More Odds and Ends

Since I began this blog, I've tried to maintain some sort of order, rhyme and reason to the stories I've presented. There was many a time when I felt too tired or uninspired to put out a post but I did so anyhow because I didn't want to break the continuity of what had been started. Of late, we have been so incredibly busy living the story that there has been little time to re-tell it. Let me just say, in the ultimate cop out (and with tongue in cheek) - It's all Gary and Judy's fault! Actually, and in truth, it is to their credit that we have done so much and seen so much and learned so much- that there actually has not been ample time to write it all down. I know that by not keeping current I pay a personal price in letting some of the informational nuggets of the experience get away from me. Hopefully I'll recall them and contribute them as they crop up later. But for now, I know that I can only post these shorter and less organized recountings in catch up fashion. Much of our time with them has been in areas of the state where cell phone is unlikely and pc card for computer access is not possible. Waiting to post is the only alternative- besides which, I was having just too much fun to stop, go in, and write it all down.
What follows here, are some shots and comments I don't seem to think I can readily incorporate into the natural flow of what yet remains to be presented. So please accept these as items that made us stand up and take note, but which were not readily available to fit with what I know I yet need to put out there.

If you've been following the blog, you already know I like my signs! This one was at the entrance to a junk yard in Hope, AK. The No Trespassing portion of the sign is long gone, but the important part- the part about squirrel habitat- is preserved and in good order. Alaska has it's priorities! They are well founded.
I call this, The Alaskan Beverage Cooler. It's an old wash tub being filled non-stop by a gravity flow of ice cold mountain run off from a reservoir up stream of Al's cabin on the gold claim. More of Al later. I happened upon it while helping him pick up and set up some gold mining equipment- and to be honest I thought he left the water running! Well, actually he did, but that was all by design. The water flows in to cool his beverages and then, totally unharmed and unimpeded, flows back in to the run-off stream and on to the sea. Water doesn't get any colder than this, so this is about as energy efficient as you are ever gonna see.
Below is our gold wheel. Picked it up at the gold show in Rapid City, South Dakota on the way up. It is used to separate very fine gold from very heavy and fine black sand. It works good! The basic principle is that the gold is the heaviest or anything you feed into the wheel, so it continues up the spiral and into a small cup that catches it in the back of the wheel, while the rest of the material is washed out the front. For gold as fine as what we were finding at this location, it was a must. We used it to separate gold that had been "unrecovered" from concentrates that had been hanging around for a long time. We fed it in one tablespoon at a time until it was "cleaned."
The image of the black sand and gold being swirled around in the wheel is beautiful in and of its own right. You can see that the heavy black sand never makes it up to the gold recovery hole in the center of the wheel- but the gold does, no matter how small. Much of the gold recovered was the size of a grain of flour. No nuggets here!
Judy and Marilyn dry and clean the concentrates from the wheel processing. Nothing replaces human contact in the final process of recovering fine gold. Judy is a master!
This is Beluga Point along the Turnagain Arm. Come here to see the white Beluga whales on the incoming tide if you are lucky. The tide rips hard like the Colorado River on steroids even on a regular tide change. But on drain and high tides, the potential is for a "bore tide." The bore tide is a 6 inch to 6 foot high wall of water that comes in at 15 miles an hour when it occurs. Almost nothing has the time to get out of its way. For that reason, NEVER venture out on the flats of Turnagain. Many have drowned, trapped by the quicksand like flats and overcome by the rushing waters of the bore tide.
This is the newly built log cabin at Beer Bears. The carver and his father building the cabin surely know what they are doing. It will be a stunning cabin when completed. Here's a look at some of their wood working skills:


Abby's Big Bed! Dear Abby (our dog, not the column) usually sleeps on the floor on a rather unassuming mattress covered by a tropical print case. So when she found this giant pile of air bubble plastic on the floor of the shelter at the gold camp, she was just in hog heaven. She jumped all over it, spun to the left and spun to the right, then stand up, sit down fight fight fight- cheerleader kinda happy nap session coming right up!!
We (that is to say Marilyn) made a dessert for dinner one night out at gold camp. It's the Alaskan version of an old Maine classic- MOOSE TURD PIE. The story, for Alaska purposes, goes something like this: A guy who had no resources of his own kept coming to dinner at his friend's camp. At first they were happy to help him out. He ate their bacon and beans and always held that they were "good." But as the food pantry got drawn down to below acceptable staple levels, the food prepared for the guest was knocked down a notch to discourage him from sharing ever meal with them. Soon, they were serving their guest leftovers from long ago. Still, the appreciative guest always managed to compliment the chef, allowing as how the meal was always, "good." One day after draining all of their supplies, the hosts decided it was time to put an end to their guest's presence at dinner time, so they made a dessert out of "local material" that was designed to make him not so willing to come back to dinner again. So after eating what little was left in the pantry, the hosts presented their beautiful looking dessert. The guest, not familiar with this particular type of dessert inquired as to what it actually was. Not wanting to give away the secret until their guest had eaten his full, the hosts simply asked their guest, "What do you think it tastes like?"
To which their guest quite calmly replied," Well, it tastes like moose turd pie! Good though!" Click on the pic to enlarge the moose turd pie.

As hard as it may be to fathom, this is the home of Dolly Parton's Tour Bus driver. He's a neat old codger who helps out now on the gold claim and surely looks the part of the old time gold miner- even if he isn't! I like to call the picture : "No Man Lives Alone." While it's certainly a cabin for one, note how the space is shared with a big old spruce tree.
Gary told me early on that miners are a beaver's best friend. No doubt! Every settling pond we traveled by was inhabited by a family or two of beavers going merrily about their business, whether we were watching or not.
OOOOOooooops! The posterior of the coach hit the anterior of this cubic yard flower pot upon return to camp after a weekend at the Hope Mining claim. Only about a half inch of the coach nicked it, but that was all it took to knock it caddywampus. When I confessed to the crime at the campground office and asked what I could do to be helpful, they told me to "Hit it again." Turns out the flower boxes have been hit a lot and the management, if not the owners, would like to take them all out. Twenty minutes of cosmetic work on the coach and I was back like nothing ever happened. Can't say the same for the flower box though.