Husky puppies!!!

Aren't these the cutest puppies you have ever seen? Can you believe someone abandoned them? I so wanted to take one home...but a condo is no place for a delightfully soft, energetic husky puppy. But no worries all found good homes.

Heidi and her friends found them out by Willow and took them in. How could you not. Heidi, Rhonda and I took them to Kincaid Beach and totally wore them out. They had so much fun.

Me and my favorite pup!
Heidi and I with the puppies.

AFN Banquet

I do love a chance to dress-up every once in awhile! Storman took me to the AFN Banquet last night and we had a very nice evening out. It was quite the posh event! Tamsin did my hair and did an amazing job. I don't know what I would have done without her. Thanks to her I wasn't in quite the tiz I would have been and I was ACTUALLY ready on time, an amazing feat for those who know me well!!!

Fall Colors

I took Kara to Eklutna where we spent the night at one of the many public use cabins all over Alaska. We biked in 3 miles to the cabin with all our gear on our backs and in a trailer that I was pulling behind my bike. I'd never pulled a trailer before and thankfully the trail isn't steep so it wasn't too bad. I'd show you a picture of it but it's on Kara's camera =). The weather was absolutely phenomenal! Warm and sunny with clear skies and amazing colors.

I briefly lost Kara (she had passed the cabin), but after reaching mile 5 she realized she had gone too far and headed back down the trail. Phew!! It's not a good thing to lose your visiting friends, they may never return for a second visit. The cabin was awesome (beats a tent that's for sure), it had a table, a lantern and a wood stove which warmed up the cabin nicely that night.

That night we were treated to clear skies and a show of the northern lights. There were so many more stars than we are used to seeing we had trouble finding the few constellations we know (orion, the big dipper and casiopia etc). We're pretty sure we found casiopia and I would show you the pictures we took of the northern lights but it would just make you jealous and I wouldn't want to do that! We tried a bit of fishing the next morning and Kara caught a huge rock fish which she struggled to bring in (as shown in the pic) but she did it. Rock fish are shy so we didn't take it's picture so you'll have to trust me, it was massive. Wanting to soak up as much sun as we could we had a picnic lunch before heading back into town. It was delicious.

Denali National Park

My friend Kara came up from Michigan for a visit in Sept. so we headed to Denali National Park in the hopes of seeing wildlife and Denali (Mt. McKinley). With high hopes I had entered the Denali Road Lottery but was denied (sigh) so we had to make do with driving just to the Savage River turn around which is just over 15 miles into the park. Because of the ever present rain we were unable to see Denali before hitting the park but the rain broke once we hit the park and we did get to see Denali although it was a less impressive view as it was shorter than the other mountains around it.


Besides squirrels the only animals we saw in the park were these cute sleddogs. They gave a small presentation and the dogs ran around a short track. They were all so cute. I wanted to take one home, especially one of the puppies!!
So speedy! It was hard to hold on, good thing I'd been lifting weights.


We also took a guided hike and learned a ton of useful information like how many types of lichen there are (3), that there are 8 types of trees in the park(I can't remember any besides aspen, spruce, alder, birch, larch and cottonwood) and which berries are safe to eat. I would not recommend the pumpkin berry however I could survive on crowberries and cranberries and I suppose I could eat the lichen too, caribou love it, but I don't think I need that much roughage in my diet =)!

Out for a hike

What a beautiful day!!!! One of the things I love about living here in Alaska are all the trails that are nearby. Lisa and I took advantage of the nice weather to check out a new trail she had run across. It was gorgeous. A great view, color changes and we even found some blueberries, yum.