The End is Near

Video Pick

The older audience won't appreciate this as much as they should; it's a hip hop generation. Also, peep my boy DJ Mearley all over the background of this video. Far left with the cup.

In Soapy news, the parlor museum isn't included on the National Register just yet. The state historic preservation office wants more information about the building mainly revolving around the fact that we (the NPS) want to consider it historically significant in a period of time that runs up into the last 50 years. That makes it a little messy, but soon enough after I resubmit my Determination of Eligibility the parlor museum will be recognized as it should be. Total bummer, but just a bump in the road not disaster.

My other NPS projects are finishing up too, well I guess they have to since Friday is my last day. The end is near. My real triumph of the last few weeks is that I figured out that a building we once believed to be a gold era toll bridge to in fact just be a homesteader cabin with no connection to the gold rush. It's cool, but it means the NPS may have wasted a fair amount of money and time working on a building that the park its in may not care about in the end.

A report I wrote concerning a house owned by the town will soon be submitted to the city and the historic preservation committee for Skagway. Apparently these people really aren't super familiar with preservation, because I was encouraged to point out that wood siding should not be replaced with metal siding as that would compromise the historic integrity of the building. Uhh, yeah.

This weekend I went on a whale watching tour in Seward. It was pretty darn awesome. The boat held about 200 people and was almost entirely full. I sat with a University of Oregon Law Student and an older couple from Orlando. The couple, Ben and Rita, had been to Alaska for 10 straight summers. Ben was making his 22nd trip to the Great North. Ben had been to pretty much every country on earth, 45 by his count. He has climbed Mt. Fuji, Mt. Kilamanjaro and Pike's Peak. Him and his wife made retirement sound like the most awesome adventure one could ever undertake. If we could all be so lucky.

But the tour itself was great. I saw otters, sea lions, two types of puffins, a distant bald eagle a bunch of other birds, a minke whale and a bunch of hump back whales, a dall sheep and a black bear. Upping my wildlife count by almost 4000%. I guess the classically touristy trips are that way for a reason. The highlight was probably seeing this massive glacier, Aialik Glacier. There were 4-5 other glaciers too, but we got much closer to Aialik and it was spectacular.

Those rocks mark the opening into Ressurection Bay
If you have ever tried to take picture of whales you feel me here.
Whale Tails and a glacier
Epic Stellar Sea Lion hide outStellar Sea Lions chilling extremely hard
Click the pick for a real look at the puffins

In front of the camera finally! With a big beard no less.900 foot ice wall. Look how small that boat looks.

This is the equivalent of an eight story building falling into the water. I can't tell if this is exciting or depressing. When I saw it, it was extremely thrilling, no joke. But reflecting on this I think I feel more sad than anything. The glaciers are melting. Quickly.


The water is rising.

Burn, baby, burn

Today's video pick:

This is the single greatest performance in the history of Sesame Street. If anyone out there can find me a better one or even close competition please send me the link. Regardless, play that video and enjoy the grooves.

In Alaska news, Sarah's gone, but not forgotten. Here's a sign expressing a minority view on the edge of downtown Anchorage

When I first came here this sign simply read "Impeach Palin," but after the fine Governor announced she was stepping down the "Thank You" was added. Palin's final acts as Governor included the annual Governor's picnic this Saturday afternoon in which she handed out free hamburgers and her official resignation and passing of the proverbial torch to (now former) Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell on Sunday in Fairbanks. Watch a few minutes of the speech, beyond her unparalleled eloquence the speech really hints at her big pictures goals. She is all about the nation, the nation ,the nation and oh yeah thanks Alaska for the good times and such.

Also in the news of the Great North, many other parts of Alaska are on fire. Burning like crazy. There are currently 71 active wildfires, including 35,000 acres in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. That's about the size of Maine! These are massive fires. There are also fires in Yukon as well. The fires are so bad that you can see the smoke on the horizon in Anchorage and some days babies, the elderly and others with respiratory issues are advised to stay indoors. So that perfect weather I have been experience all summer of 75 and sunny has actually wreaked havoc on the rest of the state. Whoops. Good news, of sorts, is that its been raining for the last couple of days and that will hopefully slow down the burning.

