Trip to Teller in the Fall

Last year, I made a trip to Teller, Alaska during the fall season.  I flew to Nome, then took a dirt road 70 miles to arrive at the village of Teller.  Here are some photos documenting that trip:

Beginning of the trip, as I pass by a road sign signaling how far the trip will be.

This is a few miles outside of Teller, don't have any real info on the Tisuk River.

Not sure what this used to be, but it looked cool.

It was located right off the main dirt road.

Teller, AK is in the distance as I come over the final hill.

The village of Teller, AK.

This was taken from atop the hill along the coastline, across the bay is the village of Brevig Mission.

This is sitting in the middle of town, saw some kids throwing rocks at the windows.

Not sure if they ran out of gas or what, but there it sits randomly on the beach.

Building in the middle of downtown Teller.

Peaceful, good weather evening.

The sun slowly setting on my wonderful trip to Teller, Alaska.

Gas Prices

 I guess at one time, Unalalkeet school ran a bus service to pick up kids 

     around the village.  I found this up in the hills surrounding the village at 

     the local dump.  I wonder how much it would cost to fill this up with 

with gas at around $7 a gallon?

I know one of the things people probably wonder about is, "What are the gas prices up there?"  Well in Unalakleet right now the price per gallon is:  $6.62.  Now, how does this relate to me?  Well, the only vehicle I drive currently is an ATV (Honda Rancher 420), so it costs about $30 right now to fill up my gas can which holds about a tank and a half.  So to go around town and do some basic things (like scenic trips in the hills, taking out the garbage, getting the mail, going to the store...etc..) right now I'll pay $25-$30 every 2-3 weeks, which is much cheaper than what someone pays doing a regular commute at a 9-5 job with an average vehicle.

*Note that the current price of gas is also coming off the summer prices, so that price is likely to go down as we head into the winter.

Back at At!

After a year-long sabbatical, I've decided to return to blogging about my adventures in Bush Alaska. Quite a bit has happened the past year, and I will be spending the next few weeks with occasional posts recapping the past 12 months.  

Going into my third year up here, I decided to purchase an ATV, many people have them in the villages because they are much more convenient and handy than a typical automobile.

This past weekend we had the most gorgeous weather in weeks, so I took the ATV around the beach and in the hills to capture some great scenery:

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.