Friday, March 5, 2010

Day Trip to Seward

Tuesday we decided to take a day trip while we waited for Dallon to fly in. Mom near the bay in Seward. The day we arrived the sun went down at 4:30 but it did not get dark until 6:00. One week later the sun goes down at 5:00 and it is light until 6:45. At this latitude the day is lengthened by 8 minutes per day. One week is 40 minutes. This is a strange place.
Avalanche came down from the hillside and took out the guardrail. Anything on the road ended up in the bay. Most snowmobilers that ride the shoots buy a parachute to save them in case of an avalanche. Ha! Money wasted.
In the bay the fresh water freezes and the salt water does not. Since it is quite well mixed the fresh water freezes in and around the brine. The result is very loosly frozen, strange shaped icebergs. The icebergs get stranded when the tide goes out. This is a strange place.
We met Virgil Johnson, owner of IRBI Knives. IRBI stands for I'd Rather Be Independent. He is a knife maker living in Moose Knee, on the way to Seward. We got a nice tour of his shop and visited with him for several minutes. He has a lot of cool "man" stuff. He is holding a small walrus skull with ivory tusks.
The object with my hand on it is walrus ivory. It is petrified. It was originally used as a dog sled runner. It is difficult to see in this photo. One might ask, "why would they make a sled runner out of expensive walrus ivory?" The answer is because they couldn't eat it.

2 comments:

Chelsea said...

Way awesome. Thanks for posting. Oh how I miss Alaska and all it's quirks. Someday I'll get to go back. Looks like Uncle B had fun in the "man stuff" store. LOL.

Harmony said...

I love those cloudy mountain pictures. Such a pretty place.

So Dad is blogging now??