It's all about Sandhill Cranes this weekend at Creamer's Field

With a wingspan of 6-8 feet and one of the longest fossil records of any extant bird -- the oldest unequivocal Sandhill Crane fossil is 2.5 million years old, the Sandhill Crane is a bird that is impressive enough to have its very own festival in Fairbanks every year. I spent this past sunny, Sunday afternoon enjoying some activities at the 13th annual Tanana Valley Sandhill Crane Festival.

This event takes place at Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, located on the site of the historic Creamer's Dairy which used to provide Fairbanksens with various dairy products.

The dairy was begun in 1904 by Charles and Bell Hinckley. They moved it to its present location in 1915 and sold it to Charles and Anna Creamer in 1924, which is how it got the name Creamer's Dairy.

These are the once top-of-the-line barns built in 1938 to streamline dairy production. The dairy thrived during the 1940s and for a while World War II seemed like it was good for business since Creamer's Dairy got a contract with Ladd Air Force Base. However, construction of the Alaska Highway was completed in 1942 and after WWII there were changes in land and air shipping that allowed for more outside competition, which affected the local dairy market, forcing the dairy to close by 1966.

 In the early 1970s, due to popular local demand for site preservation, the state acquired the 1,800 acre plot for use as a waterfowl sanctuary which it has been ever since. The site is currently operated by the Alaska State Fish and Game with the site buildings being used as a visitor center and storage sites. One weekend each year in August Creamer's Field brings people in the Fairbanks community together to celebrate the migratory Sandhill Crane with various lectures, crafts, and guided nature walks. This past Sunday I decided to channel my inner 4 year old and participated in an art project making a plaster mould of a crane's footprint.

The first step was going out into a field to find a suitable crane track.

 

 Next, I encircled my track of choice with a cardboard strip. I then mixed plaster and poured it into my mould.

 

 I had to let it set for at least an hour, so I decided to listen in on a lecture about training predatory birds.

 One of the guest speakers brought his pet falcon for a demonstration.

 

 I still needed to kill more time, so I explored one of the several walking trails.

I respected the birds and stuck to the trails.

 I noticed de-barked Birch trees along the path.

 The view from the observation tower on the Boreal Forest Trail.

 

 Back at the site for the main festival events, I collected my plaster mold from the field and headed home, taking pictures along the way.

 

The Tanana Valley State Fair: Keeping Fairbanksens Fat and Happy

Allow me to entertain you with a brief history and description of the Tanana Valley State Fair, which occurs annually in Fairbanks, Alaska for 8 blissful days around the second week in August. Our glorious, much anticipated fair was founded in 1924 and is the oldest fair in the state. That's right, take THAT Anchoragites, you city people thinking you can take credit for everything cool in Alaska. Nowadays over 1,000 volunteers come together to make this an incredible annual event that locals and visitors alike look forward to. I would personally like to thank the two ladies who kept the restrooms in Badger Hall clean. I had approached the restroom with much caution expecting grossness the likes of which I had experienced only once in my overseas travels but was pleasantly surprised when I was greeted with shiny cleanliness. You ladies rock!
The fair now has over 300 booths offering food, beverages, and trinkets for sale. My traditional guilty pleasure is to purchase an article of clothing from the Alaska Girls Clothing booth. I generally get a t-shirt but since I rarely wear the 6 AK Girls t-shirts currently in my possession, I splurged on the particularly decadent purchase of an overpriced, super-soft sweatshirt that I will hopefully wear with greater frequency.

 That's my friend Jennifer in the purple. We've been friends since the 3rd grade.

 We also tried on Nepalese mohawk hats but resisted the urge to purchase.

Now if I had the money, I would have definitely bought a flaming dragon.

Jennifer was also a fan, but, then again, who the heck wouldn't be. Flaming dragons are categorically awesome.
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Now to the good stuff, which is of course the tasty vittles guaranteed to ruin your figure. According to a friend of mine, fair food should be a) deep fried, b) something that is not ordinarily deep fried, and c) served on a stick. I concur.

 Dixon satisfies 1 of the above criteria, enjoying his pork chop on a stick.

Mom is a health nut now, so epic fail on all criteria. The grilled corn is delicious, though.

Now that's what I'm talking about. Cheesecake on a stick. In our defense we thought it was going to be deep fried cheesecake and it wasn't until we had it in our hands that we realized it was frozen. Why the stick? You've got me. Seems entirely unnecessary. We searched in vain for the booth selling deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which would have satisfied all the aforementioned criteria and potentially made us instantly ill.
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The Tanana Valley State Fair always has a corny theme. This year's was no different: "Barn in the USA".
Which brings me to the livestock portion of the fair.
I ignored the chickens and the larger animals. Not cute enough.

Baaahhhaaaaa! It's time to eat broccoli greens.

Awwwwww, cute enough to make you nauseous.

I'm not sure what that is, but I think it's alive.
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Many of you may be aware that produce gets a bit larger than normal up here near the Arctic Circle where we have 24 hour sunlight.
Just how large are we talking about?

Some averagely large zucchini and things.

The award winning cabbage, pumpkin, and mystery root vegetables.
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A fine day at the fair was had by all and it looks like a bird is landing on my head. Excellent!

An Expedition to Barrow Part III: A walk to Pepe's

Post supermarket exploration, we decided to walk the 2 miles back into town.
I took a few photos of sites along our journey.

