Isabel's First Photo

We had a complaint from a fellow ranger that there was no information about our impending new family member. I don't think it is appropriate to post pictures of how this happened, so the best I can do is post our first pictures of Isabel.

Spring Caribou Hunt 2008

In late April, Scott went on a caribou hunt with Luke and Brian up north, well above the Arctic Circle. It is about a 10 hour drive north of Denali National Park. Hunting regulations require you to get 5 miles off the road before gun hunting. Snowmobiles and ATVs are not permitted, so we skied in and set up camp just inside 5 miles. The visibility was not so good, about 20 yards, which was very disorienting, you couldn't see any horizon, it was all white; less than ideal conditions for hunting.


The next morning the clouds lifted and visibility improved greatly. After a very cold morning, with a bitter windchill, the wind stopped as we left camp in search of caribou. After a couple of hours of skiing around , we jumped some bou, they ran off a
1/4 mile towards our camp. We circled back around them, crawled up to a point where we could get shots. After the fire-fight, we had two bou down. We skinned and quartered them and broke camp for the ski back to the car and the ride home.

Definitely a unique hunt and one we will do again.

Hawaii, January 2008

Winters in Alaska are long, cold, and dark. We have learned that these conditions necessitate warm sunny winter vacations. So we went to Hawaii for almost two weeks in January. The first week was spent on Hawaii (the big island). We visited Jen's oldest friend Tracy, from MN. She works at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. She gave us the grand tour. We snorkeled, hiked, and generally played tourist. We also ran into Luke and Emily on the Kona side of the island one afternoon and had lunch and a beach walk.

The second week of the trip, we met up with Matt and Jaime (fellow Denali Rangers) on Kauai.

Here we enjoyed more snorkeling and hiking, much good food and drink, and nightly whale watching from the back yard of our rental condo. We also did some birding, adding some rare birds such as various Honeycreepers and this amazing Red-Crested Cardinal.

Furlough autumn 2007

During the fall we like to spend our furlough (time when the government sees fit to lay employees off for about 6 weeks) visiting family and friends in the midwest. Here were some of the highlights of our last trip.


We headed up north to Iron River Wisconsin to do some more work on our little cabin. On this visit, we built a loft, insulated most of the wall space, finished insulating under the building, put up knotty pine walls, and got Scotty started on bowhunting.

We went to Staples for our annual gunhunting opener, and had a great time as usual and met with some success. Jenny shot a fawn and Scott shot his nicest buck to date, a nice 8 pointer. Jonny got a nice one too (scrub buck).

After visiting everyone, we headed east to visit our friend Kimberly near Green Bay and checked out Door County. Kimberly showed us a great time as always and she let us help her with her nightly feeding of her uncle's dairy calves. From there we headed south to Chicago to see Mike's art show. This painting was from his Lakeland series. The colors he chose were Scotty's house colors growing up along with another neighbors house color. You can check out more of his art on his web site.

From Chicago, we headed west to Moab Utah and hiked in Arches National Park. We had perfect weather and saw many amazing rock formations.

We stopped in Portland to visit Jolene, Erik, Aidan, and Morgan before catching the ferry home.

Thanksgiving 2007

Last Thanksgiving day we set out to find a lovely black spruce to decorate for the holiday season. Armed with a handsaw and a gun (Scott the saw, Jen the gun), we were not only successful in getting a nice tree, but Jen provided some Snowshoe Hare meat for Thanksgiving Dinner and the freezer.

Tangle Lakes/Delta River via the Denali Highway

For the 4th of July long weekend we paddled the Tangle Lakes and Delta River with Mike, Arianne, Luke, Emily, Jeff, and Heather. We took the Denali Highway after work on Thursday, arriving at the put in around 1 am. We saw a beautiful midnight sunset along

the way. We saw a plethora of porcupines along the road. We camped at the Tangle Lakes Campground the first night, planning to meet up with the others the next day. For the trip, we borrowed Luke and Emily's inflatable canoe for Mike and Arianne to use. We grilled caribou brats and burgers that night.

We shoved off the next morning and soon met up with an apparently common headwind on the very large and long lake. This made paddling the inflatable difficult. Mike and Arianne overcame the challenge with finesse. We finally found Luke and Emily at

their campsite around 2pm and decided to camp their since it was a good campsite for a larger group, we had paddled 1/3 of the distance to our destination, and the Lake Trout were biting in the area. We cooked up fish, and Luke and Emily brought hobo dinners for us.

The next morning (Saturday), while I was boiling water for coffee with our unstable little pocket rocket, a strong wind blew the pot of boiling water onto both of my feet. I don't think I have ever taken off socks and Tevas so quickly as I ran squealing down to the river. Emily tended to the tiny little tundra fire after helping to tear my socks off. (First Aid event #1).

Since Jeff was doing one of his 100 mile bike rides on the way to meeting up with all of us, he and Heather didn't catch up with us until Saturday. They brought their dogs Harriet and Hadley. Harriet added an extra thrill to fishing for the rest of the trip as she tried to bite off every fish we caught as we reeled them in. She also tries to dive in and catch them herself. Though she has never caught one, her persistence is impressive and highly entertaining.

On this day we did the 2 1/4 mile portages which were separated by a small pond followed by a 3 mile section of class II rapids! We beat other groups to the coveted "beaver campsite" which Emily was adamant about getting to, since it accommodates a large group. We saw at least 3 beavers and a large beaver lodge. Scott and I made venison steak fajitas for everyone for dinner and Jeff and Heather brought a salad.

The grayling were biting, so poor Jeff had to hold onto Harriet for dear life. One of the more aggressive grayling decided that a fishermen's finger is a better place for a treble hook than its own mouth. Unfortunately Mike had to learn this the hard way as the fish sunk it into his pointer finger, barbs and all. (1st Aid event #2). After 35 ideas and several trials with various equipment, Mike was finally sufficiently frustrated enough to cut off each section a little at a time with Scott's small sized leatherman freeing him from the hooks.

On the last day of the paddle the river slows down and a few silty tributaries meet up with the Delta. The scenery becomes even more spectacular at this point as the beautiful mountains close in. We saw a moose cow and calf and a whole flock of Common Merganser ducklings with their mother. While Luke, Heather, and I drove to do the shuttle, the other 4 stayed and waited. Some yahoo was brandishing a gun (very common here) but what was uncommon was the way he was flashing it around and inadvertently aiming it at our crew. Scott said, "Would you do me a favor and turn around and point that away from us". A girl in his group said "Yeah I don't like guns either". Scott said "I don't mind guns, I just don't like them pointed at me". He sheepishly finished unloading it, facing away and that was the end of it.

We then headed north to Fairbanks with a mandatory ice cream stop in Delta Junction along the way. Mike and Arianne flew away at 0100 am.

Mount Healy Hike

While Jenny was slaving away bringing home some bacon Scott played hookie from work to accompany Mike and Arianne up Mt. Healy. It's a rather steep climb rewarding the hiker with exceptional views of the surrounding mountains and valleys, including Denali (Mt. McKinley when it's clear).

Visitors

Mike and Arianne paid us a visit from New York. We took a ride out to Wonder Lake to visit our friends Jeff and Amy, stopping along the way to watch wildlife and soak in the spectacular views along the park road. We saw Dall Sheep, Grizzly Bears, Fox, Ptarmigan,
Snowshoe Hares, and Moose all with their newborn offspring. We also had a closeup look at a wolf and Caribou. We paddled across Wonder Lake by canoe and visited the campground host who has been working there for 20 years and not slowing down even though she
is in her 80's! She stays there all summer not even leaving for grocery re-supply, which is over 6 hours away from Wonder Lake.

Backyard Birds

One night we heard a squawking racket in the backyard which turned out to be a pair of young Great Horned Owls perched in a tree testing their young voices. Their nests must be close to the house as we hear them every once in a while. Even though these are young fledgling birds,their size is very impressive.

Gulkana River

The Gulkana River is managed by the BLM and is designated as a Wild and Scenic River. We drove across the Denali Highway, a 130 mile gravel road that cuts across the interior of Alaska. The road is known for destroying tires, and
it didn't let us down, we lost one just when we hit the pavement. We met Luke, Emily, Martin, and Sveta at a campground on Paxson Lake and paddled across the Lake 5 miles to the start of the river. The bugs came out at our camp that night forcing us to put on our head nets for the first time this year. We ate freshly caught lake trout and grayling, with taco salad, and Luke made some cobbler in his Dutch Oven for dessert.

The next day included a quarter mile portage and about 8.5 miles of awesome class II rapids. To date this is the most challenging and fun section of river we have paddled. Our homemade spray skirt came in handy. Martin and Sveta filled their boat with water on one of
the rapids, Sveta described it as "taking a bath." We were all getting wet and cold, between the rapids and the rain, so we stopped and made a fire to warm up and drank some hot liquids.

Our campsite that night was on a bluff with great views of the river. Scott almost got lost coming back from the bathroom behind camp, after stumbling through the woods for 5 minutes, he came out a half mile downstream from camp.

The river slowed down the next day and we joined up with some other forks of the river. There was motor boat traffic in the lower section all going after the Salmon. We saw some Kings jumping and Martin had one hooked briefly, but it got away. Another nice night camping along the river.

The next morning it rained on us on the paddle to the takeout. Crossing under the Alaska Oil Pipeline signaled our takeout was ahead.