Underway

I've been traveling this week - lots of conferences and meetings, 3 to be exact. Two days for the first meeting, a day of travel, 3 days for the next, a day of travel, weekend with friends, a day of travel, 2 days for the next one. Yippee! And the really expensive hotel where I stayed would only give me internet access if I paid $25/ hr and I balked. The picture above does not really related to my travel other then it was taken in another west coast temperate rainforest. The photo is from the Popular-Icy-Surfing-Town whereas I am farther south. It was -15F when I left home, winter by all accounts although we certainly don't have enough snow to show for it, and now I'm in fall again. Me and several crates of mice that were loaded onto the plane with me. I wonder what that was all about.

Day 9 on the road - Stuck due to road closures

Well, I made it off the ferry and promptly got stuck as the pass made famous by gold diggers of the Klondike Gold Rush has been closed for 3 days straight. So close to my destination and yet so far! On the up side - this means I actually got to watch the Obama inauguration this morning. Yay!! The whole event leaves me with feelings of goodwill towards the world and with hope.

The ferry was lovely - lots of interesting people to talk to and gorgeous, unprecedented, June-like weather. Which explains my current problem. Two straight weeks of burying the needle off the deep end of the negative side of the thermometer (mercury freezes past -60F) followed by a week of above ten degrees above freezing for a week and you have the perfect black ice recipe. I was hoping this portion would take me a day and a half...but it's looking like it will be longer. However, I suppose a two week road trip is not complete without some challenges!

Day 5 on the Road - Waiting for the Ferry

Red rock landscapes covered with glittering masses of snow. Ice crystal encrusted junipers and sagebrush on salt marshes. Inversion fog banks. Tiny little towns with wonderful little houses. Smelling the change in the air as I hit a more humid climate. Trees getting bigger and bigger, denser and greener. Marshes and white egrets. Falcons and hawks watchful on fence posts. Winding, slightly hidden trails in strange cities. Having my favorite meal from 10 years ago at the same place and finding it hasn't changed a bit. Connecting with old friends for an hour, an overnight, a glimpse here and there. Lovely glimpses of the ocean. Foggy walks on the beach and small cafes. The cold rest area where a lady was offering cookies and coffee.

I love road trips, especially by myself. My sister, on the other hand, hates them. I am enjoying this transition time - the time to decompress from one life and prepare for the a different life. The Disreputables have safely made it to Anchorage. They're anxious, as to be expected, but in good hands. I am waiting near the docks where I will catch my ferry and take the Alaska Marine Highway for several days. I'm looking forward to watching the expanse of coastline, to reading books and perhaps catching up on my correspondence. It's very foggy out right now. The coast is just down the block from the bookstore cafe I'm perched in and I can't see it. I can smell it and hear it though and tonight I'll be on it - my first night on a ship since Russia. I can't help but think it will compare favorably. When I land the US will be ready for inauguration - and I will be in Canada and likely remote enough not to have a radio signal. A bit ironic that but that's okay, I'm sure I can catch up on the whole thing on the blogosphere.

Bon voyage!

AK to CO Travel Map

Here is a very rough map of my road trip (courtesy of AAA/ CAA). It's the only map I was able to find that included all of the areas I drove through. My approximate route is the thick grey line. Do you guys want more detail? I can provide it but it will have to be a state by state, province by province map. This at least should give you a good idea - just imagine it that I pretty much followed the spine of the rocky mountains all the way down (they go north-south until the Yukon at which point they turn and go east-west).



Photos are up finally! They're posted on the original posts. Let me know what you think.

Mile 4,113/ Km 6,619 or Journey's End

Well, here I am in Colorado again. While I was gone summer has come and with it the heat. It's not really heat - it just feels like it after being in the cooler north. It seems that almost the entire west has had a long winter and a slow spring. My rear hurts from all that sitting. I'm tired and dusty and both the Disreputable Dog and I have full blown hay fever. We are welcomed mightily by the rest of the pack. The Disreputable Cat comes bolting down the stairs along with the Parental Dog. When I take the dogs out for a walk both of them are wagging the tails fiercely, happy to be together again. My parents, too, are happy to see us.

