So much fun was had this day

Oh man, if it wasn't for Steve and Seca I'd never leave this place.  It's so beautiful.  I imagine winter might get a bit cold and blustery, but today, today was all about sunshine and amazing views.  The clouds burned off around 10 am and it was warm (when you were out of the wind).  Now, it's dang cold, cloudy and windy (it's 10:30 pm now).  We saw more bald eagles than people, ptarmigans, pikas (or maybe they were marmots?), sea otters, and lots and lots of mountains.  We loaded our sciency gear onto the boat this morning and met most of the crew.  We'll head out tomorrow mid-morning and I'm told we have an 18 hour steam to the first fishing site.  Not sure if that's true - seems long since I thought our sites weren't too far away.

Here's some of the highlights.  Some are a bit redundant (similar shot from slightly different angles), but whatever.  At times in the afternoon the water color looked almost like something you'd find in the Caribbean.  These are in chronological order of the day - so we went to the boat, then did some sightseeing, then went back to the boat, the did some more sightseeing, then when to the hotel for the last night before we leave.

Looking down at part of the town of Unalaska.

 Beaver Inlet:

 Looking down at Summer Bay:

 Our home for the next two weeks:

 Morris Cove:

 Look at that water color!

Not a bad view from the top of the food chain around here:

I’m a lucky girl.

Looking out the window of the Saab 340

Yesterday I left for Dutch Harbor, where another scientist, two observers, and I will meet the boat for the survey.  The flight from Juneau – Anchorage – Dutch Harbor was fine.  We had a nice view of Glacier Bay National Park just after leaving Juneau.  I even saw a cruise ship below us.  We had some turbulence just before and during landing in Dutch Harbor, but nothing horrible, and not enough to keep us from landing.  The guy across the aisle from me was saying it once took him 5 days to get into Dutch Harbor…every day the plane would take off, make the 3 hour flight, only to be too windy or too low visibility to land, so they’d have to turn around and go back.  Five. Times.  That would get old in a hurry – the plane is small (34 passengers) and very loud since it’s a twin engine turbo prop.  BUT, I can see why they had trouble…the approach to the airstrip takes you right up next to a mountain (scary close, in my book) and then you make a sharp turn to the runway, which seemed awfully short for any plane bigger than ours.   It was cloudy for most of the flight between Anchorage and Dutch Harbor, but we could see two volcanoes poking up at one point.  

Volcanoes in the Aleutian chain

It is beautiful here.  I love it.  

Temperature-wise, it’s in the low 40s (for a high and low). The mountains got a dusting of snow last night, but you can see a lot has melted off already since winter.  It’s windy, and it’s the sort of place that seems like it would always be windy.  There are almost no trees here, so the mountains look very different than those at home.  My hotel room is bigger by at least double, maybe 2.5 times, than Irv.  

First view of Unalaska and Amaknak Islands

Today we check in with the boat to see if there’s anything we need to do.  If there is, we do it.  If not, we can go sightsee a bit.  It doesn’t take a genius to guess which I’d like to do. J  We depart on Saturday and if I don’t get a chance to post again, I’ll tell you all about it when we get back ~June 15.

Anniversary weekend

It was our 12th anniversary this weekend, and we had a lot of fun.  I didn't think about school once (well, except for when I was packing for the longline survey which I leave for on Thursday, but that was fun thinking, not stressful thinking). 

I made the most awesome French toast for a 'pre-anniversary' breakfast on Saturday.  Steve picked out the recipe - Creme Brulee French Toast (recipe here).  It was sooo good, but really, really sweet and decadent.  It was more like caramel roll french toast.  We'll make it again, but only for special occasions or company.  It was really easy to make though - you prep it all the night before, then bake in the morning. 

Sunday, our actual anniversary, we had brunch downtown then bought ourselves a dremmel as a joint gift...romantic, I know.  :)  We also spent some time stripping and starting to re-season some cast iron pans we've accumulated over the years.  Steve's definitely into restoring them...and I'm starting to dig it too.  This is the 'before seasoning but after stripping' photo.  We used oven cleaner to take all the years of gunk off of them.  It worked amazingly well. 

We are still working on re-applying seasoning.  It'll take a few more nights to get them all done (they don't all fit in the oven at the same time, so we have to do them in two batches).  Then, Sunday night I made Thai halibut curry.  It's maybe the best dish I've made EVER.  I think it would be good with chicken too.  I've got the recipe as a pdf, email me if you want it!  (or leave a comment and I'll send it to you).  The best part, all the ingredients can be found in Juneau!

