Julie gets a job!

Julie just found out she is moving to Washington to work for the Nature Conservancy in Mt. Veron. After 12 years in Alaska, she is saying good bye to the cabin life and Fairbanks. She has been such a great friend, especially with all this crazy complications of trying to have a transplant, which are still on going. she leaves today for Aniakchak for field work and then moves straight to WA. We will hopefully be gone by then for the transplant so we headed out to the Pump House for a quick good-bye. Martin is also leaving in a few weeks for Washington DC, we hopefully will have a few more outings with him before he leaves!
a quick night out to say good bye. we will miss you Julie and Martin!

Pinnell Trail

the view on Pinnell Mountain Trail is awesome. Last time we hiked the 27 mile 2 day trail, we could not see past our fingertips.
there was still a lot of snow and we had a blast thermarest sledding.


we hiked about 4 miles in, set up camp and slept for a few hours. with 24 hour sunlight, we decided to pack out and head to the river.
four wheeling down a dirt road to Bear Creek.
hanging out by the river, a nice relaxing weekend!
we ended the weekend at hot licks with ted and ed fresh off the plane from kodiak island where they both ran a marathon this past weekend.

the haul road

ben had a great trip up the haul road into the brooks range this weekend. he is working on his photo project using his 4 x5 large format film camera. this time he took some digital pictures so i can see what it looks like. the road had huge ruts and was impassable with a car, good thing he now has his truck.
ben looking out at Chandalar shelf.
crazy unicyclist that rode from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay (Arctic Ocean)! he carried all of his gear with him in a backpack. ben gave him a ride back to Fairbanks after he reached Prudhoe Bay.

one long day!

Lisa and I headed up to the white mountains to hike and meet up with Ed, Ann and Trevor. They left at 8pm the night before on a 30 mile paddle and 20 mile hike out to whickersham dome. They thought they could do this in 15 hours, they were only off by 8 hours! Hypothermia and had to start a fire, post holing thru knee deep snow with their pack rafts and back packs........ these guys are really crazy and I am glad they made it with no problems, after our hike to whickersham dome and back we only waited 5 hours! Then we were treated to a dinner a Hill Top.

We got back into town at around 10pm and made to Brown and Cobb's Martini and boa party. Here we are on the deck at around 11pm, of course it is still light out.

Brown's Martini table far outweighs mine. They had lots of top shelf liquor and some great Martini's!

and we were treated to breakfast on Ed's deck. kita and pella trying to find some shade.

mother's day weekend

we all met mom at Pike's for some burgers and beer. what a fun night, my mom knew everyone from their blogs.
hiking at Granite Tors trail.
mother's day brunch at the Pump House on the river. we had a great fun weekend, it was good to see you mom!

big news in Fairbanks, Ben bought a truck today! From our spandex wearing, subaru Boulder days, to this! the background is a pipeline overlook on the way to Audrey's house to check out the 4x4 on the steep dirt roads. a little more clearance for driving the haul road project and all of our other Alaskan adventures.

dinner at Audrey's new place, it was just great....Brandt cooked up some awesome caribou enchiladas, the best caribou I have had yet. we also met delta, the best hunting lab dog i have met. he demonstrated all the calls the dog knows and it was amazing.

out on a mellow Saturday night on Ed's deck, finally spring!