If anyone is interested, here are a few pix I took while in Alaska at the Iditarod. Lotsa snow and 12 below.

Under the Finish Line's Burled Arch.


Largest Gold Pan in Alaska


Don't sit still, or you will be snowed in!


Playing Golf on the frozen Bering Sea!


One for Dog-A-Potomus, J.C., Chaos and Poncho
!

BRRRRR!

Way cold..I mean cool.

I would have loved to have been there.

[melodic] Watch out where the Huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow . . .

OK, I'm punchy after a 10 hour drive, I'll admit it. Way kewl on the visit to Alaska. Am majorly jealous.

See ya on the hunt!

Very nice, photos with GPS in hand too! I bet that was interesting looking at the lattitudes up there. Thanks for the sled dogs shot. That is pretty funny.

Love the pictures. I love the hat even more!

[This message was edited by Slayerette on March 19, 2003 at 01:11 PM.]

Welcome back.

Glad to see there was snow there. I know that was a concern for the race. I love that Dog Sled Parking Only sign!

~erik~

I was pretty much raised in Anchorage, AK and saw a lot of the starts but never got to the other end to see the finish. Great photos, love the parking sign. If anybody is interested, I have many photos of the Anchorage area, current and very old at www.goughfamily.com. See "Vacations" headings for current stuff and at the very bottom of the home page, see "Old and Very Old Photos" for some 40's shots.

Gene

Now I'm REALLY interested in this thread.

I just found out -- yesterday -- that I'm being dispatched to Alaska to commission a project ... I will be there for a week or so starting Monday 3/25. Having NEVER been to an arctic climate before, I'm curious as to what I'm in for. Any suggestions? Things that I'm going to need to bring along, things I might encounter, etc.?

I am going to have to fly into Anchorage, rent a robust, snow-friendly vehicle of some kind, and drive about 3 hours on the Glenn highway to a little hamlet called Glennallen...

--
Scott Johnson (ScottJ)

Great drive. Perhaps a bit more fun in May or June but you might be surprised. At 12:30 PM Anchorage time it was 25 F with unlimited visibility.

http://www.weather.com/weather/local/USAK0012?par=Trans&site=magnet&promo=english&code=170277

You could also contact some cachers up there in the Anchorage area.

http://www.geocaching.com/local/default.aspx?state_id=2&submit2=GO

Gene

Just posted a web page with all of my Alaska Idit photos for my family to see. If anyone is interested, here is the link:
http://www.alltel.net/~tbone/NOME2003/FrameSet.htm
Most are of family members (who really wants to see those?), but there are some that shows the scenery and the Idit finish in Nome.
Thre are about 100 pix and it takes a few minutes to load (frames), but there they are. Some of them will be posted to the CoolDreams Racing website, but I haven't sorted them yet.
phat

Where's my FUNKY hat?

Great idea. I will finish going through your photos as soon as I post this. Seeing all that snow made me think again about wanting to go home to finish my days. Brrrr. Here is a link to my trip home in 98, there are linkages to nine days of photos. On the page linked to here you can see a now and a then (1945) shot of where I lived when we first got to Alaska. The fourth from the bottom thumbnail.

http://www.goughfamily.com/photo/alaska1998/$alaska_day1n2.htm

Gene

I made a post here yesterday, but apparently it didn't take. I went to your site, Shady, and thoroughly enjoyed the pix. Especially liked the Visitor Center with the grass growing on it and the Portage Glacier pix. That's one thing I haven't gotten to see yet. Still have to explore your site further.
CLASS OF '52!? Oh my - I wasn't born until '53.

Well, I made it to Glennallen, mostly intact. Surprisingly, it's not really cold here ... high yesterday was 33, low 15, and very clear. The drive from Anchorage to Glennallen took 5 hours and was breathtaking ... it would have been three hours, but I had to stop every five minutes to take pictures! I also found my first benchmark, totally by accident, along the Glenn highway. (Big pink letters BM spray-painted on a rock, with an arrow pointing to the disk -- pretty obvious!)

I'm looking out the window at the Wrangell mountains right now and thanking God I'm here! What a beautiful place. I may not come home.

--
Scott Johnson (ScottJ)

ScottJ - ya got any pix to share?
Would love to see some from a different area of Alaska I have visited. And I know what you mean - it'll be hard to come back.

Scott,
Sounds like your having a fantastic time. Hope you can post some photos after you get back. Sure is making me homesick!

Gene

Phat.Bak, you do understand that us old %@$%# are not old inside of our bodies. The mind thinks it is a kid still, just that the body doesn't always cooperate.

Gene

Still here!

I have taken about 150 pictures so far. I'm on a deathly slow connection so most will have to wait until I get back, but here are a few.


Apparently, the workers who built the Alaska Railroad never got the message about not putting food in caches. This is near the historic section house at Potter, just southeast of Anchorage.


Cook Inlet splits near Anchorage into two "forks", the northern one called Knik Arm and the southern one called Turnagain Arm. This photo was taken from alongside the Alaska Railroad tracks near Potter, looking south across Turnagain Arm.


This is the business end of Matanuska Glacier. Located about 110 miles northeast of Anchorage, it's about 4 miles wide at the terminus, and drops almost 14,000 feet in about 27 miles. Unfortunately, the snow covering dulls the effect of the bright blue ice, and the glacial moraine hides the terminus pretty well ... that's what happens when a glacier doesn't have a body of water to drop its rocks and debris into. The glacier moves about 1 foot per day, and from where I stood to take this picture, I could hear the ice crack and groan.



This is my "Postcard Shot", taken alongside the Glenn Highway near Palmer.



This beast slithers silently through the town I'm in, Glennallen, on its way to the port of Valdez about 150 miles south of here. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs above ground here because the ground is a permanently frozen muck called permafrost. If the pipeline were buried, the warm oil would melt the permafrost and the pipeline would sink! The little "finned" devices on top of the support posts are there to radiate heat and chill down the support posts, so THEY don't melt the permafrost. There's a sign nearby that warns against climbing on the pipeline. For scale, its diameter is a little over four feet.

I'll post some more as I get time, and as connections permit.

Scott

--
Scott Johnson (ScottJ)

ScottJ
These are some really good pix. Can't wait to see them all. I even downloaded the Glacier pix and am using it for my background desktop pix.
Once you get to Alaska, you fall in love with it. Even tho I just got back from there, I miss the fantastic scenery alrady.

Sure looks like you are having a fantastic time. Keep the photos coming!

Gene