Hoar Frost

Another foggy morning with some interesting hoar frost. I ran out to take some pictures before it started falling off.

Foggy Weather

Well after a warm spell it has cooled off and has been foggy. That is typical for springtime around here. Uyaana and I took Kaija for a ride on the four wheeler but she got too cold. So I took her for a walk instead. The ice fog was forming hoar frost on everything so I took a few pictures of it.

The frost was starting to build up on Kaija's fur and wiskers. I tried to take a picture of it but it didn't come out too well, I couldn't get her to sit still. 90 percent of the pictures I take of her I have to delete because they are too blurry.

I head back to Anchorage again on Monday for another conference. It's called "Adapting Your Community Services to Support the Cognitively Impaired Offender". Sound exciting, huh. I'm going to do lot's of grocery shopping again of course. We are traveling down on monday but the conference doesn't start until tuesday so maybe I will take a ride out of town and take some pictures.I have gone south on the Seward Highway but I have only driven the Glen Highway north as far as Eagle River, so maybe I'll go that way.

Trip tp Kiana

I went to Kiana today for work. Kiana is a little village on the Kobuk River. It was a nice flight and we had a good time visiting with clients. Here are a few pictures that I took.

I mentioned before that I was going to post some pictures, so here they are. The first one was taken on April 18th as the plane was getting ready to land in Anchorage. Those are the Chugach Mountains.

The next two pictures are of Kaija. She's getting bigger.




The other day we went ice fishing. It was the first time Kaija had ever gone fishing. We caught a few tomcod and gave them to Kaija to play with. I took some video.

Springtime

I haven't written here in a while. Well, I did say that I wasn't very good at journals. It's not that I forget, it's just that a lot of times I feel like I don't have anything interesting to say. I suppose that just because I don't think somethind is interesting doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't, so I should probably just write.

Spring is here finally! The gravel roads are turning first to slush as the 8 inches of packed ice and snow melts off and then to mud revealing all the massive potholes. There are huge deep puddles all over that freeze over at night and open back up during the day. I saw two seagulls yesterday!! A sure sign of spring when the seagulls return. We took the clients from work fishing today. All we caught were tomcods but it was fun to get out into the sun. I went to bed last night and 10:30pm last night and the sun was shining merrily in my window. Isn't spring great?

I was in Anchorage april 18th-21st for a conference. It was nice to get off the gravel spit for a while. Did a lot of grocery shopping. My friend Bree didn't have any checked baggage so she checked three boxes for me. I came home with about 300 pounds of stuff. I bought a Costco membership. That bugger cost $50. I figured it doesn't really matter since up here we can drop $50 on ordering out dinner without batting an eyelash, I might as well spend $50 on something that will last a year. I love Costco. I can spend three hours in there...just like walmart. The problem is with all that stuff I seem to get overstimulated and I lose my train of thought on what I need and end up wandering around looking at stuff. After a couple of days of shopping I get really burnt out on stuff and people and I am ready to head back to the bush.

I have some new pictures and a video that I want to post, but I have to find my camera cord first....it's around here somewhere. When I find it I will post them.

I have to get ready for work. It's 8am, I think that the thingy on my blog that tells the time of my post is messed up a bit. Also the blog's date stamp and the head of each post is correct, but the archive list on the left side of the page says 2006 and I am not sure why.

Just what we needed......

Bush delivery, postage costs expected to soar
by Joy Mapaye
Monday, April 16, 2007
http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=6376466
ktuu channel 2 Anchorage, Alaska


ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- If you live in rural Alaska, get ready for some major sticker shock.

A postal rate hike scheduled to take effect next month is going to have a dramatic impact on prices in rural Alaska.

When the price of mail goes up May 14, the impact will be felt here, in the grocery stores Bush Alaska.

The bypass-mail program, used by a majority of shippers to get goods out to rural Alaska, helps keep postage costs down, according to shipping industry experts.

Michelle Adams, a logistics manager for Alaska Commercial Company, says that next month's rate increase will mean shipping costs may double to some communities.

"The post office on May 14 is taking an increase on 4th class mail, which is parcel post," Adams said. "And depending on the area that it's going to and the average bundle weight, it can go up anywhere from 32 to 58 percent over the current rates."

Adams delivers to more than 30 stores in the Bush. She says this rate increase will catch many by surprise.

