Summer Vacation 2010: Denali National Park Hiking

Our second full day in Denali National Park we planned to exercise one of the more unique features of the park buses, which is that in addition to yelling "Stop" to bring the bus to a halt in order to take pictures of wildlife, you can also just get off the bus whenever and wherever you like, barring places directly adjacent to wildlife and certain protected spots like the wolf dens.  Being from the east coast, where "stay on the path" is the mantra for public wilderness, this was different enough to cause us to do some math.  Based on the length of the park road and the number of people who go hiking in Denali (I think we got that info from a brochure or something) it works out to something like, for every 250 feet of road one person gets off the bus to go hiking per year.  Thus, the only paths are those made by animals in most places.

We were most fortunate in that we had one of the very few clear, sunny days of the summer for our jaunt and this made for incredible pictures in addition to just plain being more fun than being out in a downpour.  We were up early again (made easier by the extreme quantities of light and jet lag) and greeted by nice views even from the campground.

 View from the road in front of the campground

We wanted to have plenty of time to go hiking and return to the road before the buses stopped running, so we went to the bus stop early enough to be first in line and to get seats on the first bus out into the park.  The sunlight gave a much different view than the clouds of the day before, and some nice pictures as the fog burned off.

 Natural Beauty

 Wildlife - note that we saw a whole bunch of bears too, go see them on Flikr.

MORE Natural Beauty

And eventually we came around a corner and discovered that not only was it nice out, but Denali itself was clear.  This can change very quickly, so we stopped the bus and got pictures in case we never saw it again.

The mountain remained clear though, we had unobstructed views for the rest of the day.

This one is from Eielson Visitor's Center, a few dozen miles closer than the previous picture.  Standing there it feels like the mountain takes up half the sky.  They have telescopes there to zoom in and see details - could probably have seen climbers if it was in season for that, but it wasn't.

We got a few tips from the rangers at the Vistor's Center on the best place to get off the bus for our intended destination - the toe of the Muldrow Glacier, which is actually less than a mile from the road.

Our disembarkation point - note the complete lack of anything but wilderness and how nice it is out

 We discovered that the tundra here was incredibly deep and springy - might have your foot compress the moss six inches when stepping - was like walking in low gravity or something

 The tundra heavily featured wild blueberries, and the dew on them prompted Ana to take about a hundred pictures to try to catch the sun in the dew.  Practically, I ate blueberries while this was going on.

 We saw clouds crossing over the top of the Alaskan Range, and it was good.

The tundra bushes were somewhat deep in places.

We found tracks indicating that in the last week or so, grizzly bears had stood exactly where we were standing at the time.

We came to the dead ice at the bottom of the glacier - the black cliff over there is exposed glacial ice with dirt and rock ground into it.

Exploring around the edges of the dead ice, we found an ice cave which was pretty neat to look at.

Ice cave video

We found some exposed ice where the different layers of grit could be seen between sheets of ice.

We also discovered that Muldrow Glacier mud is deep, sticky, and quite possibly corrosive, based on what the boots looked like afterward - took the paint right off the metal.

A river that might have been cross-able on a cold day was more than we were comfortable fording due to the sun causing there to be a lot of glacial runoff - note the concrete color of the water due to the silt.

As we couldn't cross the river, we couldn't get up on top of the main body of dead ice - may have to go back and follow the dead ice up to the dogleg turn where it becomes live ice someday, but that's about 14 miles and a lot further from the road than we were going to be on this day.

For comparison, here is a point that a freshwater stream and a glacial stream mix

We made it back from our minor off-road adventure safe and sound, picked up by a different bus headed back towards the entrance.  Couldn't really have asked for a nicer day for our short hike.  We both feel like we need to go back to Denali National Park for more adventure, preferably a multi-day hike into the wilderness rather than staying at a camp site, which was perfect for this trip but limits where you can get to.  After this second day, all that was left was the ride out, and the next day was still clear, so we got to see the mountain almost all the way to the front of the park - on a clear day it is visible for something like 80 to 100 miles.

