October

We are in a record stretch of October heat on top of the world. Yes, heat! It has been hitting up to 60 degrees every day through much of October. it get down into the 20s at night, but then shoots up during the day. It's a real Indian Summer! The truth is, it can't last. We are just waiting for the bottom to fall out. It could easily be -10F by now. The timing of this warm stretch has been very fortunate for us as we have still not completed the rebuild on our chimney and wood stove. We decided that since we had to rip the whole thing apart anyway, we might as well upgrade to a more efficient Blaze King stove with a catalytic burner. We should use half of the wood we used last winter with this baby. It might get put in today so we are pretty pumped to use it. We are also going to have the hearth and surround redone so it looks nice. Our previous set up was pretty ghetto. This stove also has a clear front so we can actually see the fire. That should be relaxing on a cold winter night.

Without a stove we have just been going without heat and wearing sweaters, burning candles, etc. Our house is so tiny that it is actually very easy to keep it warm. Kari has also been busy putting clear plastic over some windows (acts like an extra pane) in order to keep some more cold out. We'll be in good shape once winter really hits.

Dominik and I started Mite hockey last Saturday. We have about 30 kids and I have about 6 helper coaches so it's going to be a great winter. This will be Dominik's first chance to play actual games so he's really excited....so am I.

The light has changed a lot. Sunrise is now around 8:30 am and sunset occurs around 6:40. We're losing 7 mins a day, so by the end of October it'll be pitch black at 9:00 am and then well before 6 pm....and that's just the beginning. i'm looking forward to experiencing a 11:00 am sunrise and 2:00 pm sunset. New experience!

Sept 09

September 09

The weather around here is constantly amazing me. It seems to turn precisely at the turn of the calendar! July was hot and dry. August was constant rain and cold. September is absolutely perfect! Cool mornings and warm sunny afternoons. It is truly great weather. After not biking to work much at all in August ( too wet) I have been able to ride again. Morning temps have been 35-40, so I now sport a sweater as well as a touque and gloves, but I'm holding the line on the shorts. I'm trying to pretend it's still warm enough for that. The evening ride home is great! 65-70 degrees and sunny. Perfect.

Kari's son Matt arrived last night and will be staying until about the 20th. He is up from Louisianna and back to where he was born. I think he preferes the heat now. I teased him about being a southern boy.

The light changes really fast here, but it's only certain days when you suddenly notice just how different it is. last night Dominik and I were coming back from hockey shortly after 8:00 pm and we both noticed that it was starting to get dark. By 9:00 it was quite dark outside. That has actually been a good thing as all of us are having a much easier time going to sleep. Imagine trying to get your kids to go to sleep when it's never dark! I got up to workout this am and it was still pitch black at 6:00. It wasn't long ago that I could train in full sun at 5:00! I have been backing up my workouts to follow the sun. Haha.

This is the time of the year when people up here start going to bed a little earlier and sleeping in a little more. It's the best way to "catch up" after a summer of staying up really late to enjoy the weather. We all know what's coming. The morning air is a little beyond crisp at this point, and soon it will be cold. our family is actually looking forward to the challenge of our first long AK winter and all the darkness. I think we're well equipped for it.

We have had another house problem and it's a doozy. Our chimney sweep informed us that our chimney is a disaster and a total fire hazard that will require total replacement. I can't wait to see what this costs. We have spent some serious $$$ just getting this place up to snuff, but what can you do. We're trying to keep a positive attitude about all the house stuff and just make it better. The more stuff that pops up, the longer we'll stay here. I have all but decided that we'll just constantly improve this house as we're able and make it better vs. looking for something a little bigger. We wanted a "cabin" style house and that's what we got. We just weren't expecting so many problems!

There aren't many birds left at Creamer's field. We live right along the flyway, so we constantly here them leaving. Pretty cool.

The birch trees are all yellow now, so I'll post a few pics to let you see them. They are beautiful.

