Nothing To See Here

Snow surveys 2008

2008-05-12T14:36:00.002-08:00

Had an awesome time in 2006 doing the April end of winter Snow surveys and so this year I got a chance to come back up and participate again. Just like last time there was some amazing sites to see. To kick it off, here's a picture of me before heading out snowmachining the first time in my giant Sorel boots. Kind of reminds me of this picture of Kanye and Daft Punk from back in the winter.

I think the oddest thing I did this trip was surveying off a cliff. Here's a view from the top:

Once again there were lots of caribou around. We were surrounded on one day. Here they are near the newly christened butt mountain.

A kind of cool rack out near Slope Mountain:

And some other ones in the neighborhood of the Imnavait basin:

Not all the time was spent snowmachining. Here's a look at the lack of snow in a katabatic valley in ANWR.

But, not much time was spent in the helicopter. Here's how degraded conditions were shortly after we dropped the helicopter near an Alyeska gate due to weather and then ended up parking it there overnight since conditions didn't improve.

Ken and I had a pretty good run in with a couple bears, too. Just after we got to one of our sites these guys popped over the edge of the hill. The interaction was totally textbook though. The wind was blowing the wrong way and when they saw us they couldn't figure out what we might be so they kept standing up on two legs and coming closer. I pulled out a large actionpacker lid and waved it over my head and eventually they figured out we were pretty big and not to be messed with. So, since we were in their way they did a semi-circle around us. Pretty cool.

When they came to our snowmachine tracks they totally booked it on out of there:

So that was totally rad. Kind of a good way to start off the last part of the trip. I think that's it for now. Maybe now that I'm caught up it'll be easier to stay that way. Daily updates on the house etc. of course. Also, getting a helicopter weather day when you're all caught up rules.

Housetastic

2008-05-12T14:24:00.002-08:00

So, exciting news.... we're getting a house. If things go well we're scheduled to close in a couple weeks. We made the offer just before I came up to Toolik back in April and will close once I'm back from Toolik in May. There will be more to come I'm sure but here's a picture of the outside of our new place:

So I guess we're pretty excited about it all.

Winter Biking

2008-05-12T14:17:00.003-08:00

This past late winter I rediscovered how fun winter biking is. Pushing it a little late into the season though the aufeis and groundwater overflow was becoming a significant problem in the trail. I didn't realize the ice would be quite this thin:

But, went out anyway. It was pretty awesome and really, you never knew. Somedays the ice was frozen enough to get across and other days it was like this. But, the end result was some pretty pink legs:

Also enjoyed this guerrilla sign action that someone had done:

Squirrel power

2008-05-12T14:15:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe I can dust off this website a bit and get some more stuff online. Basically have been crazy busy between school and work but just submitted my final paper of the semester last night. So, since I'm in Toolik thought I would kick things off with a bit of squirrel action.
Up here they've been studying the ground squirrels for a long time. I'm impressed they can keep the funding going this long but here we are. Anyway, the squirrels wake up this time of year and get on with their lives. This fellow just woke up and they are totally ready for him.

Bolder Boulder

2008-05-12T13:45:00.003-08:00

Passed through Boulder, CO back in March. Was there for a wilderness first aid and other things class. Got to see the folks and a cousin there, too. It was awesome. We did some drills and wrapped it up with yet another day of survival training. I attended this class a few years ago and my Red Cross stuff expired so, time to go back.

The first day of class I made the mistake of going for a drink of water in the afternoon after a day of training. Here's the before and after on what we learned that day:

It wasn't all serious though. I do love to shop. Here I am waiting for Emily to buy some stuff at the army surplus store. Last time around I bought a anti-tank missle tube here but things were slightly more conventional this time around.

Who can't get enough of the garbage bag jacket? Yeah, an alternate design I've seen some other places but these guys claim to be the inventors. The bonus is you get a sweet hood:

Wrapped up the awesome trip with an awesome concert. Went to see The Pharcyde with my cousin Nick. It seems my crash the stage skills work all over this great nation of ours. Here's the look from the stage:

My take home from this concert was a broken drum stick and a CD I caught that one of the earlier bands was pitching to the audience. Live music rules!

Well, that's probably it for the moment since we'll be flying soon but since I finally have a minute wanted to get some more stuff online. I'm back!

On the road again

2008-05-12T13:40:00.002-08:00

A new twist on the classic mobile home:

I presume if your stove pipe is that low you can still get through the drive through but I don't know for certain.

Hawaii, ages ago it seems like.

