Alaska — Summer of 2015

For me another Alaskan summer has come and gone already. As usual I'm struggling with feelings both sad and glad. It was a fine summer especially because I bought an old but well cared for 1988 Winnebago in which I have been living since mid June. That means my usual uncertainty about where I'll be staying won't come into play next spring — I now have a place of my own. I found it on Craigslist and drove to Palmer to pick it up. The owner was asking 6500 bucks for it and explained that it had been well taken care of. It had even been recently waxed, top to bottom. He mentioned the fact that others were in line to see it but I only needed a brief look before making the decision; I knew in an instant that it was going to make the perfect summer home. While 27 footers are fairly common and are roomier than this 21 footer, I wanted something that would fit into a standard parking space and that was easier to drive than those bigger motorhomes. This one has all the basics: kitchen, furnace, toilet, hot & cold running water, even a flat screen TV and a comfy 3/4 bed that can be left fully open without blocking the entryway. The few weeks I spent in it were terrific — I enjoyed them thoroughly.

I came to Alaska back in 1983 in a Ford Econoline van my then partner KJ and I drove all the way from New England. The journey we embarked upon in November of 1982 was a long and circuitous one that took us first to Florida and Mexico before finally turning north toward Alaska. I completely enjoyed traveling and living in that van and had so many adventures and travels in it after settling in Homer that I've missed it a lot over the years. Although the Winnie's accommodations are quite modest by today's standards, they beat hell out of the Econoline and it's been a hoot living in it. I set her up behind my old office in downtown Homer so I have electricity, wi-fi, shower and toilet facilities, and my commute to work has been reduced from 5 miles to a just few steps. I will probably come earlier and stay later next summer now that housing is no longer a concern.

My Winnie at Quartz Creek

The Winnie's kitchen

I made a few trips north to look at motorhomes as well as two round trips to Anchorage with my son Tuli and grandson Harper. The Sterling and Seward Highways run through some of the prettiest country in the world and I relished it in the special way that someone who has hiked and fished in so many memorable places along the way can do. Below is Watson Lake where my good buddy Kirk and I went ice fishing many years ago. I drove that same Ford van out onto the ice where we used it for a windbreaker and portable kitchen. We had a chain saw along and like true Alaskans cut deadwood for a bonfire that kept us warm as we fished and after fortifying ourselves with a few shots of whiskey, cheerful too. One summer my old friend Jimmy Wiles and I caught a couple of Kenai River red salmon from my canoe. One of those fish dragged us all the way to the opposite end of the lake before we got it into the boat.

Watson Lake on a cloudy afternoon

With the glaring exception of the 4th of July weekend, which must have been a total bummer for countless Anchorage vacationers, it was a pretty fine summer weather-wise. The Homer area and Kachemak Bay region are photogenic and offer the photographer plenty to choose from. Here are a few shots from around downtown Homer.

Beluga Lake - 4th of July evening

Beluga Lake - 4th of July evening

Beluga Slough Trail

View from Mariner Park

View from Small Potatoes Sawmill

Small Potatoes' V-W powered Mobile Dimensions sawmill

As always I spent a good deal of time visiting with friends. There were cookouts and dinners, hikes and parties. A motorcycling buddy who, along with Al and DC, I traveled with during my first season in Thailand, Vancouver Andy, drove his new Honda CB500X to Homer from Vancouver, BC, in just three days. He hung around Homer for about a week and his presence was a good excuse to get the whole Thailand-Homer crew together for a dinner at Kiwi John's one night.

The Thailand Expats group, Homer Chapter
(L to R) Donnie, Albie, Walt, Vancouver Andy, Al, me, DC

My son Tuli and grandson Harper made an appearance again this year. After I picked them up at the Anchorage airport we camped overnight in a little pull off on the Hope Highway just a few miles from Hope. Tuli and I had spent a few very memorable days at the Porcupine Campground when he was a youngster and I was hoping to recapture that in some small way. Camping in Alaska is open on any public land and Alaska is chock full of public land. One can pull over and stay pretty much wherever you like. We had planned to stay at Porcupine but we found someplace better before we got there. The Hope Highway offers numerous places to free camp but his one was especially fine and we had it all to ourselves.