I've been personally trained

This morning Steve got some practice in as a personal trainer...on me.  :)  He was good!  And I'm going to be really, really sore tomorrow.  He worked with me for about an hour, and he walked me through chest, back and ab exercises.  Oh my.  It was hard to raise my arms to wash my hair afterwards.  Way to go Steve!

Funny story

Funny story: This morning I had to run to the (big, national brand) home improvement store in town to pick up a rug (since we had to tear out the carpet with the salsa incident).  I wanted a runner, the kind you buy by the linear foot and need to find an associate to cut it for you.  I found the first person I came across who worked there, a nice older woman and told her I needed help getting a rug cut to size.  "Oh," she said, "We need to go to the Pro Desk, follow me".  I followed, even though I couldn't figure out why we'd need to go there.  We walk maybe 10 steps, and she stops to ask a couple of ladies if they need help.  Nope, they don't, we walk on (still towards the pro desk which is on the other side of the store).  Ten more steps, she asks another customer if he needs help.  At this point, I'm thinking this is a bit odd...I mean, she's supposed to be helping ME, but whatever, maybe she's multitasking.  Another couple of steps and she sort of turns and sees me (still) behind her...and looks at me like she's seeing me for the first time.  "Oh, hi there dear, do you need some help today?"  Um.  I sort of thought that's what we were doing.  I realized that she's perhaps a bit senile.  She had NO IDEA that she was leading me somewhere.  So, I replied "Nope, I'm good." and went to find someone else! 

Played hooky, went for a hike

Pollen-covered swampy area

Steve had Friday off and it was ~74 degrees outside, so I skipped out on studying for the day and we went for a couple of hikes on Douglas Island - the Rainforest trail first, and the Outer Point loop trail second.  Neither is very long, and they're pretty close to each other.   We didn't see much wildlife - a couple of squirrels and about 3 dozen children on a school field trip.  They probably were the reason we didn't see other wildlife.  :)

The pollen culprits...

The spruce trees are all releasing pollen right now, so everything is yellow.  There's so many evergreen trees up here that you can actually see huge clouds of pollen *as it's being released*, it floats up like campfire smoke, but very yellow and kind of creepy looking (because it's such a vibrant yellow).  The first time I saw it I thought there must be some sort of intense chemical fire, it was such a huge, yellow cloud, easily big enough to cover 4-5 city blocks.  I've never had plant allergies, but this is enough to make even me sneeze.

Blue mussels near Outer Point

Steve taking a break from exploring at low tide

 The low tides have been really low lately, which is fun for exploring tide pools.

The 'outer' part of Outer Point loop trail

Saturday night we went to see a play and had dinner with friends.  Fun!

The chicken NBA

We made breakfast burritos this morning after the gym.  I was pulling everything out and grabbed a couple of eggs and noticed that one was really tall and skinny...so I showed Steve.  His reply: "The one on the left was going to to be a chicken basketball player."  Where does he come up with this stuff? 

A few minutes later I dropped a full, brand new tub of salsa all over the carpet.  What. A. Mess.  We tried to clean it up, but then it just looked like someone vomited on the floor.  So, we pulled the carpet out and threw it out.  I'd been planning to do that this weekend anyways...now it's done! 

At least the breakfast burritos were good!  And we had a pretty good laugh cleaning salsa off the radiator, and the dog dishes, and the walls, and the fire extinguisher. 

Ugh, no privacy

One of the worst things about living in Irv, with super close neighbors and very thin walls and windows...you have very little privacy.  Last night our neighbor's crazy girlfriend picked a fight with him, which turned into a loud screaming match between the two of them...We were grilling dinner so we were outside and it was super awkward.  As soon as we finished dinner we decided to get out for a bit so we didn't have to sit and listen to that all nite.

We headed downtown to one of the marinas to look at boats, one of our favorite pastimes.  Steve likes to inspect all the boats, weighing the pros and cons of size, means of propulsion, interior space vs exterior space, vessel uniqueness, etc.  I just like to wander around and look at the birds and fish and dream about living on a boat again some day.  We both miss it, though acknowledge that Juneau wouldn't be our preferred place to live on a boat...too cold and rainy!  We finally got a bit of clouds and rain yesterday and overnight, so the sunset was pretty and the dust is done for a little while.

