The Samaritans Lodge Alaska Base Camp is just a collection of hand-hewn cabins with group accomodations (ie; bunks) and a small dining hall sited next to a small municipal airstrip. Samaritan's Lodge owns several planes and before the summer is over, I'll know them all by sight and sound. Planes and helicopters are the only forms of transportation out to the bush, so I'll be spending a lot of time on them.
The seasonal team trickled in all evening and I'll post pictures and introduce them over the course of the summer. There are a two chaplains (plus their wives), five guides, one housekeeping supervisor, a french chef and various kitchen staff, a maintenance guy, and one administrative person. Add nine or ten volunteers to the mix and you have our summer team.
May 16: We flew on the King Air through dense cloud cover to Port Alsworth on Thursday morning. Everything was a blanket of fog until we came down on the runway and unloaded. The lodge is sandwiched between two runways on the bay and we go to sleep and wake up to the sound of a variety of engines.
If you're into geocaching or GPS technology, Port Alsworth, Alaska is situated on Lake Clark at 60 degrees, 12'30''N/154 degrees, 18'24". It sits on a sheltered bay on the edge of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. The town of 160+ residents is an hour from Anchorage by bush plane. Cargo plane pilots make an extra $1,000+ for landing on the gravel strips here...short, sweet, rough and dusty. The DC-10 fuel planes land here and they say the big birds run it to the inch. The landing is a social event around here and events often revolve around the airfields.
In about 10 days, we'll all go to the 4th Annual Sourdough Fly-In, a pre-season potluck and get-together for the community. Bush pilots and their families fly in for the competitive events like the "Pizza Drop" (dropping a weighted pizza box from 100 feet on a marked spot on the runway). I'll save that for my next blog.
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