One of the stranger moments I've had here recently came on Thursday night. I was driving home with my friend Chris from UAA at about 1:30 in the morning when we realized that something was totally bizarre and thought that we might no longer be in Anchorage. We quickly realized we were not lost, but we just experiencing a new phenomenon known as darkness. It was legitimately dark outside, street signs and headlights were the main light on the road, not the sun. It was strange because it took me a while to place what was so bizarre about being outside in Anchorage when it's dark and because at one in the morning it would be appropriate pretty much anywhere else in the world for it to be dark. But that's what 3 months here has done to me, I am now a little confused when the sun is not out regardless of what time of day it is. The sun sets nowadays at about 11pm and rise again just after 5. It gets darkish by 12:30 and is bright enough again at 4:15, but for 4 hours in there it is dark. A few months in the Alaskan summer and 4 hours of darkness seems like a lot. Portland's winter is about to destroy me. I fear it with all that I am.

My final Alaskan news is a bad punchline and some photos.
This is an elementary school about 4 blocks from my house. I like it because it was basically my theory on school from grades 10 to 12. It was optional. You could go if you want, but really it's up to you. And somehow I am about to graduate from college.

From the land of Soap: I turned in my Determination of Eligibility to the State Historic Preservation Office and they will be reviewing my work on Thursday and possibly approving it for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Ballin! So that means the Jeff. Smiths Parlor Museum could be on the National Register list by the end of the year. Holler at your historian! I am also working on the Dahl/Rapuzzi house. As far as I can tell Dahl has nothing to do with this house, but I do have concrete information about the Rapuzzi's living here and purchasing the land, first Della in 1931 and then in 1934 she sold the house to her older brother and famous Skagway resident George Rapuzzi. And I know some other dudes lived there at the turn of twentieth century, but who the hell knows when or if Dahl (Peter Dahl, I assume) lived in the home. Perhaps my newest blog follower will figure this out in late August. I will have more on my research later this week.

In sports news, the Portland Trailblazers signed veteran point guard Andre Miller. Miller is 33 and the deal is for 3 years and $21 million. If you don't know basketball that seems like way too much money, but that's only slightly above the league average and that's about what Miller is, slightly above average. He can't shoot (21% career 3 point shooter) and he excels in the fastbreak where as Portland plays at a very slow pace usually, but other than those glaring issues he seems to be a good fit. Also, head coach Nate McMillan said Miller was the guy he wanted most when the free agent season started on June 1. I like the fit, I don't love it, but it makes sense for a variety of reasons. First, he is a veteran presence and the logic behind the Blazers offseason was that we needed a veteran to stabilize a young team. I almost believe it. If the coach believes and it and front office agrees, I guess I do to. Particularly because Nate is behind it. Second, this is a case where if we didn't spend the money now it wouldn't be around later. The salary cap is shrinking and we are going to have to resign LaMarcus and Brandon to big deals and this money would just disappear if we didn't spend the money this offseason. That sounds like total BS, but I read an explanation of the NBA salary cap in relation to the Blazers that I can't find or I would link it up here, but that article made me believe it so I guess I'm in.

The team won 54 games and adding Andre probably makes us between 1/2 and 3 wins. So it's not a blockbuster deal, but it certainly is better than Sergio Rodriguez, last year's backup PG who was traded to Sacramento on draft night. It means Jerryd Bayless won't get much playing time again this year, but since he was awful as a point guard last year I'm not too worried. But he has to play sometime for anyone to really evaluate him. Perhaps the plan is to never play him and thus not have his trade value decline by letting him show himself to be a fraud. I don't think he is a fraud, but he isn't really an NBA point guard just yet, so riding the bench is a good place for him to be right now.

Steelers open camp at the end of the week and I will write some more about my research then too.

Until then, fight the good fight.

It's a Lawless Game

Video of the day. This is the most anti-clamatic bull shizz I have ever seen.


