5 Weeks Out

Sorry the posts are a bit sparse, there isn't that much exciting going on with relevance to AK just yet.

I'm heading north in 5 weeks, which is really exciting. Andy (a friend of mine from grad school) is going to work for a youth wilderness program in Wrangell, AK, so he is going to drive with me to Haines, and then head down to Wrangell from there. It's going to be really nice to have someone to split the driving with. Plus, it's just going to be nice to have someone else with me along the Alcan. There were times last year where I realized that I was a female traveling alone along really isolated roads and I wondered if that should potentially concern me.

Andy and I plan on leaving Mankato on May 11th and we should hit the Alcan on the 13th and be in Haines by the 15th.

I'm still trying to figure out housing for the summer since it sounds like I'm going to be in town a little bit more than I was last season, which means more time to experience Haines and more time to update the blog! (Which means you have more opportunities to procrastinate reading it instead of doing more productive things on the internet..... like checking facebook.....)


In other news: I passed my thesis defense! So the two years of hard work wasn't for nothing and I get to graduate! I'm really ready to be done with studying for a while and to be back in the field working with students.

Thats all for now, stay tuned!

The Return North

Remember that time I was going to keep this going over the winter? Yea, that was wishful thinking. Turns out there isn't much to say about life in Alaska when you are actually living in Minnesota and spending all your free time in the library.

But now seems as good a time as any to re-start the blog... because yesterday I got my trip schedule for Alaska this summer!

For those of you who tuned in last summer, you'll be glad to know that at the moment I am only scheduled for 2 maybe 3 long trips, which means a little bit of a slower pace this summer, and some time to really enjoy being in Haines. (Also, for all of you compulsive blog checkers this is going to mean more updates and more ways for you to procrastinate!)

So for now I have somethings to finish up in Minnesota (like graduating, hosting a conference, etc) and then I'm due in Haines by may 15th!

Tune in for more updates as the departure date approaches!

Picture of the Day

So there have been some requests to keep the blog updated.... and some other comments that the blog lacks some serious picture action and even more serious lacking in good stories from the time up on the Last Frontier. So here's my solution... Picture of the Day (ish). Every few days I'll update the blog with a picture from the summer with some details about where it is, what trip it was on, why its cool, etc. That way everyone can continue to have a procrastination destination at work/home and I can get more of the pictures online without having to upload them all at once. Genius!

This picture was taken on May 18th on my first 12 day Sea Kayak trip in Glacier Bay. It was about 5 days into the trip and we had stopped for lunch on this beautiful day on a beach in Maquinna Cove. The tide was just starting to come in, and we were planning on riding the tide up toward the upper arms of the bay. While we sat there enjoying the sun we had to keep moving the boats up on the beach every 10 minutes or so or else they would float away. My boat is the 3rd from the bottom in the picture. The mountains across the way in the picture are part of an unnamed range that divides the two major arms of the bay. By the time I got back to this same spot a month later most of the snow from that range would be gone. This is probably my favorite beach in all of Glacier Bay, I love how clear the water is, and there is such a great view of the east arm from the place I am standing!

More Pictures

As time goes on I am getting a little bit better about getting pictures moved online. (baby steps).

So here are some pictures from the 24 day trip in Glacier Bay: PICTURES!

Portland

I'm almost back to MN! I'll be honest, it has been hard to leave Haines. I really loved living in Alaska, its a beautiful place, full of really fun people, and I was working for a fantastic organization. It just doesn't get much better than that. But it was time to go, so I'm back on the road.

I left Haines on Saturday morning and had some great company. One of the students from my last course was going to Vancouver, so she drove with me the last two days. It was interesting for her driving at first being that she is from New Zealand and everytime she had to make a turn she had to think pretty hard about it to make sure that she didn't turn into oncoming traffic!

We decided to take a different road down that I had taken up. We took the Cassiar Highway down from Upper Liard, YT down to Prince George, BC. It ended up being an epic day. The Cassiar is a mountain road that isn't paved all the way through, so we couldn't drive quite as fast as you can on the Alcan. It's beautiful though, and a shorter distance, and we saw 8 blackbears along the side of the road. Trouble was we had a hard time finding a place to sleep that night. Once we got back to a place that actually had hotels everything was full. So we ended up driving until around 1 am until we could find a room.

Sunday we decided to drive down to Vancouver via Whistler. Whistler is a beautiful town and we were both wishing that it would suddenly be winter so we could go skiing. But sadly there was no snow and we drove on. Too bad for us that there was major construction between Whistler and Vancouver, which really slowed things down. So by the time I dropped her off an got across the boarder it was getting late. I didn't get to the pant's place in Portland until close to 1 am.

We spent today playing in Portland and tomorrow morning I am headed toward somewhere in eastern WY. I do love my road trips, but I'm going to be excited to just be in MN and done driving for a while.

Time to sleep to be awake on the road!!!

More Pictures!

So it turns out that one of the students from the last few courses is way better about getting his pictures posted than I am (and he takes better pictures too.) So, I thought I'd go ahead and post a link or two to Henry's pictures for your viewing/procrastinating pleasure.

Glacier Bay

Yukon Territory

Enjoy!

The Last Few Days

Sorry it has taken me forever to get this up.... life here has been nuts-o. I got back in from trip on Tuesday and since then have been de-rigging the last trip as well has having meetings with some of the office staff to finish up the season well and talk about stuff in the future.

This last trip was fabulous. The students had a great time and the scenery on the hiking section was amazingly cool. Then once we hit the water things got rowdy. The Primrose River was in flood, which creates interesting obstacles for us as in there are no eddies (stopping places) to scout the river from.

The part of the Yukon Territory that we were in is in a rain shadow, so this trip was much drier than any of the others have been, which was fabulous.

I uploaded a few pictures from the trip for your viewing pleasure. More to come as I return back to MN. So far the plan is to leave here on Saturday and arrive in MN sometime on Wednesday evening. Can't wait to see everyone back down south!