Beacon: July 2008

I am now in Tok, Alaska. Tok is South and East from Fairbanks by a couple of hours drive, and West of the Canadian border by about 90 miles. There is a Denali Gasline Office here in Tok, so we’ve been in more contact with other people working with other companies on the gasline. There is a company investigating the archaeological aspects along the route, another company is investigating wetland sites, another company is investigating contaminated sites, another company is providing guide/bear guard services and of course, we’re providing the hydrology and survey investigations for the proposed gasline stream crossings.

Things are different here in Tok than Fairbanks in many ways. Definitely not a large metropolis – you can drive thru in about 5 minutes. There are a few hotel/motels, RV parks, souvenir shops, a DMV, a few restaurants, all pretty spread out along the main highway. No Fred Meyer across the street here as we had in Fairbanks. The buildings are set off the highway quite a ways, and between the buildings and the highway are several 4-wheeler tracks paralleling the highway. 4-wheelers are another main mode of transportation around here. There are so many RV’s and motor homes that go thru this part of the world. If it were not for the tourists, I’m not sure how much traffic Tok would get – probably not much at all. There are several native ‘villages’ in the area. So there are several native folks that live in the area. From the highway in Tok, you can see mountains to the South-ish.

We’re working with more PND folks here in Tok. More surveyors and engineers – all of them guys except for one gal who was here briefly, she is a survey intern with PND. The guys like to joke around a lot. Some of us have been ‘fired’ several times, others have been forced into public service, all for the sake of sarcasm and having fun. Needless to say, we laugh a lot, so I’m thankful for the laughs when we’re working 7 days a week.

Some of our weeknights we gather with other folks from the other companies working on the project and play some ball games – one night we played kickball, another couple of nights we’ve played ultimate Frisbee or soccer, last night we played basketball (unfortunately one of our guys sprained his ankle pretty bad), and then one night we invented a new game – ‘Foccer’. A cross between ultimate frisbee and soccer, complete with rules – needless to say we had fun with it.

Work is pretty laid back. Our day usually starts about 8am, we meet the rest of the guys and figure out what and where we’re going for the day. Us engineers divide up with the two survey teams generally, and play hydrologist. The surveyor’s work usually lasts longer than our hydrology work, so we usually have some down time at each stream crossing. There has been quite a few hours logged driving to and from our stream crossing sites as well. For several of the stream crossing sites on native land, we have a native guide with us, so sometimes we had to drive further than our stream crossing sites to pick up our native guide, then drive back to our stream crossing site, then drop our native guide off. Compound that time with some road construction and a few 10 minute pilot car waits, and this adds up to a whole lot of driving fun. But actually, it’s been cool driving thru the country here. The area we’ve been working in the most has some beautiful snow covered mountains off in the distance, with some foothills that fade into some wonderful blue shades and some green valleys and water ways in the foreground – so I’m really enjoying the scenery part of work. Also, the down time we’ve had in the out of doors provides some great time to take a few pictures, so I like that part too. We are planning to move to Delta tomorrow since we’ve pretty much wrapped up the stream crossing investigations from the Canadian border up to Delta. Our client is still working on getting permission to access additional proposed stream crossing sites, so we’re kind of waiting on getting access to more sites so we can do more work.

Quite honestly I feel like this is a vacation. My room and board is being paid by the company, I get to be outside exploring new country I’ve never been in before, plus meet some new folks, some of them quite the characters.

I'll have to post more pictures later - my SD card reader isn't with me at the moment.

Peace y'all.

This last Tuesday my Alaska adventure began with a very (very) early morning flight to Anchorage. After arriving in Anchorage, I walked a few gates down the concourse and hopped on a plane to Fairbanks. At Fairbanks, a co-worker of mine picked me up and drove me to meet a few of the other workers on the job here in Fairbanks. Trevor left that evening to work in another location, but I also got to meet Kyle, Ryan, Logan, Jimmy, Bill & Mike. Bill & Mike are the surveyors on our team, the rest of us are engineers (or almost engineers). So far it's been a fun crew. Ryan reminds me of my younger brother - he's the same age - and also a church goer like myself. He just got engaged July 4th.

Our work consists of following our surveyors to proposed gasline stream crossing sites, and conducting a few tests on the stream & noting several different observations. Usually, we wrap up our part of the stream crossing work before the surveyors, so we have a good amount of hang out time. But we're in some beautiful country here around Fairbanks, so I've gotten to take a few photos, and enjoy the scenery. The stream crossing sites have been parallel to the Alaskan Pipe Line, so we've been able to see that, and are also on an air force base. Sometimes we see jets fly by, or at least hear their rocket roar.

It's been a nice change of pace here... I'm enjoying it...

Ok, here's a few photos...

Our first day out in the field we saw a mama moose with her baby...