As luck would have it the pinks were indeed running. Resurrection Creek flows right through the little town of Hope and for a couple of weeks in July schools of pink salmon move upstream to their spawning beds. There were a few people

fishing but none of them had any fish landed. I chatted with a few of them trying to decide if it was worth digging out my boots and other gear. Two fellows told me fish had been caught earlier that morning and that it might be a good idea to make a few casts to see what might happen. The tide was rising and that often brings fish into the streams so I went back to the Winnie and grabbed my stuff. I had forgotten to pack my good lures and had with me only one old Mepps spinner in #2 size, which I figured was about right for this shallow stream. The spinner had a multicolored blade and its treble hooks were rusted from a long ago dunking in salt water but seeing as all the other lures I had were too big for such fast water I decided to try my luck with that one. I made a few practice casts until I was confident I could plunk the little spinner into the head of a long riffle at the far edge of the stream.

After a few casts, wham! A solid strike. I loosened the drag on my reel and gradually worked the fish to the side of the stream letting it run and pulling it back, enjoying each run. Then before it could work its way off the hook I quickly hauled it onto the shore. Now, most people will tell you that pink salmon are the poorest of the salmon species. They're small, not loaded with oil like reds and kings (sockeyes and chinooks for you southerners) and are less flavorful as a result. And that is true, to a point. They are a good fighter though and remind me of silver salmon (coho), which is one of the fightingest fish you'll ever come across. And too, a pink salmon taken just after it leaves salt water is a good eating fish that can hold its own on anyone's menu. A few more casts brought another pink to the shore. I cleaned them in the clear cold water, gave away the eggs they were carrying to fishermen who would later use them as bait, posed for a couple of photos with Harper, and off we went for pie and coffee at the well known Discovery Cafe in downtown Hope.

Resurrection Creek pinks

"Sprucehurst" 1989-1995

Not only did we have two fine fish dinners in store for us but I had relived a cherished memory that has occupied a special place in my heart for many years; the memory of living in Alaska when I was raising Tuli in a small cabin with wood heat and no running water. I'd return to those days in a heartbeat if it were possible.


A few days later we drove the Winnie north again to Cooper Landing for some rafting on the Kenai River with the Haggerty boys, Max and Lance, two of Tuli's lifelong best friends, and some other Homer folks. We all did a short float from Cooper Landing to the Russian River Ferry, and then the next day the group rafted from there down to Skilak Lake. Harper and I passed on that section and instead hiked to the Russian River Falls. The little guy hiked almost 6 miles that day, an impressive feat for a 6-year old city slicker!

The rafting party — Tuli's the tallest, Harper the shortest

Harper tries out Lance's pack raft

Lance Haggerty

Max Haggerty

On the Russian River trail

At Russian River Falls

Soon after that it was time to drop the boys off in Anchorage for their flight back to Eugene and for me to winterize the Winnie and pack my own bags for the annual trek to Thailand. I spent my last full day in Homer at Doug's daughter Maddie's wedding. It was a perfect end to another beautiful Alaskan summer.

The Explorer at my favorite Quartz Creek rest stop

Istanbul

I'm in North Carolina now, surrounded by family and enjoying the fine spring weather. I'll be in Oregon next week and back in Alaska on the 23rd.

My journey involved a week-long stop in Istanbul. I'm always amazed when the complex arrangements I made to get from Bangkok to Istanbul, then to NC, to Oregon and finally to Alaska all work out with no hitches. Every year I think I should skip the European stop over but there's always some place I want to see or something else I want to do.
Before I get to Alaska I want to finish up writing about my time in Istanbul with a collection of photos from my walkabouts there. I had promised myself I would avoid working on OpenStreetMap while I was there but as has happened so many times before, after noticing how many features were missing or incorrectly mapped I just couldn't resist. I spent quite a few hours adding POIs and because I was on foot, I paid special attention to the pedestrian walkways. It's nice to have something to do wherever I find myself, but really? (I discuss my Istanbul mapping projects at the end of this post for those who are interested.)

The location of my AirBnB flat in the Beloglu neighborhood made for a longish walk to the Sultanahmet area. This is the old city within which reside the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar and virtually all the other sights visitors come to see. I had been there when I visited the Hagia Sophia and had enjoyed the stroll over the Golden Horn on the big Galata Bridge. The only downside was the walk back. That's because Beloglu is on a small but significant hill. After I discovered the Tunel tram, a two-stop funicular train that runs up and down the hill, my jaunts became quite a bit easier.

