Moving...

MOVED TO: http://valalaladingdongs.blogspot.com/


Too much of a pain to keep putting my old yahoo email in and log out of my gmail one. All my old posts are there and potentially some new ones.

Following the birds...

I seem to be following the migration- I leave this week and the goose are honking up in the sky to go south... I followed them in the spring up north too. Just as long as they don't poop on my car its cool.

 One morning on my way into work... when it was actually sunny for once.

So on Tuesday our FWS Pilot took me and the refuge manager up on the float plane to see the refuge from the air... all 700,000 acres of it- well not really but I mean its huge.

 That pond looks like a heart. How romantic.

This would be from the earthquake a few years ago (along the Denali Fault line) that caused a massive landslide...

Oh hey hydro kids lets talk about braided rivers. Chisana River from where it starts near the mountains...

So much glacial silt deposit.

 Our administrative cabin at Jahtamund Lake (about 40 miles from any entrance point- no trail... no nothing) and Ryan, my boss. Totally awesome cabin if you love peeing in the woods with a cool breeze on your hiny and worrying about bears (below). We also have about 5 snow machines- who knows why- and 4 flat bottoms... haha i would go to this cabin in a second, if only I got in the air earlier in my season.

Angry bears.

 Our new dock that got put in that day at Deadman Lake Campground.

 The U.S. Customs station on the border.... there is a straight up line marking the GROUND on where Canada is and where Alaska is. They really don't want you to get confused.

Our visitors center where I worked all summer from the air... totally hoppin' as you can tell.

 Originally took this picture because the meeting of the Scottie Creek and Chisana River... which looks like coke (scottie) and chocolate milk (chisana) BUT after surveillance we realized there was a sow with 2 cubs hanging out down there... if you can blow the picture up you can totally see them in between the Chisana and that trail!! 

 Les Montagnes. AGH so pretty. Love mountains.

Airs Hill trail which we are currently developing and I got to hike. It is long as heck but you can't see anything and there are bears haha... sweet trail guys.

I literally have so many more pictures but I just don't have the internet capacity to upload them. 

I also didn't puke... in case you were wondering.

"Tetlin base, tetlin base this is interior 90..."

"This is base go ahead 90..."

The Weekend The Raven Won...

This is Winston- my Mom's baby- he only has three legs and she still wants him. He is really cool though.

So this weekend, as well as probably next weekend will not be too exciting because I am getting ready for the drive back home. Friday I decided to go to Chicken/hike Mt. Fairplay. Taylor/Top of the World HW you never cease to surprise. The drive up was nice and sunny and beautiful so I decided to go all the way up to Chicken and get lunch before hiking... bad idea. Once I got to Chicken I heard thunder and saw the clouds and all my D.O.T. friends were pulling their rain gear out- great. Well let me just explain it like this... Top of the World Highway isn't the best place to be in a violent storm. I drove into the cloud of death and got downpour, hail, thunder as well as watched the lightening bounce between the mountain tops which are VERY close on this road... still i thought it was pretty cool. 2 storms like this!! Mt. Fairplay was a bust, again, maybe when Katie is here.

This was after driving through the cloud of death. See the cloud? yeahhhh...

Saturday/Sunday I went to Fairbanks where it rained some more and I spent too much money. Basically I camped up on Chena Hot Springs road again- you can tell I am getting old and boring because, not even on purpose, I pick the same campsite every time I go somewhere. Set up camp and it rained so sat in the tent a while. I left my flip flops and some other crud on the table in the rain, the shoes needed to be cleaned, overnight. Surprise surprise I wake up to pee at 4am and go to grab my shoes and there is only one... I run around the campsite looking for my damn shoe and it is NOWHERE... then I realize that my orange tennis ball is gone too... I can only imagine that the ravens took it. 

 Something is missing...

And my shoe and ball is somewhere out there...

Well it is thundering again. My tent still hasn't dried out from 2 weeks ago which means I haven't been able to waterproof it which is why all my other stuff is drying out too...

My favorite place EVER! WSE Kennicott-McCarthy w/ Mom

And now onto my absolute favorite place in Alaska… maybe even the world for right now. Wrangell-St. Elias NP&P/McCarthy-Kennicott!

 The drive down the Glenn Highway never ceases to amaze!

Not only is it drop dead gorgeous, it is huge, not too touristy and everyone is nice. When I was in Costa Rica we stayed in this town down there that was a total Crunchy Groovy Surfer Hippy town… I loved it. This is a total Crunchy Groovy Mountain Hippy town.

 The town of McCarthy- Kennicott was the mining town therefore it was dry and all about business. McCarthy was where they came to sin- booze and babes.

Mom and I drove down early Friday morning after taking my truck in for an inspection. We rolled up to Chitina, where I got detoured last time, with a FULL tank of gas (suckers!). Through the rock wall we went and we were on our way to McCarthy. 

