Posts tagged #Food

Wilder

 

Flashback Friday

There are more women than men in Alaska, and the saying goes:

"The odds are good, but the goods are odd"

Wilder

    About five years ago I moved into a dry cabin for the very first time in my life. Across the driveway lived this guy from Montana, a bearded man with a love for ecology and kombucha. Our very first interaction was when he came over to my cabin and offered me some homemade kombucha, and maybe you could say that the rest is history. So, I guess both the odds and the goods were good for me!

 
 

Match Made in Heaven?

    Both me and W are interested in fire ecology, mountains, adventure and everything else in between. We enjoy the outdoors, hate crowded places and need our precious adventurous cocktails and homemade 4 course dinners from time to time. W is a foodie, and I am too, so we try to find awesome restaurants as soon as we travel somewhere. We strive to make as much as we can from scratch, and I think we do a good job!

 
 

Traveling kind?

    We like to travel to our destinations off season, because we can't handle crowded places. When we drove from Alaska to Wisconsin, and stopped in Banff, we drove into the huge parking lot by Lake Louise. We stopped the car and looked at each other and said, no way, let's leave. We made a quick sandwich with our food and were on the road again within 5 minutes. People might call us crazy but that was just too much for us, we went to another parking lot, and hiked a short distance and had the whole world to ourselves. That is how most of the National Parks work, both in Canada and the US. Fewer people actually venture off the main road. I get that, people are busy, and really don't have time to go somewhere off  the main road, but we do!

 
 

How do you feel about crowded and touristy places?

Posted on August 5, 2016 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Flashback Friday, Alaska, The great wide open, Montana and tagged wilder Alaska Montana bearded men cocktails foodie Food Banff Canada US USA National Parks Wilderness utlandssvensk 2016 Adventure Nature Mountains Cabin Cabin Life Wilder.

Tolovona Hotsprings

Out for an Adventure?

    A couple of months ago me and W booked a cabin at Tolovana Hotsprings. We booked it so early and still only weekdays were available. That was ok for us since we work a lot during the weekends, and thus we could compensate. We have quite the collection of hotsprings here in Alaska, a lot of them in the southeast but very few in the interior of Alaska. Unfortunately some of these hotsprings have become expensive resorts for tourist, and these are of course the ones that are easily accessible. So we are left with hotsprings you have to drive quite a bit to get to, and most of the time accompanied by a semi long hike/ski/bike or however you would choose to transport yourself.

Skiing to Tolovana Hotsprings

I knew the distance to Tolovana hotsprings were 10 some miles. Somehow i never quite translate this into kilometers, so most of the time I kind of think of it as kilometers even though I know it isn't. We even had a map, with elevation and distance, although these maps almost never sink into my mind. What I am trying to say is that it didn't quite sink into my head how hard of a ski this could be in the worst conditions. For one, I didn't have any warm wax for our crosscountry skis, yeah that was the first problem I guess. Although it wasn't really that warm so I couldn't quite figure out why the kick wax wouldn't stick with the wax I had. W's friend on the other hand had waxless skis, fishscales. I understand now that the trail conditions can be so extremely different depending on how much snow you have, when it snowed last, how much snow machine traffic and most important the temperature.

Hiking or skiing?

The start of the trail was (as you can see on the map above) pretty steep downhill. Most of that downhill we kind of laughed the whole way. We kept falling and slid all over the place so we decided to hike down the rest of the way. One thing that I already got reported from someone else, is that the trail is a snowmachine trail (a lot of these trails are traplines that trappers made and watch throughout the winter) which is pretty narrow, so not wide enough to snowplow with both of your skis if you need to slow down. That same person also told me that his friend actually broke his leg skiing down that downhill part... After the downhill part there were a couple of miles through the low point. As long as the trail had a slight slope to it, it went fine, but after a while me, W and our friend decided to hike instead. I believe the problem with the kickwax at this point was the icy surface and snowmachine tracks eating up all the wax we had and or water molecules coming inbetween the ski and the snowsurface.. who knows. As the elevation map showed, it was time to start going uphill...We hiked, because unless you had skins on your skis, this would not work.

