One of the things that I kept in mind on my trip was a piece of advice about photography. The secret to good vacation photographs, ran this advice, does not necessarily lie in your camera or your film. Neither does it lie in some innate sense of lighting, although that helps. No, the real secret to good vacation photographs?
Take LOTS.
Seriously. If you're going to be doing anything that you think is picture-worthy, take along about four times as much film as you think you're gonna need. And use it ALL. Take multiple pictures of things you think you want to remember. Take pictures of stuff you think looks sort of interesting. Whatever. Take as much film as you can, and use it all; you'll have a much better chance at getting that one perfect shot if you try for it more than once.
Then when you get home, go through the HUGE stack of photographs you've got and be absolutely ruthless about getting rid of the bad ones. What the heck did you take all those pictures for? Get rid of any that got munged up at the developer's. Get rid of any where the lighting turned up funny without your meaning it. Get rid of any that you don't quite fancy- who cares? You've got LOTS of photographs! Pick out the best of the bunch. If you took enough to begin with, you'll have some decent ones to inflict on people, and they'll never have to see the ones that were crap.
Alas, I went and left my eight rolls of film and my mother's telephoto zoom Nikon on the kitchen table at home. I wound up buying a basic camera with a little bit of zoom capability at Fred Meyers supermarket in Fairbanks, plus several one-use cameras, one of which was a panoramic. I've scanned in most of the pictures by now, but they still need to be edited so they're a reasonable size for the Web. For now, please enjoy the thumbnails that I've got in their stead.
On 2 September, I visited Creamer's
Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, in Fairbanks. My photographs of the local
sandhill cranes weren't good enough to scan- but the fox sparrow I helped the
Alaska Bird Observatory volunteers
weigh, tag, and release? That was a decent picture. I also visited the University
of Alaska Fairbanks campus, which features an excellent museum...
That's a full-grown Alaska brown bear behind me. I forget whether he's from
inland Alaska or down by Kodiak Island, though.
To the right is a caribou skeleton. Female, I think.Caribou and reindeer are
the same species of animal, but caribou are the wild subspecies found in the
Americas and reindeer are domesticated relatives native to Europe and Asia.
The scientific name is Rangifer tarandus, and you can find out more about
'em at UltimateUngulate.com.
All I'm gonna say now is that R. tarandus is the only species of deer
where the females grow antlers as a matter of course (other species' does sprout
'em once in a while, but it's very rare).
This
fine fellow is a steppe bison named Blue Babe. He was discovered in permafrost
(ground that remains frozen all year 'round) back in 1979; testing on him and
on the soils around him revealed that he's thirty-six thousand years old. Nearly
intact, too. Have a look at this
page if you want to know more about him.
Bowhead whale skull. I believe the one behind it is a grey whale skull. Dunno
when the animals died, but I think they were hunted by Natives rather than dying
of natural causes.
A friend of mine asked if I saw any white bears on the trip, meaning polar bears.
I had to say no, unless you count statues. I wish I could say more about this
gorgeous piece of metalwork, but I forgot to write down who sculpted it and
when. All I know is, it's the first sight you see when you enter the University
museum. Or it was, anyway. They're doing renovation and reconstruction like
crazy.
The next day, 3 September, I did something very foolish. I had been seeing ads for a yarn store called Inua Wool Shoppe (202 Henderson Road Fairbanks, AK 99709. Phone number 907-479-5830. They haven't got a web page) for some time, and being both a knitter and a bit of a compulsive, I decided to go visit. I rented a bike from the backpackers' hostel I was staying at- that was easy enough. I had a map of Fairbanks from the tourism board, but had failed to notice that it was not to scale. I was also coming down with a bit of a cold due to being stuck on an airplane for many, many hours a few days before... Let's just say I earned that skein of qiviut.
I also got a few pictures along the way, since part of my course took me across the University campus again.
UAF has an experimental farm on which they raise reindeer, much the way Rutgers
University in New Jersey raises vegetable crops and cattle and such.This is
separate from their Large Animal Research Station, which I will speak of later.
I arrived at the start of the rut, or a little before; all the bucks were banging
their antlers against the fences around their pens, trying to scrape off the
velvet.
They've
also got a Botanical Gardens. My photograph of the blossoming Asiatic lilies
didn't come out good enough to put on the Web, but this is one of the legendary
giant Alaskan vegetables. This cabbage is as big across as my SHOULDERS.
I am going to have to find the photograph of the Giant Leek of Doom at some point. But this was a seriously big brassica.
After
I finished gawping at the plants (their chili peppers and tomatoes were just
starting to turn yellowish for the season), I headed on back to the hostel.
I'm very fond of this particular style of lodging. It's cheap, and you get to
meet interesting people. So far I've never been in a hostel where I didn't feel
safe. I paid $22 a night to sleep in a room with three strangers, and got to
use the kitchen and other facilities. Met folks there who'd come all the way
from Singapore, New Zealand, England, Germany, Japan, Texas, you name it. Billie's
Backpackers' Hostel is just about the nicest spot I ever got to stay in,
even if the internet access was broken and we had to go to Gulliver's
Books or College Coffee (3677 College Rd Fairbanks, AK 99709
Phone: (907) 374-0468, again, no web page) to check our email instead.
And yes, that picture to the left is what it looked like. If you don't mind
not staying in downtown Fairbanks (you have to take the city bus or bike to
get there- it's not a practical walking distance), it's a fantastic choice for
a budget place to stay. Bring kitty treats or a ball of yarn; there's a cat
who'll love either one, and they've got a pug dog, too.
Right, that's enough for one page. I'll tell you about the next part of my trip tomorrow. Visited the Arctic Circle, I did.