Jack and I wonder if this song is the best song in the universe. You just can’t help but like it no matter what kind of music you’re into.
Bulker goes off the road
The Dalton claims another truck!
Jack calls this kind of trailer a bulker. It carries dry powders like concrete, sand, or ammonium nitrate. This one probably carried concrete or sand. He says they use air to transfer the product from one place to another. Unloading a bulker is called “blowing it off” to the people who do it. In Prudhoe they store the product in silos.
Don’t forget you can increase the resolution on a YouTube video by clicking on the settings symbol in the lower right hand corner and choosing a higher number than what YouTube picked for you.
Engine on fire
A few years ago a truck engine spontaneously caught fire. It was an electrical issue with the truck. It had popped a breaker and when the breaker was flipped back, the fire started. That’s what is thought to have happened. In the photos you can only see smoke, and the Fairbanks Fire Department working to put it out. We can imagine it was some seriously toxic smoke, as it is anytime a vehicle catches fire. The Carlile employees including Jack moved the vehicles that were next to it immediately but couldn’t do anything about the fire.
(For those of you lucky souls who don’t have to deal with the cold temperatures, trucks and all vehicles are plugged in before driving to heat up the oil and anti-freeze.)
Click a photo to see it full size, then scroll through.
Ravens on the Dalton
Jack and I found the most amazing sight back in 2006 when we pulled into Happy Valley along the Dalton Highway. Happy Valley is a former pipeline camp at about mile 335 that now is a gravel pullout where various storage units are kept. There’s an airstrip that hunters and Fish & Game use, and Jack has seen mushers there too.
A raven built a nest in a set of moose antlers on the side of a building and 2 young ravens were in it!
This raven nest, with 2 babies in it, is built in a set of moose antlers on the side of a building!
You can see how much of a mess the raven family has made with guano all over the steps, propane tanks and the side of the building.
What a work of art!
The “babies” were absolutely quiet and watchful while I snapped photos and even climbed up on a nearby truck to get on the same level as them. They did not seem traumatized. 🙂
Jack had a close encounter with a very friendly raven a few years ago too.
Raven sitting on Jack’s truck hood and peering inside the cab.
Don’t worry, I discussed with Jack how it’s not appropriate to feed wild animals and that it might even be against the law! 🙂
They are amazing creatures. So smart!
Old blind dog found after 2 weeks in the cold
Driver has a bad day
Another truck goes off the road! This one is about 20 miles from Prudhoe.
Happy Sunday everyone! We’re having a beautiful sunny day after some snow and a wind storm that cut out our electricity for a couple of hours last night.
Upside Down Truck
Here’s a short video Jack took the other day at about mile 86 of the Dalton. The truck got too close to the edge when it met another truck and went off the side and rolled over. A tree trunk punctured the tanker and according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation about 3,000 gallons of ultra low sulfur diesel spilled onto the ground. Here is a link to the local newspaper’s article about it.
Jack carries approximately 9,200 gallons in the tanker he uses. Other tankers are larger or smaller. All or most tankers have different compartments though so when one has a spill most likely it’s only that compartment that empties. Having different compartments enables truckers to carry different types of liquids and/or put weight at different places in the load.
(YouTube has a bad habit of giving you the lowest resolution so if you want to see more detail try clicking one of the HD choices under settings in the lower right hand corner of the video screen.)
Pushing a crane
It’s quite common for a really heavy load to have one or more push trucks behind it to push when going up inclines. Push trucks are commonly used on the Dalton Highway as well as the Parks and Richardson when the loads are outrageously heavy, otherwise it would take a very long time and so much fuel for the truck with the load to get up a mountain, and it would also impede traffic for long periods of time. The push trucks just follow the load when not going up hills.
Taken 11 years ago, these photos really show how close Jack’s push truck gets to the load he’s pushing (a crane). You can see the pad that the push bar pushes against, how the trucks make contact.
Rest in Peace Steve Hollibone
We are so sad for Steve’s wife Christy who he left behind when he died of cancer recently. It is a huge fear for all of us and Steve had to face it. He undoubtedly had other stresses when he was sick and we are sorry for that too.
