Mexico- Copper Canyon January 2009

The next set of pictures are from around the Copper Canyon. We took a bus from Navopatia to El Fuerte where we boarded a train to Creel. Creel is at the rim of the canyon at 7,800 feet. It was cold up there! The nite time temp. was in the mid 20's. During the day it was in the 50s. There should have been snow on the ground but it was a low snow year. The Copper Canyon is AMAZING! If anyone is thinking of going to Mexico and doing something other than sitting on a beach, this place should be high on your list.


The train stop at a "town" called Divisidero. It is really just a stop to get a good view of the Canyon. There are heaps of little shops selling touristy stuff and really good snack food. Here is a panoramic of the canyon. The Copper Canyon is actually a collection of different canyons. This is the Urique Canyon.


A few photos of the train trip from El Fuerte to Creel.


Heaps of tunnels to go thru. I think there were well over 60 along 160 miles of track. For any train enthusiasts this trip is amazing. The track does a couple of crazy double loops


We rented bicycles and went around to see the sights.

Darcie next to a mushroom rock. This are was covered in volcanic ash at one point. A harder rock covered the ash. When it was all exposed the more easily eroded ash under the harder rock helped form these interesting formations.

A nice view around Creel.




This one is not going to last much longer!!

Can you see the frog?!

Further down the road was a site with all these granite spires. The local Tarahumara Indians call the area the Valley of the Erect Penises. When the Spanish invaded they could not stomach that name and called it the Valley of the Monks. I like the former. Ha!
Really neat! Some are well over 70 feet high.












Darice and I down in the Copper Canyon on a suspension walking bridge across the Urique River. We took a hair-raising bus ride down into the canyon from Creel to the sleepy town of Urique. The road descended 6300 feet. Temperatures in the canyon were in the 60s at nite and low 80s during the day.

A few photos around Urique.



The beautiful gardens at the backpackers we stayed at. This place is owned by an American who has been living here in Urique for many many years. His home here is amazing. Entre Amigos is the name of the hostel. Here is the link: http://home.comcast.net/~ramsay52/ You can pick from the garden during your stay.



Amazing rocks/boulders along a creek bed.



Pot is grown widely in these parts.




A nice panoramic of the Urique river canyon and the town below.





About the only color in the canyon were these flowering trees. Not sure what they are called.

Here you can just see the outline of the road coming down into the canyon. In places there is nothing between the side of the road and a multi-thousand foot drop. And the road is often only wide enough for the small van/bus.

Another flowering tree/bush.

The Urique River running pretty low in this, the dry season.


Some very cool rocks along the river. It was difficult picking a few to take home with me!

Darcie posing along the river where we swam to cool off from the hot days. The river was chilly but not too bad.



Darcie and I hiked around the canyon a fair bit during our week there. One day we hiked down a creek bed and found this tree growing out of the rocks.

On our way out of the canyon and back home.

A steep look down at Urique, the Urique river and canyon.

Finished Floors and Shelves

The day after x-mas I hit the downstairs floor, installing solid bamboo T&G in most of the space and vinyl around the entry-way door. Took 2 days for the bamboo, nailing it down. It really changed the feel of the place. Much more like a finished home now.

This is what the floor looked like before, painted OSB. The black is felt paper to prevent squeaking floors.

Looking SW from the kitchen. Old rocker is from my Great Great Grandparents. I brought it up on my drive from Minnesota in November.

Looking south from the Kitchen.

Looking West from the kitchen table.

Looking West from kitchen at the entry-way door.
The next project is to put the stone around the wood stove and to put in a shower in the corner you see here where the coats are. It will be a real shower stall, a small one, but no running water besides a hoisted 5-gallon bucket with warm water in it (heated over the wood stove or kitchen stove) and a nozzle on the bottom or side to let the water out. The shower will drain thru the floor into a bucket outside.
For now I take showers at work. In the summers i collect rain water off my roof and take bucket showers outside.

The kitchen with the finished shelves.
I don't have running water but I do have gravity fed water. Upstairs there is a 55-gallon drum sitting on its side. I have copper pipe running from it to the sink and into a regular faucet. There is a small RV pump under the sink that I use to pump water up that same copper pipe out of 5-gallon jugs that I fill either at the Univ. or at a natural spring 5 miles from my house. I use about 5-gallons of water a week for drinking and cooking. Another 3-5 gallons a week for dishes. The sink drains into a 5-gallon bucket under the sink. I may plumb the drain to run outside in the summer (it'll freeze in the winter). It works great. When I leave for extended periods (more than a week) of time I just drain the line and let my place freeze, not having to burn any fuel oil while I am gone. It just takes a day or so to warm the place up again when I get back.
Yes, I have an outhouse. But I learned the trick of using a pee bottle inside for those late nite wake-up calls while in Antarctica. My first summer at South Pole Station I was staying in the Quonset hut camp where there was a central bathroom area which meant you had to walk outside to reach it. The walk was not bad, it was the blinding sun(the sun never sets at 90 south/north for 6 months) and hit of cold air that sucked, coming out of your little cave of a room (they were about 8'x10') in the middle of the "nite". I did that drill only once before getting a plastic pee bottle. The air has less than 10% humidity down there and you are at about 9,300 feet in elevation so you have to down alot of water to stay hydrated.

