Winter Break

Boy, did I get a winter break! I was in San Diego for nearly a month and enjoyed the 70 F + temperatures and warm sun. But the best part was spending time with my family, especially my nephews and niece!!
We went a bit crazy on Christmas morning playing with laser guns!!

…and had fun taking pictures with new digital cameras!

My sister and I played candyland…I think my niece and nephew were around…

yup, here they are playing chutes and ladders!

Mary made a german pancake or as the original pancake house calls it, a Dutch baby

And, of course, we all got together for a pizza party, what kid doesn’t like pizza?

I had a great time seeing everyone!!!

Mushrooms!!

Alaska has shared with me the wonders of mushrooms. Here they grow abundantly in the late spring to early fall. They are a mysterious and fascinating group and I am always on the hunt for them…even in the winter! Although winter is not the season for mushrooms, there are still shelf or bracket fungus (often called conks) living on sick and dead trees.

Love this place!

Just wanted to share some amazing photos that Mary and I have been taking. This first one is coming off the mountain from Hatcher Pass, we caught a beautiful sunset and I pulled off to the side of the road so we could get a picture. The colors were unlike anything I have seen before.

Hatcher Pass is a GREAT place for skiing. Here people strap their board or skis to their back and climb the ridges for a free fall into powdery snow, no lifts here. The hiking trails here are groomed for X-Country skiing in the winter and Mary and I are really enjoying this new sport. Our doggie, Molly, joins us too when we ski at the farm. Of course, after a ski, a pit stop for soup and bread and a warm spiked beverage at the Hatcher Pass Lodge is a must!

It gets so cold here that all the water condenses and freezes in the air, you can see the crystals magically appear and drop out of the air. Frost accumulates on the tree limbs so thick it’s like winter leaves on the tree.

Here’s Molly and me taking a walk around the farm. She LOVES this place, too!

Here’s a link to the Spring Creek Almanac, a blog about what is going on at the farm these days.

Small Town Fun

This weekend is Colony Christmas in downtown Palmer. Yesterday we enjoyed a community pancake breakfast and then scuttled off to a craft fair at the Palmer Train Depot. History of the New Deal is still alive and well in Palmer and the people here are very proud of their heritage…if you are an Alaskan, you’re in, and if you are planning to stay and contribute to this great little small town, well, you are definitely in! It’s amazing the connections you can make just by talking with people in your community, especially in a small town such as this. Last night we were treated to a hometown parade of lights followed by fireworks!! Palmer folks really know how to celebrate Christmas, this was the second fireworks display I’ve seen in the last 2 weeks!
It is really great to feel a part of a community. I don’t know if it is just easier here in Alaska to do so or if I just never tried in San Diego, but depending on where we end up I will definitely make a stronger effort to become part of my local community, whether it is through work or through volunteer efforts, it really is worth the time to reach out to those around you. You never know what kinds of opportunities may arise from contacts you make as long as you are open to the possibilities, and you might even make a friend or two.

Whoosh!

The little cabin in the suburb of Alaskan wilderness in which I live is currently shaking with the anticipation of Mary’s safe return…literally. The gusts of wind tobogganing down the Matanuska River valley are so strong that the house is shaking. I checked the NOAA website and they state 45 mph winds tonight with gusts up to 75 mph, whoosh! I am amazed by its force! I had to go outside to pick up the pet gate banging around on the deck and, man, the wind, literally took my breath away, what a rush!

I was looking over Mary’s posts with all of her pictures of snow scenes and I am so confused how there can be absolutely no snow on the ground in December in Alaska. That’s right, NO SNOW. We had a chinook, a bit like the Santa Ana’s San Diegans get…a warm wind that melted all the accumulation a couple of weeks ago and we haven’t had precipitation with cold temperatures since. Makes me feel cautious about how quickly climate change may actually be occurring. No one sees the affects as much as this state. With the decrease of sea ice, retreating glaciers, entire coastal villages evacuated…

Anyway, folks around here are a bit grumpy about the lack of snow…since the sun rises about 9:45 and sets about 3:45 having the snow on the ground actually lightens up the place. So it has seemed much darker than usual. It is so difficult to get up at a decent time in the morning…I know, I’m living the student life, but believe it or not I actually enjoy getting up early so I can have a productive day and it is ridiculously difficult. Fun part is that I actually get to see the sunrise every morning since it is so late and it is SO beautiful peeping around the talkeetna and the chugach range. The white rugged peaks with glorious golden sunbeams reaching out…amazing, I feel very lucky to see it.

Well, the wind is starting to slow a little…so maybe I can get some sleep tonight!