For those of you that aren't in the know this is the infamous video of Xavier University sophomore Jordan Crawford dunking over Lebron James at James' basketball camp. This is only even remotely significant because Lebron had some of the videos of this dunk confiscated, but he doesn't even really get dunked on. I was expecting the Danny Green on Greg Paulus treatment, but no it's boring and Lebron only made it noteworthy by freaking out about it and having Nike steal the videotapes. And that's my rant.

And here's my news.

Sarah Palin back in the headlines today as allegations that she has set up a trust that violates Alaska sate law. The trust is called Alaska Fund Trust and it essentially gets citizens to donate money to pay Palin's legal fees. I won't get into the nitty gritty details, read the link. But the trust violates ethics laws because 1. she is using her position for personal gain and 2. because it violates the state's gift rules. Her argument is that plenty of other politicians including Clinton and good ol' Newt Gingrich have had similar trusts, which it totally true. But those two fine gentlemen were not Alaskans, in the the Great North what she is doing is illegal where as in Washington it is a relatively legit practice. If Troopergate hadn't cost Sarah $600k maybe she would be less inclined to raise money to pay her legal fees. These ethics complaints basically drove Sarah out of the office, good thing she only has 5 days left before she gets outta dodge.

In other news Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. Not enough evidence to say either way, but here is what I did notice. ESPN is staying clear of this one. They jumped on the Kobe Bryant case, hell they basically sent Shelley Smith to Eagle County, Colorado for a month or more, and every time Adam 'Pacman' Jones does anything they report about it to no end. So maybe they are trying not to publicize this for both the woman and Roethlisberger's sake, but I think it's more than that. Actually I am a little disgusted with myself for this theory, but at this point I totally believe it. If Ben wasn't white the media would be tearing him apart just like they did to Kobe, but since he is a white dude from middle America the media is leaving him alone to some extent. Maybe media coverage will increase in the coming days, because it is summer and sports news is slow this time of year, but right now the white boy treatment is really saving Ben. And when I say media I am particularly singling out ESPN because this was not a front page news story for most of the day yesterday or today, where as Jamal Maglore's new contract and former NBA guard Antonio Burks getting shot were. Who are they you ask? Exactly.

In other basketball news, the Blazers have done pretty much nothing this summer and lots of people are complaining. I on the other hand am totally happy. The Blazer's won 54 games last year as a very young team making an addition just for the hell of it and because we've got $8 mil to spend doesn't seem smart. If the right deal were there, which right now it isn't as far as I have read, go for it. But staying put with the roster we have no in tact would not be a bad thing. Just gotta resign Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge in the coming months and I will be happy.

Final news story of the day is that the Taco bell chihuahua died today at the age of 15. Yo quiero celebrity funeral MJ stlye and a national free taco day every July 23 for the rest of my life.

This was a poor excuse for a post, but I'm tired. I will come up with something with a bit more substance or at least a bit more sardonic humor. Good night, moon.

Somehow 18 hours of sunlight doesn't seem like enough

Video of the week. This one goes out to my Dad. We were lucky enough to watch this live, it's truly one of the great moments in sports history. No wonder AI still doesn't have a job.


Sadly I have not been keeping steady on this blog but I have been working long days and getting out more in the city and finding less and less time to aimlessly type at my computer. In many ways it's a good thing, but for all you blog-enthusiasts I'm sure you've been missing out.

First, a few weeks ago I had a short post concerning the irony of converting pictures to a digital copy. Well we had a meeting last week where the head of the NPS archival records came and talked to us about how we archive and save things and how we may lose 30 years of records because technology quickly goes out of style. He even said that a CD may be harder to read when we retire as Jefferson's soft wax recordings. So score one team, Mike on that one. There really is no point in converting the photographs to tiff files on an NPS server because soon enough we won't be able to open tiff files and all our old shitty computers will be worthless. And that advancement in technology could come in as quickly as five years. I am not yet 22 and I remember when zip drives were the wave of the future, now those things are totally worthless and outdated. So the point is to just update and migrate everything you save, so next summer's intern will just have to do what I am doing with thousands of images all over again. So silly. But I pat myself on the back for recognizing the irony before someone from the national government had to come inform the rest of the office.

