The Beginning of the Adventures

I apologize for being so late with all of this exciting stuff happening. I forgot to pack my card reader and the cable I have works... extremely... slowly, but I remembered we have a card reader for the cameras on the project I can use! Hooray! I will try to break this down as best as I can.

Day 1 of Alaskan Adventures with Joey

Finally! After three summers of field work in Alaska, Joey has made it out with me. We planned a whole trip before starting work on the North Slope and it was one of the best trips I have been on. He may say differently, but I really enjoyed our time in Alaska together immensely. So, on with the tellings of the tales. We flew into Anchorage the afternoon of Friday the 23^rd. We had a delicious elk hotdog from a vendor in downtown Anchorage and walked around the streets for a little. Afterwards, we headed over to the house we were staying at in the beautiful Turnagain neighborhood. We used Airbnb for our stay in both Anchorage and Homer. If you don't know what Airbnb is I suggest you check it out. Basically people can rent spaces they have in their homes, guest houses, or their whole apartment/house when they aren't living there. It is a little strange but is legit. And it was much cheaper to do than a hotel or even a hostel, and much cozier. The guy we stayed with also sometimes lives in a condo he owns in Portland, so that was pretty crazy. We ate dinner at Humpy's Ale House and had some delicious halibut before we did a very nice hike up to Flattop Mountain in the Chugach National Forest in the evening. 

Flattop Mountain

Those little specks up there are people! 

It is an accurate name for this peak as you can see in the pictures. It is a 3.4 mile hike round trip through some awe-inspiring scenery. When reaching the peak, you have to clamber over some large boulders. The gentleman we stayed with mentioned that it is a difficult part but you really just have to watch out for the people ahead of you and coming down since they can kick rocks onto you, otherwise it is a strenuous, realitively quick and beautiful trek. Not to mention the views from up there, wow!

Top of Flattop view with some poppies.

Top of Flattop!

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Singing his little heart out.

That is it for this one, I will try to post the next couple of days with the lowdown of the other days Joey and I spent in Alaska together. Nothing has been too terribly exciting up here yet, except the Kuparuk bridge is out again like last year and the Sagavnirktok river is flooding the area around the Dalton Highway (Haul road). So we aren't sure if we'll be able to lay our artificial nest transect on it. It is snowing today, which doesn't help, but things do change very quickly up here.