Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Alaska

These are the long waited photos I referred to in a previous blog post when I went out to Girdwood and Portage for the first time. This was the first scenery I saw by the Seward Highway. It was quite amazing to me! These were taken with an HTC Hero, so the quality isn't great, but it was all I had. I caught some pretty things and have a video too so take a look!

Here's a quick clip of a little goat walking along the highway:

 

I, also, just wanted to thank you for following my blog. It means so much. It soon will be coming to an end. I leave this Tuesday. I made a post referring to my Alaskan internship, but it didn't directly correlate with the rest of the posts I have been posting on here. It was more of a lesson that I got out of working at the clinic and for those types of things, like my life experiences in general, I post on my Tumblr blog, called The End Result. 

Go ahead and check that post out here. There are many more exciting posts to come before I leave, including some cool videos and some stories of my recent biking activity! I will do my best, but I am very short on the time that I have.

Hope all is well. Thanks again!

"Don't take another step!"  I said to Tyler as we started to advance on the Glacier...

 

Thursday night I went camping out by Portage with Tyler Willis, a guy I met the night before. Funny how things work out. We had a ton of fun so I thought I'd tell you about it! The drive to Portage is a little under an hour. We really didn't pack much, not even wood or an ax to get some; we just roughed it. When we got there we walked over to the river and the water was completely clear all the way to the bottom. Not only was that amazing, but there were hundreds of Sockeye Salmon swimming up stream, some a vibrant, bright red color. Sadly, they were all swimming upstream to their death because that's a part of their life cycle.

We had to find wood though for the fire because like I said we had none. We scrounged up some wood left over by previous campers at the nearby campsites and managed to get enough to last until we decided to hit the sack. Or... the sleeping bag that is. All the camping gear I had was lent to me by a very friendly person who also let me borrow her Expedition. Lucky me! She even had an air mattress in her gear. I'm typically not one to use those as I prefer getting the "full experience", but this particular night I was very grateful to have one.The areas between all the trees weren't big enough to put the 16x16 foot tent in so we had to set up his tent on the gravel. First time I was ever glad to have an air mattress.

We waited for the sky to get completely dark - which it did about 12:30 or so. The stars were so bright and it was the first time I could really see the stars in Alaska! It has been such a cloudy summer and if it wasn't cloudy I was either working or still in the city and had no way to get far enough out to really see the sky the way I saw it that night. We suspect we even saw Jupiter or some planet - it was way too bright to be a star.

The next morning we got up about 8:45am, ate, packed up and left around 9. We drove to a trail about 20-30 minutes down the road. I had no idea what I was about to see at the end...

I know the video quality isn't the greatest, but it was amazing. There aren't any words to describe it. You can see the huge amount of snow/ice that was over the river and the river actually dug through the ice, creating a cave. We walked across the creek and went underneath it. The wall of ice was easily 10 feet high if not higher. It was a humbling experience. 

We then continued past the end of the trail, onto the rocks and boulders. We climbed/hiked up through the rock field and watching in amazement as the scenery behind and in front of us became more and more clear. On three sides of us, mountains jetted into the sky and waterfalls spewed out of them feeding into the river below us. While we were hiking, Tyler said to me "You know, I enjoy going to cities and seeing the amazing things man has done, but I enjoy more going out and seeing what God has done. God kicked our butt!" I laughed, but it got me thinking how true that is. We really do have something quite amazing to appreciate and there are places like this all over the world.

There were several levels to the hike. First you had just the rock, then rock on top of snow and then pure snow, then... glacier! That's right, we walked right up to ice that was millions of years old. Such an awesome experience. Then, I realized where those waterfalls were originating from! I bent down and touched the melting glacier emitting small little trickles of water. These small trickles were fusing together to make something bigger than themselves. I don't have any pictures of the large glacier in front of us as both of our phones died on the hike and we didn't have a camera. We were very unprepared. However, I saw that the enormous glacier in front of us was slowly melting, sending water downhill and continuing the flow of the river that creating the ice cave. It really was a "waterfall effect"! We hung out at a particular spot on the glacier for a bit, looked at some scenery through binoculars and caught up on our H2O intake. Then I asked if he wanted to continue on up towards more of the glacier. Tyler agreed and I took about five steps and then stopped. "Don't take another step!"  I said. Something caused me to stop - the sound of running water beneath my feet. I looked down and saw that I was right on top of a glacial crevass and that the only thing keeping me from falling in was a piece of ice, I estimated at a foot deep, if that. Tyler and I slowly stepped away and then went backed and looked at how deep it was at a little safer angle, which still probably wasn't very safe. I couldn't believe how close I was. Had I not heard the water, what would have happened? Would I even be writing this right now? It was scary, but such a cool feeling at the same time. We have to respect nature and the fact that nothing is 100% safe and to always approach it with caution, but just enough to still enjoy it. On the way back down, I heard another sound of running water beneath us! This time we were at a much safer location. The water was rushing underneath all the rocks we were climbing over, feeding into the river.  It was really neat.  This is a picture of me with my back to the lake that the Portage Glacier rests by.  This was a different glacier all together.  The one we were by was right behind Tyler as he was taking this picture. Unfortunately, right after this one his phone died and we didn't get a single picture of the glacier we walked on.