Hiking it is...

    In the picture above you can see how narrow the trail is, and that the snowmachines have been digging the trail down...kind of like a luge. Also, if you look closely, slightly above the trail to the left you can see a a white narrow "trail" kind of looks like a creek going down the hill...well that hill is where we started.

    While hiking up the dome it gave such a payoff to turn around and look behind you every once in a while. We were lucky that the weather was kind of sunny. On top of the dome though, you had a beautiful view of the landscape. In the picture below you can see what we had behind us

    And this picture below is showing where we were going.

    The last part was pretty steep downhill so we hiked the last bit, and finally we arrived. Afterwards I was told that a lot of people going to Tolovana hike and bring a pulk/sled so that they can hike up the hills and then sled down...seems like an extremely good solution.

The Hotsprings

    The tubs are filled with hot water directly from the hot springs through a hose, and likewise semi cold water is filled from the creek. There were two other tubs too, that worked a little different. The view was pretty amazing. I have been to Chena Hotsprings which is a developed hotprings outside Fairbanks, and other than that, only to the boling river in Yellowstone. Now while the boiling river is really nice, I still prefer this setting.

Evening fun

    As the sun disappeared behind the hill we went back to the cabin for dinner. We are lucky now, cause the sun doesn't actually set until 9 pm these days, which calls for bright evenings. One other really cool thing about this cabin is that it has it's own windturbine connected to the lights in the cabin. When we arrived at Tolovana we had no wind but the next day it was extremely windy. This is apparently common, since we read the log book and several others had been commenting about the wind. Hence they have a wind turbine. The rest of our time there we ate good, played games, skied and hung out in the hotsprings.

    Final picture below, it's from the parking lot. Look straight ahead, and a little to the left...

    There is the trail going up the dome, and Tolovana is behind that dome somewhere. Have a great weekend.

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Alaska, The great wide open and tagged Alaska Food Fun Happiness hiking Outdoors Ski Skiing Tolovana Hotsprings water Winter Spring Adventures 2013_2 Adventure Snow Nature Mountains Environment Spring skiing.

Friday Theme, Cooking Food

About that, I have gotten into this tendency to not cook food. W is doing that most of the time, it's not that I don't know how to, it's more the fact that W always takes the initiative for it. When I go to the store I buy all sorts of different ingredients, with no specific dish in mind, or at least my head knows what I can make with all the ingredients. W on the other hand, always writes down exactly what meal it will be for each day of the week...So I usually pick up around the house, chop fire wood, start the fire in the woodstove, feed the cats, do the dishes (most of the time..), and then when I am done I usually have an awesome meal to eat. Very balanced eh? I do know how to cook though, as I said. I love having nice dinners with friends, and when W was gone Marie came over and I made pizza dough, and then we created our own pizzas, Beautiful Marie who moved to Seattle, I guess Fairbanks winters does that to you...

The end product was beautiful

W was gone most of the summer and I didn't only eat ice-cream ;)

I also had a garden, so I got some vegetables from there, Got some potatoes when we got back from the trip down south We also made some pickled beets...which we still havent tried....I really hope they are good and we bought some meat chickens that we processed this summer. We got some Halibut in Homer So this is what we use for our dinners, as much as we can. And, right now our freezer is pretty full. Halibut fish tacos...mmmm If you only tried fried halibut before, you totally missed out. I had only tried fried halibut before and I can't believe how someone can destroy this nice piece of fish by frying it!!

Speaking about the summer, we actually celebrated midsummer too, at Maries place, and there was some cooking involved in that, even though I probably wasn't the one who did the most. But I had a fabulous time.

Happy Friday!

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Friday Theme, Cabin Life, Alaska, Baking and tagged Alaska Food Friday Theme Garden Vegetables 2012 Cabin Life.