Mind the Gap

So I haven’t written for a while…my computer crashed and now I have a new one, yippee!

Alaska has changed so much since we arrived in July. It was so green and lush and quickly faded into the amazing colors of fall. Now there are few leaves outside the window with the threat of snow creeping around the corner. The mountains are already snow-capped. Its strange how they look so much bigger under snow. We managed to find some cross country skis at a thrift store and have already had the chance to try them out…far cry from San Diego weather, huh?

So, this semester I am working on a thesis proposal, an educational kit for the Anchorage School District with Fish and Game, a wetlands interpretive walk, and a watershed curriculum for the farm…on top of all the other school work…papers and readings. I am really excited about all of it, there’s so much to learn and so many cool things to teach about! Now…narrowing down a thesis proposal…that’s what’s on my mind these days. I better get back to work. Hope everyone is doing well!!

What’s Up!

So, since I have been back I have been working as a lead instructor for trailside discovery camp. We’ve been teaching about geology, stream ecology and this week….the wizards of the woodland…edible plants. Next week it’s survival skills and then a great overnight camping trip with the group. It’s been a lot of fun…and tiring at the same time…but with the extreme hours of daylight there’s always time to meet up with friends or go for a hike with the dog after work. I am really learning a lot about kids and about how to adjust lessons to fit the age…and of course I now have a list of games to tire kids out and have fun at the same time! I am alos learning a bit more about how Mary must have felt about being a teacher and she’s learning a bit about the corporate world. Kind of an odd exchange for us.

I really like this camp because it is a mix of classroom lessons, craft lessons and outdoor ed lessons all rolled into one. It’s certainly nice to have a job where you are getting paid to learn. Since I have been studying techniques of how to teach outdoor ed it is great to be able to put them into practice. I wish I had more planning time though so we could implement some of the theories of outdoor ed a bit better.

Alright..I am off to study up a bit more about decomposers and mushrooms for our mushroom hike tomorrow afternoon!

Back in AK!

Hi there everyone!! I am sure you are all awaiting my next blog, musk ox can get a little old after a while….alas…Mary is hogging the computer …but look what she has put together…awesome little bloglets about our journey north on the Alaskan highway…http://merrymaryallegra.wordpress.com!

I will be sure to update more when I get the chance. At this point we are busy unpacking, mowing the tremendously large lawn that grows SO fast it must be mowed at least once a week if not more often due to the 22.5 hours of sunlight daily, and trying to get some exercise hiking the beautiful trails that surround us. I am getting ready to start camp as a lead instructor on Monday so I am catching up on all my camp songs and nature games…found this awesome camp site (ha ha, campsite, but really I mean website)…www.ultimatecampresource.com. Once I get some picture organized I will blog a bit, but I am trying to get things organized around the house first.

Musk Ox Farm

Today I went to the Musk Ox Farm for the Mother’s Day special, even though I wasn’t with my mom, I think she would have enjoyed this trip. I had my own personal tour guide, too, Bridgit, my roomie! She showed me around the pens, pointed out the new babies (there are 4 of them!), the steers, the bulls, the yearlings and two year olds. I tried to get pictures of the babies but they just wouldn’t come closer and kept lying down so I couldn’t see them. Here is a good web page to find out some interesting Musk Ox Facts, http://www.muskoxfarm.org/. Lucky for me this place is less than a mile from my home!

They have some amazing wool, called quviut, that keeps them warm even when temperatures reach -100 F! Walking around the pens, I was freezing, as the wind in this area gusts very strong, I was wearing a t-shirt and fleece pullover and the wind shot right through it, I felt like I wasn’t wearing a thing! (It wasn’t cold by my house or I would have worn something warmer). Bridgit was carrying a small peice of quviut in her hands and told me it was keeping her hands quite warm.

Tidal Wave

On April 18th, amidst the pressure of final projects, my roomie and her boyfriend and I took a study break pilgramage to Beluga Point in Turnagain Arm to see the famous bore tide. We checked the tide tables for Anchorage and discovered this would be the day the bore tide was at its largest for the year because of the differential between the extreme low and high tide. The bore tide was literally about a 4-6 foot wave of white water cruising down the channel at about 15 miles per hour…we drove alongside and clocked it! Cars filled the Beluga Point turnout as many a spectator sat watching from behind their binoculars. Once the wave passed, we all got in our cars and followed it to the next turn out, further down the arm. We saw cars with surfboards on their roof rack, but the danger of the deadly mudflats kept them out of the water today.

I found this giant Inukshuk on the way home from the bore tide at the Alaska Wild Berry Gift Shop…along with this yummy chocolate fountain! Ok, sometimes you gotta be a tourist…