Bearded Seal

The other day my neighbors killed and harvested a bearded seal. I know nothing about bearded seals but they were cutting and preparing the meat right outside my doorstep so I decided to take a few pictures:

Lovely May Weekend...

As I showed in my last post, the lousy weather that can be displayed during May up here...this weekend the opposite happened as the weather was very good. So I took my camera out and went along the shoreline of the coast of the Bering Sea and took some footage documenting the great weather:

May Snow Day

Just when you think the snow is melted and gone, and you wear that nice light jacket to work, you go outside for lunch and.... you're staring right into the epicenter of a late-season blizzard. By the time I made the 10-minute trek back to my house, I was sopping wet, covered in snow.















Although the snow banks around town have almost (keyword) completely melted (only a few small ones here and there), this stands as a reminder that it's not over til it's over. And up here, you can't expect the snow to be completely gone until at least June, then you can look forward to a month or more of rain. When I arrived in Anchorage last August, most of Alaska had gone 60 consecutive days with rain. And you wonder why I would prefer to spend my summers in the lower 48?

April Snow Drifts

Above is a picture of the front of my house in April. The weather in April was actually worse than March. It consisted of a 3-day rotation of: Snowing, freezing temperatures, and high winds. That's basically what you get in the winter in Unalakleet. It will snow for a day or two, then it will be become fairly cold, then it will warm up a bit but you'll have high winds. And when you have high winds, you get snow piled up all around town (including this mound of snow in front of my house that I have to get around each morning).

To the right is a picture of the snow stairway to my workplace. Because of the snow drifts, I never see too much of the actual steps for a good portion of the winter. So after I take my ten minute walk in snow boots to work, I scale the snow stairway that eventually leads to my office.

The local speed limit sign in Unalakleet is covered in snow. And below is a picture of the Catholic church in town, nestled behind a large snow bank.


The daylight has been getting progressively longer. I try to wear something over my eyes so I can fall asleep at a decent time. It's light til about 11:30/Midnight. And when I say "light" I mean that I could go outside without any street lights or anything and find my way around fine.

I'd probably estimate at this time that there's about 4 hours of actual darkness. I figure it doesn't getting totally dark til about 12:30/1 A.M., then starts getting light at about 4:30/5 A.M....In a couple weeks I'm going to create a video documenting currently how much light you will see in Unalakleet on an average night in May. I'm heading back down to the lower 48 at the end of May for about 2 months. So before I leave, (in creating the video) I'm going to stay up until it's completely dark and see exactly when that is.

Daylight

This is a picture from the back of my house at 10 P.M. on March 17th. The amount of daylight is already starting to bother me, when I took this picture it didn't seem to get dark at all til about 10. Now it doesn't seem to get dark til about 10:30, but it doesn't get completely light til about 8:30 a.m., which isn't too bad. The temperatures have been pretty moderate (for Alaska), about 20s-30s...and then it will dip down to 15 or 10 degrees. The snow has really started to melt, both of the main roads were almost completely dry yesterday, but we got some new snow last night but I don't think it will last too long.

February Blizzard 2011

I went home for lunch today, and when I was about to come back to work Unalakleet was rocked with a Blizzard. Again (like the December blizzard) this isn't the worse Bush Alaska has to offer, but it is something you will encounter consistently up here:

Unalakleet River Run

I decided to scout out a location to ice fish for an upcoming project I'm working on, so I took a snowmobile up the frozen Unalakleet river.

Bathing in Bush Alaska

Recently I came home to my village from a long trip, and discovered that my pipes had froze and I had no hot water. So I had to quickly improvise a way to cleanse myself:

Rock Wall/Flying Wild Alaska

This is a photo from right outside my house, the rock wall prevents flooding in the spring season, which there have been many floods in the past at this point where the river meets the sea. I cannot comment enough on the new Discovery show "Flying Wild Alaska"...it's so weird to watch the events that have been happening the last 6 months where I live on a national tv show. In the last episode (episode 2) they show a large moose that was shot by man who lives right next to my house. I remember walking home from work last fall and seeing the meat hung up on the meat racks and the hide laying right next to my pathway leading to my front door. I used to stop a few times walking to my house because the hide was so big that I thought it was a dog, and it startled me because there's a few rough and mean dogs in the village that wouldn't want to run into.

Episode 2 also talks about the suicide in the village of Shaktoolik, which was a extremely sad moment last fall, unfortunately it is something that happens quite a bit up here. Beyond outdoor activities (like hunting and fishing) there isn't really much going on, and a lot of young people become depressed and fail to find a purpose in life. So there are a lot of "Youth Leader/Job Corp" type of opportunities offered up here to help people along, just like the program offered by "Era" to help young people get on the path to become pilots. I'd say that if I was someone who grew up in Bush Alaska, I'd definitely become a bush pilot. There aren't many things in life that are more exciting or give you more of an adrenaline rush than what some of these bush pilots do.

The temperatures have been up and down the past couple of weeks. One day it's -20, with a high of -10, then the next day it's 15 degrees but the wind is blowing like crazy. Some nights are hard to sleep because of the howling of the wind blowing so hard against my house. It's supposed to be in the mid-to-upper 20s the next couple of days, so that will be nice. But then again, if the wind is blowing hard it doesn't really matter what temperature it is because it makes things completely miserable. The daylight is getting a lot better, the sun is pretty much up by 11:30 now, and it's completely setting around 6:30, so that's nice. I've noticed that the only real darkness you suffer from up here is in the morning, besides the sun not rising very high, the rest of the time it's not a lot different from anywhere in the lower 48.

