SNOW TIME!!! Dec 09

My Little Buddy, Gauge, hitched a ride!

Above Picture is courtesy of Besty Palfryman.

So fun to get together with friends and go sledding. Russian Jack hill is a great sledding hill. And nobody walked away impaled or injured in anyway. Bonus!

Late September Trip up the Steese Hwy 2009

We wanted to get out and see the fall colors before they all blew off the trees. So we headed first up the Richardson Highway from Glennallen. It was rainy and cold so not a whole lot of pics from that day.
We didn't expect WHITE to be one of the fall colors that we found, nor did we expect it to be 25 degrees but that is what we found at Eagle Summit, Alaska. :)

We discovered this amazing old gold dredge. It is gold dredge #3, built in the 1920s. It is 4 stories high. We climbed and explored all over this thing...it was so neat, but a little scary. The world was all quiet around us, except for the wind blowing and the banging and squeaking of doors swinging shut

We spent some time examining the Davidson Ditch. It is a huge pipe line built in the 1920s to carry water to aid in hydro mining for gold. Funny story- as I was exploring, I left the hubby and dog behind. I was 1/4 mile from the truck when I discovered that the pipe had been broken down and and was open. I proceeded to holler "hellllooooooo" down in the pipe and enjoyed playing echo for a while. After dinking around the opening for a bit I started hearing a ruckus down inside the pipe. Then CLICK, CLICK, CLICK...something was coming out of that thing and whatever it was it had claws...I armed myself with my bearspray and ran as fast as I could down that mountain to the safety of my hubby, dog and truck....it was probably a fox or something like that....but scared the begeezys out of me!!!!

We had to stop and check out the Alaskan Pipeline while we were there. And of course, there was a geocache there too!

This old truck (below) is from the Rika's Roadhouse.

Cordova, Alaska

We saw lots of swans along the dirt road out to Child's Glacier.

Child's Glacier is so amazing. The terminus of the Glacier is at the Copper River. You can sit on benches on the opposite side of the river and watch and listen to the glacier calf. The Glacier is located about 50 miles down a dirt road. But so worth the drive out there. There is so much to see along the way.

This is the Million Dollar Bridge. It was built as a train bridge to transport copper from Kennicott Mine in 1910. The Kennicott Mine shut down in 1938 and the bridge was no longer used. It fell into the Copper River in the 1964 earthquake. It was raised to its original position in 2003. You can now drive over it, but it goes nowhere....there is about 2 miles of dirt road on the other side but that is all. Got to love Alaska's bridges to nowhere.

I thought this heart reflection was so cool.

I caught this pink(below)...but we caught lots of silvers too....just had to leave the camera on the bank in fear of getting it wet...and we practiced catch and release for the most part...and not too mention all the fish i hooked and fought but lost just as i got them to shore. But it was a great time!

Rafts of Otters everywhere! They put on a great show for us! (below)

This is a must do trip. What an awesome town. And be sure and climb up Ski Hill, the hike is awesome all the way up. Twisted trees and small alpine ponds everywhere as the trails winds thru the woods with great switchbacks.

Summer's end is always marked by the Alaska State Fair. We don't go for the rides so much anymore. And we didn't have much time this year, so we didn't get to catch any of the music shows. I really enjoyed the photograph contest and the flowers. Always have to see the giant cabbage too. And I love watching all the kids with their crazy face paintings and fair hair. It is kinda sad now that the kids don't want to go anymore. Taking the kids was so much fun. This year I ran into some of my friends that I work with and we had our picture made with Hank the moose.

Fun Times at Kennicott Mine August 09

Kennicott Mine was such a fascinating place. I can only imagine what it was like back when they built this place. There is lots more out there to explore....So this one goes back on my list. Want to go out and hike to Bonanzo Mine (4 miles) and Jumbo Mine (5 miles) with about a 4000 ft elevation gain. So i have to plan a couple days next summer for that. They close up on Sept 12.

The picture above is a Lynx we saw on the road to McCarthy. We saw a total of three lynx. It was pitch black when we hit the McCarthy road. The stars were amazingly bright in the sky. But we worked ourselved into a tizzy by telling ghoststories along the way. When Carla said in a creepy voice "Where's my golden arm?", a huge owl swooped down at the windshield and we all screamed like a bunch of girls and bout peed our pants from laughing. And there was no way we were gonna pull over to go pee here. YIKES!!

On the trip out, Me, Amy,and Carla knew we were in for a long ride, but we were game for almost anything. We loaded a bunch of caches along the road and stopped every 10 miles or so to find one. The picture above is where we ran into a geocacher from Nebraska, LadyLee. She was so funny, she knew exactly what we were doing and she helped us find it.

Friends Forever - Summer 09

My BFF, Karen, visited Alaska. We had a blast as always. Can't wait for her to visit again.

Summing up Summer 09 - Fall is in the air.

Saying goodbye to summer in Alaska is always hard. And this has been an especially nice one. The weather was great. Many days with over 70 degree weather and very little rain for the months of May and June. I had some good friends, one of them being my BFF Karen since we were 3 years old, come visit from the lower 48 and that was a blast to always remember.

Some of the hikes that I have gotten in so far this summer include: Flattop, Hidden Lake, Lost Lake, Harp Mountain, A portion of the Gold Mint Trail, Resurrection Trail, Lazy Mountain, a portion of Castle Mountain, Butte in Palmer and some other trails that are unnamed.

We had some good times this summer. Camped out at BirdCreek Campground for Summer Solstice. Our planned hike of Crow Creek was cancelled due to the extra hot summer and the high rivers due to glacier melt. Instead we decided to hike Resurrection Pass. There was about 10 of us all together on this hike. We ended up hiking more than 42 miles in 3 days hiking time. Wow.

We had planned on hiking up to the top of Castle Mountain where in the middle of nowhere there is a picnic table at about 4000 ft elevation. The fog socked us in and made the trip miserable so we aborted our plan about 1500 ft below our planned destination, but it was still a fun trip and always fun to hang out with my friends.

We had an awesome trip to Valdez at the end of July. We camped at a local campground in the town of Valdez. Which was nice. It had hot showers and was convenient for me to walk around in the morning and geocache while my family lay in the tent sleeping til 10am.

Now we look forward to the Alaska State Fair and I hope to get out to Powerline Pass this year while the moose are in rut. And of course we look forward to that first bit of termination dust on the mountains to remind us winter is around the corner and we better buy those new xc skiis soon! Woo Hoo!