Alaska’s Famous Haul Road (Dalton Highway)

We spent a couple days in a Fairbanks RV park before we started up the Dalton Highway (Haul Road) all the way to the Arctic Ocean. That has been our goal for years – to drive the original Alaska Pipeline road clear to the end at Deadhorse, Alaska. It is 414 miles of gravel road. There are no conveniences or grocery stores the whole length of the road. You can get gas, diesel fuel, tire repair, and emergency communications at only two places – one just past the Yukon River crossing at Five Mile Camp, and one at a place called Coldfoot, Alaska. Coldfood is almost exactly half way between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay (Deadhorse), Alaska.

One afternoon, we wandered over to the Alaska Prospectors and Geologists Supply store and found that we could take gold planning lessons for a modest fee. So we did. It was great fun and we spent a lot of “gold” on gold panning gear. We bought gold pans, claim maps, and even insulated gold panning gloves, as the temperature of the water in any of the northern Alaska streams was only slightly above freezing. Quick, can you think of a place in your town where you could buy such things? Well, there were several places in Fairbanks that carry that stuff because recreational as well as serious gold prospecting was ‘in.’ We got a free brochure from the Bureau of Land Management entitled: “Where You Can Pan for Gold and Not Get Shot.” Serious gold prospectors give no quarter to claim jumpers in these parts, even if they can see that you are a sourdough “cheechako” – which is the Eskimo word for “greenhorn.”

After getting ourselves outfitted to pan for gold in the streams and rivers along the way to the Arctic Ocean, we headed north on Highway 2 out of Fairbanks toward a place called Livengood. A little ways from Livengood, we turned onto the official Dalton Highway, or Haul Road.

We were greeted with a couple of warning signs as soon as we turned onto the Haul Road.

From here, it is 414 miles on a gravel road to Prudhoe Bay (Deadhorse) at the end – which is our goal. We had already hit gravel road only 30 miles north of Fairbanks, so at the time we entered the Haul Road, we had been driving on gravel for about 43 miles. Paul got out of the truck, locked the wheel hubs in place, and shifted the truck into four-wheel drive. It stayed in four-wheel drive for the next 1000 miles of our trip.

We passed over the Yukon River near a small restaurant in a place called Five Mile Camp.

Don’t be fooled by the modest appearance. This was the largest restaurant we would see for most of a week, or more. You could get your burger made out of your choice of beef, moose, or Arctic yak. Yum. They were all $8.00 back in the days when a Mc Donald’s hamburger in the ‘lower 48 States’ sold for about 59 cents. Restaurant food was not cheap in northern Alaska.

This was the ‘commuter lot’ next to the restaurant – just on the north side of this very modern bridge over the Yukon River. I bet you thought those were just old junk cars? They were actively being used by people who commuted. It was hard to know or guess where those people would be commuting to or from.

It was still 120 miles up to Coldfoot, the next place that anything resembling commerce or civilization could be found. The bridge over the Yukon River also passed over the famous Alaska Pipeline which is visible in this photo crossing under the right side of the bridge. The Haul Road parallels the pipeline all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Just beneath this bridge along the edge of the river were several Native Alaskan fish traps. They were a handmade wooden contraption that funnels the fish into a large net using the current in the river against the paddle wheel – thus forcing the fish to swim into the net. While it is possible for most anyone to get a special permit to do subsistence hunting and fishing in the Alaska wilds, only the Native Alaskan people are allowed to use a mechanical device such as these fish traps.

I took this photo of one of the fish traps being used while I was standing on the bridge and using a telephoto lens.

Below was our view of the road stretching behind us after crossing the Yukon River and leaving Five Mile Camp.

We slowly made our way up to the official crossing of the Arctic Circle, a milestone in our adventure. There was a tiny little station there staffed by volunteers who would give you an official Arctic Crossing Certificate.

It was there that we decided to camp for the night. It was called the Arctic Circle BLM Wayside. Our bible for the trip, The Milepost, stated that this was a campground with tables, grills, an outhouse, and interpretive displays. I suppose those amenities were there, but we didn’t particularly notice them since we were totally self-contained in our RV and would not be using them anyway. After circling through the wayside’s campground on an ‘unimproved’ road which looked more like just a trail winding through thick underbrush and deep puddles, we found that we were the only people there. We found a semi-level spot deep in some of the underbrush which appeared to be a designated camping space.

On our way in, we rounded a sharp curve in the campground road and encountered a questionably bottomless puddle. With only a split-second to decide if to stop, or power our way on through it, Paul decided to go for it. Besides, there was no way to back up on this trail of a road. With the truck already in four-wheel drive, Paul gunned the truck’s engine, drove into the puddle and out the other side, dragging our trailer on through with us. This happily avoided us having the adventure of using our wench in the rain before dinner.

We had finally found the legendary, enormous Alaskan mosquitoes we had heard so much about. They were all there in that campground. There could have been a horror movie made using these. “Old couple camps in the wilderness only to be ex-sanguinated by giant insects.” Paul tried to do his ‘guy chores’ getting us leveled up and set for the night and came back inside and asked me for one of the head nets that everyone laughed at me for buying for the trip. He couldn’t get that head net on fast enough! It was hard to even imagine the idea of eating outside at our campsite picnic table!

One of his chores was taking a bucket of water out of a nearby puddle and trying to wash the mud off some of our trailer windows so we could see out. Here is a photo of the back of our trailer shortly before we arrived at the Arctic Circle.

The mud had gotten thrown up all over our truck and RV was over 1/4-inch thick. From inside the RV looking out, it appeared that all the windows had been painted black. I told him that any level of cleanliness would do, so long as we could partially see out the windows and identify stuff outside. He did an incredible job using just the available puddle water.

After settling in for the night, Paul got out the little GPS unit that our son, David W, lent us for our trip. It confirmed a satellite reading of our true position and also told us that sunset on this date was at 3:59:59 and sunrise would occur at 3:59:59. This was NOT a typo. The sun doesn’t set there at all on this date at the Arctic Circle. It also confirmed our altitude at 1501 feet.