Also at this meeting my boss explained the idea of "expectation management" i.e. lowering your expectations for completion of projects and allocation of funds. This wasn't his idea but what the big boss had said to him when he asked about getting more funding for travel. Office life is just the silliest.

Other than that my week was uneventful except for a moment of panic Friday afternoon when I realized I had just three weeks left in the office and a bunch of work to do. Terrifying, but almost peaceful in a scary way.

Friday night we grilled out on Chris's back porch with all the interns and then went downtown. I guess I am too young to really go to the bars looking to meet strangers and develop relationships with them, but all my 25+ year old colleagues are all about it and it strikes me as bizarre and comfortable. Maybe soon enough it will be appealing.

On Saturday afternoon Chris, Alex and I drove to Eklutna Lake and went for a 26 mile bike ride. It wasn't that hard, but I was definitely the least capable of the three of us and was often straggling behind. It was a pretty ride along a lake and into some mountains, but the whole point of our ride was to get to the end and hike up to this glacier. You could see the glacier from parts of the trail but once you got there it was still about 6-7 miles from the end of the trail and since we had rented bikes (from a very friendly Scottish lady) we had to have them back by 8pm and had to turn around and haul ass to get back in time and not end up with a $30 fee for late returns. Of course she wasn't even there at 8 and just left us a note and a bike lock to hitch our bikes up in the back. So really we probably could have hiked to the glacier and not had any issues. Oh well. Here are some pics from the journey.
Chris looking hardcore with good ol' Eklutna in the background.

Click the pics to make them bigger. This last one is the very end of the trail, well actually its at the 12.7 mile marker which is .3 mile from the end, but it's damn close.
Serenity now, serenity now, serenity now. Unfortunately I am behind the camera on this day and never in front of it, but don't Alex and Chris look nice.
At the end of the ride there are these big rocks, too bad even from up there you still can't see the damn glacier.

I did get a glimpse of the glacier on the way home and snapped these photos just to prove it existed. I can show this to my kids, or say anyone born after 2030 and prove to them that there were in fact glaciers in Alaska at some point in history.

Just for fun here are a few pics from my campsite that I had mentioned in my previous post. Two weeks late, but everyone loves pictures!
Alex (left) and Evan looking out into the bay.
Ok so that was the campsite. It looks pretty darn glorious in these pics, but really it was just car camping (in Alaskan paradise).

Finally getting to the title of my post. I have been playing tons of disc golf in recent weeks. Getting out almost everyday and playing this short 9 hole course and I have been improving, but still its golf (of sorts) and it can be very frustrating. But tonight I decided to go out and play at around 8:45 and managed to get in 30 holes before darkness, actually way before darkness and I biked home. I love this place. Well actually I don't love Anchorage, but I love the endless light. I love having good solid brightness until 11:30 at night, it's fantastic.

More to come later this week. A Palin legal battle update in honor of her final week as governor and blazer news and maybe some Soapy updates just for kicks.

Grumble young man grumble

Lots to run through, but first watch three minutes of this.

And now following "The Greatest," one of the worst. Sunday the Alaska Daily News reported that Sarah Palin plans to join the national political scene. Also, her PAC (political action committee, for those of you who don't do acronyms, hers is beautifully dubbed SarahPAC!) has raised just shy of a million bucks since she started it in January and most of that money comes form outside of Alaska (oh no). Sarah is on the move and she admits that this was basically her plan since John McCain brought her on to the political scene in August. I don't care how you slice it, ol' girl is scheming. She is about to go on a national tour promoting her political agenda and just being a celebrity. At least Barrack was still a politician as he became something of an absurd celebrity. Palin is just something else and the crazy thing is, it might work. Right now I can't imagine someone unseating Obama, but hey just maybe this hockey mom can do it. And maybe she can do it without being directly involved in politics. Romney and Huckabee still might be more popular on the national level, but Sarah with dollars from SarahPAC is about to unleash her traveling roadshow to get her on level with those two gentlemen. If somehow I could get elected to a state level political position tomorrow morning by election time in 2012 I would only have slightly less experience actually in a seat of political power than Sarah Palin. That is wild. She is wild. And again, it might friggin' work. She might get into a position of power by proving that she is more powerful outside of law making and governing politics. Sorry for being young, but can someone find me an example in history (post 1800) that this has worked or even been effectively implemented in a losing effort. What precedent might Sarah be working off of here? Was this a dream Todd had one night? Did they totally make this up? Does this seem like a crackpot scheme to everyone else? Are you panicking as much as me thinking that it might somehow be an effective move?

