Animal Conservatory

After the mine, we went further south to the animal conservatory where the only things we were really interested in were the bears, wolves, moose, elk, reindeer, musk ox and other animals that are more unique to Alaska.  We did see two bears playing around, and a coyote (we think) keeping a close eye on them. 

This was an adolescent moose, he wouldn't turn around so I could get a good picture of him from the front, so this is the best I could do.

 This is a Musk Ox.  Interesting, shaggy looking creatures.

 There was a bear in a corner of the fenced in area, in the corner nearest to the car so I got out to take a picture and noticed that he seemed very agitated, pacing up and down the fence back and forth.  At one point, a girl next to me said we must look like lunch, to which I replied "depends on which of us is the faster runner!" LOL

One thing we noted in the park were all of these dead and preserved trees.  Apparently, when the big earthquake of 1964 occurred, the ground there sank 10 feet, allowing salt water to flood the area, which killed and subsequently preserved the trees.  Incredible!  10 feet is no small amount!

Cook Inlet

Sorry it's taken so long to get the next blog up.  For some reason we've had computer issues, but there should be more soon.

The Cook Inlet was named after Captain James Cook who sailed into it in 1778 searching for the Northwest Passage.

The Cook Inlet also has the second highest tides in the world, rising 38 feet every time it comes in!  So when we drove along the Inlet in the early part of the day, we could see across the whole body of water to the mountains, with hardly any spots of sand.  When we finished our activities later that day and drove north again back to Anchorage, the Inlet seemed only 100 feet wide at places where the tide and gone out and left sand bars.  I imagine navigating the Inlet could be treacherous if you didn't know about the tides.  It was really fascinating to see the difference a few hours could make!

Most of these pictures are from our drive south.

 Our rental car was really nice!

Old Indian Valley Mine

After spending several hours at the market, we got in the car and drove south, towards seward. We came across the Old Indian Valley gold mine, where we bought a small bucket of dirt and mined for gold.  It was alot of fun, and educational!  Dave, our guide showed us how to pan properly, and to get the dirt out of the pan without losing the gold.  See pictures. :)  We both found between 5 and 10 flakes of gold when we finished! (You can kind of see them in the tubes in the last picture). I loved seeing the results of our work.  I don't know how gold miners used to do it all day long; it really takes alot of effort and it's tedious, the same thing over and over again.  But I think it would be really fun to get a pan and do it just for kicks.

 The outhouse.....

Our first trip out of Bethel

Over memorial day weekend, Jeff and I took a small break and went to Anchorage.  We had so much to do, I don't think we even scraped the surface!

We arrived in Anchorage on Friday evening and went to the car rental place, where we met (for the first time) our next door neighbors in Bethel!  Our daily schedules were a little different, so I had seen them around a little bit but I'd hadn't yet introduced myself.  It turns out they both work at the hospital as well, and recognized Jeff.  It's definitely a small world!

On saturday morning, we got up early and went down town to check out the area and then to see the Saturday market.  We got some souvenirs at a store on the way, and then arrived at the market, which was huge!

 In the picture below, you can see all the tents, and that's only one line of them.  there were apparently over 300 of them, including crafts, art made in Alaska, food, etc.  So we got some more souvenirs.

A woman was walking around with this huge dog!  He went up to my waist in height and Jeff thought he was a mix between a husky and a wolf.  But he looked friendly enough!

 Around town there were different statues on street corners etc.

 It's an "almost" smile.  Typical Jeff! :)

 This Christmas tree ornament is made of clay that comes from glaciers. From the card that came with it: Alaskan native clay left for us be receding glaciers is another of the many riches given to us by the beautiful mountains of Alaska.  These deposits of Alaska clay are obtained along the oceans and inlets.  Its unique bi-color appearance is the result of iron deposits contained in the clay which only reveal themselves during the firing process.

It is surprisingly not heavy at all, but apparently fairly durable.  The woman selling them actually tapped it on a hard surface several times to show me. 

We also found Babushka dolls, the Russian stacking dolls.  The woman selling them was in her 30's, but she had quite the Russian accent while she was trying to make a sale.  Babushka dolls are sold as souvenirs all over the city, thanks to the Russian influence in settling Alaska, so we saw probably thousands this weekend!

More blogs to come soon, we just have soo many pictures they're going to take several!

Finally, an update!!!

