My Travels    NYC Trip    The Windows	Alaska Pictures of the Day #7 Camp Lee- Like many things on the Seward Penninsula, the big, heavy pieces are left behind. Camp Lee is no exception. Great energy and expense went into the hunt for gold. When the source was played out equipment of no value was left behind. The "museum" penninsula still has many treasures from the past. Camp Lee is a typical example. This camp is about ten miles inland where the terrain becomes rolling hills. In addition to the weather, the biggest challenge here was to keep a dredge "fed" with an adequate supply of water. If you look closely you can see cuts made into the barren hillside to transport water. It wasn't far from here that Johnny stopped to show me the only evergreen within 20miles. It looked to be about six feet tall. Lee Dredge - This dredge is located a few miles south of Camp Lee and is over 70yrs. old. It was staked at one end and swung on a radius as it worked material until the area way played out. This dredge was left behind as the men moved on to another richer play. You find a lot of"stuff" out on the tundra.  Camp1 - John's first "lecture" of the trip was about subsitance hunting. He explained how the land was his people's grocery store. "We take what we need when we can and when we need to. I was up here near Camp Lee yesterday and caught a lot of fish. Maybe tomorrow I'll find Tarmagan. or something else. That's why I have all the guns." We passed many small structures, most all of them are just small camps for hunting. The structure to the right of the cabins in this image is used to dry meat and fish. John's Camp.jpg. - John was rather proud of this trailer he uses as his hunting camp. He constructed the whole thing by hand on top of a trailer base. He sewed the tent together himself. I'm not sure where the toilet seat came from. John went on to tell me about how open the community was. "We can stop anywhere and take a cup of coffee, everything is for everyone." We stopped at a construction site where an old schoolhouse was being converted to a B&B. He didn't know anyone's names, but he told the guys working there we needed a cup of coffee. The plumber said the coffee pot was in the kitchen but the water wasn't on yet. The only problem was there weren't any water to clean the spare cups. We had to skip the coffee. John was also happy to tell me that in this laid back part of the world folks would just stop in the road and talk, unlike the busy folks in the lower 48. I wanted to tell him how it wasn't too different on the back roads of Chautauqua County, but I let him continue since the stories were flowing. It wasn't long before we came upon a pick-up going in the other direction. We stopped and John asked if they were planning on fishing today. The driver said he might. John advised them," Better moved on. I took nine fish out of there yesterday." The driver just nodded and then looked at the big bag of potato chips sitting between John and I. "Hey, I could use a few of those chips. Hand me that bag over here." A handful of chips later and we were on our way. "See what I mean, it's all one kitchen table", Jonh reinforced the concept. "Do you know those guys?", I asked. "Yeah, one is a cop and the other is a pilot for Alaska Airlines. I don't know their names, but we know each other. We headed down the road to the next lesson... NEXT