In the background of this photo you might notice a vase of fresh lilacs? Those are real. Paul bought them for me, as they were just coming into bloom when we left Fairbanks. I love lilacs and in the middle of the wilderness, I had an acrylic crystal vase of fresh ones on the dinner table, wafting their wonderful fragrance into the air. Life was good.

It was pretty spooky being all alone in the underbrush in the Arctic Circle wilderness with no one else around. After about an hour of this ‘aloneness,’ a small motor home with an older couple drove by looking for a campsite. We exchanged friendly waves and they continued circling for about 10 minutes, then came back and set up their camp not more than 10 feet from us. We were glad they made it through the cavernous puddle that failed to snag us on our way around. We guessed they were feeling like this was a pretty wild, lonely place and they would be more comfortable being close to other humans.

Then a camper van with a canoe on top drove through, then came back and set up on the other side of us. Paul remarked that it was a nice feeling being a pioneer leader in the wilderness, and being brave enough to set up all alone in this place in the first place. I replied that it was nice to see that someone else was around to tell our surviving relatives about how the aliens came for us, or that bears ripped open our RV and ate us while we tried to sleep.

The next morning, we continued on toward Coldfoot, the next major stop with any kind of services on the Haul Road. We stopped at a turnout called Gobbler’s Knob to walk the dog and check over our rig. I got back in the truck but Paul seemed to be ‘lingering,’ which is never a good sign. Then I saw him go into the trailer and come back out wearing his coveralls and carrying his toolbox. Uh-oh. Very bad sign. Upon questioning, he showed me where one of our super-duty, off-road Rancho shock absorbers USED to be attached. The other end of it was hanging down by the trailer’s wheel. The spot where it had been welded to the frame was ripped away along with a chunk of the frame. Paul tried to reassure me that it was just a small chunk, and he covered the hole with a piece of duct tape in an attempt to keep too much mud from getting deep in the frame parts. I mentioned that the Titanic started off with just a small tear in its side in the beginning, too. The duct tape patch did not make me feel very confident. After he unbolted the shock from the axle, we noticed that the shock on the other side of the trailer was in the same fatal state. So he unbolted that one, as well, applied more duct tape, and threw both of the shocks into the bed of the truck. He put away his tools, changed back out of the work overalls, and we got back in the truck in silence.

Should we go forward or should we turn back? We were only about 50 miles from Coldfoot, and after checking in The Milepost, we saw that truck repairs were available there, but at what price remained to be seen. Paul said that it was a pretty simple welding job for an experienced welder, so, trusting to dumb luck, we decide to go forward. We were planning on doing some gold panning between the Arctic Circle and Coldfoot at Prospect Creek. This was listed in our BLM gold mining brochure as an active gold mining area where you wouldn’t get shot for recreational panning, as long as you did it within 50 feet of the road. However, we were too distracted over our tenuous infrastructure situation to stop and try it. We decided to pan for gold on our way back down the Haul Road, and maybe find enough gold to pay for our repairs. hahaha.

We pulled into Coldfoot a couple or so hours later.

This place had what passed in the Alaska bush as a ‘thriving truck stop,’ because they had the year-round Alaska Pipeline truck traffic rolling through on a regular basis. Even those big boys needed tires and welding done after traveling on this road. It was the first time we had ever seen a truck stop that shared an active airport runway with its parking lot! After checking our frame situation, we decided it was holding up enough to continue on to Prudhoe Bay (Deadhorse), where there was a much bigger welding service available for the oil company’s equipment and trucks. We were driving pretty slowly anyway, as 25 mph on this road was considered recklessly speeding, and wasn’t even actually possible most of the time. Also, we were driving in four-wheel drive which limits one’s speed.

So, two old sourdough ‘cheechakos’ and one old dog, headed off toward Prudhoe Bay with a patched-together-with-duct-tape trailer frame, still 239 miles away. From Coldfoot it was 259 miles back to Fairbanks, so our chances were about even we’d make it (or not) to either place. Northward we chose to go.

Thanksgiving 2012

This year, we are having a few good friends over to share Thanksgiving dinner. There will be 8 of us, and I am preparing most of the food myself – from scratch. The last time we had guests for a Thanksgiving dinner at our home, there were 28 people and I made the whole thing myself, so this year will be a piece of cake. I want to share with you how I will pull this off.

First of all, this year the Culinary Arts Department at our local college, Arizona Western College, here in Yuma, Arizona, is custom-making pies to order for the Holidays. I ordered from them this year: one pumpkin pie, one apple pie, one pecan pie, and a pumpkin cheesecake. I know. I KNOW! People can thin it out a little with the bowl of Tahitian vanilla-scented whipped cream I am serving to top off the desserts. This may seem like a lot of dessert for only 8 people, but I want people to have a choice, AND be able to take some home to have with their coffee the next morning.

The other thing I am serving along with dessert is coffee. I am taking advantage of being able to order one of those large, insulated carafes of fresh coffee from Starbucks. You would be surprised at how much time this can save by not having to brew coffee during the party. I will send Paul out to pick it up an hour before the guests arrive. While he’s getting the coffee, I will also have him pick up a couple bags of fresh ice. The ice you get in bags made by your local ice companies comes out of commercial machines that freeze it almost instantly, so you don’t get air trapped in the ice making it appear cloudy. Ice company ice is always crystal clear, and looks very nice in a water glass or goblet. I always use store-bought ice when we have guests.

I started my planning by creating a menu. You should always consider any dietary restrictions that your guests may have. One of our guests this year is a Hindu vegetarian from India, so I wanted to make sure I included things she could enjoy in the meal plan. The rest of the guests I know will pretty much eat whatever is put in front of them. So, here is the menu I put together.

A word of warning for you. If you eat all these things on a Thanksgiving, you can put away your skinny jeans until sometime before Christmas. Remind yourself that you don’t eat like this every day, so just enjoy it. You’ll be eating South Beach-style until the next Holiday feast comes around, but it will be worth it.

After I develop the menu, I make a shopping list. I look at each item on my menu and write down the ingredients for that item that are unique, then, I add to the list anything that I don’t already have on hand – like the main staples like flour or sugar.

