Sunshine and water

Oh boy, I've been neglecting you dear readers for a very long time. Honestly, its just because SO much has happened, I haven't had any time to write about it. And yes, there is quite a lot of news to catch up on. But its late and tomorrow I leave early to go check some field sites on the more northern end of the peninsula...actually that should be really cool - my boss and I are going to meet up with some Fish and Game people, who will take us in a boat across a huge lake to a site. Checking our sites won't take very long, but the F&G people are putting in a weir (basically, this barrier on a river that blocks fish passage except through a narrow opening - a sonar or something is connected to this, and in this way, they can track how many salmon are running upstream) so we'll be stuck out there while they do that. But we'll also probably get to help so it should be fun. Hopefully the weather will be ok. It's STILL raining A LOT here. Thankfully, the sun decided to shine for soccer today again. Hah, honestly I haven't been to practice in aaages, but today I dragged my lazy butt out of the house and I'm really glad I did. We had a Real Game...well, more real than we've had before - we played against some middle and high school girls on a team. Amazingly enough, the game was well matched and we won! (Yes the soccer moms beat the little mini-jocks woohoo)

Anyways, I'm digressing. I have a lot that I'd like to share, but I don't really want to leave you with a novel documenting the entire month, so I will proceed in smaller but (hopefully) more frequent postings....

So, one thing that's happend in this past month is that my family came to visit me! That was really fun - it was nice to show them around town, we went on some nice hikes, but my favorite thing was our trip to Seward, which is on the other side of the penninsula. I went there with my friend Lauren at the very beginning of the summer, but I wanted to go back because I wanted to take a boat tour of the fjords on that side of the penninsula. And it was so very worth the trip. Like I said, the weather hasn't been very cooperative (amazingly enough, while my family was here, we had the best weather all summer) but the day we went out on the boat couldn't have been more perfect. The water was completely flat and placid, the sun was out, the sky was blue...I loved the tour because we saw a TON of wildlife (sea otters, seals, Steller's sea lions - which are endangered, a humpback whale, lots of little seabirds, and two orcas! - it was my goal of the summer to see orcas, yay), but it really would have been worth it just for the scenery. It was breathtaking.



I'm sure you won't find it surprising that I have a TON more AMAZING pictures, which I am slowly uploading to my online photo gallery...I'll let you all know when those are up. But yeah, Alaska is beautiful when the weather is nice. Hah, keep in mind I don't take pictures on shitty days :)

Anyways, I'm really exhausted so sharing time is over but, until next time!