Alaskan Adventures - Dogsledding and Ice Fishing

Monday night was yet another great night for the auroras. We had debated booking a guided tour - there are many aurora-chasing tours that run a couple hundred dollars per person and will take you quite far out of town. But everyone says one of the best places to see the lights is from a spot north of town off the Steese Highway called Cleary Summit. Right across the street from the Cleary parking lot is the Aurora Borealis Lodge that also offers non-guests a self-drive option to drive up and watch the northern lights from a deck with a warming room and hot cocoa, cookies and most importantly -- indoor restrooms. So instead of booking a guided van tour we just booked ourselves a much cheaper spot at the lodge and drove ourselves there for the evening from 11pm - 2:30am.

This was definitely a good night to be out. There were a lot of colors and the sky in this area was very dark.

The lodge host, Mok, was very friendly and used red-emitting lamps in the cabin for minimal light interference. In addition to the folks staying in the lodge's four guestrooms there were maybe about a dozen or so people out on the deck at any given time. Kevin took this shot from a nearby snowbank. I walked a little further off the deck and promptly sank into waist deep snow, again grateful for good snow gear.

The deck did shake a bit with all those people walking around, so it was actually better to set the tripod up in the yard, as long as you stuck to the packed snow.

We stayed until a little after 1am then decided to head back to the hotel. For comparison, Kevin took this shot from our cabin. You can still see the aurora even with the light pollution, but the colors are a bit fainter. Notice how the ice on the Chena River has really melted in just a few days.

One of our absolute highlights for this trip was to do a dog sledding tour on Wednesday afternoon. When we were here in 2012 it was summertime so there was no snow. We did visit Mary Shields' kennel and meet the sled dogs but did not get to actually ride with the dogs. This time around we booked an excursion with the Last Frontier Mushing Co-Op. After introductions to our human guides, we got to meet each of the dogs on our team. Most were very friendly and loved the attention.

There are different dog breeds used for sled pulling, including Siberian Huskies and Malamutes. But for long-distance running, most mushers use the Alaskan husky which isn't really a purebred but a hybrid mix that has the stamina and drive to pull a sled for long distances without tiring. During a race, the dogs can run more than 120 miles a day at about 10 miles per hour. These dogs absolutely love to run, and when our mushing guide hooked them into the harness they were going nuts barking until he gave the word. Then they took off like a rocket. It was like the Matterhorn Bobsled ride at Disneyland! We went about 7 miles in 40 minutes, and that was considered an easy relaxed pace for the dogs.

About halfway through the ride, the dogs got a little rest and rolled around in the snow to cool off. In case it wasn't obvious, at no point were either of us actually driving the sled. We were packed in like cargo. 

We had a few photo ops with the team. These are the lead dogs, Rainy and Scarlett. They are both females and two of the smallest dogs on the team. But they are the smartest ones in the pack, and understand commands like "Gee" (turn right), "Haw" (left), and "Come Gee/Haw" (turn 180 degrees right or left).

To round out the Alaskan adventure part of the trip, we booked an Ice Fishing expedition for our last day. It was quite a cozy setup -- a heated cabin with bench seats and all the gear we needed (miniature fishing poles and shrimp bits/fish guts for bait).

This time of year you can catch very small King/Chinook salmon, Silver/Coho salmon, and Rainbow trout. Everyone caught at least a couple fish and we kept the biggest ones. Then our guide cleaned and cooked them for us outside on a portable grill.

We were warned to keep our phones and sunglasses secure because they've been known to disappear down the ice holes. My phone was secure in my pocket but of course I did manage to drop my fishing pole straight down the hole. Ooops! Luckily the cabin had an underwater camera. We could see it plain as day, resting on the bottom surrounded by all the fish that I wasn't catching.

Our guide Trevor managed to fish it out using another fishing rod to hook it. It was definitely the catch of the day!

When Kevin first said we should go to Fairbanks in winter, I was pretty apprehensive. I expected it to be frigidly cold and extremely unpleasant. Contrary to my expectations we had a delightful time, saw enough of the Northern Lights to last a lifetime, and had a few other fun adventures to boot. It was a very memorable trip!

Okay, okay...here's one last bonus aurora photo. This one we took through the window while sitting inside our toasty warm cabin. Too lazy to put on all of our gear and go outside. If you've seen one aurora, you've seen them all, right? Farewell, Fairbanks!

Fairbanks - Antique Autos and More Auroras

We had another great night for northern lights on Sunday. We went to a different location a little further out of town, where we could look northward without any light pollution from the city. We walked several hundred yards from the road and parking area and had the tree-lined trail all to ourselves. The aurora came out just around midnight, with lots of colors and movement.

I really should note that even though the skies look full of color in our photos, the lights did not look like this to the naked eye. Without a camera lens, our eyes really only picked up wispy light-green patches or streaks across the sky. To my eye it was a very pale white-green; Kevin could really only see white. Neither of us could pick up the pink and red tones without looking through the camera. Kevin joked that all the aurora photos he'd ever seen in his lifetime were "lies". In reality, everyone's eyes are different, and it's possible that other people do see the full range of colors, who knows? Here was our setup in the snow (I shot this handheld so only a 10 second exposure and a little blurry).

The aurora appears to have different colors based on which kinds of atomic particles collide (oxygen or nitrogen) and at what altitude. Red occurs when the collision is 150 miles above the Earth, green is at about 100 miles, purple/pink is at about 60 miles, and very rarely people see blue colors when the particles are colliding lower than 60 miles up.

With our toasty warm clothes we were able to stay out taking photos and looking up for a couple of hours. We experimented with turning on our headlamps for a few seconds at a time to illuminate the trees and each other in our photos. We each walked over to this tree and snapped a photo. What we didn't catch is that just to the right of Kevin is some thigh-deep snow that I discovered when I walked out there. It was like being caught in quicksand -- I was flailing around and managed to get to a densely packed spot and haul myself out. Kevin had his back turned and missed it; too bad we didn't catch that on film. I was very glad to have snow bibs and good boots on!

On Monday we discovered one of the most fantastic car collections we have seen anywhere, let alone in a tiny town like Fairbanks (population less than 100,000 people). The Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum is a hidden gem - each of their 100 cars is from the 1930s or earlier, and several of the cars are the last of their kind in the world. Almost all of them are actually in running order. They even have one (a 1911 Everitt) that you can get in for a photo op, although the rest of them are hands-off, obviously.

The massive warehouse holds only part of the collection; the museum is moving to a new location sometime later this year where they will be able to put many more cars on display. I liked how each car was displayed alongside a mannequin in period clothing; it really set the scene for the kinds of people who would be driving these works of art. The cars on display ranged in age from an 1898 Hay Hotchkiss to the elegant 1936 Packard (bright yellow, in the picture below). 

We are glad we chose to stay at Pike's Waterfront Lodge, instead of farther out from town. With the easy drive to town we have been able to check out some pretty good restaurants. Fun fact: Fairbanks has the most Thai restaurants per capita in the US. There are at least 15 sit down restaurants, plus I don't know how many Thai drive-thru kiosks. We remembered the good Thai food from last time we were here and made sure to hit one of our favorite spots. But we were surprised to also discover a Moldovan restaurant right in the heart of town. We are certain that we can't get Moldovan food in Phoenix, so we stopped in to try it. It was hearty and good, if a little heavy-handed with the sour cream. We probably won't be visiting Moldova anytime soon since it is right next to Ukraine, but we will definitely be rooting for them in this year's Eurovision Song Contest.

We had been hoping to go back to the World Ice Championships to catch a few photos of the sculptures lit up at night, but the timing just didn't work out (we have to sleep sometime if we're out touring all day and chasing auroras at night). Luckily our hotel had a few slightly melty and vaguely shaped sculptures for us to take some photos with. Kevin is standing by some kind of beakless bird and I don't know what the thing behind me is supposed to be. If you can figure it out, please let me know.