Hope you enjoyed the post and pictures. I plan to post more pictures once I get them from Tyler.

Yes, that's right I am tapping into the extremely boring subject of weather. Nooo, just kidding... but while I'm here I might as well say that the past few days have been sunny!  And also, as the title says, cloudy.  If you're not awake in the morning you pretty much miss all the bright sunshine.  Sure, it's light out till 11:30 or Midnight, but it's not "sunny".

Last Thursday I went fishing on the Knik River with Kevin and Craig Farnell.  Originally both from California, Kevin now lives in Texas, while Craig still lives in Cali.  I met them at Walmart haha, but they knew some other people that I did so they weren't complete strangers. We had a great time; no fish though.  Later, we hiked to Thunderbird Falls in Chugach Park (click to view).  Their aunt was actually with us as well and she had a Canon (actually the same model I was shooting with before) that she let me borrow.  It was nice to be able to get that feeling again.  You photographers know what I'm talking about! When you get into that "mode" that you feel you're in your own world, everything else disappears except you, the camera and nature...

*Shakes Head* Whoh! Sorry about that, I started day dreaming!

Anyways I know you're all here to see the pictures anyways so here are some of them!  I took a lot of random pictures this time. Some of scenery, but like I said I got in the mode so I was just taking pictures of everything.

This is looking out from over the ledge.  What ledge you may ask? Well... had I had a camera with less "zoom" I would have been able to capture it, but it is the ledge over the stream. It was a long ways down. And this was an amazing view!

All along the way I took photos on and off the trail. Here are some of those:

Here are some pictures of the trail itself:

There it is! Thunder Falls:

And some shrooms. Alaska has some super poisonous/deadly mushrooms up here. The bright red ones are very dangerous to dogs, we get dogs in all the time that eat things like this. Mostly Labs... go figure.

I did think these were quite pretty though, so I took a couple shots.

And that was really all I've got today. Hope you enjoy the pictures and the rest of the day! I'm going to go enjoy the nice weather.  Haven't slept yet (been up since 12 last night). I'll probably hit the sack around 4 today. Why waste away the day?

Straight from the Anchorage Daily News:

"City officials say there is 'a high probability of encountering a brown bear on this trail' and are urging people to 'avoid using Rover's Run under any circumstances'."

...hmmm sounds like a good place to be!

They went on to say, "The majority of the trail users are bicyclists who are more likely to encounter a bear because they move quickly and quietly."

Although all of you may not realize it, deep down inside you have a burning desire to find out what I have been up to this week that has kept me so busy.  Don't deny it, you know it's true.  Well, I will try my best not to let you down. 

The week mainly consisted of two things (with a couple minor changes): work and sleep.  As you may know I have worked 4pm-12am in the past week and a half or so, this results in an interesting sleep pattern.  See, I'm not tired after midnight when my shift is over so I end up finally falling asleep by four.  I don't have anything planned the next day before I start work at four PM so I don't set my alarm and wake up anywhere between one and three-thirty.  I somehow have a mental alarm that gets me up, but I don't know how I sleep that long, I just do.  So it's a vicious cycle of work and sleep. I hate that schedule, I would take any other schedule over that one.  The other schedules are midnight to 8am and 8am to 4pm.  I don't mind working some evenings, but when I do work the 4-12 shift it feels like I don't have as much time even though it's the same amount of hours.  I guess it's just how my body works.  I'm trying to train myself to wake up earlier, but now it's about breaking that habit. 

There have been some pretty fun events that have gone on this week, even though I have been busy.  Of course, earlier this week I saw a moose bathing in our sprinklers in front of the clinic.  I have taken quite a few pictures of the staff's pets in the clinic and some of patients in surgery and just around the clinic.  Here's just a small collection of what I took.