Wow, I didn’t realize it’s been so long since we’ve blogged!  I’ve been having lots of conversations and even taking notes so that I can share all of the information with you, although it’s going to be kind of disjointed so please bear with me.

About two weeks ago, another hospital employee offered me a try of her husband’s pickled salmon.  I was willing to try a piece, as it’s something I hadn’t heard of before.  The salmon was firm, much like chicken, and didn’t have any flakiness you might expect from fish.  At the first taste, it was like a firm, yet soft, sweet pickle, but after the initial pickliness, then you taste a very very mild salmon flavor.  I would say it was pretty good and since I only like sweet pickles, I could see eating them more. That’s the only native food I’ve tried so far though.  I imagine there will be more later.

All last week, there was flooding up north in Crooked Creek where the broken ice created an ice dam.  All of the buildings in town were flooded and/or moved off of their foundations, and some residents were even surprised as water flooded into their homes last Sunday night.  Luckily there were no fatalities and all of the residents were evacuated by helicopter and boat to a mine camp a few miles away to wait it out.  A week later, the ice dam finally broke and they were able to go in and inspect the damage.

While the dam was blocking up the river, villages down river were preparing for the worst.  South of Crooked Creek in Aniak, people were moving their cars, snowmobiles, and apparently even dog sled teams to the highest ground in town, the high school to protect them from the water.

In Bethel this week, the Kuskokwim river broke and Bethel had the “2011 Ice Classic”, a party along the river bank celebrating the breakup.  This is the time people can start using the river for travel again and go to the fish camps for the next few months. At the party, they had a live band on the back of a flatbed pickup truck and free hotdogs.  It was incredible watching the ice flow down the river, and at some point I will show the video I took of the ice.  It had good speed and we could actually see the end of the ice, about 1000 feet up river, where there was no ice.  Within about 30 minutes, the end of the ice came and we went home.

I’ve also learned that because we’re only about 50 miles from the ocean, the Kuskokwim river in Bethel actually has tides, that rise and fall with the ocean.

The fish camps I talked about earlier are where the natives families go for the summer months to fish and have enough for the winter.  The fish camps are passed down through families, one generation to the next.  One of my co-workers inherited his fish camp from his brother who inherited it from their dad.  He actually said he might consider taking me and Jeff to their fish camp for a weekend so we can see what it’s like.  It’s a lot of work, but it’d be such an Alaskan experience!  This co-worker said a few years ago, he shot a Musk Ox (spelling?) while out hunting, and then traded the whole thing with another family for 3 gallons of pickled Pike.  Instead of using money, they trade goods.

These days, the sun comes up around 5:30 and it stays out light until 11:45 at night.  It’s nice to have more sunlight for longer, but I think my body clock isn’t liking it too much.  I’ve been struggling to get myself to go to sleep around 11 but it’s not working yet.  We’ve been closing all the curtains around 9ish in the hopes that we can trick our bodies into thinking it’s time for bed.  We’re still waiting to see if it works.

I don’t know if it’s a Moravian church thing in general, or just up here in Alaska but up here, 40 days after a loved one has passed away, they have something called the “40 day”, which is a huge feast where all of the family and friends get together and celebrate the life of their loved one.  After the first 40 days, they do it every year on the anniversary of the death.  They told me that after awhile, you have a lot of celebrations to go to every year as people continue to pass away.

6 week update

Six weeks ago, I started my career in nursing. At last, I was following through with my dream of becoming a nurse; after decades of thinking about it, now I was living it. Let me tell you, that first day was scary as hell. No amount of clinicals or school can prepare you for the day that you are now the nurse and not the student. Your license gives you the ultimate responsibility of helping people lead healthy lives and to stay alive when health is failing them. The first few weeks were very overwhelming. Here I was a baby nurse in a surreal situation in a small town in Alaska I had never heard of a few months ago.

The organization I work for is unique in many ways. I work in a clinic that would probably be considered an ER in most small towns in the lower forty eight. We do procedures and tests that an ER back home would do and it doesn’t matter if there is an LPN or RN behind your name. Up here we are all just nurses on the tundra.

The people we serve here are far different than the patients I worked with during my clinical experiences. They are so appreciative of our services and our facilities have made such a difference in the health care of the Eskimo people. Gone is the highest rate of tuberculosis deaths in the country and now, epidemics of the flu don’t wipe out entire families. 

