Chuck:
On the road again! The RV crowd at the Fairbanks Wal-Mart is thinning, we will also be moving today. During the last couple of days I have been cleaning both my hybrid and my old road bike in hopes of selling them. They were both brought along as backups and so far I have not needed either. It is a pain trying to haul around 5 bikes, if I can get rid of two, it will be more manageable. Now that the two are ready to sell, I made a place to carry them inside the CRV to keep the road dust and mud off them. Now we have: 2 inside the CRV, none on the CRV’s rear bike rack, 2 on the Motor Home’s rear ladder rack and I will be riding the fifth one. Betty and Bren were closing up the RV to make it “road ready” as I biked out of the parking lot. A quarter mile later I was on Alaska Highway 2, the Richardson Highway, heading south. Mid-morning and it is warm, forecast is a high of 92 degrees today. I am moving along creating my own breeze. After all of the “hill & gravel training” during the past few weeks, the flat, smooth highway with a wide safety lane is slipping by quickly. Eielson Air Force Base is on my left, five old B-52’s are parked on the tarmac, an even older C-130 transport is on a landing approach. Forty-Nine years ago this month I was in Jump School, we made five static-line parachute jumps from C-130s, the old bird is still a work-horse. In the early 1950’s my Uncle Mac & Aunt Vivian with their daughter Vivian (Poochie) were stationed here when what is now Fort Wainwright, was called Ladd Field and what is now Eielson AFB was a satellite to Ladd. I am proud to say my Uncle Mac was in the United States ARMY-Air Corps. While they were in Alaska, we would get wonderful letters telling of life in this frozen frontier. It is still a frontier without a lot of creature comforts that we, in the lower 48, take for granted; I can only imagine how rugged it was over 60 years ago.
Up ahead I see golden arches, hey, it’s 11am, close enough to have lunch. While standing in line a lady asks me about my Key West to Alaska T-shirt. We chat a bit and I go to get my drink. Then while looking for a seat, I see she is alone and ask if I can sit at the table. What a gal! Barbara Moore and her adult daughter are the only mother and daughter to have completed the Iditarod Dog Sled Race. She keeps asking about my bike trip and I keep asking her about sled-dogs, training for long races, how many dogs, what do they eat and more. I think she said she completed the Iditarod in 1980 and her daughter in 1987. They now have about 30 sled-dogs which they have trained and they mostly “lease them out”. In the summer, the off season, the dogs mostly eat dry commercial dog feed, but in winter they eat mostly salmon. She and her crew use a band-saw to cut the heads & tails off salmon that is about 2 feet long, then they cut it into three pieces. The heads and tails get fed to the dogs right away, the rest is frozen till needed in the winter. When the salmon are running they buy about 200 pounds at a time, it takes a couple of hours for three people to “process” it. They do this several times in order to freeze enough for the winter. Too soon, it is time to go our separate ways. I bid Barbara farewell and feel privileged to have met her.
Now, back on the bike, it is warm. Betty calls to say, they have parked at the Harding Lake State Recreation Area. She is on her way to the local Post Office, in Salcha, and will meet me there. Ahhh, she can’t wait to tell me of their “sighting”. She and Bren saw a moose and her two calves, which posed for pictures. We are the only ones in this entire “primitive” campground. “Primitive” is code for no hook-ups; no electric, no water, no sewer. But they do have moose.