Up the River and On an Iceberg

The following images are almost two weeks old but I wanted to make sure I put them up because some of them are pretty silly.

Adam and I got a wake up call two Sunday mornings ago from Noah asking us if we wanted to go up the river with one of their coworkers. We did. But it meant we had a little over an hour to clean the house I had been petsitting at for two weeks – a task I had designated the whole day to do since the owner of the house was getting back to town around six that evening. I’ll leave out details of the express cleanup, but we did make it to the dock only five minutes late, which means we were pretty much on time if not a little early.

Weather-wise it was a typical Wrangell day – patchy rains, grey, windy. Didn’t seem like ideal going-up-the-river weather, but it was actually really fun. Since we went up with a friend and not a tourist charter, we got to do cool stuff like walk on an iceberg and Shake's Glacier. I even got to drive the boat for a little bit.

This is the first iceberg I've ever walked on. I'm pretty sure it was the first one Adam and Maria have ever walked on also. Notice how we're all being very responsible boat passengers, each weaing a PFD, ie. personal floatation device.

Adam and I had just watched March of the Penguins the night before. Noah and Adam doing belly slides.

I think this picture is amazing. When we arrived at Shake's Glacier, we found another boat filled with our friends already there. Kevin has just thrown a small boulder in the crack and I'm lying down watching because I'm scared of slipping and falling in if I stand too close to the edge. Maria is watching from afar and that's Noah.

Maria and I contemplated for a few minutes on whether or not we should attempt to jump over the crack. I ended up walking to a point where the gap wasn't as great and jumped over. This is me "woah"ing my big feat.

Me and Ad on Shake's. He really isn't that much taller than I am. Notice my practical rain pants purchased from Angerman's in Wrangell, the same store where my XtraTufs came from.

Overall, it was an excellent day trip, and when I went back to the petsitting house, the owner was back. I apologized for not having left it as nice as I would've liked and he said it looked way better than it does when him and his family are living in it, so that was a relief.

On a different note, my mother is coming to visit for a week on Sunday. I'm hoping she'll be able to glimpse what I've grown to love about Wrangell. Or perhaps her visit will only confirm to her more just how crazy I am to live here.

Wrangell's 4th

Over a week has passed since Wrangell’s 4th of July which I heard about ever since I arrived to this town in November. It’s what the residents of Wrangell are most proud of, what Better Homes & Gardens did a color spread of in 2004, what they prepare for all year, what is the ultimate definition of community for them.

The town goes all out – from July 4th queen contestants to fireworks to town tug-o-wars to a soapbox derby. Wrangell swells in population with guests and family members visiting. For those who have moved away from Wrangell, around the 4th is predominantly when they come back. They are even celebrated with a town-wide Welcome Home potluck.

Anticipation builds for each 4th with a month of queen food booths prior to the big day. The competing queen contestants serve food daily and sell raffle tickets. Money from ticket sales – each ticket is worth $1 – is what goes into the July 4th fund for the following year. This year, a little over 48,000 tickets were sold, which is lower than last year’s 65,000. Money from tickets sales is also dispersed among the queen winner (she gets a few thousand which seems like a lot but she worked probably 16 hour-days for a whole month and had a team of at least five working the same amount of hours if not more who get zilch) and the raffle ticket winners – 1st place got $5000, 2nd place $3000, and 3rd and 4th place get $500 each. I was not a raffle ticket winner.

Here are some images from the 4th which started out grey and cloudy and turned into one of the sunniest, hottest days in Wrangell causing everyone in town to sunburn. Still now, it’s funny to walk around and see tanned, peeling noses, as if everyone went on holiday to some tropical island.


According to some, the Front Street parade that kicks off the 4th every year wasn’t as grand this year as years previous. But it was still exciting to see rows of cars parked in the middle of adjacent streets and EVERYONE filling in the sidewalks.



The Chuck Oliver Logging show featured many events involving wood. Featured above is Karl competing in the Power Bucking and then two guys doing the Axe Chopping.