Next, I sketch out a timeline. This keeps me from forgetting anything that can be done ahead. The key here is to gather up things you need and make as many dishes ahead as possible before the big day. Otherwise, you are slammed on the day of your party, and you’ll end up in the kitchen the whole time instead of enjoying your guests. Of course, there are things that absolutely can’t be done ahead, and I will cook these the morning of the party. That would include making the stuffing both for the turkey and the vegetarian version to be served on the side, prepping and stuffing the turkey and getting it into the oven. I will make the mashed potatoes fresh that day, and I will sauté the Brussels’ sprouts with the shallots about an hour before guests start arriving.

Two weeks ago, after I had my menu planned, I bought some turkey pieces from the butcher and made homemade turkey stock to have on hand for when I cooked the actual meal. I froze it in some of those quart-sized Zip-Lock jars with the screw-on lids. I will thaw it out to use for making the stuffing and the gravy. I will also add some to the turkey roaster as the turkey bakes, to keep it moist and enhance the gravy’s flavor. If you don’t have turkey stock, just use a good-quality chicken stock.

On Monday, I began setting up the main dining table. I planned the layout of the seating, chose which tablecloth and napkins to use, and which serving dishes I wanted to use. I did a basic table set-up Monday, and I will add last-minute things like the fresh flowers, truffle butters, etc. on Thanksgiving afternoon before people start arriving. This lets me see if I am missing anything from my layout with plenty of time for last-minute shopping to fill in.

Here is the basic table set-up.

I will set out all the hot main and side dishes as a buffet on my kitchen counter area which is really just steps away from the dining room, and put the roll baskets, butters, and condiments, on the dining table. Guests can fix their plates at the main buffet then sit down and have their rolls and truffle butters and salt and pepper, etc. right at the table. This also eliminates people having to pass hot dishes of food around a crowded table. If they want seconds, they can simply get up, go back to the buffet counter, and help themselves to more.

I make little place cards for each person, so they can see where I would like for them to sit. I make these out of those little free cards at the flower section of your store that are designed to go on those plastic sticks found in flower arrangements. They have lots of different themes and choices depending on the seasons. I asked the lady at the flower counter if I could take a few and she said it would be fine. I found some with a smattering of fall leaves around them. I use two for each place card. I tape them together on the backside so that when you fold them over into a little tent, they stand up perfectly. Then I write each person’s name on the front side and the back side so that when it stands up, the people across the table can also read the name. This is particularly helpful if you have people who don’t know each other very well, or who have just met at your dinner party.

I also will add small vases of fresh flowers to the table. I buy those bouquets of flowers from the supermarket floral section in those big tubs of water. They are often sold for “3 bunches for $12.00.” I select three bunches of complementary colors for the season and theme of the occasion. I then set my small vases out on the kitchen counter and cut the flowers way down to fit in the little vases – putting some of each color in each vase. When I put fresh flowers on the table, I make sure that the arrangements are never more that 8-inches tall. That way they don’t block people’s view of the other people across the table from them. This helps the flow of the conversations by people not having to look through or around a tall bunch of flowers. The same goes with candles. I use miniature candles in small containers that don’t tower over the center of the table.

I have a separate piece of furniture – sort of a sideboard-type cabinet – where I will have the desserts set out. It will also have the coffee service set up there next to the desserts along with the coffee cups, cream, and sugar. I also keep guest’s water glasses topped off with fresh ice and water throughout the meal. A small slice of fresh lemon in each water glass adds a light, clean, citrus note to the water.

I will make the homemade Cranberry Orange Relish on Tuesday, as it needs a couple days to develop its flavors. It is a simple recipe made from ingredients you can find in most any supermarket.

1 12oz. bag fresh cranberries
1 large whole orange, trim off stem but leave peel on
1 cup sugar
1 pinch ground cloves
2 Tbs. frozen orange juice concentrate
2 Tbs. Grand Marnier or Cointreau

Cut up the orange and remove any seeds and white furry stuff in the middle. Leave the peel on. Put everything into a food processor and whoosh together until cranberries and orange pieces are chopped up together. Don’t over-process and turn it into a puree. Put it in a glass, or plastic lidded container, and store in the refrigerator until Thanksgiving. It will thicken upon sitting from the natural pectin in the fruit.

Put your relish in a pretty serving dish and cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it until right before serving time on Thanksgiving. It really only takes about 15 minutes to make this fresh cranberry relish and it is so much better than the canned cranberry sauce. It’s so worth the little bit of extra effort to make it fresh – and you can do it days ahead.

See? Ain’t it purty? Yum.

On Wednesday I will make the vegetarian Indian Rajma Masala and the Brown Basmati rice that goes with it. Rajma is a classic North Indian-style kidney bean chili – spicy and flavorful, and it will actually make an interesting counterpoint to a traditional Thanksgiving Day feast. These two are also perfect dishes for making a day or so ahead, so their flavors can develop. I will set out separate small serving bowls for the Rajma, as people may not want such a spicy, strong curry-flavored side dish mixing in with their traditional Thanksgiving fare.

It looks just like American chili but it is vegetarian and loaded with Indian spices and flavors. It also happened to turn out quite spicy. Yikes! I think I should set out a bowl of plain yogurt to go with this. It’s killer hot!

Here is a photo of the rice I made to go with the Rajma. I decided to change it up slightly by the addition of toasted, unsweetened coconut and some channa dal – a yellow Indian split pea. Plain Brown Basmati rice works great, however, and it is on my original menu.

On Wednesday, I will assemble the Candied Sweet Potatoes. This is a traditional side dish served in the Southern United States on Thanksgiving. I grew up eating it every year. My family always added butter, brown sugar, crushed pineapple, a pinch of cinnamon, toasted pecan pieces, and topped the whole thing off with a layer of marshmallows. It would bake in the oven into an ooey-gooey bowl of heaven. These ingredients also couldn’t be simpler, and you can find them in any grocery store!

Candied Sweet Potatoes

2 large cans, sweet potatoes or yams – drained of syrup or water
1/4 cup drained crushed pineapple
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup pecan pieces
1 bag marshmallows

I chose a 10-inch diameter, 2-inch deep oven-safe casserole dish. Place the drained potatoes evenly across the bottom.

Next, I melted the butter and brown sugar, and cinnamon pinch on the stove until just blended. Then I poured this evenly over the potatoes.

