we had a celebratory dinner last night, dan won the flint hill mile race in 4min 35sec! Ted did great too at 5.03. we made our final plans for kesugi ridge this weekend, good night out at Lavelle's...

Kesugi Ridge

we have a four day weekend and we are so excited to backpack all of kesugi ridge with a group of friends, it is one the great trips in alaska. the ridge is in denali state park and faces denali. the views and trail up on the ridge are amazing. here is martin friend corey's pick from the tent on kesugi ridge. hopefully we don't run into any grizzly bears. we will be back soon with some great pics of our own.

this will be some of the views if they weather is nice, usually though it can be rainy and foggy.

at 11pm these two kids were playing softball in the parking lot and ben looks out the window and says "oh, how cute." about a minute later they were at our door and you guessed it, the softball went through the window.

i thought the storm would be the highlight of the day, but then Ben's boss limited out in 3.5 hours in Chitina and gave us these awesome salmon filets!! We cooked up a feast tonight.



this picture is from on the roof of the GI today. i was taking an ozone measurement as this cool storm rolled in. you can see the trail head at bottom in the back parking lot of our building...the veiw from the roof is great. dea

Lazy Sunday

last night out on the town...

we are having a mellow sunday today, headed to birch hill to run. ben has been riding my road bike, starting off with some good rides...

dea's birthday

dea's birthday was yesterday. actually, her, stacia, julie, and martin all have birthdays within three days of each other- kind of creepy if you ask me. but, it was a great excuse to have a birthday/solstice party. the whole crew was there: martin, julie, dea, dan, ted, matias, laura, dave, ed, komi, audrey,friends and all the dogs.

dea spent most of the day today in the hospital getting an iron iv- not the ideal way to spend a day, but she felt good tonight and had a great time...

the longest day of the year here in fairbanks: 22 hours and 52 minutes of daylight...it can kind of make you crazy...


martin, julie, dea, and stacia (in spirit- she's up in prudhoe bay)


all the dogs ran wild tonight, and caz schooled matias in soccer.


dave and dan racing big wheels.


audrey attempting to get some air.


dea- she's got a style all her own with the hoola hoop!

this is about how exciting the salmon fishing in chitina was this year.


here is Ben and the bob trailer mtn bike set up to haul out the salmon with Julie scoping out a good place to descend the cliff. new landslide on the already closed road made nearly impossible to pass with a car so we hiked a few miles to our spot and ben road with the cooler.


Julie and I in action...


though the fishing sucked, this was one highlight of the trip. caz stayed on jeff and ellie's farm and it was so funny watching her chase the goats!

after we go back and get some revenge fishing and limit out, we will try halibut instead..check out LauraAK blog to see the catch off a charter last week.

off to chitina!!

julie, ben and I are headed to chitina, fishing for salmon! i am so excited to get out of the house, i went stir crazy last weekend!

with solstice around the corner next week, lots of parties(gemini b-day bash, julie,martin,dea and stac!) and festivities celebrating the longest day of the year, midnight sun run is also this saturday and we will miss it this year. all this sunlight, today sunrise: 3:09am and sunset: 12:33am, hard to explain, but the sun goes just below the horizon and it is just light all the time. hopefully next post will be salmon!!

green

we have been riding the dog(s) almost everyday and just overnight it seems it is so overgrown with green grass and flowers...


midnight express, UAF ski trail/mtn trail is in good shape now, the ground below is still frozen and as it thaws this run becomes really boggy.


at this point ben and sky are lapping me, i am slow, but man it is still fun! pella however is just my speed, we stick together out there on the trails....

finally tried the noodle place near the condo, a good quick stop. then ben had to run off to shoot a commercial tonight with the ABC folks...


taylor, grandma and grandpa huff....we are excited for cory and sharae they are having a baby boy! ben's looking forward to having a nephew,too!

Giving a hello out to justine, man we keep missing each other on the phone. she is vacationing for a month in florida at her sisters house with her son richard, he is coming up on 10 months old. a chair next to the pool sounds great to me, can't wait to see the whole family!

smoke!

we had a pretty mellow saturday around here today. dea wasn't feeling very well, so she spent most of the day in bed. i stuck close to home, and nailed down a couple projects i'm working on.

the big news around town is the fire down in nenana. it's grown to over 20,000 acres, and doesn't show much sign of being contained any time soon. we have been having consistant winds of 20-30 miles per hour, and the smoke is on it's way...


this was taken at 10:15 tonight, the smoke is just beginning to roll over the valley.

alaska mosquitoes

in case you don't read the link below, here are Joel's feet showing the bugs!

slope news

check out this article in this months national geographic(click). the pics are from renowned photographer Joel and friends with Stacia. He did this shoot with her up on the north slope. her ravens did not make the article though. make sure to click on the photo gallery link next to the article too.


riding to hot licks ice cream for stacia's last night before heading back to the slope. the raven's up there know her every move and she dresses in costume to trap them, she has video, but I don't have pics yet. it was clear and sunny last night at 10pm and this morning, SMOKE! it's back from the wildfires near by....

Ester

stac took us on a great ride that ended at the golden eagle saloon in Ester. we went up over ester dome and on some other trails to Ester, it was a great ride with some sweet single track. they have a grill at the saloon and you can grill you own brauts, let the dogs run wild..


given ben a little "what's up?"


stac climbing like a rock star


the gang hanging out on the deck under the 11pm sun.

Tim O's Birthday

this is suppose to be a picture of tim and stac but my memory card was not in my camera. it was a good group of people out in Ester and an ice cream cake that said Jim...

stacia is in town for a few days from the north slope. we have been mtn biking with dogs, pella, bellie and beaufort. hopefully another day out today with my camera. it has been great to hang out with her again if only for a short while. this is her field season so she will be up on the slope for most of the summer. roaming around the oil fields trying to trap ravens she has also seen polar bears, grizzly bears and musk ox! I can't believe musk ox roam around up there! hopefully she will get me some pics soon.


musk ox on campus at the large animal research station

Anchorage

I had to fly to Anchorage today to the hospital for a kidney evaluation. With all the blood draws and injection meds, things are getting pretty routine(well,not too routine, Ben does the injections and he is a pro!), so they wanted to just make sure everything was going OK. The best part of course was taking the people mover public transit bus to all my favorite stops around town!


coffee and the skinny raven


informative captin on AK airlines: "Denali on the right and Foraker on the left, the little bump in the middle is Mt. Hunter and is the same size as Mt. Rainer, just to get an idea of how tall Denali is...."


This one's for you Jen, here is my new horrible haircut. I said bangs, but meant no bangs, yuck. oh well, it will grow out soon.

one long day and I am back home in fairbanks to get in a walk with Ben and Pella.
Dea