And yes, the Boston Terrier only has one eye. These are some of the patients that we've had in this week and I will forewarn you some pictures may be "less than appetizing".

My day off this week was Thursday so I hung out with Travis Dennison and went biking around Anchorage on the coastal trail.  We rode to an airfield where floatplanes were landing and taking off on a private, airplane-only lake.  It was pretty neat!  We took a break, ate at "The Sub" and then took a roundabout way back to his truck.

On the way back to his place we bought some discs for Frisbee golf and then later on, you guessed it, we played Frisbee Golf with Brandon Church (well maybe you didn't guess the 'Brandon Church' part).  It was a fun-filled day and definitely a nice change to my "cabin fever schedule".  Don't get me wrong, I love what I do, but I needed a break. 

This upcoming week I get two days off so I'm planning on not coming back for at least one night.  I'm not sure where I'm staying, but I'll sleep in a tent somewhere if I have to.  I need to get away and get up in some mountains!  Also, just as an FYI, I am only borrowing the camera taking these awesome photos and will need to send it back within this next week, so hopefully I can take as many pictures as I can before I send it away to it's home.  I might buy a cheap disposable camera and scan them in... you know, what we used to do in the 90's.

...And if you're trying to figure out what the title has to do with my post, absolutely nothing! "W.A.A.G." stands for "Week At A Glance", but other than that, there is no relativity. The "Your Tail" part came to me later on, don't ask how I thought that one up.  Hope all is well with you guys and have an awesome, exciting, fabulous, phenomenal week!

At about 4:22pm on Monday (Yep, about, but not quite 4:22) I walked out and saw a cow moose taking a shower in our sprinklers in the front of our building.  Even Alaskans were taking pictures.  I knew people saw them in town crossing the road and such, but this was the closest I had been to one and I had yet to see one in town.  So much for enforcing public indecency - sure a moose can do it, but if I want to go out and shower in a sprinkler I'll get turned in to the authorities.  What kind of world do we live in now?!  As you can see the moose wasn't even threatened by these "tiny" cars driving by.  She was probably enjoying watching them... as they slam into signs, poles and each other, as the lady in the 3rd photo could have easily done.

It was a pretty neat experience and I guess the moose had been there quite a bit all day, but it was new to me at 4:22 because I woke up at about 3:36 yesterday afternoon.  I'm adapting better to the time now, but it's just the crazy hours I've been working lately that really mess with me.  A three hour time difference is nothing, but when you work a 4pm-12 shift one night and a 12-8am shift the next, you get kinda confused which day your on.  I've had to check the date more in the past week than ever before.

While I was working on my shift last night I had to organize a bunch of past x-ray films.  Mainly just putting the new ones in their place in alphabetical order, but like I said I ended up organizing a bunch of past ones.  All I'm going to say is who ever thought of the saying "I before E except after C" was wrong.  They forgot to also add "and in the alphabet". Goodness, gracious people!  "I" isn't even close to the letter "E". Oh well, I'm done with that, but I thought it was funny.  Hope your day goes great and feel free to comment below.

Well I spent the majority of my evening at the nearby coffee shop surfin the web, sipping coffee and yackin away on the phone and stayed an hour past close. Oops! But I came back to the clinic to a pleasent surprise. One of the Techs grilled fresh ocean-caught halibut and salmon on the grill outside the clinic and served it up with spices and lemons and all sorts of goodies! YUM! I thought about taking a picture of my plate half-way through eating it (the fish not the plate, c'mon!) and then got distracted by the fish..

...and kept eating again. So I have no photo to offer you, but it was just the most delicious meal I have had up here yet!

To all of you that say "I hate fish", you are lying to yourself and everyone else. No one could hate this. Even people that aren't in their right mind couldn't hate fresh, ocean-caught, Alaskan halibut and salmon!  Until you have eaten every kind of fresh fish from every coast in the world, don't tell me you hate fish. :D

Now that we have that out of the way... here is something else that's fishy, but it's not edible. It's my schedule for the next two weeks. Yeah that adds up to approximately 90 hours of work. 90 hours! Phew, I guess if you can do that much for free you know you'll like it for a job. And I've got a whole month and a half left of that, but I enjoy it.

