Tour de Bethel- Bethel City Fair

Sorry it's been so long since we've written.  We've been busy off and on, but it's just enough that we keep forgetting. 

This weekend, we had the Bethel City Fair.  They had it in the cultural center, which is also the library.  That actually had several different events all day Saturday, including bird viewing, a Saturday market, fair items to view, a Fun Run/Walk, bird demonstrations, photography show,  tours of the Community Gardens, games and activities, skateboarding/BMX contest at the skate park and a potluck and Fiddle dance.  Quite a few activities packed into 1 day really.  The pictures below are things from the fair.

 The coat was a submission by someone, which got first place. The detail is really beautiful!

 Vegetables grown here in Bethel.  There are about 2 farms up here, where they grew some of these.  One of the farms has a green house and even does a "Saturday Market" where you can buy vegetables.

 This is a belt buckle made of moose horn.

 These are homemade native shirts.  Women and men wear them all the time around town.

 There were homemade boots, hats, gloves and headdresses.

This is where people sold stuff.  All kinds of ivory carved into animal shapes, earrings and other jewelry, furs and other things.

My trip to Marshall

I finally got to go on a village trip for the first time with YKHC. I flew with Era Alaska with Anne, the Physician’s Assistant I work with at the hospital.  We were the only people on board and we were flown by John Ponts from the TV show, Flying Wild Alaska. The landing strip in the village of Marshall was what you would call a dirt road back home. But the landing was actually quite smooth unlike Bethel most of the time. When we arrived there was no one to be seen; it was just us, the pilot and a little shed that said “Welcome to Marshall”. Eventually a truck appeared in the distance to pick us up and we headed about a mile into town.

                Marshall sits up on a little hill above the Yukon River. Surrounded by greenery and trees which is a lot different than the lack of green in Bethel. It was so nice to see trees again and it made me miss the Pacific Northwest.  The Yukon River was not small in Marshall; It is much wider than the Columbia River in places to give you a comparison, about 1 ½ miles across. The King Salmon are running right now so most of the 400 residents of Marshall were busy at fish camps, cutting the recently caught salmon, and hanging them in smoke houses to dry out so it will keep when they have to go for weeks at a time, before refilling their supplies from the cargo companies during the inhospitable winters in the Alaskan Tundra.

                Upon our arrival we had little time to settle in as we had a seriously ill patient come. He was in such rough shape that we had to activate MedEvac to come and take the patient into Bethel quickly. They were here in about forty minutes flat and back out quickly. It was interesting to watch them at work and their knowledge far exceeds an LPN’s knowledge for sure. The rest of the day we saw some patients, but it seemed that for most of the day I was doing clerical work and getting organized. I don’t envy the Med Techs that have to do all this paperwork for patients back in Bethel.

                The time spent in Marshall was a very interesting experience. I think it helped me learn where the Eskimo people are coming from and I understand their culture even more.  I got to visit them in their homes and walking through town we were met with friendly waves and hellos. It was awe inspiring to think that that Marshall, formerly known as Fortuna Lodge has been there far longer than even the rest of the United States have existed. I also got to know our health aides, who are trained to be the first response to patient care in the villages for the YKHC organization. They treat patients in the village after consulting with doctors over VHF radio back in Bethel through radio medical traffic. I enjoyed my time in Marshall and I look forward to the next time I get to visit one of our villages or regional clinics.

 The plane we flew on to get to Marshall.  We left Bethel shortly after 9am and got to Marshall about 45 minutes later.

 This is ALL luggage and supplies that were being flown to the villagers.

 John Ponts from "Flying Wild Alaska".

 Bethel's runway...

 My last view of Bethel for a few days!

 The Tundra

 Still the Tundra, but you can see the Kuskokwim river

 Finally in Marshall!

 The view of the Kuskokwim river from Marshall

 This is where Anne and I worked for the week

 The homes in Marshall were much like Bethel, in that they were very small

 The Russian Orthodox church

 This building is the grocery store...

 This point of the Kuskokwim is 1.5 miles across

 Salmon hanging out to dry

 This school was recently built, and will be hiring a couple more teachers soon. They've been able to expand a little bit.

 Ready to go home now! It's been a long week!

And I'm home!!!

Winter Solstice and daylight

The winter solstice was about a week ago and on the longest day of the year, the sun came up before 4 in the morning and "went down" around 1:30, and by "went down", I mean that the sun may have been gone down, but it was like dusk in Oregon, where you could still see easily.  Now, only a week later, both Jeff and I notice that it seems to be darker already at midnight instead.  It feels like it's changing very fast here!

One thing we've noticed is that people here don't seem to stick with any kind of scheduled bedtime up here.  We hear kids (little kids) and teenagers out making noise past 1 in the morning!  And people are up and about until the sun actually goes down.

 Here are some random pictures of our trip.  This huge bear was a real live bear before it was killed and stuffed!

 I had to include this sculpture of this Eagle.  It was a spectacular piece of art... until

 I saw the pricetag:

 After our busy days, we went to a restaurant called Humpys where they had delicious food and good beer!

 These pictures are from our ghost tour.  Supposedly this ladies restroom was haunted by the ghosts of two women who had died in there.  I didn't see anything...

 But it sure was a spacious, luxurious restroom!

 And lastly, our ghost tour guide. He knew alot of history, to the point that the tour felt more like a history tour than a ghost tour. But it was interesting enough and we learned a bit about the town.