Next, I added the crushed pineapple and a layer of pecan pieces.

Lastly, I topped the casserole with a layer of the marshmallows. In a dish this diameter, it took the whole bag. It is then baked in a 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the marshmallows on top are golden brown and puffy. By using a dish with a lot of surface area, people end up getting some of the gooey marshmallow topping with every serving. They’ll thank you for that, trust me.

In a bin of potatoes at the local market, you will often see potatoes that are different colors. I always choose the deep red or orange ones, as those are the varieties with the most nutritious vitamins and have the riches flavor.

Never mind thinking you need to start completely from scratch for EVERYTHING, however. Canned yams or sweet potatoes work just fine. Its like canned pumpkin – tasters find it impossible to tell the difference in pies made with canned pumpkin and pies made with pumpkin made from scratch in your own oven or steamer. I’ve made this dish using yams baked in my oven, laboriously peeled, cut up and used in the recipe. It is a lot of extra work and it doesn’t taste any different at all in the final product. The only thing you need to keep in mind is, if the sweet potatoes or yams that you purchase are packed in syrup, you should cut back on your brown sugar to compensate. Or, maybe not. Suit yourself.

As guests arrive, I will have a cheese and cracker plate set out to munch on, along with a homemade Smoked Alaska Salmon Spread. This is another one of those extremely simple dishes with very few ingredients, but over-the-top flavor.

Here is the recipe I use. My oldest son and his wife shared it with me when they lived in Alaska a long time ago.

8 oz. Philadelphia cream cheese
6 1/2 oz. can Alaskan Smoked Salmon
1 capful natural liquid smoke

Soften the cream cheese in a small mixing bowl and add one un-drained can of smoked Alaskan salmon, and one capful of liquid smoke. Mix together well, and serve in a pretty bowl with the top lightly sprinkled with a little paprika to give it some color. Serve it with high-quality water crackers. You can use other kinds of crackers as well, but don’t use a cracker with a lot of other high-flavor ingredients, as these will tend to overwhelm the delicate salmon flavor.

The cheeses I am serving include a rich, French triple-cream Brie, and a mild Dutch Beemster with Wild Garlic. I make sure to put the cheeses out about an hour before guests arrive as they are in their most flavorful and creamy state when they are served at room temperature. I will also set out a bowl of mixed nuts and a plate with two kinds of olives – pimento-stuffed Queen green olives, and traditional Jumbo black.

It is during this time of the party, when they first arrive, that you should offer your guests something to drink to get started. Try to have a selection so that people can have something they like. Along with a couple choices of beer – a light and a dark beer, I will have both red and white wines, a carafe of ice tea with a dish of fresh lemon wedges, and some sparkling water. You don’t want to have too many appetizers out as you want people to be really hungry when you serve up the main feast. My plan is to eat about an hour after guests arrive and get settled.

Thursday is here, and I am beginning to assemble the dishes that I have sketched out on my time line. I will make the stuffing, prep the turkey, get it stuffed and ready for the oven. I also will peel the potatoes for the mashed potatoes and get them ready to cook, and I will prep the fresh Brussels’ sprouts and cut up the shallots for those. I made the Alaska Salmon Spread and put it in a nice serving dish as shown below.

I began by making the stuffing. I start with Pepperidge Farms Herb Seasoned Stuffing Mix and the Cornbread Stuffing Mix blended together.

‘A word about using this bagged grocery store stuffing mix. My daughter-in-law’s sister Brigitte, who I love dearly, calls this “trailer stuffing.” She loves this kind and always wants to have some around, or Thanksgiving doesn’t feel complete for her. Now these women are French, and I’m sure they grew up eating tres-artisanal stuffing made with hours-old le pain de la Boulangerie, so this Pepperidge Farm Stuffing looks like an ugly American insult. However, I love this kind and it’s what I grew up eating and I always stuff this kind into my turkeys, no matter who’s coming over for dinner.

However, I also always add my own touches to the mix. I sauté fresh chopped onion, celery, a chopped fresh Granny Smith apple, as well as fresh thyme and sage. I sauté these ingredients in the amount of butter recommended on the back of the bag. I also add about one teaspoon of extra Poultry Seasoning. I cook these vegetable until they are just crisp-tender to give them a head start when the stuffing is inside the turkey. This keeps your stuffing form tasting like it is still kind of raw, which can set off people’s salmonella radar.

I blend the vegetable sauté evenly into the stuffing bread mix. Then I add two slightly beaten eggs and enough turkey or chicken broth to make the stuffing the consistency and moistness you prefer. For two bags of mix, this takes at least one quart of stock; today I used about 1 1/2 quarts.

Next, I washed the turkey under cold, running water in my sink and made sure to get out any goo left inside it from the processing plant. The organic turkeys I’ve bought seem to be much cleaner inside than the standard Butterball or grocery store brand turkeys for some reason.

Then, I dried it off with clean paper towels, and salted and peppered the inside cavity and neck area, and stuffed it. Don’t pack the stuffing in tightly as it will expand as it cooks and needs room to do this. If you have extra stuffing, bake it separately in a small casserole dish. Tie the legs together and anchor the neck skin over the neck area stuffing using turkey lacing skewers, to make a nice little compact turkey package. Place it in your turkey roasting pan, baste it all over with melted butter and then put salt and pepper all over it.

I stuck a remote thermometer into the center of the stuffing inside the bird, added about a quart of stock to the bottom of the roasting pan under the turkey. I put the lid on the roaster and put the whole thing into a pre-heated 375 degree oven on the bottom rack. When the stuffing reaches a temperature of 165, I will check a thick piece of turkey meat with an instant-read thermometer in a couple places around the bird to make sure it’s at least 160-170 degrees. The temperature will coast upwards another 10 or so degrees while the turkey rests before you carve it.

Meanwhile, Paul has been attempting to be helpful by adding wine charms to all the wine glasses (great!) and moving some Thanksgiving decor around where he thought it would be attractive (not so great). Thus, the acorn squash on the living room end table, channeling his inner man-cave artistic taste.