Last look on the way out

We took a bus back to Anchorage, which was faster and cheaper than the train, but substantially less scenic, which was OK because I think we slept though most of that drive.  Back in Anchorage, we took it easy for a couple of days, eating in fancy restaurants and buying souvenirs like caribou jerky and seal-oil candles, before flying back home to attend various weddings and see our families.

Summer Vacation 2010: Denali National Park Bus Tour

For our first full day in Denali, we got up (very) bright and (very, for us at least) early, had bagels instead of trying to cook oatmeal, grabbed some apples and other snacks, filled the Camelbak bladder at the spigot, and headed out to the bus stop.

We got there before 7 AM, but that wasn't early enough.  There was already a family in line to head out on the first bus and they managed to get the last seats available.  We hung around for the next bus that went the full distance to the end of the park, which turned out to be the next bus, and managed to get seats on that one.  We headed out with our camera ready, hoping to see some wildlife and natural beauty.

Wildlife

Wildlife

Natural Beauty

We certainly got what we wished for!

We were told several times that only 30% of visitors to Denali National Park get to see one of the park's biggest draws, Mount McKinley (also and perhaps more commonly known as Denali - apparently there are a couple of Senators from wherever McKinley was from that have managed to keep an official name-change from going through for decades).  With the weather patterns of the area, there is quite often fog obscuring at least parts of the mountain and frequently the whole thing.  Throughout the day, the mountain was mostly obscured, but we were able to see bits and pieces of it.

 30% of Denali

The park road goes through valleys and also several high passes, with changes in altitude on the road of more than half a mile and back down again.  The scenery changes with the height and location significantly.  This first day, fog and clouds kept close in and gave everything sort of a mysterious look.  Several times we could look out and only the half of a valley closer to us, or the bottom (or top) half of a mountain range.

 Off the edge to the right it goes down for a loooong way.  The bus driver said something pretty close to "Quit whining! If you die, I die.  I'm highly motivated not to drive over the edge, and I haven't driven over it yet in 17 years."

The Dall Sheep would have been uncaring witnesses to our deaths if the bus driver had spoken too soon.

At the far end of the park road is Wonder Lake.

Apparently the ultimate photograph from the park is to capture Mt. Denali (behind us in this picture), with no clouds over it, being reflected in this lake, such that you see the mountain and a perfectly clear reflection at the same time.  I guess one guy did it once, and it was impressive.  They said he spent the whole summer camped on the other side of the lake to get it though, and it finally came through for him at something like 4am the week before he left.  I think a better idea is to buy prints of his picture than to try to get your own.

After turning around, we now had seats on the "good" side of the bus, which is the side facing the view 65% of the time instead of 35% of the time.  Even on the "bad" side, you get to see plenty.

The sun started peeking through the clouds on the way back, producing dramatic scenes.  This valley is filled with glacier, the very toe of the Muldrow glacier stretching 40 miles and a hard right turn from the face of Denali itself.

We got back at a reasonable hour, played around with our camping stoves, produced quasi-edible food (wasn't the stove's fault, instant stovetop-type food I wouldn't eat at home), switched over to candy (things we can't get in Japan) and retired early to read books in the tent by extended daylight until we felt like going to sleep.

You can see our several hundred Denali National Park Pictures here.

Summer Vacation 2010: Denali National Park Campsite

After we got off the train, we found our way over to the check-in area for campsites just before the last bus to the campsite we'd be staying at left.  It might have been a long while waiting to see if someone in an RV or car would be willing to drive us to the site otherwise!  Luckily, we'd reserved our campsite early; most sites were full.

We stayed at Teklanika Campground, inside the park, notable of all the Denali campgrounds because if and only if you stay there you can purchase a "TEK Pass", which allows unlimited bus rides as often as you'd like during your stay as long as you do not return to the entrance.  We'd only briefly tested our camping stove prior to this trip, so we were a bit concerned about having enough food if it didn't work, but it was nothing that paying for more bus rides to the front entrance couldn't fix if necessary.

