Samara and Aaron's Alaskan Adventure

May in Alaska

2010-05-08T23:41:00.001-08:00

The updates are coming fewer and fewer. Sorry. That doesn't mean it's not still an adventure here in Alaska.

How's the temperature where you are? Today it reached 70 degrees. And you know what it looked like outside?

Yeah, that's snow still on the ground. In May.

And it's all over the place.

Oh, and I'm cat-sitting Atticus again for Anthony and Erin.

Apparently he likes high places that he doesn't know how to get down from.

Oh, and for anyone that hasn't heard, Samara is back in Kentucky. I guess that makes this "Aaron's Alaskan Adventure" until September. :)

April in Alaska

2010-04-17T14:13:00.004-08:00

You might be wondering, in your warm places, what April is like in Alaska. Well, today is April 17th, and here's what it looked like outside.

Better clear the snow off the windshield.

Fresh snow on the trees, and plenty of old snow on the ground.

And a big slushy rut in our driveway. Whee!

Just last weekend, we were hanging out in the house when our neighbor Grant called. He said there were moose outside. Sure enough, a cow and two almost-grown calves were cutting through the yard.

The two calves are making a break for it--we're less than a hundred yards away, on the porch.

Hanging around, looking back at us.

Grant was making moose noises from his porch, but they weren't fooled.

Now it's time to hide out in the woods.

And there they go--the most common view of a moose: from behind!

I had my rifle, but it wasn't moose season, we were in town, and they didn't charge us. So no moose for our freezer!

And finally, some even cuter pictures. This is our niece Chimmy. Her name isn't really Chimmy and she's not really our niece, but in Yu'pik culture, you don't really have to be related to someone to be related to them, and every kid gets a nickname.

Samara loves Chimmy.

And this picture was taken just minutes ago. She's sleeping, but she wasn't really happy about the whole camera-flash thing. Such a cute baby!

There's your April update from Alaska.

Bush plane to King Salmon

2010-03-01T09:11:00.005-09:00

Last month, I had to make a trip to King Salmon with is across the bay from Dillingham for work. This was the first time I had ever been on a bush plane and I learned 2 things from the experience:

Bush planes are cold...VERY COLD. I could see my breath for all the ride.
It is REALLY scary being in a tiny, cold plane.

This is my coworker and good friend, Jessica. She was 8 months pregnant and flying in a bush plane. She's kinda crazy like that, but I am super glad she came with me because I had a good time with her.

This is our pilot, Robert. He was nice, but I really expected him to keep his eyes looking forward instead of looking down at the water.

You might recognize me. I'm the one who wanted to pee my pants even before I got on the plane. You'll be glad to know that I didn't actually pee my pants. I think Jessica was thankful for that as well.

This is us taking off.

This is Dillingham as we were flying over it. It's not very exciting, but it's our tiny town and I think if you look closely you can see the McDonald's sign--just kidding. We don't have one of those.
Pretty water. It might be the Nushagak, but I can't be certain of that.

Look at all of our pretty snow. Whee!

We had the privilege of eating at the D&D restaurant for lunch and dinner every night we were there. It was pretty good food and the only place open. And for the record, D&D is in the neighboring town of Naknek, not in King Salmon. But they are about 15-20 miles away on a 2 lane road which is mostly straight-a-way through the flats.

Even in Naknek the food is kinda pricey. I got the French dip one day and it is $17.95. WOW! One night the prime rib was the special for like $29.95 and I ordered it, but I didn't know that the police chief of the area was going to buy dinner. I felt kinda bad, but it was a pretty good prime rib and he was a lot of fun to have at dinner. He was a real nice guy and I was glad to have the opportunity to chat with him about the area.

All in all, it was a good trip. I really enjoyed the people in King Salmon and Naknek. They had some good things going on over that and I am glad I got to have the chance to do this.

Christmas Pictures

2009-12-27T15:14:00.005-09:00

Christmas was a pretty sedate affair at the Baker's Alaska compound. Here's a brief update in pictures.

A few days before Christmas, Aaron decided to shave his beard. It had gotten pretty bushy...

The "after" picture was a little blurry, but here's a picture of us on Christmas eve after we opened all our presents...

Aaron is clean-shaven, and we're covered in a pile of goodies from our friends and relatives. Thanks everyone!

We have a guest for Christmas and New Year's Eve. It's our friend Atticus.

Atticus belongs to Erin and Anthony, who are in Kansas for the holidays. So we're cat-sitting. He's a pretty good cat and has gotten used to living here for a bit already. He does seem to know how to open the freezer, though, which is strange. We taped it shut for now. (With the bright green duct tape that Aaron got for Christmas!)

For dinner on Christmas day, we went to Ginger and Terry's house. (Ginger is Samara's boss.) Their daughter Aurora was there, along with their (former) foster child Lauren and her sister Ayla, as well as one of Lauren's friends. Here's Lauren (on the right)...

Ayla acting silly...

And Aaron and Aurora acting silly...

It was a nice dinner. Ginger and Terry made a ham, as well as mashed potatoes, salad and a wonderful diced cranberry dish. Samara brined and cooked a turkey, which came out great. Soaking the turkey in brine overnight before cooking is a great way to keep it moist!

The rest of our holiday weekend has been pretty tame. Aaron went next door and played some video games with Tim, we watched marathons on TV, and slept a lot! On Sunday, we felt like we needed to get out of the house, so we went to the shooting range at the dump.

Samara wanted to test out the new lighter trigger pull on her Glock. (The new trigger connector was an early Christmas present from Aaron.) She says she likes it much better now, and she's getting pretty good at hitting targets. Saramay apparently got a .44 magnum revolver for Christmas from her dad, so there may be all-girls shooting trips in the future.

Here's Samara shooting her 9mm...

If she ever gets tired of her job at SAFE, Samara could always apply to be a Dillingham cop. She's a natural with the Glock, and they definitely need the help!

Well, Happy Holidays everyone! Hope you got everything you wished for. Now it's time to do some dishes, hang up the laundry and exercise on Samara's new Wii Fit. (Sorry, she won't let me take a picture of her doing that!)

More snow pictures

2009-12-06T20:09:00.004-09:00

We haven't been updating the blog recently. Basically, what you're getting is more snow pictures.

Check out our amazingly long icicles.

Sometimes there's snow to clear off the car in the morning.

Sometimes that requires a shovel and a beaver hat.

This weekend the snow actually melted quite a bit because it was rainy and warm. Now our driveway is just a sheet of ice. I can't wait for more snow.

Winter Freaking Wonderland

2009-11-03T17:24:00.003-09:00

The snow was late this year. Last year, we had feet of snow by this time.

This morning, when I got up and went to work, the ground was dry. No snow. Not even frost on the windshield.

By the time I got home from work today at 4:30, my house looked like this:

Yeah, that's a good couple of inches, with the wind blowing drifts up to a foot deep.

Ahh, Alaska.

New Orleans

2009-11-01T15:06:00.011-09:00

I recently went to New Orleans for a work related conference. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a few days down there before my conference started. I got to meet up with one of my cousins that I hadn't seen in 15 or so years. And we had a few days to hang out and run around the French Quarter.

This is Kyrstin, my coworker, eating alligator for the first time. She told me later that she didn't really like it. To me, it tastes kinda like chicken. I thought it would taste fishy, but it doesn't.

This is my cousin Gina. She live up the road a way in Mississippi, but she made the trip to come for a visit. She was a lot of fun and I hope to get a chance to go down there for a visit sometime next year.

We took a carriage drive around the French Quarter at night. It was really pretty and we stopped a couple times for drinks. It was neat being able drive though and get drinks. It was also neat walking around with fruity frozen drinks in our hands.

On one of the nights, Gina came down with Aunt Lynn and we all went to Emeril's restaurant for dinner. The wine was good. The food was great and the company was beyond compare.

The conference was good too, but who takes pictures of that? I learned a lot and it was a great experience. But the best part was visiting with Gina and walking around New Orleans.

Long-Awaited Update

2009-10-19T17:17:00.002-08:00

I've been hearing from various people for a while that they were still watching our blog, waiting for new posts. It's been over a month and a half since we've posted, so I guess it's due.

Samara started a post about our vacation to Kentucky, but it didn't get finished, so I'll start by describing that trip.

We moved to Alaska at the end of August in 2008. We finally made it out of Alaska for a visit to Kentucky in August 2009. This was the first time we were able to visit the lower 48 in over a year. This was big, at least to us it was.

We left on August 26th. We were on the 9:30pm flight out of Dillingham. When we went to check in, they told us that the flight was going to make a stop in King Salmon. In case you don't remember King Salmon, I had a bad experience the last couple times I was forced to go to King Salmon. We then went home for a while and started walking to the airport at about 8:50. As we were getting closer to the airport, 2 airport attendants yelled towards us asking if we were on this flight. We told them we were and they asked us to hurry so the plane could leave earlier. So we boarded the plane at 9pm and we were off to Anchorage.

It wasn't easy getting back to Kentucky. We had to fly from Dillingham to King Salmon, to Anchorage to Seattle, to Chicago, to Louisville then drive to Winchester, pick up a car and drive back to Lexington. It was a long trip. I will spare you the details of flying the red eye with 2 screaming children and the long lay overs.

When we landed, we were greeted in Louisville by our good friend Amanda. She was sweet enough to pick us up, take us to dinner and loan us a car for the duration of our stay. As we cruised us to Winchester to pick up Amanda's spare car, I saw my little brother, Michael, at the stop light. I yelled towards him and we got a short visit with him before we left for Lexington where we proceeded to pass out at our house.

One of the first things we did when we got up the next morning was to eat at Chik-Fil-A! Mmm... fast food chicken.

Samara even bought a Chik-Fil-A tshirt.

Hooray for chicken!

Friday, we did a little shopping and were suppose to meet up with our friends Scott and Kirsten to celebrate their son's first birthday. We couldn't find the park for the party and ended up having dinner with Ann and other Anne. Later in the week, we did meet up with Scott, Kirsten, Violet and Wip.

On Saturday, Aaron's parents and sister came up for a visit. Aaron and his dad worked on Ann's car while the girls went shopping. It was a good visit with them and Natalie got to visit with the kitties. She was more excited to see the kitties than she was with us. I can't say I blame her. Pippin is such a sweet cat and Eve is just as naughty as ever.

Here's Ann's car, in partially disassembled form.

Aaron and his did get Ann's car put back together and running, which was good. I think they enjoyed spending time together on that project.

We visited with a lot of our friends over the rest of the week that we were in Kentucky. I snapped this picture of Aaron eating ice cream with some of the boys.

Of course, I got a few shots of some of those boys in their drag outfits, as well. We spent a lot of time hanging out at Pulse Nightlife in Lexington. Two of our friends are the owners, and they've built a really nice bar/nightclub.

Another thing did during the time we were in Kentucky was hook up with our tattoo artist and get some new art. Aaron got a flying skull on his arm, which we didn't snap a good picture of yet. Samara got a tattoo that people either understand or don't: bacon in a frying pan on her leg.

The real reason for the entire trip to Kentucky was that Aaron needed to get sworn in to the Kentucky bar. So we went down the Kentucky capitol in Frankfort and did the whole official deal.

That's it. Now Aaron can practice law in Kentucky.

We paused for a few pictures in the stately capitol building. Isn't Samara cute?

Check the credentials on our famous Kentuckians.

And what's a trip to Kentucky without a tour of horse country?

Samara had a visit with her mom and sister (who was about to pop!).

On the second weekend we were home, Aleks and Jenny drove up from South Carolina to visit with us. Our first outing was a nice trip to the Pioneer Festival in Winchester.

Al was very excited about the Pioneer Festival.

Jenny, maybe not so much.

But we did do other fun things while they were there. Mostly alcohol-related. First, there was the winery.

Then, we checked out the distillery.

The free samples were better at the distillery.

I'm sure there was a lot more we did while we were in Kentucky. We saw a lot of our friends, but not everyone, unfortunately. (Sorry Matthew and Hideko!) The flights back to Alaska were better than the flights down. We got to go straight from Chicago to Anchorage, instead of stopping in Seattle. We also had an overnight layover in Anchorage. We crashed at our friends Nathan and Trevona's place. We even got to go out to eat with their daughter Sailor.

She tried all the different foods at the Yak'n'Yeti, which is pretty amazing for a kid that young.

We got back a while ago, obviously. What have we been up to since then? Well, mostly business as usual. Aaron is still working at the courthouse and doing Deputy Magistrate duties on weekends. Samara is still working at SAFE and trying to teach kids not to commit domestic violence. Aaron cut some wood for the steam, bought a big game tag for bear and replaced the water pump on our Canyonero. He's living the Alaska lifestyle. Samara's big news is that she got to go to Anchorage and then New Orleans on a two-week training conference extravaganza.

This is the part of the post where we promise to make better efforts to update our blog. Well, we'll try. But no guarantees.

Moose Hunting

2009-08-26T18:28:00.006-08:00

This past weekend, I went moose hunting.

I'm lucky to have made friends with Tonya and Rich. They've been instrumental in more than one of my authentic Alaska experiences: commercial fishing in Ekuk and now moose hunting on the Snake River.

After hearing all the locals getting excited about the beginning of moose hunting season on August 20th, I expressed my interest in moose hunting to Tonya. She told me that Rich was going moose hunting the first weekend of hunting season. I got invited along with her, the girls and Rich down to their cabin on Snake River, which comes off Snake Lake.

I'd been to Snake Lake before in the winter on a snowmachine, but I had never been all the way out to the lake in the summer. Let me tell you, it's a pretty big difference from the frozen, snow-covered lake that I'd seen before.

In preparation for my hunting trip, I packed a backpack full of old clothes and made sure I had soft-point bullet for my Mosin rifle. Then I went down to the N&N Market and bought my resident hunting license for $25. (Hooray for being here a year and finally being a real "resident"!)

Now there are actually two moose hunting seasons in the fall in Dillingham. One is a regular harvest hunt, which requires you to take a bull with at least 50 inch antlers. The other is a Dillingham-resident-only hunt that starts earlier that allows you to take any bull moose. To participate in this hunt, you have to get a permit from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Under the permit hunt, you have to report back whether you kill a moose or not so they know how many animals were harvested and how many people hunted. I picked up my permit for free at the ADF&G building.

While I was preparing to hunt, everyone I talked to seemed to think that it was a foregone conclusion that I'd get a moose, since I was hunting with Rich. Apparently he's got a good reputation for getting his moose. I already knew from talking to Rich that he is a self-described lazy hunter. Moose often weigh hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Shooting one deep into the bush is a nightmare once you realize that it all has to be cut and carried out of the woods. Most locals try to shoot one as close to their boat as possible so that the packing is minimized. Rich doesn't want to shoot a moose any farther than a few hundred yards from the river. That sounded perfect to me.

You may be wondering why I bothered to get a permit for a moose. After all, Samara and I don't have a big deep freezer and we couldn't possibly eat an entire moose. Well, to be honest, I didn't expect to harvest a moose for myself. Rich was planning to get one for his family, but he's done enough hunting in his life that he didn't care if I did the shooting. I got a permit just in case I got to be the one that dropped the hammer on the moose.

On Friday, Tonya and I cut out of work early and did some quick shopping before meeting Rich at the landing at the end of Snake Lake Road. We had just enough time to stop on our way over the mountain so that I could sight in my rifle. At 25 and 50 yards, three quick aimed shots resulted in groups small enough to put a bullet solidly in a moose's vitals, so I was good to go.

We got to the landing and met Rich and the girls in the skiff. It's a small aluminum skiff with a outboard jet motor. It steps across the lake pretty well, even when there's a bit of whitecaps. Where it really shines, though, is when we get into the river, which is pretty shallow. Without a jet, you can't run the Snake River without running the risk of tearing up your outboard's prop.

Rich and Tonya own acres of land out along the Snake River. They've built a cabin right on a small bluff overlooking the river.

They laugh about how rudimentary it is, but it is actually pretty comfortable. It has a main floor and loft, with a wood stove for heating. There is a nice gas grill outside for cooking, as well as being able to cook over the fire. There an outhouse (with an actual toilet seat) and plenty of chairs to lounge around in. When you're relaxing in the wilderness, what more can you ask for?

Of course, Rich has his big boy toys out there. Not satisfied with just a 4-wheeler, he actually has a D3 bulldozer for blazing trails. Besides the skiff, he's also got a canoe for paddling the river.

After we got our stuff unpacked and dinner started, we went back up the river a little ways so that the girls could do some fishing. This river has lots of red salmon this time of year, which don't tend to bite much, and tons of world-class rainbow trout, which definitely will bite when you use salmon eggs as bait. I actually managed to catch a few fish myself on this trip (which we threw back, of course). I caught some rainbow trout, which put up a good fight. I also got a red salmon on the line, who seemed to just want to give up once I hooked him. One of the girls hooked a silver salmon, which made Tonya pretty jealous. She's always wanted to get a silver salmon on a fishing line, as opposed to the way she normally catches them in a big commercial net. This 6 to 7 pound silver wasn't going without a fight through, and finally broke the line before Rich could get it in the boat.

After a dinner of pork loin and potatoes, we got to bed. I slept in my sleeping bag on an army cot next to the wood stove. It was pretty cozy. The dogs, two big labs, slept downstairs with me.

The twins, Rich and Tonya all slept up in the loft in their beds. Like I said, not too primitive. Rich even had a generator to run for lights and radio once it got dark.

Rich set the alarm for early Saturday morning and we got up before the sun even rose. We got our gear together and took the canoe down to the river. I was hunting with my Russian surplus Mosin Nagant, but Rich hunts with an old 7mm mag Savage bolt action. His rifle looks rough. The bluing is practically gone from the barrel and there's an old sock wrapped around the stock that he uses to cover the scope. To get it ready for hunting season, he douses the thing in Marvel Mystery Oil and lets it drain off.

He's had a lot of people laugh at that rifle, but he can make some amazing shots with it. He says the first two shots are always extremely accurate, and after that, the pencil-thin barrel starts to heat up and the shots wander all over. He told me that he once won a few bet with a customer that he was helping his brother commercial guide by hitting a wounded brown bear just behind the ear from over 500 yards away with his ratty old rifle. Still, I thought it was pretty funny that my half-century old surplus rifle looked like the prom queen leaning next to his old Savage.

Saturday was a rainy morning.

We paddled down the river, watching for moose in the trees and over the tundra. The rain seemed to be keeping them all bedded down, though. Rich saw a cow in the trees at one point, and we found the spot a little farther down river where she'd crossed and left tracks.

I got a great picture of Rich with one of his classic expressions on his face. He looks like I just asked him how many legs a moose has.

As we paddled down, we passed a bald eagle's nest, with the baby eagle still hanging around even though he was getting pretty large. We also saw the mother and father flying around the area.

A little past the nest, we turned off into a slough that went back up and let out near the cabin. It was a long and winding waterway, and there was plenty of chance to watch for moose as we paddled along in the spitting rain.

After a while, we hit a beaver dam, and had to portage the canoe across. We took that chance to look around a bit, and saw some bear tracks, as well as a bunch of moose tracks. Rich figured they weren't very old, and indicated a cow, calf and a bull. That's when he decided they must all be bedded down because of the rain. There was a beaver swimming around the pond behind his dam, and when he saw us, he slapped his tail on the water and dove.

Before long, we got back on the water and headed further up the slough. There were some more beaver dams, but they had all been broken and the water was pouring through with no sign of the beavers.