Why would someone put a squash on the living room end table? Let me just say that this is not something Christopher Lowell would recommend on his home decorating show. I removed the lovely squash and replaced it with a small green plant. I put the squash back on the kitchen counter next to an arrangement made out of fall herbs. At this point in getting ready, keep an eye out for unwitting sabotage to your decor, by an over-helpful spouse or three-year-old child, maybe.

I must add a small correction here regarding this squash decorating thing. Upon reading this blog over, Paul insists that he FOUND the squash sitting there on the table and thought to himself “Who would decorate their living room with a squash?” He claims to have tried to find a better place to put it, but in the end, he put it back where he found it, adding a small coaster underneath it to protect the table’s finish. It was at this point that I caught sight of him carefully setting up the squash on the table and assumed this was his well-planned addition to the living room. Sorry about that, Paul, but as a lawyer I still find you guilty of gross decorating indecency under the “last clear chance doctrine.” You were the last person to have a chance to do something else with that squash.

Now it is late at night after the party. Well, I am disappointed that I got so caught up in getting the dinner served that I never got a photo of my fabulous turkey right as it came out of the oven. Below is a photo of it after I carved it and put it on a platter on my buffet counter.

Next is a photo of the turkey meat on the serving platter.

See that golden brown turkey leg on the platter? Now let your brain Photoshop that golden brown color all over the turkey as we took it out of the oven, and you can see in your mind how wonderful it looked. It was tender and moist and delicious.

In the background of this photo you can see 2 gravy boats and a bowl of mashed potatoes and another bowl of Brussels’ sprouts.

Here is another view of the buffet counter with the marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, the stuffing from the turkey in the bowl in the foreground, and the vegetarian stuffing in a Pyrex casserole bowl sitting behind the ceramic dish with the Rajma in it. Behind the sweet potatoes is a dish of Coconut Rice.

Here is what’s left of the appetizer area of the buffet. As you can see, people ate most of them while waiting for dinner to be served. When guests arrive around 4 PM, they are generally starting to get a little hungry.

This was the dessert table with the various pies and the pumpkin cheesecake I described earlier. The small cups contain an Indian dessert that our friend contributed. She made it by warming chickpea flour with brown sugar and almonds together with a little butter. Then she topped it with a Medjool date. This is a very popular dessert in India, and we had never had it before.

When we invited our friends for the dinner, we told them to bring their dogs along with them to play with our dog, Yuki. One of the couples brought their little Chihuahua named Juliette. The dogs had a great time running around the house begging for turkey bites. In this photo, Paul is holding Yuki on his lap and Juliette is draped over his shoulder. Paul thought Juliette was giving him a hug, but she was really reaching as far over his shoulder as possible to snag some mashed potatoes out of the bowl on the counter behind him. We had a good laugh while Juliette’s people parents got her down in order to save the potatoes.

Two of our friends play musical instruments – Penny plays the flute, and the other friend, David, plays a cello and a guitar. They treated us to an informal recital while we were putting the dinner on. Again, I was busy finishing the dinner and missed getting a photo of them playing together, but I did get a photo of our friend, David, while he played his guitar and sang a song he had recently written while we were sitting around after dinner and dessert. Penny and Ric look on – enjoying David’s new song.

We were so very fortunate to have spent such a wonderful Thanksgiving with such talented and interesting friends. Our friend, Reetika, is from India and teaches Physics and Math at the college. Reetika loved the vegetarian version of the stuffing I made for her, as she said she’s never tasted it before because it has always been made with meat at other Thanksgiving dinners she’s participated in. Our other friend sitting next to her here on the couch is Earl. Married to Penny, he’s semi-retired from a profession training hospital chaplains in dealing with people in medical-related crisis within the hospital setting. He is also a genuine horse whisperer, and spends a lot of his spare time training difficult horses for people all over the country. He keeps three horses of his own.

Our friend Ric heads the Creative Writing Department at AWC and is a published author of one book and has another one finished and will be published soon. Penny teaches English, Literature, and writing at AWC, as well. David, our guitar player and cellist friend, is a former Poet Laureate and a retired English Professor at AWC. He has had several books of poetry published over the years – his most recent just two months ago. He is now retired from AWC, but still lives mostly here in Yuma.

Also at the dinner, was our son Daniel, who is finishing a degree in Microbiology this year. He was super help on the late-night clean-up of the kitchen, and the repackaging of left-over’s for the fridge.

It was a wonderful, casual, and entertaining Thanksgiving which everyone seemed to enjoy very much. There was lots of good food, good laughter, and great camaraderie. And, as a bonus, great left-overs for turkey sandwiches over the next few days!

Amazing! I think I have the last loaf of Wonder SmartWheat Bread in Arizona, which will make some fantastic 50s style lunchbox turkey sandwiches, just like my mom used to pack for me for my school lunches. I will savor every nostalgic bite.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to each of you.

Denali Visit

We left Anchorage on Highway 1 heading north with our newly, re-outfitted rig, feeling like we were truly prepared for the Alaska wilds this time. We had all our extra mounted spare tires for both the truck and our 5th Wheel RV, our screens were re-sealed tightly to keep out the most daunting mosquitoes, and we were provisioned with food for a month. We wound our way through Wasilla, made famous later in 2008 by the antics of Sarah Palin. Just east of Wasilla, there is a junction where Highway 1 takes off east toward Palmer, then on over to Tok. We took Highway 3 which goes to Denali and eventually ends up in Fairbanks. We made a stop in the tiny community of Cantwell to visit their U.S. Post Office. We needed to pick up our latest mail which we had forwarded to us via General Delivery from our mailing service in the States.

This is the view we saw of Denali (Mt. McKinley, elevation 20,320 ft. – the tallest peak in North America) from coming toward it from the south at Milepost 107 on Highway 3. Native Alaskans (Athabaskan Indians) call Mt. McKinley by their name – Denali – meaning The High One.

We arrived at the Visitor’s Center at Denali National Park prepared to spend 2 or 3 days in the general area waiting until our passes into the Teklanika Campground were approved. We had reserved our time there six months earlier, but we still needed to check in and do paperwork before we could get our passes. We checked in and secured all the proper paperwork at the main Visitor’s Center as soon as we arrived.