"I don't think a lot of people out there are aware of how large this increase is and what it's going to mean to rural Alaska," she said.

Officials with the U.S. Postal Service say the increase will affect all parcel post customers around the nation, and Alaska is no different.

The Postal Service says it is required by law to charge a uniform rate on the same class of mail everywhere in the United States.

"In many cases, that helps Alaska, because although the costs individually to the Postal Service are higher here, due to the transportation costs, everyone across the country pays the same," said Kathy Hamilton, acting marketing manager for the Postal Service, Alaska District.

But, this time, it's likely that prices out here will continue to go up.

Postal officials met with Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens last week in order to determine whether anything can be done about the increase.
............................................................

I love living in the bush, I really do. I love rural Alaska, but it does have it's down points.....prices being one of them. It always makes people from the Lower 48 want to faint when I tell them that I regularly pay $4.99 for an 18 pack of eggs, $9.98 for a 12 pack of diet pepsi and $10 for a half gallon of ice cream. That's not even taking into account the $5.20 a gallon for gas at the pump and $4.02 a gallon for fuel to heat your house. So now we get to look forward to another freight price hike.

With my job I get to travel to Anchorage about 5 times a year, sometimes more. During those 2-3 day trips I try and travel with almost nothing for baggage. Alaska airlines allows you to travel within Alaska with three 50lb pieces of luggage. I usually hit Costco, Sam's Club and Walmart. I go home with 20lbs of chicken, 8-12 lbs of butter, 5 lbs of cheese, 15 lbs of frozen vegetables, toilet paper, tissue, laundry soap etc. These opportunities to shop save a lot of money.

The walmart in Anchorage also has a thing called the bush department. While at walmart you can fill up your cart with things that you want to buy and then drop it off at the Bush counter. They will shrink wrap it, box it up and send it C.O.D. to you in your village. You can also call them up on the phone and tell them what you want and they will box it up and mail it C.O.D. Of course this service isn't free. On the total of your merchandise you pay a 15% handling fee and 26% for postage. Even still it is often cheaper to get things you want than buying it at the ONE store here in Kotzebue.
Here's another article on the rate increase.
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/rural/story/8796384p-8697608c.html

So that's the big news here in the Bush. Other than that things are business as usual. Spring is dragging it's feet. As you can see it's not anything resembling warm out..............

It's supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow. Hopefully it will stay there and we will all welcome the start of mud bog season.
AKZ209-180200-
BALDWIN PENINSULA AND SELAWIK VALLEY-
INCLUDING...KOTZEBUE...SELAWIK...NOORVIK
444 AM ADT TUE APR 17 2007
TODAY ...MOSTLY CLOUDY. ISOLATED SNOW SHOWERS IN THE MORNING.
HIGHS 20 TO 25. WEST WINDS TO 10 MPH BECOMING
EAST 10 TO 25 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON.
TONIGHT ...SNOW LIKELY. UP TO 3 INCHES OF ACCUMULATION.
LOCAL BLOWING SNOW. TEMPERATURES RISING TO NEAR 30 BY MORNING.
EAST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH.
WEDNESDAY ...CLOUDY. RAIN AND SNOW LIKELY. HIGHS 35 TO 40.
EAST WINDS 20 TO 30 MPH.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT ...CLOUDY. CHANCE OF SNOW. LOWS 20 TO 25.
SOUTHEAST WINDS 20 TO 30 MPH.
THURSDAY ...MOSTLY CLOUDY. CHANCE OF SNOW. HIGHS 25 TO 30.
SOUTH WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT ...MOSTLY CLOUDY. LOWS NEAR 15.
FRIDAY ...CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW. HIGHS NEAR 30.
FRIDAY NIGHT ...CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW. LOWS NEAR 20.
SATURDAY ...MOSTLY CLOUDY. HIGHS NEAR 35.
SATURDAY NIGHT ...MOSTLY CLOUDY. LOWS NEAR 20.
SUNDAY ...MOSTLY CLOUDY. HIGHS NEAR 35.
SUNDAY NIGHT ...PARTLY CLOUDY. LOWS NEAR 20.
MONDAY ...PARTLY CLOUDY. HIGHS NEAR 40.

Slide show

Here is a slide show of some of my favorite pics that I have taken in the Northwest Arctic region of Alaska where I live. These pics were taken over the last 4 years. It's kind of a long slideshow.

