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

migration celebration

the birds landing at creamers field yesterday. these are sand hill cranes.

Ben cooked these incredible enchiladas last night with homemade tomatillo sauce. Julie came over and Matias stopped by after his 1/2 marathon in anchorage, a nice mellow evening...

the sunrise today was at 3:47am and sunset at 11:57pm; the sun barely goes below the horizon and really never gets dark at all.

this is Ben and Pella climbing moose mountain for our "mellow" mountain bike ride. I missed or was not sure of the last left turn and our 1 hour ride turned into almost four hours. Ben and I had a great ride, Pella....she not so sure...


moose mountain climb to this ridge line trail and out there somewhere a left and another left, either loop is a good ride.

We had a great visit with my parents, lots of eating and hiking.
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Julie had us over to her cabin for smoked salmon we caught together last year in chitna(she caught many more fish), she smoked it herself and it was awesome.


the last night we all ate at Gamberdella's Pasta Bella


dad getting into the alaskan lifestyle using the outhouse!

we went all the way to Denali to see grizzly bears and there were two right in town in Fairbanks on Monday. Check out the news-miner(click).

fantastic trip to Denali!!

on the drive into Denali national park we were greeted with great views of Denaliin person. this pic is just too far,Denali is in the background, it is still hundreds of miles away and you have to fly in on a bush plane to get near the base and climb, there are no roads or trails.....


then we went to hike at savage creek and just past the trailhead we saw three GRIZZLY BEARS! It was so awesome. a mom and her two cubs, my mom was the one that spotted them in the bush and then they came out on to the snow so we got a great look.



more bears...



and a caribou herd, what a day!



after that we hiked up part of Mt. Healy, my parents were troopers and made it to this bridge crossing where the water was flowing underneath and still frozen above the bridge. you had to jump to get over it, they decided to turn back....



we did not.

ben and I are already planning our backpacking adventure into Denali national park next weekend...

we had a great soak at chena hot springs today and my parents first moose sighting.
the weather was awesome, on our way we hiked at angel rocks, picnic lunch and back for a river boat dinner cruise. we have had a busy visit already, hitting the alaska coffee roasters, our cabin in the valley and a little shopping at Beaver Sports...

the UAF tour

we took the parents on a tour of UAF today and great hike to smith lake from my building, of course Pella was swimming


the roof of the Geophysical Institute and the Dobson in the background where we take ozone measurements from.

research

started full time on the research this week and it is a great change. I like problem solving and calculations. randy and I both working on the CRDS have fear factor for nerds races to assemble and dissasemble parts, when did I become such a dork?

so excited for the parents to visit this week and we have a ton of stuff planned.

check out the newest blog link on the right Martin, great pics and stories of the arctic island he is working on. ben has been shooting more stock, but that is on his "other" blog.

borrowed from Ben's photo blog....

murphy dome

dea and i went on a hike with julie, matias and the dogs this afternoon. it was 70 degrees in town, and 55up on the murphy dome. there were still patches of snow on the top, but spring is here.


matias ties rainy and pika together, because rainy runs away and pika stays close. they are the abbott and costello of the dog world.


julie throwing a snowball at me- just missed (and dea gettign tooo much enjoyment out of it).


the gang on the rocks at the turn around point.

we also had a chance to see matias' cabin after the hike as well. he built a awesome log cabin up off murphy dome road a few years ago. it's really a perfect spot- unobstructed views of the alaska range, 5 acres all to himself...perfect.

we capped the day with moose pasta at julie's. it was a good day with good friends.

Pella had a great day, swimming at the lake on our hike and here at the Tanana river. we went on a mellow hike today, I was feeling a little under the weather. then of course a stop at local HOT LICKS ice cream...

the current was moving pretty fast and she just kept swimming out to all the big branches that floated by.

we are still planning on riding bikes into Denali National Park tomorrow, but something mellow. The road is open, but the tourist busses do not start until next weekend. It is the only weekend to ride with no one on the road. Julie(great pics on her blog) was there birding this week and said the road is in good shape, they saw bear and lynx too.....

Golden Heart Utilities run was tonight. I stayed home to study, but Ben was out shooting. Like how the ballons outline the tallest smokestack at the utilities plant?
that's my ben:-) cool picture.


ted and dan at the start- eyeing their competition. ben said he saw #465 was winning until dan tripped her at the turn around:-)


matias local running legend (2nd at chena river run), is also a sports editor for the fairbanks news-miner. here he is interviewing Dan,he was 2nd tonight and ted 4th. all the cool kids were out.

for more insight and great photography check out ben's until now, "secret" artsy fartsy blog, it has some way interesting stuff at www.huffphoto.blogspot.com

fun alaska fact tonight

tonight is the last night the sun will set until Augurst 2nd in Barrow and the north slope of Alaska. Stacia's up there now, but the temps are still chilly. the north slope is about 400 miles north of here. we only drove 285 miles north on the Haul road last time we headed that way. there is no road to Barrow though, you have to fly.
dea

riding out in goldstream valley

Ben, Julie and I went out on a great road ride today. Julie just bought a bike and she is climbing really strong! We headed up the "city route" past the trap shooters to Hagelburger lookout and then up the old steese out to goldstream valley.


Ben up ahead on the last desent into Fairbanks, they both kicked my butt!