My Life in the Sunshine

This weekend was the summer solstice, which to most people in this fine country means nothing, but here in Alaska it's a huge deal. Huge.

So to celebrate this occasion I went to a bluegrass festival in Cantwell, a town of 150 or so people 30 miles south of Denali National Park in pretty much the middle of nowhere Alaska. We left Anchorage way late and didn't get to Cantwell till about 11:30, we set up our tent, cracked a cold one and got over to the stage to listen to what we thought, according to our schedule, was the final band of the night. Boy were we wrong. Another band got on stage at about 1 am and then the rain came. It was pretty cold to begin with but once it started raining it was absurdly freezing. Absurd because the actual temperature was like 45, but I felt like I was enduring a tough Alaskan winter. I couldn't survive here at negative 20 in January.

The strangest part of Friday was that this festival was tiny. Maybe 200 people there and we were four of them. So figures I would see someone I know from LC. Clarkies love music festivals, this is clearly proof. I was there for maybe 15 minutes and low and behold Lewis and Clark's own Danielle Ringer walked by me. Dani lives in Homer, AK which is like 430 miles away! She drove 430 miles to come to a tiny blue grass festival in nowhere Alaska. This can be explained, she's went to LC and she's a native Alaskan, of course she'd be there. Of course.

Since we had arrived at pretty much the darkest point in the evening my chances for sleep were totally shot and since the music didn't stop until about 5 am I was pretty much up all night. I woke up Saturday morning at 10 am somehow and the entire camp site was abandoned. So this is when these crazies sleep from 9 am till 11 am and then start all over again. 10 is like the peak sleeping hour at this event.

We rested all morning and finally regrouped at about 5 when the evening music started up. The music pretty much didn't stop for the 2 and 1/2 days so saying it started back up is a bit misleading, but it is almost true. Saturday was way cooler than Friday because the festival was at least twice as big. Apparently Cantwell used to be "the party" but it got too out of hand and it got shut down. So this year was the first time it happened in a decade, the word got out and tons of locals flocked to night two. Stayed up till about 7 am on Sunday and watched the sun not set. Here are some pictures I took that afternoon and into the early morning hours.
This is 10:15 in the morning when everyone is still sleeping the previous evening off. Plenty of people just don't sleep but those people end up half naked and cover in body paint.
Those are the amazing mountains that surrounded the campsite and the entire venue. It was an absolutely gorgeous place. Click the pics to view the larger.3 am on the porch of the bar. Shouldn't it be dark?
The endless sun reappears at 5 am over the lodge! It never got dark, but the sun did hide behind the mountains and clouds for about 2 hours, but really it never left. What an awesome weekend.

I slept for about 2 hours on of the ride home and then fittingly enough went and saw The Hangover. Thought it was pretty good but not the funniest movie ever made like everyone has been saying. I just feel like I could easily write/direct this genre of movie. It was essentially a little meatier version of Dude Where's My Car. Still a funny movie, but not life changing.

I know I have been BSing about this Soapy Smith post, I swear I am developing it. Let me quote something I wrote earlier today to give you a preview. Warning, this will totally piss you off Jeff.

"Reconstructing the building to the 1898 'Soapy' Smith era would erase the work of [Martin] Itjen and [George] Rapuzzi, without whom the building likely would have been lost."

That's my argument and I plan on getting some images to back it up. What can I say the NPS propaganda got to me. More to come, really.

Well that was my weekend and I had a pretty hilarious archive experience today, but I'm doing the same thing tomorrow so I will write about it then.