We saw plenty of ducks during this time, but no moose. The slough put us right back up at the foot of the cabin, which was nice because it was getting to be breakfast time.

Rich and Tonya sure do eat well when they're in Ekuk or out at the cabin. We had bacon, eggs, toast and southern-style hash browns. After a nap, we decided to take a little fishing trip. We packed up the twins and Tonya, then headed up to the lake to another fishing spot.

After crossing the lake and finding the creek outlet we were looking for, there didn't turn out to be any fish hanging around.

There was a fat seagull, an otter, and lots of views of the pretty mountains, though.

Pretty quickly, we headed back down the river.

We found a better fishing spot and threw a few lines in the water. The girls really enjoy fishing, especially when it's so productive. They catch plenty of nice rainbow trout on the Snake River. It's always really easy to spot the red salmon as well.

Later that evening, we decided to take another try at the moose hunting. Rich and I took one of the girls, Caiti, and floated down the river in the skiff for a little ways, watching for moose.

Even though the rain had let up, we still didn't see much. Rich got off the boat and did a little stalking in the woods while Caiti and I fished.

When he got back, he said he'd seen a bull off the tundra, but when he tried to stalk closer, a swan took off and blew his cover. The bull disappeared into the woods. Since we weren't likely to get a moose that night, we did a bit more fishing and headed back.

That second night, I was plenty tired and slept well! Sunday morning, we got up early again and Rich and I took the other twin, Shari, with us on the moose hunt this time.

We floated down to the spot where Rich had seen some moose before and got out to look around. Rich found a shed antler, so he scraped and banged it on a tree for a while. That got one bull curious enough to peek his head out of the woods, but he was still way too far to shoot. We waited for a while along the shore for moose to show themselves, but didn't have any luck. There was one seriously pissed-off beaver hanging around our skiff, slapping his tail in the water, so we headed back up the river and did a bit more fishing. Then it was back to camp for breakfast.

That afternoon, we got all packed up and headed back across the river to home. It might not have been a productive hunting trip, but it was a pretty good fishing trip, and the views of the mountains and Alaska wilderness were amazing. I really enjoyed getting a chance to get out into the bush and away from the hustle and bustle of Dillingham, such that it is.

I hope to get another chance to enjoy Snake River before winter, but if not, I'm sure I'll be back the next summer.

A trip to Kentucky

2009-08-26T14:01:00.002-08:00

We leave out of Dillingham tonight and we expect to arrive in Kentucky late tomorrow night. We're looking forward to fountain drinks, shopping, going out to eat, visiting family, visiting friends and acting like huge tourists. Aaron is getting sworn in to the Kentucky Bar while we are there so he can get a job in Kentucky when we move back. I'm looking forward visiting people and I might even get to meet my new baby niece, if she is born before I leave. I can already tell that this visit is going to be too short.

Use Caution When Operating Power Tools

2009-08-10T22:49:00.003-08:00

I'll preface this blog entry by saying that I'm fine now and there's nothing to worry about.

I say that because this blog post is about me doing something stupid and hurting myself. I don't want anyone to be in suspense and worry about the outcome. I'm fine.

On to the story...

Last night about 10pm, I decide to do a little metalworking project. I sit down on the front porch with the angle grinder and the piece of metal in my lap and get ready to cut a piece off of it. Instead of putting the damn piece of metal in a vice, I'm holding it in one hand and the angle grinder in the other. Why I thought it was a good idea to work with an angle grinder one-handed in my lap, I'll never know.

I'm cutting along, doing fine, and the cut-off wheel catches in the metal and rips over it and into my knee. I pull up my pants leg, and I've cut a hole in the side of my knee. It's not really bleeding, but it was a good 3/4" long cut, which was stretched open maybe a half inch. I could see subcutaneous fat, but I guess I missed any tendons or major blood vessels. Very lucky.

I hop inside and have Samara grab the band-aid wash (Bactine). I irrigated it and stuck a paper towel on it and head off to the ER. Like I said, it barely bled at all and it wasn't even really hurting. I just knew it needed some stitches. Dr. Stout numbed it up with a local anesthetic, revised the edges where the grinder had left it dirty, cleaned it and stitched me up. Four stitches and a new tetanus shot was all it took.

They didn't give me any pain meds, because to be honest, it didn't really hurt. I took some Tylenol at home, but then I woke up in the middle of the night in pain. Couldn't get back to sleep until the next dose of Tylenol kicked in.

I called in sick for the first half of the day today, but managed to go to work for the second half. I was limping because it was sore. By the end of the day, though, I was used to walking on it again and wasn't limping so much. I'm staying dosed up with Tylenol and Ibuprofen.

I think, all in all, that I learned a very valuable lesson for very cheap. No real damage, but it could have been bad. Now I'll be smart enough to work safely with my grinder. I'll be using two hands and a vice from now on!

I have pictures of my knee, but I won't post them, because it's gross. E-mail me if you're morbidly curious to see the before and after. (Yes, I got a before picture at the hospital.)

Here's some pleasant pictures instead, of Samara and I sitting in the booth at the Muddy Rudder, waiting for our dinner.

So I'm thinking of a new tattoo, right above my knee, that says "Use Caution When Operating Power Tools." What do you think?

Moving, vandalism and other things that have happened

2009-08-06T08:24:00.013-08:00

First, I realize we haven't blogged in over a month. There is a good reason for that--we're pretty lazy and we were in the process of moving from our posh Dillingham Apartment to a cozy house by the airport. (You understood that cozy meant small, right?) Anyway, we were taking our time moving since the house needed some fixing and we are now property managers for that place and 4 other houses. Aaron fixed the moldy floor and put down new peel 'n stick tile down.

It looks pretty good. And We painted just about every surface of the house that could possible hold paint. I think we did a pretty good job. Now the only problem I have is storage. There is almost no storage space. No closets, very few cupboards and as it turns out the washer and dryer doesn't work.

But free rent, you can't really do too bad with free rent.

As it turns out my coworker lives in one of the rental properties we manage. This is how the not-so-harmful vandalism started. I had extra paint from painting all the walls, so I thought it would be cute to paint some of the rocks in her flower garden.

So she painted some rocks in my driveway and around my porch.

So then I painted her bird house and the side of her porch.

And she glued magazine ads to my newly painted red door--they came off, the paint was dry and not harmed.

So then I painted clam shells and glued them around her door from. (Sorry I don't have pictures of this.) But this has been going on since before we moved it. I am hoping that we will call a truce soon or else the houses are going to look pretty funky and not in a good way.

In other news, we made it through the summer solstice and the sun is starting to set earlier and earlier every day. I have proof that there is a moon, which I was starting to doubt for a while.

Aaron and I took a drive out to the harbor while the weather was still good and we actually got to see a sunset. It was probably close to midnight, but we hadn't been awake to see a sunset in a few months. It's seems wrong to stay up until 2am to watch the sun kinda set.

I Survived a Weekend Fishing in Ekuk

2009-06-29T21:36:00.017-08:00

This past weekend, I went commercial fishing. The Clerk of Court, Tonya, had invited me to come out to Ekuk where she and her husband Rich, and two daughters fish for salmon commercially with set nets. I really didn't know anything about how commercial fishing worked, but I was willing to help out and have a little working vacation in order to learn.

My parents left Thursday night for West Virginia, and I left Friday night after work for Ekuk. Of course, first I had to buy a 7-day commercial crewmember license, some raingear, boots, and a sleeping bag. I packed up all my clothes and gear, and picked up some groceries for Tonya and Rich.

Ekuk is a small community on the southern edge of Nushagak Bay. I think it might actually be on the Bristol Bay, which is what the Nushagak Bay empties into. Dillingham is on the north shore of Nushagak Bay, on the narrow end near the Wood and Nushagak Rivers. Ekuk is across on the south shore and around the end of a couple of points. (Straight across from Dillingham is a village called Nushagak, and then you can often see Clark's Point farther out. Ekuk is around on the other side of Clark's Point.) No one lives in Ekuk year round, except for the winter watchman at the cannery. Everyone else just goes there to fish. Some of the cabins are pretty nice, but others are a step above a trailer. It doesn't really matter. If you're there, you're there to fish.

To get to Ekuk, you fly or take a boat. That's about it. Besides me, Tonya's friend Jeanine and her dog Karma were also going for the weekend. We caught a ride on Bristol Bay Air, which is run by the lone pilot of the operation, John Paul. He's a good pilot with a well-maintained aircraft. But it's a small plane.

Samara dropped me at the airport at around 5pm, and I met up with Jeanie, her dog, John Paul and his other passenger. We walked through the gate and loaded our gear right onto the plane.

John Paul gassed up, we all jumped in, and he taxied around to the runway. Pretty soon, he throttled up and we were into the air.

It was neat to see Dillingham from the air as we took off. I didn't mind flying in the small plane at all. There's plenty to see when you're at 700 feet and cruising, and it felt perfectly safe. It's a ten or fifteen minute flight across the bay. There was plenty to see.

I spotted the hospital at the end of Kanakanak Road, then boats in the bay headed out for fishing.

All these little boats run drift nets to catch fish out in the bay.

We flew past Nushagak, with its giant white orthodox cross on the hillside.

Then we passed over Clark's Point, which has quite a few people by the name of Clark still living there. There were a lot of boats just off the shore there.

Pretty soon we started banking hard as we flew over Ekuk. I could see houses and cabins dotting the beach as we banked, and although I didn't realize it at the time, I could see the runway as well.

We went out and flew over the beach, and could see people down there fishing as the tide went out. Quickly, we banked back around parallel to the beach and started coming in for a landing. All I could see was tall grass out either window as we touched down on a gravel runway about as wide as a two-lane road.

It even narrowed and curved towards the end. Not a big runway, for sure.

After we jumped out, we unloaded our gear from the nose and tail of the plane, along with Tonya's boxes of groceries. We wandered over to the cabin, but no one was home. I went back and ferried everything from the plane to the cabin. (It was only a couple hundred yards.) Inside the cabin was a note that they had fish and we were welcome to come down to the beach.

We got our gear on, and I got Jeanie to take a picture of me in my clean raingear. This was the last time I bothered to wear the jacket all weekend, but I wore the bibs every time I went down to the beach.

I took a look around Ekuk, but there's not a lot to see.

Once we had our gear on, no one was driving by to hitch a ride with. Instead, we started walking. Tonya had told me they were only about a half mile down the beach. She lied. They were three or four miles. Thankfully when we got part of the way there, someone stopped and gave us a ride. We sat in the back of a dump-back fishing truck with our boots in icy water. (It keeps the fish fresh.)

When we got down to the site, they had already picked all of the fish out of the net and we ready to throw them into the truck. We helped them do that and then headed back up to camp.

At this point, I should probably stop and explain a little about how set-net commercial salmon fishing works. You get a site permit, then you get some nets. The nets are 50 fathoms long and about six feet wide. Along one side of the net is a line with floats spaced along it, called a cork line. On the other side is a long heavy line called a lead line. At either end is a bridle, which is basically a two-by-four that keeps the net spread open. You hook rope to the bridle at either end. Just like subsistence fishing, you have an anchor out in the ocean and two sets of pegs up on the beach. When you want your net in the water, you put rope on either end of your net, which runs down from the pegs to the net, then from the net through the anchor, and back up the beach to the other pegs. Fish swim into the mesh of the net, get caught by the gills, and then sit there in the water until you pull the net out. You pull the neat by loosening both ends of your lines from the pegs and hooking a cable clamp onto one rope and pulling the net in. When you want your net in the water, you pull the other rope to run it back out.

Most people use a pickup truck to pull their gear in and out of the water. Not Rich. Rich uses a Maruka tracked vehicle.

He can run it way out into the mud without sinking in and it will pull anything. Gear will break before his Maruka does. It makes it much easier than using a pickup truck to pull gear.

Once the gear is on the beach, everyone goes along the net with a small hook like a bent nail with a rubber handle. You use that to pull on the holes in the net and get the fish out. Salmon have gills and little fins under their bodies near the gills, and they tend to get stuck in the net right there. They can't get pulled out if the mesh gets stuck in the gills, so you need the hook to pull the mesh away from the gill as you work the fish out. Sometimes a fish gets so far into the net that it's easier to just pull it through. I like those.

Anyway, you pull the fish out and then throw it up above the net onto the beach in piles. Once they're all out of the net, you load them into the back of pickup trucks (preferably with a dump bed), put some slush ice and water over them, and drive up to the cannery to make a delivery.

The cannery offloads the fish into hoppers and weighs them. You get a ticket with the weight and your permit info, and they pay you later based on the price per pound.

The fishing season is very dependent on the escapement of salmon. You have to make sure there's enough salmon going up river to spawn for next year, so the Department of Fish and Game tells you when you can and can't fish. They're called openings. When it's open, you fish. Except, of course, that in Ekuk there's one damn cannery. So if they get overwhelmed, or if they're not happy with the quality of fish, they may tell you to stop fishing. You have to do it, pretty much, because if they won't take the fish, then there's nowhere to put them and you can get a serious ticket from the wildlife troopers for wasting fish. A lot of fishermen would love to have the foreign markets come in to buy fish, since they'd pay more and could handle more volume, but so far the fishery is closed to foreign markets.

So we helped load fish that first night and then delivered them. Then it was back to the cabin for dinner of BLTs. They eat pretty good at fish camp. We went to bed before too late, and we were back up at 3am to set more gear. You get two tides a day, and the tides dictate when you can fish. I didn't have to get up, but I was there to learn, so I accompanied Rich, Tonya and their crewmember Kali down to the beach. I had to ride in the back of the truck and it was a little cold, but I learned how to set gear.

Then it was back to bed for about 5 hours, and then we got up to fish again. That morning when we pulled the gear, there was about 850 pounds of fish in the net. That wasn't bad, and it gave me a pretty easy introduction to picking fish and loading. After we pulled gear, we set it right back out again and then went back for breakfast.

A little later in the morning, we went back down to pull the gear again. Here's everyone getting ready.

Sometimes you pull it on the incoming tide and sometimes you pull it when the tide is going out. It's harder to pull on an incoming because as you pick fish, the tide is coming in, so you have to be fast before the tide covers the whole beach. It comes in right up to the bluff at Rich's fishing spot.

When we got there, the fish were hitting the net like crazy. Rather than pull the gear right away, we sat down and watched them swimming into the net. Rich and Tonya drove back up and brought down a second truck and some snacks. We relaxed and just let the fish do their thing.

Here are some pictures of our morning fishing adventure.

It was low tide then, and once the tide had turned a little, Rich pulled in the gear and we picked 3200 pounds of fish. (Well, to be fair, that included a pile of fish that fell out of the broken tailgate at the next site down, which one of the crewmembers there told us we were welcome to.) That was more of a workout, but I was getting better at picking fish.

I went with Rich to do the delivery on this load.

We went back up to the cabin and relaxed for a little while and had dinner. Rich set gear again a bit later.

It was a good thing that we did relax a little. I ate both porkchops and steak, along with rice and cabbage salad. I went back for thirds.

At around 9pm, we went back down to check the gear. The fishing was looking pretty good. Rich was running the Maruka and Kali and I were standing by to put the cable clamp on the line to pull in the net. Tonya was standing by to loosen the rope at the other end. When we went to pull the gear, everything went a little crazy. The bridle snapped as Rich went to pull, then when we were running around trying to get the clamp on the cork line to pull the gear in, it slipped off a couple of times. The cable clamp swung around and got caught inside the track of the Maruka and Rich ran it over with the inner wheels a few times before we got it out. It was broken then, and we had to scramble for another cable clamp. Finally, Kali and I jumped into the surf, and I held up the cork line while she popped the cable clamp on it. We pulled the gear up onto the beach a bit at a time that way until all of the net was above the water line. I was panting and out of breath by the time we were done.

That's when we realized why gear was breaking. There were a lot of fish in the net.

Rich estimated 10,000 pounds at first, but that estimate went up a few times as we picked at the net for 3 hours to get all the fish out. Luckily it was overcast and we had pulled the gear up into the runoff from the creek nearby, which meant the fish sat on wet gravel and didn't bake in the sun. It was after midnight when we got all the fish out of the net. We seemed to pick forever, even though we had one of Rich's cousins, Garth, as well as Tonya, Rich, Jeanie, the 1o-year-old twins Caiti and Shari, Kali and me all picking.

Another one of Rich's cousins came along and brought his truck, so that we had 4 trucks full of fish to take to the cannery. That was good. Throwing all those fish into the backs of the trucks probably took another hour. When all the fish was offloaded, we had pulled 15,326 pounds of fish on a single pull of the net. That's the second biggest pull Rich has ever made and he's been fishing with his family in Ekuk since he was a toddler. I'm glad I was there for it.

We celebrated with some drinks and sitting around chatting for a while afterwards, and didn't get to bed until 5am.

Thankfully the cannery had cut us off from fishing for a bit, so we all slept in Sunday morning. Then Jeanie and I hung around all day waiting for our ride home, since we didn't know who we were going to ride with at first, then once John Paul agreed to take us, he had other flights to make, then fish to pull at 8:30pm before he could fly.

When we finally got onto the plane, it was probably 10:30. John Paul was in a hurry and said he had six people to take back to Dillingham. Three of us, the dog and John Paul took off from Ekuk and landed almost immediately on the runway in Clark's Point. We all got out, unloaded our gear and waiting will John Paul flew back to Ekuk and got more people. Turns out that one of them was a pilot for Grant Aviation, who had a slightly bigger (small) plane at Clark's Point. He loaded Jeanie, her dog, and two guys from National Geographic out here to write a story about fishing, and me into the plane and we flew from Clark's Point to Dillingham.

Samara had been waiting for a little while by then, unfortunately. Worse yet, I couldn't smell myself apparently. As soon as I got in the car, she said I stank like rotten fish. She had to pull over and barf almost right away. I felt pretty bad, but I jumped in the shower and washed my clothes as soon as I got home.

I was pretty worn out Monday at work. I almost fell asleep at my desk. I have a lot of sore muscles and some sunburn as well. Nevertheless, I got a fishing experience that was at least as hard as what those guys do on Deadliest Catch, according to Rich, who has fished crab before. It was worth the pain and smell. I really enjoyed myself.

Cannery Tour

2009-06-29T20:29:00.007-08:00

It's been a few days now since my parents left. They flew out of Dillingham last Thursday evening, and were in West Virginia again by Friday morning. While they were still here, we tried to do a few more of the touristy things in Dillingham.

One of those things was the tour at the Peter Pan Cannery. It was a nice tour, but at two hours long, it was also hard on my feet. Natalie, Dad, Mom and I learned a lot about fish processing, though.

We started out by getting some lab coats and hairnets to wear.

There were a couple of old men from New Stuyahok in the net loft, working on putting nets on the cork lines.

The cannery is very old, and so some things, like the decks, are interesting. Giant slabs of lumber for the dock.

They also use an old Model A Ford to pull around their welding rig.

The boilermen have decorated their bike.

We all looked great in hair nets.

Even Dad and Mom.

We saw where they filet the fish and vacuum pack them for shipment.

We also saw the huge warehouse where they store things like cans for packing salmon into.

They have to replace pieces of the floor periodically with new beams.

There were boats coming up to the cannery to offload salmon.

And more boats steaming by.

Drift net boats are interesting.

They had some local girls working for DNR. They were measuring fish and taking scales for DNA samples to learn more about where the various salmon come from and where they go to spawn.

