Posts tagged #Fall Adventures

Fall.

I have been missing in action once again. Sometimes I feel like I want to write a blogpost but I am not really sure what to write about. I have all these pictures I want to show but I have a hard time composing a story about them. This summer felt (and I am pretty sure it was) shorter than usual. At this point today we have already gotten our first frost. This endless summer that just seemed to rain away anyway is gone. It has been really really rainy. The headwater streams in the watershed I am working in have had flows up to 10 times the normal.

Even though this summer has been wet, it was still really beautiful, in its own way.

And now fall has arrived. But I love fall. I do feel cheated though, what happened to the summer? I guess I have a hard time appreciating fall when summer didn't really happen...

Did I tell you about..

As the snow keeps falling I kind of remember all the nice things about this past spring, summer and fall. One of the most recent activities in this past month was the Far North Forest Sports festival. You can participate alone, but its nicer to be a team. You can be four to six people in a team, and I was asked to participate, but I said no because i really needed to work. The team was going to meet for breakfast in the morning of the day, and I decided to tag along and be their photographer. After a big cup of coffe and a lox tomato and capers bagel I was ready to head over to the "festival". We arrived, it was cold, rainy and overcast.. Ugh, and we were early, so we still had to wait a bit, in the rain...in the cold. So to warm us up one of the tem members said he actually had a double ax in the back of his truck (yeah...just randomly, I don't remember the whole story about that one..) so we could practice axe throwing. Well, that looked really fun, so I decided to try it out! An it was super fun, and I apparently (ego boost) had a talent for this, I hit the target ever swing, so after that I was recruited to the team. Even though I didn't have time for these festivities, I was suppose to work, remember, but who would say no for some axe throwing? Besides, I was already dressed appropriate...

That axe fitted really nicely in my hands, and nicely on the target.

I actually got second of all women, that made me proud, a proud viking :) Dana and I decided to do one of the most complicated activities at this sports festival which is moving a big stupid log.....which we deeply regretted after a couple of minutes.

Did I mention that it was heavy?

Anyway, at least we got third, of all three teams of women that did this....yeah. Other activities was to saw through a big "log", and me and Dana did that too. It was fun, but so heavy, my arms were dead by the end of that.

And we were so proud in the end of that 1.40 something minutes....the fastest team was about 30 seconds...

The most interesting part though, was the log rolling...in the water that is. Dana did that, she was a champ. I think this picture summarizes pretty well the feeling of "what have I given myself into". She did awesome though, she came in second by the women! This is when she got defeated.. I am pretty sure it was cold! Anyway, just a short update about a past weekend. Happy Wednesday!

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Alaska, The great wide open and tagged Alaska Fall Fun Fall Adventures 2012.

The trip down south

I started to plan the trip down south quite a while before my patents actually did arrive, I think maybe as early as may. There was a lot of talk about what should be included and the costs. Alaska is really expensive if you don't live here, the hotels and the tours. I wanted to include Seward and a train ride from Anchorage or at least Talkeetna, but that got scratched from the list pretty early. We started our trip on a Saturday, not too early maybe even a bit late according to some... The first stop was Denali, me and Winslow were going to camp, and mom and dad got to stay at the Grizzly Bear in. On the way down we stopped at the 49th brewery outside Healy for a late lunch and then we continued the trip.

Once in Denali we decided to set up camp before driving the parents to their hotel, and on the way there we got our first wildlife viewings!

Next day we went up early in the morning and started the bus tour into Denali, unfortunately it rained the whole day, but that didn't stop us from seeing wildlife again. And the view itself wasn't too bad.

The next day we were all pretty tired and started the car ride to our next destination, Palmer and the state fair, and most important, Avett Brothers!

Palmer is a beautiful little town, or maybe I should say the setting is beautiful. It's surrounded by mountains and the pretty balmy (yeah Alaska balmy) evenings brought beautiful sunsets.

We also went to the musk ox farm, anchorage and Wasilla (that's where Sarah Palin is from) to visit a good friend of mine. We also went to Matanuska glacier, really lucked out about the weather, sunny and blue sky.

But, as I mentioned earlier the visit to the actual state fair and Avett Brothers was one of my highlights, especially when I saw the two brothers come walking at the fair right by me, and I finally got courage enough to walk up to them and ask if my mom could take a picture of me with them. That made my day!

The journey continued south and we had a rainy drive down to homer, and I was worried how the fishing would be for Winslow and my dad the next day. My parents got a nice welcome to their B&B