This is the one gas station in Barrow. Let's check the prices.

 I don't know about you, but they're not as bad as I was expecting.

We stopped at Brower's Cafe for a break from being brutally abused by the Barrow winds.

Owing to it's Korean ownership, the menu has a wide variety of dishes on offer.

After perusing the menu we decided against kimchi, favoring some good old fashioned hot cocoa to warm our icy fingertips.We all agreed that it was the best hot cocoa from a packet we had ever had. I believe this finding was primarily due to our being a tad cold and wind weary rather than an indication of any particular superiority on the part of this particular hot cocoa. At $3 it was also the most expensive hot cocoa from a packet we had ever had.

You can get fresh soft serve ice cream in Brower's Cafe and the owner swore that its a popular item all year round. I was tempted to get some and eat it outside in my t-shirt, but common sense got the better of me.

The decor is quite nice as well.

Brower's Cafe offers a warm, cozy respite from the wind abuse outside as well as a fine set of whale bones outside.

We headed back out into the elements, continuing our noble quest for Mexican food.

We were not bit a few hundred yards from the cafe when we were stopped by a white SUV, the occupant of which inquired as to whether he could interest us in some baleen. We declined, but I now regret not purchasing some. It was only $10.
We made our way back to the ocean.
Perhaps some of you are curious as to whether or not seagulls frequent the Barrow shores.

That's a resounding "YES!"

I was wearing my bathing suit and at this point had the half-hearted intention of jumping into the silty, cold waters of the Arctic Ocean. It had been a whole-hearted intention at our journey's beginning but my courage was carried gradually away by the 38mph winds. I got so far as getting ankle deep before I admitted my defeat. I mean, with the wind chill and all I would surely be at risk for catching pneumonia. That darn common sense getting in the way of my fun!

Off to Pepe's we go, where the promise of hot Mexican food kept us constant in our journey's goal. But we did stop at Top of the World Hotel, which is next door to Pepe's. Elizabeth and I book people rooms at Top of the World Hotel so we were curious what it was like. It has a fancy flat screen t.v. in the lobby and the staff was super friendly, as was the polar bear along side the t.v.

Bienvenidos a Pepe's fine Mexican restaurant.

Pepe's as everything one could ever desire from a Mexican eatery.

It even has a fun logo.

It does not, however, offer margaritas. This is because Barrow is classified as a "damp" village, which means that you can own alcohol that you have bought elsewhere and brought in but it is illegal to purchase or sell alcohol in Barrow. The other native village I visited, Anaktuvuk Pass, is classified as a "dry" village, which means that it is illegal to own, sell, purchase, or imbibe any alcohol. On a side note, our company almost accidentally aided in the illegal transportation of alcohol to another "dry" native village earlier this season. Some people charted a flight with us and as the pilot was loading their cargo one of the lids popped off revealing cases of whiskey. He called the troopers and it was a bit like the t.v. show cops for a brief bit. Apparently a bottle of cheap whiskey sells for upwards of $100.
Despite the lack of margaritas, I would recommend stopping at Pepe's even if Mexican food doesn't suit your fancy because the staff gives you a pretty sweet certificate verifying your having been to Barrow. Plus they have Bavarian pretzels and these fun, fruity flavored Mexican sodas. I tried guava while Elizabeth went for pineapple. Both proved tasty.

Mission accomplished. Barrow, consider yourself visited. Okay, so now what?
We headed back to the plane to make our 3:30pm departure time.

 I slept the whole way back, so no more exciting photos to show you.
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Some of you might be wondering what people who live in Barrow do for a living. If you're a fan of pretty graphs and tidy statistics then this site will be of interest to you. Basically most people are employed in either the retail or health industries. According to City-Data.com, 9.4% of the Barrow population is Asian and from what I could tell they appear to be busy. As you may recall my mentioning that one of the super markets is Thai owned and it seemed that many of the restaurants are foreign owned as well. In addition to the Thai restaurant, the Korean owned Brower's Cafe, and Pepe's Mexican, there is also Osaka's Resturant [Back off grammar police, that's how they spell it on their sign!], which, contrary to what its name would imply is Korean owned.

 I have also heard reports of an active Filipino population keeping taxis and stores running.
Along with the jobs in hospitality that the few hotels in town offer, there are also institutions and industries where Barrow residents can find an occupation such as the Ilisagvik College that keeps some people busy either as students, faculty or administrators, the Tuzzy Consortium Library which brings book-learning to the Arctic, and utility companies keeping things flowing.In addition, the local florist is busy helping to keep demonstrations of love alive. Not to mention the importance of employees in the communication industry. When you live as far away from the next booming metropolis, which is of course Fairbanks, Alaska, boasting of a population of roughly 35,000, your need to keep in touch demands cable t.v. and high speed internet. Let's give a shout out to our Barrow cable guys working hard to keep Barrow connected! And hey, when things get tough you can always try selling baleen to tourists.
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Thank you, Barrow for showing my friends and me such a fabulous time! Perhaps I will visit you again someday in the Winter if you can promise me that they will have hot cocoa waiting for me in Brower's Cafe.
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For more information about Barrow checkout the following websites;
1) City of Barrow-Farthest North American City
2) Barrow, Alaska on Wikipedia
3) Some random dude named Rob's blog from a winterish visit