::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Two new takes on The Ant and the Grasshopper

Political ·Thursday September 18, 2008 @ 18:55 EDT (link)

This is a well-known parable; in the original, the ant works to store up food for the winter, but the grasshopper is idle; in winter, the ant has food and the grasshopper starves to death (the Wikipedia entry says this is cited as an example of a libertarian society, although libertarianism does not preclude voluntary charity). Here are two modern versions:

Once upon a time there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered some grains of wheat. She called her neighbors and said "If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?"

"Not I, " said the cow.

"Not I," said the duck.

"Not I," said the pig.

"Not I," said the goose.

"Then I will," said the little red hen. And she did. The wheat grew tall and ripened into golden grain.

"Who will help me reap my wheat?" asked the little red hen.

"Not I," said the duck.

"Out of my classification," said the pig.

"I'd lose my seniority," said the cow.

"I'd lose my unemployment compensation," said the goose.

"Then I will," said the little red hen, and she did.

At last the time came to bake the bread. "Who will help me bake bread?" asked the little red hen.

"That would be overtime for me," said the cow.

"I'd lose my welfare benefits," said the duck.

"I'm a dropout and never learned how," said the pig.

"If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination," said the goose.

"Then I will," said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and held them up for the neighbors to see.

They all wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, "No, I can eat the five loaves myself."

"Excess profits," cried the cow.

"Capitalist leech," screamed the duck.

"I demand equal rights," yelled the goose.

And the pig just grunted.

And they painted "unfair" picket signs and marched round and around the little red hen shouting obscenities.

When the government agent came, he said to the little red hen, "You must not be greedy."

"But I earned the bread," said the little red hen.

"Exactly," said the agent. "That's the wonderful free enterprise system. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations productive workers must divide their products with the idle."

And they lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, "I am grateful, I am grateful." But her neighbors wondered why she never again baked any more bread.

—Seen on CLAMS; found here
Claimed first heard it in a message from Dr. Adrian Rogers (Bellevue Baptist)
(which is down the street from where we used to live in Memphis, TN)

Comment from CLAMS:

Maybe add the grasshoppers' vote along with the single ant to take the ant's property. They claim its all fair 'cause everyone had a vote. But oops what a coincidence the grasshoppers all voted to loot the ant's property. But its all fair… 'cause it was a vote.

(Which is one example, isomorphic to the wolves and the sheep voting on what to have for dinner, that shows democracy isn't necessarily inherently fair or good; compare Churchill's dictum: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" (from a House of Commons speech on November 11, 1947), probably because libertarianism still needs to be tried.)

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green".

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Tom Daschle and John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

—Seen on CLAMS; found here.

Rivendell is born

News, Technical, Guns ·Wednesday September 17, 2008 @ 20:47 EDT (link)

20080912: Registered at UWa. (CSE P 590, Accessibility, with Dr. Ladner, ID 97999) and paid tuition. (Had some trouble: they didn't have the correct notation in my file for the program, so I called David Rispoli, the program advisor, and he said he'd sent a list over to someone, and told me to ask for her by name; I called later and did, but she was out; called a half hour before they closed, and things finally worked out.)

Went to Duvall "Movies in the Park"; got there a little after 1900, they showed some cartoons (and then some real estate ads from the sponsor, yawn), and the movie, National Treasure 2, started about 2000, ended 2215?, we got home shortly after, since it shows at a park just down the hill from our house.

20080913: minas-tirith (primary outward-facing server) died overnight; turned out the graphics card was causing boot failure (POST, 8 beeps, and some lights which a kind chap at Hard Drives Northwest investigated for me). He also showed me where some capacitors on the motherboard were bulging and leaking acid; we decided to buy a new machine (rivendell; old one was imladris and before that minas-tirith; the wheel of time turns, and machines come and pass…). New box has a 500 Gb HD (also bought another 500 Gb HD, SATA in a USB 2.0 enclosure, for backups), AMD 64 X2 3.0 GHz, DVD±RW; no OS, no monitor.

