Saying Goodbye - Walk on the beach

Our house in Alaska is right on the beach. But about 120' straight up. One of the things on my list as we look at moving back to Arizona was to make another trip down to the beach.



That doesn't sound like much, but really it's not somthing I wanted to do by myself. The trail leading down to the beach is REALLY steep. There are strong tides and wild animals (read Bears) that add to the danger of going alone. An injury of any kind would make getting back up the trail really hard. Although the motivation of a bear ...



This is a picture I took from the banks of Fish Creek located about 20 minutes walk down the beach. It's looking toward Knik arm and the Chugach mountians across the water. You can almost see the snow caped mountains in the picture. I had to shrink it to fit here - sorry.



Spring has arrived here and all the trees are budding and as you can see in the picture the grass is sprouting up. The temperature was about 55. Perfect and sunny.



It was a little muddy.


Next Monday I'm going hiking on the Gold Mint trail in Hatchers Pass. It's a trail that I've not been on. It should be a lot of fun and beautiful. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures and post them here. Shouldn't be as muddy since it's in the mountians.

Nina

Guess I should update..

It's late and I'm tired after a long day at work, but I noticed that it's been a while since I updated this. Hopefully later I'll replace this post with one that's better written.

We got the news yesterday that our loan is going to go through for the house we're buying in Sahuarita AZ. So the good news is that now we have a place to live lined up. Now if Mark could sell his dog truck.. then he'd have enough money to buy a truck to drive once we get to Arizona. The plan is to leave his old truck up here for us to drive when we're visiting Alaska.

I had a transfer all worked out with Walmart, but then they realized that I wouldn't be there within 30 days. So I have to wait until just 30 days before we arrive to work that out. So still a couple of weeks from now.

The snow is mostly gone and you can see the brown grass. The road is still really muddy but gets better every day. It was almost impassable for a while as the snow melted and refroze.

The moose seem to have gone back into the mountains. We haven't seen any for a while. They come down here to the lower elevations when the snow in the mountians gets too deep.

Last Tuesday I took my first bike ride since moving back up here. It was great. I think I probably rode about 10 miles. The weather was pretty much perfect. About 45 degrees and sunny.

Moose video

I'm trying to upload some video that I shot about a week ago in our driveway.

I've spent the last couple of weeks filling in in the Pharmacy at Walmart and put in lots of overtime so haven't had time to work on my blog. This is a really good thing since my most recent paycheck took a real hit from some unpaid time off and then me being sick.

Volcano

Mt. Redoubt errupted today. Here's a link to the most up to date activity.
Alaska Volcano Observatory
So far we've not had any volcanic ash fall our way, but if the wind changes we could have some. In that event we've taken precautions as directed here.
http://www.ak-prepared.com/Poster_Contest_Files/Ash_Alert.pdf

This is me getting ready to ski Crevasse Moraine agian today. This was only my second time and tragically might be the last time for a long time. The warmer temperatures are taking a toll on the snow conditions. It was a little icy, but not bad. And I didn't actually fall down even one time. Although there were a couple of times..

When we went last week we followed the groomer and the trails were in really great shape. Today it looked like it'd been a while since the groomer had been through. The tracks had some holes in them and were partially filled with snow. Since I didn't fall.. maybe this was a good thing for me??

Since I remembered to take the camera this time I thought you might enjoy a few other pictures.

I took the map along just in case and I got it out quite often. They also had thoughtfully posted maps at almost all of the junctions of the trails with a handy little icon that said "you are here".

This is a REALLY nice trail system. And another nice feature for me is a well stocked restroom at the trail head. I have a picture of that too, but really .. if you've seen one you've seen them all.

On my way off the trail I came upon some kind of strange green trail marker. On closer inspection it turned out to be a green bag used for poop scooping. Someone must have dropped it. Being a good trail citizen I picked it up and placed it here.

I hope I get to go again before the snow melts. But if not.. it was fun while it lasted. And I hope to be back in Alaska or somwhere else where I can ski again someday.

Skiing at Crevasse Moraine

I actually wrote this last week, but didn't get to post it until today..

I wanted to blog about my experience today (that would be March 17) skiing but frustratingly enough for some reason neither blogspot nor yahoo will open up for me. My home page works fine though. Maybe this is a sign tthat it's time for bed since I do have to be at work tomorrow.

Just some things that stand out. First I didn't break a leg. Thank goodness and thank God. That would have made it rough to be at work tomorrow and I missed a couple of days last week being sick. Speaking of which it's really great not to be sick anymore.

My performance on the trail wasn't stellar and I was really embarrased by my lack of stamina. Some of which I put down to being sick last week and not exercising and eating right durring that time. Now that I'm not sick I'll get back to my routine of regular exercise. My goal in that area is to burn off at least 300 calories a day - which I was doing pretty well in..

I fell several times and no I wasn't counting. But none of the falls were serious. Snow is not actually soft - as it might apear to be at times but still I didn't hurt myself.

It turns out that a lot of the techniques I've used before as a beginner/Intermediate (at times) level downhill skiier work fine for cross country skiing. And that the bindings on my new boots and skiis are far superior to the ones the movers broke for me when we moved to Cottonwood AZ 5 years ago. So in actuality they really did me a favor in breaking them. That forced me to buy new skis this year and since I had new skis I might as well get new bindngs and therefore new boots to boot. I did however manage to get by with my "old" poles.

I wanted to post some pictures but forgot to bring a camera.. but here's a web site with some great pictures of the trails. http://www.solsticelight.com/aks/gallery/journal/alaska/030301/index.htm

Mark and Stacie from the Mat-Su ski club were nice enough to meet me there and show me the trails and basic techniques.

Tear Drop trailer - not a moose

I was looking for a picture of the Moose that frequently come around our house. A couple of days ago I actually saw 9 (NINE) moose on my way to work.

Anyway.. not finding that on the computer I found this picture which I thought you might like. It's a picture of our Teardrop trailer which we used when we drove the Alcan NORTH last summer.

We'll be using it again this summer headed SOUTH.

It is very small but comfortable. It has a (wall to wall) almost double bed inside and a "chuck wagon" kitchen in the back. That is you open up a hatch (the whole back side) and inside is a countertop and cabinets.

It has a battery and battery charger in the front storage area which run lights and a fan inside the trailer. There is also an electrical hookup that will run these things in addition to a regular outlet inside.