The first cut

Thursday 4 Sept. saw Brianna getting her first haircut a few weeks shy of her 2nd birthday. We all know both my sense of style and artistic ability is crap so instead of giving her a geeky pudding bowl haircut at Chez Verena, I decided to take her to my stylist (I guess the word hairdresser is out of vogue now just like airline hostess which I much prefer to flight attendant. I like to think of myself getting on board a party plane with a real-life hostess instead of being begrudingly attended to). Jamie has 3 little ones of her own so she knew how to deal with a pint-size wiggly worm with the attention of a knat. Actually Brianna did really well. She is now a fashionista sporting a Suri-Cruise like bob. No more bed head or hair in the eyes.

Swimming pools, cousins, and snapping turtles

With the fireweed blooms creeping to the top of the plant, highlights of red peeking from the tundra, and still no sign of summer, we decided to flee to South Dakota (and that's 2 words I don't take lightly together!) for a glorious week to bask in the mid-west sun and see some of the Anderson clan. We stayed at Grandma Olga's house in Brookings which is a clean town on the prairie and home of South Dakota State University. Uncle Jim was also home for the summer from his teaching job in Nevada. Brianna finally understood what all the fuss was about this summer thing. For the first time in her life she got to play in a paddling pool and slip 'n slide outside. She learned how to chase people with a garden hose and not need to suffer 3rd degree frostbite. Her Uncle Art and 2 cousins, Molly and Jesse, drove out from the Black Hills for a couple of days. Brianna had a blast with them playing on the neighbors swing set and learning to use a big-girl swing for the first time. We took the 3 kids to the outdoor waterpark in Brookings and learned that swim diapers would probably hold the droppings of an elephant, they are that good. Love the swim diapers!! Another one of Brianna's cousins, Christine, also dropped by on a coast-to-coast car trip to move her boyfriend out west. We took the opportunity to go canoeing at Oakwood Lakes State Park. It is a little oasis in the middle of a bunch of ranches. In fact it was a little disturbing to see cows right down at the water edge. Although the water was warm and shallow, we didn't feel like getting some kind of salmonella from swimming in what essentially was a bovine cess pool posing as a state park. Nonetheless it was pretty and we saw some interesting wildlife; white pelicans, painted turtles, muskrat, beaver, canada geese, egrets, bitterns, and herons. On the 20 or so miles back to Brookings, I spotted a large snapping turtle on the side of the road trying to cross (why did the snapping turtle cross the road? Because an idiot human put it through the turtle's migratory path). I was thrilled as I have always wanted to see a snapping turtle. I very carefully placed it out of harm's way.

Snapping turtle (I didn't even know they were in South Dakota so much 'googling' ensued after the sighting.



I was very aware of where the jaws were at all times but s/he seemed very placid.
Attitude!

Painted turtle



Muskrat lodge

McRory Gardens

Slip 'n slide with the neighbor girls

Classing up the neighborhood in this season's hot new trend of pull-ups and red rubber boots on a walk with Jesse


Big-girl swing

Chasing daddy and Christine with the hose

The waterpark

Coloring at Grandma's with Jesse.

Molly and Jesse show Brianna the finer points of playing on the slide


Jesse chasing Brianna with water

Jump, daddy, jump!

Cool baby

Those hot summer nights are the best!


Mamma shows Brianna how to drink from a hose

Look at my white Alaska tummy Grandma

Baby Brianna was pretty worn out every day from all the sun and fun.

McNeil Magic

In July I was lucky enough to go over to Kamishak Bay to look for sea otter carcasses as we had been receiving reports of large numbers of animals showing up dead. The State had invited me over there to stay at the McNeil River camp which is world famous for its brown bear viewing. The 4-day trip now rates as one of the top ten experiences of my life. I urge everyone to apply to go there and get up and personal with brown bears in a way that will nourish your soul. For more details on the program and how to get a permit go to: http://www.wildlife.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=mcneil_river.main I want to thank Tom and Doug for helping me on the ground and Joe for issuing me an emergency permit to go into the sanctuary and scout for otters. I was very lucky one day to be able to go to the falls as one of the lottery winners dropped out (only 10 people at a time can go up to the falls). Even though photography was not my main mission and I have a crappy point and shoot you can see I got amazing pictures even with this limitation because the bears were so close and so forgiving. Several times I was within 5ft of a brown bear and in awe and appreciation of its tolerance. These are truly amazing creatures and I think very differently about bears now and what we could have if people were respectful of other creatures on this amazing planet.
Despite all the tromping around the coast rubbing my skin raw from my waders I only found 3 dead otters.