Visted a few places nearby including a new (to me) gun store, Estate Arms Company, across from Bellevue Square, and took a look at the Springfield Armory XD(M) in .40. Installed a minimal Gentoo on the new machine when I got home; no problem connecting up my old HD as hdb, although the bearing sounds noisy so backups definitely need to be brought up to date.

After following the Gentoo Handbook, I had to copy over various settings: networking (/etc/conf.d.net and /etc/hosts), DHCP server (/etc/dhcp/dhcp.conf), NAT (/var/lib/iptables), NTP (/etc/ntp.conf), cron (/etc/cron*), and DNS (/var/dnscachex). This gets a basic system working, but no web or mail servers, which are a bit more work to migrate.

Along the way to setting up mail, it wanted a database server, so I decided it was a good time to reinstall and restore PostgreSQL. Unfortunately, copying the data directory didn't work ("FATAL: incorrect checksum in control file"; net wisdom suggests it's a 32-bit to 64-bit issue); fortunately, I was able to use chroot to run the old PostgreSQL server and run a dump (pg_dumpall). I have weekly dumps, but wanted the latest data. Copied over and restarted MySQL, too (I still have some old databases on it).

20080914: Went to the gun show in the morning, picked up 1000 rounds of ammo since I'm running low (9mm, 124 grain FMJ since it was the same price as the 115 grain). Mail server and IMAP is up; web server is getting there (note: moved logs from /home/server to /var/log). And… we're back.

Broadstripe decided to have a few long outages this evening, several hours so far, with only a few minutes of actual uptime. Note to anyone finding this is a search: don't get Broadstripe; get anyone else, even Verizon. Perhaps we'll be able to switch to SpeakEasy now; it's worth checking again, anyway.

20080916: Argh, Harmony remote issues. Its crappy configuration utility only communicates with the web site at the end (the web site produces a configuration file which is uploaded to the remote), and at that point it came back with an error (something useless like "unable to display page", not something more useful and true like "although we say we support sequences of commands, we really don't, so donÂt try to use them or we'll give you random errors").

Bad drivers: 1735: WA 086 XDY, Black Hyundia SUV, WA-520; 1803: WA B718 71A, white Ford truck, NE 124th St.

20080917: Cleaned up ZX's recent checkin: it's like he completely failed to read the Word coding conventions document, plus he could know C++ better. They oughtta let me do interview screening here…. Went shooting at SVRC with Honey after I got home from work.

Books finished: The Rook.

DVDs finished: Ransom, The Saint.

Luke Williams: goodbye and good luck

News, Work, School ·Friday September 12, 2008 @ 01:57 EDT (link)

20080910: Early am: trying to log in to work to submit some changes (co-authoring object model), but I'm waiting for automated test results to come back. I don't see the results in my (web-based) email, so I log in, which is a lot of fun in itself: first I have to get the highly-finnicky Microsoft IT Connection Manager to work (see previous rants 1 2 3), then I have to go to the internal tools site and run a debug script which magically fixes some machine Kerberos tickets so I can terminal serve to my machines, but that doesnÂt quite work so I have to connect to the REDMOND domain and (and reboot; see previous #3), re-run the magic debug scripts, and then remote desktop appears to work.

Remote desktop is also highly finnicky: for one of my machines, when the login prompt shows up, it grays out and tries to use the smart card, which hums for a bit and must be canceled or it fails and logs me out. Then it shows a normal password prompt, except that it ignores the first password (but if you hit enter it logs you out, so I have to type some random characters to get it to fail), and only then do I get to log in. Wow. Is Windows a heap of crap or what? Modular design and standards (open or not), people. Software architecture, do you speak it?

Anyway. I log into DROBINS5, my newest development box, and check the automated test system, but it's down for maintenance. Never fear, though: they expect it to be back at midnight. Good luck with that, since it's 0033 now, but why should I be surprised, they couldn't stick to a deadline last time either. Must be the dreaded patch Tuesday that I've heard about.

Checked in during the day; the tests passed except for some OfficeArt failures that should be unrelated to my changes (knock wood).

