Durango Trip!

Steinmetzer Mama just sent us some pictures from our trip to Durango to visit Durango Mama for Christmas. 

Below: downtown Durango. Tyler and I with Deanna (sister) Durango mom and Steinmetzer mom. We just had our family portrait taken: western theme! It was one of the few moments in life when it's okay to put a gun to your own mother's face. A moment not easily forgotten :o)

Tyler is getting ready to go fishing with my dad below. They went fly fishing together while I went snowshoeing with the moms and my sister.  Here we are snowshoeing! I'm in the front. I don't think it's a past time Deanna or my mom will take up as a favorite hobby....but the landscape was quite beautiful! A dessert covered in snow. We saw some really beautiful sandstone covered in icicles.  Tyler and I. This is my new hat: Just like dad's! Here Deanna and I are with my dad in front of the X-mas tree, strangling his girls. Sweet, huh? We had a wonderful time in Durango. Too bad it couldn't last longer! I'll update with recent Seward happenings soon....

Imminent Explosion!

This is a picture of Redoubt Volcano, which is not quite 200 miles away from Seward, AK. This was taken in 1989, the last time Redoubt had a large explosion. Seward received a few inches of ash from this explosion We've been on eruption watch for about a week now, and even had a small earthquake when the watch started. If it does explode, there is a chance ash will reach Seward, but it's a small chance. It would be exciting! We'd have to wear masks ad HAZMAT suits all over town for a while. I'm supposed to be going to some villages around the Redoubt area next month for some educational outreach programs--wouldn't that be amazing to watch the volcano explode from the air?!? Wish me luck. 

A fair amount of time has passed since my last post, and the lives of the Barenjager family have stayed fairly uneventful. We did have quite an enjoyable jaunt in the forest last weekend during some heavy snowfall. It was quite beautiful. We hiked back to Vogt lake a few miles outside of town. Tyler had his gun out the entire time porcupine hunting. No signs of porcupines, although we did see plenty of coyote tracks. We found cute little shrew tracks leading to a little shrew den, too. Fishing the lake was slightly productive--Tyler caught one rainbow trout, I didn't get any bites. We did have Tyler lassoed around his belly with a long line of rope much like a five year old overactive child. It was, of course, for his safety. He was the ice tester, so he'd go out onto the ice first and I'd stay towards the snowy shore holding the rope just incase he fell in. We were hiked about a mile and a half in, so it was a good thing the ice was about a foot thick--no chance of falling in once we knew that. We also collected some lichen (rock tripe in particular), boiled and ate it. It had really no flavor whatsoever, but neither of us had ever tried lichen before, so it was at least a new adventure. Natives, especially eskimo, apparently ate it quite a bit. 

We also took a nighttime road trip with our friends Sara and Chad to find the Northern Lights. We're not quite sure if we saw them low on the horizon, or saw some sort of orange glow from a man-made object in a place where there should not have been a man made object. Hopefully, before the winter's over, we'll have another chance to try. We went about 13 miles outside of town on a clear night with no moon. The stars were gorgeous. I was suprised how much the snow glowed just from the starlight. Low on the horizon, between two low mountaintops, was a distinct orange glow, much like you would get from a distant city. However, the closest city was about 130 miles away, so it couldn't have been the city. We like to assume the glow actually was space plasma hitting the earth's atmosphere, giving us the duller version of the Northern Lights. Our goal is to make it farther north on a vacation next winter to enjoy them more properly. We're a little too far south in Seward. 

The sun is coming back to us more and more--Thank you solstice! I can feel spring on its way. I think soon I'll be able to actually FEEL the sun again! During the winter, the sun is so low on the horizon that it provides light, but you can't feel any warmth from it. It hits your eyes at this funny low angle, too, that can make objects prism sometimes. It's quite interesting. 

Our Barenjager Update is now complete. Have a pleasant week! And we'd be more than excited to get an email update from anybody, letting us know how our friends and family are doing! We do miss home from time to time :o). 

steinmetzer@live.com 

Fishin with a Mission

We went ice fishing once again! We took a friend of mine, Gwen who I get to work with in the Avian department, and her most amazing dog Rory on a trek through the woods and drilled a few holes to fish. This is a picture of Tyler with the auger, drilling the first hole. 

Close up of the drilling! The ice was about a foot thick that he was drilling through. It's quite a bit of work, so Tyler was Mr. Man and drilled holes for all of us. I believe it put a few unneeded chairs on his chest.  Fish on! Tyler and his little ice fishing pole bringing up a tastey lunch! And here's lunch! A beautiful rainbow trout. I think it might be the prettiest fish to come out of a lake, the tastiest too.  And this is Rory in her fleece sweater Gwen made especially for her. I never knew a dog could look so svelt in fiber.  The lake was in a very pretty location with mountains and spruce trees all over the place. The wind wasn't even blowing while we were out there, which is a rare thing indeed! It was a beautiful day in the woods, and quite the smashing time around Seward. 

I thought I would share more pictures of the pretty birds I've been working worth lately. Below is Sesi, an arctic tern. They breed in Alaska, then fly south to Antarctica for the winter, then fly all the way back for the summer again. She came from a rehab organization because she can't fend for herself in the wild. She's too habituated to humans unfortunately. 

This is Dory, the tufted puffin, in her winter plumage. She's a pretty bird who likes lots of attention in the summer time. This is the king eider. He has pintails on his back that make him look like a mac daddy 1950's cadillac. He also has a large yellow nose that's a salt resevoir. It allows him to drink and process salt water.  These are our red legged kittiwakes. They are found on only a few islands in the Berring Sea and the end of the Alleutians. The one in the middle with the black beak was a chick, born this summer. And this is one of the stars of the touch tank! It's a Heart Crab. Do you see its spiky legs?? I hope you enjoyed more animals!