We headed out on the bus with our minimal gear (as compared to both the serious week-in-the-wilderness backpackers and the people driving RV's), carrying one big hiking pack, one Camelbak daypack, and an insulated bag full of food.  In Denali, there is only one road (92 miles long) through the park, which is the size of Massachusetts.  Cars are not allowed past Mile 14, with the exception of cars/RVs staying at Teklanika, professional artists, and a small number of season passes.  We learned that the buses there are more like  safari buses than just public transportation vehicles.  If you see an animal, you can yell "stop" at any time and the driver will stop the bus so everyone can drop the windows and take pictures of the wildlife.

First animal sighting, two moose

There are many animals in the park, including moose, caribou, wolves, foxes, rabbits, lynx, bears, sheep, and an assortment of birds.  On our ride in, we saw some grizzlies and some moose, as with bits of amazing scenery peeking through the fog.  We could have taken the bus to the turnaround point and gotten off when they passed the campground on their way back out of the park, but it would have been quite late at night at that point and we were still a bit tired and jet lagged.  We also weren't sure how late it would remain light enough to put up the tent and have some food.

Our little tent in our campsite made for RVs

In the camping area, there were some of the nicest outhouses I've ever been in with antibacterial gel to clean your hands:

Real doors and everything!

Bear lockers to store your food:

They're upgrading these, but the old ones look cooler

Bear-proof garbage cans:

Very sturdy

And only a few campsites available. We snagged one that was fairly close to everything we needed without being right next to the outhouses.  It was also towards the middle of the campground, giving us a protective layer of people the bears could eat before getting to us.  Bears don't tend to come into campsites, but as most other campers in that particular area had cars or RVs to hide in should a bear come, we wanted to be extra careful about leaving food around where it could lure bears to our site.

After getting the tent up, testing out our thankfully working stove equipment, and inflating our sleeping pads, we had an excellent night's sleep and were quite thankful we had our eyemasks. We could definitely read books well into the night there without artificial illumination.

Summer Vacation 2010: Anchorage to Denali

We flew from San Francisco at 7 PM, and arrived at 11 PM in Anchorage.  For those of you keeping track, we left our apartment at 6:00 AM on August 4th.  We left Tokyo at 5:40 PM on August 4th.  We arrived in San Francisco at 11:08 AM on August 4th.  We left at 7:40 PM on August 4th.  We arrived at 11 PM in Alaska on August 4th.  We were traveling for nearly 40 hours, then arrived in Alaska and found it still light outside on the same day we left.

We were surprised at how bright it was outside.  You hear about the "midnight sun" and all, but we never understood it viscerally until we were there.  While packing, we made sure to have our eyemasks for the planes, and headlamps for lighting the tent.  We were considering buying a lantern too, as we don't have one of those in with the camping gear at the moment.  As it was bright enough to read a book at midnight in the tent, we were rather fortunate to have brought our eyemasks and never needed the headlamps.

11:30 PM, outside the airport

We spent our first day in Anchorage, shopping.  New hiking boots for me, wind- and water-proof jackets for both of us, fuel for our camp stove, and food to cook in said camp stove while in Denali.  They only sell food at the entrance of the park, and there was no way we'd be making the 4-hour round trip there for food daily.  We definitely spent longer than necessary in the grocery store, appreciating the quantity, diversity, and English-language-ness of the food.

Alaska Railroad

The next morning we headed over to the railroad depot and took the train to Denali National Park.  We upgraded to GoldStar Service, their version of First Class.  With GoldStar seats, you get better windows, free drinks, a better dining car, and a covered platform to stand out on to see the views.  Totally worth it if you're taking the train.

Viewing Area

We traveled through Elmendorf Air Force Base, through the surprisingly large wreckage of a recent crash, followed by lots of fairly average scenery.

Train and Trees

We also went through Wasila, which seemed like one giant strip mall.  We went out on the viewing area a few times, and were quite glad we'd purchased our new jackets.

It was windy.  And cold.