There are a lot of rules in order to buy your way back to the campground in the restricted area of the park. We had to sign sworn statements that we understood that we had to stay a minimum of 3 nights in the campground, but under no circumstances, more than 14 nights. We had to sign forms stating that we understood there were no services of any kind in the campground, – no electricity, or phones, or groceries, or fuel, etc. We had to swear that we were prepared to keep a bear-proof camp, and recycle, and pick up our dog’s poo, and leave no trace of our having been there. Before we left the Visitor’s Center, we purchased our passes for the day-long shuttle bus ride deep into the Park all the way to Wonder Lake and back to our campground.

We arrived at our campsite at the Teklanika River, deep into the Denali National Park two days later.

We found a good site nestled down in a patch of tiaga near the Teklanika River. The views from our RV windows were spectacular – towering mountains with the tops above the tree-line. We walked along the river which is mostly braided streams of loess and jumbles of beautiful rocks transported by glacial, hydraulic action from distant volcanic peaks.

We cautiously kept an eye out for foraging grizzly bears as we saw a movable sign stuck in the river bank near where the Park rangers had last seen a grizzly only a few hours before.

We find ourselves torn between hoping to see a bear and hoping not to see a bear at the same time.

The following day, we boarded the shuttle bus at 11 AM at the stop just outside our campground for our day-trip tour into Wonder Lake.

The trip is 85 miles up and down a gravel road through mountains in an old school bus with only two stops along the way. During the summer months, Alaska schools allow the parks to use their busses for transporting visitors deep into the Park where private vehicles are not allowed to drive. It takes at least 9 hours to make the round trip. You need to have all your own food, water, snacks, raincoats, and anything else you might need during the trip. It was a mostly sunny and warm day and we were very lucky to be able to see Mt. McKinley most of the way along the Park Road. The mountain is only clear of clouds and visible all the way to the top for about 2 days per month on average, which tells you how lucky we were that day. Fortunately, this time of year, it is daylight 24 hours a day, so we don’t have to worry about it getting dark and missing any part of the scenery.

Along the way we saw marmots, Dall sheep, golden eagles, lots of caribou, moose, grizzly bears, fox, beavers, one wolf, arctic ground squirrels, and arctic hares.

When we came to the part of the road that had bears along the shoulders, the driver stopped the bus and everyone was very quiet so as not to disturb them. There was a beautiful golden grizzly sow, and she had a yearling cub with her. The bears walked within 10 feet of our bus with people taking as many photos as they could out of the windows. To give you an idea of the size of this bear, her back came almost up to the bottom of the school bus windows. Yikes! After a while, the bus driver just let the bus coast slowly away from the bears, and started the bus engine after we were a long way past, so as not to startle them.

After about 2 hours, we came to the midpoint of the trip to Wonder Lake – The Eielson Nature Center. We got a chance to get off the bus and use the restrooms and hike around the area on some short nature trails for about 45 minutes.

Along the trails there were lovely clumps of wildflowers growing in the Alpine tundra. They were tiny miniatures of common wildflowers you’d see about anywhere – only these were decades old and only a few inches tall. The harsh growing conditions and short growing season causes everything to either grow very quickly, as with animals, or very slowly, as with plant life.

We could also see large herds of caribou from the ridges around Eielson, grazing along the slopes. They had some telescopes set up so you could view them more closely, but even so, they were a very long way away.

A fellow bus traveler took our photo standing in front of the unbelievable expanse of the Alaska wilderness.

After another 2 hours of spectacular scenery, we arrived at Wonder Lake. If you are a hiker and are camping with a backpack, you can get a permit to stay in the Wonder Lake Campground. Many trekkers do this. In fact, some of our sons did this when they were working in the cannery in Seward in the summers. They and their friends would come up to Denali and hike and backpack for several days and stay at Wonder Lake. They would catch a touring school bus for a ride back out. They then took the Alaska Railroad train back to Seward.

We were allowed to get off the bus again to use the restrooms and hike around the area at Wonder Lake for about 1/2 hour or so before our return trip. It was just gorgeous.

It was a long 4-hour trip back to our campground. We stopped again at Eielson for one last chance to use restrooms and stretch our legs a little. We were pretty tired when we finally got let off at our campground, and our poor little dog had not had a potty stop all day. So Paul took her out for a short walk while I fixed our dinner.

The next morning, before we were scheduled to leave the campground, we decided to get out our spotting scope and set it up on a tripod down by the river to see what we could see on the mountains around us. The scope is powerful enough to see the craters on the moon, so I figured we could see some wildlife on the mountains. As Paul got it out of the storage area underneath, it made a terrible sound like rocks clattering inside a tin can. Ugh!

This is when traveling with a Physicist and Astronomer has definite advantages. ‘Someone who has a working knowledge of optics, say? Paul carefully unscrewed the ends of the scope and out came several lenses and screws and a mounting assembly of some nature. More ugh. How would we ever get those parts put back inside that scope correctly to make it a functioning scope again? Well, Paul cleaned up all the lenses with Windex and carefully fit them back into the mounting assembly in the correct sequence so that it was a telescope again. He mounted it back inside the tube and it worked perfectly!

We set it up in a clear spot and we promptly spotted a herd of mountain sheep high up on a craggy peak. We watched them scamper along the rocky cliffs and graze on the grassy slopes. Even the baby ones could jump from rock to rock without falling. We looked at another meadow and saw a herd of caribou curled up taking a nap on top of the world! On another mountain, we spotted some grizzly bears turning over rocks looking for bugs and small animals.

We especially wanted to spend the Solstice here in the deep solitude of this isolated Teklanika Campground. We have special memories of this time of year in Alaska as two of our sons were married during the summer Solstice up here. Our oldest son, Chris, and his wife, Toi, were married in North Pole, Alaska outside of Fairbanks in 1990 and another son, David, and his wife Michelle, were married in 1991on top of Mount Alyeska overlooking Turnagain Arm on the Cook Inlet, just south of Anchorage. It was nice to have the quiet time in the majestic Alaska wilderness to reflect on how very lucky our whole family is to have these wonderful women in our lives and families.

Paul put our telescope away in a more cushioned area, and we hope to use it again as we make our way north toward Fairbanks, then on to the Arctic Ocean. I took some time to record our experiences over the past few days in my travel journal. An email version was sent to family and friends who are following our adventures.

