We have now been in Alaska for six weeks now. Therefore I am about as poorly qualified as anyone to make some random observations about the state and its people.

Let’s start with the state. It is huge, but if you limit yourself to paved highways you don’t see much of it. When we get back to the Canadian border we will have driven about 2,000 miles inside Alaska and we will have traversed almost all of the major highways, several out and back for double credit. In the same breath I must say that we probably haven’t seen ten percent of this state. It would take a well founded boat and a whole summer to see the fjords of the panhandle of the state. Then it would take half a lifetime to hike the wild back country areas of the state.

Homes: Huge areas of the state have a permafrost condition in the soil. If a building is not properly constructed so as to allow the soil to remain frozen, the building slowly slumps into the ground. I was surprised to find out that large areas do not have access to good water. You see a lot of pickups with a huge polyethylene tank in the back. Many homes have to truck in their water. What I call the “California Style Home” has not caught on here in rural Alaska. Log homes are very popular and considerably smaller that we of the lower 48 consider a bare minimum. You don’t actually see many of the homes along the road. You see a corridor of trees with drives that dive back into the timber every quarter mile or so. I am told that when you fly over these homesteads, each drive opens up into a nice little clearing with a home and several out buildings.

Cars: I expected to see a lot of “Cowboy Cadillacs” up here in this “bigger than Texas” state. Yes there are lots of big new one ton duallies with shiney chrome and four doors. They all have out-of-state licenses on them too. The ones with Alaska plates are older Ford F-100′s with a crumpled fender, rusted out rocker panels and either a water tank or fishing gear in back. Mostly you see the resident Alaskans driving the same cars you see in the rest of the states, usually a few years old. They all have two or three electrical plugs dangling out of the grill in front. The most popular paint job is mottled rust. Quads, four wheelers, ATV’s, ORV’s; what ever you call them are every where. There is a little snaky pair of tracks alongside every road we have traveled. People go everywhere on them. The crowning moment came when we were camped at Pippin Lake along the Richardson Highway. A family of five towed a Ski-Doo up on a trailer and launched it by our boondock camp. The oldest child was perhaps eight and he was riding his own miniature dirt bike and the two younger kids were sandwiched between dad and mom on the four-wheeler. They launched and put the kids into jackets and all piled on the ski-doo and off they went. The older boy was hanging on to his mom and standing on the back lip of the hull. Once the snow starts flying I expect the snow machines we see parked under tarps become the chief mode of transportation for the short haul trips.

Airplanes: There are unimproved landing strips everywhere. Half a dozen little old tail-draggers are hunkered down alongside each strip. Many of these have huge STOL wings with down-curved tips and oversized low pressure “tundra tires” on them. Everyone is a bush pilot around here, and I understand that Alaska has a rather high “incident rate” in their general aviation population. Indeed the FAA statistics for 2003 indicate a rate of incidents that is about three times the national average. There has been a focused safety program to lower that rate and in 2004 the incident rate dropped to only twice the national average. In all fairness it is a big state and many people fly here.

The People: We found an acoustic music festival in a small town called Kenny Lake. Up till then we were mostly on the standard tourist circuit; Denali National Park, Kenai Peninsula, halibut fishing, glacier gazing, museums and on and on. We had a unique opportunity to get to know the “down home people,” of Kenny Lake, Alaska. Don’t try to find it on a map. It is a group of loosely grouped homesteads along the Edgerton Highway that leads into Wrangle National Park and Preserve. This is the famous Copper River Valley of Alaska. We attended “The Music Festival Between the Ranges.” People arrived in cars, pickups and four-wheelers. Camped in vans, tents or just laid out in sleeping bags. We were by far the biggest rig around and the only “tourists” there. The bands were all Copper River Valley locals or Anchorage based. The music was “acoustic” but there was some flexibility there. The Piano was electronic and the base was electric. The genera were eclectic and ranged from rock and roll, to folk, jazz, classical and bluegrass. Maximum attendance ranged from 100 to perhaps 150, and at least a third of them were participating musicians. The people ranged from bearded guys with canvas coveralls at one extreme to some young gals dressed in beads and bangles with filmy semitransparent dresses and a thong with a cartridge belt full of bullets to hold it all together.

We have heard many testimonials from people we meet who claim to have visited a few years ago and just fell in love with this country and stayed.
The motto on their license plates is “The Last Frontier.” If you like the idea of having your neighbors at arm’s length, love hunting and fishing and all types of outdoor sports, then just maybe you should look this state over. You might want to take a peek in January before you make the big plunge. We have heard that 20 below is kind-a refreshing after a few days at 40 below with 20 mile winds.

We are now on our way to visit Haines, Skagway and Juneau as we start working our way back to the lower 48.

Bye from Gary, Judy, Jack, Sonja, Al and Audrey in Alaska.

Typical Bush Plane, STOL Super Cub