So Where Exactly is the Ukraine?

The Ukraine is situated on the north shore of the Black Sea and shares borders with a handful of eastern European countries. So I am off to the Ukraine for a month of Russian language immersion in mid-September. My original plan was to go to Vladivostok, Russia on the Pacific Ocean but it turns out that the cost of school was cheaper in the Ukraine. Also, an invitation and visa is no longer required so that saves some $$ too. The airfare was also more reasonably priced.

I will be living with a family in the port city of Odessa doing 6 hrs of individual lessons a day. Although Odessa is in the Ukraine, its a Russian speaking city. It was also the big seaside resort town for the former Soviet Union and is now the place to go if you are in need of a Ukrainian wife.

I know absolutely nothing about the Ukraine so I am really excited to see what life is like in this part of the world. I head out on Sep 19th..

Weekend in Town

Big fat blueberries are ripe on Murphy Dome

I stuck around in town this weekend to take care of some home things and just to chill out. There was nice race on Saturday up on Murphy Dome-It was about 10 miles on trails above treeline. The weather was just awesome.

Lisa finishes the 10 mile run with a smile--or maybe she is getting ready to heave up her breakfast...

Julie opted to mtn bike the route which traversed rocks, mud holes, tundra, and a gravel road. She came through with one flat and I think a couple of spills.

Denali on Two Wheels

Julie descends Polychrome Pass on the Denali Park road

We finally biked in Denali. Julie and I had intended to do this back in June but it was difficult to get bus reservations for us and the bikes. The Park only allows 2 bikes per camper bus--and there are only 3 or so a day. Our plan was to take the latest bus to the Fish Creek stop about 60 miles into the Park and then bike back to the entrance overnight when there are few, if any, vehicles on the road. It's August now and I sort of spaced out that it gets dark for a few hours at night now. Oh well...we brought our headlamps and only needed to use them between about 1-2am. Dea and Ben were going to meet us at Polychrome Pass but sped ahead and we eventually met up with them at the campsite at the park entrance.

I brought the GPS along and logged our vertical profile. Our total distance that night was 61.1 miles and there was a net drop overall but we did have a few good hill climbs.

Ready to go--Mile zero and the weather is great. I wasn't smiling so big a few hours later because my ass was super sore from my seat.

Julie is excited to bomb the hill down to the Toklat River.

Bear chewed sign--doesn't look like the nails are helping much.

We saw moose, caribou and sheep on our ride. No bears in site except during the bus ride into the Park. Apparently Dea and Ben shot past a waiting bus and some bears....we missed them.

No Blog Updates

Man--I have a lot of pics I would like to add to my blog but the phone/internet has been down for a week now on my end of town. Its been really quiet without the phone ringing but I sure feel out of touch with everyone. Now I wish I had a cell phone for a week. I hope to be able to update the blog sometime next week.

keep checking back!!


ed

Wedding Bells in the Boreal Forest

Today was the long awaited wedding of Lars and Sharon. They have been shacked up for several years and have now filed paperwork with the state of Alaska to recognize their coexistence. Lars' dad performed the ceremony (anyone can be a wedding commissioner once in Alaska) at their ginormous home that they call Belfair.

Jim and Mark play the popular Midwest game called "cornhole". The objective of cornholing is to toss small corn filled bags at a board with a hole in the middle. Jim fabricated this cornhole game as a gift for Lars and Sharon.

Ted is an intense cornhole player

Lena and Amanda bungee race. There was also a giant air filled castle to jump around in

The crowd dances in a heavy downpour from a thunderstorm

Trevor gets decorated by the ladies

20,320 Feet of Rock and Ice!

Mark-E is awed by the view of North Americas highest peak--Denali!

My nephew Mark-E just arrived this week. This is his first time up to Alaska. He is a Colorado mtn boy and is totally excited to be up here in the endless wilderness and to see as much wildlife as possible. This is no ordinary kid. He gets excited about everything outdoors: wildlife of course, flowers, mountains, rocks, bugs, plants, clouds. He makes me take notice again of subtle things that I have seemed to begun to overlook over the last few years. The other cool thing about him is that he loves to eat fruit and veggies and try just about any food at least once. I think this kid is from another planet...don't most 13 yr olds hate everything?!?

Mark is a total mountain goat and wanted to hike up every mtn or ridge we saw. We bagged 2 different peaks during our overnight jaunt into the park. Our first evening we climbed about 2000 ft up to what he called peak #4 because it was the highest of four points on a ridge above the Savage River. We hiked until about 11 pm in the warm evening sunlight.

We stopped a lot because Mark was fascinated by every little thing growing in the tundra. We thought this cotton grass looked like little people with fuzzy white hair singing into the wind.

There were sooooo many flowers in bloom. He kept saying that his aunt Cheryl would really like to be here because she studied alpine flowers. He had me take pictures of all of them. Pink plumes (aka bistort) - this is one of the plants Cheryl studied in grad school.

Mark simultaneously checks out the Alaskan poppies and eats spicy trail mix

On our first hike a golden eagle swooped down right over our heads and landed about 30 ft away. It was being chased by a raven.

Nice view of endless tundra in Denali Park

He thought the shooting stars were really cool - we went trough fields of them.

Mark-E sits in a field of shooting stars and mountain avens

Glaucous gentian--ouch! If any flower needs a common name its this one

I couldn't remember the name of this flower and it wasnt in the flower book either

Mark checks out Denali in the late evening sunlight.