Shopping in the Bush

I'm hoping to get a video up soon, documenting the basic shopping experience in an Alaskan Bush Village, but for right now I'll be giving a brief description of how it all works. Because the price of food at the local store in the village is so high (because of the cost to ship it up here) and because there's not a big supply of it anyways, most shopping in the Bush is done either online or on the phone through a catalog. There are two big companies that ship food up to the villages to consumers: Span Alaska and Fred Meyer. Since I've had so many problems with getting my food on a timely manner, and getting the actual food that I ordered, I only use Span Alaska...because I can't wait weeks up here to get the wrong order from Fred Meyer anymore....I've had a lot of problems with them, so I've lost all trust...

For example, once I ordered a bunch of bread and canned food. When the Fred Meyer package arrived (2 weeks late) I opened it to find 24 boxes of Dinosaur Egg oatmeal. Who in the right mind living up here would order 24 boxes of Dinosaur Egg oatmeal??? So after calling them and arguing with them for a while, they let me keep the Dino Eggs for free, and said they'd ship up my original order. Absolutely crazy, can you imagine living thousands of miles away from anyone, and the only thing you have to survive on is Dinosaur Egg Oatmeal?

So after that whole ordeal, I decided not to go with Fred Meyer anymore (and I've had only one actual bowl of Dino Eggs since the incident last fall). But anyways, when you order your food online you order a big bulk of items so you don't have to post an order every couple weeks and pay for all the shipping. I just put in an order for what I think will be my last Bush Food Order of the Winter: 40 lbs. of Ground Beef, 8 24 oz packages of Chicken Strips, and 12 Red Baron Pepperoni Pizzas. I already have a small stock of other things, so this should get me through the rest of the Winter.

Due to the fact that I travel quite a bit with my job, whenever I go to Anchorage or down to the lower 48, I'll get a few flat rate boxes and just fill them full of things like: Hamburger Helper, Raviolis, Fruit cups, all kinds of canned goods...basically just things that you can fit into a box that cost 1/3 the price you'll pay for it at the local grocery store. This saves a lot of money, plus friends and family members send me food from time to time in the mail (non-frozen obviously), and it all just helps me to avoid the local store as much as possible.

The one thing I do like to get at the store that isn't too overpriced is the casual energy drink. These days an energy drink goes for about 2-3 bucks in the lower 48. At the local store they go for around 3-4 bucks, so the mark-up isn't bad when compared to other items. For example, you can typically get a 12-pack of pop for around 5-6 dollars, up here it costs 13-14 bucks for your cherished Dr. Pepper or Mt. Dew or whatever. So basically what you would pay for a 12-pack of Corona bottles is the same price as a 12-pack of Pepsi.

I'll be elaborating more in my Bush videos of the two grocery stores here, but for right that gives you an idea of how things are up here. I also have some beautiful pictures of some sunrises and sunsets right outside my house that I hope to have up when I get some time in the next couple days. Be sure also to checkout: "Flying Wild Alaska" on the Discovery channel (comes on Fridays), the first episode was last Friday, but this series is based entirely in my village of Unalakleet, Alaska. My house was actually on one of the opening shots in the Pilot episode.

December Blizzard 2010

A couple days before I flew out for holiday break there was a big snow fall, followed by a blizzard. Although this isn't the roughest blizzard you'll see in Bush Alaska, this is something that you may encounter quite frequently when living up here. Also, at the end of this video is a shot of a bush plan flying over my house. My house is right on the coast between the Unalakleet River and Bering Sea, so when the planes come in they fly right over my house, and sometimes appear as though they're flying right into my house...ha.

Flying in Bush Alaska

I just recently got back to the village from the holiday break, and as I was leaving for the lower 48 I decided to take some video showing the basic Bush Alaska flying experience. There are two airlines in my village: Era and Pen Air. I mainly fly Pen Air to get to Anchorage because I've found some good deals with them and they fly earlier in the day. However, Era also flies to Anchorage, and is the actual popular airline off of the current Discovery show "Flying Wild in Alaska."

I wasn't able to see the first episode air on January 5th, but basically they filmed the show in my village from July to November 2010. So if you tune into the show, almost all of it takes place where I live. What's unique about Era is that they do so much more than just basic passenger flights. I'm not an expert on the company, but I imagine you could probably learn a lot from watching the show. The only time I've actually flown on Era was on a small charter plane....2 hours, no bathroom, and no complimentary drink or snack.....but that's how most charters are out here.

And that's my experience so far with Era, when it comes to Pen Air, their planes seat about 25 people (again, don't quote me on that), and provide the basic in-flight services that every airline does (except no movies). As I was flying back to the village yesterday, a man was actually kicked off the plane in Anchorage for being too intoxicated. So I guess the rule of thumb is that if you plan on flying into the village, and you show up obviously drunk, they won't let you fly. Most villages are either dry (no booze) or damp (you can order booze in, but no one can sell it in the village...my village is damp), so it makes sense that you're not allowed to fly into the village if you're hammered.

Below is my first intro-video to flying in Bush Alaska: