It felt good to put cares aside for a weekend: I was supplied with food and gas, gotten mail, checked in on friends and family and the house. There was really nothing else I could do but get back to enjoying traveling.
 |
| Bluffs above Eagle on the Yukon River |
Taking a breather
 |
| Morning fog (again) |
What was the use of sightseeing when you cannot see anything?
So, when in doubt, draw!
It has been quite awhile since I've been able to draw anything: between worry over the house and needing to get going, there just hasn't been time to sit and concentrate on art.
 |
| In progress fireweed drawing |
As with all colored pencil drawings, it took a long time, but it was such fun to work with bright colors: pink, magenta, purple, even flashes of peach and orange.
I was in heaven!
The flowers were simple enough that this was a good project. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. I'm gaining confidence in drawing shapes, applying color and noticing shading.
 |
| Finished fireweed drawing |
After finishing (yaay! I really finished a drawing!), the rain was stopping, and before setting out again, I needed to do some housekeeping. The kayak hadn't been off the top of the car since the downpours near Swan Lake in Alberta, and I was afraid that the recent rains had started to fill it up again. I really did not want to drive on any more rough roads with a heavy kayak full of water!
So I bit the bullet, and undid all of the straps and eased the boat off the top of the car. I was delighted to find that there was only maybe one or two gallons in the bottom of the boat. This is outstanding, considering the amount of water that has come down from the sky in the past weeks!
I dumped the water out, and used the excellent chamois given to me by the "Clean, Dry Your Boat" campaign in Montana. It worked great!
The weather was even improving, and the road drying out. Things were looking up!
 |
| Fireweed is going to seed |
I actually love driving at this hour.
You see more animals at dawn and dusk; the light (if it's sunny) is fantastic — there is a golden glow, the shadows are long with high contrast, and the sun hits flowers and hills at a unique, low angle.
This is special: no amount of post-processing will create this on a photograph.
And it was really nice not to have to worry about traffic. I don't think a single car passed me in either direction that night!
The interesting thing about this drive out to Eagle was that the landscape was actually quite reminiscent of coastal California.
 |
| High above the Forty-Mile country; I could finally see mountains! |
The differences are that here in Alaska, it's not just a mountain range (like the Santa Cruz mountains, for instance). The mountains go on forever, it seems. Instead of mountain upon mountain, there is range upon range of mountains.
The immensity is humbling and inspiring all at once.
 |
| Moose and babies |
Moose!
It was a good thing I was driving slowly. Animals do become more active at dusk, and here dusk starts around 10pm and goes until midnight.One does not want to hit a large animal at any speed out here, miles from anywhere!
I came around a curve, and there was a moose cow with two calves! For all their ungainliness, they were so cute! Their spindly little legs make them look like they are walking on stilts. They were spooked, but they did stay on the road just long enough for me to get a few pictures.
 |
| Wild blueberries! |
For the record, I also have seen quite a number of ptarmigan and chicks, but they are faster (and smaller) than the moose, so I don't have good pictures of them.
Yet.
I stopped overnight at a gravel pit by the side of the road. In the morning, when I got up and explored a bit, I found blueberries everywhere. I ate my fill, and didn't even make a dent. These were really juicy, and just a little bit tart. Great with morning cereal!
There were also moose tracks in the mud of the pit; I was glad I'd seen them the night before.
Eagle, AK
 |
| Church at Eagle |
It turned out to be a really nice day: blue sky, crisp weather. I got a pretty early start, and I was glad I did, because just as I pulled into Eagle, two big motorhomes were leaving. There are a couple of narrow sections, and I was very glad not to have had to deal with them on the road.
Eagle is a VERY small town. It was the first city in the interior of Alaska to be incorporated in 1901 (Dawson City is in Yukon Territory, Canada), and like Dawson City, experienced a boom with the discovery of gold, and then bust when the gold played out. There were just 86 permanent residents in 2010.
 |
| Historic Eagle courthouse |
There is a school, gas station ($5/gallon), hotel/cafe/grocery, post office, church, and city hall, built in 1901 as a one-room cabin. There is also a courthouse building, but it is now used as a museum. Being Sunday, it wasn't open, but I peeked in the windows. I was just a little too late for the 9am daily tour.
I stopped by the visitor center to get my national parks passport stamped, and spent probably almost an hour talking with Randy, the ranger there. I get the feeling that not a lot of people come out to Eagle, as he was very happy to answer all of my questions, and talk about his life, too.
 |
| Strawberry blite |
• "Where are the peregrine falcons?" Not nesting on the bluffs anymore; due to a recent fire, they've abandoned their traditional nest and gone around the other side of the bluff so they can't be seen.
• "Where are the eagles?" Not nesting on the bluffs anymore, either. They do occasionally come in if there is carrion on the islands; he said he's seen as many as five pecking away at a carcass, or dead fish.
• "What is this weird plant?" Strawberry blite; Randy claims the red "fruits" are edible and taste vaguely of strawberry and almost fall apart in your hand. Says he ate a lot of them as a kid. (These weren't ripe, they were too hard.)
• "What is this flower?" Flower of Parnassus
• "How do canoeists get back after they've finished a trip?" It's complicated. Very complicated. There are some companies that will drop-off and pick up canoes and people, but... it can involve cars and planes and boats.
• Fall hunting: most hunters come into Circle by car or plane, boat up to Eagle, shoot their animal and boat it downriver back to Circle. Most hunters don't go far from roads or rivers (or airstrips), because of the issue of getting the meat out.
 |
| Eagle City Hall sign |
• Horses aren't used here because of the price of feed. The forage here isn't good for them; there's no nutritive value in "red grass" one of the prevalent grasses here. (It's going to seed now, and is beautiful.)
• Randy had been born in Fairbanks, but his family left for New York when he was young. He grew up there and worked on his family's dairy farm, and went to college, but never finished (but he's never found that to be a hindrance). He's been in every state of the union except Hawaii, and is happy to be back in Alaska. Like many people, his job is seasonal. This works for many who prefer the flexibility of being able to go different places in summer and winter.
• I'll probably remember more, but I think we covered everything from Athabascan crafts to zoology!
• I ended up buying a book on boreal plants... so many things here are different: mosses, lichens, flowers, trees. The book has some information on medicinal and traditional uses, too, which I really like. I'm getting better after so many weeks up here. I've gone from looking at the plants and not knowing anything, to being able to name many, although I don't know the grasses at all.
I could have gone to Fort Egbert, but it was so pleasant, and it looked like the rain was going to hold off for a bit, there were no (few) mosquitoes, and I decided I wanted to try out the watercolors (Inktense blocks). It was a steep learning curve, but the piece actually turned out better than expected, and I can't wait to try another one!
I finally left Eagle around 8pm, deciding that would be late enough that I wouldn't encounter too much traffic on the road. I found a different place to stay, high up (not in the trees or a canyon), and was treated to an impressive sunset.
It really had been a perfect weekend!
 |
| Midnight sunset above the Forty-Mile River |
No comments:
Post a Comment