The next day I open for the bookstore and find my boss already there brewing coffee. It seems, as the day wears on, that there was great deal of uncertainty that I would actually come back. Bets have clearly been made. Perhaps they, and you, knew what has taken me a little bit longer to see clearly - that I will be back in Alaska sooner then later.

PS - Pictures coming soon!!

Mile 3,276/ Km 5,272 (Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado)

The last day of travel - I had to hammer it out. By now my rear hurts and I'm just ready to end the trip but somehow the miles I had left were more then I expected so I did about 800 miles in one day - most of the US portion of the trip.

Montana is a memory zone...I drove through the once small town that used to be my refuge a summer when I did field work in the eastern prairie. The camp was small, the person coordinating was temperamental, and the prairie vastness rolled on forever such that I thought sometime my soul would roll out and away and I'd never be able to reign it in again. I could understand how those prairie wives who were stuck in one place and could not travel like their menfolk might lose their minds. I spent the 4th of July in this town, alone. I attended a bluegrass festival in the local park and then camped by the river, lighting a lone sparkler by myself at twilight.

Idaho is a short portion of our drive but we are back - or is it still - in the mountains. I've spent time here too and I watch for the pronghorns and the coyotes.

We hit the heat in Utah - we forgot about heat and it was stifling. The poor Disreputable Dog was panting heavily and the rivers we stopped near for him to swim in were lukewarm and didn't cool him very much. Utah was full of more road construction then the entire rest of the journey - and I had thought it was bad in the north. I almost got lost a few times with the detours. Utah is another memory place, and the heat. I wonder now, how did I ever live in this heat - spending full days out in the sun with no refuge? I watch the prairie dogs on the roadside catching grasshoppers with fondness.

Utah Photos

In Utah bright red poppies burned through the desert gardens. We stopped at a river for a swim and at a nearby gas station I jokingly asked a guy with Washington license plates "Are we there yet?" and he said not yet, took a look at my license plate and asked whether I had ferried down. When I replied no he jabbed his finger at me an exclaimed "You guys are CRAZY". Well, I've heard that before.

Colorado Photos

Just across the Colorado border I see a semi truck rolled over and burned, emergency vehicles surrounding it. Clearly it has burned a huge swath of the median and their is less then a 3rd of the truck left. I hope that the driver is okay. I pass by the red rock country that started in Utah - the country I always yearn for in the spring with it's eons of history running through the stone - and into the grey cliffs which as a kid I used to imagine were precisely what dinosaur skin would have looked like. Of course, now we know that it would have been a lot more colorful as their relationship with birds has become more known but the texture of these cliffs still reminds me of skin. Now I'm in the home stretch and soon I am home, in the cool of the evening, the scent of my parents' garden wafting out at me. We park and end the day and the journey at mile 4,113 / km 6,619.

Mile 2,618/ KM 4,213 (Alberta & Montana)

Alberta Photos

I am impressed by the vegetated wildlife overpasses throughout the National Parks in Alberta. I've always thought that making wildlife go under a road was a bad idea - after all, most animals do not like to go underground or in dark confined places where predators might lurk.

I pass the US border in Montana, a little outpost where the border guard is mostly concerned that I might be bringing animal products in. He asks me if I'm tired of Alaska and offers me a "welcome back to the lower 48". Of course, I'm anything but tired of Alaska and I tell him I'll probably be back this way sooner then later. All the same I am pleased to be welcomed. I am taking a slightly longer route then necessary through Montana but I want to drive along Glacier National Park.

Montana Photos except for lower right which is Idaho (with a milage card)

It's a beautiful drive. All day we see more coyotes then anything else - some lit up by the morning sun, a pair running along a fence line - and the occasional pronghorn, and one lone elk with his silly little velveted antlers which are just sprouting and thus look very small on his head. We stop near the park to walk on native lands which have been burnt by wildfire. The sun is warm, the wildflowers blooming, and little rivulets of water fill the dirt tracks and the Disreputable Dog does his best to lie in them although they aren't quite deep enough to cover him.