Also be on the lookout for Sarah's book, she's got a HUGE book deal in the works apparently going to get her over a million dollars.

In my news, I went on a whitewater rafting trip this weekend on Sixmile Creek, which is very near Hope, Alaska. The night before we camped near Cook Inlet where it branches into the Turnagain Arm. Not the best campsite but you could walk right down to the train tracks that ran next to the water and look out over a bay and right at some big snow covered mountains. I will run some pictures of this site later this week, but for now I am too lazy to upload them. The river was real cold, about 40 degrees, and the rapids were pretty big. The last rafting trip I went on was on the Nile River in Uganda so this was literally the exact opposite experience. Instead of an expansive and equatorial flow this was glacial creek that ran through very tight canyons only slightly wider than the raft at some points. The day starts at the Chugach Outdoor Center where they fit you with a dry suit and some old tennis shoes, the suit keeps you dry but has no insulation so you need to wear pretty warm clothes under it to be comfortable in sub-50 degree water all day. I of course was totally unprepared and wore a cotton long sleeve t-shirt and some khaki shorts and thin little socks. After you get all dressed up in what looks like the merging between a Beastie Boys tracksuit and one of those Astronaut pre-flight get ups they wear in Apollo 13 when they are walking to the rocket you get a personal flotation device (actually these really are life vests so the new school lingo misses the point), some old tennis shoes so you don't scratch the neoprene on the bottom of your suit, and, of course, a helmet. Once you are fully outfitted they drive you about 7-8 miles to the put in point and instead of getting right into the raft you do a swim test. It's cold as shit in the water and you just gotta walk in and start swimming in a rapid. My hands were so cold I figured right then and there after about 40 seconds in the water that I was going to stay in the damn raft at all costs. Once you prove you can not immediately drown when put in the water they consider you ready to get into a raft and you group up and head to the rapids.

The first two canyons have about 5-7 class IV rapids and then the last canyon has 7 rapids, three of which are considered class V rapids. What was interesting about the first Canyon was that the biggest rapid was the first, so in case you were nervous you get to hit a huge set of rapids right away just to totally kill any bravado you may have been trying to muster up. Canyons one and two for all their hype were not that wild. I mean you got wet and you had to pay attention, class IV rapids aren't by any means small, but I was never nervous and barely had any adrenaline when we stopped before Canyon 3. At that point about 40% or so of the rafters leave and the rest continue on to the more daunting and more expensive third canyon run. Canyon 3 was about as awesome an experience as I have ever had on a raft, the rapids came in short succession and the guides were genuinely worried for your safety if you were to fall out of the boat. Luckily I did as I planned and stayed in the boat but I did damn near fall out on this one rapid called ZigZag and was only saved because when I flew to the other side of the boat I landed on my friends, and fellow interns, Evan and Alex. It was their first time rafting and they had an absolute blast. I did get to pull someone else out of the water though, and it would have been heroic if it wasn't totally easy and happened below a rapid in essentially flat water. We were close to another rapid but the raft I pulled the guy into was basically still and he was only in mild danger when I grabbed him. We made it through all the rapids without a scratch and rode back to the office feeling triumphant in our now horribly smelly and still extremely goofy dry suits.

By the end of the day the hot chocolate followed by the beer and chips in the parking lot were a Ben Roethlisberger-send err godsend, excuse me.

The sports world has been a mixture of boring and depressing, but in the next week we will have real Blazer news which I will give you the inside edge on. I assume most of my readers don't care about the NBA or the Blazers so for you guys I am your first report and cutting edge info on the world of Portland basketball. It's a real honor. I also am working this week (shocking, I know) so I am sure to get a few goofy office stories too.