Here is where a small clear water stream mixes with the silty glacially fed water of the Toklat River.

We did see a few animals (sheep, caribou, ptarmigan, eagles, grizzly bear) but since it was so warm and sunny most of them were hunkered down in the brush during the heat of the day. In the late afternoon some thunderstorms popped up and it was a bit cooler. This caribou ran right alongside our bus.

The park is patrolled by dog teams in the winter. We saw a dog sled demo at the park headquarters kennel.

Mark and I hiked up to a ridge high above the park road to check out the view

I Can Smell Winter in the Air

Sunrise: 2:59 AM, Sunset: 12:48 AM, Length of Day: 21hr 49min

Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere today. Up this far north its an especially significant day because it means our 24 hours of continuous light will gradually be replaced by dark nights and falling temperatures. Yeah--that's still a few months away but I know for some people the thought of losing daylight is depressing and can throw them into a funk. In reality--today marks the beginning of our uphill swing back towards winter and hopefully lots of snow to frolic in. I still have oodles of summery things to do so now the rush is on.

There are a lot of activities going on in Fairbanks in association with the solstice. I wandered downtown with Dea and Ben to check out the scene and hopefully catch some interesting characters. Man--there were tons of people out enjoying the evening. Downtown actually had a festive feeling and I felt like I was in some hip lower-48 city.

No bucking broncos in AK--only spawning salmon trying to shake lose small children

Some dancers shaking handles of love on 1st Avenue in downtown Fairbanks

Thunderstorms rock the hills northeast of town this evening

Back to the 40-Mile Country

2 am twilight -- Tetlin Bridge

I have been in/out in the field quite a bit the past couple of weeks and I am really ready to be sedentary for at least a little while. I just finished a rather exhausting trip out towards the border and in the 40-mile river drainage. I was back out there doing hydrologic surveys with some folks from our Anchorage office. The trip was so demanding because we worked a couple of 18 hr days and got very little sleep. There were advantages though to working late into the night: no vehicles on the road, amazing soft pastel colors of the twilight sky overhead, birds singing, and even the sound of wolves howling in the distance. It was quite nice...

Scott and Becky measuring flow on the West Fork at the Taylor Hwy. It was really convective this week with quite a lot of lightning and heavy downpours.

Early morning cumulus clouds reflect in the window of the truck

There were splashes of color from numerous wildflowers all along the road.

This is a hovercraft our observers run up and down the 40-mile river.

Becky hopes to pull out a few flakes of gold from her pan. The 40-mile River is know for its gold deposits and has lured in miners for over 100 years.

I intensely try out my prospecting skills.

I caught this cloud-to-ground lightning strike on the road to Northway Village

1 am sunset at the Chisana River

A Run Through the Rocks

Martin and Turtle running the 15-mile granite tors loop trail

It seems like when you live somewhere for a while its easy to sort of forget about some of the cool places right in your own backyard. This was the case today when I went out to the Granite Tors trail today to run the 15-mile loop with my friend Martin. I hadn't been there for several years and I forgot how beautiful the landscape is along the trail. The granite rocks jutting up out of the tundra are very mysterious and take on a different look from every angle. The alpine wildflowers were also in full bloom and in several places we were running through a carpet of white and pink. Nice!

Its about a 2000 foot climb up to the tundra where the running gets really nice and the views are endless. We got to the ridge just as a thunderstorm was departing to the southwest.

Above the Fold

This was a surprise--there was a photo of me sitting in my Alpacka raft on the front page of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner--and it was above the fold! My pic was even bigger than the one of Governor Palin...although she is quite a bit hotter than me so a smaller shot of her still grabs a readers attention much more. There was a really good article about the Hot Springs adventure race in the outdoors section today. Here is a link to the article on the Anchorage Daily News website. The Fairbanks paper requires you to login to the page. There isn't too much info about Ned, Andy and I but there are some good stories from the other racers.



A couple of Ned's pics made it into the Outdoors section. A lot of the other guys were going super ultralight and didn't carry a camera or even have much time to stop and soak up the scenery.

Another Day in the Bush

The Kobuk Sandunes overtake the boreal forest in northwest Alaska. The dunes lie 40 miles north of Arctic Circle and are part of the largest active sand dunes in the Arctic.

I had another work trip out into the Alaskan bush today. I chartered a flight to take me several hundred miles northwest of Fairbanks to the villages of Kiana and Ambler on the Kobuk River with a quick stop in Hughes on the Koyukuk River on the way back to town. Getting out in the field and seeing rural Alaska is certainly one of the perks to my job. I do enjoy working in the office but I can only tolerate being a slave in front of the computer issuing forecasts for short bursts of time. I try to take another fellow worker with me because I usually need a second hand but I also think it benefits our staff to become familiar with our forecast area. This time I recruited ye ol' salt of the office--Ron Stuvek.

My cooperative field assistant Ron helps me survey in a new river gage in Kiana. The village council will be taking daily river readings for us. They were nice enough to let us cruise around on a 4-wheeler in order for us to get our work done. About 400 people live in the village of Kiana on the banks of the Kobuk River

Curtains of rain fall over the meandering Kobuk River

The kids of Ambler were out trying to catch the first Sheefish running up the Kobuk River