Happy Belated Birthday -- USA

I looked back through my posts on this blog, and I skipped July 4th last year.  It's always a busy day because NPS staffs a booth at the fairground.  I did blog about it back in 2009, but I was using a different blogging site then.  Here's a link to it.  Frostbytes on Tumblr

The novelty of some of the events has worn off, or maybe it's that I have to spend the day in my uniform because I work part of the time at our booth, but I didn't watch as many of the activities this year.  I did happen to catch the opening ceremonies.  Of course John Baker (2011 Iditarod winner) was the grand marshal.

John Baker's trophy

Another thing that happens, that I'm not typically a fan of, are the various pageants -- Miss Arctic Circle, Teen Arctic Circle, Miss Maniilaq, etc.  The redeeming quality of these pageants is that the girls are actually covered, head to toe.  What covers them is what I enjoy getting to see.  They borrow parkas from friends or relatives, very nice and often very old parkas.  They're amazing to see, and the photos don't do justice.

Oh, and don't forget the mukluks on their feet.  Beautiful craftsmanship!  On this day, those girls were happy to have the warm parkas on; it was cold and windy.

I didn't watch any of the other events this year, but while I was at the Park Service booth, there were a few of the field events happening (foot races, water balloon, etc.)  One funny one is the tug-o-war.  In addition to the usual age/gender competition, they always have two certain groups face off for this event.  They call for the native women and white men on opposite ends.  The native women always win, but to be fair, they have a lot more of them to pull.

Every year our NPS education staff comes up with a theme to interpret in our booth.  This year it had to do with bears and bear safety.  We had a pretty elaborate setup.

To get people to read the information on the board, we make some pretty cool, unique buttons, and if they take a quiz (using the information on the board), they get one.

This display highlights a project that our biologist is working on.  People here live off of fish.  They build big fish drying racks to prepare the fish for winter storage.  It's a great place for bears to find the food they need while they're trying to put on their winter fat!  Our biologist is providing electric fences to people who have fish racks in order to keep bears out.  We don't want the bears getting people's fish because they can become habituated to humans....

Here we demonstrated examples of things to not do when you camp. 

Even though we don't sell fried snickers or cheap, made-in-China plastic toys, we're still a hit with people!