At the end of the day we find ourselves at a KOA campground and feel like we are at a hotel. We are parked on lush grass and can hear peacocks calling in the distance. Last night a bunch of teenagers had come through my camp running their fingers along the tent and the Disreputable Dog launched out of the tent on defense barking and growling. I shouted at them and they nonchalantly pretended they didn't know they were in someone else's campsite. I had been fast asleep and my adrenaline was so high my hands were shaking - I had removed the safety off the bear spray and had my knife in the other hand. Luckily, none of it was necessary but it took a long while to get to sleep. Now at the KOA station I experienced my first darkness and had to rummage for my headlamp which had been unnecessary up until now.

Mile 2,282/ Km 3,673 (British Columbia & Alberta)

Photos of Alberta - that's a mountain goat top right

I'm over another time zone now and the vegetation has changed dramatically. Gone are the spindly little bog spruce and the quaking birches. At first they were replaced by aspens and pines but now I am into the wetter parts and the trees are huge and mossy and there are many species, too numerous to list. The disreputable Dog and I had a lovely day, humming along to the blacktop. I find it so interesting talking to all of the random people I run into and meet in a day of traveling. They are almost all friendly and almost without exception they start their conversation with a comment about the Disreputable Dog who is obligingly friendly. I am starting to run into tour buses coming north although the summer travel season is only just beginning up here and most of the campgrounds are busy getting last minute construction projects finished. I seem to be making faster time as the construction zones grow less and less. I've lost track of the days of the week and sit down to reckon it. Friday.

Photos of Alberta - bottom left is a wildlife overpass

As you can see I've finally found an Internet connection and so am now posting my backlog. I'm not sure I'm ready to glance at my email yet since I have been enjoying the oblivion from such real world intrusions. It's amazing how the bookstore, job worries, everything just fades away into the contentment of the here and now while on the road. A real vacation even though that is not what it was planned to be. Cheers!

Mile 1,834/ Km 2,952 (British Columbia)

Grizzly, Stone Sheep, and moose damage on Aspen Trees

This is the first time I've been able to type outside of my tent, where neither the weather nor the mosquitoes chased me away to type from my sleeping bag. Today was a good day. I was up early in the morning and once again sampled the delights of the hot springs where I was camped and swam away the morning chill just before setting off on the road again. Since the nights are still relatively chilly up north, despite the 24 hour daylight, the inside of my rain fly is damp with condensation and needed to dry out later along the road when I hit a sunny spot. This is part of my daily road routine - sometimes it's wet on the outside from rain, sometimes on the inside from clear, cold nights.

The Boardwalk is a picture of the famous Alcan hotsprings

The road was very interesting today, windy through mountains and valleys and over braided rivers and mountain streams. I saw lots of wildlife - bison dotted the road way early on - mostly sitting in the verge like great moss boulders chewing their cud. Stone sheep & their young crowded the mountain passes and at one point I had to pull over abruptly in order to avoid being creamed from behind by a semi when the vehicle in front of me suddenly stopped to gawk. I saw mule deer along the way sides - they seem larger here which is only to be expected as it is lusher. I saw some caribou too - they were lighter in color, almost tawny, in comparison to the bull on who stopped me several days earlier on the road, his coat dark and shiny. A few moose were to be seen, young bulls with their newly emerging velvety antler which look almost comical at this stage being smaller then their ears, and a female kneeling to drink from a puddle. There were the few requisite black & grizzly bears, mostly munching at the new vegetation on the verge a few sniffing marking stakes left by road crews.

A black bear & more stone sheep - geologists check out that mountain!

The Disreputable Dog and I walked longer and more frequently today after my aching hips and sciatic nerve from yesterday and we wandered through to a gorgeous mountain lake and up a hill side where the water flowed down huge slabs of rock like poured concrete and then through the woods. Interestingly, although we hiked more frequently and longer, and I started later, I made better time on my mileage then yesterday and stopped earlier too. From a bustling town I called my five year old niece to wish her a happy birthday and could hear her shouting over her birthday party to her mom "she's driving from Alaska to Colorado!". I'm doubt she understands what that means but she seemed excited nonetheless. Having cell phone coverage at that moment, I then called my mother who had eye surgery yesterday for cataracts and was relieved to hear she is doing well - the surgery had made her very nervous. Apparently the Disreputable Cat is disconsolate without us.

Moose & black bear & you guess who!

