Wistful for Washington

In September I was able to head home to Washington for my good friend Lynn's wedding. My first weekend, we of course went to Orcas Island for a get-away. The above picture was the start of the sunset view from the ferry...it turned bright red and pink the closer we got to the island. It was one of the most beautiful ferry rides I've had, and it started my visit off with a nice resonence of tranquility. 

Tyler went moose hunting while I went home, so Gretel was lucky enough to get her first airplane vacation! She was very well behaved on the plane and received many compliments from the airline staff. Apparently, airline personell don't see dogs go willingly into their kennels very often. Once we arrived, she was ecstatic to see Grandma and Grandpa Human and constantly jumped on my Dad the hole visit. She really enjoyed the visit to the Orcas house and became quite adept at jumping off the dock after sticks, not a trick most dogs take on very readily. She was like a super dog, plunging under the water, surfacing with a billow of air to clear her nasal passages, then on the prowl for that elusive peice of wood! 

Lynn's wedding came the next weekend. She specifically wanted a roast pig, so since my parents catered the wedding, we got to watch the pig roast from start to finish. It was on the spit by 4am, and this is Mr. Pork-Almighty in all his glory. Definately the best pork to ever enter my mouth, I drool just looking at the picture!

At the wedding with some wonderful high school friends! If only Alaska was closer...I could see you all more! 

Dad never missed a moment to play with Gretel. Here, he plays with her and the 16 year old golden retreiver at the same time. Such talent! 

I of course got to see my much-missed family while I was home, with plenty of love from everyone! Here I'm enjoying a great visit with Aunt Connie and Uncle Jim. 

I of course got to visit with friends, too! Jill made an amazing chocolate strawberry cake when we had her and her fiance Ira over for dinner. The hardest thing about living in Alaska is being far away from amazing friends and family. And Jill's visit solidified that notion ten-fold! 

All in all, a great visit home. If only I could do it more often. 

Wishin for the Fishin

My parents came for a fun visit in June. We took them up north to Talkeetna for a salmon fishing trip on the Talkeetna River, supposedly a superb fishing location. The drive took about 6 or 7 hours, and was gorgeously sunny the whole way. We took a water taxi up the river to the prime fishing spot and got ready for the fun, pictured above. 

Tyler, Dad, and I all tried our hand at salmon fishing. The trick is to anger the salmon enough that he wants to attack your lure. 

We saw a lot of giant fish, but couldn't entice them. We tried many different setups, here Dad's changing out the tackle. 

Mom and Dad playing with Gretel while we waited for the taxi. No fish, but a gorgeous trip in the Alaskan wilderness! 

August Shenanigans

I'm going to try and attempt a few quick blogs to update you on our fall and winter. We stayed busy, enjoying Alaska! 

We went on a beautiful backpacking trip in August. The hike goes straight up for an elevation gain of about 1000ft, then levels off and you hike around two gorgeous lakes. Above is the second lake, Crescent Lake. The cabin we stayed at was on the opposite side, about three or three and half more miles from where this picture was taken. Little did we know the trail isn't maintained in the summer. We were swarmed by bugs, dwarfed by gigantic cow parsnip bushes that were over our heads, traversing on muddy, slippery rocks we couldn't see, during berry season when all the bears could very well be hidden in the bushes in front of us looking for the little tastey jems. We ate a few of the berries ourselves, but the rest of the hike took us hours even though it was only a couple miles. Exhausting! So we didn't stop for much berry picking. But still one of the most beautiful hikes we did all summer. 

Once we got to the cabin, exhausted both mentally and physically, we were in dire need of some nourishment. As we started boiling the water, we realized *gasp* we forgot utensils! We only had one pocket knife, which you can't eat pasta with very well! Thankfully, some campers left a newish-looking toothbrush holder behind. After some short pondering, shown above, Tyler cut the cylinders in half  and we sanitized them in boiling water. 

The little spoons fit quite well in the pan for their little sanitizing boil bath!

And viola! Look how well those little spoons worked for the pasta! After that last bit of mental energy was spent, we quickly passed out hard in recovery from our day's trek. It's about 9:30pm in the picture, even though that Alaskan summer light's still pouring in the window. 

The next morning, I watched the sunriset and made Gretel this beautiful fireweed necklace. It, of course, didn't last long. Before long, I saw her on the opposite ridge at least a mile away rustling through the bushes looking for something to chase. At least I could see her turn around and rush back the minute I called for her! 

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!