Day-by-day look at Alaska

Mary made a delicious salad with fresh veggies from her garden and brought some fresh blueberries that she and Ken had picked in the wild. Ken makes beautiful wooden bowls out of Alaskan woods, and Mary brought one of those in which to serve the salad. Thankfully, Mary also brought a pan large enough for the crab legs.

Ken and Mary had three house guests at the time of our visit, all of whom were using their house as a staging area before flying to teaching or counseling jobs in the bush for the school year. They brought one of their guests, a delightful young man named Dan Jarashow, with them. Dan is going to be a dorm counselor at a boarding high school in Galeena, on the Yukon River. The villages in the bush are so far apart that the older kids go to boarding high schools. Dan, a resident of Maryland who went to college in Minnesota, was really looking forward to working in the wilds of Alaska and spending his first winter in the bush.

The five of us had a great time. We went birding in the woods behind the resort, finding sandhill cranes, Canada geese, juncos and a wood frog, the only amphibian species in Alaska. Surprisingly, Alaska has no reptiles, so stepping on a snake unexpectedly was not an issue. Dinner was lots of fun, picking apart the steamed crabs and pouring fresh blueberries onto vanilla bean ice cream.

Day 9 — Fairbanks

Again today, I slept in while Vic went birding. I got up to see the (NOT) delightful news on CNN of the terrorist plot to blow up planes that was thwarted in London. Fortunately, I don't think terrorists have an interest in Delta airlines, and certainly aren't targeting Anchorage to Salt Lake City, nor Salt Lake City to Orange County. I suspect we'll just be subjected to more delays at security in the airports when we fly home Saturday night/Sunday morning.

We had blueberries on cereal for breakfast in our apartment at the Wedgewood. It was a rainy day, so we visited the University of Alaska Large Mammal Research Station to see muskox and caribou on a guided tour.

Baby muskox are adorable. Later, we went out for lunch but ended up having breakfast instead when we saw the menu. Surprise, surprise, I had reindeer sausage, this time in an omelet with mushrooms, onions and cheddar cheese, with hash browns and sourdough pancakes.