Expect pics and tales soon. Out.

It been a long time coming....

So I went to Skagway and then my hard drive promptly crashed. I went to some local mac gurus (acne faced teens who talked to me like English was my second language, I don't speak that variety of geek) and they fixed up my computer, save for a few lost files, but hey I'll take it. In any case it's been a while since I have been able to enter the blogosphere. It's good to be back and I've got a lot to cover. So get some grub, maybe a brew or two (or wine if the Busch Light and corn chips I'm envisioning aren't your thing, or if you're Ben a samosa and a Lassi) and just sit back and get ready to read. (Also you might want to open the link in the title of this post in a new tab and let it play while you give this post a go, it will help, I promise)

First off, by popular demand: Sarah Palin!? This is either a strange blessing where a governor who seemingly doesn't give a shit about her state backs out because she really isn't git to govern or some kind of hyper-tricky political move that no one can quite get a grasp on. The local news pundits are split and/or baffled on what exactly Caribou Barbie is up to. This one fellow (standard right wing Alaskan, maybe further right than most) I read this morning insists its a great political move because now she can focus entirely on the national political scene and not piss off Alaskans in the process by making them feel like they are on the back burner. He believes its a wise political move and somehow by dropping off the scene she can prepare a campaign based strongly on 'family values' as well as religious ones. He also insists that her real supporters at the national level will not care about her decision to step down. He's probably right about that, which is just absurd. A dissenting (read liberal) writer insists she essentially couldn't handle the heat and figured getting out now saved her some scrutiny when her term ends and shit really hits the fan. This guy also is convinced there is more shady stuff going on and that no politician can ever move up the political ladder by resigning first. So he hypothesizes something real wild will surface in the coming months that will explain why Sarah got out when she did. But like his more conservative counterpart this guy thinks she's got some tricks up her sleeve and warns Alaskans to 'not sleep on the Palin campaign.' First time since I've been here that I have enjoyed reading the Anchorage Daily News in the office each morning.

I just can't figure out how a one term governor with (seeming and rumored) aspirations to take on the national political scene could think not finishing her only term would be a good political strategy. Maybe she just got fed up with it all, as another talking head suggested the day after her resignation. The weird thing is that Alaskans really seem to love her, maybe not here in Anchorage where there was a large Impeach Palin sign close to my hostel in May, but a lot of people I talk to absolutely love her. Not in my office where people tend to be pinkos, but plenty of people I have met in the city and elsewhere have praised her on a variety of things, the least of which is putting Alaska on the political map, something these fanatics insist no other politician has done or could have done. It's a pretty red state, but at this point people on both ends of the political spectrum are pretty confused. If MJ would just hurry up and get buried and produce a conclusive autopsy the rest of the country could join in on the media frenzy that we've got here in AK. Oh, and in case you were worried, Tina Fey clips all over the news.

So that's the news. As I get more so will you. From what I can tell local writers seem to know nothing more than the national ones. CNN and ADN.com ran essentially the same story just after news broke about her resignation. The real difference seems to be that people here are just way passionate about it and everyday the same, what the hell is going on here story is the at the top of the politics section in the paper as well as the headline on local websites. It's a big deal, but the analysis is no better even with the relative proximity to the situation.

Now for my week in Skagway. Getting there was just as cool as being there. After flying to Juneau on a normal sized aircraft we (two architect interns, their boss, my boss and myself) got on an 8-seater plane and flew right up the Lynn Canal to Skagway. Not the smallest plane I have ever been on, but close. Here are some photos I took from the plane.

The not so large plane. Juneau only has 6 gates at its airport, but has 3 different companies that run charter planes to various towns in southeast Alaska. Also, you can't drive to Juneau so these planes along with the Alaska marine highway are pretty key for residents and tourists (and interns!) alike.

