Well hi there! Brad has a special treat for you today and comes courtesy of a trip he and Jan took to the upper northwest of the US – as in very north, very west and definitely very upper! I had been holding on to this out of jealousy…I mean as a safety net, yeah, that’s it (almost ended that with a reference to Morgan Fairchild, but that would have dated me big time ha). With the travels coming up I wanted to make sure I had at least one story ready in case there was a gap in connectivity. Great news as we just received Brad’s latest batch of adventures, so we are absolutely good to go. Now, I may not have been kidding on the jealousy front. I do have a list of nemesis birds that haunt me daily. For some reason I either failed to get them in the tin or worse, never managed to get eyes on one. These are all affectionately called “Effin” birds. I’ve had the distinct pleasure of going after this particular Effin family over 5 times now, which have all consisted of long hikes above 10,000 feet. Have not even seen one of them for my efforts! Whenever our staff goes out in the field I tell them to bring back one of the Effins off my list. Going to cut Brad and Jan some slack as they are still relatively new around here, but when I tell them to “bring one back” I literally mean to bring a live specimen back for me!
Time for me to shed a few shades of green hue and get you to Brad’s adventure. Take it away Brad…
As Brian noted in previous posts, Jan and I survived our August photo assignment to the wilds of Alaska. This was one of those places we’ve always wanted to visit, but didn’t want to do half-way. I think our 17-day Alaska trip (land and sea) gave us a good intro to this truly wondrous and wild place. We both recommend a trip to Alaska. Go ahead and book it, I’ll let you catch up later.
Only about 2% of the state is accessible by roads. The rest must be visited by some other mode of transportation including: boat, plane, horse, dog sled, four-wheeler, SUV/Truck, tour bus, or on foot. Thankfully for Jan and I, most of the places we visited were by road, only a few were on foot. We did see and hold a very cute sled dog puppy (maybe a future post).
Thirty-five years ago, when Jan’s dad retired from a major manufacturer based in Illinois (BTW, he just celebrated the same thirty-five years of retirement and is still going strong), her parents took a 6-week driving trip to Alaska. Yes, that’s right. They chose to drive to Alaska from Illinois. As Jan’s dad is fond of telling us, “When you’ve driven from Illinois to Seattle, you are about halfway to Alaska.” (Now to be completely fair on the length of the driving trip, Jan’s dad did have to order and replace the hydraulic lifters in the car’s V-8 engine somewhere inside Alaska, but that only added 2-3 days to the whole adventure. Yes, he had tools in the trunk of the car.) We experienced similar travel times. No, not six weeks, but it did take us nearly 9 hours of flying, via fairly circuitous route, to reach Fairbanks from Illinois. Fairbanks is only about 100 miles from the Arctic Circle, or 64 degrees, 56 minutes north latitude. That means the sun sets for only a couple of hours each night during summer months, leaving us with a twilight-y sort of sky for sleeping. For those keeping score at home, I think this is a latitude record for Wildlife Intrigued.
As Jan’s parents discovered on their trip, there are many colorful people and stories along the way. One of those stories is about the town called Chicken in Alaska. The good people of the town wanted to name it after a local bird from the tundra, but no one could spell the bird’s name. They ended up calling the town “Chicken.” Stay tuned for the real bird’s name in just a bit.
If it looks like one, acts like one and easier to spell, then it must be one – hit the jump to read more about this Chicken!
Continue reading “Chicken”…by Brad Marks
Wildlife Intrigued 