Jack says Steve was a good driver and a good guy. We would like to extend our sympathies to his wife and family. Christy, hold on to your memories and know that you made his life worth living.
A raven’s eye tour of Fairbanks
Flying into Fairbanks one day in 2008 the airplane took an unusual route. Instead of coming in from the southwest it came in from the southeast, flying over Harding Lake and Salcha and circling over Farmers Loop across north of town into the airport. Maybe this direction of landing is normal, I don’t know, I have never experienced it before, but this day happened to be beautifully clear and I captured some great photos of the Tanana River and various Fairbanks landmarks.
Click on the first one and then scroll to the right for an overhead, raven’s eye, tour of Fairbanks.
This is Hardling Lake with the Richardson Highway at the top of the photo (looking south).
Harding Lake with the Tanana River and Richardson Highway running in between.
This is the Salcha River flowing into the Tanana River, surrounded by the community of Salcha with the Richardson Highway running through it.
The Tanana River
The Tanana River
Now we are looking northwest toward Fairbanks with the Tanana River flowing westward.
A closer view of Fairbanks with Fairbanks International Airport in the upper left, above the Tanana River. The Parks Highway runs next to the airport from the northwest then turns east (Mitchell Expressway). You can see almost all of Fairbanks here including the hillside residential areas to the north and west. The bodies of water in between Fairbanks and the Tanana RIver are the gravel pits around Lakeview Terrace and farther away, the South Cushman ponds.
The intersection of the Richardson Highway and Badger Road is on the right. The road that parallels the Richardson on the left is called Saddle Avenue; we think this is the dike that protects Fairbanks from Tanana River flooding. Fort Wainwright is on the right.
The middle rectangle spans south Fairbanks from the airport to Fort Wainwright. The University of Alaska is in the upper right hand corner and below it is part of downtown.
Now we are on the other side of Fort Wainwright looking southwest. Bottom right is Birch Hill Recreation Area and downhill ski runs and Jack says the circular cleared area is the Fort Wainwright landfill. On the right side middle you can see Johansen Expressway with the big box stores along it, though it’s more developed now with large commercial buildings on both sides of the road instead of just one. The Chena River winds westward from Fort Wainwright.
We’re flying north of town now looking south toward Fairbanks with the intersection of Farmers Loop and the Steese Highway in the upper left corner and McGrath and Farmers Loop closer to the middle.
Someone’s personal junkyard, one of many in Fairbanks. Normally you can just see an edge but here you can see one in all its glory!
This interestingly shaped pond is either an oxbow lake, which is formed where a river or slough used to run, or a thawed area of permafrost.
This is north Fairbanks where the industrial area of Aurora Drive and the residential areas north of it meet. Carlile Transportation is kind of in the upper middle, just on this side of the Johansen Expressway. Danby intersects Johansen in the upper left corner and on the other side of the expressway is the railroad industrial area. There have been a lot of changes since these were taken 6-7 years ago.
We are farther west, looking southeast, with Johansen Expressway running horizontally. The large buildings in the upper left (not near the middle of the photo, that’s the Aurora Drive industrial area) are Randy Smith Middle School and the car dealerships of Danby Road. Next to the red roof in the foreground is the partially constructed foundation of the Carlile shop that now services Jack’s truck.
Here we see the Chena River meandering through Fairbanks and the intersection of Johansen and Peger Road on the left. The Carlson Center is the large green building in the upper left. One of the newest and most expensive neighborhoods of Fairbanks is Doyon Estates which is on the right, inside one of the the loops of the Chena River.
The intersection of Peger Road and Phillips Field Road is near the middle and here is where the railroad industrial area and the residential neighborhoods meet.
This is Riverview Drive running between the neighborhood pond and the Chena River, with an active gravel pit on the right bank of the Chena. This residential neighborhood is called Taku or Westgate. You can see the new intersection of Airport Way and Washington Drive in the upper right corner. The large building at the corner of that intersection has been shuttered since K-Mart closed, and next to it is Sears.
And finally, we land at the Fairbanks International Airport with the float ponds next to the runway.
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