Winter Is In The Air!

A couple of things have happened in the last couple of weeks so I figured it was time for an update. At the end of September our Director of Husbandry sent out a center wide e-mail saying that he was giving away his 1986 Ford Bronco for FREE. I was pretty excited to hear this news since the Marshmallow Mobile is not exactly a prime winter car. Well as luck would have it I was actually the first person to respond to the e-mail and am now the proud owner of a new Bronco. It came with summer and studded winter tires and it has four wheel drive. So I am set for the snow which is good since we are already getting it. Normally, Seward does not start to get snow until Halloween with the earliest recording being October 15th. Well this year we had our first snow about 2 weeks early. Brr!!! Luckily the first snow did not stick around long but the temps and regularly in the 30's now. In other news Chris came to visit for 10 days. It was nice to have a familiar face around even if he did enjoy the cold weather way too much! I was able to take some time off work so we were able to hang out and have fun. Chris brought one of his kites along and we attempted to fly it but as luck would have it we actually had very little wind while he was here. Before he left we went up to Anchorage a day early so I could get some errands done and while we were there we went out to dinner one night and then went to see The Dark Knight. It was a really good movie, I definitely enjoyed. Otherwise life is pretty much the same up here in the North. I suppose I am as ready as I can be for the immense amount of snow and shoveling that I will soon be doing.

Rain, Rain, Rain!

Well it is September and I guess in Alaska that means lots and lots of rain. Today marks the 18th straight day of rainy yucky weather. However, to keep myself busy and distracted I have been spending my time diving and training the birds. I mean if its going to rain this much and I am going to get wet I might as well fully submerge myself. Today marked the completion of my Advanced Open Water Certification so I am pretty excited. Since arriving in Alaska I also completed my Dry Suit Specialty Cert. and got to dive in our Harbor Seal Habitat with three of the seals. A very very cool experience. On the training front I have been doing a lot of work with one of my little kids that hatched when I was an intern here. Nemo has had a bit of an attitude and is our little savage attack puffin at times. So my goal was to break him of his biting and try and make him a little friendlier so that we could use him for educational talks. Well so far Nemo and I have been quite a team. I have yet to lose a finger so that is always a positive however, it has only been a week and a half so things could turn south at any point. Yesterday I attempted to do some puffin painting with Nemo and as you can see from the picture he is a bit of a messy painter. We normally have the puffins walk through paint and then walk across some paper well Nemo was doing great until he slipped and face planted. It was pretty funny and he was a trooper and never once got nasty. Hopefully we will see a break in the weather soon although we are already starting to get termination dust on the mountain tops. I guess summer here is officially over even though it felt like it never really started.

Winding Down!

As the summer comes to an end I have had to say goodbye to some really amazing people. At the end of July we had a really fun beach bonfire going away party for our volunteer Janice. She was from Australia and worked out on Eiders with me for 2 months. We had a crazy time and it was an absolutely beautiful evening. The sun was shining and there was only a light breeze. Thanks to Tasha we had a very warm toasty fire all night which allowed us to toast some marshmallows and pop some popcorn. The next to leave Seward was our intern Kelsey. Kelsey and I became good friends and Seward and work are just not going to be the same without her! Her last day at work just happened to be my birthday. So we of course needed to celebrate! We started the night off by going to our favorite place, The Roadhouse for some yummy nachos! Then of course we had to stop back by the house to watch Michael Phelps make more Olympic history. Then we were off! We started at the Alehouse where we played a round of pool and then joined a group of guys to play some darts. I partnered up with the one guy Luke who is a dog musher for the one dog sled tour group in town. Tasha and I spent quite a bit of time talking to him and he was really psyched to meet people who lived here year round. He was a cool guy and a relief from the typical skeevey guys in town however, he was the worst dart partner ever. Later we all headed to the Yukon where there was a live band playing. Along the way we stopped to take a group shot of us all riding the Orca as well as some other random pics. The Yukon was pretty crowded but the band was good. We all did some dancing and it was a nice end to the night. Sadie announced it was my birthday in between one of the songs and got the whole band and bar singing. It was a great night with great friends and another highly memorable birthday compliments of Alaska! The next to leave town unfortunately is our Americorp Sadie and her husband Sean. I truly don't think you could think of anything bad to say about these two. A truly unique pair! They are also going to be missed and we all wish them the best and hope they come back to visit us soon.

Halibut Hunting!