We also saw the machine that cuts off the tails and heads, and then uses a roller to smoosh out the guts.

The canning line was pretty interesting. Once the cans are sealed, they're rolled into the ovens in big carts.

And then when they come out, a big machine picks up a whole bunch at a time with a magnet and puts them neatly on a pallet.

I probably should have written about the cannery tour earlier, as now I'm forgetting all the highlights. I hope the pictures give you some idea. After the cannery tour, we had dinner at the house of Samara's boss. She, her husband and children are nice. It was another good opportunity for everyone to eat fresh salmon (and some pizza, which Natalie liked).

The day that they left, mom did get one last chance to walk down towards the beach and enjoy the view.

Overall, the weather stayed overcast and rainy for their visit, but I think that my family had a good time visiting Dillingham. It's certainly a different place to live, and they got to see all the highlights, from the lakes and mountain views, to the moose and bald eagles. They got to experience the Bristol Bay fishing season by watching subsistence net fishing and eating fresh salmon. Not your typical vacation, and a long way to fly to see us, but we were happy they came.

Somehow, though, I don't think we'll be able to convince them to take the flight again before we move back to Kentucky at the end of next year.

Aleknagik Lake and a Moose!

2009-06-23T14:58:00.005-08:00

Samara had to return to work today, but my family is still here visiting. Today we decided to take a drive out to Aleknagik Lake and see the view. There's not a lot to do out there, but it's a really pretty area. Since the weather was okay (cloudy, but not raining), we headed down the 20 mile road to the lake.

Before you get to Aleknagik Lake, there are a couple of small lakes on either side of the road. We stopped and took some pictures there.

Then it was back on the road for the next mile up to the lake itself. Natalie really loved it. We took a bunch of pictures. There was a great view of the lake and surrounding mountains, and plenty of people were ferrying their groceries and whatnot across the lake to the City of Aleknagik on the north shore. There was also a float plane parked near the boat ramp.

On the way back into town, we were cruising right along when I came over a hill and there was a moose and her calf. Natalie was very excited. I only snapped a few pictures before they trotted off into the brush, and mom wasn't able to get out in time to get a good picture with her regular film camera. Here's the two pictures I took in regular size and with close-ups.

That's the second time I've seen a moose and calf on Lake Road. This time it was right outside the Dillingham city limits. I'm usually pretty unlucky in being able to see wildlife, so I was worried that Natalie wouldn't get to see a moose while she was here. I shouldn't have worried so much. My luck has turned, and moose are all over the place now.

We're headed down to culture camp to help Samara out with teaching the local kids how to do things like clean and cut fish for smoking. I hope to get some more pictures down there.

A Visit From My Family

2009-06-21T20:41:00.006-08:00

We're enjoying a visit from my parents and sister here in Alaska. They flew up here to Dillingham all the way from West Virginia. It was a very long flight. They left very early in the morning on Wednesday from Charleston, West Virginia, flew to Cincinnati, then Seattle, from there to Anchorage and finally to Dillingham. They arrived at 5pm our time, and were plenty tired from the trip.

I took them for a quick trip around the town, and it didn't take long for them to see most of Dillingham. They've been enjoying the stay. But of course, the most exciting part is the sightseeing outside town.

We took a trip down to the end of Wood River Road for a view of the Wood River, the fishing boats and the mountains.

There was a boat unloading some fish there. And Natalie immediately wanted to take some pictures of the mountains.

We had a pizza for dinner at the Windmill Grille. It's not the best pizza ever, but the pizza is one of the better options on the menu at the Windmill Grille. Samara and Dad both enjoyed an Alaska-brewed beer.

The next scenic stop was Kanakanak Beach, to see if any folks had caught fish in their nets. We didn't see many fish, but we did get some nice pictures of the family at the edge of the Nushagak Bay.

Kanakanak Beach also gives a slightly different view of downtown Dillingham.

I think one of the best sightseeing trips we've taken since my family got here is up Snake Lake Road. This is where Anthony and I started our hike when we saw the brown bear. Natalie especially wanted to head out there. We drove up Snake Lake Road to the lookout point. Everyone was pretty impressed with the view.

These are some pretty good pictures of the mountains around Dillingham, which don't usually photograph well.

It has been pretty cloudy for the whole trip, but at least no one is getting sunburned. We went farther down Snake Lake Road and got a good view of the lake.

Our next restaurant trip was to the Muddy Rudder. It's a favorite of mine, and I think everyone else liked it as well. Natalie really enjoyed her milkshake.

Dad had a seafood alfredo, Natalie demolished a cheeseburger, Mom had the grilled halibut and Samara and I both ordered the fried halibut sandwich. Definitely a recommended dining experience in Dillingham. Too bad they're only open in the summer. I miss it all winter long.

The family have all been taking pictures as well, but those are most of the pictures I've gotten. We also went down to the beach at Snag Point, below our apartment, and collected a ton of sea glass. It all seems to wash up there when people throw their glass bottles over the side of the boat. You can find lots of rock-tumbled, smooth pieces of glass all along the beach. We picked up a bunch!

I also introduced everyone around at the courthouse, which was nice. They got to see my office. Natalie, Mom and Samara went shopping at the gift shop at the airport. We also took a tour of the Sam Fox museum. It had some neat history of the Alaska Natives, local fishing and prehistoric animals native to the area. It's a small museum, but not bad.

We also checked out our new digs. Samara and I are moving to a cheaper place to live, out by the airport. (It's quite a bit cheaper--it's free!) We'll be managing the property for the absentee owner. The place we're moving into will take some work to get into shape. I might even be able to get dad to help me out a little while he's here.

Natalie has been keeping her eye out our window for a bald eagle that lives on the bluffs. We saw him out the window one time, but since then only dad has been lucky enough to spot him again. I took a few pictures from the bluff tonight, but all I could see was boats and seagulls.

More pictures as we have time. The family is here for another few days--they don't leave until Thursday. We haven't even gotten out to Aleknagik Lake yet, so I can guarantee a few more pictures then!

Beach BBQ with the cops and booze

2009-06-15T21:33:00.010-08:00

This past Sunday was the Court house Beach BBQ out on Kanakanak beach. The court people invited everyone that helps out the court including the local cops, troopers, the district attorney, the prosecutor, the judge, the court clerks and all the families of each. (I invited Erin because Anthony is still in Fairbanks.) I have to say this is the first time that I have been to a beach bbq that when the cops came, they didn't come to break up the fun. No, they were there for some pretty good potato salad and bbq chicken and ribs. This is also the first time that I have been to a beach bbq with booze and the cops didn't take it away and issue tickets. (In case you were wondering, you can drink in public here.) It was a balmy 60 degrees with the wind blowing. I got some sun on my face that or wind burn. The wind was blowing that today. But the sun was shining and it was looking to be a great day.

Tonya's husband rich manned the grill, while Aaron manned the bonfire.

Erin and I walk along the beach to watch people pull in their nets and ask stupid questions like "Does it hurt to get bitten by a salmon?" (They have teeth!) That of course leads to them asking a question, "So, where ya from?" When I say Kentucky, I know they are thinking of the Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials and wondering. Meanwhile, I am taking pictures of the ulgy, muddy salmon they are pulling out of their nets.
I am told this is a dog salmon. It doesn't have a beak or a red stripe indicating a king salmon or a red salmon.
I have no idea what kind of fish this is. If it had whiskers, I would say catfish. See how little I know about fish!
Again, do they bite? While you can't really tell, they are still flopping. It makes me nervous and twitchy.

We walk back down to the bonfire where Lori and the new cop in town are chit-chatting about the differences between living in a big city and living here in Dillingham. You'll notice that since he is in uniform, he is only drinking sodas. (I wanted to point that out.) Other people were having a nice beer with their ribs, but not Dillingham's finest.

Rich finally has all the ribs and chicken cooked so he sits down and enjoys the fruits of his labor by the fire. He did a really great job. Also note that a lot of people are wearing hoodies. It was cold and windy.

I forgot to mention that this was the same beach and the same nets that not 2 weeks ago a beluga whale got caught in the nets. I know this may upset some readers, but that whale did not go to waste. Since the whale couldn't be saved, it was distributed to memebers in the community. We were hoping to see the whale, but by the time we got to the beach, there wasn't much left of it. I won't post any pictures of the close ups, but let me assure you, there was little left of it.

We also saw a bald eagle. At least Aaron thinks it is. I thought it looked like a vulture. You can decide.

He wasn't exactly Paddington bear.

2009-06-07T23:18:00.006-08:00

We had a birthday party for Saramay yesterday, and Anthony was antsy the whole time we were there because it was nice outside and he wanted to go for a hike to scout out places for fishing. I promised him that I'd go hiking with him all day today.

So today, we got our packs together and went hiking. He has a few places that he wants to scout out to see if there's any good trout fishing, but I convinced him to head for a place off Snake Lake Road that we had been on snowmachine before. It's a bit off of the road itself, but it's a nice little valley with a stream where there's usually lots of moose. (Except, of course, when I've been there, but there have been moose every time Anthony went without me before.)

We drove out (Aleknagik) Lake Road towards the start of Snake Lake Road. As we were driving out there, with his dog Sofie happily sleeping in my lap as we drove, we came up over a hill and there was a moose right in the middle of the road. It was huge! It was actually a mother with a calf, which was much smaller. The calf was about the size of a Great Dane and the mother was as tall as any thoroughbred I've ever seen. It was a seriously large animal. Anthony's camera was still in his backpack, so we didn't get any pictures as they trotted off into the woods. It was pretty neat, though, and the closest I've come to a moose yet.

We turned off onto Snake Lake Road and drove up to the overlook point. This is a little area of broken rock to the left of the road. The road itself actually goes up and across the side of a mountain, so there's always mountain on the right and a drop-off into the valley to the left. The overlook spot is on the left and gives a great view of the area. Anthony took a panaramic picture of it.

We got unloaded, both of us with our packs, me carrying my single-shot shotgun and Sofie bounding along beside us. The stream we were headed to is about 2 miles down from the road. First we had to get down the hill through a lot of brush. It's really slow going through this stuff, but we made our way from clearing to clearing and got down into a wooded area with alders and spruce. It was easier going then. We saw a lot of moose scat. At some point we came across some scat I didn't recognize as moose, and there was a lot of it. Our educated guess was that it was bear scat, so I put a slug round into the shotgun, which I had been carrying empty.

As we came down through the trees, we could see open country to left, so we weaved out there. It was really marshy tundra, though, so we moved back into the trees a bit. After a few minutes of walking like this, we came out into the open again and it was less marshy. I had Anthony wait up for me and as I caught up to him, I turned around.

A flash of brown caught my eye, and I pointed it out to Anthony. It was a grizzly bear. I would have estimated from memory that it was about 300 yards away, but we measured with Google Earth as well, and it said it was more like 1/4 mile. No matter what the actual distance was, it felt close. We were in the open, with trees to our back, and the bear was across the open area.

He was lumbering along as he was coming down off of the ridge between us and the road, and while he was travelling parallel to the road, he wasn't walking perpendicular to us. In fact, as he was coming off the ridge, he seemed to be pointed straight at us.

We immediately froze, and Anthony took off his backpack and clipped Sofie to it. He started his camera rolling in video mode, and unholstered his .45 pistol. I held my shotgun ready just in case. The proximity of such an enormous, powerful animal made me really nervous, and he kept lumbering along mostly perpendicular to us, but closing the gap slightly. Anthony and I were immediately afraid that he would run into the trees that we just came through that were now to our left as we faced the bear, and then we would lose sight of him.

The wind was in our faces, so I don't think that the bear actually knew we were there, so the first thing we did was yell really loudly to try to get its attention. On the video Anthony shot, you can hear us yelling, but the bear doesn't even seem to notice us. He is still just moving at the same angle to us, towards the trees. Anthony suggests that I fire a shot into the air to startle him. I tell him that I'm switching to buckshot, so that I don't waste a slug in case the bear comes towards us. Then he says that he could fire a shot from his pistol. I really didn't want to waste any ammunition for the shotgun or his .45 pistol, though, so I tell him that I'll fire off a round from the .380 pocket pistol that I was also carrying.

In the video, you can hear Anthony say that he's going to cover his ears. Then I pointed the little pistol into the air, cover my closer ear with one hand and fire off two rounds in fairly quick succession. A split second after the first shot, the bear's head snaps up and he looks in our direction and then begins running full tilt perpendicular to us and into the woods. I had to recock the pistol because the magazine slipped out a little, and then I fired a third shot into the air. The bear just keeps running for the woods.

(Anthony got a video that's about a minute and a half long, from the time we see the bear, yell at him, and then finally shoot into the air and scare him off. It's about 30 megabytes, though, so I made a shorter clip (3.5 mb) that starts when he suggests shooting in the air, and ends when the bear hits the treeline. It's a bit shaky, but watch the bear's head snap up as it hears the first shot, and look how fast it runs.)

As soon as the bear hits the tree line, we decide to head in the exact opposite direction, through the open tundra where we can keep a good eye behind us. Anthony let Sofie loose, and she immediately began running towards where we last saw the bear. We both yelled for her as we headed the other direction, and she quickly realized that we weren't going to follow her towards the bear, and ran back to us.

Anthony looked back as we were moving across the tundra and said that he saw the bear heading back the way it had originally came, up towards the road. That didn't really leave us any good options for turning around and going back to the car right away, so we headed further out into the bush towards the stream.

We found the stream easily. Anthony took a nice panoramic shot of it.

We planted ourselves down in the valley next to it. Anthony scouted around for some good fishing spots while Sofie and I relaxed for about an hour.

When Anthony finally got done looking around, we packed back up and headed back out of the valley. At the top of the ridge, there was a game trail and we saw some fairly good-size bear prints, but the camera battery was dead, so we didn't get any more pictures.

Almost as soon as we got into the trees to cross back over to the open tundra, Anthony found a giant moose antler that had been shed. We looked around a little for the other one, but there was just one. He lugged it all the way back to the car. It was a pretty good find--definitely an Alaskan touch to decorate their house. Apparently people find them in the woods all the time when the moose shed them.

We kept to the open tundra for the entire trip back to the car, except when we got to the mountain itself, where we had to crawl and scramble our way through brush that even a bear would probably avoid. I was exhausted by the time we reached the car again, and very happy not to have seen our friend the bear twice.

I think our little episode with the bear was scarier when it was happening that it really needed to be. Like I said, when we checked the distance on Google Earth, it said it was actually 1/4 mile away, but it sure didn't seem like it at the time. Also, if the bear ran 30 mph, which I understand they can when they're charging, it could have reached us in less than half a minute. That would not have given us much time to shoot and reload a single-shot shotgun, if it became necessary. Then again, even brown or grizzly bears are usually skittish around people unless they have cubs or you surprise one by walking right up on it in the bush. We were in the open, so that was probably the safest situation. Nevertheless, it was both scary and pretty amazing.

Our 6th Anniversary

2009-06-04T13:23:00.002-08:00

Yesterday was our 6th anniversary. We celebrated by taking a long lunch at the local hot spot known as the Muddy Rudder. Aaron ordered the halibut sandwich and I got the patty melt. We then went home and played internet and watched tv before we had to head back work. I then stayed late at work due to a all staff meeting. When I finally managed my way back to the house, we had company. And then we went to go look at some new and different rental property. We then drove to the local grocery store for slushies. All and all, it was a pretty good day.

There was this one year, we were pretty poor. I think it was about 3 years ago when Aaron and I both were in school and for our anniversary dinner we went to Long John's Silver. It was super cheesey, but it didn't matter. We were in it together and I knew that we weren't going to be poor and in school forever. Now, we're out of school and not as poor, but still poor and very happy.

Deputy Magistrate

2009-06-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

I am now a judicial officer for the State of Alaska. My deputy magistrate certification arrived last week while I was out of town, and I was sworn in today by Judge Torrisi.

I just have to do five hearings while supervised by a judge or magistrate and then I'll be doing weekend arraignments by myself once a month.

A year out of law school and I'm working as a judge before I've even tried a case.

Not bad.

When is a 5-year adjustable rate mortgage a good idea?

2009-05-31T00:36:00.000-08:00

When is a 5-year adjustable rate mortgage a good idea?

When you're me.

The conventional wisdom is that when the market is good, you should just get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage to take advantage of the low interest rates by locking them in. When we bought our house, the market was good. Not great, but good. Nevertheless, since we were buying just as I was going into the first year of 3 years of law school, we opted for the 5-year ARM. Adjustable rate mortgages give you a fixed rate for the first few years, and then they vary each year after that. The rate is lower for the initial period. We figured we'd probably sell our house once I was out of law school for two years, so the 5-year ARM worked for us and got us a lower rate.

Little did we know. I did a dual-degree program and took 4 years to finish school, and then we went to Alaska for 2 years. So our mortgage rate is adjusting this year, and we're nowhere close to selling our house.

I got the Notice of Intent to Change the Interest Rate on Adjustable Rate Mortgage from our bank today. Scary stuff, right? Our rate is gonna go up like everyone fears, right?

I laughed out loud. Our rate is tied to the 1 Year US Treasury Security Weekly Average. Our initial ARM rate was 5.375%. The new rate for this next year is 3.25%.

What can I say? Sometimes you step in shit and come out smelling like roses.

Our new mortgage payment is a fiver short of $300. (That's down from $350.) We'll keep paying the $400 we always pay, of course, but now that'll be more money going towards our principal.

Hooray for the economy being in the crapper!

(As you probably surmised, Samara and I returned safely from Fairbanks. The flights were uneventful, we took most of the day off from work on Friday, Dillingham has turned green, I went hiking with Anthony, and then today we had dinner with Erin, Anthony and Saramay. Shaping up to be a good weekend so far, except for a little rain.)

Stampede Trail Hike (Into the Sort-Of Wild)

2009-05-28T21:15:00.032-08:00

I made good on the promise I made in yesterday's blog post. Today I hiked the Stampede Trail in Alaska's interior.

First, some background. Samara is here in Fairbanks for training, and I just decided to come along with her so that we could spend some time together outside of Dillingham. We arrived in Fairbanks a few days early and did some shopping along with various touristy activities. When I asked people what we should do in Fairbanks, more than a few folks thought it would be a good idea to drive the couple hours down to Denali National Park and do some hiking. Samara and I had actually planned to do that, but she ended up getting sick on Tuesday. It just didn't seem like such a good idea to take a really long drive when she wasn't feeling well.

There isn't a bookstore in Dillingham, so we picked up a lot of new books when we first arrived in Fairbanks. One of the ones I picked out was Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. This is a true story about a young man from a good family, Chris McCandless, who took up a vagabond lifestyle, traveling around the United States. His ultimate destination was Alaska, where he ended up in Fairbanks. From there, he traveled down to a road outside Denali National Park called Stampede Trail. This road was built by mining companies in the 1960s. It's a 50 mile road to nowhere, and about halfway down this road is an old city bus that was put out there to provide shelter for the miners using the road. Chris went out to the old bus alone and tried to live off the land. He arrived in the spring, and by the beginning of fall, his body was found by some moose hunters. He had starved to death, despite apparent success in hunting small game and gathering local roots and berries.

The book contained a map of the area.

The road on the right side is the highway to Denali National Park. Stampede Trail (now known as Stampede Road) goes west from the road, just north of Healy. Some important landmarks to note on the map are Eightmile Lake and the line indicating the end of the maintained road. There are a few rivers that cross the trail, and none have bridges. The abandoned bus is about 10 to 15 miles off the end of the maintained road.

