Brrr....

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One of those stay inside Saturdays. It's too cold to play out, especially since I am still trying to get over this cough. There was supposed to be women's dog races this afternoon but I am pretty sure they were canceled due to the cold. If it is colder that -25F then they call off the races for safety sake. Yeah, it's gets colder in Alaska, but us coastal folks are spared most of it.



It's going to be pretty cold for the next few days. Tomorrow will probably be another indoor day. It's just as well I guess. I have a ton of homework. I have a 100 level psych class that has about 14 hours of course work a week. Not exactly sure why that is, but is a major pain in my rear to say the least.

So today I stayed in and cleaned, watched movies and did laundry.


I needed to get the laundry done because on Monday I am trading the subzero temps of the northwest arctic for the relative tropics of southeast Alaska. I'll be in Juneau from Monday thru Thursday. I'm not going to let their soggy forecast dampen my spirits. I'm hanging up my parka, putting on my rubber boots and heading south to warm up for a few days.

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View of Town

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Here are some photos of the view towards town taken from out on the ice.


















Here is a photo taken last August from the boat at approximately the same place.

My Best Friend's Wedding

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My friend Bree got married on Friday, February 19th. She asked if I would take her wedding photos for her. I agreed even though I don't really care for taking indoor photos. I think it's harder to take good photos inside than out. These came out ok, but I won't be quitting my day job anytime soon.

She made me promise I would only show the "good" ones...she is sooo critical of photos of herself (aren't we all). Well, even though she is my BFF she NEVER reads my blog so I'm just gonna post whatever photos I like anyway and she won't know the difference :P




















































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Spring Tease

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This last weekend was a spring tease. The weather was beeeeutiful! The high temp for Friday, Saturday AND Sunday was 33 degrees. It was nice to spend some time outside in the sun. Here are some photos from Sunday taken out on the ice with the dogs.
























































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Fishing Fool

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More Camp Photos

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From last weekend.


Playing Pictionary until the wee hours.




Ahna Lena cooking breakfast.




Sourdough hotcakes.




Wood stove and oil stove.




Uyaana listening to a book on his ipod.




Kristi doing what she does best.....texting.



Naptime.

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Getting Ice

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Uyaana's Ahna (grandmother) Lena lives in camp year round. Her camp is located on a small slough near the mouth of the Noatak River.




One of the winter chores at camp is making sure there is enough water for cooking, drinking and cleaning. There are a few ways you can do this. You could drill a hole in the slough, but the water in this slough isn't all that great and the ice is several feet thick so you need an auger. Ahna usually melts snow in buckets. This is not the best method because the snow to water yield is low but it is the easiest for her to do herself.




While we were there we helped Ahna chip ice for water. Here is Uyaana and Ahna Lena on our way to get ice.




We went a little ways from the cabin where a creek flows out from the tundra. We found a clear patch of ice with a nice big crack.




It is best to chip along a crack because you can get big chunks of ice to come off.
You chip the ice and put the pig pieces in a box and all the little chips and ice dust into buckets and bring them back to the cabin so they can be melted for water.




We use a tuuq (kinda pronounced too-ook)to chip the ice. It is basically just a long metal shaft with a sharp metal chisel at the end. Here is Uyaana taking his turn with the tuuq. Unfortunately our tuuq needs some sharpening so it's a lot of work. He didn't last long.




He gave up and wandered off to play on the ice.




Here is Kookie taking a turn.

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