5 August, 1997

Nevins Journal 08/05/97

We met this morning at the department at SUNI to make last min. Preparations and to make sure that we did not forget anything. Fritz and I boarded a 737 for Chicago with two equipment cases and our luggage at 10:20 am. The flight to Chicago took about 1 hour and 48 minims. When we got to Chicago Fritz and I separated to take two different flights to San Francisco. The flights left within minutes of one another and will arrive about 4 minutes apart. We will be in the air for about 3 hours and 45 minutes. From San Francisco we fly to Anchorage together and from Anchorage we travel to Fairbanks. Our flight was delayed in San Francisco we got out about 30 minutes late. What a day it has been. I am in the Anchorage airport now waiting for my flight at 9:30 pm but that is 1:30 am where we started this morning. Flight times have been 1 hour 48 minutes, 3 hours 48 minutes, and 3 hours 56 minutes so far and we have a little over an hour to go. I did not have a window seat Chicago to San Francisco so I can not describe much of the terrain that we saw. I did have a window seat on the right side of the plain into Anchorage and it was interesting to see the changes in the mountains as we traveled up the coast. At first things were rather dry and there were reservoirs that supplied irrigation water to the farms in the valleys, as we went north the mountain vegetation changed to trees and we could see where timber had been cut and replanted. Then we saw our first snow on mountain tops (remember this is August) and as we went further North snow became more the norm. Unfortunately the clouds began as we started to come into the area of big glaciers and we had rather intermittent views of glaciers and their associated land forms. The valleys really changed from V shaped to U shaped forms that show that glaciers have been there. Well we finally made it into Fairbanks and got checked in at the hotel at 12:00 local time which is 4:00 am where we started. I think that I have had enough travel for now . By the way, local sunset was 10:47 pm. Good night!