Alyeska, Girdwood -Jahlaska

    For spring break and the following week I went to ski in Alaska! Alyeska Resort to be exact- in the town of Girdwood, about one hour outside of Anchorage. It was EPIC to say the least. The main attraction to the town is the ski resort as well as the awesome  back country terrain and LOTS of cold, fluffy powder :) However, this town also has very interesting history, it was initially attracted gold miners becuase of its great location near numerous streams, rivers, and the ocean. In the 50's or 60's there was a huge earth quake that destroyed the original town site of Girdwood as well as caused the ground to sink to sea level so due to salt water seepage the soil could no longer support any continental plant life. Along this coast there are huge skeleton trees. 

In these two pictures you can see the mud flat that used to be Girdwood. This is now a tidal flat also called sink mud, this is a very interesting thing that I have not seen before.. the receding tide pulls water from the saturated mud and creates a suction in the mud.. the hotel people told me a lady got suck a few years ago and they tried to free her with a helicopter and she got ripped in half! Awful right? anyway suck mud excursions were not recommended.
Also in the bottom picture you can see the highway the connects Anchorage, Girdwood, and past to Kenai and beyond. It is only two lanes ocean on one side and rock face on the other. The locals say it is super dangerous when it snows which only adds to Girdwood's skiing exclusivity.

This is the Hotel Alyeska, the major hotel in the town. This is the only accommodation around within an hour, and it is an amazing hotel. It has eight stories, two bars, a sushi bar, two other restaurants with a phenomenal breakfast buffet. It is ski in&out and attached to a tram that goes to the top of the North Face of the ski area, and a very expensive restaurant that I never went too. During our time there the 2011 U.S. Adaptive Alpine Skiing Championships were being held..

All of the athletes and trainers for this event were staying in the same hotel as us so we got the opputunity to meet SO many cool, tough, great athletes. I felt that we were very special to be a part of this we met so disabled athletes that just kicked ass.  If you are interested in learing more about this amazing event check: http://usparalympics.org/news/2011/03/22/alyeska-resort-hosts-the-2011-u-s-adaptive-alpine-championships/41521

This is the Crow Creek Mercantile, the only place to buy groceries in town, and they have a very limited selection of everything. There are numerous fancy restaurants in town to cater to the tourist population, but the hotel does not have microwaves in their rooms so the demand for raw food is not principal. It is a single story building, personally owned store, however they do accept Safeway cards.

Girdwood is a great little town with a very interesting history. Its has great skiing, and all sorts of other winter activities. In the summer the hotel remains open as there is world class mountain biking here as well.  

Suburbia to beyond

       Suburbia- Boulder Point

The concept of suburban neighborhoods came about with the mass production of automobiles and the latter construction of nice, maintained, accessible roadways. People who could get places much easier and quicker and soon everyone had a car, this in turn allowed people who wanted to live away from the busy city to do so, while still commuting to their job and errands in the commercial district in the city.

       The suburban neighborhood that we looked at for this class, is a great part of town. I live in the Arbors condominiums which is just down the hill from the Boulder Point neighborhood. First off i noticed the houses were all different colors and quite well maintained; everything including sheds and main building attachments were freshly painted matching colors. Even the fences were nicely painted/finished or deliberately made to look rustic.

The yards of these houses are all maintained but they are very picturesque. Not very many of the yards that I saw were grass, but rock and shrubs and small trees, which is great for the water conservation movement. There are a lot of Ponderosa Pines in front yards and even more in the backyards. All these houses have at least two are three car garages, and the ones that are open sometimes didnt even have room for more than one car, they rest was packed with all sorts of different stuff. The garages all had entrances to the house, and in some cases they had doors too even more places. The houses with these grand garages usually had even more grand front entrances, with carved wooden pillars and stone steps, most of these facades were build on the front of house facing the street, but again, there were also less grand but not shabby external entrances on other sides of the houses.

The driveways of all these houses were paved with concrete and it was not oil spotted or seriously damaged, the asphalt in the road is recently tarred and properly painted with appropriate markings. This is interesting for me because there is a significant of geologic activity in Flagstaff, so it really must be high maintenance to keep all the asphalt and concrete in this neighborhood in good repair, and if they were not regularly maintained the sidewalk would look like the sidewalks around the Uni Heights Apartments, which are very cracked and have major differences in the heights of the slabs. The exception to the great neighborhood street repair is going west on University because it is FILLED with potholes and crap. In spirit of the civil engineering we talked about this is a picture of the LOVELY well maintained, car safe curb in Boulder Point. 

NAU Campus: North and New

 

This is the Old Main Building on NAU north campus. It has the historic office of the dean in it. 

  
       Walking through the North Campus of Nau provides a great insight into the history of the school, and for me I have had classes or errands to do in many of these building so it was really interesting to learn about their individual histories. Plus North Campus is beautiful to walk around in; first off, I noticed the direction of North Campus, all the building are directed to Old Main, except the 1899 Grill place which if facing north toward the town, even that used to have a courtyard that was a third space facing the center of the circle. There is a big traffic round about through the center, and lots of sidewalks through out the buildings.  There is lots of big trees and open spaces, the buildings are very grand and Victorian and it is apparent that even in the modern additions the brick color and symmetry of the building was preserved.