Nanimals!

I thought I would share some animal adventures, since many of you are suffering the effects of my constant bird chatter. Below is a picture from work, it's actually my staff picture on the avian staff wall.  Kristen at work! Here I am with a horned puffin at work. This is Aleutian. He was born at the SeaLife Center and is still considered a juvenile. If I'm remembering right, he's about 4 years old, but puffins live for a long time-we have one tufted puffin that's 24. This summer will probably be the first time he gets breeding plumage. And yes, the white spot on my jacket is his poo. However, puffins can projectile poo up to about 4 feet, so he did poop more while he was on my shoulder, but it ended up far away on the floor where it was easy to clean.  Since it is winter, none of the puffins have summer breeding plumage. This is another horned puffin, Rain, in his winter plumage. 

   Below is a horned puffin with its breeding plumage. Pretty! In the background is a tufted puffin in breeding plumage. These are the two species of puffins in Alaska kickin back on some wood in our bird aviary this summer.  This is a tufted puffin taking a bath. Hooray for clean! This is a rhinoceros auklet. It's another species of puffin, but it was originally classified as an auklet. But since I'm talking about puffins: here's another!!!! Tyler's fishy fun lead to this animal encounter: Dolly Varden from an ice-fishing extravaganza! There's more of them in the Pyrex dish underneath his hands. We cooked these suckers up as our first fresh water Alaskan fish. We were going to take them to a party, but their flesh turned this grayish color we were embarrassed about, so we took little wieners instead. It was tasty the first day, but the next day this fish made the worst fish tacos I've ever had. And I was quite sad, because I really like fish tacos. 

A Long Time Coming

It's been quite a long time since last I posted, so here's our Christmas update! Festivities started with the tree hunt. We dawned the snow shoes and headlamps and tromped into the woods just outside of town. We called and whooshed, imitating the sounds of wild trees, hoping the perfect tree would show itself through the snowy moonlight. Sure enough, it did. The spruce tree shined in a beacon of moon glow, so Tyler commenced the cutting. After a few scrapes and vocal 'ouchies' from the poky nature of the spruce needles, the tree was ours! We dragged our conquered stick of wood home. 

Once home, we decorated it like a true Barenjager tree, complete with chili pepper lights on the top, and new LED lights below. The LEDs are pretty intense. Don't stare directly at the light.  

A few days later, I decided it was time for a festive cookies. These are holly cookies that some old biddy of Tyler's from back in Iowa used to make for him. I don't know who she is, I just know she's old, and still tries to send him these things every year. They didn't come this year, so to prevent saddness, I created! Shazam! They're pretty tasty. 

We made it to Colorado and back for Christmas, but sadly no digital pictures to share of the fun. We did manage to get stuck at the Seattle airport for the solstice. Damn Washington snow in December. I grew up wishing for a white christmas, hoping for snow, and the one year it comes it completely gets in the way. We spent a day and a half waiting on stand-by lists to get out of Seattle and actually see the family. Thank goodness we made it, after the most uncomfortable night's sleep we've ever had.

These are some post-solstice photos I took from the deck of the SeaLife Center a couple days after we got back. It's actually very windy and cold while I took these pictures, but the water's all steamy and weird, so you can't tell. It was a beautiful moment of sun for the day! And each day we're getting more of it! That's about as high as the sun gets right now, it rises over the mountains on the left, gets that high, then sets over mountains that are on the right. It makes for some beautiful bright pink colors on the snow. But it means you can't actually feel the heat from the sun's rays if you're standing in it. We have about a 1 degree difference in temperature from the middle of the night to the middle of the day. And we've had winds above 70 mph this week, so with the windchill factor, we're reaching the negative double digits in freezing temps. Adventure!

Sunset a la Seward

We had a beautiful sunset in Seward this afternoon! I took this picture just after 3:00pm, as the last beams of sun were hitting the side of Mount Alice in front of our apartment. My camera doesn't do the scene justice-it looked like a tropical fruit explosion on that mountainside, complete with oranges, yellows, pinks, and reds. Perhaps a rather large passion fruit had sliced itself sledding down those icy slopes. Our temperature has warmed as well--a downright balmy 36 degrees during the peak of the day. We had the sun out today, so the day lasted quite a bit longer than it usually does with the heavy light-dampening clouds around here. If those clouds had been in, I would not have been able to take a picture at 3:00 from the simple lack of a light source. We have about a 4 hour window of actual daylight right now, so the sun itself doesn't do much heating. Today, for example, we had a high of 36 degrees and a low of 34 degrees in a whole 24 hour period. It is nice to have the warmer weather coming off the Gulf of Alaska, though. It means the streets have slightly melted, so we can drive to the grocery store again!

This is an example of what the pavement looks like. This was taken this afternoon, in warm weather, so the ice isn't as thick as it has been for the past few weeks. But you can see the white line on the pavement from where the ice begins. This is what all the roads around town are like, as well. Complete sheets of ice. I wish I had ice skates and the proper ice skating skills to just get around town with, it would be much quicker and safer. As it is, everyone walks very slowly and we all wear special metal grips on our shoes so we don't fall face first onto the roadway. They plow around here, but with all the thawing and re-freezing we get being at sea level, the whole town turns into one big ice skating rink. And since the four-wheel-drive doesn't work on our truck and we live on a slight incline, that means we can't really drive around town now, even though we have a working vehicle again. Ah, such is a poor-couple's life. Good thing it's pretty to look at so we can enjoy it!