Denali National Park, Post 1: Aramark and the Park Service

It's 1:45am on Thursday. We've been home long enough to get most stuff out of the van. I was in the back seat from Talkeetna to Anchorage and after a nap I pulled out the computer and began notes for the Denali trip.

I'm not sure how much of this I'll get written in the end. Probably just short notes in passing.

• There was the big rain last night at Denali that caused a number of rock slides and slowdown of the buses, but things were cleared up pretty quickly.
  
• There's the finicky weather and the luck of the draw as we drove up in rain on Monday afternoon, had some beautiful clear views of the Mountain yesterday when our Wonder Lake bus ride was scheduled, and then it rained again last night and was cloudy and rainy much of our time in the park. Enough so that we came home early because Doug's sleeping back was wet and the forecast was for more rain.
  
• And then there's the sense I felt here and there of the lack of communication and coordination between Aramark and the Park Service.
  
• And finally, the bus drivers are frustrated and hopeful that Aramark will settle in their favor and they won't have to go out on strike. It's got to happen while the tourists are still here if will have any impact.

But before posting I looked at my email where I get copies of the comments that people posted on the blog. So, Steve Heimel, it was your comment that alerted me to the fact that while I was doing important things at Denali, and consumed by weather and mountains, animals and bus schedules, cooking over coals, and doing lots of catching up with Doug, you all had such mundane things as political indictments. It all seems so boring in comparison. So, here's the first post.

Note: The photos in the next posts will be from my Canon. I grabbed my old Pentax for the trip because I wasn't sure where my battery charger was and my battery was low. It turned up in the car. A major reason why I've become addicted to the digital camera: I still have pictures to take on the roll in my camera, but the digital pics are already on the computer and ready to go. BTW, there are outlets at Eilson where one can stick a battery charger between buses.



We got out of the house before 9am Monday. It was cloudy and cool. The view from mile 135 was of clouds obscuring even the foot hills. You could see the river. Within an hour it was raining hard. Aramark employee at the WAC (Wilderness Access Center) gave us a handwritten note to put on our dashboard to show we had reservations at Teklanika (and so could drive to the campground) and a printed paper to put up at the campground.

Reservations for Discovery Hikes had to be made at the Visitors’ Center (Park Service, not contract Aramark employees.) There was only one place left on the Wednesday hike (Tuesday we were scheduled on the Wonder Lake bus) so we signed up Doug. We were given a paper that confirmed the booking and were told we had to go back to the WAC to pay. What? After some questioning back and forth, the young man serving us asked someone else, who quickly ascertained that we already had TEK passes and didn’t need to do anything more.

If you camp at Teklanika Campground (mile 30 of the road in the park) you have to reserve for three nights. You can get a one day bus pass for the park with a reservation for a specific bus on your first full day. After that you can use the pass on a space available basis anywhere after mile 30. They call this special bus pass a Tek pass. When we made the reservation, I understood the person to say it was good for the next two days. But when we got there our campground host said, no, only for the second day. Since we left on the second day, we didn't test it. The drivers really didn't ask to see the passes inside the park.

At mile 12 at the end of the paved road at Savage River. you get to the stop where you can’t go any further in a car unless you have a campground reservation at Teklanika. The ranger there looked at the handwritten note in our windshield and asked if we had a green card. No, that was what they gave us. Do you have the campground paper? That we had, so the ranger took the windshiled note into the little booth and soon came back with a green printed card to put into our windshield with our dates. The Aramark employees at the WAC were supposed to give us the green card.

This was our first sign of conflict between the contractors - Aramark and Doyon - and the Park Service employees. When we left today, a day early, I told the campground hosts we were leaving early so they could notify the reservations people that there would be an extra campground available at Teklanika. When we got to the ranger at Savage River where you exit the permit needed area, the ranger there said we should stop at the WAC and let them know. I said I told the campground hosts. The answer: Yes, but they are Park Service and reservations is Aramark. I'm supposed to go the short road to the WAC, park the car, walk to the building, wait in line because the Park Service and the private contractor can't communicate? Some people want to help out by notifying Park people that they are leaving early, but when they have to give up precious vacation time to do, I suspect most people won't.

Long Life Noodles

Doug biked along for my run this morning and we found a moose with two calves on the Campbell Creek bike trail between the Alaskan Native Medical Center and Lake Otis. We also found some spawning salmon in the creek. We did a little part of the garden tour that had six houses on one street on the hillside then made it to X & WY's for dinner. There were several other folks with China experience and as good Chinese food as you're going get in Anchorage.










And long life noodles for Alex and my belated birthdays. Here's Alex's dad making the noodles. He prepared most of the food. He learned to cook during during the Cultural Revolution when he was sent to Inner Mongolia and was assigned to cook.


Tomorrow morning we head out for Denali. Back on Thursday night, so I expect the blog to be pretty quiet. We had a little sunshine today and are hoping to see a certain mountain tomorrow as we drive north.

