Cabin et. al.

Here by popular request: pictures of the cabin we just moved into! It's a much better "all alaskan" experience than the moldy gross apartment we lived in before. Here's the outside of the log cabin, right at Christmas when we had some lights in the tree outside.

The main level. We have a dining room table (painted like an Ande's Mint) next to the little oven on the left, and a couch instead of the large grey chair the cabin was furnished with.

There are two lofts in the cabin, with one ladder that swivels between the two. Here's the spare loft that Dad is currently staying in. Now that we've moved in, you can't see much but shelves and the bed up there.

This is on the creek just a couple blocks from the cabin during Gretel's first snowshoe excursion. We had super fun, and she really liked chasing the snow! It's a perfect spot to go for a nice long energy-burning walk with our little hyper puppy.

Doggon fishin

Papa Steinmetzer has been in Anchorage for the past three weeks, and now he's down in Seward spending a week of winter fun with us! To celebrate, we went on an ice fishing excursion today. We had perfect sunny, wind-free weather for it. Gorgeous!

Our darling little Gretel was quite excited to play in the snow all day. I didn't think it was possible for a dog to eat so much ice. Her belly became a mini-cooler--we should have strapped some beer to her.  Gretel ate so much ice she almost got hypothermia and couldn't stop shaking....silly puppy! Do you like her ears? They can't decide if they want to be German Shepherd stand-up ears or lab floppy ears, so right now they just stick straight out from her head in her own dopey rendition of a Yoda impression.

Tyler and I took Dad to Hope today...the last town we had to visit on the Kenai Penninsula! It was a beautiful day and we all enjoyed a little romp in the snow.

On our way to and from Hope we stopped to do our ice fishing. Gretel tried really hard to help, but only succeeded in falling into the ice fishing hole. Dad got the catch of the day today, and it was Gretel's first experience with a real live fish! She didn't treat it much differently than a vegetable...we have some work to do to get her excited to attack things. :o)

Gretel even tried carrying around the ice hole scoop for us. It didn't work out too well. It became a chew toy. We had a wonderful day in our winter wonderland, and hope to have some more outdoor fun while dad's here!

PUPPY!!!

So, here's a few pictures for you to enjoy of our new little lady! She's half lab, half german shephard, and the little princess is named "Gretel". She really likes gingerbread.

Exhausted after her first move-in day. She's sleeping!

Her first taste of BACON! She fell instantly in love

Puppy and papa cuddling in the new cabin. See the swivel staircase behind them?? It goes between our two lofts. Perfect home!!

Sunrise, Sunset

We are quite lucky to have beautiful, gorgeous landscapes frequently in Seward. A few days ago, this exceptional sunrise made me quite happy to get to live in such a breathtaking place. This was about 9:30am from the back deck of the Alaska SeaLife Center.

Our perfect Storms!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We hope you all enjoyed good food and good company, we certainly did! (although we did miss family being close, and not just for Dad's tastey pumpkin soup!) We spent the day frolicking in the  snow banks around Seward and went ice fishing on Grouse Lake, just out of town. This is a picture of all those who went, standing astutely around the fishing holes.

I took a picture down the fishing hole! It's just a little black hole of shineyness. If you keep your face close to the hole, you can watch the fish come check out your lure. I have the misfortune of only attracting fish the same size as my lure, but it's funny to watch them try and stick a big fake fish in their mouths!

Here Tyler models the close-face ice fishing technique. It gets pretty wet awefully fast.

Tyler caught a few Dolly Varden on the lake....aren't they pretty while they die in the snow? We fried them up to have on the side with Thanksgiving dinner.

We're house sitting for some friends right now, who graciously allowed us to have a few people over for a dinner feast. We had quite the turnout of food, and it was all amazing! Tyler and I provided all the meats...four kinds of birds, two kinds of fish, and clams.We spent all day cooking after the morning fishing, but it was well worth it.

Here we have the main course: a Turduckouse! Yes, that's right; a turkey, and duck, and a grouse all wrapped into one fabulous dish! I of course put a layer of thin bacon in the middle for a little extra 'umph' and coated the outside in my special herbed butter. It was amazingly good...we only ended up with one little leftover peice! In all, we had a marvelous Thanksgiving day.

The people we're housesitting for also have an adorable puppy. We made a snow kitten together the day after Thanksgiving. Immediatly after this picture, she jumped on it and ripped out its stick arm. I guess she already hates kitties....

I literally just took this picture at noon from the side of the SeaLife Center. We have a big storm surge right now, and all the snow is melting away and adding to the rain...it's rediculously wet outside! In the back of the picture is a concrete wall you can usually see much more of. The waves have been so intense we've actually had concrete blocks getting tossed to where I was standing to take this picture! It's a nasty, stormy Alaskan day, and it's not going to get any brighter than that...we're in for a few days of darkness!

This is Gwen (the co-worker who's sadly leaving for an awesome job in Oregon soon!) and I just after we braved the storm for 3 minutes to try for some pictures. It was brutal. We should have been in a video for a heavy metal band!

The Winter Bomb's Exploded!

Mr. Snow has once again attacked Seward with his magical white crystals--the snow and ice has taken over! This weekend, we went adventuring. This is the view of Seward from the opposite side of Resurrection Bay--you can see the white streets of the town, right where our apartment is. The light is faded and low, as well. Even though it looks like the beginning of a nighttime sunset, this picture was actually taken just before 3:00pm. The sun wasn't up for much longer. The low angle of the sun in the winter is beautiful, though. It makes the white mountains perpetually highlighted in yellows and pinks.