I didn't honestly think I would make it all the way to the bus, but I figured that if I drove down there to do a little hiking, that it might be an interesting experience. So when Samara went to training at 8am this morning, I got in the car and drove down to the Stampede Trail. It's a two hour drive, and I had to be back around 5pm, so that only left a couple hours for hiking each direction (in and out) of the trail.

It was a beautiful drive down towards Denali.

As I got closer, I could see the mountains in the distance.

In about 2 hours, I reached Stampede Road.

Stampede is paved for the first few miles. I noted my odometer and figured I'd make it about 10 miles in before I had to park and walk the rest of the trail. The paving actually gave out after 4 miles or so, right after a little hippie commune/bed & breakfast called Earthsong. After that, it was all river-rock gravel.

It's beautiful country. Of course, I only made it to about the eight mile mark before the maintained road ended. (You could probably guess that based on the name Eightmile Lake on the map.) It went quickly from a two-car-wide gravel road to a single-car gravel road with large potholes filled with water. I stopped at a little pull-off right before the road went to a single-car width and parked.

It was definitely a good choice to stop there. As you can see, our white rental car is not a four-wheel drive monster. I'm pretty sure I wasn't even supposed to take it off the paved road, but considering how many gravel parking lots there are in downtown Fairbanks, I don't feel too bad about going down Stampede Road as far as I did.

You can see my equipment leaning against the car, there. Here's a closer picture.

The backpack was on sale at Sierra Trading and it's a great bag. Samara bought me the carabiner and carabiner-handled coffee cup that you see clipped on. I have a filtration water bottle and regular water bottle packed inside, along with lunch, a change of clothes and a jacket. The shotgun is a single-shot H&R 12 gauge. I packed buckshot and slugs for bear protection. That might seem a little silly to those of you sitting in your living rooms in the lower 48, but I was hiking alone in an area where brown bears (grizzlies) and black bears are both abundant. (In fact, that's what a lot of people go to Denali to see.) When Samara told someone at her conference today that I was hiking Stampede Trail, they expressed concern about bears. That made me feel even better that I made the investment in a shotgun. (Which, by the way, was an amazingly good deal. Just over $100 for a gun that provides bear protection, and I can also take it duck or grouse hunting in Dillingham.)

At this point, it was a little after 11am, and I started down the trail.

As you can see, it was very muddy. I had to dodge around some pretty big puddles, some of which took up the entire trail. It was fairly easy hiking, though. I had almost expected the road to simply end and have to pick my way through the overgrowth. I was worried about actually being able to follow the old trail. I needn't have worried. If I'd had four-wheel drive or an ATV, I could have driven the entire route I took.

The scenery was, obviously, very pretty.

There were rolling hills and mountains to see at first, but before long, there was a lot of brush on either side of the trail. That's when I started seeing small game.

See it? How about a little closer...

I'm no expert, but I believe this is a spruce grouse. It was skittish enough to run away if I approached too quickly or too closely. Nevertheless, I got within five feet of one of these guys. I should think it would be easy to take these guys with a shotgun using birdshot, or even a .22 rifle. They're the size of a small chicken, so they should have a decent amount of meat.

One thing I noticed as I was walking along was that some of the trees seemed to have a fair amount of missing bark. My educated guess is that the moose were eating the bark before the plantlife around here starting greening up.

As I came down the backside of a hill, I started to get a nice view of the hills off to my left.

There was a creek running beside the trail as well.

I didn't see any actual beavers, but I did notice some beaver activity. This tree appeared to have been downed by a beaver.

There was plenty of evidence of human activity on this trail, but this tree clearly wasn't chopped with a hatchet or axe.

Speaking of evidence of humans, I wasn't the only one on the trail. After I'd gone a little ways, a guy came down the trail behind me on a mountain bike. He surprised me, to be honest. He stopped and chatted for a minute. He had just moved up to Healy and was going to see how far down the trail he could bike. We discussed the relative merits of a shotgun versus pepper spray for bears. While I'll spoil the end now and tell you that I didn't see any bears (or any large game at all), I'd still rather have a shotgun in hand than pepper spray in my backpack if I were to come across a large brown bear.

The other evidence of human activity on the trail was the ATV tracks that followed the entire course and the fire pits that I stumbled across somewhat regularly. There was also evidence that folks liked to camp down this trail. Someone had taken a home-made pickup camper and dropped it off into the woods.

It was just twenty yards off the trail, across a small creek.

As I went on down the trail, I saw plenty more small game, such as this hare.

I saw a few of these. Just as in Dillingham, they're turning from winter white to summer brown. They were skittish, but only if I approached quickly. The other small game I saw were a couple of squirrels. I'm used to eastern gray squirrels. These guys were brown, and they were pissed off that I was in their territory. Both squirrels I saw chittered at me loudly and stood their ground until I was very close.

I ran across another makeshift campsite.

I don't know what this area was like when Chris McCandless walked in here in the early 1990s, but it's hardly the most remote area of the Alaska bush any more. I guess it probably wasn't that remote when he was here either. That's one reason it's so sad that he starved just 30 miles or less from a main highway.

After a bit, I started to run into places where the streams and creeks crossed the trail.

I don't know if any of these bits of water were the ones marked on the map. In all honesty, since I didn't reach the bus or any other definite landmark before turning back, I have no way of knowing how far I hiked. I did hike for 2 hours in, so assuming an average speed of 1.5 to 2 miles per hour, we can assume I made it 3 or 4 miles past the end of the maintained road. That should have gotten me past the first stream marked on the map and possibly to the Savage River. I know the rivers flow quite differently depending on the season, but I just don't know if I really reached any of the ones that are actually on the map.

It doesn't help that the map is probably outdated. For at least one section of the trail, a creek had decided that it would take the path of least resistance and route itself over the actual trail.

I had to take a detour through the pines off the side of the trail.

There I encountered another angry squirrel. He surprised me, but not enough to need to use any buckshot on him. He sure was loud and angry, though. If he'd had a shotgun, he probably would have used it on me.

I had planned to hike until 1pm and then turn around. I passed the mountain biker coming back my direction, and he asked how far out I thought the abandoned bus was. Apparently he knew about Chris McCandless, and had wanted to see the bus. He didn't get that far, though, and he was moving much faster than I was. Shortly after we parted ways again, I reached another stream crossing the trail.

Given the time, and since I knew I wasn't anywhere close to the bus, I decided to have a little break and then turn back.

I stopped for lunch next to an old firepit that was on a bank just above this stream.

It was a nice view from where I sat and ate my sandwich and chips.

I had read online that this wasn't a very beautiful hike and that Denali was a better choice. I disagree. Sure, there weren't lots of mountains, but it was still a very pretty area. I think the locals would rather discourage people that are only interested in the area because of the bestselling book, but I think it's worth the hike to see such a notable area.

Here's me at the turnaround point.

As I was hiking back, I saw a couple of ducks sitting in a stream, but they took off before I could get their picture. Still, the stream itself was pretty.

I took some pictures of a couple of piles of scat that I crossed on the trail, but Samara says scat isn't very photogenic and that I shouldn't post it. So I won't. But my guess is that it was moose scat, and that it was old.

On the way back up, I was glad I had turned around when I did. My right ankle started to get really sore and I was slowed down considerably. I did see another spruce grouse on the way out.

I also saw some tracks. The first ones I think were moose, and Samara agreed at once when she saw the picture.

The second set were bear, I think. They're very faint, so it's hard to tell. I'll post them anyway, and you can decide for yourself.

There are two tracks in that picture, running diagonally from bottom left to top right. You can see separate toe prints on each one. (Ignore the obvious ATV tracks at the bottom right of the photo and concentrate on the fainter tracks in the middle.) I compared those to some images online, and they certainly could be bear. I didn't see any actual bears, though. Of course, between the mountain biker running the trail ahead of me and me yelling out "hey-yup" every few minutes, I hopefully scared off any large predators. I didn't have any desire to see a bear up close and personal.

When I arrived back at the car, there was a great view of the mountains to the south in Denali.

The mountains were really big compared to the ones we get in Dillingham, and unlike the ones around Dillingham, I was able to get a better picture of these.

It threatened to rain on me all day, but it never quite opened up. I was thankful for that. The clouds looked ugly a couple of times, though. I wore a jacket for the first hundred yards of the trail, but I stripped down to my t-shirt after that. My pack actually made my back sweat a lot, and the pace kept me warm enough, even though it was a cooler day.

I took a picture of the note I left on the dashboard of the car. Even though Samara had told me that she was going to call the Alaska State Troopers if she didn't hear from me or see me by 6pm, I wanted to be on the safe side.

I wrote that note on the back of the author's bio page from Into The Wild (which I carried with me for the map it contained). If Chris McCandless had left a note like this for someone, perhaps he wouldn't have died a mere 30 miles from help. Better safe than sorry.

On the way out, I got another good picture of Eightmile Lake. There's a small cabin at the edge of the lake on the right.

I also got at least one good parting shot at the mountains as I was winding my way back down Stampede Road to the highway.

I wasn't even off the Stampede Trail when Samara called me on our pre-paid cellphone. (There was no cellphone service after the maintained road ended, so I left the phone in the car, but as soon as I hit the maintained road, I got service again.) I left her know that I hadn't died and was on my way back to Fairbanks. It was a smooth trip back, and I arrived by 5pm. I took a nice hot bath to soak my ankle and wash off all the 40% DEET bug spray I was wearing. (Mosquitos are killer here!) After that, we ate a nice dinner at Chili's. (I actually miss chain restaurants--I'm definitely not ready to go "into the wild" for good.)

Tomorrow we catch a 6:15am flight back to Dillingham via Anchorage. We've enjoyed our mini-vacation in Fairbanks, and I hope you've enjoyed reading about it. Cross your fingers--we're hoping that when we get back to Dillingham, it'll be as green there as it was here in the interior. Then maybe you'll get some hiking-related posts from Dillingham.

Fairbanks Vacation - Wednesday

2009-05-27T22:17:00.003-08:00

Not much to report for Wednesday. Samara did her first day of Cultural Recognition blah-di-blah... whatever it was called. (You know, her seminar on how not to be the white oppressor.) She was gone from 8am until dinner. I ran around town and did a little shopping, but nothing too exciting to speak of.

I did finish reading Into The Wild, about the guy that lived in a bus up here in the Alaska bush and died of starvation. Turns out that the bus he lived on isn't far off the beaten path, and is between here and Denali. So while Samara is at her training tomorrow, I'm going to drive down there and do a little hiking to see if I can find where the guy was living. It should make for an interesting blog post with some pictures. It will also let me try out some of my new hiking equipment.

I'd post more, but the wireless internet at the Pike's Landing cabins doesn't reach to the actual cabins. I'm sitting outside right now to get internet access, and it's gotten kind of chilly.

More tomorrow, I promise!

Fairbanks Vacation Days Two and Three

2009-05-26T17:51:00.006-08:00

Monday was Day Two in Fairbanks. We didn't end up seeing a movie on Sunday. We just did a little shopping instead. After we got back to the hotel, we realized that sleeping was going to be harder than Dillingham. The sun sets after 11:30pm here, and rises again around 4am. We never see the night.

The bed at the Extended Stay was less than great. We both woke up Monday with hurting backs. We slept in for a while, then went out and had some breakfast. At Taco Bell. Well, we did get up late, and Taco Bell is something Samara really misses in Dillingham. After that, we drove around a bit and found a tattoo shop and salon right next to each other. Samara wanted me to get a haircut, so we stopped in there first. Since it was going to be a fifteen minute wait, we went next door and spoke to the guys at the tattoo shop. One of the guys there really admired my sleeve--Scott should be proud. He said it was the best work he'd seen from outside his shop.

Pretty soon we went back over to the salon and I got my hair buzzed down for summer. Samara likes it short, and I like Samara, so it's a pretty good haircut, I guess.

Next activity for the day was a little canoeing down the Chena River. Chena River runs through downtown Fairbanks. We rented a canoe near Pioneer Park and paddled downstream to the Pump House restaurant, where the canoe rental folks picked us up. They said it would take at least two hours, but we were done in about an hour and a half. I guess we're fast paddlers.

Here's some pictures from our canoeing trip.

(Samara would probably want me to note that her swimsuit in this picture is covering her lower back--that's not her butt. She seemed to be displeased with this picture when I took it.)

Since Samara was in the front of the canoe, she got stuck in most of the pictures. But I was there too!

We saw a sternwheel boat on the river.

And a float plane took over from the river and flew right over us.

After we did the canoeing thing, we decided to take a trip to Chena Hot Springs. This is about 60 miles up the road, through the Chena State Recreation Area. There's a little resort there that has a hot springs. It costs $10 to swim all day. The drive was probably the nicest part.

In fact, as we were driving through the Recreation Area, I saw my first up-close moose! It was on the left side of the road, just grazing, and I saw some brown movement and slowed the car down. It took Samara a minute to get her camera out of her purse, so the best picture I got was of its rear end headed into the woods.

The Chena Hot Springs Resort is at the end of the road. The very end. It seems to cater to the tourist crowd. From the signs, I'd guess mostly Japanese tourists.

We saw some horses tied up when we arrived. I guess you could take a trailriding trip.

As we walked down towards the hot springs, we saw the ice skating pond, too. Guess it's more impressive in the winter.

The hot springs itself was nice. They had an indoor pool, two indoor hot tubs, one outdoor hot tub and a hot spring-fed rock pool. The hot spring pool itself was about 106 degrees. We couldn't stay in it for very long.

We hung out there in the Chena Hot Springs for maybe a hour, and then headed back towards Fairbanks for some dinner. On the way back, we saw some funny road signs.

We called our friend Ricky, who went to college in Fairbanks, and asked him where we should eat for dinner. He recommended Brewster's, but they turned out to be closed for Memorial Day. We went back to the hotel and got out the phone book. We decided we had to try the local barbeque place.

It is advertised as the world's northernmost southern barbeque. I suppose it is. It was pretty good food, as well. For the price, in fact, it couldn't be beat. We had a lot of leftovers to take home with us.

After dinner, we passed on the movie for a second time and did a little more shopping at Fred Meyer. We picked up a DVD to watch in our room. We made it about halfway through the movie before we both decided it was time to just zonk out.

Either the light or the bed was worse the second night. Samara and I both had trouble sleeping, and she was pretty sick during the night. In fact, she didn't feel well at all this morning. We had planned on taking Tuesday to drive down to Denali National Park, but the prospect of two or three hours in the car each way was just too much with Samara feeling bad.

Instead, we started off with a trip to the northernmost Denny's for breakfast. Every Denny's is the same, let me tell you. This one wasn't too great. After that, we checked out our new hotel, the Pike's Landing Lodge. They told us we could check in after three o'clock. So we decided to do a bit more shopping. We got some blackout curtains and dog treats for our friend Saramay. Then we decided that we'd go ahead and watch a movie today. We saw the new Star Trek movie, which was pretty good. Not the best movie ever, mind you, but fairly entertaining.

At that point, it was nearly three, so we went back to our new hotel. They really pissed Samara off, because she was sick, the room still wasn't ready, and they walked off when she tried to ask about switching to a different room. So we took off for another hour and drove around Fairbanks.

At 4, we got back to our new hotel, and Samara talked to the manager. She was really apologetic, which helped Samara's mood a bit. We got our room, which is actually a single-room cabin by the Chena River. It's nice, and the curtains do a much better job of keeping the light out than they did at the Extended Stay motel. I left Samara taking a nap and went out for a stroll.

There's a little pen with baby ducks in it, called the Duck Hotel. They have a pen with a little pond, a little house, and a coin-operated feeder. I had some quarters to feed the ducks, but the machine was empty. I guess someone will feed them.

I took a picture of the river near our hotel.

Tonight we'll probably try eating at Brewster's for dinner, since they should be open. Tomorrow and Thursday, Samara has training all day. I'll probably do some shopping around town and whatever else suits my fancy.

As far as vacations go, this one is so far, so good.

Fairbanks Vacation Day One

2009-05-24T17:01:00.004-08:00

Samara and I are vacationing in Fairbanks. We left Dillingham early this Sunday morning and arrived this afternoon in Fairbanks, in the Alaska interior. Samara has training here on Wednesday and Thursday, but until then, we're just here to have fun.

We both woke up early this morning, before our alarm. Anthony drove us to the airport, and we got there an hour early to check in. Samara always gets flagged by TSA for an extra security check. It really pisses her off, and we have no idea why it happens. So we had to stand there the extra few minutes while they called someone to clear her to fly.

The flight from Dillingham was okay. We sat in the exit row right over the wing, and it's a Saab turboprop plane, so there was a fair amount of buzzing vibration from the engines. They give you earplugs, if that gives you any idea what kind of flight it is. The plane sits three to a row--one on one side of the aisle, and two on the other. I got a window seat, and although I didn't take any pictures, it was neat to get a bird's eye view of Dillingham as we left.

Samara bought us some new books while she was in Anchorage last week. I had already read one, and started the second before we left on our trip. I finished the second one on the Dillingham to Anchorage flight. That left me a little time to just stare around the plane. Honestly, flying on a Saab turboprop is kind of like taking a Greyhound bus with wings. They do provide in-flight service, though. Soda and bags of made-in-Alaska potato chips.

We got into Anchorage and got off the plane fairly quickly. With these small planes, they just park you on the tarmac and you take the stairs down and walk across the asphalt to the airport. Once inside, we went straight for the baggage carousel. At Dillingham, they gave me both my boarding passes and checked my bags through to Fairbanks. Since Samara was flagged, she only got her boarding pass for her first flight, and they said her bag wasn't checked through. So we were waiting for her bag in Anchorage, but it didn't show up on the carousel. She asked the nice baggage ladies, who told her that she was checked through.

Upstairs we went to the Alaska Airlines check-in and waited in line. My boarding pass said 12:25 was the flight to Fairbanks, and it was already after noon. I was worried we'd miss our flight. Samara got her boarding pass for Fairbanks, though, and the girl said we had plenty of time. Turns out that it wasn't departing until 1:10, and didn't load until 12:40.

We had to take off our shoes, pull out my laptop, take off our jackets, and Samara had to throw away some hand lotion so that we could go through security. PenAir is definitely our favorite airline. You don't have to go through any security at all to get on their planes, either in Dillingham or Anchorage. But Alaska Air, you gotta go through the TSA folks. Samara was convinced that she would beep in the metal detector, but it was me who beeped. I had to go into a separate little glass cubicle and the guy patted down my baggy pants. Dunno what he thought he'd find.

I left my shoes off after that, and we cruised on down to the gate for our flight. Then we realized we had plenty of time, so I put my shoes back on and bought some magazines to read on the Ancohrage-Fairbanks flight. I got a Shooting Times and The Economist. Samara just laughed at me.

The flight to Fairbanks was on a jet, which was more comfortable, quieter, and had lots more people. It probably took longer to load and unload the jet than we were actually in the air. The flight is less than an hour. We only got water or juice and a small bag of peanuts. Lame. PenAir is definitely better, even if you do have to wear ear plugs.

Once in Fairbanks, we got our luggage pretty easily, and then Samara stood in line forever to get our Ford Fusion rental car. We drove out of the airport, and realized that we didn't actually know where the hotel was. It's the Extended Stay, and thankfully Fairbanks isn't that big. We drove right by it. It's right next to a Fred Meyer store. It's not the nicest hotel ever, but it's okay, and the small indoor pool does seem to be working. Also, we got it for $43 per night on Priceline. Not bad.