Pike's hotel also had a small herd of feisty reindeer onsite. We caught one of them -- let's call him Dasher -- literally playing reindeer games with a couple of oversized soccer balls. Notice the 2nd reindeer in the corner, who I nicknamed Rudolph. A few seconds after I took this shot, he tried to join in but it ended up just like the song.

Too bad this Rudolph couldn't actually fly. Run, Rudolph, run!

Fairbanks, Alaska - Aurora Chasing

Ever since we caught a rare glimpse of the northern lights in summer on our Great Alaskan Road Trip, Kevin has been wanting to head north to see the Aurora Borealis properly. Auroras are created when charged particles from the Earth's magnetosphere interact with the gases in the Earth's upper atmosphere. The aurora are enhanced by "space weather" from the sun during times of high solar activity, when the sun can send either High-Speed streams of solar wind (HSSs) or Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that can further activate the particles in the magnetosphere.

This year is the perfect time for the trip since we are at the solar maximum - the peak phase of the 11-year cycle of solar activity. Kevin opted to go to Fairbanks during the last week of March for several reasons. Firstly, March has the clearest skies of the winter months -- clear skies are great for seeing the actual ribbons instead of just dispersed light filtered through cloud cover. Secondly, the last week of March this year there would be no moon out -- along with light pollution from cities, the glow of the moon can decrease the visibility of the northern lights (you want dark, clear skies). And finally, the spring equinox occurs on March 20th and the Russell-McPherron effect occurs -- this means that the magnetic fields of the earth and the sun are in better alignment for the earth's magnetosphere to intercept the charged particles from the solar wind. Basically, Kevin tried to choose the best possible time to give us the best odds of seeing aurora. It worked.

We arrived on Friday night, just as a large-scale CME was arriving from the sun. Even though our cabin was well within the light pollution of Fairbanks, we had no problem seeing the strong aurora from the porch facing the Chena River. Notice how much ice is still on the river - we could hear it groaning and crackling; by the end of the week it had completely cleared. It's definitely springtime!

The next night was another spectacular night for aurora. We had purchased a great e-book by a Fairbanks local nicknamed "The Aurora Guy". For $12 he described sixteen aurora-viewing locations around Fairbanks in detail - explaining the pros and cons of each. It included a Google map list which was very helpful. Kevin and I spent some time during the daylight hours driving to a few of the locations to be sure of the road conditions and where to park. Some locations had proper parking lots; others were pull-offs on the side of a road. The guidebook also advised that we could get better photos if we were able to walk a half mile or so away from the parking areas. That was another benefit of these daytime recon missions -- we could take note of the existing snowmobile tracks and trails where there was packed snow for easy walking. When we arrived in the dark around 11pm we parked, switched on our red light headlamps, and trudged off along the path to darker skies away from people and lights. For the photo below you can see the effect of headlights on the snow during a long exposure -- we ended up having to move even further away to avoid light interference like this.

Because many tourists are coming from warmer locations and might not have good winter clothes (ahem, Phoenix!), there are several gear outfitters that will rent you a set of waterproof boots and sub-zero bibs and coat. We were glad we splurged on this (renting two sets for a week cost more than our rental car, yikes!). This allowed us to feel confident going out into the snow and standing around for 2-3 hours. We also rented some Yaktrax Diamond Grip cleats that attached to our boots and helped grip the icy snow so we wouldn't slip. The final touch was some disposable HotHands hand and toe warmer packets and we were actually pretty cozy out in the snow. Here's a shot where we used passing headlights to our advantage to light up our faces. Kevin is using his watch to trigger the camera (thanks, Apple!)

Kevin brought a good sturdy tripod which was really handy (even though it raised some eyebrows going through airport security). Over a 30-second exposure the aurora does move around a bit creating softly blurred edges. But you can tell that the tripod is doing its job because the trees in the foreground are crisply in focus. Kevin spent a little bit of time beforehand learning the best settings to use on our phones. We didn't bring any fancy cameras, just used our phones with the tripod.