 The beginning of the road... a narrow one lane pass.

Chitina fish wheels along the river... too cool!

Now when they say that road is unmaintained… they were right. The first 10 miles were the worst and either we got used to it after that or it magically improved. After the LONG drive and a few stops… and a huge train bridge I had to drive over. We were there. I had a reservation in a campground for us and it was named Glacier View Campground… being the smartasses we were we bet on the fact that we wouldn’t be able to see the glacier and just get some bullshit fed to us about how you could see it here… 15,000 years ago. To my surprise… we could see it and it was beautiful. Insert foot in mouth now.

 THE bridge.

 The beautiful Kennicott/Root Glacier.

Now this is not actually in town. McCarthy is across 2 foot bridges, the first with a raging river under it and I am far from sarcastic here. One of the glacial lakes that is normally damned in burst and was flooding the river, the whole town was coming down to watch it hit flood stage and have a few beers (did I tell you how cool this town is?). The second is over a dry creek. Both though have see through bridges… and I had numerous panic attacks that weekend. Mom and I walked that night… around 3 miles just to get a case of beer. We then came back to our campground and cooking our brats over the fire… with a knife tied to a stick because I don’t seem to have adequate cooking utensils.

This entire weekend we were here was beautiful. Hot and no rain! We both managed to get some sun- Mom is already turning into fried chicken status and I am just exposing myself for the first time this summer in all actuality. That Saturday we headed to McCarthy to pick up the shuttle to Kennicott which is about 5 miles down the road. Cutest little mining town ever! The buildings stand out and are still so vibrant and the NP Service as well as basically the one guy who owns everything that the government doesn’t are doing a great job taking care of it.

All in all I am in love with Wrangell-St. Elias and will, no matter what, come back here in my lifetime. I met a few of the guides who work for St. Elias Alpine Guide Company and would love to come back and do some of their classes and hang around with them. They lead glacier hikes, mine tours and mountain climbing expeditions. WSE is so much more impressive than Denali in the sense that it is still completely rugged and outdoorsy and partially undiscovered. The mountains are mostly still nameless!! You can get so close to the action and its basically a "take care of yourself" situation instead of having the park service looking over your shoulder every five minutes. I loved it. I felt so at home here and now, since I can see the North end of these mountains/park from where I work, every time I see them I have a longing to go back there and just stay there. Ugh... I am done gushing over the beauty of it...

Well actually one more thing- WSE connects with Kluane National Park in Canada (pronounced Klu-Aw-Nee) which also connects with Glacier National Peace Park (Canda/US) making it the largest public lands in the world! THE WORLD! WSE also has North America's second highest peak- Mt St. Elias at 18,000 ft in elevation but since it is so close to the ocean it has immense vertical relief- higher than Denali and most of the Himalayas. WSE at 13.2 million acres just on its own is the largest national park and holds 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S. It is of volcanic descent, and not exploding and violent volcanoes but slow and oozing ones. Mount Wrangell is the only volcano still considered active in the park with small steam and ash explosions in the past but it has been heating up significantly since 1950! It is also unusual- geology nerds- because it is a shield volcano that is made out of andesite rather than basalt-- andesite is typical of stratovolcanoes. Okay I am done- seriously.

All in all it was a great week with my mother here! I hope she enjoyed herself because I sure did!

Sorry it took me so long to update- my internet is so slow and I didn't have much time this week to wait for pictures to load.

Denali w/ Mom

The weekend of 7/14-7/18 my mother and I went to Denali National Park and Preserve! She flew in on Thursday night to these beautiful skies up in Fairbanks and I picked her up. We stayed at Princess hotel which is like one of those hotels where right when you walk in you feel out of place... I am dirty and woodsy and all these people smell like roses and have expensive clothes on. I tried to check in to this hotel and the girl asked me for my credit card and I say "oh for damages, right..." and she goes "No, no one has paid for your room yet." Haha Mom such a sly devil.

"Sunset" in the parking lot.

The next day we went to the UAF Museum of the North which I have already posted pictures of... below... and then made our way to... Walmart! ha and then to Denali NP&P! Needless to say due to the fact that Mt. McKinley/Denali is the largest mountain on this continent, the park is a little over done to our liking. McKinley village is over run by Holland-America and Princess tour buses and hotels and about 10 odd gift shops. Luckily, gift shops that are owned and run by Alaska advertise it loud and proud and with the exception of 1 or 2 things we purchased most of our items were from AK residents.

