Heading out to rural Alaska

Tomorrow I hop a bush plane to Stebbins located on St. Michael island in Norton Sound. I will spend two weeks in each village before returning home August 17th. My rural communties I will be working in are Stebbins, Hughes, Beaver, and Tuntutuliak, and Chistochina. One of them is Yup'ik, one is Cupik, and the other three are Athabascan I think? Thanks for all the prayers and support.

Drew

Training and last blog

Our team during plant identification training. A lot of the time was spent studying how Alaskan plants can be used for eating and healing.

Karlan and her boyfriend put on a great bluegrass style show. Sitting around a fire, listening to bluegrass and a roaring river, while watching moose move through the campsite. That is cliche Alaska.

Cousin Greg has been amazing. We bike, eat, drink, and hang out. I love the house and hanging out in his hot tub isn't too bad either!

Greg's House

Anchorage

This is Beluga point where I have went the past two days to look for Beluga Whales. No dice! They should be chasing in Hooligans, which are a fish known by the Natives as Candle Fish . They are called candle fish because they are very oily and can burn like a candle if a whick is ran through them. They are also said to taste like chicken. Beluga point is only a 10 minute drive!Us at the International Whaling Conference in downtown Anchorage. We made friends with the doorman before making our way into the conference.

Downtown Anchorage is great! The streets are very clean with a view of the mountains in the background. Everywhere in Anchorage has a view of the mountains. We went to a theater called The Bear Tooth Theater Pub. It has $3 movies every night and on Monday nights they show a foreign or independent film. I watched a French film that was great! I will have to find the name of the film for all of you. Anyway the theater serves food. Crazy concept! A quarter of the way into our movie out comes our large pizza! They also serve really good food, not just crap like the pizza I ordered. I love it, I am going to make a habit of this. You can see the tables for the food in my blurry movie theater picture.

The man in the photo is Ron who may be having me house sit for him from September to April.

Janet my host was a hoot. She knows how to stay young, let me tell you. Every night she went to bed about an hour or two after me and got up before me. She put on a huge party for all her friends and I was able to help her get ready for the party. The party was fun, especially after the wine began to flow. I am glad to say I have a great new friend in the Anchorage area.

The Inlet. Wow! The picture with the tracks is the train I am going to put you guys on when you come and visit me. During the day when I am working I will send you to Seward on a train. You will be able to spend the day in Seward, take in a whaling tour, and be back to Anchorage by nightfall.

Matsu Valley

The Matsu Valley was nothing like I expected. I stayed at Jim and Kathi's house in Palmer. They were a super fun couple who brewed their own beer and wine. Jim's beer tasted much better than the beer I had had at the Yukon brewery. He even brews Mead ( I think that's how you spell it?) The valley is full of deciduous trees and runs into Anchorage. South
Central Alaska looks nothing like I thought it would.

I took a bike ride up Hatcher's pass. Talk about a tough ride. I made it until my bike could not push through anymore snow. I hiked the last two miles on foot to reach the lake up on the pass. I also hiked to an old abandoned mine that had been turned into a state park.

The glaciers in Alaska are in places you would never expect to find one. This one was right along the highway in the Valley.

Roads of the Yukon and Alaska

The mountains up north are the toughest looking masses of rock I have ever seen. And so close to the highway!

This is Jacque the truck driver from Nova Scotia who saved my butt by fixing my tire. My tire went flat at 1:00 am 160 miles from any repair shops. Jacque and I worked up some sweat trying to pull the metal out of the tire and drive a plug through the steel radials.

The roads in the Yukon are crazy with all the frost heaves, but they make up for it with all the beauty they have to offer.

Whitehorse, Yukon

The brewery tour in Whitehorse was a little too fun. They have 12 brews and they insist you drink all 12. They only give you samplers in 4 ounce glasses, but that was still too much for me. I had to change my plans, by walking around town aimlessly eating food trying to sober up. Luckily because of the long summer days I was able to drive all night under the Yukon sun! The beer was not that great. I don't think they have quite figured it out yet, but they were super friendly. The guy in the picture with me is Birch the brewer.

The b/w photo is where I went biking along the Yukon. The single track trails were steep with a lot of sand that caused a few wrecks.

The Yukon, Vast and Wild

These are the typical bridges you cross on the Alaska Higway. The road surface is metal.

The famous Sign Post Forest. There are signs from everywhere and if you look closely mom you will see our Dale's Family Restraunt sign.

The capital of the Yukon, which is Whitehorse has only 23,000 people. Imagine that, the largest town in this province only has 23,000 people. So you can imagine how much land and how few people there are up here. I think when the Klondike Gold Rush tuckered out so did the people.

Charged by bear and am alive to blog about it!

I woke up early in the morning to a lady screaming outside of my Jeep that someone was in trouble. I opened my door and heard a man back in the woods yelling for help. I put on my sandals, grabbed my bear spray just in case it was an angry moose during calving season or possibly a bear. I looked for my first aid kit because I assumed someone hasd drowned in the spring or had broken an appendage. Just ahead of me I saw the deputy sheriff from Minnesota and his wife, which I befriended the night before. He told me the night before he had been a rescue diver for 25 years, so I knew he would know what he was doing. We reached the 20 year old man who was screaming because he was cornered by a huge bear! He was pounding his sandals against wood trying to make noises to make it leave. The sight of three of us moving quickly towards it made it slowly retreat to the woods. Almost instantly the superintendent of the provincial park showed up with his dog Lucky, which later on he strongly lived up to his name. The superintendent yelled go get him lucky! Lucky just jogged into the woods looking confused. After a few seconds Lucky picked up the scent and went barreling after the bear. I was surprised at how hard it was to see a bear in the woods, even when you know where it is located. The bear and Lucky are making an incredible amount of noise and all of a sudden Lucky is back by us and I cannot see the bear. I lean to the right and here comes the bear angry as hell charging straight for us! If the bear wanted to get us we wouldn’t have had a chance. The superintendent yells, “Get on the cart.” All four of us jump on the cart as the bear barrels within five yards of us. Either the bear was bluffing, or the four of us huddled on a cart confused the heck out of the bear. The bear stopped right in front of us, Lucky took off, and so did the bear! A few minutes later the game warden and the superintendent escorted us out with their rifles. The bear hunt was on! That day our story was told all up and down the highway. I stopped at a visitor center and a gas station where the workers were talking about the group who got charged by a bear and how they had shut down the hot springs for the day. Luckily I got my dip in the springs the day before. I also checked my shorts after the incident and I am proud to say they were clean!

Top couple is the two from Minnesota who joined me in the bear experience. Picture with the guns is the warden and the superintendent who saved us!

There are Bison all over the highway. I know I have seen too many in my life, but it is a large part of the experience. I was excited for the Hot Springs. I allotted a half day for me to sit in the springs and recover from some hellacious bike rides. But unfortunately it was May Long Weekend in Canada and every JackAss in the country came to run their mouth and ruin the experience with vulgar talk and actions.