The Conversation Picks Up 38 Years Later

...as if it were just a couple of days ago. Due to modern technology I was able to see the Anchorage airport arrival schedule on my laptop at home and see that Doug's plane was several hours late. And I could check the Frankfurt airport's departure schedule to see exactly when it left. If anyone wants to practice their German in Anchorage, just go to North terminal when a Condor flight is due. Most of the tour people waiting were speaking German as were most of the arriving passengers. We waited with them for people to come out from Customs through that door on the left of the stairs, or down the stairs.

Doug's napping now and a little disappointed about the rain after I reported the sun out yesterday. And he's been correcting my version of events that he's been reading on the blog. In his version of things, we met at the youth hostel in Amsterdam, not the Heineken brewery, where he says he's never been. And I didn't stay at his flat in London, but rather in the flat of friends of his, since he didn't have a flat in London.

He gave me a copy of Private Eye which bills itself as

Private Eye is the UK's number 1 best-selling news and current affairs magazine edited by Ian Hislop.

It offers a unique blend of humour, social and political observations and investigative journalism.

before heading for bed. I can't imagine a magazine like that selling in the US. It's all words with a few cartoons. I guess they still read in England. The content is a blend of a blog, newspaper, news of the weird, Saturday Night Live.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but it's the size of a normal magazine, but in newsprint. You can double click anyone of these images to enlarge them.

Pebble Mine Goes Digital

Sitemeter is a program that monitors hits to websites. As I was checking last night, I noticed, blinking on the top of the page was an Anti Prop 4 ad. The
Anchorage Daily News just reported

The huge amount of advertising on the proposed law, set for statewide vote on Aug. 26, is creating one of the state's costliest political battles in years.

Preliminary disclosures to the Alaska Public Offices Commission show that supporters and foes of Measure 4 have raised at least $3.6 million so far for their ad campaigns.

And as I went to the ADN site to get the quote I noticed that the same ad is running there. This is one issue that Alaskan voters will need to study.

My initial knee jerk reaction was that we shouldn't trust any company that calls itself "Northern Dynasty." What kind of people call themselves 'dynasty'? But we need to look into what the proposition says. Here's a link to the state election site's version of the Proposition 4.

Salmon and Placinta

We had a great dinner with I, his parents, and grandmothers tonight. Unfortunately, I
is teething so there were a lot of tears interspersed with smiles and showing off his new vocabulary, all in Romanian. Being bi-lingual is a great advantage and they know he's going to be immersed in English soon, so his mom speaks to him just in her mother tongue as does the Grandma visiting now from Moldova.




But Mom's teeth must have been fine as you can see her smiling beautifully through the wine glass.









Grandma N made this placinta - it's filled with cheese and potatoes and kept calling me back.







And when we got home there was an email from Doug - it sounded like his flight to Frankfurt was ok.

Yak and Yeti and Habitat for Humanity

After Potter Marsh yesterday, we had dinner at Yak and Yeti last night. I usually stick pretty close to vegie and fish, but I couldn't resist the lamb curry - and on special occasions I've wandered off the diet. And it was delicious, but my stomach let me know it isn't used to meat afterward. They were very sparing with raita that comes with the curry and rice. The samples at Costco are bigger.



But this is a great addition to the Anchorage restaurant scene. It wasn't as crowded as the last time we were there (that was a winter Saturday night) and so it was much more relaxed.








After we took a walk to work off some of the dinner. We see these interesting new buildings. Obviously apartments or condos.




Then we saw they were Habitat for Humanity homes. Wow! They have a hip urban look. And then I realized that I had seen these when they were first getting built. Sky's dad had brought some young folks up from Juneau to work on them and I had been at the site a couple of times. These look pretty impressive, just off Spenard.

"Each day is like a work of art to him."

This was in a Fresh Air piece this morning. The girlfriend of Philippe Petit was quoted as saying this about the man who tight rope walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. The piece was about a new movie - Man on Wire - that is coming out about Petit.

Think about it. Each day is like a work of art. What if we all approached each day thinking of time as a canvas? Each day is ours to make into a work of art. Living as a work of art. Communications with others as a work of art. Walking as a work of art. Simply making creative use of the time, place,and energy we have each day. Changes in weather, health , and the world around us are simply different media with which to experiment and gain new insights about life.

What would your life be like if each morning you lived artistically in whatever you did - cleaning the house, attending a meeting, biking to work, shopping, visiting the dentist, relaxing, talking to friends? How can you do these things in ways that are beautiful, create new meaning, cause others to see or feel things they didn't see or feel before?

I think children do this naturally. Why do we lose this?

[See my review and clip from the film.]

Patronizing Businesses With Political Posters

So, what do you think? If you see a business that has a poster for a candidate that you are opposed to, does it cause you to go to another store or do you just go in and shop anyway? What if it is a candidate you favor? Do you buy more? Would you go to a new store because they support your candidate?


Ideally, we should be able to treat our fellow citizens the same no matter which candidate they favor. But when the political divide gets wider and wider, and rhetoric gets hotter and hotter, I can't help but wonder whether the money I would spend in the store might not end up supporting candidates I oppose.

Would it be better if they left the sign off? Then they still might use my payments to support candidates I oppose, but I wouldn't know. (Well I could look at the APOC reports.) Does posting a sign on your business constitute an in-kind donation? What if Conoco-Phillips put a huge banner down the side of their building?