2008-05-12T13:13:00.003-08:00

So, in the spirit of getting back into the swing of things, while I'm waiting for our helicopter to think about leaving, here's a few more pictures from our trip to Hawaii back in January. There should be some more posts along these lines as I work to get caught up over the next few weeks.

Anyway, we went to Hawaii. You probably saw some pictures on Jessie's blog... I've got mooooore. So, first up is one of our camping places. We camped our way around the Big Island. A highly recommended way to do. The only catch is maybe get a hotel for the weekends because that's when the locals come out and the campgrounds are packed. Maybe if you get in on a Thursday and stick around at the same place Friday and Saturday you'll be golden but if you're motoring around the island like we were you might have trouble getting a spot.

That was like up on the NE part of the island. Totally rocking.

As you might expect, saw quite a bit of funky stuff there. Here are a few favorites. I was pretty fascinated by these wild chickens. They're like regular domestic chickens species-wise but they just run aroud on their own. Being a little suspicious of chickens in general. This picture was from the first place we camped at Ho'okeena I think. This was just in the parking lot for the beach and campground and the chickens were totally just hanging out.

If I had unlimited money I'd have one of these in every bathroom in the house. We saw this in an awesome diner / tourist trap ala Russian American Company (more upscale and pushing the arty things than most places). So, this was all done by hand. I wish I could find inspiration from the toilet like this person seems to.

One thing I remember from growing up was the marlin Dr. Dehnke had or maybe talked about in his dentist office. Up in Fairbanks, the Marlin has one. So, pretty cool fish right. Check it out. This is the world record Marlin and it's on display at a gas station north of Kona. How ridiculous is that. I guess it gets more exposure this way but definitely a nontraditional place to put it.

Finally, here's a few pictures from Waipio valley in the north part of the island. It was totally awesome and the icing on the cake here was a hippy getting naked and running out into the ocean to wash off across a creek from us. He put on a good show for the tourists, that's for sure.

Cauliflower Soup

2007-12-26T23:27:00.000-09:00

Jessie couldn't remember a favorite cauliflower soup so I made my own today. It turned out incredible and we thought we should share. It has I guess hints of Indian flavors perhaps. To get your drooling in a healthy sort of way check this out:

I think this is probably cauliflower-tomato soup for those keeping score at home. Anyhoo, here's the recipe which I can't emphasize enough just how easy it is:
6 cups vegetable stock (or water)
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
5 carrots (or there abouts, your call)
3 celery ribs (or there abouts, your call)
1 onions, finely chopped
3+ garlic cloves (never can have enough, right)
Some olive oil (or your favorite oil I'd imagine)
1 sweet potato/yam, finely chopped (optional but it was nice and you can buy them individually)
The Spice Action:
Black Pepper
Mild Curry
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Salt
Cumin
Bay leaf or two (optional)

So, dump the garlic and onions into your soup cauldron and follow up with the oil. Cook it up for five to eight minutes to soften up the onions. You can dump in all the spices now, too. I put in healthy amounts of pepper, cumin, and curry. Probably the curry was the largest quantity. Then the cinnamon and nutmeg were in there just to sweeten things up a bit and were a nice addition.

Once you've got the onions softened then dump in the tomatoes and vegetable stock / water. I use vegetable stock since I'm always making it but I imagine water works well, too. Move the heat to medium-high. So now as the soupy part cooks away chop up all your remaining vegetables and dump them in. Once they're in you can bring it to a boil and then drop the heat until you're ready to eat. We found it just crazy good. Brought a stupid grin to our face and there was enough that we'll have lunch and dinner soup for freezing.

I bet you could dump in sausage or beans into this if you wanted, too. It's quite tasty as is though.

Side note, hopefully this week, due to popular request! I'll get a desserts and foods section fired up on the website someplace so you can see all the recipes in one place.

Christmas Desserts

2007-12-26T23:09:00.001-09:00

So, Christmas is over and we're basking in the afterglow. Mixed it up a bit this year and didn't do any pies. Instead tried a couple new items I was curious about. Jessie got me creme-brulee cups for Christmas and so when I decided to make that for one Christmas dinner I got to open a present early. Score! I was excited.
I started with this recipe for Lemon Creme Brulee but used it as more of a jumping off point. If you choose to follow my footsteps (and they're worth following!). zest the heck out of two lemons. That left me with in the neighborhood of 3.5 tablespoons of zest. Dump that in instead of the 2 Tbsp mentioned in that recipe. I also did a bit more lemon juice (and added one more egg to counteract the extra acid in all that lemon juice and zest), and grated probably in the neighborhood of 1.5 tablespoons of ginger.
The result was tasty. Tart with a bit of bite from the ginger. There was disappointingly little creme brulee in each cup but totally worth it.