Our adventures began at the start of Alaska's Iditarod Trail (only 2 miles from our apartment) on our cross country skis! We both received a pair of skis, boots, and poles from a very generous friend we met while living in the campground. Robert had spent the winter literally driving across the entire United States, and showed up with a van-ful of skis this summer, with plans to sell them from his tent in the campground. (The year before he sold fishing gear he found on the beach and polished up--when he skipped town he was nice enough to let us keep it!). He wasn't in town for very long this year, so when he left, we got to pick out boots and skis that fit! A super duper deal from a super duper friend!

We found a nice hill to practice our downhill form on. This was the first time we'd been on skis, and neither of us were ever anything like pro skiers, so this hill posed a challenge. I immediately fell  down, turning my body into its own sled (gravity loves me too much---I never stood a chance on those slick skies!). Tyler did much better, although did manage to find the pointy stick in the side of the hill. Not bad for our first day of practice!

The next day we took advantage of our cold temps and high winds to try our rods at our first round of ice fishing for the season. The temps had been around 20, and the winds had been blowing up to 60mph all night-perfect conditions for the ice to form! We went to Grouse Lake, which wasn't quite frozen over, so we drilled some test holes on the sides. We had aabout 3 inches of ice over about 4 1/2 ft of water, so we dipped our poles in. Unfortunately, the only fish we saw were the same size as our lures. After about a half hour, the ice started cracking, so we jumped off and dashed to the truck. By next weekend, we should be able to walk across this lake no problem! Our high temp yesterday was 11 degrees, and the wind's still blowing. Bring on the fishies!

Even with ample adaquate gear, there's only so much of the cold, almost-gale-force winds a body can take before a warm, wind free home beckons. We spent the evening making homemade pizza--complete with homemade rosemary crust! It was sooooo good, I almost had to slap the  moose mit into submission because it started drooling on the pizza. The green cardigan I'm wearing in the picture was my weekend project--my first time sewing with jersey knit, and it turned out really cute!

I sadly forgot my camera for the Halloween party we attended, but our friend Tasha graciously took this beautiful family portrait. Such a sweet family. Such a nice and sweet family... :o)

Road Trip!

This September we took a hunting/road trip around Alaska. The hunting was, on the whole, unsuccessful. But in our search for querry, we ended up covering about 2500 miles of road, to the arctic circle and back. We started out looking for moose, but when our 7 mile packing trip turned into a 20 mile packing trip, we decided to scour the rest of the state for some different hunting grounds.

This was very close to the arctic circle. We are traveling on what is known as the "Dalton Highway", and this was after our fist night camping in the back of our truck. The temp hovered right around freezing, and the clouds and fog were so bogged in that you had to look very closely to see the tundra. Tundra, for the most part, is nothing but grasses and lichens for miles and miles. Here, the geology has created these large granite pyres that stick up from the tundra and create a very fantastical atmosphere. I felt like I should be in a scene from the "Labrynth".

We've reached the arctic circle! We're now officially in the north polar region! We've been travelling on dirt roads for about 160 miles, and good dear Maude likes her new rugged mud paint job.

Coldfoot is the first town in the arctic circle, and the only one until the end of the road 240 miles later. This is the stretch of highway they film "Ice Road Truckers" on. We stopped in town for a warm bite to eat; I hadn't had tater tots as a side option in a restaraunt before! The town has two public buildings: a 10X4 ft post office, and a cafe/bar/gas station/gift shop. Coldfoot has a population of about 30, I think, and it's all brown and dirty. But it was an interesting stop!

In order to get to the caribou hunting grounds we were aiming for, we had to make it through the Brooks Mountain Range at  Attigun Pass. A blizzard hit on the pass, this was the view from the window. Consequently, our caribou hunting was botched and we decided to travel back down south for some better options. We did try and hike on the tundra a little. I have never walked such a hard straight, flat line in my life! Recommendation: Do NOT hike the tundra. Your thighs and ankles will die.

The Alaska Pipeline follows the Dalton Highway.

The sun broke out finally after a few days of travel. It was still cold, and we ended up with snow the next day, but beautiful!

Tyler caught his first Burbot night fishing near the Yukon River. This is a big sucker, and we even caught it with the guts of the grayling we were eating for dinner!

With hunting unsuccessful, we decided to detour around Fairbanks for some hiking. Here, we climbed up to some protruding Granite slabs only to find the perfect blueberry patch. I've never had such sweet berries!

Tyler caught this trophy-worthy grayling on our way south from Fairbanks to Valdez.

And lookey here! I shot my very first nanimal! The spruce grouse was quite tastey.

We found this big fat black bear in Valdez. We saw a total of 4 black bears in the town of Valdez, and 3 others on the trip that were in places we couldn't shoot. We also saw 3 moose we couldn't shoot. Lesson learned: unless you're rich enough to buy an air boat or spend $1200 on a flight to a remote location, you're shit out of luck for profitable hunting grounds in Alaska. We need more rich friends. It's quite ironic that the perception of Alaska is a place where a man can be a poor gold digger and live off the plentiful game around him, when in actuality you have to have plenty of gold in hand to get to places it's actually legal to hunt large game.We don't know a single person who went hunting this year and was successful, unless they spend thousands of dollars to get to remote locales. Ah well, such is life. At least there's plenty of animals to see!! Consequently, rather than bear, moose, or caribou, our freezer is jam packed with halibut and ducks. Good thing those are tastey! And maybe one day we'll be lucky enough to justify buying our sausage stuffer!