This evening Disreputable Dog and I have had a lovely camp-made super and took a walk down to a lake near our campsite where I caught a glimpse of deer mamma and her young to which, luckily, my dog was oblivious being focused on a thrown tennis ball. The wind is keeping the mosquitoes off but my battery is running low so I must go.

Mile 1,380/ Km 2,221 (Yukon Territory & British Columbia)

Yukon Photos - a grizzly & an elk

It was an on again off again kind of day. An RV pulling a truck careened across a graveled section of the road and dislodged a softball sized rock that went through my windshield. Thankfully it went through the passenger side as glass sprayed all over my dashboard even while the windshield itself stayed mostly intact. I saw wild bison two grizzlies, one black bear, a beautiful little porcupine by the side of the road. At one point I was feeling sleepy and pulled over near a grassy river bank and slept - only to wake up and find I had rolled my legs in some sort of animal feces. I washed in the cold river. Sore from driving, my hips aching and my sciatic nerve throbbing, we took a hike off into the woods along a dirt road and came across fabulous crashing waterfalls. I made the famous hot springs in BC for the night and enjoyed them thoroughly until two local boys took too keen of an interest in me. When they inquired after my tent site and phone number I took refuge with a bunch of German tourists, asking them in their language, which the boys couldn't speak, if it would be all right to walk with them until I reached the place the Disreputable Dog was tied up. Sure glad he's along. It was a long boardwalk to the springs and he wasn't allowed. I brought him as far as I could - lots of single men in the campsite who eyed me as I went to pay my fees this evening but with the dog, they won't bother me. Little do they know that they would also have to face a full bottle of bear spray. I'm sure it would work just as well on them (don't tell the Canadian Boder Patrol - they only let it in because it is stated clearly on the bottle that it is for animals - where as the US border will only let it in if it states clearly that it's for humans!).

My lovely windshield

I love being in my little tent, my home away from home, with the Disreputable Dog next to me - just the smell of the tent makes me feel at home. I've been listening to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" on CD and I think it has been affecting my mood. It's a very dark book. Anywho, it's late again, I seem to always get to this very late at night, and I'm too tired to write more. I hope I get to post some of this before I return home! The internet connections are either very sparse or they insist that I have a local mobile phone company which, of course, I don't. Even if I do post pictures will have to wait until I return. Good night!

British Columbia Photos - wild bison & a black bear

Mile 916/ Km 1,474 (Alaska & Yukon Territory)

Alaska Photos

Mmmmm....just got out of some local hot springs near my campground here near the Capital City of the Yukon. Feeling all loose limbed and ready for sleep so this may be short. These hot springs aren't supposed to be part of the deal but some guys laying tile let me in on their secret and I met up with a local girl who was also soaking with her dog on look out.

Alaska Photos

Last night I woke to rain and slept soundly through the rest of the night and its patter on my tent. The next morning the entire tent got wet while breaking it down. Everything was wet. But no matter - we hit sunshine somewhere along the route and in mid afternoon I had it hanging from the bike on the roof of my car while the Disreputable Dog and I took a walk. Most of our drive however was in and out of rain showers. Mountains hovering in and out of mist and cloud, gorgeous light peaking up just right to highlight the still dry grasses and the new leaves on the trees. Saw some deer and a grizz all munching contentedly on the side of the road. It felt good to get into the rhythm of travel and to stop for hikes and sunshine and picnics by river banks.

Yukon Photos

Mile 416/ Km 669 (Alaska)

First day of driving, first night of camping. The Disreputable Dog and I are cozily ensconced in my tent and I can hear the water of a nearby stream rushing by and the warble of the varied thrush. The Disreputable Dog is already down for the count. I have been socializing my way out of the state. I started out at mile zero in Farthest North Ice Free Harbor Town with breakfast with friends, drove to Largest Alaskan City where I met friends for coffee, drove to Town Known For Its Particularly Large Cabbages where I met friends driving south from City of Largest Temperature Range in North America for lunch, then drove on to Town That Exists Solely Because Two Highways Meet, where the Disreputable Dog & have lived on and off, and dropped in on yet more friends having dinner. Of course, along the route we stopped for the Disreputable Dog to take a long swim, stopped for the lone caribou bull with his shiny new coat and velvety antlers who stood in the middle of my lane of the highway while the traffic going the other way roared by, stopped to fill my cooler with goodies, and stopped to sample some old favorite walks and haunts. It was a regular excursion down memory lane and seeing all of these wonderful people who turned out to see me made me feel very lucky. The drive was uneventful and scenic and familiar. We're about 40 miles (64 km) from the Canadian border now and I thought about pushing to get over it but decided instead to try and aim for a decent bed time because I am tired from all my packing and socializing. Clearly the Disreputable Dog is too although I'm sure he slept most of the drive.