Gastineau Channel

Greening up

It was only last weekend that there was still a lot of ice on Mendenhall lake, but now it's all gone (except for the icebergs, they tend to stick around all summer).  Seca and I went for a leisurely stroll around the park, looking for porcupines and other critters.  It was mostly leisurely because Seca stopped every four feet or so to sniff something new.  I brought my camera and took a bunch of photos, so it all worked out. :)

This is the path out to the 'photographic overlook', which is a really scenic spot with a bench at the end.  The ground it's on was covered by the glacier until about 20-30 years ago, and you can see the scoured rock with deep scratches in it.
 More signs that summer is on the way!

procrastination is my middle name

Instead of jumping right into studying today, I first changed the blog up a bit.  Not sure I love it, but since I really should get to work, it'll have to do for now. :)

Cleaning out the pantry and some randomness

Yesterday on the drive home I saw a raven flying with what looked like a whole burrito in it's beak.  Seriously...a whole, six-inch long, burrito.  It was probably thinking it won the lottery.  Last week I saw a black bear standing in the middle of the road.  I love my short, wild commute.

The streak of good weather continues.  It was supposed to rain a bit yesterday, but didn't.  At one point we apparently hit an ambient humidity level of only 17%, which is super low since we're usually in the 70-90+ range.  It's so dusty here without rain, it's getting a bit annoying (and the sun is not helping my lack of desire to study for my comprehensive exams).

So that fishing survey that I'm going on at the end of May might have hit a bit of a snag.  The fishing vessel we'll be on stores it's gear (and our scientific gear) at a warehouse in Dutch Harbor, which apparently burned to the ground over the weekend.  I'm not privy to all the details, but it sounds like our equipment (custom-spaced fishing lines, holding tanks, work tables, the 'dog house' what sits on deck for the observers to shelter out of the elements while collecting their data, etc) is gone.  I don't think anyone knows yet what this means in terms of timing for the survey, and whether or not we'll be able to start as planned in a couple of weeks.  What an unfortunate mess!

We're working on cleaning out our panty - eating all the things that have been in there a while - which makes for some creative meals.  Yesterday morning I made pancakes since we had pancake mix, syrup, and...oatmeal!  We had two packets of instant 'maple and brown sugar' flavored oatmeal, so I threw one in with the pancake mix, along with some chopped pecans (also laying around in the panty).  It was SO GOOD.  I may make pancakes this way all the time now.  The oatmeal added some flavor and texture to the pancakes, as did the pecans.  I used 1 cup pancake mix with 1 pkg instant oatmeal, about 1/4 cup finely diced pecans and I added ~1/2 t of vanilla extract.  I had to increase the water just a tiny bit too.  I think other flavors of oatmeal would work too...like apple cinnamon or maybe even a bananas and cream with some shredded coconut tossed in?  Next up - lasagne noodle surprise...and something with tropical flavored jello (why did I buy that??).

I hope this isn't the only summer we're going to get...

It's been in the upper 50s to almost 70 (!!) for the past week or more.  I think I've forgotten when it rained last - we even have burn bans in place right now.  It's been one spectacularly sunny day after another.  This weekend was no exception and we made the most of it - grilling for dinner Saturday and Sunday, bonfire on the beach with the most incredible northern lights I've ever seen,  long walks with Seca.  It's hard to go back to school this morning!

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me Saturday night to capture the northern lights.  We wre on a south/southeast facing beach and they were directly overhead.  And they were out early, about 10:30 pm, before it was even fully dark out.  They started as a green streak across the sky then were pulsating and twisting, with streaks green changing into red and an almost purple color.  They are also the fastest moving I've ever seen.  Most of the time they seem to move so slowly you think your eyes are playing tricks on you (at least the ones I've seen).  These were winding and morphing quickly, almost like a heartbeat.  So. Amazing.

Seca swimming in Mendenhall Lake, Nugget falls in the background.

Sunday Seca and I went to West Glacier for a walk on the beach.  It was warm out but the breeze coming off the glacier and still partially frozen lake was pretty chilly.  Seca still went for a swim (crazy dog...yes, that is ice still on the lake!).  Even in winter, water flows under the lake ice.  It comes from off of the glacier and from a couple of nearby streams and it leaves via the Mendenhall River, which empties into the Gastineau Channel.  Since there's so much water moving the icebergs that are embedded in the lake ice move too.  The water pushes and erodes from the bottom, so they scoot along, and the lake ice must move around quite a bit too...check out this boulder that left a trail as it was moved by ice this winter!