Kachemak Bay otter population on the rise

Mid-August I was again back in Homer working with the otters. This time it was a distribution survey of the otters in Kachemak Bay. The crew was (L-R): Sebastian Carrasco (UC Davis PhD student working on otter disease), me, Jose DeCreft (pilot), and Dana. We had incredible weather and got finished early. One evening Sebastian and I gave a talk on the sea otter project at the Islands and Oceans visitor center http://www.islandsandocean.org/ and had about 50 people in the community attend. One of the attendees was a guy from Alaska public radio hence the radio interview now linked at the bottom of this page.





How many otters? Ans. at bottom of post

Sebastian marking otters locations on an ArcPad application linked to a GPS. Very nice set up that allows you to avoid having to digitize and enter data.


Kachemak Bay otter population on the rise

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P.S. About 100 otters (95 adults and 4 pups).

Another rainy weekend

Yet another cold and rainy weekend in the land of the eternally cold and rainy weekends. So having a toddler that can't go out and play is tantamount to having a ball of venomous snakes in your underwear. Brianna has developed a serious dancing-on-the-couch-to-Latin-music addiction this summer which she was eager to show Elka and Nora the moves for when they came over to play. Brianna soon turned it into a wrestling match. Elka quickly got fed up with being on the bottom so did a nifty karate kick to get the other two off the couch. Yup folks, that was the highlight of my weekend.

A summer eve's fun

Suz Speckman and I took Nora and Brianna to a local playground on Saturday night and had lots of fun until Brianna got a goose-egg bump on her head and Nora obsessed about it for the next 2 days ("Anna ow-wee, Anna ow-wee").

Flying north searching for the sun

July was beginning to look a lot like the lovely Junuary so when Paul came up with a plan to find some scorching sun for the 4 July weekend we eagerly headed north to Fairbanks as backwards as that sounds. If you want a blow by blow account of the trip go to Chris Zimmerman's blog site: http://zimak.blogspot.com/. Chris and Tamara Zeller came with us and some of these photos are taken by Tamara who bemoaned the fact she couldn't take her fancy-smancy camera with her because of those annoying weight restrictions in the plane. The map of Alaska below shows the most southern pin as Birchwood, the airport we left from, and the north west pin shows Fairbanks while the north east pin indicates where Chena Hot Springs is. The map on the right shows the valley which Chena Hot Springs lays in. To read all the details about it and see lots of photos of the resort that I didn't take go to http://www.chenahotsprings.com/. Paul always says one of the best things about having a plane is you can go places other people can't. Seeing as we spent our entire time on the road system surrounded by people it sort of became a running joke about how lucky we were to be in 'isolated' Chena and Fairbanks in our run for the sun. However, a little goes a long way though as we all got pretty rejuvenated before heading back to the grey hues of Anchortown.

Brianna looks like she wonders why it always takes so long to go anywhere by plane but Chris lost a spring off his tail wheel upon landing at Birchwood and that had to be searched for and fixed before we left. As the un-initiated (Tamara) were to learn you spend a lot of time on the tarmac when it comes to flying.

Below are various photos of the gorgeous scenery on our way north. The plane is ours taken from Chris' plane. Our plane is red and white and Chris' is yellow with snoopy on the door!

Approaching Chena Hot Springs strip and the sled dog lot right before you turn for final approach.

We were all pretty happy to be out of the plane after the 5-hour trip and set to finding the pools as soon as our cramped legs allowed. There is a kiddie pool inside, which has been cooled and chlorinated for all the wee piddlers, and a hot, hot, hot adult pool outside. It felt soooo good after our crappy Anchorage 'summer'.

This is Chris on our late evening take off from Chena headed to Fairbanks for the 45 minute flight.

Brianna was pretty exhausted by the time we got there but managed to rally and party with us until 1am to celebrate both independence and unindependence (our wedding anniversary) day.

At Ed and Nikkis' new house which is the envy of Paul and Chris with a grass strip.

We finally got our sun-soaked butts in gear to leave Fairbanks around 9pm on the 5th only to discover the brake fluid had drained out of Chris' plane. Tamara learned once again what 'time to spare - go by air" meant so settled in on the runway while the pilots pondered how to fix it. Brianna helped!

Finally airborne we meandered home taking lots of shots of each other.

Flying through rain showers on the way home.

Finally after 3 hrs in the air we touched down at around 11pm in Birchwood back to land of the midnight grey light.