The Basilica Cistern

My first stop was at this ancient water storage facility built during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I around 534 AD. These days there's only enough water in it to give tourists a photo opp but it's a huge underground cistern capable of storing 21 million gallons of water and was a source of drinking water for Constantinople, Istanbul's ancient predecessor. Historical texts claim that 7,000 slaves were involved in the construction of the cistern. There is a famous upside-down Medusa head at the base of one of the 336 marble columns that support the roof of the chamber. The columns were recycled from the ruins of older buildings in other parts of the Roman Empire.

Medusa Head - shown upright

I got to the Blue Mosque on the following day. It is the only heavily traveled building I've been in that requires you to remove your shoes before entering. It's possibly also the only place of this size whose entire floor is covered with fine carpets. It was impressive.

Dome of the Blue Mosque (N41.00532° E28.97682°)

The ornate columns supporting the dome need to be seen with some sort of frame of reference in order to appreciate how massive they are.

Here in this place that is so holy to Muslims I found myself walking among people who embrace a religion that tolerates radical members who believe that any person not subscribing to their brand of theism should be killed. All religion is bad in my opinion because rather than teaching tolerance practitioners strive to marginalize or even eliminate those who disagree. I reckon the sort of passion that can erect a mosque like this one or a cathedral like Notre Dame can also drive people to kill one another. WWJD? Or if you're Muslim, WWMD?

Upon leaving the mosque and casting about for a cup of coffee I got these photos of the Hagia Sophia (N41.00883° E28.97949°) and people strolling in the nearby gardens.

Two views of the Hagia Sophia

There are a few other structures dating from earlier times scattered here and there that I thought worthy of a photo. Dating from 1728 at the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Fountain of Sultan Ahmed III is one. The water came from a pool inside this ornate kiosk and was supplied to people through one of four facades, each of which has a drinking fountain.

I wandered around the area enjoying the old buildings for a while before turning homeward. One annoying part of these trips to the old city is the number of rug merchants that try to coax you into their shops. At first I was pleased to be meeting all these friendly people inviting me to share some coffee or tea with them. A fellow would approach me and say, Hello, where are you from? I'd reply, Alaska. Oh, I have  a brother (uncle, son) there. Where are you going? To have a cup of coffee and then visit the Basilica. Oh, don't bother, I will make you  some coffee. Really? Sure, come this way. My friend and I have a little shop over here. We sell these beautiful rugs, and jewelry.

Finally after the second or third of these "chance meetings" I caught on. What a dummy! I'm so eager to make friends that I couldn't see the pitch coming until it was too late. I started deflecting these touts by looking straight ahead and not breaking my stride until their pleas faded into the background.

On my next to last day in Istanbul I made the walk to the Grand Bazaar. It was pretty cool but markets only interest me in a small way — I seldom buy anything because I have no way to bring stuff back in my single suitcase and little interest in owning more "things" in the first place — and so I enjoyed the market for what else it was, a historical artifact. It has something like twenty entrance gates and contains about 60 small avenues or walkways, many of which are roofed over. Each avenue is lined with shops, there are approximately 5,000 shops inside, selling everything from carpets and silks, clothing, pottery, food and drink, housewares, to lamps and leather goods; jewelry and gold shops are plentiful as well. Wikipedia tells me it receives between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors every day. Luckily, on the day I went it wasn't heavily crowded.

An entrance to Kapalicarsi, the Grand Bazaar - Gate 1

Lamp shop - Grand Bazaar

I was getting hungry and when I left the market through Gate 20 immediately opposite was a sidewalk cafe offering a buffet of traditional Turkish food. The lunch at the Historical Subasi Restaurant (N41.01064° E28.96980°) was one of the best meals I had during my stay.

Again my walk home led over the huge multi-level Galata Bridge: 6 lanes of vehicular traffic, 2 commuter rail tracks with 20 foot wide pedestrian walkways on each side. And that's only the top layer. The lower level has walkways along both sides and those are lined with restaurants and night clubs.

Galata Bridge Restaurants (41.018735, 28.972467)

Galata Bridge- fishermen
(The man at left isn't baiting his hook. The fish he's grasping is his catch.)

The Golden Horn and the Attaturk Bridge
View north from the Galata Bridge

I was up early the next day, a Sunday, and saying goodbye to the little flat and to Beyoglu grabbed a $25 taxi ride to the airport for the long trip to North Carolina.