Road Trip!

Wet spring snow falling past the windows, the Disreputable Cat catching her first live mouse (it was in the house), the deaths of too many young daredevils, meetings with an old friend, trips to the zoo with my niece, and to the park with my nephew, gardening, watching the arrival of western tanagers and cedar waxwings....

I've been a bad blogger and a bad blog reader the last month. I've missed you but things have been so crazy, as much in my head as anywhere, lately that I haven't had the time or the energy to even pick up the computer. And it doesn't help that my computer and Internet access have been spotty. Every now and then I'd wonder how all my blog friends were doing, wanting to catch up but since I knew I was unable to catch up with all of you I caught up with none of you. I've even gotten some new readers who have surely already given up due to the lack of blog posts. Thank you to those of you who inquired after my well-being! I have been fine although preoccupied with decision making. My head has been spinning like the legs of an upturned beetle, my thoughts chasing each other like a fox its tail. The dust is finally starting to clear a little and I hope I'll be around a little more regularly.

But now I'm going to try and make it up to you - I'm going to take you with me on my drive south from Alaska to Colorado. I have decided not to take any of the tempting summer job offers that while putting me in the places I want to be and doing the things I want to do don't actually give my career any kind of boost and just delay the current situation until the fall. So, although it's subject to change, at the moment I am planning on spending the summer in Colorado selling books. So with that in mind I desperately need some summer things which were not packed in my suitcase. So the Disreputable Dog and I are going to drive my camping & backpacking gear, my bike, and some summer clothes down the Alcan (more formally known as the trans Alaska-Canada highway). I've always wanted to drive it in the summer, having previously always driven it in January - I don't know precisely why, it just ended up that way. The Disreputable Cat is staying in Colorado to wait for us.

I'm going to write a post every day but they will only be posted as Internet connections avail themselves (we're camping the whole way down). This means I will continue to be a bad blog reader/ friend for a least another few weeks and have decided that when I start out I'm just going to clear my reader and start with where you are then....but I miss you and do wonder what you are all up to.

PS - CAE, Doris Rose, & Silver Fox, I got your tags, I promise I will get to them!

In Holland

Preface: I traveled through Morocco with a dear friend I met ten years ago in Ghana, West Africa. When we lived there people constantly asked us, "Are you twins?" which at the time seemed laughable because she is a least a foot taller then I am and has bright red hair while mine is brown not to mention the fact that she is from the Netherlands and I from North America. However, I often wonder if the Ghanians didn't see something beyond the surface, something other then "all white people look alike", because although it's been seven years since we saw each other last and much has happened to both of us in that time, both good and bad, it was as if we had only seen each other moments before. After Morocco I had the luxury of being able to travel to her home in Holland and finally meet her husband and two children (who thought it was about time the met me). It's one of the most amazing connections that seems to persist no matter how outwardly different our lives might appear and I am grateful for it.

So here are some images from a wonderful visit with a dear friend which included such delights as bicycling everywhere, playing with her kids, going horse riding, eating luscious Dutch cheese, joking with her husband, having dinner with her mother, bird watching at a local park, walking through autumn leaves, going grocery shopping. We were both recovering from salmonella that we caught in Morocco (did I mention that?) so we were lazier then we otherwise might have been. At the end we both felt so strange saying goodbye because in so many ways it felt like I had always been there, sleeping in their attic.