These last two photos I took on the way out of town, but you get the general idea of what an awesome ride it was.This is a poor photo of downtown Skagway as we headed for the runway. This is pretty much as high as we were flying the entire flight. What's key about this photo is you can see all the cruise ships parked in the port as we were landing at about midday. Highlight of the trip was that I saw a whale from the plane! A whale! Almost the whole whale too, it was breaching and I saw the whole front half and then the tale. Unfortunately no picture, but I saw it-- bringing my wildlife count up to 4, for those of you scoring at home that's one moose, two moose calves and one whale from 8,000 ft.

Our first day there we did so little it was just silly. Your tax dollars not at work. We ate lunch and then took a tour of various historic buildings that the park owned or had recently acquired and was working on restoring. We also had a meeting with the Klondike Gold Rush NHP staff, toured some historic artifact collection in a warehouse and took a tour of Dyea (Die-EE) a neighboring gold rush town that is now abandoned. And that was a day's work. That night we had dinner with an old Skagway couple that knew Grant (the architecture boss). They were a freakin' riot and the kind of old people I really want to be. The woman, Virginia, is on the historic buildings committee and her husband, Howard, strongly believes in destroying historic structures for a variety of reasons. They are two of about 600 people who stay in Skagway through the winter so needless to say they are a hardy duo. The key story is that when Virginia purchased a historic building downtown and brought her rehabilitation proposal to the committee Howard had slipped a demolition proposal into her packet. They were just hysterical and rivaled and amazing plane ride for the highlight of the day.

The next morning started off with an amazingly ironic walk to the Park headquarters office. My boss was showing me all the historic buildings the park owned in town and giving me a general tour of the town when we walk up to the Frye Ice House. The Frye was a cold storage building for meat in the 1890s and currently sits about 25 yards north of its historic location. Where it once stood is this big tree. Bonnie explained to me the tree will probably get up rooted when the building is moved back and restored and she added "it's not a historic tree." What!? This is what my NPS job entails, destroying trees and spending money on old buildings.

Speaking of spending money on buildings, the McDermott Cabin in Dyea was the project that the interns came to Skagway to work on. This is a tiny little cabin that may have been a toll booth during the Gold Rush. It's possible that the building served as the toll booth for crossing the river before getting on the Chilkoot Trail. But really this is just a tiny old shack in the woods that we can only guess at its function. And to restore it to its possible Gold Rush appearance will cost $500,000, and that's on the cheap end. I know I am supposed to really respect historic preservation/rehabilitation at this point in the summer, but half a million bucks on a cabin when millions of Americans can't get a job just rubs me the wrong way. How about we give that money to a couple would be retirees who can't quit their jobs because they have totally lost their retirement funds. Or maybe we can just put 1898-esque siding on a couple cabins in the woods in an abandoned town that no one will ever see or care about. I'm getting a little jaded, but I still love my project and so I say bring on the millions to save Soapy's!

On the Soapy front, after my historic tree tour I got to sit down with the Skagway historic expert and park historian Karl Gurcke. Karl walked me through all the research I needed to do and inspired me to become a sweet ass old historian with a protruding gut and encyclopedic knowledge. It would be so cool to be the premiere source on one topic and that's Karl, no one knows more about the Klondike Gold Rush than this guy and my two and a half hours with him that morning were fantastic. I spent the rest of the afternoon looking at old Skagway Newspapers and a bunch of historic photographs and maps that Karl had directed me towards, I made a few good discoveries that I won't detail just yet.

The next morning I finally got to go inside Soapy's, or as I know it the Jeff. Smith's Parlor Museum, and poke around a little bit. I had been inside for about 30 minutes the previous evening, but Wednesday afternoon I really got to explore. And explore I did. A curator named Jon showed me around the interior of the parlor museum which unfortunately has been totally cleaned out and stripped down. The only things that remain in it with any historic value are actually bar itself and the moose diorama that was built in the 1930s. It's two bull moose with locked horns that were once part of a larger bizarre wildlife diorama, but now are wrapped in plastic and sit in the middle of the room in the back of the museum. Pretty bummed that the museum was empty, but the park is in the process of preparing it for rehabilitation. My boy Jeff Smith, not Soapy but his great grandson, would just be crushed to see the museum in its current state, hell he'd be crushed to hear me keep calling it a museum. But there is some good news, which I will get to in a moment.