North to Fairbanks!

Post-Election Musings

Mid-November is creeping up and I am suffering from the post-election blahs, except that I am too busy to give into them. Has anyone else noticed that the overall atmosphere of stress over EVERYTHING seems to be distilled and concentrated during a big election season? All the unsolved problems facing the country as a whole, not to mention all the personal and/or job-related stuff, all claiming large chunks of our time and energy. It is exhausting, both physically and emotionally.

I’m sure the Republicans must be feeling the ennui and let-down far worse than the Democrats. They invested heavily in a man who turned out to be the poster child for non-fact-based reasoning. He sold himself as a “great businessman” with all the answers for the country and a real “numbers guy,” while at the same time allowing his handlers to convince him that a huge wave of white evangelicals would somehow rise up and sweep him into office, in spite of what the crunching of real numbers predicted. This is faith-based reasoning, not fact-based reasoning.

How could the Republicans get it so utterly wrong? By alienating Latinos – the fastest growing segment of our society – along with most women, most people of color, and all people who wish to live their lives with the partners of their choice. I read a comment by a Republican campaign manager, analyzing why they think they lost, who stated that they “just didn’t do a good enough job of explaining to the Latinos how the Republican’s immigration reform proposals were in their (the Latino’s) economic best interest. During the next election, they will strive to help Latinos better understand this fact.” Self-deportation? Being systematically rounded up by Sheriff Joe? Really?

Spoiler alert, Republicans! You will lose again with this ignorant strategy. This statement shows a monumental lack of understanding of the Latino culture and values. Latinos are committed to helping their families move forward in this world, and they will sacrifice whatever it takes to do so. I have Latino friends who faithfully send money to their families in Mexico to help support parents, spouses, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. They also do whatever it takes to help their collective families be able to join them here in this country, legally, so they can all live together. It takes untold years to happen that way. I have seen this support of their extended families NOT be in their own personal economic best interest, and it comes with a great deal of self-sacrifice.

I personally know a woman who works several jobs to help support her husband’s mother in Mexico who needs life-saving medical care. Because of the quotas, years-long waiting times, and Draconian red-tape involved, they are unable to legally bring her here where they could personally care for her in this country. So, she languishes just across the border in a dusty village, getting what care she can find in Mexico. Without the money they contribute, she would have no medical care at all. It tears their hearts out. Hispanics will choose family over personal finances, and they strongly believe in caring for their own – not stashing aging or sick relatives in nursing homes to be cared for by an impersonal system.

Another thing we have personally witnessed by knowing many Hispanics here in southern Arizona, is their commitment to education. We have had enlightening conversations with late-middle-age men and women doing back-breaking physical labor, day after day, often in the 115-degree desert weather, in order to pay for their kids to go to the local community college. They express the view that they don’t want their children and grandchildren to have to work manual labor jobs into their old age, as they have to do, in order to survive. One man proudly told us in broken English that he only finished the 8th grade in his village in Mexico, but here in this country, his kids are graduating from college, and one is now a local policeman and one is about to become a nurse. They believe that by their own hard work to pay for their kid’s education, they will best insure a good future for them and their collective families as a whole. Isn’t that what we all want?

We have seen Hispanics go to the polls in this community, and by over a 75% margin, support a bond issue to expand the community college where their children are getting the education they need for a profession, or to move on to a University. Where do you see that kind of collective response from people voting on a bond issue when they know it is going to raise their property taxes? Every school bond issue in this community gets that kind of support in the mostly Hispanic communities around here. It comes from much more than just economic self-interest, it comes from a passionate commitment to caring for, and furthering the others in their lives.

For the Republicans to think that they can convince Hispanics that their economic self-interest will be harmed by immigration of their beloved families is disingenuous, at best. It shows such a profound lack of knowledge about what makes Latino culture tick that they might as well not even enter the next Presidential race. They lump all Hispanics into the ‘47% victim class’ they talk about, instead of recognizing them as the same kind of people who founded and built this country into the most powerful nation on the planet – immigrants! Most all of us are descended from immigrants, if you go back a couple hundred years, or more. Our immigrant families sacrificed and endured unspeakable hardship so we could enjoy the life we have now. We don’t know one Hispanic family, no matter how impoverished, who see themselves as ‘victims.’ That characterization is incredibly insulting to them.

Our American life will continue to move on through ups and downs as always. I expect little to really change rapidly, in spite of all the dire forecasts. Real progress comes in continuous, inexorable steps which slowly chip away at prejudices and self-interest to further the good of the whole population. Hispanics and people of color will continue to expand their representation and contribution to this country, and we better wake up to this fact and embrace the change, or suffer the consequences the Republicans just experienced. Marginalizing, demonizing, and keeping as an underclass, such a large segment of our society, will cause this country untold grief and debility. Bigotry, discrimination, and repression of other people are all moral wrongs.

So, to the documented Republican base of mostly well-to-do, white, rural, evangelical Christians, I can only advise you to ask yourselves “what would Jesus do?” When you think about dealing with the people who you are writing off as less valuable or more sinful than yourselves, remember this, and you’ll have your answer. This should be the message coming from every pulpit on Sundays. Our country’s ultimate survival will depend on it.

Southern Alaska Visit

We finally made it to Anchorage, Alaska. We spent a night parked in a relative’s driveway before we ventured down to Seward, Alaska to visit a son working in a fish cannery there. We would return to spend some time in Anchorage with family members before heading out for the deep Alaska interior and the Arctic Circle.

During their college years, four of our six sons worked summers at the Seward Fisheries – Icicle Seafood Division – the biggest fish cannery in Seward, Alaska located on the Kenai Peninsula. It sits right on Resurrection Bay and is a very popular tourist destination in its own right.

Seward has an active port and cruise ships come and go from there as well as thousands of fishing boats laden with fresh halibut, black cod, and salmon. From April through October, the cannery runs 24/7 processing millions of pounds of fish. The work was grueling – often 18 hour days with no break for a month at a time. But, oh, the MONEY to be made! Everything over a standard 8-hour day was at overtime pay. They also provided benefits to their employees. They provided housing, as well, in their famous ‘tent city’ on the cannery property. Here is a photo of our youngest son Dan’s tent in 1998. ‘Lovely summer home, eh? There was a communal bathroom and shower building to accommodate the sanitary needs of the tent city residents.

