i'm broken

typing with one hand will definitely tame my passion for verbosity. I broke my third metacarpal bone (below my middle finger) into three while playing stck pull at a pioneer day activity.

my 15 minutes of fame.

This is me enjoying the sunshine. . . a rarity on the summit.

Another day "on the job" for Brian. . . he's hiking with a few people from our ward in this photo. Taken about 1 mile from the Canadian boarder.

Alaskan wild Iris blooming in Dyea. It litterally covers the feilds!

Un beso.

So, last week was natural disaster week. It flooded on the chilkoot-- the glacier meltoff combined with the 6 inches of rain caused high mountain streams to dump on the trail. People were wading up to their chest in freezing water. We ended up having to close the trail (this is nearly unheard of) for 24 hours. I ended up being interviewed by the radio (and there is only one station for all of Haines and Skagway and everyone listens to it). I was one of the "special radio guests" where they ask you a question and your recorded voice answers. They ended up broadcasting it all over Alaska. I'm pretty much a local Alaskan celebrity now. That was a joke, BTW. I came up with an ingenius plan to spend more time on the trail with Brian last week and my boss ended up okaying it. So I spent Wed- Sat last week and my legs are feeling it today. Not to mention I haven't taken a shower since Tuesday and I just went to the store. You can get away with a lot up here. I think I'm in for culture shock.

Pocahontas and John Smith tackle the Yukon

This weekend was intense. B-ryan and I were a bit tired of hiking and figured we would do something a little different this week. Jackie from NPS let us borrow her canoe and so we decided to take on one of the toughest rivers in the Yukon-- the Kathleen (not a very ominous name, but don't let it fool you). We ended up capsizing five times, missed falling over a waterfall and portaged the canoe around a gorge of granite cliffs and churning whirlpools. It was one of the most terrifying things I've done in a while. . . even the "mellow" parts were full of strainers and the river was so curvy that we had to make several sharp turns. We found out once we were done that the canoe shop in town doesn't even rent to people going down that river b/c the boats always break! It was quite the epic.


After our intense canoe trip, we decided to take a mellow bike ride through Kluane national Park.


We set up camp on this island. We had capsized and we were swept to this little spot. We decided to explore around the bend before going onward. It was a good thing we did, b/c right after that bend about 20 meters down was an 8 foot waterfall that fell onto a bunch of rocks!

Every night Brian is in charge of putting on a Ranger Program at Sheep Camp for the Hikers on the chilkoot. This game is pretty funny to watch-- you can let slack or pull hard to try and pull the person off the rock. The winner gets a special surprise from the Ranger Station (like fresh baked bread).

On the pass into Canada. Last weekend Brian was on shift, so I got to hike up Friday for work and spent the rest of the weekend hiking around with him.

Life as a psuedo-adult

I am graduating school. I am going to have a job. I have no idea what I am doing in the fall. I have five weeks to decide. Sometimes I feel like the key to doing well in jobs isn't actually the job itself, but rather appearing to be busy and creating work for yourself. Jobs and careers are only accessories to what really matters. It feels funny to waste so much time on an accessory.

This weekend was so fun. I hiked 35 miles and brian and I feasted like kings every night at sheep camp. I went to his ranger program and watched him in actioni. It was pretty dang cute (although I must admit some jealousy when a girl my age on her honeymoon said that she thought he was adorable. . .ugh). I took a shower outside in the mountains with one of those bags you hang up and a lit candle. I am very tired today. I melted my shoes over the heater (I was trying to dry them) and hiking with them felt like hiking on a slab of iron rock. Needless to say, my feet hurt.

INFORMATION BOOTH

**The next three posts are for your viewing pleasure. Please feel free to experience alaska vicariously (That's all the tourists up here do anyway)**

BRIAN HAYS now has a blog. Check it out at: www.ropelog.blogspot.com

I told him that boyfriends of the past have always conformed to the blogging cirlce. Hence Marcus, Tim and Toleman. . . who are now virtual friends of us all.

Who the heck goes to the Arctic Circle?

So Brian discovered that there are only two roads in all of North America that go to the Arctic circle, and that one of them is relatively close (500 miles) to Skagway. With that challenge ahead of us, we packed up the jeep and drove the most beautiful roads I have ever seen in my life, ate the largest sticky bun I have ever seen in my life and completely destroyed my biological clock. . . which was confused why it looked like daytime at 2am.


These beautiful cotton flowers were growing all over the permafrost tundra. It was so weird to walk on the tundra-- it is like a giant sponge that sinks in a foot as you walk.

What you don't see in this photo is the swarm of mosquitos that followed us all night. . . it was crazy.

On the dempster highway.

This picture was taken at midnight!! The sun never really goes down on the Arctic circle. It stayed like this all night.

Sunset on the way to the Arctic circle

The Chilkoot Trail

Hiking the pass into Canada

In the forest on the US side.

In the Sheep Camp Ranger station where Brian lives. It is 12 miles up the trail and so beautiful!

On one of the suspension bridges at the beginning of the Chilkoot Trail.

Sea Kayak

At a waterfall we kayaked to. I was pretty excited as you can tell.

Every trip needs a good bum-shot.

Sea Kayaking in Alaska (the tide drops so fast! Our boat was right next to the water just an hour before).