Luke Williams' farewell party was today; a group gathered in the kitchen for cake and a few songs from Luke, which is fitting since he's heading out into the world to make music. He was my office mate way back when I started (in 36\3157); some of us once filled his side of the office with red Microsoft logo cups^1,2 while he was on vacation. After a stint in Word, he went over to WAC (Web Access Companions, online versions of popular Office programs). Luke has a blog.

1 There's no problem revealing LW is Luke Williams now since he no longer works there and time has passed; I try to keep current co-workers' full names off my site for their privacy and mine, and also to keep my site off web searches for their names.

2 The cups are now earth-friendly green, and can no longer be used in the microwave; I usually take two since they conduct heat rather than insulate, which probably negates any individual environmental savings from the switch.

Went to PMP orientation today; headed out at 1730; it went 1830-1937 (Professor Ladner talked about his new Accessibility course, and then the rest was just going over stuff that was already on the web site and we could and should have done ourselves, so it was somewhat slow going); I left the school 2145 (after talking to Dr. Rispoli some and looking around), arrived home about 2220, not bad, considering getting there just from Redmond took about 45 minutes.

20080911: Costco; bought Logitech Harmony (620) remote. Setup program is pretty crap, but it manages to work (and did find my existing remotes). It's crappy because it gratuitously (as in more than just to fetch updates) talks to a web site, which becomes a problem later. Also got an 8Gb USB stick and a(nother) 4Gb CF card, since they'd sent us a coupon (ditto for the remote; coupons work).

Reasons I am voting Democrat

Political ·Thursday September 11, 2008 @ 22:36 EDT (link)

·
requiescat in pace
·

I'm voting Democratic because…

… an inexperienced US Senator gives great speeches that make me feel good.
… I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.
… I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.
… I believe three or four elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution through judicial fiat every few days to suit some idealists who would otherwise never get their agendas past the voters.
… I don't want a stimulus check to spend. Let the government spend it for me.
… freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.
… I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the employees (after taxes).
… I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.
… I believe that churches should only be allowed for political speeches.
… I don't want Doctors who were at the top of their classes to operate on me. I want a government employee who makes $50k a year and couldn't hack it as a contractor or an engineer doing my surgery.
… I believe that paying $4.00 a gallon or more is no reason to drill for the mountain of oil we are sitting on in this country. We wouldn't want to have to move a couple of polar bears now would we?
… when we pull out of Iraq, I trust that the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.
… I like it when planes fly into buildings full of civilians. I want to see more of that.
… I believe that when the terrorists don't have to hide from us over there, when they come over here I don't want to have any guns in the house to fight them off with.
… I don't want to eat poison food and drink infected water. We all know Republicans love that stuff. (Ever wonder why the most left wing country in the world (China) is the most polluted?)
… I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.
… I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I'm going to marry my TV.
… I really believe there is no bias in the media.

—Posted to CLAMS; found here.

I keep leftovers longer than that

News, Political, Guns ·Tuesday September 9, 2008 @ 23:52 EDT (link)

From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days. I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.

— Columnist Cheri Jacobus

Cost of living, Q3 2008: Tennessee was lowest, West Virginia #21, Washington #36, and California came in dead last (#50, DC not included). Site didn't include details about unemployment rates, income means and standard deviations, or education levels.

20080831: Passport arrived in mail; good thing I didn't put a rush on it; the lady at the King County court said it probably wouldn't have arrived any faster, it cost more, and we managed to make do without it.

20080901: Hung around the house, put stuff away, did laundry, watched Hook on TV.

20080902: Back to work; catching up on emails (half a day, easily), trying to get a working build, the usual ramp-up stuff after a break. Mowed the lawn.

20080904: Twit time! WA 432 XVE, tan-colored Toyota 4Runner SUV, cut off on WA-520 going home (1805).

20080905: Various Galco holsters arrived in the mail: EMP concealed carry (Royal Guard RG212) and open carry (Cop Slide CSL 212B), and Glock open carry (CSL 224B). The fit well and are comfortable. Definitely need the thick carry belt I got from the gun show (nice guy that makes them and can do adjustments on-site); a regular belt wouldn't hold up.

