There are many diverse communities in Interior Alaska. We would like to cover them all, but we don't have the time or the knowledgeable staff to do them justice, so we pick and choose among the smorgasbord of offerings.
And we are just beginning to "know" Ester on a personal level. When we worked for Artic Marine Freighters, a Crowley Maritime company, at Prudhoe Bay back in the pipeline days of the oil boom, we would wish for an overnight in Fairbanks so we could go to the Malemute Saloon in Ester for the evening.
Then when lived in Fairbanks from September, 1995, to September, 2002, we would go down occasionally, but then it was to The Blue Loon.
In June of this year, when we were in Fairbanks to promote the 2014 Steese Summer Solstice Bicycle Gran Fondo, we got to know some of the folks who make Ester tick, and spent a few (tto few) hours at The Golden Eagle Saloon.
Since then we have had the pleasure (and honor, really) to have a dialogue with Deirdre Helfferich, the editor and publisher of The Ester Republic, regarding the issues we promote in the Steese Review.
We have now carried on this exchange long enough to recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about the diversity of Interior Alaska that they follow her in the Publisher's Blog. Here is part of my last communication with her:
Folk/blues music festivals and bicycle gran fondos can converge from separate paths. They are both growing in popularity, (Which again is not to tell you something you don't already know, but to let you know where our heads are.) We believe Ester is a natural for putting them together.We'll be writing more about Ester—its people and places—in the future.