Y-K Delta Field work

I've made the commitment to try and update this thing. Since there's no internet at the house, I'm going to keep the text short and sweet!

As most of you know, I went to the Yukon-Kuskoquim Delta to do 2 weeks of feild work with the USGS. That basically entailed me driving to Anchorage, flying to the remote town of Bethel, then flying to the very remote village of Chevak. From Chevak, we took open aluminum Lund boats and traveled down the rivers, touched the Bering Sea, and banded and bled geese. The first week, we had high-school age kids from Chevak with us to help. The kids made it interesting and frustrating all at the same time!

This was during one of our first drives for the birds. Basically, you find a penninsula, have everyone spread out at the top of the penninsula, which is usually a distance of about 3 miles, then everyone starts walking at once towards the tip. It's so flat on the delta that the birds can see your figure for miles and miles, so the idea is they keep walking away from you towards the tip, where we've already set up nets for our bird 'pot'. What you see behind the Chevak girl is one of these pots. She's holding a swan cygnet (baby swan) that ended up in our pot too. Swans are the biggest things on the delta, you can see there huge white bodies for miles!

I'm taking a chloacal (butt) swab. This is to test for avian influenza

Holding a sample! There's a cackling goose in my lap, which look a lot like miniature canadian geese.


I'm holding a cackler for a bleed. We bleed from the juglar, the large vein that runs down the neck. I'm pinching it off while Jen, my feild partner, is spraying the area with alcohol.

Doing my very first bleed! It's quite intimidating to do for the first time because if you do it wrong you can end up with air bubbles in the vein, or the bird can even bleed out and die because you're tapping into one of its main bloodways.

Swans running hurriedly away after we released them. You can see the flatness!


This was our first group of kids from Chevak. They all did a great job! Except for two of the boys who thought it was a great idea to harrass the birds they were throwing. They sort of ruined the entire experience for me at first. I've never readily screamed at kids so vehemenetly or so well!

Spectacled Eider mom with her ducklings! They're hard to see, but I was so excited! This is one of the species I work with at the center, but they're really rare to see in the wild because of where they live.

Flat but sunny. I got sunburned this day walking around on the delta!

Our second feild camp, thankfully without the kids this time. These are the boats that we spend hours traveling, rain or shine.

This is the toilet. It's so flat you either dip down to the river or use the bucket that's behind the tarp, otherwise everyone can see you.

One of my field partners with a red throated loon chick. We had GPS coordenence, no nets, and we were supposed to walk around the delta trying to catch these loon chicks on the lake. With no nets! So, we're wading around in the lakes trying to catch a bird that's evolved to be one of the best swimmers around. It took us 10 hours and we only caught 2 of the 3 we were supposed to. But at least it was a beautiful day on the tundra! We were sweating and sunburned. The next day a terrible storm blew in, which happened to be the day we had to pack up camp and leave. Needles to say, not many pictures of that storm. It was so bad while we we touching the bering sea that I was afraid our boat was going to flood. But we made it!

Welcome to Paradise

Over our last weekend, we ventured into real wilderness for an amazing camping and canoeing trip. We left straight after work and drove over to our first night's camping spot on Paterson Lake. While we pulled the canoe off the Bronco, Gretel couldn't wait for a swim and jumped right in. She's swimming in circles simply for the joy of swimming in circles.

We packed her wet little behind into the canoe and headed to the other side of the lake for some more private camping. She whined the entire way. Sitting on top of water is apparently a cruel form of torture.

Teyler paddled while I kept the naughty little Gretel in the canoe. The loons were calling and we passed 4 pairs of surf scoters getting ready for the breeding season.

After we set up camp, the moon came out along with three whole stars! We're getting close to the solstice, so it doesn't get much darker than this at night. This was around 12:30am. The embers provided a nice little fireworks show!

We geared up to head out on our canoe trip. Even Gretel has a backpack! She made the dog equivilant of a frowny face through the first part of the day and didn't like moving with it on, but by the end of the trip she was a good pack dog earning her keep!

Gretel, of course, went swimming.

We spent the day paddling and portaging between lakes. It felt like a beaver sanctuary, each lake had a beaver lodge and a damn on each end. There were lots of discarded beaver sticks, which turned into stick heaven for Gretel. She couldn't decide on just one!