20080909: Early am: working on Myth box games: mouse was non-functioning, but turned out to be wireless sync (needed to press the button on the receiver which makes it go into Cylon scanning mode, then the button on the bottom of the mouse to make it sync up). Then everything else was fine; ZSNES really needs a mouse, there are things that can't be set with a keyboard. Re-configured the controller, and all was good; NEStopia was still fine. Rebooted once with no sound, though, but alsamixer fixed that up. Evening: cleaned Glock; Honey's math book arrived from Amazon (already got the telephone interface for my Olympus digital recorder (TP-7), extra Nikon D300 battery (EN-EL3e; it won't take the same ones as the D100 since the new batteries provide a remaining charge readout, although the D100 can use the new ones; pretty silly, it should take the old ones and just not provide new functionality), and some widescreen DVDs).

Books finished: Asterix at the Olympic Games, Sons of Fortune.

DVDs finished: Ocean's Twelve, The Peacemaker, The Recruit, Blue Planet: Seas of Life, Battlestar Galactica: Season One.

Alaska #8: Relatives; safely home

News, Photography ·Sunday August 31, 2008 @ 14:55 EDT (link)

20080830: (Williams Lake, BC to Abbortsford: 296 miles.)

We left the Vanderburghs at 0912; the power was still out. We stopped at Tim Horton's 0927-0937 to get donuts, and again for gas at Lac La Hache. Since my battery had run out on the way up, we stopped at 108 Mile House ranch to get photos 1035-1049.

We reached Boston Bar at 1324, got gas, changed; radio indicated one of the tunnels was closed (truck wreck Sailor Bar) but it was open to alternating traffic when we got there; good thing: there aren't really any alternate routes to highway 1 (the Trans-Canada). It took us 40 minutes to get past (1330-1410, passed the truck at 1351). At 1437 we got to the Flood-Hope Road exit on highway 1 West out of Hope, and at 1525 we drove into visitor parking at my Uncle John and Aunt Sharon Sutherland's condominium complex.

We had a good talk, and they gave us a great dinner, and took us for a walk at the the nearby monastery (St. Clare's, in Mission).

20080831: (Abbotsford, BC to Duvall, WA: 113 miles.) We left in the morning at 1016, waited at the border at Sumas at 1020-1045 (again, no problems, just a queue), and arrived back home at 1325.

Total distance driven: 5644 miles (9083 kilometers).

Books finished: Polgara the Sorceress.

Alaska #7: Mile 0; Jasper National Park; Alberta

News, Bad Drivers, Photography ·Friday August 29, 2008 @ 22:39 EDT (link)

20080828: (Fort St. John, BC to Jasper, AB: 370 miles.) Up at 0910 and had breakfast at a small restaurant next to the Best Western at 0948 (the hotel gave us discount coupons). We looked at the map and decided to take the opportunity to drive through Alberta, specifically through Jasper National Park, which is north of and contiguous with Banff, which I'd been to when I was working in BC several years back. My Uncle John (Sutherland) had emailed us directions to their place and we printed it (no charge) at the hotel Internet station. We left the hotel at 1122 and arrived at Dawson Creek visitor center at 1234. I spared you the photo of the giant beaver (it was next to the lamps pictured below; squint and you can see it in the reflections).

Dawson Creek is, as the photos indicate, mile 0 of the Alaska highway (BC-97 in BC, YT-1, AK-2). We missed it on the way there, since we took a slightly different route (highway 29); when we reached it, we had driven the entire length of the highway. We picked up some maple syrup for the Vanderburghs at the gift shop; not a great choice, but the selection was uninspiring.

At 1308 we left Dawson Creek heading towards Grande Prairie, AB via BC-2, arriving at the visitor center at 1450. We tried to reserve a site at Jasper National Park, but the parks system doesn't take same day reservations. At 1526 we pressed on heading for Jasper on AB-40 via Grande Cache.