Lunch was very enjoyable in the dining car.  Lee had some Buffalo chili and the rest of my pasta and chicken dish.

Cute Dining Car

Then the mountains started to come into view.

Off in the distance...

...mountains...

...awesome mountains.

The scenery from the train was amazing for the last couple of hours of the seven hour train ride.  I highly recommend it - it's definitely worth the experience, once. 

The Train!

Check out the rest of the great images of the scenery from the train over at Flickr.  Next up, Denali National Park.

Lee's Office and Desks

The average Japanese professional office and the average American professional office are not terribly similar. In an American office, you'll get in general more space, more privacy, and better hardware. It would be expected that you personalize your space at least a little. Unless large stacks of disorganized paper count as personalization, that is less common in Japan. I can't say that I've visited a large number of Japanese offices, but I account ours as fairly clean and well organized compared to some that I have seen, despite there being several design elements I would have done very differently had I been in charge - like leaving up the six walls that were torn down to make sure that everybody could see everybody else at all times and that your coworker's phone conversation four rows away is clearly audible. Anyhow, I went in early one morning and snapped some pictures before everyone else got there to show you the before and after for my working space and a few shots of the broader office.

First, I show you a recreation of what confronted me when I started working here. A single half-height cube wall, steel desk from before computers existed, a few extra beige drawers, too-small but moderately comfortable office chair, and a 13 inch laptop computer from before time began.

A few words about the computer. In the US, 13 inches is considered a size pretty much exclusively for portability - OSHA and your employees would both lynch you if you tried to make people work on it full time - but here if you wanted Windows XP that is the only kind of computer the school would give you, and several people in this office do all their work on computers of that size, usually by committing serious and prolonged crimes against ergonomics. Incidentally, I had to check the minimum and suggested system specifications for XP, because the laptop they offered with Vista on it did not meet Vista's minimum system requirements. I chose XP and meeting minimum specs over Vista and not enough RAM. Basic clockspeed / thread math says that that laptop has less than 5% of the power of my current home computer. Despite coming out in 2004, the laptop's CPU has about half the power of the CPU I used when I built my first computer in sophomore year of high school in 2001. The laptop they gave me works, and I did manage to get it with an English operating system instead of a Japanese one, which was very helpful. It was, however, the kind of situation where opening Word or Excel might take 15 seconds. I'm sure most people don't care about the computer but it is such an egregious example of hiring expensive people and wasting their time and your money by giving them underpowered tools that I felt the need to comment at length.

And here we have my newly completed desk setup. I managed to get my spot moved to the other side of the room, away from the shredder (it's loud) and into a cube with two half-height walls, giving me a lot more space to hang papers and lists on the walls. My new computer, provided by a generous co-worker with excess grant money that I was working with on a paper with, is far more current and powerful - I'll spare you the details and just say that it is a specialized engineering build and I don't spend nearly as much time waiting around for the computer to catch up with me as I used to.

The dual-monitor setup with stand means that I can look at more than one thing at the same time (for instance, a paper being written and the data needed for writing it) and even in addition to that I can spread out papers on my desk because my laptop isn't smack in the middle of it taking up all the space. The laptop dock allows for hot docking/removal so if I need to get up and take the laptop to class I don't have to turn it off, just press one button and then pick it up and walk away, and I don't have to fiddle with plugging in/out the monitors and keyboard or anything like that. The full-size keyboard and the mouse really speed up the computer interface process when at the desk.

The chair I had shipped in from the US, because I could get it there and then ship it in for 1/3 the price of buying the same chair in Tokyo. The noise-canceling headphones help to lessen the distraction-factor of being in a room with 25-30 other people, who are not necessarily being quiet, while trying to work. There are a couple other tweaks - I took the center desk drawer out because I couldn't fit my knees under it, hid the phone in the set of side drawers (rarely rings, usually a wrong number), ran cables all through the desks for tricky things like USB hubs and the audio connections, and managed to hide most of the cables from view. All in all, major improvement from the beginning, though I always had a much larger and more adjustable desk and FAR more space and privacy even as just an intern in the US.
Anyhow, now that everybody is really sick of hearing about my desk, here are a couple of pictures of the office itself. There is one row behind me so the room goes about 20 feet back behind where this was taken. This open format is quite common in Japan. Apparently, it enhances group feeling. I might value productivity (or even, you know, actually being friends with your co-workers) over "group feeling", but then I'm not cutting the checks (which is a crappy way of saying it here, because checks don't exist in Japan).