We found a camping spot and stopped for a relaxing night of fishing and fire roasting. Fiddleheads and fresh rainbow trout for dinner!

Gretel played hard all day long, she was asking us to go to bed early.

Our camping spot was perfect, with a gorgeous view of the lake and the loons that kept passing by.

The next morning we broke camp and slowly worked our way back to the car. None of us wanted to leave.

It was a beautiful trip! The wilderness around here is easy to fall in love with, especially when it's actually tank top weather! I've never been so excited for a sunburn...my first tan in two years. Ah, making memories!

Bearfia

Most of you have heard we brought home a bear. As you can see, Gretel wanted to steal blood, fur, tongue, and anything else she could grab while we weren't looking. It was her first large game experience! We went for a nice little hike after work, me, Tyler, and the Gretels. This was the year Tyler was going to put up a bear baiting station, so he had picked his sight and gotten his permits from the state troopers. After a long day of work, we had a beautiful afternoon and decided it would be a perfect opportunity to post his bear baiting permits at his hunting sight. We geared up, took off, and started bushwhacking to the sight (you have to be a certain distance from any marked trails, etc., so bushwhacking is always involved in bear baiting). We went up and down one ridge, then started climbing another. With GPS in hand, Tyler kept pushing me on ".5 miles to go!" Up and up we went ".2 miles to go! We're gettin close!" My chest heaved and I'm ashamed to say my legs ached quite a bit, and on we went. "0.1 mile to go! We're practically there!" I hear. 20 seconds later: "BEAR! BEAR!" I look up, confused, astonished, and disbelieving all at the same time. I hear a gunshot, grab the dog so she won't get close, then hear a few more shots. I think to myself "I can't believe this! He's really shooting a bear!" I hear crashing up ahead, and Gretel's ears are perked. Tyler shouts "Stay there! Don't come close yet!" As he fires another shot to make sure it's dead, then gets close to poke it with a stick. The poking comences and no movement ensues. "It's safe. You can come close." I let the dog loose and the minute she sniffs the bearness, she starts barking. Circling the bear, barking barking barking. Tyler pulls it into a clearing to feild dress it, and she follows, barking barking barking. She didn't stop the entire time, unless it was to steal a bit of blood or pull at the fur (for which she was promptly reprimanded). I think it was about the most exciting thing that's ever happened in her life! 

After gutting it, Tyler slung it over his shoulders to get the bear out of the woods. He looked like quite the ultimate hunter, complete with a fur muff. We barbequed the ribs the next day--quite a tastey treat!

A nice action shot of Gretel with her favorite toy. I love free frisbees!

I've started a strawberry wine--my first brew attempt! This was the wine-making process. It's now a fermenting vat of  pale pink. Pretty, but we'll see if it turns out. 

Well, that's basically our last month. We're so glad the summer's come!

Mayhem in May

The sun and warm weather has returned to Seward, so we've been out enjoying it! We adventured to Anchorage and back last weekend. We spent the night breaking in our new ford bronco car-camping style up by Palmer. The mosquitos have returned with gusto--I have a group of mosquito bites so solid on my back you can't tell there's supposed to be 5--it's one big lump. The Kristen Blood Bank has opened for the season! We snapped this picture by Kenai Lake on the way back. Gorgeous weather! 

Our trip to Anchorage included new tattoos. Tyler got this super spiffy Trilobite. Behave, or he'll go Cambrian on you! 

An Anomalocaris in very Kristen colors: blues and teals! He was the first major predator in the oceans. And what did he eat? Trilobites! You're watching an epic battle frozen in time! 

While the snow clumps were still lingering a couple weeks ago, we hiked up the creek we live on for a picnic after work. It was a combination of postholing in the wet snow and fjording the river where it had popped out of the ice. Here, I'm being lead by Wendy the neighbor dog who likes to go on walks with us, and Gretel's showing me her mad agility skills by swerving in and out of my legs as I post hole. What a helper. 

On the road to Anchorage, we often see mountain goats that come all the way down the the highway. I'm standing on the opposite side of the highway to the goats, those white specks on the rocks. They're showing off their amazing climbing skills.

A brief update of our adventures of late! More to come shortly!