A few days ago my mom came to Alaska for a visit. It was nice and we had a good time. I got to take a few days off work and see some things in Alaska I had yet to see. First we took a little trip to Homer. It is about 2.5 hours from Seward and fairly similar. Both are small towns that sit right on the water except Homer is way more artsy and hippie. We stayed at a cute little B&B that was right on the beach. It had a lovely outdoor hot tub that I couldn't get enough of. From the hot tub I could see 7 glaciers, the Homer spit and St. Augustine Volcano. Very Impressive! On one particular night in the hot tub I watched three guys kite boarding which was pretty cool, seeing as the water is quite chilly. After our time in Homer we headed back to Seward. So for the first time my mom got to check out what I call home. I think her words were "it's quaint"! She loved going to the SeaLife Center and seeing the puffins. She even got to meet Nemo and Dory, my kids from my summer of 2005 project. The Sunday before she left we went out on my friend Jeff Roy's boat to do some Halibut fishing. We had a decent day for fishing, it was raining and a bit chilly but the water was pretty flat. Tasha came along as did Jeff Roy's mother in law. Tasha and I were the boat rock stars catching the majority of the fish, including her 45lber!!!!! It was a lot of fun and I even have my first fishing story, The One That Got Away! I had the very first catch of the day in Pony Cove and it was a Silver Salmon. It was a fun catch and as I raised it into the net the hook ripped out of his mouth and plop he fell in the net. Except there was a splash and to our surprise the fish was gone and that's when we found a big hole in our net! Bummer, but thankfully the Halibut were biting and we reached the boat limit. Back at the dock we took pictures of our catch and cleaned/filleted the fish. Tasha and I took our portion of the meat back to the house to vacuum seal and freeze. Later in the week mom and I again went back on the water to do a boat tour. It ended up being a beautiful day. The water was so flat and we even had sunshine for most of the afternoon, otherwise known as cloud failure here in Alaska. It was a nice 10 day visit and I got to give her a pretty good feel of what I do and what life is like here.

Day at the Beach!

So maybe summer finally has arrived in Alaska. The last two days which just so happen to be my weekend have been absolutely amazing. Temperatures in the 70's and not a cloud in the sky so it was time to head to the beach. I took Coho along and we had an excellent day romping around, playing fetch and doing some swimming. I found a nice piece of driftwood to prop up against and I did some reading and snoozing. All and all it was an excellent weekend and hopefully the weather will stay like this since we had 3 straight weeks of rain.

Summer Solstice

Wow! So its been over a month since I moved to Alaska and things have been moving right along. Last weekend was the summer solstice which is fairly traumatic here in Alaska. With the Solstice being our longest day it also means that Winter is not too far off. Since we are so far North we are actually able to notice just how rapidly we start to lose light. Anyway, this also marked the return of Tasha from the field. (yay!) I unfortunately was unable to attend the weekend festivities because I had work. I was also supposed to have 6 Spectacled Eider ducklings hatch. Unfortunately things did not go according to plan. We lost 2 ducklings early on, about a week before they were supposed to hatch. Then we slowly started seeing issues with the remaining 4 and unfortunately none of them were able to hatch and survive. This is unfortunate on many levels specifically because I now won't have babies til mid-July and it throws a wrench into the research project. The SPEC. babies were supposed to be the baseline for a study that is going to take place next summer. The only slightly bit of good news is that since there are no ducklings I finally got a weekend which meant sleep and good times! Yesterday I went on a float trip down the Kenai River. Gwen (a fellow co-worker) and I drove to Cooper Landing about 45min from Seward and not only went rafting but found the Sun! It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny and quite the relief from the very persistent rain and chilly weather Seward has been having. The trip was great! We saw a momma Merganser and her babies, Harlequins, Gulls, a Kingfisher, a couple Bald Eagles and of course a big old brown bear. There is some fantastic Salmon fishing on the Kenai and so people do something called Combat Fishing. This is when tons of fishermen stand about 3 feet apart and fish along miles of the river. It is a ridiculous sight to see and of course an excellent place to see Bears. After our trip we headed back to Seward briefly stopping at Tern Lake to see Momma Loon with her baby. Later that night we had an office boat party on our boss' boat. It was a sloppy good time for all involved!

The Neighbors

Well as more and more snow melts the more visitors I get. Today I got home from work and was getting ready to go for a run with Coho (the dog) when two very large moose just sauntered through my front yard! So to give you an idea of how large moose are... I could of limboed under them. I mean seriously we are talking some big creatures. (see moose next to greenhouse photo) Then yesterday a friend and I were coming back to my place after dinner when we saw momma brown bear and her cub chilling in Resurrection River! It was pretty awesome!!! Lets just hope they don't want to pay me a visit.