Then for proper Christmas dinner I riffed on this flourless chocolate cake. I used chambord (a rasberry liqueur) instead of the coffee liqueur and also dropped in 1/2 cup of finely chopped dried cranberries. The cake part turned out pretty well but to really put if over the top I also put a dark chocolate ganache which was like 10 oz heavy whipping cream 11.5 oz dark chocolate chips. You heat the cream over low to medium low heat until it begins to have steam come rise off the liquid. That's a good time to drop the temperature or turn it off and then dump in the chocolate chips. You should be able to whisk them in and they will nicely melt. Some people will tell you to boil the cream. You don't need all that heat to melt the chocolate though and the lower the temperature of the cream then the shorter your waiting time on the ganache cooling to the point of being spread and stickable on the cake. One tasteful rendition:

So, flourless chocolate cake with chocolate ganache is good but to really put it over the top I made up a cranberry dessert sauce. It was pretty similar to this one from the chocolate torte made at Thanksgiving and Emily's nominee for best chocolate dessert of all time. If you try it at home you really need to make the sauce. The chocolatey goodness can be overwhelming without the cranberry sauce to balance it out. But together, super. Emily says not as good as the chocolate torte from Thanksgiving but still pretty decent.

Dead of winter parties

2007-12-26T22:58:00.000-09:00

Celebrated the Solstice, Christmas a couple times and Christmas Eve over the course of the last five days or so. Pretty awesome. Some friend have chronicled the highlights here at the E&L blog and here at Jillian's website. They're both well worth your time. I won't dwell on those two gatherings other than check out one Christmas present:

Yes indeed, it's a real honest to goodness Lucha Libre mask! How awesome is that. Merry Christmas from Mr. Johnson. Look for it to make a reappearance on New Year's Eve...

In other partay events, John also scored some free fireworks from co-workers. It was awfully fun discovering what they were at a solstice party:

And, don't look now, but Pat's been sporting a video camera to these shenanigans. So look out world now that there's some additional documentary evidence.

Break-In

2007-12-26T21:33:00.000-09:00

Finished the semester on a high note, am just finally recovering. So, Jessie had been out of town on work and family. Last Wednesday night she came back but I had a heck of day leading up to it. My last final was late in the afternoon. So, thought I'd hit up coffee roasters for a breakfast pocket and some coffee. They were out of pockets so against my better judgement I got the hotdog that's kind of like a pig in a blanket. It has dough spiraled around the hot dog. They're kind of rough and I swore them off after the last time I tried them but that was what was available. So, popped onto the road towards campus. Thought I'd get a jump on studying if I ate the hotdog on the drive to campus. So of course the bun unraveled around the hotdog when I pulled it from the paper bag. Fixed it up at the stop light and resumed eating without incident. Got to campus. Pulled into my parking spot and the hot dog jumped out of the bun and hid under the e-brake. Figured I'd dump it in the paper garbage bag but when I grabbed it the bag jumped from the passenger seat to the wheel well. Had to unbuckle and carefully miss the slimy hot dog retrieving the bag. So, wrap things up with the hot dog and pull the extension cord out to plug in the car. The extension cord got tangled with my skis and popped the lid off the coffee and nearly knocked it over. Ouch! So, carefully pulled the extension cord out and plugged in. Made it up to my office without incident but then discovered I'd locked my keys in the car. Ooops! Insult to injury, got food poisoning from the hot dog. That's seriously the last time I eat one of those things.

I had to study so I didn't revisit the keys in the car till the end of the day. Everyone says call the campus police they love to get you into your car. Well, they only do it if you're the registered owner... I'm not. So, out of luck on that score. Rena, Ana, Pat, and I were going out to celebrate the end of the semester but before that I gave Emily and Luke a jingle to see about borrowing their car until Jessie got home later that night. No problem but it was almost out of gas. So, Pat and Ana dropped me off at their house and I scored their car which looked like it had enough gas to get me home to the dogs and then back into town for Jessie later.
I get home and it turns out you can open the house if the keys are locked in the car on campus. So the dogs got all fired up for nothing. Johnson suggested I call a taxi to get serviced on campus.

