Happy Fat Tuesday! I would like to thank Lollie for infusing the early morning atmosphere with Fat Tuesday spirit by decorating the conference room with Mardi Gras beads, masks, and blaring New Orleans music!
Whew, another whirlwind of a day. The PolarTREC staff did an excellent job of "winging it." The finish of the Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race occurred mid-morning, so rather than sit inside and practice the very necessary skills of incorporating photos into my journal I, along with the rest of the PolarTREC crew, strolled to the Chena River to cheer the mushers and their teams on. Luckily, the weather was a balmy 18 degrees F this morning, because I hung out on the frozen river for over an hour and a half waiting for the teams to cross the finish line. All the dogs crossed the finish line in a full out run, tails wagging and looking like they could keep on going for another 1000 miles. WOW!!!
Sebastian Schnuelle and his dog team about to cross the finish line.
After warming up for a short while (and grabbing another cup of coffee) it was time to head off to the PolarTREC office for an amazing feast of Alaskan foods provided by the staff. I had reindeer pizza, moose roast, salmon dip, and yummy local blueberry cobbler. Thank you PolarTREC staff for feeding me, you made my tummy happy and my tongue a fabulous shade of blue! Stuffed and content, I got back in the van to go to the Large Animal Research Station (LARS). There are caribou, reindeer, and musk ox at LARS. Did you know that female reindeer are the only ones that have antlers around the winter holidays! You know what that means... all of Santa's sled team are females! I wonder if they are terribly embarrassed to have boy names? Musk ox have incredibly fine and very warm under-wool called qiviut (pronounced kiv-ee-ut). A hat, scarf, or sweater produced with qiviut is very light, and way warmer than long johns, fleece, lamb or angora wool. A single skein of qiviut wool- enough to knit maybe 30 cm of a 15 cm wide scarf can cost around $70! I am pretty darn sure that people consider it money very well spent.
Male Musk Ox at the Large Animal Research Station
The last big event of the day was a trip to the Museum of the North on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I thought the most spectacular exhibit of the Museum was not the natural history of Alaska or the artfully created and never used outhouse, but The Place Where You Go Listen. The Place Where You Go Listen is a room with a screen that has very muted blue light on the top, orange lights shining up from the bottom and thin green lights running vertically every 60 cm. The rest of the room is completely white with speakers embedded in the walls, and the ceiling. The sound coming from the speakers are every-changing and represent the sounds the light of day and the light of night create, as well as the phases of the moon, the Northern Lights, and the seismic activity of the Earth. I cannot think of a noise to use as an analogy, all I know is that I was totally captivated by the sounds and spent quite a while in the room, quietly sitting with my eyes closed just letting the noises surround me. It was incredible, and occasionally a bit eerie.
Museum of the North exhibit at UAF
Again, the PolarTREC team was wonderfully accommodating and flexible today. My trip to Fairbanks is now brimming over with fresh adventures and wonderful moments.
The one downfall to all the excitement of today is that I didn't finish learning how to load photos into this journal. That is the fist thing on my "honey-do" list for tomorrow.
Happy Birthday, Carol!
Wink