Construction at Smoky River, 1719-1722; got gas in Grande Cache. We met up with highway 16 and turned southwest heading into Jasper National Park (and back towards BC; a small part of the park, including part of the highway 16 corridor, is in BC). At 1941 we arrived at our campsite in the park; fortunately were able to get one without a reservation: site C36 at Pocahontas. We cooked stew and coffee, and bought firewood and had a fire; it was a nice night, only rained a little while we were sleeping. The site was possibly the nicest all trip, although the one in Fort St. John was nice too and the wood was delivered (but the ground was gravel instead of dirt).

20080829: (Jasper, AB to Williams Lake, BC: 339 miles.) We got up at 0730, and finished breakfast at 0900; we drove up to the Miette hot springs (0922-1013). It's a very nice facility, $6/each I believe, with showers, and in-ground pools in which to enjoy the springs.

There were goats and big-horned sheep by the roadside; I stopped to take pictures of course; we were done taking pictures at 1058; we stopped at 1300 to try to call the Vanderburghs (to say we were running late), but nobody was home. Got gas again in Jasper.

We played some passing games with a twit in a silver Hyundai driving through the park at about 1625; AB EEJ 080; Honey would pass him, then he'd speed up and pass her, then he'd drive slowly again and she'd pass him, etc. What a pinhead; pick a speed already.

The scenery through the park was beautiful even though it was a bit overcast. There were several stops and detours in the park that I wanted to make, but we just didn't have the time. It started raining heavily at 1633 near Clearwater, BC; we stopped at 1700 in Little Fort to phone the Vanderburghs to let them know we'd be late. At 1805 we arrived at the junction of BC-97 and 24 (the 24 is a fairly short and slow east-west road) and headed north to Williams Lake (doubling back, since there isn't a more northern route). Since we knew we'd missed dinner (1800) we stopped at McDonald's in Williams Lake (1915) and got to my aunt and uncle's at 1938. Their children were there for a bit. We watched the Olympics with them until the power went out; we went to sleep fairly early, at 2239.

Alaska #6: Leaving; little sleep; NWT; Forts Nelson and St. John

News, Photography ·Wednesday August 27, 2008 @ 22:19 EDT (link)

20080825: (Fairbanks, AK to Whitehorse, YT: 592 miles.) The return trip officially begins. It's a fairly straight shot southeast from Fairbanks to Whitehorse. We got up at 0750, showered, had breakfast with the Hernings at 0830, and headed into town at 0949. I took a photo of the sign on the way out (1157). Ran into a construction delay (1330-1344), stopped for gas in Tok at 1543 ($4.699/gallon, which seems obscene as I'm writing this in December, when prices are at around $2.50). More construction 1620-1634, 1648-1654. Went uneventfully through customs at 1930, and got to Destruction Bay, Yukon at 2149 (back on Yukon time, i.e. PST). Stopped again for gas near Haines Junction at about 2330.

Knowing the state of Whitehorse lodgings (rare, expensive, and decidedly average), we decided to keep driving through the night; we stopped at a Tim Horton's in Whitehorse at 0119, sat down and had coffee and donuts, and left at 0148. Speaking of donuts, at one of the small towns we came through, there was a cardboard cutout of a police cruiser at the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) outposts, with glow in the dark decals.

20080826: (Whitehorse, YT to Fort Nelson, BC: 591 miles, plus 170 miles round trip detour to NWT.) We slept 0450-0730 at a rest area and then again 0853-0912. At 1010 we got to the Watson Lake visitor center, got gas again at Petro Canada, and stopped again to rest at Old Mile 585 rest area (1132-1325). Short stops in a car don't replace a night of sleep very well.

At 1400 we stopped for lunch, reheating the last of the great Thai curry from Fairbanks with our camp stove. Gassed up again at 1800 in Toad River; stopped and fixed coffee (with the camp percolator) 1920-2030.

On the way back I wanted to drive into the Northwest Territories, just to say we'd been there; we didn't want to take the on the way up, but going back we took the Liard Highway (BC-77) and drove to the NWT and back, about 85 miles each way. It's not a great road: pitch dark, no lights, no road lines, 110 km/h (about 70 mph), lots of potholes and (signed) gravelly areas, and the occasional big truck oncoming. There wasn't much to see when we got there: I got a photo of the sign then we headed back, getting back to the Alaska Highway at 1227.