After getting our stuff unloaded, we decided that 3pm was long enough to go with nothing to eat except airline food all day. We drove down the strip and found a Wendy's. Besides the fast food Samara has flown into Dillingham on her trips, this is the first time I've eaten fast food in 8 months. It was yummy. But they didn't have air conditioning, and Fairbanks is hot compared to Dillingham. It's almost 80 degrees here. After eating our lunch, we decided to drive down and explore some more.

I can't say much except that Fairbanks doesn't seem to have a lot going on. Between the rental car and its strange new car smell, the flat terrain and strange city, I felt like I was in Oklahoma for some reason. It was like vacation flashback, or something.

On our way back to our hotel, we stopped at Pioneer Park. This is a public park with free admission that was first set up for some kind of expo in the 60s. They have old cabins turned into museums and gift shops, as well as various restaurants and park stuff there.

This is me outside the entrance, with a little train going up overhead in the background.

There's a big paddlewheel boat that's been turned into a museum with boring dioramas here.

Whee, boat!

Samara is relaxing outside a gift shop.

Doesn't she look nice? Compare that to my scruffy mug outside an old church.

Samara talked me into buying her some ice cream.

It was okay, but we didn't finish the tiny cup. Then we walked around a bit more and went back to the car. On the way home, I stumbled onto the place I wanted to rent a canoe from. You can rent a canoe and go down the river here for a few hours and then they pick you up. It seems like a fun thing to do, and if the weather holds, we'll probably do that tomorrow or Tuesday.

We're back at the hotel now, and Samara is napping away. I think flying takes it out of her. She had a headache and some nausea. We're talking about taking in a movie tonight. The new Star Trek is out, and that seems like a good bet. It's been 8 months since I've seen a movie in a theater, too.

It's actually been 8 months since I've done a lot of "civilized" things. This should be an interesting trip. Stay tuned.

Set net lines and mud in the bay

2009-05-23T10:47:00.021-08:00

Ginger, my boss asked me what Aaron and I were doing on Friday. I mentioned that I didn't think we were doing anything so she wanted to know if we would go out to help her and her husband set their lines for their subsistence nets. I said that we would and we might be able to recruit Erin and Anthony to help.

This whole week it has been raining on and off, which means that not only is everything wet and muddy, but it is also a bit chilly out. We head from Ginger's house in caravan-style down to the beach to Ginger's claim at about 8:30pm. (It looked more like midday than late evening.) In fact, we had four vehicles: Terry in his truck, Ginger and her daughter Aurora in her truck, me and Aaron and Ayla (Ginger's foster daughter's younger sister) in our Canyonero, and Erin and Anthony in their SUV.

We drove down onto the beach, and then along the shore for about a mile until we got to the place where Ginger and Terry had staked their claim. Each family has a sign out at the shore that has their last name or family name on it so people will know where their plot of beach is. There's no real legal claim to any area of beach, but people fish the same spot every year, so if you steal their spot, they get really upset. (Aaron says there have even been court cases about it.)

Ginger had warned me that it was going to be muddy because they have to look for the ring that they tie the line to out in the bay at low tide, beyond the usual shore line. As it turns out, after the sandy/rocky beach, there is nothing but muck and I don't have a pair of rainboots so I was wearing my snowboots with the lining out of them. Aaron figured they were water proof so they will work in a pinch. Bad idea.

The boys get started right away with Terry, Ginger's husband, looking for the ring thing out past the shoreline. Aaron says what they were looking for was an anchor that was buried deep in the beach, with a ring on top to feed the line through. It took a little while of walking up and down the muddy beach, staring at rocks before they spotted it.

Erin, Ginger and I hang out on the beach. I think we were going to start a bonfire, but all the wood was so wet. Erin and I started wondering around on the beach and playing in the creek that fed in to the bay.

Ayla and Aurora went hiking up the grassy clifts with us. Ayla is the short, cute one.

(See, she is just so cute!)

This is Erin and Aurora on top of the grassy cliffs. Erin is one acting a fool.

Meanwhile the boys were hard at work, hammering in the stakes and bringing out the lines to the ring. Two stakes are crossed and pounded into the sand at the top of the beach. Then another two are crossed and sunk in about 50 feet away at the top of the beach. A line runs from one set of stakes down the beach to the ring at the anchor in the muck, then back up the beach to the other set of stakes. Later on, they'll tie their net to the ropes out in the area where the tide comes in. Then the fish will swim by, get caught in the net, and they can use the pulley system to drag the net up onto the beach.

While they were doing all the stake-pounding and searching for the anchor, I was busy getting stuck in the mud with my snow boots. I fell in to about my knee at one point. Erin had to help pull me out which made the boot, fall down to my ankle. This allowed water to pour in to my boot. So now, I am muddy, I have wet feet and I am stuck between the shore and the water. I decide to head back to shore and take off the cold wet socks. And that is where I stayed until the boys finished up.

(This is when I first sunk in to the mud. It only got worse from there.)

(This is the soaking wet wool sock I was wearing. You might not be able to tell, but the sock was filled with water and it is dripping out which is why it is just hanging off my foot.)

Aaron says the hardest part of the whole procedure was running the lines. He kept getting stuck in the mud. At one point, he had the drag a really long rope through the mud, pulling it through the ring they use as a pulley. Apparently when they have nets attached, they use a truck to pull the ropes, since they're so heavy. But for setting out the lines without the net, they just sink their feet into the mud and pull.

Overall, it was an interesting experience. We got to learn how the natives and local folks subsistence fish for salmon, and we realized that it definitely isn't easy work. Ginger has invited us to help them subsistence fish this summer. Sounds like we'll get to learn how to pull the nets in, clean and gut fish, and hang them to dry. All that and salmon isn't even one of my favorite fish. Terry may also take Aaron along with him moose hunting this fall. I think Anthony may go too. They certainly proved to Terry that they aren't afraid to do a little work. If they go moose hunting, they probably won't be doing the shooting, but Terry wants help carrying the meat out of the woods after he shoots it.

I guess we're learning how to be locals.

Anchorage again

2009-05-23T10:12:00.011-08:00

Ah, Anchorage.

I had my last and final training for positive behavioral support last week. I am very thankful the training is over, but I will miss the monthly trips to Anchorage. This time I spent an extra day there with nothing to do, but go shopping and drive around. It was sunny and about 70 degrees while I was there. I was even wearing sandals the whole time. The snow was completely gone. Actually, the snow was gone last month and this time everything was green. There was green grass and leaves on the trees and the snow was slowly fading from the mountain tops.

As it turns out, I really like Anchorage. It's not a bad town. It's easy to drive in. And it has all the wildlife and outdoorsy stuff that Alaska is known for while still having a mall and a large grocery store. If we decide to stay in Alaska, I think I would want to move to Anchorage.

After my stay in Anchorage, I returned home to Dillingham. It was so cold when I stepped off the plane, I could see my breath. I was wearing flip flops and just a tank top with a cardigan over it. It was cold, rainy and brown. It's hard to tell that spring is here other than the snow is gone. It was just so hard to leave the beautiful weather to come back to the mud and all the brown in Dillingham.

I am very lucky that my job allows me to go outside Dillingham for trainings. For instance, I will be leaving on Sunday for Fairbanks. And since Aaron isn't as lucky as I am about training, I talked him in to shelling out the money for him a ticket so he could go with me. YAY! So this trip will be the first time Aaron has left Dillingham since we arrived back in August. He's pretty excited about going out to eat, fountain sodas, movies and shopping. Plus we have about 3 extra days of nothing to do but sight-see around Fairbanks. We are planning to take a trip to Denali National Park and do other touristy things... but there will be more on that later this week.

Throwing Shoes

2009-05-20T20:22:00.005-08:00

On Sunday, Samara went to Anchorage for a meeting. She was gone until today, Wednesday, and I missed her. She brought back goodies, though: blackout curtains, various and sundry bath and hygiene supplies, and some new books. Always good.

I don't have a lot of pictures to share with you today, so I'll start off with the ones I do have. The bay is clear of ice now, so the barges have started rolling in. There's a really nice place on the edge of the bluff, behind our apartment, where you can watch the bay.

In the above picture, you can see the edge of the bluff, the retaining wall at the shore below, and a giant barge out in the bay. It's hard to get a sense of the scale of the bay when it's empty, or even when there's ice in it. It takes a large boat like this to realize just how big the bay is.

There's actually two boats out there.

A barge.

And a smaller boat--maybe a fishing tender or some kind of smaller barge? I really don't know. I'm not very familiar with the different kinds of boats they use around here. I know that there are small fishing vessels, larger tender boats that take on fish that are caught by the smaller vessels, and then there are tugs and barges. I know a barge when I see one, because they're covered with shipping containers. Well, except the one above, which is empty, because it already offloaded at Dillingham's dock.

That's it for pictures. How about a story?

This is a work story, but it's one of the more interesting things that has happened since I started working at the courthouse.

It seems there was a fishing tender (a vessel of the sort mentioned above that collates the catch of smaller vessels) that was anchored in Togiak Bay. Many people come from around the world to work on fishing vessels. For instance, the clerk of court related to me that she has fished with many Russians. On this vessel in particular, there was a gentleman from Somalia. He had a bunkmate, of perhaps the same nationality, although I don't know for sure. He and his bunkmate did not get along.

As a result, this Somali gentleman threw his shoe at his bunkmate and threatened to kill him. Allegedly. In many nations, including Somalia apparently, it is a grave insult to throw a shoe at a person. The bunkmate was not pleased, and spoke to the skipper of this vessel. The skipper, no doubt concerned about keeping his crew happy, contacted the Alaska State Troopers and reported the assault. The Alaska State Troopers sent one of our local troopers over there in a chartered helicopter to pluck this gentleman from the boat and bring him to Dillingham to face the music.

He was charged with assault in the fourth degree. (That's the lowest level of assault, reserved for placing someone in fear of imminent physical injury by words or deeds.) Having lodged him in the local pokey, the trooper decided that his conduct was not exactly the crime of the century. He called up the local district attorney to see about having the charges dismissed. He figured that putting this guy on the next plane to Seattle would be sufficient to resolve the issue. The district attorney was out of town, convening a grand jury in Anchorage. He called the back-up DA, who refused to make that call without discussing it with the full-time DA. Left with no choice, the trooper contacted the courthouse, hoping to have this footwear-heaving miscreant arraigned before the magistrate.

Ah, but there's a rub. Have you guessed it yet? Our Somali friend speaks no English. In fact, the folks down at our Dillingham jail didn't know what language he spoke. Never fear, I thought, puffing out my chest. I have a degree in diplomacy! I wikipedia'd Somalia and learned that two languages were predominantly spoken there: Somali and Arabic. Aha! I have a very good friend who is both a public defender in Kentucky and an Arabic speaker. He had taught me some Arabic phrases. (Okay, mostly how to cuss, but I think my pronunciation is fair.) I looked up a few phrases in Arabic on the internet, transcribed them phonetically, and went to the clerk's office.

The clerk got the jail on the phone, where I could hear the jailor asking our Somali pal what language he spoke in louder English, as if that would make him understand any better. The clerk got the jailor to put the defendant on the phone, and put it on speakerphone. I cleared my throat and gave it my best: "Hal tatakallum al-lughah al-arabiyah?"

"No," he said. "Somali." Okay. So he doesn't speak Arabic. Well I don't know a lick of Somali, that's for sure. We hung up, but now at least we knew what kind of translator we needed. We got the AT&T language line paperwork out and called them up. Sure enough they had a Somali translator. Great! We could arraign Mr. Fourth-Caliph Prophet. (I won't actually say his name, to protect the dubiously innocent. But he's named after both the fourth Caliph and the Prophet, in that order.)

The trooper who helicoptered him off the boat brought him up the courthouse. We hooked up the translator on the overhead and the magistrate used every last bit of patience he had to wind his way through an extremely long version of a simple misdemeanor arraignment. When the magistrate first read the charges to Mr. Prophet, he broke down in tears and started sobbing. It was hard to watch. We learned that he had grown up as a nomad in Somalia. Considering that Somalia is a failed state with no government, I can only imagine what it was like to live there. He was likely worried that we were going to take him out back, shoot him with an AK47 and kick his body into a ditch. Once the magistrate explained all the rights he had under our justice system, he calmed down quite a bit. When asked for his position on bail, the trooper recommended that our Somali friend be released on his own recognizance and be allowed to travel to Seattle. If that happened, we'd probably never see him again, and I'm pretty sure the trooper knew that. I really don't think he wanted to pursue the charges, but the district attorney just wasn't around to sign off on dismissing the case. After the arraignment, we kept the translator on the line and the trooper used her services to try to discuss with the defendant how he might be able to travel to Seattle once he was released. This officer really went above and beyond to help out this guy.

The magistrate didn't actually just let the guy out of jail completely--he appointed the public defender agency to represent him, and required that they get an address in Seattle from him before he could be released. Unfortunately, the person that he thought he could stay with in Seattle told the attorney that they had never heard of the guy. So she couldn't get him released from jail. And by the end of the day, we still hadn't heard from the district attorney about whether the charges should be dismissed. Our Somali friend, therefore, is still in jail here, but I hope that he'll be released by tomorrow.

It was an interesting day, and I recommend taking this lesson away from this story: don't throw shoes at people when you're in a country where you don't speak the language.

The final bit of news from this blog post is that I'm finally going to get to do a little traveling. Samara just returned from Anchorage, but next week she has a training in Fairbanks. I'm buying a ticket to go with her. Her flight, hotel, rental car and per diem are paid for. I just had to buy my ticket, essentially. It's going to be nice to get out of Dillingham. Her training is Wednesday and Thursday, so she was originally going to be gone from Tuesday through Friday. We're leaving on Sunday instead, and staying until Friday. We'll get a hotel room or camp for the first two days, do some sightseeing and shopping, and just generally enjoy a little vacation. I'm personally really looking forward to seeing some of Alaska outside of Dillingham.

And I figure we'll get some more good pictures for the blog out of that trip.

Another Week in Alaska

2009-05-16T11:12:00.006-08:00

Here we go--another weekly summary, since I can't be relied upon to blog every day.

This was a somewhat exciting week. Our friends Erin and Anthony were out of town, so we were cat sitting. Their cat Atticus was very affectionate when we went over to visit him. It made us miss our own cats.

On Tuesday, the alternative school had its graduation. Let me say that this was a pretty long graduation for just 10 students. I went, and I was proud of these students, some of who I knew, for graduating from high school. A lot of them had very difficult circumstances, and the alternative school gave them a chance to graduate despite difficult family situations or newborn children. It's a great program. Graduations around here, though, are long affairs. Each graduate had a slide show of pictures accompanied by a song. They also had a lot of award certificates to hand out. It took forever! Also, our pictures didn't come out so great. Here's a decent one of the graduates.

You can't see her in this picture, but we were really proud of Samara's boss's foster daughter, who graduated. The young man in the front row holding the certificate is Shane--we were also very proud of him for graduating.

In fact, Samara had to do some work late at SAFE this week, and she arrived home one evening with Shane in tow. He needed a ride out to his mother's house at the end of Aleknagik (Lake) Road. She lives in a subdivision out by the lake. We like Shane, so we didn't mind making the drive. Since we were out there, we stopped by the dock at Lake Aleknagik afterwards. It was around 9:30, so the sun was starting to go down.

Here's Samara at the boat ramp.

Yes, there's still ice in the lake. And she's standing on some.

In her flipflops.

And if you dip a toe in that water, it ain't warm.

What's really neat is that some of the ice is really clear.

Like this large chunk, which I'm gonna toss into the water.

And, as promised, a sunset.

After one of the visits to Erin and Anthony's cat, we pulled into the boat harbor and caught sight of a boat in the bay.

It's getting close to fishing season, and our barges can now get into the bay because the ice is mostly gone, so there will be a lot more boats in the bay these days.

At work at the courthouse, the phone system stopped working one day. When people dialed in, they got looped around in the initial message, and couldn't hit zero to get the operator. (Apparently dialing a direct extension worked, but no one knew to do that.) We were scrambling around trying to get people on the phones for various hearings. The Clerk of Court, Tonya, talked to someone at Nushagak that said the phone system ought to work if we just shut it off and restarted it. So we did--Tonya and I went into the server closet and she switched off the phone system and then turned it back on. Turns out it wasn't the phone system we rebooted.

When we went out into the front office, the alarm system was going crazy. Tonya tried to reset it, but the red alarm light started flashing. She knew that meant that the police were getting our silent alarm. We just stood around and timed the police to see how long it would take them to respond. What we didn't realize is that police dispatch was trying to call the courthouse to see if everything was okay, and wasn't getting through because the phone system still wasn't
working.

I go into the courtroom to mention the alarm to Theresa, and she makes some comment about the troopers showing up with guns drawn. I walk back out and the people in the front office are looking out the window saying that Police Chief Thompson is here. Tonya comes running out, and we both go outside. Chief Thompson has his vehicle parked sideways in the lot, and he's behind it with his gun unholstered. Misty, Lori and Grant are waving to him from the window, and he is motioning for them to come outside. He assumed there was a real emergency, especially after we didn't answer the phone. So Tonya and I tell him that it's a false alarm and that our phone system is broken. He radios dispatch and tells them to stand down the troopers.

We very nearly had all the police in town in our parking lot with their guns drawn. Thankfully, Chief Thompson understood and wasn't mad about it. But it was a pretty interesting situation. The upside is that there's a good police response time when our alarm goes off.

That wasn't the only thing going on at the courthouse this week, though. We also had a belated Law Day/Juror Appreciation Week celebration. We did a carwash for anyone who had ever served on a jury. Including our own cars, we probably only washed about a dozen cars. So there was a lot of standing around, talking.

That's (left to right) the judge, his assistant Theresa, Lori's son Brett, Tonya, a tiny bit of Misty's head, and Lori. It was pretty warm, but the wind was blowing pretty hard from the north as well. Our hoses and buckets stood dormant quite a bit.

But we did wash a few cars as well!

It was an interesting way to celebrate Law Day.

Today, Samara had training for new advocates at SAFE. I was supposed to be on call as a deputy magistrate this weekend, but because the training judge didn't get the certification over to the presiding judge to sign off on the order appointing me, I had to have the judge cover my weekend instead. Samara planned to take the new advocates to the courthouse to watch arraignments, but the judge got lucky and there weren't any arraignments this morning. Samara got me out of bed instead and I gave a little tour of the courthouse to the trainees. We discussed protective orders and what each courtroom was used for, and I think it was good for getting them familiar with the court system. I'm sure I'll be doing arraignments soon enough.

Whales

2009-05-11T21:41:00.002-08:00

We saw whales.

Well, we think we did. You know those whales we'd heard about, from the last blog post? Well, we were looking out into the bay this evening and saw some weird movement in the water.

Samara took pictures, but it's hard to actually see anything.

This is the water off the beach just down from our apartment. As we looked out there, we could see movement in the water that wasn't just wind on the waves or ice in the water.

You could tell it wasn't wind or ice by the way it moved around and whatnot. Unfortunately, none of the ones closest to the shore showed in any spectacular way. But there were a few way out into the bay that would come far enough out of the water to see the entire body at the surface. It just looked like a white streak in the distance, but it moved against the current, unlike an ice floe. So it had to be whales.