A moose, an igloo, and a concertina

Tyler and Gretel went skiing last Sunday, while I sadly had to shovel snow at work. They saw two moose on the trail, though, and although this picture's far away, you can see two moose behind the little Gretels!

This is a better shot when they got up close. Moose are so big they don't really care about anything, so they went right about their business of eating sticks while they skiid by. 

My concertina (an instrument like a small accordian) came this week! I've been excited to start learning how to play! You can see Gretel's not so excited. She howled for the first time, then started whimpering as though she thought I was dying. I think Tyler's been quite happy to work during my off time the past few days, too :o)

Last week we thought spring was here--no snow on the roads, easy driving, even temps in the low 40s! The past two days have proven us very wrong, unfortunatly. We had a blizzard yesterday, and got about 15 inches of snow before things started warming up to rain last night. Tyler and I had the early afternoon off, so we decided to build an igloo with the large amounts of perfectly wet snow! Tyler started on construction, here he's measuring his circle to make sure it'll be big enough. We used the large blue bin to pack blocks from and started stacking them!

Gretel really wanted to help. Unfortunately, being non-human, she had no desire to build something, only to destroy it! She was quickly fired from her temp igloo-helper job and came to help me do some exterior decorating by our cabin driveway. 

You can't have all that snow and not make a snow man! Well, a snow-porcupine to be precise. Holding my birthday flowers. Isn't the porcupine cute??

I went to help Tyler with igloo construction when the perky porky was complete. Once you start stacking bricks, it gets tricky because you have to angle them inwards to make a dome. Technically speaking, you're supposed to stack them in a spiral, but we sort of forgot until we were halfway through. She still turned out beautiful, though!

Just before we put the last blocks on, I took my few last breaths of fresh air from inside the dome. 

Once the top's complete, I cut myself out and made a door-hole! Whew! 

Tyler finished off the igloo with this nice entry-way.

Inside the igloo, our body temps quickly raised the humidity levels, so my camera instantly fogged. It was quite cozy in there! We briefly discussed sub-leasing the igloo, but we sadly warmed up last night and it caved in. We'll have to rebuild tomorrow! We cooled off again, and it's been snowing all day. We'll try again for that igloo!

Our little update

*sigh* Our new Alaskan cabin makes updating this blog much harder! It took 1 1/2 hours to load these pictures from our cabin this afternoon. Good thing I had a hat to finish knitting! The warmth of the wooden cabin walls does make the knitting cozy, and makes me want wooden walls for all eternity. So cozy and nice! 

I had a few pictures left from when PapaStein came to visit. Gretel's exploring the Snow River when we snowshoed out there on a nice sunny day. Gretel loved exploring the ice and was very much the Olympian in training. Watch that triple quad lux!

PapaStein terrorized his grandpuppy at every opportunity, even while on snowshoes. She loved it so much! When she heard his voice on the phone last night, she literally attacked my face and the phone at the same time in excitement. Unfortunately for me, I was wearing glasses at the time and could no longer see due to puppy slobber. 

Dad also cooked up a tasty pork shoulder on the barby. The barby turned into a smoke machine and filled the cabin with eye-watering aromas. 

We've been busily keeping up with a puppy, playing volleyball, and planning a Ducks Unlimited event since Dad left, so we haven't had much to document for everyone. On Valentine's Day, though, Tyler got me a cute new pet to put in my mouth!

A little chocolate hedgehog! Isn't he cute? He was even cuter when I disembowled half his body and let him melt in my mouth. Thank you local Sewardian choclatiers! 

Last weekend, we took down Tyler's traps. He ran a line a few miles from our cabin, and would go check them every other day. This is one of his traps, both of which were 'instant kill' traps to ensure the animals would suffer as little as possible. Unfortunately for him, nothing took the bait. He found some bunny and lynx tracks, and did get to do some hunting in the woods, though!

We took a family portrait while we were out. Gretel was very excited to play in the snow, and consequently did NOT want to sit still for our little picture. She wasn't so happy with the result: Tyler holding her in his lap.

Since Tyler was hunting rabbits along the way, we wanted to make sure little Gretels stood out in the crowd, so we gave her this yellow bandana. As you can see, a war ensued, and the bandana won. Such a silly puppy!