And, here is a view of the interior of his tent house! Note the convenient eat-in kitchen in the center on the floor. Most of his meals were provided by the company in their cafeteria, but occasionally he dined ‘at home.’

One of our kid’s good college friends at Icicle married a man she met at the cannery. They were building a rustic cabin on some acreage in a new Seward subdivision called Camelot, on the corner of Merlin Street and King Arthur Place. Lest you think this is a typical suburb you’d see in the ‘lower 48,’ forget it. No utilities were even part of the town of Seward’s future plans for this community. This Thoreau-style place – deep in the mossy woods inhabited by moose and grizzly bears – has no electricity, no running water, and is heated by a wood stove – which is also used for cooking. It has an outhouse for a bathroom.

Later that evening, Paul and I were contrasting our friend, Susheela, with most all of the other women we knew. There weren’t many who would be ecstatically happy over a new house with no power, no water, or bathroom. We felt vaguely embarrassed by the extravagance of our 5th-wheel RV with its luxurious tub and shower, forced-air furnace, satellite Direct TV, and solar electricity.

While visiting Seward, we were parked in a city campground right on Resurrection Bay – as far away from the Alaska mosquitoes in the woods as it was possible to get. The scenery was gorgeous. To the east, we overlooked the Resurrection Mountains across the bay, and to the west we could see Mt. Marathon, in the Kenai Mountain Range.

A further word about Mt. Marathon. Every 4th of July since 1909, a marathon race is held up to the summit, at 3,022 feet, and back to downtown Seward. The race record is a round trip up and back in 43 minutes and 23 seconds.

Hiking the trail (or running it, for some) has been characterized as using a ‘Stairmaster with a view.’ Describing the trail as a “Stairmaster” is one of the grossest understatements of the century, in my opinion. It is STEEP, slippery, muddy, rocky, glacial scree, and snowy ice chutes, and steep cliff faces. You get serious street cred for even getting to the top and back – let alone racing. At the summit, there is a book you can sign and enter your name, hometown, and date and time you reached the summit.

How do I know all this? Because we climbed Mt. Marathon with several of our kids and their friends in late June of 1991!!! They made it sound so easy when they suggested we do it together! They had done it many times before. They took the day off from working at the cannery while we were visiting them in Seward, and we all (foolishly) decided to “just climb up and back to see what it was like.” It was the most physically grueling experience of my life. I was 46 years old when we did this.

As we were huffing and puffing and struggling to put one foot in front of the other while going up the trail, people would pass us as they RAN up to the top and back. They were practicing, and ‘getting into shape’ for the July 4th race! We asked them why they had no water bottles with them, and they replied that they were not going to be gone more than a hour going up and back, and wouldn’t need to bother with taking water with them! They said they were running up and back down every day before the race. Jeez!

We thought it would take “a couple hours up to the top and an hour coming down.” NOT! We climbed for almost 5 hours. The closer we got to the top, the less inclined we were to quit – with the top seeming to be so close! We finally stumbled up over the summit ridge and signed our names into the book, got a group photo and collapsed.

We seriously wondered how we would ever make it back down alive. The kids kept saying it was easier and quicker going down, but I don’t think that was the case. It was insanely steep and slippery, and by the time we reached the bottom, we were beyond exhaustion. We had our street cred, though. Our names were inscribed into the summit book forever! Now when we were back in 1998, a full 8 years later, we weren’t even tempted to try it again. Once in a lifetime was enough for us.

We said good-bye to Seward and drove back north to Anchorage to visit family and finish our preparations for heading into the interior. We had a long list of provisions we needed to obtain and repairs to be made for both the truck and the RV. We put all new, super heavy-duty off-road tires on the truck and we bought another complete wheel and tire for both the truck and the trailer.

When we heard from people back in Michigan that we should have two mounted spares for each vehicle, we thought that sounded pretty alarmist. We should have listened to them, because we ended up buying all those items and more at Alaska prices. The $50.00 we didn’t spend in Michigan, ended up costing over $100.00 in Alaska. We had those extra spare wheels and tires mounted across the rear bumper of our RV making us look something like a displaced tugboat.

We replaced our unsightly masking tape around all the RV windows with a special sealant and weather stripping to keep out the mosquitoes. We removed and cleaned the thick mud out of the brake light lens covers so people could actually see our brake lights when they came on. Paul had to weather seal those, too. We also installed a special split-screen on our front door as an added barrier to mosquitoes when we went in or out of our trailer.

On our way back to Anchorage, we made a stop to see Exit Glacier. It is the only part of the Kenai National Park that is accessible by a road. The glacier spills down out of the Harding Ice Field. A dirt road winds to it way back into an area where you can walk up to the edge of the glacier and see it up close. There is a small ranger station there and guided tours are sometimes seasonally available.

This intense blue color is not a photographic trick. The colors are absolutely incredible to see. Paul was walking along and talking with one of the park rangers while we were crossing one of the many glacier-fed braided streams, by balancing on logs and large rocks to get across, on our way to the glacier’s edge. He jokingly asked her if she knew how to swim if she fell off one of the logs. She told him that she was a native Alaskan, and that almost no native Alaskans knew how to swim, because if you fell into water in Alaska, you’d most surely die quickly because the water is so frigid. The lakes and streams and rivers are all fed by melting ice and glaciers, and you wouldn’t live long enough to swim very far or get rescued if you fell in. People in Alaska don’t use their bodies of water for swimming-related recreation like people in the ‘lower 48’ do. They are only on or around water for hunting or fishing.

We had also always heard that there were creatures called Iceworms living in glaciers, and we didn’t really know if that was true. However, it turns out that they really do exist, and they thrive in the glacial ice – feeding on algae and windblown pollens that get trapped in the ice. They come close to the surface of the glacial ice in the mornings and evenings, and borough down deeper to avoid the direct sunlight at other times.

We left Anchorage after a few more days of preparation and sight-seeing, and were off to our next big stop – Denali National Park!