20080827: (Fort Nelson, BC to Fort St. John, BC: 236 miles.) Got gas at 0100 in Fort Nelson; slept 0338-0606, drove a little more, slept 0710-1021; arrived in Fort St. John, got gas again, reached the info center at noon, and registered at the Best Western. Ate at McDonald's, back to the hotel at 1320, and called Uncle Alan and Aunt Shirley in Williams Lake and Uncle John and Aunt Sharon in Abbotsford, to let them know when we'd be there. It was nice to sleep in a hotel for a night (and use their whirlpool/sauna).

Alaska #5: Countryside, Hernings, UAF museum

News ·Sunday August 24, 2008 @ 22:25 EDT (link)

20080824: (Denali National Park, AK, to Fairbanks, AK: 130 miles.) As I said, it was cold, so we got up very early: before 0600, and we were packed at 0630. The tent was a little damp, so we'll need to dry it later. We slept an hour by the roadside at about 1100. We found a chapel, Countryside Bible Chapel, and attended services there until 1330. Their numbers were few but their hearts were open; we had several offers to come for dinner and even stay overnight. We took up Bill Herning and his wife on their offer, and went out to a Chinese buffer (Mayflower) with them 1400-1455; we insisted on paying since they were letting us stay the night.

We had to run some errands: our first stop was to return to Beaver Sports to return our stove that melted. I wasn't sure how they'd take it, or even if they'd accuse us of damaging it on purpose, but they were very accommodating: they too were surprised that a Snow Peak stove would bend like that (our other stove is Snow Peak too, an older model but still sold, and we've never had any trouble with it); they gave us a full refund. We picked up some camping plates and cups there and some more fuel.They have excellent selection and service and I would highly recommend their Fairbanks store to anyone going up that way.

We stopped for gas at Safeway then headed out to the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) museum. We spent most of the afternoon there, looking at various artwork: paint and sculpture, and the huge Alaska Room with history and natural wonders of Alaska exhibited. Alaska has many amazing artists in all sorts of media, and natural wonders abound.

We left UAF at 1920 and headed to the Hernings' place, which wasn't far from the church. I took the opportunity to clean out the car, and we did laundry, until 2036. We read the Our Daily Bread together; we tried to call Whitehorse to book a hotel, but didn't have much luck. Slept @ 2230.

Alaska #4: Denali, Mount McKinley, ice on the tent

News, Photography ·Saturday August 23, 2008 @ 22:44 EDT (link)

20080823: (Fairbanks, AK, to Denali National Park: 130 miles.) Up 0830; had coffee in the room; checked out 1029. Got an oil change at Jiffy Lube, since we'd put a lot of miles on the car going up here and didn't want any trouble going to Denali or on the way back. Headed out for Denali National Park at 1102.

Arrived at the Park at 1430, registered and got a campsite (Savage River site 21, the furthest-in "car camping" campground). We reheated our Thai food for lunch; the supports on the new Snow Peak stove we'd picked up in Fairbanks warped while we were cooking (still managed to heat up both our pots, but titanium's really not supposed to do that). We had our tent up and sleeping bags set up by 1620, and went driving: we drove out to Savage River, and walked most of the Savage River Loop trail; Honey hurt her ankle half way. The scenery was beautiful:

Later we drove out to the park entrance, and made various stops for pictures. We weren't the only ones: there was a lot of slow and stopped traffic on the park highway. Most people used the regular cutouts to stop and take pictures, but one twit decided he was so important that he'd just park in the middle of the road.

When we got to the store at the park entrance, they had no firewood (so we bought chocolate instead). We saw a West Virginia licensed purple van, but never made contact. Arrived back at our campground at 1928, and drove back to the store at 2028 to see if they'd gotten any firewood in, but they still hadn't. Saw a lot of moose driving back; back at the site 2221, went to sleep, coldest night of the whole trip, ice on the tent in the morning.