I went moose hunting with me friend, Tyler, in Delta Junction on September 1st. What an experience. We saw tons of moose just wandering by, but nothing we could take. Getting a legal moose is serious business around here. Many of my patients have been out hunting this week as well. It is pretty cool to see people cycling with the seasons here. I enjoyed the hunting so much that I need a rifle. I'm told that every Alaskan needs a .22, a 12 guage, a heavy pistol for bear protection, and a 30-06. I need to pick up a 30-06 and the shotgun and I'll be all set. Dominik is really into the hunting and loves to be outside. We have tried to grouse hunt several times, but they are at their low cycle right now and we haven't even seen them. I think I'd rather go for a big animal so that when you get it, the freezer is full for the year. We become residents in January, so I should be moose and caribou hunting in February, and then Salmon fishing in the spring. Should be fun!

Fall is early!

The weather has changed to wet and cool. Fall is in the air. There are a few signs that summer is over and we have them all as of today. The fireweed is at the top, the cabbages are ready to go and today is the first day of school.

Here are a few pictures of the season as well as one of Dominik about to enter the school.

I hope everyone is well!

Who flipped the switch?

I had heard about how abruptly summer ends here, but it has totally shocked me. I had been riding my bike to work in shorts and a t-shirt since the middle of May......come to think of it, it started abruptly, too.........but this week we switched gears. I needed a sweater yesterday! It's only August 10th. I have come to expect August as being another hot summer month, but it's not that way here. August brings much cooler mornings and the daytime high is rarely past 70. July had morning temps around 55-65 F, but we are now firmly in the low 40 F range. What a rapid change!

The daylight has been amazing. We have really enjoyed watching the days stretch out and it's nice to have those long summer days. You can literally play cards outside or garden until 1 am and never need a light. That too, has been disappearing. We are back to having full night and it seems weird. The dark is now beginning at around 10:30 and it is staying dark until around 5:00 am. I get up to work out at 5:45 am and very soon I'll be getting up in the dark. The change is noticeable every day as we are losing about 7 minutes of light daily.

I have been adjusting a teacher from Barrow and he is heading back to the town to prepare for the school year. In Barrow the sun goes down on Nov 20th and doesn't return until Jan 20th! Now that's extreme! I asked him if he does any snowmobiling and he said, "no way! We have polar bears there and they see people as part of the food chain". I would have to say that I sit firmly in my conviction that it is good to live on the edge, but not on the very edge..... It's fun to practice here. I have patients that literally fly in from over 300-400 miles away to see me. Fairbanks is the hub of the interior and when these people come in to shop, they stop in and see us as well. It's interesting to hear stories about living out in the villages or in the bush. We see quite a few people that don't even have running water. You can tell! Haha.

I bought a .22 cal rifle over the weekend and Dominik and I took it to the local range to take a few shots. Dominik is still only 6, but he really likes guns and enjoyed pulling the trigger and pointing it at cans. We are going to go to the Tanana Valley Fair tonight after work.....I'm not that interested since I've been to enough fairs for one lifetime.....but Kari says that it's part of the Fairbanks experience, so we're going. Later this week I am going to take the boys out into the woods and see if we can find some grouse. I bought a small animal license and we're going to continue in the Alaskan experience by seeing if we're cut out to be hunters. I'm going to take Yanik as well, so the birds will have an unfair advantage. He's never been good at being quiet.

We're starting small. I've been on youtube all week learning all the ways to field dress a bird. I don't want to be caught unsure of what to do in case I actually hit one! We're allowed 15 grouse/day, 20 ptarmigan/day and an unlimitted amount of hare. If my shooting is any good, I should be able to get some nice healthy meat for the freezer. We figured we would start small and if we enjoy hunting, maybe next year when we are residents we could go for a deer/caribou/moose, etc. I thought about doing it this year, but we are not residents and it is very cost prohibitive at this point.

Overall, life is great in Alaska. We miss familyand friends of course, but we are thankful for the experiences we are having. I know we'll never regret coming up here, no matter where we end up, but we're planning on staying here for the medium to long term. The biggest shock to living up here was the cost of living and now that Kari is working partime, we have adapted well. Ithink she is really enjoying having a little of her own money and being more independent. My practice has been growing, although it never seems as fast as you would like it to. We had a slow July, but some of that had to do with the high temps and forest fires. Most of July was in the high 80s and we had a record smoke season. The smoke in town was so bad for much of July that it was extremely unhealthy to breath the air and people were supposed to just stay inside if possible. Thankfully it has been raining and the fires are dying down. We saw blue sky for the first time in quite a while this weekend.