---

OSM Notes:

Despite my intention to concentrate on touring Istanbul and to keep my Open Street Map addiction under control I gave in early on and did quite a bit of mapping. Because I had rented an apartment for the entire 8 day stay and didn't want to pay out money to stay elsewhere I was sort of tied to the city. That left me with quite a bit of free time and free time means mapping. If I had done it another way, and in hindsight wished I had, I might've have taken some guided tours, or journeyed to the countryside. Instead, I filled my spare time with mapping the areas I walked through.

The biggest effort was in adding and enhanced the footways on both ends of the large Galata Bridge complex. When I started my Istanbul walks there was only one pedestrian tunnel showing at either end of the bridge, no way connecting to the tram stops, few footways and no tagging for wheelchair access. Nor were the Tunel tram stations easy to find. The screenshot below shows the northern end of the bridge and the numerous tunnels and walkways that have been added to the area.

Galata Bridge - northern terminus - 

I also added many shops and other details along Istiklal Avenue. The Bing imagery there is not very good and to make matters worse is not aligned well with reality — there is an offset that must be applied to bring it into line . In addition, the tall buildings exerted a deleterious effect on the accuracy of my GPS tracks. They wandered all over the place.

Screenshot from JOSM - GPS at Main Entrance to the mall

To get some idea of the magnitude of the error I suspected was present, I recorded the average coordinates of a point at the main entrance of the Demiroren mall on Istiklal Avenue. My Garmin GPS has the capability to take many samples and average them over a period of time, in this case ten minutes. That averaged point deviated significantly from the apparent location of the entrance as you can see in the above screenshot. But the Bing imagery is so skewed that if one was to reposition the Bing layer using that offset, all the streets and other features in the entire area would need to be moved to reflect the change. This would cause many of those streets to appear as if they were going right through buildings. In the end, I left it everything as it was and tried to place my POIs as well as possible.

In Closing:

The other day as I was driving back to my daughter's after a few days down in Clemson with my old college buddy Terry, I turned on my iPhone and ran Google Maps alongside of my Garmin GPS. It was an interesting comparison that led to some disturbing questions. Considering the amount of work I do on OSM and all the potential I see for crowd-sourced mapping, Google with its immense financial resources has developed a navigation product that will be difficult to supplant. What's not to like about an app that runs on an ordinary smartphone that talks to you with a sweet voice, displays the passing countryside in three flavors; just roads, roads and terrain, roads and satellite imagery, or all of the above with traffic reporting thrown in for good measure? It makes me think I shouldn't be spending so much time adding land cover, lakes, ponds, forests and marshes to my favorite regions on OSM. I mean, won't OSM be able to display satellite imagery at some point in the future just as GM does now thereby making my hard work redundant or even, perish the thought, superfluous?

Istanbul — first days

It has been a long while since I've taken the time to write a blog post but I have excuses all ready to wheel out. Mapping Thailand for the OSM project literally takes all my time these days. It's surely the most addictive pastime I've ever had and those of you who know me also know that I have a tendency towards addiction. I can barely pull myself away from the computer to play tennis and, for me, that's quite something. I also have mapping projects ongoing in Alaska, the Adirondacks in New York State, and anywhere I travel. In fact, mapping has become a prime motivation for travel in itself. I used to motorcycle for the pure joy of spinning along the highway, leaning into the next turn, feeling the air rush by.... Now, I take my GPS and camera and record information that I will later incorporate into the huge Open Street Map database of the world. A three day ride in Thailand generally requires another 4 or 5 days of data entry after I get home. Nut thinks I'm crazy but I love the work and it gives me something to do that is both satisfying and meaningful.

Last week I was working on the coastline and other details near Anchorage. Below is a little montage of the work I did on Fire Island which is located just west of the Anchorage Airport. Smoothing the jaggies on the shoreline and adding woods and other details took about an hour or so. (About as much time as it took to make this animation LOL). OSM in Alaska needs a lot of TLC similar to this, but Alaska is so vast that the amount of work needed feels overwhelming at times.

Anyway, I'm in Istanbul at the moment, in a suburb called Beyoğlu, and I'm trying desperately not to notice mapping chores that need doing. It's enough already that I'm constantly mulling over tags, attributes and descriptions, traffic controls and geographic features in Thailand, but it's been tough to avoid making needed corrections here in Istanbul...

Well, we'll see.