Today seemed like a busy day. Noah and I got up about 10am and decided to head down to the ice to watch the start of the Archie Ferguson Willie Goodwin Memorial Snowmachine race. There were about 50 or so racers this year...the first time there have been that many in a looong time. It was nice to see the numbers back up.

After the race Noah and I took a ride up Cemetary Hill to take Kaija for a ride.

We didn't stay long because Noah wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home. Poor Noah has been sicksince monday evening and hasn't been in school since Monday. Tuesday night his fever was 103.7 and if the tylenol wore of it would keep going back up, and he had a bad cough. I took him to the clinic on wednesday evening. They checked his ears, gave him a Strep test and said he had "The Flu". The fever kept with him all week til yesterday he seemed to be feeling a bit better. Then today after we got home from our ride he said that he wanted to go to bed....it was 1pm. About an hour later he comes down and says that his ear hurt. Sooooo...I took him to the ER and sure enough he had a wicked ear infection in the ear that the tube fell out of. That's the second ear infection in that ear in 2 months. I have a feeling that he will have to get another tube in that ear.

The weather has been pretty good. Not too cold, but not too warm either. Yesterday it was about 28 degrees. Today it was only about 25 or 26. Tonight it is supposed to snow and get windy for the next few days. Haven't seen anymore tweety birds out, that chickadee was just a tease. I want to go fishing but Noah has been so sick this weekend that we haven't gone. We usually fish for Sheefish this time of year through holes in the ice. For those of you who don't know what a Sheefish is a picture of Noah last year, 3-19-06, with his first Sheefish that he caught

and here is a website where you can read all about sheefish...
http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/pubs/notebook/fish/sheefish.php We usually fish through holes that are 10 inches in diameter and sometimes the sheefish are so big you can't get them up through the hole and you have to try and shake them off your hook.

For any of you that might be bored check out the links on the side of my page. The city of Kotzebue website has hundreds of pictures from around Kotzebue that are fun to look at.

Spring has Sprung!

There is a beginning and an end to everything, and here in Kotzebue we have reached the beginning of the end of Winter. Spring here is a long affair. April is one of the nicest months in the Arctic. It's still winter in that there is snow and ice and the temp is below the freezing mark, but the sun is high in the sky and shines from 8 in the morning until 10 at night. You can go out on the ice and fish for sheefish for hours in your sweatshirt. The birds start sneaking back. First the little tweety birds, then the seagulls, and then the geese, cranes, swans and ducks. Monday I was taking Kaija for a walk and I thought I heard someone whistling. Suddenly I realized it was a BIRD! It was a Boreal Chickadee!

I would like to say that I took that picture but I stole it off the internet. I was so excited to see that dang chickadee. You would be too if the last little birdy you saw and heard was back in October. The only birds that winter here are ravens, which are basically crows on steroids.

Kaija has been going to work with me everyday. I keep her penned in on my side of the office with her toys and food and water. She likes to sleep at my feet unter the desk. She seems to like it there. She sometimes likes to visit our clients and my coworkers, but mostly she likes to sleep. When she is home she and Raven, our other puppy, tear around the house constantly so I think Kaija knows that at the office she should sleep in peace while she has the chance.

I haven't taken very many pictures. I will have to start carrying my camera around in case I come across anything interesting. In the meantime here is some eskimo dancing from Barrow that some of you may find interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ4GPZo1AaA

Meet Kaija

On March 30th my new Karelian Bear Dog puppy, Kaija (pronounced kye-yuh) arrived from Soldtna, AK. Her dad is Eska-Mo from Bearunoff Kennels http://www.bearunoffkennels.com , and her mom is Bearunoff's Nanna Kneeka. Kaija is a beautiful puppy as you can see here.....

Uyaana is in heaven with two puppies. He enjoys laying on the bed with Kaija and watching tv.

She is a really good puppy. She does have some accidents on the floor, but I take her out regularly and it doesn't happen that often.

It has warmed up quite a bit. This weekend has been our first taste of spring, although it is in the form of a mini blizzard. It sure beats the last month straight of 20 below zero. Here's today's weather....


So that's all that is going on at the moment. We are all well, work is good, Uyaana is doing well in school and we are all looking forward to more springtime weather.