Summer Vacation 2010: San Francisco

We took a month-long trip to the US for two weddings, some fun, and a certain amount of barbecue.  We aren't going to blog about the majority of the mainland US trip, but we did have an exciting vacation before things got crazy busy trying to see all our family and friends between cycles of intense eating and shopping.  We had to be in the rough area of New England from about the 12th of August through the 30th of August because of the weddings, but we were able to leave Japan on August 4th after classes ended for Lee.  While we could have crammed more family visiting into the trip, and that would have been nice, we decided that visiting someplace new and really vacationing for a bit on the way to the US would be an excellent idea.  Our main options were Alaska and Hawaii, figuring them both to be between Japan and the mainland US.  While Hawaii would have been fun, we chose the tundra rather than beaches.  The Kanazawa summer can be likened to living in Satan's armpit (though it gets worse the further south you go) and a break from the heat sounded better than a week at a beach.  Also, Hawaii is a lot more expensive than Alaska.

We started our Alaskan adventure with an eight hour layover in San Francisco, from 11 AM 'til 7 PM.  When you enter the country, you have to collect all your baggage and clear Customs, so we disembarked (de-planed? dis-planed? We heard them all from the airline attendant), grabbed our monstrous bags, took them through Customs, and checked them back in for the next leg of the flight.  We were then free to figure out how to get to the city from the airport and see what there was to see for 4-5 hours.

San Francisco was gray.  Very gray.  Surprisingly gray.

San Francisco was a lot colder and cloudier than anticipated.  Weather in the 60's is by no means cold, but when you're used to the 90's and 90% humidity, it seems downright chilly!  We took the BART (expensive subway / train) to the harbor and then walked down to Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf.  We found a big noodle.

We're still not sure what the noodle is about.

We also found Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge (partly obscured by fog), and an excellent lunch.  It's amazing how everything is really all right there.  We weren't sure we'd be able to see all that we wanted to see in the few hours we had, but we crossed quite a few things off our list in a short amount of time, including the obligatory MySpace self-portraits near famous things.  We also had a kind passer-by take an actual picture of us near Alcatraz:

There's Alcatraz!

We also got to see sea lions hanging out at the pier.  Pretty cool place, wouldn't mind going back!

Posing prettily for our picture.

We had an excellent and deeply satisfying lunch of local specialties, along with milk that *gasp* didn't taste like someone added flour to it!  Sourdough bread, local oysters, sourdough garlic bread with blue cheese melted on top, Dungeness crab pasta, and halibut battered in a local beer.  Mmmmm.  I typically don't like blue cheese, but melted onto the sourdough garlic bread, it was wonderful!

We ate them all before we remembered to photograph them!

Amazing garlic bread.

Pasta with Dungeness crab on top, Lee's entree. 

Good old Fish'n'Chips (Halibut in a local beer batter), Lee caught red-handed stealing fries.

After we lunched, we walked the city some more.  We wanted to ride a cable-car trolley, but the lines were immense and we didn't have exact change for a middle of the line stop.  It was also kind of expensive.  We did ride an electric streetcar later on.  We walked to Lombard street as well, and it is a very interesting street.  The houses that line it must cost a fortune!

Lombard Street.  Crazy, winding, Lombard Street

This city seemed like a nice place, with great views, lots of bike riders (with *gasp* helmets) and buses that also carry bikes, though the hills really are pretty steep.  I could not imagine walking there in heels!  Nice place to visit, and I wouldn't mind going back.  Check out our pictures on Flikr.

View from top of Lombard Street

Steep hills - SF has many