I rented a small apartment through AirBnB before I got here to help ease my transition to a new and very different sort of city. The place that looked so nice in the photos turned out to be a mixed bag. It's smaller than I anticipated and funkier. The neighborhood too is, to put it politely, a bit down at the heels; it's a very poor urban neighborhood with lots of kids playing in the narrow streets all day long. Goddamn it, they sure yell a lot. I don't remember being that noisy when my buddies and I were playing touch football and hockey on the streets of Sloan back in the day but maybe we were and I just wasn't aware of it or don't remember it now. (N41.03669° E28.97658°)

Then later on their parents, friends and neighbors come out and spend most of the night yelling at one another. I haven't a clue about why they yell, or what they're yelling about because they are speaking Turkish. They don't sound drunk, but maybe they are. I dunno. The quietest time is between 6 and 9 am. For some reason, nobody is out at that time.

I've been walking everywhere. For various reasons I don't do that much walking in Thailand and I hate learning the intricacies of foreign public transportation systems so I reckon I might just as well walk. The famous Istiklal Avenue is quite close and is lined with shops and eateries. It's also jammed with people, natives and tourists. Many people would have trouble in the Turkish streets because literally everybody is puffing on fags. Even in breezier spots the smell of cigarette smoke is impossible to ignore or avoid.

Sunday strollers on Istiklal Avenue

The nicer tourist areas like Sultanahmet in the old city are only a mile or two away from here so yesterday I walked across the Galata Bridge (N41.020176°, E28.973184°) to see the Hagia Sophia. The famous Blue Mosque and Basilica Cistern are in that area too but the queues to get in to visit them were long so I decided to hit them on another day. Putting first things first however, I stopped to eat a fabulous lunch at the Dr. Cook Restaurant.

This tasty meal of lamb with almonds, mushrooms and olives cost about $10 

Here are a few shots of interior of the Hagia Sophia, an old Greek Orthodox cathedral built in 537 and turned into a museum in 1935. (N41.00883° E28.97949°) It's old and time worn and like many ancient structures I've visited is undergoing extensive renovation. It is an impressive structure. I included some photos of its exterior in my next post.

Ancient mosaic art - Hagia Sophia

Detail from above

These floors have been smoothed for 1500 years

The city is thick with bakeries selling baklava, pastries made from layers of thin phyllo dough filled with nuts, butter and honey, lots of honey. It's more than I can do to constantly avoid them. Naturally, I gave in and when I found myself near a well known shop, Karaköy Güllüoglu, I had to satisfy my curiosity about the amazing pastries within (N41.02559° E28.97998°). Baklava is so sweet I couldn't stand a steady diet of it  but it's awesome stuff nonetheless. Here's a shot of another pastry shop on Istklal. These delectable confections are filled with pistachios and butter and are literally dripping with honey.

I have another 6 days to spend looking around. I usually try to avoid touristy spots but I will definitely visit the Grand Bazaar and the Blue Mosque, maybe even take a cruise on the Bosphorus. I read somewhere that the Grand Bazaar gets between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors per day. If that's not a tourist spot I don't know what is.

So I guess I'll be here in this little flat in Beyoğlu for the duration. It will work out fine in the end but I wish now I hadn't committed to staying here for my entire visit. I'm not a very adventurous traveler and like having my accommodations taken care of ahead of time. That usually works out well. Sometimes it doesn't.

---

I miss Thailand and my lovely partner but as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. That seems to be working for us anyway. We moved to a new place a few weeks ago. The apartment we left was cheap and had some nice features but it was very noisy, especially at night. Then a couple of months ago, as if to add insult to injury, several bar girls moved in upstairs. Their evening starts after work, oh say about 2 or 3 am. After slamming some doors and entertaining their boyfriends for 3 or 4 hours they will finally turn in at 5 or 6 in the morning. You might think concrete construction would be quieter than the wood-framed apartments we're used to. Not so. It sounded like they were bowling up there.

A friend called Nut right around the time they moved in and she told us about some new townhouses available for rent in her neighborhood of Nong Hoi. We took a look and jumped right in. The rent's higher but the place is pretty fine; brand new, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, huge kitchen, all tile floors, front and back covered areas and a side yard for Nut's birds and orchids. Very uptown. At less than $400/month it's still more affordable than anything comparable in the U.S.

Our new rental in Nong Hoi. Nut's in the side yard tending her orchids.