Of course, by whales, I guess I actually mean dolphins. Or whatever belugas are. They're called beluga whales, but I think they're more like dolphins. Our apartment complex's fancy name is Beluga Bluffs, which also lends credence to the idea that what we're seeing is belugas.

So far, our Alaska animal-watching hasn't been exactly fruitful. We both saw a small snow weasel ("ermine"), I saw a moose at a very great distance, we've seen some snow hares (they're turning brown for summer) and now a glimpse of whales. It sure would be nice to see a moose or something large up close.

But until then, enjoy our almost pictures of whales.

Saturday and Sunday

2009-05-11T18:10:00.005-08:00

On Saturday, Anthony and I headed out to the shooting range at the dump. But first we made a stop at a friend's house. Anthony knows the husband from work and I know the wife from my job. Anthony had heard that they might be selling some of their guns, and he was looking for a particular type of rifle. We had a nice visit, but the price for the rifle he wanted was a little too high. Instead, he bought a .45 caliber pistol and they gave him a really good deal. It should be a good pistol for carrying on hikes in case he runs into any bears, etc.

I got a good picture of him on the range as we did some test-shooting.

We were shooting my rifle as well. We used his camera, which takes videos, so we got a couple of good videos of him shooting his pistol and me shooting my rifle. I don't know that large video files are the best content for a blog, though.

On Sunday, Samara wasn't feeling very well, but by the evening, I was finally able to convince her to go hiking with Anthony and I out past the hospital. The hospital is on the opposite end of Kanakanak Road from town. It's out the coast towards the mouth of the Nushagak Bay. Past the hospital is a place called the "Vortex" which is actually a little building with some kind of radar or beacon on it. You drive to there and then walk across the boggy tundra to get a good view of the bay.

Look, tundra!

Once we got across the tundra, there was a nice view of the bay.

Then we sat and watched it for a while, looking for whales.

But there were no whales to be seen.

Just icy bay.

After we got home, I snapped one last picture for everyone--to demonstrate an important point about Alaska.

This is ten o'clock pm.

Perfectly light.

Alaska on Friday

2009-05-08T23:38:00.004-08:00

Here's how a Friday goes in Alaska.

First, a purely Alaska story. The Clerk of Court tells me that she and her family were down at the harbor, seeing the sights the other evening. The big river break-up is going on, and there's a lot of ice floating around. As she was watching the ice flowing out of the bay, she noticed something strange. One a large block of ice, floating their way out of the bay, were two moose. One was laying down and the other was just standing there. I still have no idea whether they jumped off and swam to shore before they made it out to the Bering Sea, or if there are two moose still floating their way towards Russia. Only in Alaska.

Today was a pretty good day. I spent the entire day at the courthouse working on my deputy magistrate tests. I have to complete 19 tests on various subjects before I can work as an on-call magistrate on the weekends. I finished the remaining tests today, which means I should be ready to do arraignments by next weekend. I haven't actually be sworn into the Kentucky bar yet, and I'll already be a judge. (If that seems like overstating things, Alaska case law does say that magistrates are judges within the meaning of the Alaska constitution.)

For lunch, Samara and I got together to go to the first payday lunch of the season at the local police station. They supplied the burgers and fixings and we brought a bag of chips and something to drink. All the local law enforcement, courthouse and assorted criminal justice folks were invited, along with their spouses and friends.

Here's Samara, hanging at the police garage.

And here we have Lori, who works at the courthouse on the left, Tonya's husband Rich in the hat in the middle, Tonya (the Clerk of Court) with her back turned, and Samara again. Behind her is the magistrate, Monte.

Everyone very much enjoyed their burgers. The Chief of Police sure knows how to work a grill.

In the afternoon, Lori was deputized to perform a wedding at the courthouse. I was sitting at my desk and saw the couple's friend decorating their car for their triumphant departure.

Then the couple came out and drove off, coffee cans rattling away.

I'm sure that before my two year stint is up, I'll be called upon to perform a wedding. Being a deputy magistrate means that in addition to arraignments, I can also do weddings and notarize things. Whee!

After work, Samara and I laid around the house for a while watching TV. I got bored, though. So I called Anthony to see if he wanted to hang out for a bit. We decided to take a drive down Aleknagik (Lake) Road. We got as far as Snake Lake Road and took a little detour up the mountain. It had been plowed, but there was still lots of snow. We got as far as the first turn-around and did exactly that. After we bumped our way down, we continued out towards Aleknagik Lake. It was nearing 10:30, but still light out. That's how the daylight is rolling in Alaska right now. Comes early and stays late.

The lake is beautiful. It must be strange to live on the far shore, in the tiny village of Aleknagik. During the thaw, in the in-between time between a frozen lake and a watery lake, when neither snowmachine nor boat can get you across the gap, the residents of Aleknagik are stuck there. Today, though, the lake seemed to have thawed enough for boats. There were a couple on the shore.

Really pretty pictures.

We also got there just in time to catch a really nice sunset over the mountains.

And I'll leave you with my favorite one.

That's a Friday in Alaska.

pictures from the airplane going to King Salmon

2009-05-06T15:49:00.003-08:00

This is Mt. Redoubt. See the steam and smoke. Ooooo. Aaaaaaa. Neat-o.

This is Mt Redoubt again. I have heard that the top might actually blow in the next month or two as the ice and snow cap collapse on itself. Which might make travel to and from Anchorage a bit harder.
This is the King Salmon Visitor Center. I was stuck there for too long. You can't tell because it looks like I was smiling, but I was actually pretty angry that I was stuck there. That was the second time that day I had been to King Salmon. Also in this picture is Thresa, she is new to Dillingham and isn't used to this kind of stuff either.
I did buy some post cards inside. I haven't sent them out yet. But I will.

This is the mountains between Anchorage and Dillingham.

Pretty.
Nice!
WOW! So that was my adventures in King Salmon.

A Long-Awaited Update

2009-05-05T18:19:00.003-08:00

I didn't realize how long it had been since a blog update until I got ready to post just now. I can only apologize so much that we've tapered off in our updates. When we started our blog on the trip across America, we certainly intended to make updates every day. The fact of the matter, though, is that Alaska isn't all that different from other places in many ways. Sure, when something uniquely Alaskan happens, we want to post about it. But working here is like working anywhere--not always that interesting.

Since Samara's triumphant return from Anchorage (requiring a few false starts), we've mostly just been working away at our jobs and laying around on the couch in the evenings. The days are getting longer here--lots longer. The sun rises at 6am, and it doesn't set until 11pm. It's only going to get longer, too. Although Dillingham is below the arctic circle and never has 24-hour days, we do have a very short night in the summer. It's so short that after the sun sets, we'll still have twilight for most of the nighttime hours. Our bedroom already has dark, heavy curtains (called blackout curtains around here) on the windows, but our living room just has vertical blinds. That means that if you're relaxing in the living room in the evening, you're never really sure what time it is. Back home, the dwindling daylight would indicate that it was time to wind down and go to bed. Not here.

Samara has been working hard to expand her outreach efforts at SAFE. One of the big develops is Teen Tuesday, which is a program designed to get teens together to talk about things they can't discuss in school. It provides a safe environment for them to discuss whatever is going on in their lives. Samara has been getting help from Saramay on that program. She has also been working with Saramay, who teaches at the high school, on another program that reinforces positive behaviours in kids. This past Friday night, they held a dance at the school. Dances here are pretty easy to put on--there are some high school kids that know how to work the sound and lighting equipment owned by the local tribal council. As long as Samara can pick up the equipment, they set it all up and play the music. Apart from that, all she really has to do is get access to the gym, sell some concessions and make sure there are enough chaperones.

Work at the courthouse has been easier in last few weeks in some respects, and much more frustrating in others. We've converted to a new computer system for tracking court cases, called Courtview. The system is more user-friendly and provides much greater access for the public to view the progress of cases online. On the flip side, it requires the court staff to document every piece of paper that comes in for each case (called "docketing"). The software is also slower because it connects to a server in Anchorage, rather than a local server. What's good for the public isn't necessarily good for the court staff, in other words. We're managing, though, and it's getting easier to use as everyone learns how to do things they're used to doing in the old system.

One saving grace is that our court calendar has been mercifully empty during this conversion to Courtview. We haven't had any felony cases go to trial, and now our felony calendar is clear until August. We can't do jury trials, either civil or criminal, during the fishing season. We just can't get a jury. That means that until August, we won't have to worry about the big production of a large trial. Now that Courtview is running pretty smoothly, that's left me more time to actually do things like legal research. I enjoy doing legal research. So work has been okay lately.

Lest you think we don't ever do anything but work and watch TV, I did do some hiking over the weekend. The weather was good--high 50s and 60s all weekend. I hiked Friday, Saturday and Sunday, actually, and took more or less the same route each time. First, on Friday, while Samara was working at the dance, I took a short, but somewhat ill-fated hike. I started by walking out behind our apartment building and sliding my way down the eroding cliff face to the muddy flat behind the sea wall. Mud is going to be the word for this weekend. All this thawing snow is making lots of mud. I walked along the top of the sea wall to avoid the mud, and made it to the place where Anthony, Erin and I went sledding when there was still snow. Then I worked my way through the brush and walked along where the tundra meets the beach. It's extremely wet, with lots of puddles, but the mud is mixed with reeds, and it creates a soft but firm place to walk. Almost immediately, I stumbled onto a couple rotten, beached boats. They're just falling apart on the shore, but it's pretty neat. Of course I hadn't brought the camera, though.

I kept up a fairly slow pace and just worked my way north along the shoreline. To give you an idea of where I was going, our apartment faces south into the Nushagak Bay. The bay empties to the southwest of our apartment. As I worked my way along the beach to the east, it turns north and the north end of the bay is the mouth of the Wood River. I walked along for a little while, watching the seagulls, which are starting to return to the area. After a while, I checked my watch and it was getting close to 8:30. Still plenty of light, but I didn't want to walk forever. Instead of going back the way I came, I turned inland. I could see the satellites near HUD (it's the area of town where a lot of the poorer people live--I guess not all of it is government housing, but it's still called HUD). I walked up onto the ridge, and smack into a fence. Apparently the water reclaimation plant is next to the road there. And there's a fence around it. Going around the fence would have required me to walk farther north towards HUD, or going up another hill to the south. I chose the hill.

Now here's where things went wet and cold. There was run-off come down at the base of the hill. It was a pretty fast stream, but only about a foot wide. There had obviously been a snowmachine trail going across it and up the hill, and where the trail crossed the water, there was a lot of snow still. The water forked, so that there was grass, then snow, then water, then about 3 feet of snow, then water, then more snow and finally grass going up the hill. I walked over to the edge, tested the snow, and didn't sink in very much. I figured I could hop to the snow pack in the middle, then cross the other bit of water and go up the hill.

I hopped. And then I sunk into the snow up to my thighs. Turns out that the snow was actually just slushy ice and water masquerading as snow. I crawled out the other side, and was very wet and cold from my thighs down. Up the hill I went, and came out behind a house. I had to turn right again to get to the road, but that required going through some trees that still had lots of snow at the base. Unfortunately, that snow was soft as well, and I kept sinking in to my knees or deeper as I slogged through it. I was pretty happy to get out to the road finally. I went home, had a shower and felt much better. Lesson learned: even when it's 60 degrees out, the melting snow makes VERY cold water.

My other two hikes were much better. Saturday, Anthony and I took his dog Sofie out for a walk along the same route. We went a little farther than I had gone on Friday, but we were able to walk on the ice still covering the beach. It was faster walking than jumping from footing to footing among the mud and water on the tundra. This time, Anthony took pictures.

Here's Anthony and Sofie, ready to walk.

And me, ready to go, strapped with a canteen.

We found the rotting boats almost right away.

Sofie was very interested in the boat.

Then we moved out onto the icy beach.

I got warm enough walking to strip down to my t-shirt.

And that's it for pictures.

On Sunday, Saramay, her dog Chaos, Anthony, Erin, their dog Sofie, and I all walked the same route. Samara couldn't go because she was on crisis line back-up at SAFE and had to be near the phone. We walked for about 2 hours and ended up all the way at the mouth of the Wood River, which also happens to be the end of Wood River Road. There's a phone booth at the dock there, so we called Samara and got a ride back home.

That's all the Alaska-related excitement for now. Besides that, we've just been playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo Wii and being generally lazy. I'll try to be better about the updates. I promise.

There and back again by Ruby Burrows

2009-04-24T11:11:00.002-08:00

Earlier this week, I flew to Anchorage for a training. The skies were blue. The sun was shining. I got some really good pictures of Mt. Redoubt and the smoke, ash and steam coming from the blown top. I had a pretty good time in Anchorage. And then the trip was over and I was on the 8am flight from Anchorage to Dillingham. I get on the plane. The plane takes off. Everything was fine.The hour and a half trip didn't seem that bad. We got close to Dillingham. I could see Lake Road. But then the jets turn back on and the plane starts to ascend back in to the clouds. It was too foggy in Dillingham and the plane is being diverted to King Salmon for re fueling. We wait around King Salmon for about an hour and then it was decided that we needed to fly back to Anchorage. SO back to Anchorage we go.

We make it back to Anchorage. I have now been on the plane for 3 hours. As soon as we get there, we get on the next flight to Dillingham since the fog had lifted. We wait in ANC for about 20 minutes and then leave for Dillingham again. This time, when we got close to DLG I couldn't see the roads or anything. We were in a holding pattern for about 30 minutes when the jets kicked back on and we were back on our way to King Salmon. By now it's 3pm. There is no lunch service on these flights and there isn't really any where to eat. My poor coworker didn't eat breakfast b/c she didn't want to have food on her stomach during the flight. Other than the small bags of snacks that were given out on the flight, she hadn't eaten anything. I packed a Qdoba burrito with me so I had lunch. (First rule of traveling: Always be prepared for anything)

We finally got an update at 5pm which was to go back to Anchorage. By now, the 8am flight people had not eaten lunch or dinner. And people were getting very cranky. We landed in Anchorage at 7pm. I called for a room and tried to get on the first flight in the morning. The morning flight was packed. So we got on the 11:30 flight, which was fine with me b/c at least I got to sleep in. But then I had to wait an extra 30 minutes at the baggage claim as it seems my luggage had been misplaced.

At about 8pm we finally made it to the hotel, got some food (went back to Qdoba--more lunch burritos just incase) and went to bed.

I found out that the 8am flight to DLG had been delayed for 2 hours this morning and as I am writing this, they are in a holding pattern above DLG. Will I get home? Sure. Will it be today? Maybe.

(Ruby Burrows is my Hobbit name in case you didn't know)

Thaw?

2009-04-18T16:45:00.004-08:00

I'm not convinced yet, but for the last few days, the weather has been warmer. Yesterday the high was 39 degrees. That's definitely warm enough to start melting snow. In a lot of places, the roads are down to the asphalt or gravel. There are also lots of really muddy puddles. (More like small muddy lakes.) Our car is covered in dirt from all the muddy water.

Today Samara had to open up the thrift shop at SAFE for a few hours, since the regular employee is on maternity leave. Left to my own devices, I decided to take a little walk. The snow isn't melted enough to make hiking a very good prospect, but it's improving.

I walked over to the next street and down to the beach. You can see that there's still lots of snow.

I had thought about exploring the shoreline up past the beach, but the snow and ice was still too deep. I decided to head down the beach towards town instead. The tide was flowing out, and there are still giant boulders of ice along the shore.

When I reached the part of the beach near that ice boulder, I realized that I was right below my apartment building and looked up at the bluffs.

It seemed like I could probably climb the cliff fairly easily. It was easier than I expected, actually. The mud and dirt tend to slide down into the retaining wall here, but where grass was growing, it's easy to get traction. About halfway up, I took another couple pictures of the bay.

This is the cliff, halfway to the top:

The only problem with that climb is that the snow at the top was still about 3 or 4 feet deep. I couldn't walk across it to our apartment without sinking in up to my thighs. So I just crawled instead. I probably looked strange if anyone saw me, but it was a lot easier than walking all the way along the beach back to town and then back up my street.

If the weather stays nice, I expect to spend a lot more time outside.

It's not spring yet.

2009-04-12T14:18:00.005-08:00

It's definitely not spring yet. How about some pictures of inches upon inches of new snow?

I'm sick of cleaning the snow off the car.

Samara is pretty tired of it too.

See, lots of snow.

Icky.

I stayed at work until 6:30 on Friday, working on finishing my magistrate lessons so that I can be sworn in as a deputy magistrate before the end of this month. I've got an on-call weekend scheduled at the beginning of May, so I've got to hurry. After work, Samara suggested that we just have dinner at the Duct-Tape Eagle (also known as the Bristol Eagle--it's a burger joint). Unfortunately, when Samara, Saramay and I got there, it was closed. We went to the Windmill Grille instead.

I'm just not impressed with their food. Saramay had a steak, and it was overcooked (well done instead of medium, like she ordered) and tough. I had a French dip and some fries, which was okay, but not the best food ever. Samara said her hamburger lacked flavor. Most of the time, it seems like their food is no better than what we could make at home. It takes just about as long to get out to you, and it costs a lot more. But at least we don't have to make it. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to the Muddy Rudder opening again.

Oh--we blogged a long time ago about having a beer with the judge at the Windmill Grille, shortly after we first arrived in Dillingham. We didn't want to whip out the camera and take a picture of the local brew, since it may have seemed weird. But Samara had one again this time.

Comes in a pretty glass.

On Saturday, I went snowmachining with Anthony and two of his friends from the hospital, Isaac and Clay. We left at about noon and went up between a couple mountains off Snake Lake Road. We drove the snowmachines up and down the mountains, while Clay hiked up with his snowboard. I really wish I had taken the camera. On the other hand, we all agreed as we were checking out the beautiful mountain views that cameras just never do this landscape justice.

We spent a lot of time exploring the area on snowmachines. In fact, we spent 5 and half hours tooling around, until we were almost out of gas. Then we fueled up the machines at the closest gas station and took them back home. It was a fun day, but I also ended up with a headache so bad that I was nauseated. It was really unpleasant when I got home--I took a shower and some Tylenol, but it didn't really help. So I added some Phenergan on top of that. Anti-nausea drugs work wonders.

Of course, today I'm just extremely sore. My back is especially sore, but my arms are also sore. I'm just very sore. Holding on to a snowmachine is hard work.

Before I sign off... I will leave you with Dillingham's idea of grocery-store humor. Samara took these pictures at the AC.

Yes, that the cornflakes-box Michael Phelps, doing the drugs.

Poor guy can't live down his mistakes, even in rural Alaska.

As for the spring, I'll let you know when it arrives. Some of the snow is melting as we speak, but we've seen melting before. Until the snow is mostly gone, I won't believe that spring is here.

Tastes of Alaska

2009-04-03T22:01:00.002-08:00

Oh, it's 70 degrees where you live? Well whoop-dee-do for you. Here it's still snowing regularly and temperatures have been hovering around freezing.

That's good for some folks, though. For instance, if you're still commuting to work by snowmachine, you need the snow.

This was the scene just outside the courthouse today.

Life has been strange here lately. It's light until 10pm these days, and the sun is coming up just before 8am these days. Samara and I have also been tired a lot recently. I don't really know why, but I suspect it has to do with the weird seasons and light patterns.

Samara's work has been slow in the wake of the auction. (Which, as a reminder, went really well! Everyone on the board of directors was impressed with how she handled it.) The lady that works at SAFE's thrift store, Ulla's, has taken maternity leave. Since Samara is her boss, now she gets to fill in at Ulla's.