Brianna's Beluga Bear

Paul took an unexpected break from Bethel for a few days last week and convinced Brianna and I to skive off and go camping. We flew over to Beluga Glacier, to the west of Mount Susistna, which drains into Beluga Lake; a perfect camping spot. The pin on the right of the map above shows Birchwood airport where we took off from. We camped on the north-west shore of the lake where the pin in the map below is. It was about an hour flight from home.

Paul always says "time to spare, go by air" meaning if you could drive there it would probably be quicker because of all the preparation that goes into getting ready. Brianna was pretty game about the whole thing but once she had read the paper, played on her trike, and pretended to fly on her strut swing, she was ready! Of course 5 minutes into our flight she was missing all the fabulous views as the thumb sucking had lulled her into a nap.

However, she was clearly delighted when we arrived since the sandy, flat terrain of the glacial outflow was manna for an inquisitive toddler with a new bucket and spade.

Brianna decided to put her potty training to the test by announcing 'poo-poo, help'. Paul told her he would teach her to go in the woods. As you can clearly see from the pictures below she had quite a different interpretation of what that meant and was not happy with the result!

There was a very handy spring bubbling under the beach but the glacial source made it a tad too chilly for even a hardy Alaskan-grown kid.

With miles to run in any direction and no one else within miles, Brianna went cruising to the max.

After this trip Brianna has her own bear tale that will also include the comment, when she can express it in words we understand, that her parents are idiots. About 10pm Paul and I were around the camp fire making s'mores (which surprisingly Brianna didn't show a penchant for) talking about bears. The sourdough (Verena) was telling the cheechako (Paul) that there were no bears, quote "within miles of here" since there was nothing to eat. Paul did point out that we said the same thing a couple of weeks ago when we flew out to the mouth of the Little Susistna and had a young grizzly wander by. The whole time we are discussing this, Brianna is saying "bear, bear, bear" but she now spends most of her days parroting us and practising words so we tuned her out. But when she started gesticulating wildly and adding "ooh-ooh" excitedly before each rendition of bear, I looked up and, low and behold, there was a big black bear 200 ft behind us ambling straight our way. Being the only humans and camp fire for miles he was coming to check us out. Paul ran to the plane for the gun and I stood up, waving my arms to look bigger (of course being only 5 ft this is not exactly much bigger) and yelling "hey bear". At that point Brianna was happy her parents were finally joining in the fun. The bear didn't take much notice so Paul had to shoot at the ground next to it a couple of times. I took these photos after the shots when it was heading away into the trees. After it was all said and done we laughed so hard that our one-year old saved us from what could have been an unpleasant encounter with a bear that showed no fear of us. After all that excitement it was hard to get the baby to bed but after some obligatory book reading and a few sheenanigans we got the party animal to sleep around midnight.

A tired Brianna takes a power nap on the wheel.

When is summer getting here?

Mud pies in Homer

Paul and I were in Homer for 10 days flying aerial surveys for sea otters in Kachemak bay. Most nights we'd try to hit the beach after flying. Brianna loved it. Eating sand, jumping in the waves, and sloshing in tidepools were the most favorite fun things ever as far as she was concerned. By the time we left 'beach' was a regular part of her vocab.

This is my friend Debbie Tobin who looked after Brianna, along with her 3-yr old Peyton, while Paul & I were flying. She is also my iPhone buddy as when she came up to the big city a month or so ago we bought the devices together. All these photos were taken on my phone.

Plane day tripping

We had a couple of chances this spring to get out in the plane before Paul left for the field. Nora and Suzann, and Clint, joined us for a trip down to Homer. Unfortunately about all we had time for was a lunch at Fat Olives but it was a bonding experience on the way there and back! Then we joined Paul Flint and co. for a trip out to the mouth of the Little Susitna. We landed on a flat grassy island and Brianna got to see her first brown bear which she promptly signed about and made growling noises. I didn't take a picture as it was a just a juvenile and would have looked like a speck of dust through my lens. We then landed on a gravel bar on the Yetna River. One of the guys had a cabin across the river and we got a boat ride across to check it out. Saw a few moose from the air and a lot of bald eagles. Fun to spread our wings a bit after the long winter.



Yetna River with gravel bar landing strip.
Paul Flint taking off




Suzann at Homer aiport with Brianna & Nora





Clint in his cruiser off lower Cook Inlet.
Luckily Nora and Brianna slept most of the way so there wasn't too much whining!