Back to campus. On campus I tried every taxi but the North Pole ones. No one answered the phone. Eventually gave up and figured I'd run back to the house and somehow break in. But first, to try breaking into the car. So here's my successful setup:

Of particular note I think is a fork. This setting from Fred Meyer's a few years ago comes through again. Last time this silverware made an appearance was digging a boulder out from under the truck a couple years back. This time around it was key to prying the window open enough for the yard stick to work its magic:

After a half hour or so I was in and had enough time before Jessie got in to run home and clean house a bit. Woo!

That time year again...

2007-12-01T03:54:00.000-09:00

When every morning is gorgeous if the sun is out. This was a not super picture with my waterproof camera but the colors yesterday morning were just so gorgeous. Otherwise, in the getting down to business part of the semester but it's almost over.

This is just a planetarium but when I look at it I see the supersized version of a favorite from Christmas past, the snowglobe (and weren't those the days)...

So, I think the technology behind that project is worth doing in other locales, like large scale inflatable sculptures. If only I was crafty... so, I guess the world is safe for a bit longer.

Thanksgiving Pies

2007-11-24T17:19:00.000-09:00

We did awesome on Thanksgiving. You'll have to check Jessie's blog for pictures of the goose and dressing, which turned out incredible. Plus pictures of yesterday's vegan thankgiving but if you're looking for pie pictures, this is the place to be. Made two piles this year. A Pumpkin (first time I've ever made pumpkin pie):

It was good and the whipped cream instructions on there were pretty good, too. I'm still pretty bummed about this but we were hurting for time Thursday so I didn't get to try the vodka crust, went with a store crust (those pilsbury ones). I defrosted it in the microwave for super long by accident but we recovered by glomming the dough into a big ball. The crust turned out just fine in the end. I supplemented the recipe with a bit of whipping cream and tinkered some with the spices in case you want to try that one yourself. We had some squashes laying around from the Freddy's 99c / pound squash sale so I used on that looked kind of like a pumpkin (we're not sure if it was or not though).

The second pie was pretty good, too. It was a Cranberry eggnog tart. Totally worth all the time and effort. I made the tart crust more like a shortbread plus dumped in some lemon zest. Yum!

It's kind of hard to see but the way this one works you stick a creamy eggnog layer between two cranberry jam layers. Combine that with the shortbread and it was fat overload city!

So, yesterday we had vegan thanksgiving for some other friends. Jessie made some awesome dishes again and I tried to mangle a chocolate cake. Since it was vegan you make some substitutions. We forgot to take pictures on it but the cake turned out great. That was totally in spite of my best efforts to bungle it. The recipe used baking soda/powder + vinegar combo to help it rise. I had the tablespoon over part of the recipe book and missed the vinegar detail plus the water that needed to be in there. Luckily it'd only been in the oven a couple minutes. So, we pulled it out, dumped it back into the mixing bowl and added the other ingredients. It turned out pretty good although the taste was a bit earthy for me. It was definitely good, just earthy.

iron maidens

2007-11-24T16:31:00.000-09:00

In our ongoing quest for the best hair bands Fairbanks has to offer we found ourselves at the Iron Maidens last weekend. It was a pretty fun time. Just like the Megadeth concert from September only with more friends along. They've won best cover band of all time or something like that. It was pretty fun. Didn't know any songs but that's never been an excuse not to go to a show. I'm glad we don't live someplace better where we would become picky about shows rather than going to anything that isn't country (or is that a good thing?).

Here's Johnny and I rocking out:

We did pretty well. Johny got an autographed set of underoos (gulp) and we both scored several guitar picks from the band for getting so crazy up in front. It was pretty fun. Unlike the Donna's pick, these ones have the band logo and are signed by the guitar person. Pretty funny.

Rat-tastic

2007-11-17T19:32:00.001-09:00

Rats seems to be a current theme in my life right now. Been bumping into them here and there. This was a funky sign we saw at the pet store last week. These rats look pretty darned happy don't they.

Also had no idea it was so cheap and easy to buy rat poison in bulk. Something to do in Illinois next time you're in the area:

Party Time

2007-11-17T19:30:00.000-09:00

Or something. Ran into Bartles & James the other day. Didn't realize they were still around.

Pie season's back!