I snapped a shot of her while she was selling a Spongebob Squarepants-themed television to her boss's daughter.

Soon we'll be scheduling my family's visit to Dillingham (sometime in June) and our triumphant return to Kentucky (a week-long visit, probably in September). I'm looking forward to both. It'll be nice to show my folks and sister around our tiny little town, and I can't wait to see my friends in Kentucky.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

That's it!

2009-04-01T17:17:00.000-08:00

It's freaking snowing again! It's never going to be spring here!

We just can't take it anymore. Alaska is stupid and we hate it here.

We're on the next plane back to Kentucky, volcano-permitting.

April Fools!

It's not so bad here. But it IS snowing.

Natural Disaster & UPS

2009-03-28T10:15:00.003-08:00

I recently made an order from drugstore.com and they decided to ship it using UPS instead of the Post Office. I want to show you where my package is and why it is still there.

That is correct. My package is being delayed in Louisville because of a natural disaster--namely the eruption of Redoubt. This is why it is best to use priority shipping through the USPS--I can't track my packages like this and get annoyed when volcanoes stop the progress of my package. I will also get another one when the package is finally scanned in Anchorage that says something to the effect of 'remote area, deliveries not scheduled daily." And then, some nice man who works for Pen Air, not UPS, will show up at my door a week late to tell me it had been sitting behind some stuff at the airport for a week.

Redoubt erupted

2009-03-27T11:47:00.006-08:00

Redoubt finally erupted and it has been continuing to erupt for about a week now. This is slowing up the mail process, because there are no planes leaving Anchorage to Dillingham today. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. You can see more of them here.

Auction (and Snow)

2009-03-23T19:51:00.006-08:00

We've been negligent about blog posting again. Our apologies. We'll do this update chronologically.

First up are some pictures we took last week. It was a very cold day, but there was still a lot of puddles around from the big thaw we'd had. We were driving out of town towards the flats, and I drove right through a puddle of icy water.

Problem was, as soon as it hit the windshield, it froze.

I couldn't see AT ALL. I pulled over almost immediately into the fire station parking lot. It's good thing there isn't much traffic in Dillingham. Then I had to scrape the ice off the windshield.

That brings us, then, to this weekend. Samara had been tasked with planning an auction to benefit SAFE. It involved lots of planning on her part. There were donations to get, tickets to print and sell, sponsors to wrangle, catering to arrange, and an elementary school gym to decorate. I'm sure there was plenty more to it, as well, but I didn't have to be involved in all that.

I was involved in the grunt labor on auction weekend, though. After work on Friday, I helped move prom decorations from the Middle School gym to the elementary school, where the auction was being held. There was a crap load of gossamer, lots of Christmas lights, some rolled-up slightly-rusty chicken wire, and some street lamps.

Once that stuff was safely in the elementary school gym, we got to decorating. We had lots of volunteers to help. Besides the SAFE board members, some of our friends like Erin and Saramay showed up to help. In fact, Saramay helped hung out all weekend and was a big help.

I was surprised that the decorations turned out so nicely, given what we had to work with, but they were really good. We had gossamer hung between all the basketball hoops, along with strings of lights. Once the tables were set up and the lights turned down, it looked pretty classy. On Saturday morning, we got up early and Samara cooked a good breakfast, and then we went to work setting up the silent auction items and putting the finishing touches on things. After that, it was home again for showers and getting dressed up in our nicest clothes.

Samara had to work the whole auction, of course. Saramay, Anthony, Erin and I got to sit down at a table and enjoy it.

Here's Anthony chowing down on the tasty catered food.

And Saramay, relaxing after the meal.

And here's Samara, running off to collect more dollar bills during the "Chinese auction."

And finally, a long shot that shows a bit more of the room.

The event was probably one of the ritzier moments in Dillingham. We had catered food, with thin-sliced been tritips, glazed baby carrots and potatoes. There was a silent auction, a live "Chinese" auction (explanation to follow...), a live dessert auction (good way to get people to bid--don't provide dessert!) and various raffles and door prizes. It was an entertaining night.

I only bid on one thing--a giant, stuffed toy horse donated by Wells Fargo Bank. I didn't expect to win it, mind you. This was the "Chinese" auction, though, so there was a set price and people bid $1 at a time until the secret price was met. Each dollar bid was collected, and when the bidding reached the secret, pre-set price, the person making the last bid won the auction. I bid $5 just for fun, and happened to hit upon the winning price. So for $5, I got a giant stuffed horse.

I set it up at my table in a chair--too bad I didn't get any pictures. It was rather amusing. Then Samara happened to notice that I'd won. She wasn't as amused that we'd have a giant stuffed horse at the apartment. She suggested I give it to one of the kids of a lady she works with. I think I made that kid's whole week.

After the auction was over, we got everyone to put up their own chairs, and had some folks help out with putting tables away. Then we retreated home to lounge on the couch, exhausted, and count the proceeds from the night. SAFE ended up make over $6000 for its programs, which is great!

Of course, then we had to finish taking down the decorations on Sunday. We got Saramay and Erin to help again. It was a whole lot easier to take things down than to put them up, and we were done in a few hours.

By Sunday night, you can imagine that we were pretty worn out. We slept in Monday morning, right through the eruption of Mount Redoubt. Apparently it spewed out ash 4 different times on Sunday night and Monday morning. The ash isn't falling anywhere near Dillingham, though, so we're safe.

Something else did fall today, though.

That's the view outside after lunch. Here's my co-worker's truck after a day at the courthouse.

And my car, after the work day.

Stupid snow. It's icky. I thought the thaw was on, but apparently it's still winter.

Alaska, you bastard!

2009-03-16T18:30:00.002-08:00

Alaska, you tricked me.

Last week, it was above freezing most of the week. We had puddles of icy water everywhere as the accumulated snow melted. It was good weather for enjoying the outdoors, since 35-45 degree weather now feels like sweltering heat to my accustomed body.

Then, this morning, it was cold again. Alaska cold. As I write this blog post, it's -2 degrees outside, with 22 mph winds, gusting to 30 mph. I can't really describe how unpleasant that feels on the skin. It's run-to-your-car-and-then-sit-in-it-shivering weather.

And it's supposed to last all week.

At least it was nice yesterday. I went sledding again with Anthony. We went to a different hill near the Nerka "subdivision" and the sledding was awesome. There were already a few kids there when we arrived, but they didn't mind sharing their hill. I was most impressed with the 3-year-old kid who fearlessly sledded down the hill before he began the ascent back to the top. It took him twice as long as the other kids on his stubby little legs, and he was just cute. If I ever have a three-year-old, I want him to be an awesomely brave sledding 3-year-old.

No sledding this week, though. Now it's time to hide in my warm apartment again.

Henna and the preggo belly

2009-03-14T22:30:00.010-08:00

One of my coworker is having a baby. Her baby shower is tomorrow. I loathe baby showers and wedding showers, so instead of going I thought I would henna her belly. This is the first time I had ever done this. And thanks to Ann for the henna. I need to remember to pick up a ton of this when I go back for a visit. After this, I might have more requests for it.

In case you couldn't tell, the baby's name is Lilly. I looks pretty cool with the wet henna on it. I hope it looks ok tomorrow for the shower.

Earlier this week, Aaron and I took a walk down at the beach again. This time we stayed above the retaining wall and took pictures of the beached icebergs from a far. It was a nice cold walk and I wore my slip on shoes instead of my snow boots. Not the smartest thing I've done, but I am pretty doped up on NyQuil, DayQuil and Sudafed for the past week. We made it to the beach right in time to watch the sun turn the horizon pink. It was beautiful. And Aaron looks like a fisherman in his knitted hat and facial hair.

Walking on the beach is very neat. It's just so quiet. The only noise you hear is the crunching of the snow or the ice....and me skreetching when I get snow in my shoes.
If you look closely, you will notice the water/ice on my pants. That was because the hill to get to the beach was icy and Aaron and I thought it would be fun to slide down it. I slid on my knees. Aaron slid down on his butt. Again, probably not the smartest thing to do since I wasn't really dressed for it. However, Aaron went sledding with Erin and Anthony and he was dressed much better. Check out those photos if you want. I didn't go because I still have this head cold thing going on. I will leave you with some pictures of the walk.

Cheater Post

2009-03-14T18:17:00.002-08:00

This is what you call a cheater blog post. Today I went sledding with Erin and Anthony. Samara was still feeling under the weather, so she didn't go.

Here's Erin and Anthony's blog post about sledding, with pictures: sledding.

I did not get injured. I did end up in the trees a few times. It was lots of fun.

A new blog

2009-03-14T13:53:00.002-08:00

I am shamelessly going to promote my new blog: 2 birds in the bush. I decided that since most of what I like to blog about seems to be cooking, I should probably just create a cooking blog. My friend, Erin, likes to bake so we got together and made this new blog. The second post includes more adventures during Beaver Round up. And by more adventures, I mean entering the beaver round up bake off with a 12 layer cake and apple dumplin's. (Yes, you have to say it like dump-lin's--no "g") A good time was had by all.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Beaver Round up!

2009-03-08T09:46:00.009-08:00

There a few things the people of Dillingham look forward to: Fish camp, berry picking, Moose season & Beaver Round up. Beaver Round Up is the biggest festival of the year. People from neighboring villages come for the events. Such events include: Pizza Hut Dinner, KFC Dinner (Both air freighted in), Out house racing, chili cook-off, and much, much more. This being my first Beaver Round up, it only made sense that I (through SAFE) had to "host" a number of events.

The craziness started on Wednesday night. Instead of going to Dilicapers (think talent show), I was in my kitchen cooking 40 dozen eggs for the breakfast that SAFE was hosting the next morning. You might ask your self, how long does it take to scramble 40 dozen eggs in a tiny kitchen. The answer: 3 hours. I only used one pan and Aaron helped me crack and scramble (thank you mom & dad for my Kitchen Aid Mixer) the eggs while I was cooking. After all the eggs were cooked, we dropped them off at the Youth Center for the next morning.

Thursday morning started out way too early. I have having a hard time sleeping because I needed to be up at 5am to pick up some volunteers and open the youth center so we could start re heating the eggs and sausage. Did I mention we made breakfast burritos? I had wanted to get the huge cans of cheese sauce that you get from Costco or Sam's club, but they didn't come in. So I had to make Velveeta cheese sauce. Every good Southern girl knows the magic of Velveeta Cheese. It makes even the yuckiest vegetables taste awesome if you like the school bus yellow, molten cheese food taste. The breakfast was over with at 11am. Which was nice because I had already been up since 3am and I was exhausted.

After a 2 hour nap, it was back to work to get ready for the kids Carnival and the youth Dance. Thankfully, I did not have to work the kids carnival. I went there to make sure the staff that was working was doing ok. She was working the "marriage booth." For 3 tickets you can get married to who ever you like. For 6 tickets you can get divorced. I'm not sure what the lesson to be learned here is.

I left the carnival to start the set up for the dance. Can I just say that the kids out here are great! I had about 7 of them setting up the whole sound system and getting the middle school gym set up for the dance. Then at 11pm, I had about 7 kids help me tear all the sound equipment down and load it in to my car. I was out of there by 11:30pm. It was nice and again, those kids are awesome. I think they were just so excited to have a dance that they were willing to help with anything. The good news was that there was no cost to SAFE for the dance so it was all profit.

During the time of the dance, Aaron went with a few of our friends down to the local bar to watch the Wii Bowling contest and the Beaver boobs & buns contest. Yes, that is equivalent to a wet t-shirt contest and best butt contest. (Classy!) One of our friends came in 4th in the Wii bowling contest and thankfully, Aaron left before the Adult contests to help me pack up the sound equipment.

By Friday I was dragging. Wednesday & Thursday had worn me down. But there was still more to do. Friday was the Beaver Round Up Parade. That was interesting. I can't believe how many people showed up for that. I will try to get some pictures of that from the girl who was riding in my "float." By float I mean a purple van with cardboard purple ribbons taped to it. Very stylish.
Friday night was the KFC Dinner. They air freighted in 500 lbs of KFC chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and coleslaw. It was $10 a plate for 2 pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes, slaw, & a biscuit. I remember buying a full bucket meal for $10.00. After that, there was the Harlem All-Stars Basket ball game, during which SAFE (meaning me) sold concessions. We ran out of bottled water and capri suns before the game even started . (oops--I will know to buy more next year) By the end of the first break, we had sold out of just about everything. Which was fine with me because again, I was ready to go home. We were suppose to meet up with our friends, but I just wanted to sleep.

Aaron and I woke up Saturday morning and went to the breakfast that was sponsored by the headstart. For $5 you got a pancake, eggs, bacon, sausage and coffee. After that, we headed down to the local market to watch the turkey bowling. I kid you not, there was a turkey bowling event complete with a frozen turkey and 2 litters of Mountain Dew. One of my favorite authors, Christopher Moore, wrote about Turkey Bowling in one of his books, Blood Sucking fiends. It's pretty amusing.

Also on Saturday, Erin and I decided to bake a bunch of stuff for the bake-off on Sunday. We decided to try to make a 14 layer cake together. She made chocolate chip cookie cupcakes and I made apple dumplin's. This took us all day. I am not sure why any one would want to make that 14 layer cake at all. It is labor intensive. You bake 14 flat cakes--think pan cakes, make this goo that goes inbetween them and then top it with butter cream. We have no idea if it is going to turn out right. We will see today. I am hopfull about the dumplings and if the cake isn't a huge train wreck, it will be impressive.

Tonight is the bonfire and fireworks display at dusk, which thankfully is at about 7:45-ish on a clear night. Yes, the days are getting much longer now. D'oh. I just realized day-light savings time took effect today. I guess dusk will be about 8:30-ish. I really need to buy some black out curtains. That is all for now. I will post more about the bake-off and hopfully more pictures some time this week.

A Juror Ate My Damn Lunch

2009-03-03T13:09:00.002-09:00

This story, I think, demonstrates something about life in rural Alaska. Maybe.

We had the final day of jury trial today. When a jury is deliberating, someone must keep watch, in case they have questions for the judge, etc. That person is the bailiff. You're probably familiar with the idea of Sheriffs as bailiffs--guys in uniform with a gun in a holster, looking formidable and official. Well, in rural Alaska, we don't have those. We just swear someone to watch the jury and be the bailiff. Usually it's the judge's assistant, but since she needed to get some other work done, I was also sworn as a bailiff. I was supposed to mind the jury during lunch.

One of the perks of being a bailiff is that if you're bailiffing (is that a real verb?) during lunch, you get a free lunch. So, when the jury ordered lunch today, I put in my lunch order as well. A poor boy sandwich and fries.

You must bear in mind that such a meal, prepared by a restaurant, has a value of $20 in rural Alaska. That's why Samara and I don't eat out very much--there are very few restaurants, and they are expensive. Eating out is a REAL luxury.

Wouldn't you know it: the jury returned with a verdict before lunch. Still, the lunch had already been ordered--just not delivered yet. That meant I still got a free lunch. Hooray!

When the lunch arrived, I graciously stood back and let the jurors, many of whom were just taking their food and leaving, get their food first. In fact, I went back and sat down and talked to the judge about a case for a while. Then, when I figured they'd all gotten a chance, I went looking for my lunch.

The box that the food was delivered in was empty.

I checked my office, the front office, the judicial assistant's office... I was hoping that someone had merely set it aside for me. But no. One of the jurors belatedly informed me that they thought the lunch (marked bailiff!) had belonged to one of the jurors that had already left, so it had gotten sent off to the hospital with someone else.

A juror ate my damn lunch.

Now, I packed a lunch today. I didn't know I was going to be getting a free lunch. But a double-bologna-and-American-cheese-on-wheat-with-yellow-mustard sandwich just does not satisfy when you've had your heart set on french fries and a poor boy.

I honestly don't know why it bothers me so much, but I think, as I said before, it has to do with the value and rarity of a pre-prepared lunch in rural Alaska. I haven't eaten at a "fast-food" restaurant (such as the "Duct-Tape Eagle" or "Windmill Grille") for at least a month, perhaps two. It's hard to justify spending $20 for a mediocre take-out meal. But, man, was I looking forward to eating such a lunch on the court system's dime!

Sometimes you just can't win.

Rock Hopping on Ice

2009-03-01T17:48:00.004-09:00

In the month of March, Aaron will be participating in the Iditacise Challenge at work. Basically, you keep track of your exercise, and each minute counts as a mile. Your goal is to go 1100 miles. That's a little over a half hour of exercise per day.

Since this is Day One, Aaron decided to get into the spirit right away with some situps, pushups, etc. Then we both took a walk down to the beach. That required getting bundled up, since it's a bit windy and just below freezing.

We went at 4:00pm, and high tide wasn't until 6:30 today. That meant that there were huge ice boulders beached on the edge of the water. It was fun to hop around on them.

Here's Samara with ice boulders and freezing water behind her.

Doesn't this water look cold? Not a good idea to fall in. You could die.

But that didn't stop Aaron from climbing from ice chunk to ice chunk to get as close to the water as possible.

Yep, that's Aaron.

Sometimes you've got to get on your hands and knees to stay stable enough not to slide off.

After a bit of climbing around, we posed by the giant tires that keep the boats off the dock. Those big tractor tires give you a sense of scale. They dwarf Samara.

In fact, two of them are almost as tall as Samara.

Notice the icy water behind her.

And here's Aaron next to the tires. Let me tell you: that warm hat is necessary.

And finally, as we got ready to head back home to the warmth of our living room, I snapped a picture of the beach full of icy boulders and the cliffs where our apartment sits.

Brr. Winter exercise is cold. But, considering that Aaron wants to go backpacking into the Alaskan wilderness this summer, perhaps it's a good idea. We're getting older, rounder and out of shape.

Things I forgot to buy in Anchorage--D'oh!

2009-03-01T15:47:00.003-09:00

When I went to Anchorage, I had a list of things that I needed and wanted. I seems besides the ammo, I forgot a few other things. I did manage to pick up some items I wanted. I also think I forgot a thing or two in either the car that I rented or in the hotel. It was a long busy week so it is hard to tell.

Humidifier--these things go for over $50 here and I know I bought one at the Family dollar for $10 back in Kentucky
Circular needles: US 8 --There is no place to buy knitting needles here :(
Flavored coffee in a non super dark roast
Wool yarn that can be felted--Red Heart just doesn't felt for some reason
round cake pans
Parchment paper
cocoa powder--Why is this so expensive here? It's good forever!
Jerk seasoning--I am pretty sure I bought this and lost it somewhere between ANC and DLG
Hair color--I have no idea what I was thinking when I didn't buy some at Target

Well, I'm not sure when I will have a chance to venture out of DLG again. Here's hoping.

What I do when I get homesick

2009-02-28T19:36:00.002-09:00

There are days that make me miss home more than other days. On those days, if I have time I try to make things that remind me of home. Sometimes it's the trashiest food ever, you know the ones that take me back to my childhood, in the trailer in Iowa or in the split level house in Winchester. Today it was broccoli salad. (I think a month back it was pea salad) I remember this salad being served at Easter dinners, family reunions, summer picnics and funeral lunches. I think its the mayonnaise dressing that makes me feel as if it is trashy, maybe it's the bacon. Either way, this is a pretty tasty salad and if you have the means to lighten it up, you can. I choose to use canola mayo and real bacon and real sugar. You can use fat-free mayo, turkey bacon and splenda, but it might not be as good as the full flavored, full fat version.