The Eskimo people value life so much more than their American counterparts. You won’t find an abortion clinic within hundreds of miles. Eskimo’s greet children with open arms by adopting the children born to mothers that choose life but not motherhood. Children are honored in this culture. I’ve also been amazed at how active the men are in their children’s lives. It definitely goes against the old stereotype that men don’t know how to nurture like a mother can.

I am proud to be a nurse for the Eskimo people and Bethel is definitely an experience like no other. I am happy to go to work every morning. Gone are the days of hating my jobs as a preschool teacher. I will be a stronger person, man, and nurse in three years when I head back to my Oregon home. I love you all and miss you all more than you will ever know but I don’t regret the decision I made coming up to the last frontier of Alaska!

Things are happenin'!

Wow, it’s been crazy up here!  Our belongings arrived at the end of March so I had the mover bring it all on the 1^st of the month when our contract started for our new rental.  YAY!  We stayed in the temporary housing for a few days longer because I wasn’t able to hook up the water etc until the next week.  I tell you, you will never appreciate the access you have to water until you live with limited water through a water tank and weekly delivery.  We were relieved to move out of the temporary housing especially because the roads leading to it were not paved and have proceeded from ice to frozen mud, and now to mud which means the taxi’s won’t drive out there anymore and we’d have to walk about a mile just to get to the nearest paved road to be picked up.

Our new place is about the same distance from town as the other place, however it’s about double the distance from the airport so we hardly hear the airplanes anymore.  It’s a side of a duplex that is farther from the road so it’s a little bit quieter and we have a better view.  See picture below! It has 2 bedrooms and a kitchen with more storage than the one I had in Oregon! It also has a washer and dryer which is fantastic and means no more frozen hair! So you understand about frozen hair; while living at the temporary house, I had to walk around the outside of the building to the other side to access the washer and dryer for laundry. One day after I’d washed my hair, I walked around to do laundry. When I got to the other side, I noticed my hair wasn’t really swinging, and just felt weird on my head.  When I felt it with my hand, I realized that it was frozen into thick strands!  It was the craziest thing that had never even crossed my mind before.  After that, I had to make sure my hair was dry before going outside).

Our new place also has fireplace which we won’t use much since our landlord pays for heating fuel, a deck at the front entry and a deck that leads out of the master bedroom.  It’s really nice!

 Our living room

 The view from our living room. The houses you see in the distance are where we lived before and just beyond them (you can't see unfortunately) is the airport.

The temperature today is 36 degrees and sunny. It's the warmest it has been since I arrived 6 weeks ago! I stepped out onto the deck earlier today and decided that I have acclimated to the temperature probably as much as I ever will!  I was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and standing in the sun (or even in the shade) didn't feel cold!  Right before I left Oregon and when I was still working, I remember wearing a scarf and sweater every day in my office because I was so cold every day. It was only about 50 degrees... Now when the temperature is in the teens, I feel as cold as I felt in Oregon at 50 degrees.  I have a feeling when I get back to visit in Oregon I'm going to be too warm!

I am happy to announce that I’ve found a job!  I’ll be working as a Medical Support Technician II at the hospital, in fact just down the hall from Jeff.  I had two days of orientation last Wednesday and Thursday and was impressed with the presenters thoroughness and passion for their subject.  Despite that it meant sitting for 8 house a day, two days in a row, I found most of it interesting.

My first day was Friday (yesterday). I arrived early (gotta make myself look good!) and waited for 30 minutes for anyone else to show up.  Apparently attendance up here isn’t as strictly enforced because it is harder to fill a lot of these more skilled positions with someone more reliable. I intend to make sure I am there on time, every day so that they know I am a reliable employee.  When the phone started ringing at 8am, when I was there by myself, I was itching to answer it.  I had to persuade myself not to several times because I wouldn’t be able to help them… But I sure wanted to!  In the end,  I spent most of the day waiting for different access on the computer to be given to me so that I could do my job and I ended the day not having booked one single appointment.  I know that next week I’ll be able to do more so I went with it.  Two weeks from now, I’ll be in the front offices for the week, training for that area so I can move back and forth as needed.

I learned the other day that the last large flight of the day is Alaska Airlines, which leaves around 8:30 every night.  This flight is called (by the transplants in town) the “Freedom Flight”.  In other words, it’s your last chance out! LOL!

We hope everything is well for you!