After sitting in the sweltering sun (we’re talking 70 degrees at least which is HOT for Wrangell) for a few Logging events, Anri and I decided to walk over to the Street Games and starting watching as the running races ended, an event that Anri was sorry she had missed as we’re both positive she would’ve won some money. Each Street Game was broken up by age group. There would be many participants for age groups under 15 – those were broken up into two-year blocks, ages 5 and 6, ages 7 and 8, etc. After age 15, the groups would be in much larger blocks to encourage people to participate – ages 16-25, ages 26-35, ages 36-50, 51-65, anyone not dead. Above are Anri and I doing tug-o-war. Our side did not win.


Egg Toss is the most popular street game bringing in the most town participation. I’ve heard many stories of people attempting to take late-afternoon naps but hearing the repeated, echoing, “Toss your egg now.” That phrase, said by the same woman for almost 28 years, is a pillar of the 4th of July in Wrangell. Teams comprise of mother/daughter, father/son, mother/son, father/daughter, brothers, sisters, brother/sister, husband/wife, friends. I got to compete twice – once with Adam during husband/wife, and again with Anri during the friends one. Needless to say, it was fun.

The following is a sequence of images from the Sonny Wigg Log Rolling Contest. I let Maria convince me that since there weren’t that many contestants entered, we’d each have a good chance of placing and winning some cash. When she convinced me of this there were, I think, two or three people entered. By the time the two of us entered, we were contestants eight and nine. Since neither of us has planned to do this, neither of us has proper foot wear, which would be cork boots, boots or footwear with spikes on the bottom of them. So we each had to wear cork boots of men who had much bigger feet than we did.

It was double elimination which means you had to fall off the log first twice to be out of the contest. I think I may have been the worse. I fell off the first time even before they said, “Go.” For my second chance, Maria and I competed against each other. She won. She ended up coming in fourth place which wasn’t enough to win cash back but it is pretty amazing she did so well on her first time log rolling, on top of the fact that she was wearing a skirt. That black shirt I was wearing was lent to me from a friend who insisted I couldn’t compete wearing just a white t-shirt. She was right.


Right around they called, “Go.” We still look pretty grounded on that log.


Getting trickier. This is right before I fell in.


After I lost for the second time. Notice the spikes on the bottom of the boots I’m wearing.


Before there was even talk of doing the log-rolling, we’re all happily and dryly watching the men’s Log Rolling contest. From left to right: Sarah, Jon, Kevin, Anri, me, and Maria.

The day ended with fireworks. Maria, Anri, and I went out on the water with Kevin in his boat. It was a fabulous place to watch them from. The fireworks felt like they were right on top of us.

Safe Town, USA

I had one of those heart-stopping moments at exactly 4 o’clock in the morning. The Wrangell police department called. The door to the Sentinel office was unlocked. They had tried to call my co-worker, Kris, but no answer. Did I want to come down to check it out?

I was a bit freaked out because I had been the only one at work yesterday. I had opened and closed the office. I imagined the cash register being empty, computers gone. I ran down to the Sentinel and met officer Groshong (who is more familiar to me for sitting on the school board than donning handcuffs and a gun). The office was perfectly fine – no money missing, nothing seemed astray. I called Kris from the office and she said she had gone to the office after I had left and must have forgotten to lock the door. Phew. I was back home by 4:15 a.m.

Apparently, early in the morning every day, the Wrangell police walk through town and check every door of every business to make sure it’s locked. What’s funny is that even as I was freaking out, I knew that I really had nothing to worry about. Wrangell is the safest place I have ever lived (well, minus the murder that took place in February) and while there may be the occasional bar fight, people here pride themselves on not locking their house or car doors, and letting their dogs and children roam the streets unattended. When I'm getting my groceries delivered and I know I won't be home when they arrive, I know the delivery boy will just leave them inside my apartment – even put the frozen stuff in the freezer for me – and I have absolutely no reason to think anything suspicious will take place. When my purse went missing for a weekend and was finally located, every single dollar, cent, credit card was still there. People trust people. I have learned to trust people.

With our trailer parks and empty storefronts, Wrangell may not be the most reputable place, but it’s definitely the most safe.

Apology

I just wanted to extend an apology to the few of you who actually check my blog for not posting anything new lately. After this coming Tuesday deadline, I will be sure to write some stuff and post some images of events come and gone - Anri's visit, July 4th, river trips. For now I must get to work on the s-l-o-w process of transcribing. Last week I had a phone interview with the woman from Hawaii who got mauled by a bear at a camp site 20 miles from Wrangell. She was still recuperating at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle when we talked.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.