So Friday we drove... and drove... and drove some more. We were not planning on staying in the National Park but possibly in the Denali State Park which has a Denali North View Campground- sounds nice right? PSYCH! They got you good on that one. It is a parking lot... with a view of Denali (yes we saw the mountain on Friday) but nonetheless a parking lot... for RV's and Campers... read my pasts posts to see why this is an issue for me. Luckily since sleeping on gravel/pavement wasn't Mom's idea of fun... and she is paying... we decided to head a bit north again to some random wayside we saw with a random camping sign. Low and behold we camped 3 nights... for free in some random state park wayside! I was baffled we didnt have to pay... I still am. So friday rolls by with the sun and like normal Alaska fashion, especially close to the mountains, it starts to rain. And literally never stopped! We slept in the rain, cooked in the rain and dressed in the rain.

 Overlook in McKinley village

On Saturday we hung around the park and the town. Drove the 15 miles allowed to be driven by the public into the park and hiked at the Savage River Trail. Beautiful hike, so much geology, a bridge and animals! We saw Ptarmigan (AK state bird) with chicks which was too cool!! That night we went to a dinner theater. Apparently I did not know what I was getting myself into with this one. I was enticed by the mention of all you can eat... ribs. Well apparently there is a lot of singing, in your face-ness, participation and sharing. It was fun but I will never do that again because I am not a big fan of yelling "YOOOOHOOOO AMBERRRRR!" as a group with our napkins almost like in song to get more ribs.

 Savage Creek!

Moms new best friend.

On Sunday we went on the bus tour about 50 miles or so into the park to Eilson Visitors center. That was interesting. Not exactly my cup of tea but whatever. It is a school bus packed with children, foreign people, old people and anything else you can imagine- except dogs (I would have preferred dogs). The kids didn't give a flying crap about what was going on, anywhere, and all the did was cry and scream and yell and be obnoxious, misbehaving, undisciplined children that I would have left for the bears if it was my choice. Personally by that point I didn't seem to care too much either about ground squirrels, Dall sheep (they are seriously white spots on the side of the mountain- AWESOME! not.) or moose for that matter. The occasional grizzly was cool but also very far away and I have a point and click camera from Target unlike the German tourists who I have decided are in cahoots with Japan when it comes to camera technology- I can see another axis of evil forming. Also some caribou here and there. The rocks were pretty awesome though and Mom and I found ourselves pointing out that kind of stuff and ignoring the constant screams to stop the bus for white dots.

 Look at the two different color silts/waters meeting- how cool. Two different glaciers.

 Polychrome dome.

Sadly we did not really see the mountain too much on the bus trip because it was overcast. At one point we saw the base and the top tip but the middle was clouded. We hiked at Eilson and did all that jazz then dragged ourselves back to the bus from hell where I fell asleep and ignored the world till we got back.

The next morning, Monday morning to be exact, on our way out of town we took a tour of Denali's Sled dogs. I. am. in. love! It was sooooo cool. We got to meet all their sled dogs and we got a demonstration and yeah it was just great... something I might dabble in soon- along with mountain climbing.

 This is just one of the many dogs. I like this one though because she reminds me of our dog at home... why does she have a cone you ask? She eats rocks. And she ate a rock that was too big for her stomach and they had to do surgery to remove it. Cone of shame for the rock eater... take note Wes. Also her EYES!!! so blue!

A small team demonstration!

These are just some of the flowers we saw over the weekend! Looked purdy so I put 'em up.

 AK Cotton Grass

 Lupine

My favorite- Fireweed!

Well then I had to be a debby downer and go back to working for The Man on Tuesday so it was time to drive... and drive... and drive... and drive a lot more. Mom came with me to work on Tuesday and got to experience that bag full of excitement. Wednesday I presented my talk at the campground and she got a private showing since no one showed up to that and Thursday I worked then prepared... for WRANGELL ST. ELIAS...

North Pole, AK

First of all I would like to give a HUGE congratulations to my pick up truck, the Black Beauty, she hit 100,000 miles this weekend. Poor truck.

I didnt do too much exciting things this weekend. Just drove up to North Pole on Friday for my race on Saturday. I was going to stay at one of the two campgrounds in Salcha but they have two bear sows with cubs wandering so I went all the way to Fairbanks. I stayed at Chena River SP IN Fairbanks and it sucked. Any campground that says Free WiFi when you pull in should be an indicator. I had someone attempt to steal my campsite after I already claimed it and it almost turned into an argument until they saw my USFWS jacket in my camping stuff. It was loud the entire night and cars were constantly driving by. It was also taken over by RV's- my favorite. And expensive. I ran in North Pole on Saturday morning at the Santa Clause house and that town is so cute! I am not saying it because one of my blog friends is from North Pole, it really is cute!

Its always Christmas! Caitlin would be in heaven. I liked it too actually!

 The pipeline shows up in random places. This is across the Tanana River by Delta Jct.

 Sounds good to me... just how will i get them home? And get the pee stains out of them. Hmmm.

 This reminded me of when I was younger and I used to convince people that anything with the word Johnson in it my family owned i.e. Johnson and Johnson, SE Johnson... and more. So my family owns this bridge and river. And sign.

 My families river.

Purdy day for a drive eh.