Even though we stayed up late to see the Northern Lights, we also found a few fun daytime winter activities to do in Fairbanks. We had just missed the World Ice Carving Championships, which were held at the fairgrounds in February and early March this year. Teams came from all over the world and carved ice sculptures in three categories -- single block, double block, and multi-block -- depending on how many massive blocks of ice get used in the design. We were surprised to see teams from places like the Philippines and Thailand, two countries not particularly known for having icy terrain.

Even though the sculptures had been exposed to the elements for weeks, it really was only just getting warm enough to cause melt damage. The organizers specifically hold the competition in a wooded area of the fairgrounds, to maximize shade protection and help the sculptures last longer. Quite a few sculptures showed minimal cracks and damage. The huge blocks of ice used in these sculptures are locally-harvested and weigh 2000 lbs apiece. 

In addition to the ice sculptures, the event has a fun area with a skating rink, exhilarating sled ramps, and some interactive games made out of ice like checkers, ping-pong, cornhole, and mini-golf.

We also made a brief stop at the North Pole over the weekend. Not the literal North Pole, but the town of North Pole, Alaska. There's a roadside attraction called the Santa Claus House. It's actually more a glorified Christmas decor store than a true "attraction". But you can get your photo taken with Santa here almost 365 days a year (except holidays, including - ironically - Christmas). We didn't take photos with him this time around but there was no line and Santa honestly looked a little bit bored, poor guy. It's going to be a long wait 'til December for the jolly old elf. But in the meantime, if you are looking for themed Christmas decorations this is definitely the place to be. Even if you are a grinch.

Roatán, Honduras

 

For our anniversary this year we wanted to go someplace beachy and warm, where we could refresh our scuba diving skills. The small island of Roatán just off the northern coast of Honduras fit the bill perfectly. The island is part of the same coral reef chain that extends northward to Belize and Cozumel, Mexico. The small island is home to about 100,000 people and has almost as many dive shops (or maybe it just seems that way!)

We scheduled an Advanced Open Water Dive Course with West Bay Divers. Kevin and I are both already certified but it was worthwhile to take the Advanced certification to fine-tune our skills like buoyancy control and underwater navigation.

Photo credit: Juan Darhanpe West Bay Divers

Another benefit of this course is that we are now certified to dive to 100 feet. A highlight of our diving was being able to dive the wreck of the Aguila which sits in over 100 feet of water.

Photo credit: Juan Darhanpe West Bay Divers

The reef here is very healthy. We did six dives in total and every part of the reef was teeming with aquatic life. Several times we were surrounded by enormous schools of colorful fish.

Photo credit: Juan Darhanpe West Bay Divers

The island population swells by several thousand people per day when the cruise ships come into port. During the nine days we were on Roatán, there was at least one cruise ship in port every day. On one of the days there were 19,500 passengers in total across four ships (and that's not even counting the crew)! On those days the island gets pretty busy. We caught a glimpse of the Icon of the Seas lumbering off into the sunset; it's currently the largest cruise ship in the world at 250,000 tons. It's got 20 decks and in the twilight it kind of looks like a building lying on its side. 

After we completed our scuba course, we enjoyed doing absolutely nothing for a few days. We drank some beers at the beach bars...

...And spent plenty of time lounging by the luxurious hotel pool, just reading books, sipping drinks, and watching the world go by.

We had a wonderful, relaxing, trip. Maybe not quite as exhilarating as some of our other adventures, but we loved our visit to this friendly, beautiful tropical island.

Videos: Dolomites

 Here are a few videos from our trip to the Dolomites:

 . . .and a bonus video from Lake Garda and Bolzano

Riva del Garda and Bergamo

Driving from the Dolomites to Malpensa airport is quite a distance so we decided to break the journey into two driving days. We spent two nights on the northern side of Lake Garda in a charming town called Riva del Garda. Parking here was a bit of a challenge; the public lot was showing as "full" so we passed it thinking there would be a place where we could just make a U-turn and park instead at our hotel. But to our dismay, for the next 13 kilometers we drove through a series of narrow tunnels bored directly through the rock until we reached the next town, Limone Sul Garda. It was a Saturday so the heavy car traffic (and extra challenge of bicycle traffic) through the tunnel series meant that we really couldn't pull to the side and turn around anywhere until we arrived in Limone. We were able to finally flip a U-turn and made our way back through the busy tunnels until we found the hotel and were allowed to check-in and park a bit early. Whew, time for a glass of wine!