I have found that I love helping animals. I don't think I'll work in a clinic setting the rest of my life, but I have this yearning deep down inside to help whenever I see an animal that is hurt.  It's a neat, but sad feeling too because it's so hard to understand what they're going through. At nine o'clock this morning, a dog came in that was hit by a car and he looked pretty bad.  After taking X-Rays we found that what had looked like a broken forearm, was merely just a dislocated humerus. Thankfully, one of the Vets was able to quickly pop it back in place and we reinforced it with a cast to keep it from slipping back out so that it could heal.  His tail was also badly injured.  The skin was split open and ligaments were visable.  We shaved the hair around it and wrapped it in gauze.  It will most likely need to be rechecked after the swelling has gone down.  We were unable to suture it closed, due to the swelling and lack of skin available.  But, all that aside, he was a super lucky dog - no breaks or ruptured organs. The only other things he suffered from were some minor cuts and scrapes and a few broken/chipped teeth! Not bad for getting nailed by a car. Luckily for us he was also easy to work with, unfortunately his owner wasn't so much.

Well thats all the excitement for today! Thanks for reading and I hope your weekend finishes off wonderfully!

Last Thursday I was invited out by some of the local kids up here to
go out to a lake and go airboating and four wheeling. There were
quite a few that showed up and we road till about 12:30AM. It was
such an eventful night and I saw my first moose in the wild.

We did everything from skimming through the water in the Ross's airboat to
spinning cookies with four wheelers and trucks to jumping dirtbikes
over berms. Water separated the different areas of land, so the only
way to get to the other side was to tear through the water with your
truck or ATV! Note to self: don't hit water at full throttle, it
never ends good.

The awesome thing about Alaska is you have so much more light to do stuff during Summer, but the best thing is that the people always make the most of it!  I still find it hard to believe that I am up here especially when I see the scenery - it's breathtaking.

I met a bunch of kids Thursday night and plan on hanging out with them
more in the near future. People are so nice up here. They're willing
to help you out with anything and are so care free.  And as you can see the night really did end with a "Splash of Fun" ...for some of us anyways. :P

Well, that's all for today! More stories and pictures to come for sure!

P.S. I have updated some of the other pages so feel free to check those out and remember to subscribe too! Just click "Subscribe to this posterous" or "Subscribe via RSS" underneath the section labeled "Get Updates" on the right side. Also, both last night and the night before I worked at the clinic 4 PM to Midnight; both nights had their exciting moments, but I'll save that
for another time!

The first full day I was here on Wednesday, I went out venturing for a
coffee shop to get some Wi-Fi. Since I didn't have Internet access at
the clinic yet I wasn't able to Google for it on my laptop, but I
didn't let that stop me. I texted 466453 (Google) free of charge and got the nearest coffee shops to me.

One was only .1 miles away! I rode and rode and rode my bike until I
came the conclusion that I must have gone the wrong way or somethin...
I turned around and realized I rode right past it. There I saw
it; sitting there in a vacant parking lot. I thought to myself "What
a disgrace, this is no place for a coffee shop." But in all honesty
Google, that is not a "Coffee Shop", that's a Coffee SHACK.

I have now found a place called Kaladi Brothers that is not too far if
you take the back roads. I'm learning my way around Anchorage...
slowly, but surely! There has also been lots of excitement in the
clinic. Check back for more on My Alaskan Experience!

Sponsered by: The Moose

 

::UPDATE::

I just want to apologize for my kindergarten spelling. It was brought to my attention that I "road and road and road my bike".  Sigh. When really I did not construct ANY roads with my bike, but I simply "RODE" my bike. Sorry for those spelling errors. Thankfully, we have Moms to look after us even when we're in college. :P

Last night (or this morning) I worked an eight hour shift from midnight to eight this morning.  Last night was pretty uneventful; we watched over two small Chihuahuas.  One was just a small little puppy "fell" 3 stories and landed on it's head.  I put fell into quotations because when the neighbors tried to get a hold of the owner she was too drunk to wake up.  She was unable to pay for the $600 treatment, apparently she'd rather throw her money at alcohol, than help her pets.  One of the vet techs in the office adopted her and is paying the bill.  She was doing great last night compared to how she was on Wednesday.

The other was a 12 year old who somehow swallowed a wire of some sort.  He was first taken to a regular vet clinic and they performed surgery and after the second surgery they found the wire.  He, however, worsened and was brought here for more extensive monitoring and treatment.  Unfortunately, it was a sad night for him and the owner as he didn't make it.  Around 7 he started going through convulsive shaking, similar to that of a stroke.  We saw he was slowly dieing and the owner made the decision to euthanize him.  It's sad, but it's part of being at a 24/7 emergency clinic.

On a happier note I have really been enjoying my time in Alaska.  I have been taking many pictures and will be posting them on a consistent basis so stay tuned and have a great evening.