AK

Everything is bigger than average here...the moose, the mountains, the bears, mosquitoes and even some vegetables.

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Check out the latest from the Anchorage Daily News:

http://www.adn.com/life/story/807240.html

got crabs?

Crab Fest!

some highlights:

-Hobo Jim @ The Rendevous

-King crab legs

-Survival suit race

-riding the "Tornado," an amusement park ride set up on the spit, with Margo in the rain and cold

-Blackened butt wrap

-Kodiak Island Drummers show and workshop

-Balalaika Players @ the Baranov Museum (Russian folk songs)

-Erica's reading of her dirty fishergirl poem "I wanna get you in a bunk" at the Fisherman's Poet gathering

feel the burn

We went on a great hike up Pyramid Mountain yesterday. There was nothing but sunshine and blue skies so we ate lunch at the top (a little over 2,000ft). Shelly spotted some mountain goats along the top ridge and we saw a couple Rock Ptarmigans on our way down. Ryan impressed/entertained us with his sledding attempts-one good way of using plastic bags. Yes! There is still snow, and quite a bit of it on the mountains-people were skiing on Pyramid all day.

The last two nights a few of us have driven to Abercrombie Park to watch the sun go down off Miller Point. It has been setting at about 10:30 and getting later every day! I am loving the long days.

hot butt

Jone hooked us up with some fresh butt- caught this morning! It was delicious. I just put some butter and garlic on a warm skillet and slapped the fish on there and voila!

Hopefully I'll be catching my own fish soon. The Dolly Vardens are here! I put in a picture below of one in spawning colors. The name "Dolly Varden" comes from a character in the Charles Dickens novel, Barnaby Rudge. Dolly V. was a young girl with a rosy complexion and around 1860, a popular fabric with red polka dots was marketed under the name Dolly Varden. It was actually then a young girl who is credited with connecting the name with the fish, and it stuck.

potluck cookout birthday

What a sweet group of people I have met here. Margo & Roger invited us all over for a potluck cookout at their house on Saturday. There were sweet and sour meatballs, salmon dip & crackers, burgers & bratwursts, fruit salad, beer, and of course, butt. To top it off, Margo made two "bombs," a homemade type of ice cream cake, only 10x better than any you've ever had. I put on a poor performance of blowing out candles on one of them and we gobbled it up.

ps. I feel lucky to be here with some really cool, adventurous, and down to earth people.

pps. I'm really just sucking up because they got me some awesome presents, but they're alright I guess.

the tuffs...xtra tuffs that is

You might be wondering where you can get a pair of the sweet boots I'm wearing...

They're called Xtra Tuffs and they are like the Alaskan sneaker. I feel like I fit in much more now that I can wear these around town. They came with the job and are really rather comfortable!

(I was told by the pilot to hold onto the plane until he jumped in and got it turned on)

Flying the Beaver

We went out on a float plane today! We took the Beaver (that's the model of the plane) to Karluk Lake where Fish & Wildlife has a cabin. It took us about ~45mins each way, taking off from Trident Basin, which is on the other side of Near Island from town. I mapped out where we went on the map as best as I could. The black square is Karluk Lake.

I was sitting shotgun for the ride out and was pretty sure I was going to lose my cookies before we touched down in Karluk, but managed to hold on. On the way there, we took the coastal route, saw some whales and a couple Native villages (Port Lions and Larsen Bay) and it was a bit bumpy. I thought it was cool that we could see the mainland too! Going home was smooth sailing, we took the mountainous route over the "spine" of the island and saw some bear tracks in the snow, no bear though.

So, Kevin was our fearless leader- he's a native Alaskan who grew up flying with his dad in Fairbanks, now he flies for Fish&Wildlife. He happened to have open seats and Margo, Chad and I all had the day off, so we got to hitch a ride :)

The sun has been out all weekend with blue skies ta boot! Doesn't happen much around here I'm told, so I've been soaking it up.

fish here, fish there

Mama bought me a fishing license for my bday! I've been learning some lingo, ha...so there are
chinook salmon=you call them kings, they're the big guys
chum=dog
sockeye=reds
coho=silvers
pink=pinks, right? nope, you call them humpies because of this huge hump on their backs


What did the fish say when it hit the wall?

DAM.