What I did while I was in the museum was get a run through of all the layers of wallpaper that came off the walls when they first stripped the building down to the wood. Then I examined all the walls and any indications of old door frames and windows and then I spent about an hour climbing around in the various parts of the foundation attempting to tell what was original flooring and where clear changes in the foundation indicated additions to the building. One part of the foundation was so close to the ground that I had to lie on my back with a flashlight in the dirt just to get a look at it. I came out extremely dirty and extremely knowledge about the different types of flooring that went in to the building.

While I was walking around the building a tour group came by and a park ranger looking woman gave them about a 7 minute talk on the history of the building. And here's the real key for my boy Jeff. No mention of either of the museum operators, Martin Itjen and George Rapuzzi. No mention that the building became a museum. The tour talk only harps on Soapy's life from wealthy southern beginnings to crime in mountain west and Alaska. One thing the tour totally missed on was Soapy's death, which the woman credited to Frank Reid who "shot Soapy right through the heart." As Jeff explains that is not the true story, but it is what the newspaper at the time reported, so hey let the 'amateurs' tell the story like that and leave it to guys like me and Jeff to set them straight. (One thing I learned about Soapy form Karl, which Jeff will undoubtedly dispute, is that Soapy was not the Grand Marshall in the 1898 July 4 parade, but actually just the leader of the 4th district. So he was a key part of the parade, but not the key part. Prove me wrong, Jeff.) But the key take away is that the tour of the Parlor Museum is actually just a talk about Soapy's life of crime. So for all my work to preserve the life and careers of the Soapy museum owners and operators the park just totally ignores that portion of the building's history. I guess you win this round, Jeff, but with all my efforts Itjen and Rapuzzi won't totally disappear. What I really learned, crime pays or at least it makes for a good story once you get shot.
This is the foundation I crawled around in. I am standing in another portion of the foundation taking a picture looking back, it looks small and dark don't it.
Here's a tour group just outside the building getting the all Soapy all the time rundown.
And here is the Soapy mannequin that was in the old parlor museum and now sits in a storage warehouse about 5 blocks away.

Skagway is a silly town beyond crawling around in the foundations of old buildings. It gets about 5-8 thousand tourists everyday most of whom come off giant cruise ships that park in the harbor and run their engines for 12 hours before the last one leaves just after 9pm. Eco tourism! The rest of Skagway is equally silly because every third store front is a jewelry store run by south Asians. Of course, it's picturesque and situated in the middle of mountains at the end of this beautiful canal. But almost all the buildings are restored to look like the gold rush era, except they are selling lattes, diamonds and have wireless internet. And the park spends literally 10s of millions of dollars in preserving buildings and promoting the history of the town so tourists can come in for 8 hours walk around, shop and forget any historic info they may have accidentally come across. It was a good time but the irony is a bit overwhelming. In all honesty this week was the first time I thought, man I have an awesome job. So for all my bitching in this post I did feel like I was doing good/interesting work. I leave you with some pictures of Skagway. Holler.

These last two images are actually pictures from Dyea, but its only about 7 miles away so it all gets grouped together. Pretty ain't it.Top vehicle is the historic streetcar that the park hides away and will bring out for display once the parlor museum is rehabilitated and restored. The bottom one is the recreated version that now drives the elderly and overweight and I guess other curious folks around Skagway. The drivers dress up in period outfits and show all the points of interest that Martin Itjen would have, and probably some new ones too. It's just classic Skagway hokey-ness.This beautiful little home is the Rapuzzi house where George Rapuzzi and his wife Edna lived in Skagway. I spent an afternoon here looking through the building and taking photos. I am doing a small project on this house but really it was cool to just poke around in the building. They found some old WWII ration containers and just tons of old stuff saved from the 40s through the 60s. Here are some photos from inside the house.
That's it and that's all. Except for July 4. I went to a double header baseball game and then watched fireworks that didn't start until 12:20 am (July 5), because it wasn't dark enough until friggin' midnight. Only in Alaska.