Notable Smells: farmlands and manure, rain and water, fresh cheese, autumn leaves, rich chocolate and hot tea, line dried laundry

Notable Noises: small children playing in the streets, the sound of bicycle bells, migrating geese, crunching of leaves underfoot, the sound of children in the house, laughter

Look at all those bicycles!!! There was about a kilometer of them, this picture doesn't show the half of them. This is the bus/ train station. I don't think there are this many bikes in the entire US. I love watching the bicylicists during rush hour in Holland: men with their ties flying out behind them, women in fashionable skirts and boots, and teenagers in packs often with linked arms down the pathways.

A village street. Notice the bicycles (you wouldn't imagine that I'm in favor of bicycle commuting from reading this post would you?). Here we went into a delightful store that specialized in freshly roasted nuts. Yum!

Fall colors at a lakeside park.

At a bike trail crossroads...and the bike I borrowed from my "twin's" neighbor. I tell ya', they don't make bikes like this in the USA. This was the limousine of bicycles. I have recently been trying to get a pedal power operated light for my bike because it is cold enough here that batteries freeze up and then I end up with no light. The main response I seem to be getting is that it isn't available because after all they would slow you down! Well, this lovely bike comes with one built into the frame and it even has an automatic setting that turns it on when it gets dusky out. And it may be that it slows me down but you'd hardly notice unless you were in a race and that's not something I'm planning on doing any time soon. Ooo - and this has a cool built in lock that just goes around the back tire, no need for a bike rack. I want one!

My "twin" and her two children (faces obscured) using a common mode of transportation. When we went to pick up her oldest child (rear seat) at school I noticed that only two of the parents had driven to pick up their kids, the rest had either ridden bikes with similar child seating arrangements or walked. Notice too, the lack of helmets, the Dutch think Americans are absolutely hysterical over helmet safety.

Just boating through the neighborhood. Something that one can do most anywhere in Holland due to all of the canals.

Traditional thatch roofing on a farm house.

A picture of the village that my "twin" lives in.

Morocco: in words

Here are some snippets of my impressions of Morocco - pictures are coming, I promise. (Speaking of which, does anyone know how to make a mosaic of different images using Photoshop? I'd love to create one for you, but I haven't figured out how yet.)

First off let me say that Morocco, as I find is typical with many non-western nation, immediately penetrates all of your senses the minute you leave the plane. These places are vibrant with smells and sounds and colors, there is a sort of immediacy in everything that lacks in the more subtle, more contained and manner-focused western societies. I will try and share with you my impressions but I am sure that it will only begin to capture the feeling of the place.

Moroccan smells: donkey dung, jasmine oil, mint tea, baked earth, hyacinth flowers, tannery pits, new leather, fish, dust, smoke from the pottery kilns, the occasional smell of sewage less then expected, the smell of sheep that have been in the desert and often long without water

Moroccan sounds: the buzz of the muezzin early in the morning, the sound of the shuttle from a weaving loom, pounding on metal as artisans created the famous pounded silver, laughter, friends calling out to one another, tinny taxi horns, Arabic, French, and the clicking noises of the Berber like a bird in the brush, the hooves of donkey feet in narrow stone passages, loud shouting of men through the night (and how, I wonder, do they manage to get up for the 5am prayer?)

Moroccan visual: narrow, labyrinth streets, tall buildings, colorful mosaics & clothing, women dressed in gorgeous saris, leather works, pointy toes leather slippers, walls & gates to Medinas and around ancient cities, the dry Atlas mountains with onions piled under stone crates, Barbary apes hanging out with donkeys in a forest that seems too dry to be a home for apes, tiny steps and narrow passageways, homes dug out of the earth with put upon door fronts, symbolic colors: green for holiness, blue doors for Mohammad, red for Fatima, plastic bags strewn across the landscape as far as the eye can see, men holding hands or walking arm in arm down the street even a couple of policemen walking down the street hand in hand

Moroccan tastes: almost everything is sweet in Morocco with the exception of the olives which come with every meal. It is no wonder that so few Moroccans seem in possession of good teeth.

Highlights/lands of Scotland

Here are some of my impressions from a fall visit to Scotland in the company of dear friends.