This is the main entrance to the old Main Building

This is the main entrance to the Old Main building, one thing I did notice about this entrance way was that the steps were dark polished granite, they didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the architecture so I think they were probably replaced when the less hard sandstone eroded from use.

This is an example of a biforate window on campus. This one is found in the old Gammage Library now used for the financial aid and bursars office.

I really like the design of this building, outside of the picture frame the leaf pattern around the doorway continues into an arch and the ashlar is stratified with rustication around and up. I also really like how this building is smaller than some of the others but is very solid, and pretty. 

To conclude this blog, I really like how the history of North campus has been preserved despite modern enhancements. The inside of the building has been re done and are very nice, it is important that the original architecture of North Campus is maintained because it is so important to the history of the university.

Breaks in NAU campus development

Nau is a mix of pretty old and very new architecture. From walking to NW campus to the more central area around Mckay village there are so many different influences seen.  This is the very space age looking Science building, right next to Campbell hall which feature red sandstone and Greek columns like the rest of North campus.  The building below however also is similar to other building on campus like the Communications building and parts of the Education building. These great breaks in the landscape is one of the things that makes NAU such a beautiful and interesting campus.

The pictures below are of Mckay village, in central campus right next to University St. They are NAU newest apartment style housing. They have a central-ish court with many sun shades and grilling hookups, this is an example of NAU deliberately planning third spaces to encourage productive "campus approved" student interaction.

The Houses of Cherry Hill

The houses on Cherry Hill, are very nice to say the least. They are probably worth much more than the houses in Flagstaffs southside. Once you start the walk up Cherry st, you notice the road starts to curve and lose the linear, grid pattern we see downtown, the building become much more isolated - set farther back from the road, deliberate landscaping to shield from road and neighbors. When compared to the business section of DT this is a great break in landscape. From wanting to be seen and seen as convenient to wanting to be secluded and not open to outside viewing. This goes hand-in-hand with the switch from commercial to residential.  


I really like that most of the landscaping is done with native vegetation- saves water & prevents intrusive species from killing native ones. Although, honestly this is not peak lawn season so I doubt that is really that case. I am sure there is an HOA in this neighborhood as well. Another think I noticed was the great embellishment of the outsides of houses, they may not want you seeing their house but if you do they want it to look good. The use of non operational shutters, cutesy flourishes,  and false windows as an aesthetic for the outside viewer makes the home owner appear ... something. Fashion before function is usually the best way right?? 

The Mormon Church that is a predominant landmark along the main road shows a wealthy Mormon influence as opposed to Baptist or Catholic churches else where around town. I wonder if any other littler churches were constructed on this neighborhood after this church?

Aspen St & Cherry Hill

      The architecture in the downtown area is very different from the construction with Malpais basalt in Flagstaff's south side area.  The downtown area of Flagstaff of built at a higher elevation, as to avoid a flood when and  (if) the Rio De Flag ever floods, but it is also the chosen place for all the governmental buildings, and more recently more governmental building have expanded and more operations have been put in this downtown vicinity. ( The Picture above is of the Weatherford Hotel, the Old courthouse has the same type of architecture, and building materials.)

     Another feature of this area that I noticed was the "building up" most of the building I saw down town were tow to three stories high, and most with commercial or business on the street level and apartments on the top floors. This is different from Southside, Flagstaff because there is not the agrarian or pastoral need for pasture land.

  This Building downtown is an example of the multi level building very common dowtown. It also seem that SBS west and some of the building downtown were built are around the same time due to the very similar architecture. Heritage square is also a very interesting feature of Downtown Flagstaff. "Empress Amphitheater" is a great place, especially during first Fridays. This is a aunty picking up trash in the glorious Heritage square. 

Place Attachment and Identity

 

Home for me, and the place that I am attached to is Crested Butte, CO and Gunnison, CO which is about 30 miles down the road. I grew up here both of my parents worked on the Mountain, which is also how they met. I was born on Gunnison County Hospital in 1990, and lived in the town of CB until I was about 15. This is home for me because I feel more comfortable around big mountains and snow, than big flat area. Mountains are the most solid thing in the world. I feel at home here because I have so many childhood memories here, my name Hasley come from a basin in this area, and my Father still lives here. The greenish building the in lower right hand corner of the picture is the town school where K-12 attends; my father built the town bank, as well as the white house in the lower middle section of then picture, plus numerous other structures in town. This is a olderish picture because the school has already been remodeled, but there are several things that exist now that are not shown in this picture. The mountains shown are Gothic MTN where the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab is, they do super cool stuff there.  The predominant peak in this picture is Cinnamon Mountain, and the one disappearing up on the left of the picture is Red Lady, where my Godmother died in an avalanche. so many memories, that what make this home.