2007-11-17T16:35:00.000-09:00

Have been waiting excitedly for my favorite time of year, pie season. It was kicked off this past Thursday with the IARC Thanksgiving lunch. I whipped up a pair of desserts. First up, this buttermilk-maple custard I did back in the winter. It's super. If you get the chance, put it on your list. It is super easy and turns out great.
Maple Buttermilk Pie

Some people don't think you need to be this extreme in the baking but I like putting a pan with an inch or so of water on the bottom rack of the oven. It works best if you put the water in when you first start preheating the oven so you can get it nice and moist in there before the pie goes in. I've also been thinking that a pan of water in there properly heated also does a better job heating the pie. Once that moist air gets hot there's more energy floating around the oven and so if you pop open the oven for some reason (I haven't found the need) you won't drop the temperature as far (I'm guessing). To check the custard done-ness without opening the door give the door a hit and watch the wiggle of the pie. With time you should be good at seeing when it's ready so you're not overbaking out of frustration that it doesn't seem set up yet. It's a delicious pie though and dreadfully easy to make. If I had more time I would have tried Anne's vodka crust but that will have to wait for Thanksgiving proper I think.

Dessert number two was a Chocolate-Cranberry Torte. Friend Erin's boyfriend asked me for a good chocolate + cranberry / rasberry / coffee cake and so this one was one I found for them. They didn't use it and I couldn't believe it because it looked so darn good.
Chocolate-Cranberry Torte

The best part by a mile was the chocolate ganache topping. Worth your time to work into any thing possible. I'm actually thinking of doing another chocolate cake like maybe a flourless one just to work in the ganache!

In the trashy glory category, searching for how to spell ganache I came across this gem of a cookbook:
Twinkies Cookbook More Than 50 Inventive And Unexpected Recipes From Hostess

Featuring such classics as:

Twinkie Sushi
Twinkie Burrito
Pigs in a Twinkie

Thesis defense

2007-10-27T21:54:00.001-08:00

So, I came across this site in a round about sort of way. One of our work colleagues, in response to a question about helping out in a booth wrote:

I alreadny replaied my join at AGU meeting.

So, not that funny but there were some other emails in the thread and I followed one to somebody's website where they have their resume, journal article etc. Well, it's not hosted on the UAF webservers but on another one so they signed up for the google ads. I thought it would be funny to click on the add since the website probably gets visitors pretty infrequently. So the ad was for one of those paper mill aggregators to help you pump out the pretend thesis or whatever. Anyway, clicked through a few of the links and was amused by the writing quality of these companies. Here's a typical example:
007 term papers dot com (tricksy name and everything). Anyway, would you trust someone to write you a good paper.. for 'reference material' that writes like this:

We Guarantee that your term paper or research paper begins with you, the customer! We use college professors and college instructors whose areas of expertise matches the field in which you require assistance with. Thus, your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. We want you to be pleased with our work so that you will become a long term, repeat customer and recommend us to all of your friends. We are in this business for the long haul and we want you to be part of it.

Most Frightening Contest

2007-10-21T22:57:00.000-08:00

Seems like they roll Halloween out even earlier than Christmas these days. I don't know what's more frightening, this pet photo album:
Dressed up pets

Or the portrait of a German business dude working to get an international airlines off the ground which will bring inflight smoking back to the skies.

Time for a summer recap

2007-10-01T00:55:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a while hasn't it.... Yeah. To busy soaking up the sun and hanging out outside. Well, big news....

... I held a baby and it didn't scream. That doesn't happen every day. That's Morgan, Jeff and Loda's fresh new baby. Who has the best diaper covers you've ever seen!
So, summer's finally over. We're totally ready for it. I've been all over this summer. Nome was the usual highlight (working on my deviled ham and celery sandwich here from back in July):

But we saw some cool stuff out camping around the interior. Check out this monster mushroom:

Yeah, so, a pretty fun summer, plenty of posts to follow down below. I think I'll start things off with a typical scene, the TSA doing a crossword and chatting up the alaska airlines clerks. Ah, makes me feel nostalgic already:

Barrow!

2007-10-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

Or something. I really wasn't feeling the exclamation point up there. Two days after the Nome trip I left for Barrow. Anna was already up there and I helped to put in two big new stations for her where she's looking at ground temperatures and near surface soil moisture. Condtions were pretty miserable. blowing 10-15 the first day eventually getting up to 20-30 once I was wiring. Neat to make it that far north though. It was my first trip and hopefully not the last.