More White Mtn Pictures

White Mountains

On July 11th we had yet another new experience. I took Dominik and Yanik and we rode ATVs 7 miles into the White Mountains to stay overnight at Lee's Cabin.

We took after after work on Saturday and headed up the Elliot highway about 40 miles out of town. The scenery along the way was just beautiful. Large rolling hills and lush forests as far as you can see. We arrived at the trailhead and unloaded the trucks and then piled onto the ATVs. I couldn't believe how much stuff we had to cart in there! My buddy had a "meat wagon" and that was sufficient to get all of our overnight supplies into camp.

The trail was pretty bumpy and was certainly a climb in a few spots. We had our guns fairly handy, as this particular area is bear country. I was hoping to see one, but maybe it's better that we didn't with all the little kids.

When we arrived at the cabin we unloaded and then spent the evening enjoying the scenery, playing hide and seek in the woods, and of course eating! For future reference, do not bring potato chips or bags of mini carrots on this trip. The carrots were transformed into soup by the trail and you could imagine what the chips looked like! Nonetheless, we enjoyed spaghetti and even a few nice steaks. The cook...yours truly. The kids had a great time and we loved the fresh air. We never even saw a hint of another person the entire time!

More Denali Pics

Denali

Denali Park

Last weekend we took our new (to us) truck and headed up to Denali. We stayed at the Savage River Campground, 13 miles into the park, hoping for some time away from people. Tourism has been down a lot this year, but even here it was still pretty busy. The campground was really nice, but it's definitely not isolated enough for our tastes! We brought all of our bikes along as well, but the terrain was a little too tough for the kids, so we had to do just a little biking at the Park entrance and through town. Denali is definitely not the best place for little kids to bike, but I loved pounding up and down the mountains!

We enjoyed sleeping 2 nights in our tent, but I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't nervous about grizzlies. We had been told that bears frequent the area and to keep our campsite really clean. I woke up the first night to a growling sound and I shot straight up in bed, but I laughed when I realized it was just Kari snoring a little!

We got a kick out of the Gray Jays, aka camp robbers. Whenever you were eating and turned your back, they were into your food. It was funny. I had them landing on my hand and eating of of my head. They were well trained.

Even though it was 85 degrees in Fairbanks, Denali was cold. We topped out in the 60's, but it was always pretty windy. We enjoyed hiking around and the boys did well on the 1.5 mile savage river loop. We hoped to see Dall Sheep, but weren't lucky enough to see them.

The highlight of the trip was seeing a Griz at the park entrance! He was just sitting in a patch of berries and didn't seem too interested in us. Unfortunately our batteries ran out on the camera before we got any really good pictures. We also enjoyed a dogsled demonstration and have decided to adopt a retired sleddog. I was really inspired by the dogs. They were SO anxious to be chosen to pull the sled!! It was a good reminder to myself to be enthusiastic for each day and to love work. Denali is a place you can find inspiration at every turn.

Next year we are going to go in to Toklat campground.....WAY into the park and really sleep with the bears. Looking forward to getting a lot more wildlife pictures and telling you all about that! We hope to actually see mt McKinley as well. We missed it this year. Only about 1/3 of visitors get to see it b/c it is so big and often hides in the clouds.

I've also included one trailing picture of Dad with one of the baby halibut we caught. When I get better at this, I'll put it with the Valdez pictures where it belongs. Haha.

Valdez Pictures

July 09

July was an exciting month for us! We took mom and dad to Valdez to tour the town. Valdez is beautiful and nestled right in the mountains. Kari, grandma and the boys went on a glacier and wildlife boat tour and Dad and I went on a halibut charter. I found out that I was a prairie boy. After 3 hours in choppy water on the way out to the Gulf of Alaska I was as green as could be. Knowing we were going to be out on the water for another 5-6 hours fishing, I had a hard time thinking about anything but just not throwing up in front of everyone. Haha. I had heard all the stories about fishing in Alaska and filling your freezer with halibut for the winter, so I had an agenda. I was goal oriented and planed on getting my limit of 2 halibut.....and 2 big ones at that. We saw several fish over 100 lbs on the dock and that is what I was going to get! Better yet, father was fishing too and there was no way for him to get his fish back to Canada, so I had dreams of 300-400 lbs of halibut for my freezer.

We dropped lines and I waited for my first Alaskan monster. I didn't wait long. About 20 mins. in I hooked one and fought like a dog ( I thought) to get him to the surface. He pulled so hard I imagined he must be 60-100 lbs! I'd never felt anything like this one my line! Finally he surfaced

and we brought him on board.....all 18 lbs of him. Well, you're only allowed to keep 2, so of course I threw him back......why would I take him when I could snag a 100 pounder?? As luck would have it, that was my only bite all day. All the charters had a strange day and very few fish were brought in by anyone. Dad did manage to catch 2 15-20 pounders, so we kept those and had a few feasts before they headed back to Canada, but the freezer remained bare.

Speaking of bear....we did have a friend who brought us a quarter of bear so that is in our freezer now, but it is a little different and I'm the only one who eats it....although Yanik loves the hunter sticks. Another friend contributed about 10 lbs of moose and that is a favorite. We love it!

Summer Stuff 2009

Well, it's August 1st and we have been doing all kinds of new activities and I haven't stopped to talk about any of them at all!

My daughter Samantha came up for 3 weeks and at the same time we had my parents come and visit, so we had a house full of people. Our house has only about 800 sq. feet of living space upstairs, so it's really more of a cabin than a motel.

While our family was here, we decided to really start exploring Alaska, starting with Fairbanks. We visited Chena Hot Springs first. It was really buggy there, but the water was great and the kids had a ball. How neat is it to be soaking in the springs while a moose keeps watch over you. We promised my mom some moose dring the visit and we got our fill the first day!

Over the next few weeks we frequented Alaskaland, ate at the Chena Pump House Father's day buffet, checked out the Santa Claus house and the Knotty Shoppe, went to the Botanical gardens and Arctic Museum, too. Mom and Dad also got a chance to visit the Eldorado Gold Mine with Dominik where they panned for gold. On their last night here they went down the Chena River on the Riverboat Discovery tour. I would say they had a busy trip. We spent most of the evenings playing cards in our enclosed porch in the natural light until the wee hours of the night.

One of mom's highlights was taking a picture of her three grandkids at 12:15 am in the back yard...and of course no flash was necessary!

21 hours of sunlight!

We have now reached a point where we have sunlight from 3:20 am to 12 :15 am and we're still gaining rapidly, albeit the rate has slowed a touch. We are adding 5 1/2 minutes per day. When you consider dusk and dawn, we no longer have any darkness. At first it was a little strange and I found myself going to bed later and later, but now we have all adjusted and are used to going to bed and then waking in full sunlight.

The boys are loving it here. We have been exploring all the bike trails and enjoy looking for wildlife at Creamer's field. We especially like looking for wood frogs and viewing from the moose platform.

We have made some good friends, so that helps, too, but I still miss the closeness of my Boise friends.

Kari and I have been at our wits end with the expenses we have incurred with our home. We have had an inauspicious start when you consider the sewer problems and the leaky garage roof which will cost between 5 and 10k to fix. Yikes! Kari has even thought about looking for a part-time job in the evenings so we have a little extra spending money.

This weekend I will be flying to Reno to pick up Samantha and then fly her back for a 3 week visit in Fairbanks. We're all anxious to see her and show her around.

Last night Dominik had his first hockey practice in Alaska. It was not as organized as I had hoped it would be, but not bad. I helped out a little and tried not to step on any toes, but I have decided to get involved. The gal who was organizing it wants me to run the mites program in the fall and mentor other coaches so that should be good. That will allow Dominik and I to be on the ice together. Yanik has begun to express an interest in hockey, but I am not going to let him get involved until I know it's for real. It's too expensive to have a kid sitting on the ice doing nothing! Yeah, that's what he did the last two times he wanted to start.

More later.

Spring is finally here!