Before the holidays I finally put up my kitchen shelves. They are made out of rough cut lumber I made from logs left over from the building of the house. My brother has a band-saw saw-mill and I used it to make these one inch boards. The house logs still have the round on one side so the boards have this round on one side too. It makes for a nice effect.
I had to sand the wood so I'd have smooth surfaces. The supports are made from little spruce trees from around my place.

Driving: Minnesota to Fairbanks, November 2008

I flew back to Minnesota in early November and spent 18 days there visiting family and friends. My brother, his wife and their new baby, Lucas came down for a week and we traveled around together visiting family. They flew back to Alaska but not before buying a mini-van for their growing family; 4 kids now. I agreed to drive the car back to Fairbanks. I left Nov. 25th and arrived in Fairbanks 6 days later. It was my first time driving up in the winter. The roads were excellent and the weather mild, in the 30s during the day. The only bad weather was from the boarder to Delta Junction with blowing snow.
With it being winter and the car full of old furniture from my Mom, I had to find a cheap way to spend my nites. I signed up onto the website: www.couchsurfing.com. It is a free service where you search for people's places to stay, in cities around the world. I found a place to stay 3 out of my 5 nites. It was a great experience and way to meet locals/new people. My couch/spare bed is listed on the website now. So come surf my couch!!

The beautiful Mississippi River Valley just above the little town of Alma, Wisconsin and the Alma locks/dam. This was not part of my driving trip back to AK but on one of the trips to visit family while in Minnesota/Wisconsin.

Flat, flat, flat North Dakota and a wind power farm near Langdon. There had to be over 50. Pretty cool.

A turtle made of wheel rims. In Dunseith, North Dakota, just south of the border with Canada. Nearby is Turtle Mountain which I imagine was the inspiration for this piece of art.


I had no idea this park existed and came upon it totally by chance. I chose this route thru North Dakota just to by-pass the busier boarder crossing south of Winnipeg.
Pretty neat park. Check it out: http://www.peacegarden.com/
And here is a link to the history of the park: http://www.peacegarden.com/allpdf/Peace%20Garden%20History-%20Web%5B1%5D.pdf

In the park, looking along the boarder.

In the park.

My first nite was in Brandon, Manitoba. I surfed on a mattress of a nice college student there. Jessica, her sister and friends were hashing out ideas for their new 'zine.
That nite, while driving to find the place, I heard on the radio that the International Space Station was about to travel overhead, looking like a moving satellite but much brighter. I pulled over and looked up. Sure enough, there it was. Really cool to think that that moving thing in the sky had 10 people in it.
The next morning was cold and foggy making for a beautiful drive. The ground/trees were covered in frost.
I was in the land of wheat and giant grain silos!

The North Saskatchewan River valley.

Driving across Saskatchewan was so beautiful. Wide open space.

I love these old graineries.

Nearing the end of my second day. I spent the nite in Lyodminister, a city that stratles the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta, just east of Edmonton. I spent the nite with a young fellow that works as an environmental technician for Husky Oil.

The scenary between Edmonton and Fort Saint John, my third day, is not very pretty. Just rolling hills of forested land. Lots of oil and gas developement going on. The highway was chocked full of trucks servicing the oil and gas fields. The air around Edmonton was very polluted and the roads were crazy busy. Alberta is booming with all the oil/gas money.
North of Fort Saint John you begin going thru the mountains. Here I began to see alot of wildlife, like these Caribou. Elk, Bison and a Lynx too.

Entering Stone Mountain Provincial Park, British Columbia.

Bison along the road just north of Liard Hot Springs. There were about 60 spread over 3 groups. Very cool. The ditches alongside the road here are very wide. Grass grows there and it makes for good grazing for the Bison.
I spent the nite at a lodge, after my fourth day, across the road from the Hot Springs. On that fourth day I became very sick with the flu. I slept 16 hours that nite. My fifth day was not fun. I was still very sick. I spent my 5th nite in Whitehorse with an old college-mate, Forest and his wife Georgianna and their son Finn.

The mountains around Kluane Lake. And that is it. An exhausting trip but glad to have experienced the Alaska Highway in the winter.