I remember once asking the owner of an ethnic restaurant about the large poster of a candidate in the window. "The candidate eats here often and asked to put it up. We couldn't say no." Notice how skillfully the owner did not tell me if they supported the candidate or not.

Do such posters help a candidate? Do yard signs help a candidate? I would gess they do help persuade the undecideds. If you see lots of signs, especially if you know and respect the people whose yards they are in, you get a feeling that this person has widespread support. Especially if you want to fit in, be like everyone else. But some people may be turned off by the signs, especially if they are put up illegally.* (See below) I tried finding some articles on this, but didn't come up with anything recent. I guess people just assume it works.

For people who feel strongly against a candidate, seeing that candidate's poster in the window of a store they are about to enter, surely has to cause them to pause. Do you tell the owner why or just leave quietly?

The owner has the right to express his or her opinion. Is not shopping at a store that posts a sign for the candidate you dislike a political boycott? I think that going seeking the information about which candidates which business owners support and then telling people to avoid those businesses moves more into the boycott territory. Customers have a right to shop there or not. Business owners can support candidates many ways. If they want to post signs at their business, they have to consider the possible impact on their business.

But I do think the restaurant owner I mentioned above could have declined, saying that they didn't want to offend potential customers by having any political signs. They could then offer to have a sign at their house if they did support the candidate. Or, conversely, they could also allow the opponent to post a sign, though the opponent would probably assume they support the other candidate and wouldn't ask.


*While trying to get some information for this post I did find this about putting signs on roadways from the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities:

1. Campaign signs placed within the State’s road and highway rights-of-way are deemed unauthorized encroachments under AS 19.25.200 – 19.25.250 and will be removed by DOT crews without notification. Vehicles parked in rights-of-way that are used to display political advertisements are also prohibited and subject to removal. Political campaign signs are considered outdoor advertising.

2. AS 19.25.105(a) states, “Outdoor advertising may not be erected or maintained within 660 feet of the nearest edge of the right-of-way…” This section deals with advertising outside the corridor, but also addresses advertising that maybe placed within the corridor on bus benches or trash receptacles. If the sign is on private property, DOT must provide a 30-day written notice of removal to the sign owner and property owner.

Potter Marsh New Boardwalk

We kidnapped a friend from his office today and took him with us to check out the new Potter Marsh Boardwalk. When you go to the boardwalk from the parking lot, you turn left (right to the old boardwalk) and you walk further into the marsh and away from the highway.





The boardwalk is much higher above the marsh than the old one and shakes with relatively little motion. At one point about seven people were standing at the end of the new boardwalk, none walking, no one near us walking, and the boardwalk swayed.




We didn't see a lot of bird life. We were there about 3pm. We saw a couple of grebes, a whole family of Canada geese, and lots of swallows.









But there were salmon coming through the large pipes under the highway. Without a polarizing filter it was hard to see them through the camera, but if you look really carefully you can see one or two.

Lufthansa Strke - Turning the Unexpected Obstacle into an Adventure

Our visitor is due Saturday at 11:30am on the Condor flight from Frankfurt. The idea of a non-stop flight from Europe to Anchorage sounded great back when he was booking. But today he forwarded the following email he just got:

> Sehr geehrte Gaeste,
>
> bei einem eventuellen Streik des Lufthansa Bodenpersonals empfehlen wir
> Condor Gaesten, die einen innerdeutschen Lufthansa Zubringerflug nach/von
> Frankfurt gebucht haben, die Bahn-Anreise nach/ab Frankfurt. Der
> Flugschein nach/ab Frankfurt kann als Zug - Fahrschein genutzt werden.
>
> Wir bedauern eventuelle Unannehmlichkeiten.
> Ihr Condor Team
>
>
> Dear Passengers,
>
> Due to a possible strike of Lufthansa airport personnel, it is
> recommended
> that Condor passengers with a booked Lufthansa connecting Flight within
> Germany to/from Frankfurt, take the train to/from Frankfurt.
> The flight coupon will be honored as a train ticket.
>
> We apologize for any inconveniences.
> Your Condor Team.
>
>

He also wrote that the trains from London to Frankfurt are full until July 31.

Meanwhile the bus drivers in Denali have also voted to authorize a strike.


One way or the other this will work out. We used to tell our son, the year we lived in Washington DC and we went on weekend trips to see the sights and he said he didn't want to go: "You're only seven. We can't leave you home alone. You have to go. So, you can choose to have a terrible time or you can choose to have a good time. It's up to you. But, if you choose to be miserable, you may NOT make the trip miserable for the rest of us." He usually ended up having a good time.

So Doug can fret each step of his trip, or he can let it all go, and do what he needs to do and then observe the whole thing like he might a tv show about an airline strike and how everyone copes. I hope he can do the latter. This is a vacation, he isn't being airlifted out to have a premature baby like Sky's mom. It'll be ok. And maybe the rain will be gone when he finally gets here.

Easy for me to say, I just have to sit and wait for him to arrive.