Alaska

I guess I can start with what I'm currently up to. If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm in Alaska. I flew in on May 30, and my friend Lauren (who goes to WM but is from here) was nice enough to let me crash at her place in Eagle River (about 20 mins north of Anchorage) for a few days while I got over my jet lag (Alaska is 4 hours earlier than east coast time). It was a pretty good introduction to this state - she lives right next to the third largest state park in the country. So one day we hiked through this valley to reach this glacial lake. The previous day, we hiked a peak about 10 minutes from her house, to reach the ridge that is featured oh-so-prominently at the top of this page in my heading. So, great thing #20304493 about Alaska? Daylight! Forever. That header photo was taken at 9pm. Its great to be able to go out and not worry about running out of daylight. The sun starts to set around 8ish...but at 11pm it looks like maybe 7pm. Its dusky around midnight. The other night I woke up around 2:30am and I saw "city" lights for the first time since I got here ("city" because Homer is pretty small). Even then, the sky wasn't black, just sort of a deep blue color. But its funny, it was kind of a jolt to get such a familiar sight, I hadn't realized that I'd missed night.

I have a ton of pictures already, and I'm behind on uploading them and putting them online. I'll be working on that this weekend, but I don't have internet access at my place. I'll certainly post the link to my photo album when its presentable. Right now I'm working from Homer's public library. Fun fact about Homer's library - it has a Silver level of LEED certification, making it 1 of 3 LEED certified buildings in Alaska, and the first LEED building to have been created to address community environmental sustainability. Incidentally, my boss here was one of the instrumental people in making this happen. She's pretty cool. I'll talk more about that later.