My recipe is as follows...and be warned, there are not precise measurements.

1 bunch of broccoli
3 0r 4 bacon slices cooked until super crispy (this can be done in the microwave)
cherry tomatoes (sliced in 1/2)
shredded cheese (not velveta--I used pepper jack but cheddar is fine)
diced red onion (about 1/4 of a large onion)
chopped cashews (or almonds or walnuts or pecans or raisins--not chopped)

Dressing:
small bowl of mayo (about a cup)
some cider vinegar (a couple spoonfuls)
sugar (a couple spoonfuls)
pepper (to taste)

Blanch the broccoli. This is not necessary, but it makes the broccoli prettier and tastier. If you don't know how to blanch vegetables, it's basically just putting it hot water for a second or two, then pulling it out and putting it in cold water. If you have time, do this. It is well worth it. Put the broccoli, cheese and tomatoes in a mixing or serving bowl. Crumble the bacon on top. Add the chopped onion and the cashews.

In another bowl, mix the mayo, vinegar, sugar until well blended. Add in pepper. Pour over broccoli mixture. Chill for about 30 minutes. Enjoy. Remember the days of your childhood.

I am sad to say that not only did I eat 2 bowls of this today, but I also did not get any pictures of the salad in all its glory. It was pretty and very tasty. You'll have to take my word for it.

Icy Outing

2009-02-28T14:12:00.004-09:00

Having not posted anything this week, I began to feel bad about neglecting the blog. This morning, after a trip to the post office and a trip to SAFE for Samara to do some work, I suggested that we grab the camera and head down to the harbor.

It's still very much winter here in Dillingham. On Wednesday, we had a blizzard that shut down the courthouse early. The police closed the main road out of town because it goes across the flats. The wind was blowing so hard there that visibility was about a foot in front of your headlights. High tide was at 4:30, and the wind was blowing so hard that there was a risk of flooding across the flats as well.

I should have taken some pictures then. But I didn't.

Instead, you get some pictures of the ice on the bay. Actually, it's low tide, so the giant hunks of ice are mostly beached.

Here's chilly Samara at the harbor.

And what's the behind her?

Why, it's hunks of ice as big as cars.

Then we drove down Wood River Road to the boat landing at the Wood River. It was all frozen over and covered with snow, as you can see.

It's a pretty view, I guess, if you like snow.

Here's a nice shot of Samara, in front of the Canyonero, with a boat in "storage" in the background.

As we were driving back to town, we saw our friend Ricky driving to his parents' house. We stopped and said hi.

Then as we pulled in at the apartment, Samara snapped a final picture of the ice in the bay right at the end of our road.

The giant, beached hunks of ice do make for a neat view.

I hope that the pictures keep you all entertained until I can come up with something more interesting to blog about. Samara and I have both been busy with work this week, so it's hard to find time to blog about the daily grind.

Anchorage training--Day five, six and seven

2009-02-21T20:37:00.010-09:00

I had a lot of things to do while I was in Anchorage.

go to Special Education conference
finish up grant report
go to positive behavioral support training
shop for items I can't get in Dillingham (bulk food, spices, exotic food, clothes)
go to dinner every night
mail items back to Dillingham that can't fit in to the suitcase. (50 lb limit in suitcases)
get my eyebrows waxed
buy ammo for Aaron
meet up with Saramay for drinks
go to Mad Myrna's
pick up a dog at the airport at midnight the night before we leave
leave Anchorage

Guess which one of these I didn't do. I'm gonna give you a hint. I have no idea as to what kind of guns Aaron has.

At some point, I managed to go to Sam's club and buy some bulk food, such as a very large bottle of balsamic vinegar, a very large wedge of Parmesan cheese, Havarti cheese, bisquick (we just don't have that here) and a giant can of cashews for Aaron.

I also managed to go to an City Market (think local co-op store) which I had to buy stuff for other people (which I will never do again--this takes up valuable space and weight in my suitcase) such as gluten-free flour, spring roll wrappers, hawaiian salt, & chinese 5 spice. These things were not cheap and had to be packed in one of my checked bags. The nice thing about cold Alaska, is that i just kept all the refridgerator items in the car and because the airplane is so cold, I used a tub as a checked bag and just let it go into cargo storage.

Everything that wouldn't fit in my suitcase, carry one or checked tub had to go to in a tub to be mailed. This is Erin and myself waiting in line at the post office at the Anchorage air port. It stays open until midnight. Now, bear in mind that each of these tubs we are mailing are about 60 pounds each. I have one and Erin has 2. She bought cat food, dog food and cat litter. And man that stuff is heavy. As long as the tubs are under 75 pounds, we were able to send them via USPS. We could even use parcel post since it's basically a straight shot to Dillingham from where we sent them.

As we tried to be back to our hotel we saw some strange looking "cows" at the air port. And by "cows" I mean moose. Please notice the fed ex cargo and plane in the back ground. (And I have played with all the settings on my camera, you all will just have to deal with blue snow pictures)
The mountains are nice around Anchorage. They are much bigger than the ones around here. They seem to go on forever in to the sky. Some of them reach so far in to the clouds, you can't see the peaks.

At some point during this trip Erin and I went to an Indian/Nepalese restaurant. It was called Yak and Yeti. It was pretty good. I had some steamed buns with spicy meat. Erin had the saag paneer. This is the best Indian food in town. It is also the only Indian restaurant in Anchorage. We thought it was a bit funny because Erin's husband, Anthony, is a yeti/big foot fan. I will have to bring Aaron here if I ever get a chance to do so.

The last real adventure of the week end was the trip to Mad Myrna's .
It was an adventure. It made me miss home. How could anyone have that much fabulous and not miss Kentucky? We met up with Saramay who had never been to a drag show. Saramay wasn't used to so much fabulous in one day. Erin seemed right at home. We even had some creepy troll trollin' on us at one point. I believe he was asked to leave.
Thh last stop of the night was to go to the airport to pick up Erin's new puppy a shiba inu that she named Sophie. It is so cute and hyper and after being in a crate for almost 24 hours it was also stinky. But after a quick bath in the hotel bathtub, she just smelled like a barn puppy which was much better than poo covered puppy. This is Erin cuddling her new non-stinky puppy.

And this is Sofie. I Like the "f" spelling of sofie instead of the "ph" spelling (Sophie). The "f" spelling seems like an older more, ethnic spelling. I haven't talked about the spelling over with Erin so she's just gonna have to deal with how I spell her dog's name. And here she is in all of her fuzzy cutiness, not Erin, Sofie.

And thus ends my trip. I was so glad to come home. I missed Aaron a bunch. And for those that might worry about his eating habit and vitamin intake while I am away, I did buy him some Flintstone chewables while I was there so if I have to go on a trip again, he can eat all the hot dogs, chips and pretzels he wants and still get some vitamins.

Anchorage training--Day two, three and four

2009-02-19T07:38:00.007-09:00

First, yes I am a huge slacker for not posting earlier. But to be fair, I have been going to a conference and working on "the grant report of doom" in between the breakout sessions. And unlike the last time, I have chosen not to eat super fancy food every night. It makes me sad, but Erin seems to like to eat 3 meals a day instead of me just eating one.

When I woke up on Monday, I looked out the window to see this..

Those are mountains. And no matter what I do, all the pictures turn out kinda blue. I also can see this...
This is the downtown cemetery. This is the view a lot of people get when they look out their window. It's kinda pathetic when it is compared the the Lexington cemetery, but then, that one is a couple hundred years old with fallen civil war soldiers in it. Just for comparisons sake, I thought I would add a picture of what the Lexington Cemetery would look like in the winter.
Ok, enough with that. Erin and I were so excited about fountain soda. There is a serious lack in the fountain soda area in Dillingham. Erin was pretty excited about Wendy's baked potatoes.
One one occasion, we asked what were some good Mexican restaurants in the area. We went to Don Joses. We were told that they made the guacamole at your table. We were told they had good margaritas. We were told...You get the idea. The point of the matter is we were told a lot of things and were disappointed. There was no guacamole. The place couldn't make real maragrita because of some city ordinance about liquor. Erin was so disappointed, she went to the car and got her hot sauce.
She felt like she needed to sneak it in. It was sad. We are hoping to have better adventures in the last few days here. But we'll see.

Office Makeover

2009-02-18T17:44:00.005-09:00

Samara is in Anchorage, slaving away at a grant report in between attending conference sessions. In the meantime, the judge is out of town and I'm left to my own devices at the courthouse. Since we've decided to stay for a second year, I decided that my office could use a little cosmetic help. It was not particularly well set-up for my tastes, and it needed some decoration.

Well, don't take my word for it. Take a look at the "before" pictures.

As you can see, there are a number of issues. It's a mess, for one. Also, I have to walk an entire circuit of the office to get out from behind my desk. There's also not much decoration on the walls, and I haven't really put my personal touch on it. My printer is also stuck in the corner. That sucks because when I print envelopes, I have to feed them one at a time and then run back to my computer to hit print.

So I did some rearranging. First, I moved the looming cabinet and hung up my diplomas.

I think it added quite the personal touch. You can also see the bundle of sticks and peacock feather that was the last law clerk's contribution to the office art.

And yes, that's the Canyonero in the parking lot. You can also tell that I've moved my desk up against the window. That leaves a nice space for me to walk through to get to my desk. Now I can jump up and go right out my office door when I need to grab a file.

You can see the other art piece contributed by the judge's first law clerk. Her father visited from China and painted the piece to the right of the window. My printer is also now on the desk, which means I can reach it without getting up.

The looming file cabinet had to go somewhere, so it's in the opposite corner. I also hung a bulletin board and re-centered my map of Alaska on the other walls.

And finally, I snagged a more comfortable chair for any visitors. I think my office is much more pleasing now. I'm happy with the makeover.

Really, it didn't take that long. I did little bits over two days and still had time to push some paper and grease the wheels of justice.

Anchorage training--Day one

2009-02-15T22:46:00.006-09:00

I am once again in Anchorage for a training. This time, I am in for a special education training with a emphasis on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome education and Positive Behavior Support. So on to my adventure...

First, I have to mention that my flight out of Dillingham was an hour late. So instead of leaving Dillingham at 5:30, I left at 6:30. Which in turn, meant that I arrived in Anchorage at 8:15pm. Have I mentioned that I Anthony's wife Erin is with me? I'm sharing a room with her all week. So we arrive at the airport, grabbed our checked baggage and went to find a taxi. The taxi driver was to take us to our rental car place which is closed at this point. He kept asking if we were going to be ok, I assured him that our car was going to be waiting for us, so he pulled away. As it turns out, the car was not waiting for us. So here we are some where in Anchorage, with all of our luggage and no rental car and no taxi. Erin is smiling, but I think that is so she doesn't cry.
I call my boss who tells me to just get another taxi. Strangly enough, we were able to flag down another taxi. It was pretty weird since we were on a seculded strip. Anyway, this taxi drive was like, "hey, you don't mind if I stop by up here to pick up my money from a woman I just dropped off?" "Uh, sure dude." He took us here...

Yes, that is PJ's Darts & Adult Entertainment. Some nice stripper tried to pay the taxi driver with a $100 and he isn't allowed to accept them, so she needed to get change. She paid him in mostly in ones. (Ewww...) He then took us to the hotel and said that if we wanted to party later on to give him a call. He even gave us his number. He ws such a nice young man. Here is Erin posing with him.
Poor girl, she has no idea what kind of stuff I will get her in to. (Just joking, Anthony) We then walked 8 blocks to the 5th ave. mall for food. By this time, just about everything was closed and we were just wanting something. We ate at Sullivan's Steakhouse. I ordered the filet migon and Erin got the Ahi tuna. It was over priced and not super, but I was hungry, tired and cold. I didn't take pictures of dinner this time, maybe tomorrow. I have to call the car rental place and sort all that out. UUGH! Well, tomorrow brings another day.

Alaska Weather Report

2009-02-13T10:11:00.002-09:00

Let me start by apologizing that I don't have pictures. I'm sure it's more interesting to read about Alaska weather when there's pictures of the snow.

Last night, the wind started blowing really hard. I had never really experienced "blinding" snow, but this was it. The snowflakes are blowing around so hard that they sting your eyes, and you can't really look around. You've just got to put your hood up and trudge wherever you're going.

As Samara and I were getting ready for bed last night, the wind was blowing really loud. It wasn't a howling wind, really, but more of a low rumbling wind. It was blowing hard enough that our large picture window in the living room was visibly bowing inwards with the hard gusts. That kind of wind really has a tendency to create snowdrifts.

This morning, when I went to clear the snow off our car windows, the brush wasn't working--I had the use the squeegee side of the scraper. This morning's snow is big, wet, nasty snow that sticks to everything. You know how they say that Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow? Well, I can believe it. There are so many different types of snow.

As I look out my window right now, the snow is coming down fairly hard, and it's still very sticky and wet. We have a blizzard warning in effect until 10am. The wind is still blowing. On the plus side, it's warmer. Only 33 degrees. Snow accumulation should be between 2 and 6 inches today. It's funny how that used to be amazing weather in Kentucky. We get that kind of accumulation every couple of weeks in Dillingham.

I'll try to get some pictures later.

Snowmachine Trip

2009-02-08T20:41:00.008-09:00

Today I took a trip by snowmachine with Anthony. He's housesitting, and there were two snowmachines available for us to use. One was a Polaris Snow King 700 and the other was a Arctic Cat 600. I drove the Polaris for the first half of our trip, and then we switched about halfway.

Remember those other pictures of Snake Lake that I've taken? Well, it took us about ten minutes at the most to reach the place where I took most of those pictures, and that's including driving the snowmachines TO Snake Lake Road. I think I'm going to have to drag Samara along on the next snowmachine outing.

Anthony and I parked at the outlook.

We took a few pictures up there.

As we were sitting there, admiring the view, Anthony exclaimed, "Look, a moose!" And indeed, there was a moose down in the woods.

It's right there in the center. It's at least 600 yards away, I'd say. If you click on the picture, you may be able to see it a little better. That was full zoom on my camera. But hey, that's my first big Alaskan game sighting.

After the break, we got back on the trail and zoomed on down to Snake Lake. Yes, the actual lake. Here we are, parked on it.

The lake itself is frozen, and probably have five feet of snow on top of it. It was also very flat, and made for some very nice views of the surrounding mountains.

Here's Anthony with the two machines on Snake Lake.

His hands were very cold at this point. The hand warming grips on the Polaris work much better than the ones on the Arctic Cat, which he had been riding. So we switched at this point. The Arctic Cat is a much lighter machine with better handling and speed. That's probably why the rest of the trip was so interesting, but more on that in a minute.

We took off back up the mountain, with Anthony on point. Within moments, though, I passed him and took off like a bat out of hell. He was having trouble keeping up on the larger machine, I think. It was fun.

Once we got back to the top of the mountain, we took a side trail that branches off before the first lookout. There were some good jumps in that area. We got to the top of the next hill and turned around to take them again.

After Anthony gave me the thumbs up and took off, I followed him down to the jump. I caught about two or three feet of air, came off the snowmachine and landed in the snow on my left side. I really hit my arm fairly hard, and was worried that I'd broken or brusied something at first. But I recovered after a minute. I think I may have scared the crap out of Anthony, though. That'll teach me to slow it down on a machine that I can regularly drive 40 mph over snow, with speeds as high as 50 or 60 in bursts.

We went back to the top of the hill and I took a picture of Anthony OFF his snowmachine. The snow was pretty deep.

Then Anthony took some action shots as I went down the hill, made a turnaround and then zoomed back up.

After that excitement, we followed some trails around. Anthony was in the lead on the heavier Polaris, and he pulled it to a little cove of trees where there was probably a small pond when the snow wasn't covering everything.

We took a break for a few minutes, and then when Anthony tried to make a turnaround, breaking trail through the deep snow, he got stuck. The front of the machine was up in the air, but the rear of the machine was dug deep down. The tracks on the rear that drive the machine just dig into the loose powder.

I was thankful that I'd packed my snowshoes. They made it much easier to walk around, break some trail for the machine and dig it out.

As we were digging the machine out, we realized that the drive belt was shredding. We popped open the front of the machine, and the drive belt was toast. Thankfully, there's a spare belt right on top of the belt guard. It took us a while to get the belt on--it wasn't easy. But once it was on, we got the machine up out of the drift and moving. I told Anthony once it got going to get it back up on the trail and then wait for me.

After he took off, I started my machine and tried to follow his trail. Instead I veered off into the powder and rolled the machine onto its side. Yeah, it sucked. I called Anthony back, and he came back around on our now-broken trail on the Polaris. We rolled the machine back, pulled it out of the powder and I drove it up to the trail. Then, as Anthony was trying to follow ME out, he got stuck again.

So then we dug him out and headed back off on the trails. We got back onto Snake Lake Road and took some trail that went back off the other side. We only made it a little ways before Anthony decided to break trail again. Well, let me tell you, that heavy Polaris just wasn't having it. He got stuck again. We were both fairly exhausted from pulling machines out of the deep, loose powder. (We're talking about five feet of snow above the ground.) Once we dug him out this time, we decided to call it a day.

I would say it was a successful trip, since both machines and both riders arrived back at the house without injury or damage. We probably both learned a few lessons about snowmaching as well.

This is the sort of adventure that Alaska offers, and I'm happy to be taking advantage of it.

Snowed-In Breakfast

2009-02-07T19:12:00.003-09:00

I'm sorry that the blog posts have dropped off in frequency. I'm sure you're all wondering what's been going on in the great white north.

Well, I can say that Samara makes the same yummy breakfasts that's she's always made!

It's been crazy weather up here. We've had everything from temperatures way below freezing where the cars have to be plugged in to temperatures that I now regard as warm. Yeah, when it's 32 degrees, I take the trash out in a t-shirt.

One night this week, it snowed a couple of inches. The wind was blowing so hard, though, that when we got up in the morning, all the snow had drifted up around our car and the front porch. It was a good two feet deep in the drifts. Here are some pictures taken in the dark.

After we did some shoveling that evening, I took some more pictures.

That's a pretty deep drift, but once you got past it, the snow was less than an inch deep on the rest of the parking lot.

I have to say... I'm looking forward to some summer weather here in Dillingham.

On the other hand, Alaska summers bring out the bears. I had a dream last night that I had to shoot a bear. Of course, my childhood friend Ryan was in the dream, and as I was shooting them, the bears turned into welding machines. So maybe it doesn't necessarily equate to some prediction or omen.

That's all the news from Dillingham for now.

A Surprise in the mail

2009-02-03T12:19:00.004-09:00

Aaron and I went to the post office today on lunch. This is is our usual routine. However, since the holidays are over, we haven't been getting very much in the mail except for bills and the occasional catalog. Today was different. Today we had a package waiting for us...well, it was waiting for me. I had no idea who the package could be from since I wasn't expecting one. As I picked it up, I was like, who lives in North Carolina? Our friend Aleks live in Clover, South Carolina, but he's a guy and guys are not known for sending random packages. I had no idea. I open the package to find these:
I was so excited. And the package was from Daisy, who is currently living in South Carolina with her 2 very sweet children and husband. This is so sweet and very unexpected. So I would like to give a shout out to her. (Thanks Daisy!) I am so looking forward to brewing a cup of the gingerbread coffee and the Costa Rican reminds me of Meg who is currently living in Costa Rica.
I don't think I can adequately describe how excited I am about good coffee. WHEE!