild the town (this time using stone not timber) and build up the street level to stop the flooding and improve the sewerage drainage system (up until now toilet were on stilts and the sewer pipes were timber box pipes often suspended above  ground level).

The major problem was that it took so long to elevate the streets that the buildings were rebuilt before the streets were raised. This left the buildings below street level, so in true Monty Python fashion they built new buildings on top of the old ones which in turn left a subterranean city of about 5 square blocks. This is Seattle’s Underground.

The tour begins at the hardware Store four metres below street level.

Walkway to nowhere.

Fancy plumbing.

Old generator used for elevator. Again just left behind.

Left behind after the rebuild.

Original plumbing still in use.