We had lunch on the main piazza overlooking the lake, and I had a nice glass of Lagrein, a wine which is made from grapes native to the South Tyrol. I'd never heard of it before this trip but now it has become a favorite. To burn off some of our pizza and pasta lunch, we climbed the 110-foot campanile (bell tower) and had a bird's-eye view of the city and lake far below.

The next morning was super breezy. We took the ferry back down to Limone Sul Garda to explore a bit. The 45-minute ferry ride was much more relaxing than driving through the tunnels! Because it was a windy Sunday morning, the lake was packed with kitesurfers, windsurfers and wingfoilers. I'd never seen wingfoils in action before but it looked like they were having a lot of fun out there.

Limone Sul Garda is a very romantic little town right on the water. When we arrived it was early on Sunday morning and we had most of the town to ourselves but as the day progressed it got more and more crowded with tourists and locals enjoying the sunny Sunday weather and charming ambience.

As the name suggests, the lemon has been a significant part of the town's economy since the 1800s. Terraced lemon groves were built into the hillsides and the mild winters on the lake allowed lemon trees to flourish. Although the lemon groves mostly vanished during the mid 1900s a few have been restored and one, the Limonaia del Castel, belongs to the municipality and is a living museum with mature citrus trees of all types. Even though many of the lemon groves have given way to tourist hotels and development over the years, the shops in town are dedicated to selling lemon-themed products - soaps, oils, candies, limoncello, lemon-print textiles, magnets, you name it. Come to Limone Sul Garda for all your lemon needs!

We enjoyed a cocktail while waiting for the next scheduled ferry back to Riva del Garda. A limoncello spritz for me, of course. Strangely, the cafe was called Bar Waikiki, so....aloha, I guess?

For our last day in Italy, we drove ourselves to the historic city of Bergamo. The Città Alta ("upper city") is perched high on a hill and surrounded by 16th century walls. Constructed by the Venetian Republic to defend against the Milanese (and the French...and the Spanish...Venice had a lot of enemies), the walls surrounding the old city are now a UNESCO World Heritage site because they are so well preserved. A funicular links the lower city to the upper city.

In the heart of the Città Alta is the Piazza Vecchia. Vecchia means "old" and I should emphasize that Bergamo is quite old, with a history that pre-dates the Roman Era. Back in Roman days, this square was the site of the forum. And it has continued to be the seat of political power in Bergamo over the centuries -- there are several palazzos and churches in this square. The Palazzo Nuovo ("new palace") was once the town hall.

Two remarkable churches are crammed into the Piazza side-by-side. In most Italian cities the Duomo, or cathedral, is the most important church of the diocese -- it's usually the most ornate and decorative church in the city. However in Bergamo's case, the Duomo is a bit overshadowed by the older - and more ostentatious - Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore right next door. Prior to 700 AD this was the site of a Roman temple, then a smaller church was built here in the 8th century. But in 1133 the citizens of Bergamo made a vow to build a basilica in the spot if the Virgin Mary would protect them from the ravages of a terrible plague. Apparently Mary held up her end of the bargain, and work on the basilica continued for the next several centuries.

It is truly a masterpiece. We've seen a lot of churches in our travels, and it takes a lot to impress us. Nearly every square inch of the interior of the Basilica is gilded, painted, carved, or embellished in some way. When taken as a whole it seems really over the top -- almost too much, but when you take the time to get up close to the details it really is incredible. This is just one of a series of dozens of gorgeous wood panel inlays in the choir.

The Città Alta is very walkable and we spent the better part of the afternoon just meandering through the crooked streets stopping for both gelato and pastries along the way. Hey, cut us some slack -- it was our last day in Italy so we indulged a bit!

Spending the afternoon in this historic city was a great way to end our trip. We really enjoy the northern part of Italy, and hope to come back this way very soon. Arrivederci, Italia!