road trip

 
 
 
  

wet wet wet weekend

I had planned a long canoe trip to Nenana on the Tanana river with my friends Kyle and Julie. We were smart on Saturday - woke up early, looked outside, and promptly went back to bed. Some reason we weren't so smart on Sunday and we decided to go anyways. Got on the river at 5:45 AM!! and it rained non-stop for 9 of the 10 hours, it took us to get to nenana. If the rain wasn't bad enough we had a 15 mph headwind to contend with for at least 40 of the 60 miles - crazy long day! The crazy thing is that I've skied this exact route in almost half the time - I never would have thought my skiis were faster than my kayak! Now after a long hot shower and 6 cups of tea later, I'm finally warming up and drying out.
Thursday I head up North for a short vacation - I'm helping Stacia drive all her field gear from Deadhorse back to Fairbanks. Should be interesting to see Prudhoe Bay in this midst of this major crisis, but really don't plan to spend much time there, we're planning to backpack in the Brooks range for a few days on the way back south. plan to be home by tuesday...


 

Maine

Just back from a great trip to Maine for Lynette's wedding. I couldn't handle the heat (and I left before it hit 100!) so spent a lot of time at the beach or in the neighbor's pool. The air feels so good here in Fairbanks now, lots I miss about Maine but not the humidity!


 

crockett ridge kids

1st generation... 2nd generation...
 

had a blast with these guys...

Martin's trip

was just having coffee in the cabin this morning when I heard Martin's voice on the radio... holy cow that woke me up! NPR did a great story on Martin's trip to ANWR with George Schaller. check it out: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5582159. also there was more good radio a few weeks ago when the what'd ya know show came to fairbanks. i think you can still listen to the whole show - http://www.notmuch.com/Show/Archive.pl?s_id=410. he actually did a great job characterizing fairbanks life and he also interviewed Ned (Kristen's husband). off to the east coast now...

dog days of summer...

 

ferry trail

Stac is in town this week so I played hooky today and went to Healy with her to explore the ferry trail. It was a phenomenal place to bike, endless ridge hikes... such a cool area we'll be back for sure. We had a really awesome day - great weather, great ride, great company, then found the perfect beach spot (on the side of the nenana river) for a picnic dinner.

the fireweed just started blooming last week, it's everywhere suddenly - definitely one of my favorite things about july in alaska.
we love trish. 

half Ironman

the sourdough triathlon was on saturday - i finished my first half ironman! it was a really fun race, there was a great turnout (55 solo racers) with a lot of folks from anchorage coming up for it. the 1.2 mi swim was total chaos (ben took this pic of me looking for the next buoy), the 56 mi bike was pretty challenging with periods of pooring rain and a steady headwind (which of course turned into a nice tailwind for the 2nd half) and the 13 mi run was simply not a whole lot of fun for anyone. i finished almost 20 minutes under my goal of 6 hours and was in 4th place for the women and was just 15 sec. out of finishing in the top ten overall - not bad for a rookie eh?! the best part was one of my all time favorite alaskans did the race - Deedee Jonowre - she's a long time iditarod musher who is recovering from breast cancer, very inspiring story. now i'm ready to tackle a full ironman - just kidding! no my next goal is to do my first marathon in september, we'll see... 

matt and kenny

time flies when you're having fun.... the 2 high school kids i've been working with finished their internships last week and went back to their villages (matt is from mcgrath, kenny from stebbins). i'm not sure they really learned much about climate change, which was the point of the internship, but we did manage to have fun most days in the field. but after spending 40 hrs a week for 6 weeks with 2 high school boys, i will admit it's kinda nice to work alone for a while...

but i still have caz going to the field with me every day... 

happy birthday spence!!

i am super excited to see you in just a few weeks! hey i heard you got a new bike for your birthday, will you take me for a ride when i come visit? love you - juju. 

best shot

here's my favorite photo from the weekend. caz, the 4 month old wonder, was a stud with all the stream crossings, and was even more diligent than the other dogs in protecting us from all the bears (we saw none, not sure how many she saw), other hikers, and even ourselves. 

kesugi ridge

we had an awesome 3 day backpack along kesugi ridge this weekend. probably one of the most popular hikes in alaska - the trail is 30 years old this year (so we were told by the overly friendly woman that took this photo for us) and cuts through some dense forest up to a ridge where you have miles and miles to view denali, and some really unique and funky geology. just the 5 of us, 6 dogs, and 57 nanogizillion mosquitos (or so we estimated).... amazingly all the dogs made it into this final group photo just before we descended down to byers lake. we all hiked 27 miles, a few of the dogs likely did 75+ miles since they had to detour for every single marmot living within 5 miles of the trail.
pretty ominious clouds on day 1, but we never got even a drop of rain.

view from the tent day one. 

the kesugi gang...