That's a pretty typical fall scene from up there. Pretty much nearly flat with lots of patterned ground. One highlight was soldering in the wind. It just takes a little longer for the iron to heat up but if you do it right you can still make a bit of headway:

So, this cracked me up. I don't know who thought it up but check out this 10 meter weather tower which is busy jacking out of the ground. I bet this site has only seen a couple winters but that's enough to raise the wind sensor elevation a decent chunk:

So, food up there is a mixed bag. Check out the menu from a place we'll probably pass on the next time but nice to go once for the experience I suppose. Pretty sweet deal, they throw in the lettuce and tomato free if you upgrade to the Hamburger deluxe!

So, that's Barrow in 30 seconds. As luck would have it Jessie was up there, too. We overlapped by a day up there although she was on another project. So, if you want to see picture of the new football stadium and everything (and it looks pretty cool from the pictures) head on over there!

Fall Trip to Nome

2007-10-01T00:26:00.001-08:00

So, a couple weeks ago Jessie and I went back to Nome for the last time on the year. I've got jury duty in October and Anna had a bunch of Barrow stuff going on so we went earlier than usual to Nome. It was pretty much one of the hardest trips of all time. Certainly of recent vintage. You may remember the four wheeler catching on fire back in July.... so, we got it fixed in Nome between trips. Jessie and I picked it up on our way out to Kougarok but we drove it like two miles and it was overheating like before (pre-fire) and so it got ditched. That was the bad news. The good news was we came between storms/ weather systems so the weather was terrific. Plus the fall colors were out:

So, instead of spending a couple days fourwheeling around Kougarok and then wrapping things up and preparing for winter in Council we slogged 25 miles across the tussocks (seriously, no exaggeration there) over four days. So, a couple years ago I timed myself over tussocks and at top speed I can go about one mile an hour. Total top speed though. Can easily drop to a half-mile per hour in the right conditions. So, a long of walking. The scenery was great though. Here's a scene from our 1km by 1km thaw grid out in Kougarok. We measure how deep the ground thawed out during the summer time on this 11 x 11 grid.

So, the walking was a downer but the company was fun. Here's Jessie at the K1 site out in Kougarok after a few hours of hiking. This site has been pretty fertile bear mauling (of the site) grounds in past years but this summer we got off scot free.

So, we survived and came back later than scheduled but in time for me to blurrily get to class Tuesday morning. One final highlight was prices out there. Check out gas station bottled water. A steal at $10 a gallon!
Water

Mega Rad

2007-10-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my life saw Megadeth, Live!

How funny is that. Yeah, you thought perhaps they might be old and washed up but no way, still bringing the heat! ... all the way to cold, cold Fairbanks, Alaska. Johnny, Jessie, and I went and it's tough to say which was the best, the show or the people watching. All world class though. We started the evening parking the car near some swordfighting duct-tape sword kids and it just got better. Here's the man himself, Dave Mustaine in total action. He can really ham it up with the best.

Party on everyone!

Chena Dome

2007-10-01T00:07:00.001-08:00

We didn't go super far (far enough) over labor day weekend but it was plenty good for wearing the dogs out.

To celebrate labor day, and the first one I haven't worked in a few years, Jessie and I took the dogs up Chena Dome out near Chena Hot Springs. It's a pretty tough 30 miles loop. Water turned out to be one of our weaknesses. The dirty dogs were pretty thirsty most of the trip:

And although there was supposed to be some water up there we couldn't find any this late in the year. So, we hung out on top till we ran out and then came back. In the mean time though the dogs had a blast running around, Matilda bit the two men on the trail we came across (that was um, interesting). But most of the time it was pretty fun.

We didn't make it that far up the trail, three and a half miles maybe but the view was still nice!

And it was still a good enough trip to wear the dogs out. Yay for that! Plus we thought the last big hike of the summer.

Palmer State Fair

2007-09-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

So, Ana, Johnson, and I road tripped it on down to Palmer for the state fair. Three years running now that I've made the pilgrimage and I think each year is better than the one before (first year was pretty tough to top though with the whole Donnas concert and all though..). Picture one there is from Rob's house. How's that for a sweet flying saucer alien light. We overnighted with him and Mr. Pumpkin the cat in Denali Park before driving to Palmer Saturday.

How can you go wrong at fair that has stuff like this though:

Even saw the skunk lady again. If I see her once more I'll be able to start critiquing.

The fair is fun and the food is plentiful but watch out for the animals.

It was Ana's first trip to the fair but John and I made sure she had a great time. And really, how can you top face art like this right!

I really think the low point of the trip was seeing the grafitti someone put on this sign. Heartless. At least one dog got sold.

So, after another great breakfast at the Palmer 24 hour diner (which we shared with Charlie Daniels and band)... we hit the road for home with light hearts.