Scotland visual: old stone buildings with brightly painted doorways and stovepipe rows, rolling hills of green with fat sheep, mossy crumbling old stone walls, instructional signs that take the most amount of words possible to convey the desired meaning, old graveyards, graceful outer buildings often transformed less gracefully inside, loch's and mist, swirling autumn leaves

Scotland smells: wet earth, slight fragrances of fire smoke and the occasional coal briquette, ale & meat dishes (such as haggis), the smell of damp wool, peat and loam, the smell of the first frost

Scotland sounds: the trill of the European robin (which is nothing like the American one), the dripping of rain or dew, genial laughter from the local bakery, warm woolen Scottish brogue.

And now, for a sampling of pictures.....

The village of Killn

View from Stirling Castle

View from the Munro Ben Lawrs

Old mill and falls in the village of Killn

Scottish street

Red doors

Blue doors

With S having bagged the Munro (I'm on the left)

This also happens to be the Munro on which I lost my spectacles

The streets of Aberdeen

Back in Alaska

I'm back! Admittedly, a little later then planned due to a 19 hour delay of my first flight resulting in subsequent delays there after. I had a fabulous trip and I promise to tell you about it in subsequent posts! Promise! I came home to a snowstorm - the kind that makes it hard to tell if you're even moving when you drive in it. The Diresputables are more then pleased to see me back and I them although we all have some schedule adjusting to do. My friend who watched them works a swing shift and so in some senses, they too have been in a different time zone. I always find that my stomach is the last to finally recover from jet lag. It wakes me up demanding to know why I missed an important meal and refuses to eat when it's actually meal time. I forced myself to stay up until 9pm last night, going cross-eyed from the effort and then managed to sleep most of the night although I still rose all together too early for a weekend after too little sleep.

While I was away the lovely Gill of Gill's Jottings awarded me my first ever blogger award! I was very touched by her comment about my blog "Wayfarer scientista who teaches me daily that you are never too old to learn, a fascinating blog!" THANK YOU GILL ! She awards me the community blogger award which celebrates people who reach out and make the blogging community a better one.


In my turn I award:

JEN of One Plus Two. While I suspect Jen has more then a few of these awards around she was the first to welcome me to blogger land and always leaves comments and has a wonderful blog. She is also the instigator of the "Just Posts" for a just world.

SKOOKUMCHICK of Feminist Engineer. She is the instigator of the Scientiae Carnival which has allowed me to meet many interesting researchers, expanding my community beyond that of the researchers I run into directly in my own field.

ATHENA DANOY of Sipping Hot Chocolate. Athena's blog was one of the first I regularly visited and I love seeing the world through her camera lens. When I first commented on her blog I was so delighted that she replied to me.

MAD HATTER of A Mad Tea Party . Mad has taken topics that I have discussed on other blogs and written new posts about them and has made for very lively dialogue that is much appreciated.

Going on Vacation

I'm headed off for traveling adventures tomorrow and it's likely that I will be completely out of touch (& yes, that means not blogging or reading blogs) until I return the 1st of November. When I sent my itinerary to my sister she asked "And where aren't you going?" and it's true, I'm doing quite a bit of moving for such a short trip. But oh(!) I'm so excited. Here is the sketch of my trip:

SCOTLAND: Here I will be visiting a dear Swiss friend who is pursuing a Post Doc in Aberdeen. We will be joined by her boyfriend who is originally German but lives in Switzerland, another dear friend. We met when they became my housemates in Fairbanks, Alaska where they had come for his post doc and a portion of her PhD. There she fell head over heels in love with the Disreputable Dog despite the fact that the first words out of her mouth to me were that she did not like dogs.

All map courtesy of Meriam-Webster's Geography

MOROCCO: This is the original pupose of the whole trip. I will be meeting up with a very dear Dutch friend who I met in Ghana. We're making this a girls trip. We both like to travel footloose and fancy free and we haven't made and determined plans although we have vague ideas in mind. I've never been to Morocco and am terribly exited about seeing the architecture and the textiles and to feel the heat of the desert.

HOLLAND/ NETHERLANDS: I will head back to the Netherlands with my Morocco traveling friend to met her family, her husband and two children of whom I have heard many stories and whom I have yet to meet. I suspect they're equally curious to meet me especially since I'm dragging their wife & mother away from them for a week. And I may have a chance to visit the school for mentally disabled kids and talk about Alaska while I'm there.


