Flutterby™! : Still more Alaska 2005-04-20 13:14:43.354682+00

Still more Alaska

2005-04-20 13:14:43.354682+00 by Dan Lyke 6 comments

In my ongoing attempts to obsess over something that's not happening for another 4 months, here's http://www.juneauphotos.com/ , regular photographs of the Juneau area. Almost 1,600 of them, over 8 years.

From the FAA's Alaska Airports photos and diagrams, an oblique shot of PSG, the Petersburg airport, including some background and the town itself, two overhead shots (1, 2), and the diagram.

The crashed DC3 that used to be outside of Petersburg along Mitkoff Highway and the Wrangell Narrows has apparently been sold to be a museum piece up in Juneau as of May 2000, so it may be up there by now.

The Project Gutenberg online version of The Alaskan by James Oliver Curwood

#Comment Re: made: 2005-04-20 17:43:32.526605+00 by: jeff [edit history]

Dan ... you are helping me immensely in the planning of my next trip to Alaska (whenever that is). Don't lose the Flutterby archives! <grin>

No worries. Just keep this link and this link bookmarked (I should really hack together a "show me me the 'and' and 'or' of these topics feature).

Oh, and apparently the dumps are cleaning up their act and being managed in such a way that they're no longer the spots to go bear watching.

More musings on the Alaska travels: Jeff, you should think about a motorcycle trip. Tool on out to Bellingham, take the ferry up to Haines, head inland on the highway from there.

The more I learn about Juneau, the more I think that if you were doing such a trip on the cheap and were in good shape you could probably get one heck of a fantastic view of Mendenhall Glacier by just taking public transit (or the aforementioned motorcycle) up to the visitor's center on the lake, and hiking up into the glacier. You won't have the "on the ice" experience of the helicopter ride, but I'll bet the picture potential is at least as good. Depending on what all we find in Juneau, one of the "I'd like to do that" trips is bicycling up there. But two days ain't much time...

Can you get foldable tires for the motorcycle? With bicycles they've got Kevlar tires you can fold up and put in a saddle bag, which would make some of the issues with road surface in the back country less important. Be a bitch to pump that much volume with a hand pump, but would make you more self-sufficient. On the other hand, during summer there's probably enough traffic that it's not a huge issue.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-04-21 04:03:35.516088+00 by: jeff [edit history]

Read this recent thread and this older thread to see that some of us are actually serious about doing this sometime next year (Tom--you may want to chime in). And here is an article written by a fellow who recently made the Alaskan journey on a motorcycle identical to mine (except for the color). My V-Strom, in original Alaskan Red:

Those guys seem intent on riding up through Canada, which seems to me like you'd miss much of the best parts of Alaska. But yowza that looks like it could be fun and pretty far out there.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-04-21 15:20:10.69979+00 by: jeff [edit history]

Yeah, I've recommended to Tom that he take a route through Glacier National Park, then head northward through the Canadian Rockies (Banff, Jasper) if he hasn't seen those areas already. To me, Lake Louise is the most beautiful lake in North America, perhaps the world. Wouldn't want to miss that.

From the Canadian Rockies there are a number of routes one could take to head both westward and northward towards British Columbia and then northward to Alaska. There is lots to be seen along the way, I'm sure ...