Does that not sound like a fabulous trip? A little summer in Morocco before returning to the winter of Alaska. Exotic sights and sounds and smells and yet the comfort of seeing very good long held friends after a long absence? And there's sure to be a little adventure and some unexpected, unplanned events in there to boot.

Newly Arriving Exchange Students

I'm so excited! Today this next school year's AFS exchange students arrive in Alaska and I'm going to meet up with them in Anchorage and give them their arrival orientation! I think we have 31 kids coming but I have to check the roster. They're coming from all over the world and they'll be going to host families all over Alaska and attending high school here for the next year.

I love meeting these groups in the beginning and then watching them grow and change over the year. They gain confidence in themselves, they learn to be independent thinkers, they learn how to solve difficult problems, how to deal with new situations, etc. I know that this group will be nervous, many of them did not think of Alaska when they signed up for this thing. To them the USA meant Florida, New York City, and California - the world portrayed by Hollywood and by the view-the-states-in-a-month tours that people they know may have gone on. They will be freaked out about how they will survive the cold, the dark, and sometimes the isolation of small town life. They will be freaked out by all the dogs in this place. And they will have a blast. By the time they leave they will laugh at their worries. They will have done things they never dreamed of doing: skiing, dog mushing, kayaking, camping, hiking. Many of these outdoor things that Alaskans take as a normal part of life are completely alien to these kids who live in places where there isn't quite the same wildness left so that even when you are recreating in it you are always on a well marked trail (most of Europe) or in places where the wild is seen as a dangerous place that you strive to conquer or get away from (much of Africa, Latin & South America, & Asia).

Wild Geranium (Geranium erianthum)

When I lived in Northern California I used to take the kids and their liaisons on a backpacking trip about 3 months after they arrived and I would tell them that it was a metaphor for their experience. In the beginning you are scared, nervous, not sure you are going to like it and it seems like a huge trip. In the middle you are tired, you have blisters, you may be grumpy, you think it is never going to end. At the end you are having so much fun you don't want to go back even though you are looking forward to showers and your own bed but you know you will be leaving fine company who knows you in a way that other people don't because it strips you down to your essentials and you can't believe how quickly the time passed. When you leave it changes your outlook and you look back on it as one of the best things you've ever done and you have a wealth of stories and memories from it.

When these kids arrive tomorrow we will be doing the equivalent of giving them a map & compass and signing them in at the trail head. They're going to be excited and nervous and they will be awesome. I'm already inspired and I haven't even met them!

Prize Conversations with Tourons

I have nothing against tourists. I've been one and without them this very wet small town south of the permafrost would not survive economically (which is probably true of much of AK) but sometimes you have these conversations that make you shake your head and wonder if their brains went on a different vacation.

* Standing on a balcony overlooking the ocean this fellow says to me "So, what's the elevation above sea level here?" I look over the balcony and say "Well, since the tide seems to be out I'd say about 4ft"

* I was pumping gas when this RV pulls up. This couple gets out and they look distinctively cold being dressed for some other climate than 60 degrees with rain & mosquitoes. The guy says to me "I thought it was warmer in Hawaii! Where's all the sunshine?". II thought the guy was joking but he wasn't. You know how on maps of the United States Hawaii & Alaska get pulled out and put in little windows in the Pacific? Well, come to find out that somehow this couple had managed to get all the way to Alaska while thinking that Alaska was merely the largest island off Hawaii. I think they need a new travel agent and a better map.

* "So how much does it cost to ship an iceberg?" Umm, well seeing as you live in the Carolinas can I just ship an empty box and tell you it evaporated?

* "When do the smoked salmon run?" Let's see....

* "I'm from the United States of America" (best said by drawing out and emphasizing the country name). Umm...guess what dude, you're still in the United States of America. Yeah, really.

* And then there is the woman who is living in a campground this summer. She comes into the coffee shop and tells us things like the mountains around us are invisible (I can agree on a foggy day), that she controls the weather (well, give us a break then!), and to complain that the AK Park Service hasn't installed plumbing in her tent yet (well, they haven't gotten around to that amenity in some of the houses either dear) all in an accent she claims is French but which sound suspiciously like attempted Irish. But this later one is loony enough to possibly be an actual local.