Here's what's been up:
Friday, June 17th: well, today is payday, which is always a good day. Nice to see some money coming into the old bank account.
Today was a normal day of work, nothing too crazy happened that I can recall. I cleaned out the half of the cattle trailer that Nelson the moose calf was living in.
I later helped in the ticket booth from 1pm to 3:15pm which is stressful. I don't like doing quick math or messing up with people's money- so I did not really like that type of work. At our daily 5:15pm staff meeting, intern Sarah told us some stories about people climbing over the people fence at the brown bear enclosure and walking right up to the bear fence which is a huge no no. Sometimes people go on vacation and leave their brains behind.
After work ended at 6pm, Rick- one of the maintenance guys here gave us some smoked salmon that he had caught and it was delicious! I am eating a lot of salmon up here and quite like it.After dinner, a group of us interns and some staff drove the 12 miles north to Girdwood- the closest actual town, and played basketball at the school in town. It's fun to still be able to play basketball, although our trips into town to play basketball are not too frequent. Pretty good day overall I'd say.
Saturday, June 18th: A day off. I slept in until about 11:45am- then made a nice breakfast. I then went on an adventure with my friend Michael Thomas, or MT as I will refer to him as from now on. We rode our bikes five miles north to on the Seward Highway to Blueberry Hill- which is actually a 3,500 ft. mountain. We parked our bike in the woods then clamored our way to the top. It took about four hours to bushwack our way up through the spiny devil's club plants and terrible swarms of persistent mosquitoes. They were really getting to me to the point that I had to wear my big rain jacket all the way zipped up with my hood on even though I was sweating already from the 68 degree day. Although by the time we reached the top, I had completely drenched my shirt and rain jacket through with seat, it was better than the mosquitoes.
Devil's club:
It was a good hard climb. We crossed lots of snow patches on the way up.When reaching the top, we took a good half an hour rest, as well as lots of pictures.
On the way down, we did lots of glissading (sliding down snowpatches on feet or butt) It was tons of fun and we got down way faster than hiking! MT glissading:
We then hiked, scurried down a waterfall ravine. It was wet and dangerous, but fun. I dropped my knife in its sheath into the waterfall/stream, and only recovered the knife. I'll have to make a new sheath for it now. MT and I did our fair share of falling, but with the assistance of alder trees, we were able to scramble most of the way down until it got too steep. We then bushwacked back into the woods the whole rest of the way down. The devil's club and mosquitoes were still terrible in the woods. When we reached our bikes, we were sore, boots soaked, mosquito bitten, prickled all over with devil's club spines, hungry, and tired. that five mile bike ride home was pretty rough as well to top it all off. Upon returning home, we raided the free concession stand food and gave our barking dogs a rest.
Later that night we played basketball with other interns and staff then watched the Blaire Witch Project. Weird night, but looking back on it, it was a great day. I was exhausted at the end of it.
Sunday, June 19th: I was up at 8:35am this morning. Another day of work. Breakfast was peanut butter and jelly on toast. I cleaned out the barn from 9am to 11:45am because we needed it super clean for the senator who was visiting the center today. I ran errands until 12:30pm then grabbed a quick lunch. I worked at the brown bear enclosure from 1pm until 5pm. Alaskan Senator Murkowski came today for a visit. Pretty neat. she drove up to the bears where I was but didn't get out of the vehicle. At 5pm when my shift was done, I walked the enclosure perimeter as required to look for holes that bears might dig and to make sure the electric fence is working properly. I called my dad because it was father's day, and it's just good to talk to him.
After dinner, we played some more basketball and had a good old time. Long day.
Monday, June 20th: typical day at work- morning bear shift. I had to tell a guy not to stand on the people fence and lean on the bear fence (which some parts are electrified). It was a little awkward but it was not a good choice what he was doing. After that, I cleaned out the mallard ducklings pen and put in a large water bucket to see what they would do with it. They loved it! They had never been in that much water, so they where splashing and swimming around like crazy. It was pretty cute.
After that, I bottle fed both moose calves, fed and pet the porcupine (yes, it's possible if you pet him the right way), fed and pet our Sitka black-tailed deer, fed our bald eagle, and fed our two great-horned owls. I thought back on the day and realized what a cool opportunity it is for me to be here and how it was my passion to do just this and that God provides. After all that, myself and three other interns tried to help our animal curator corral the Kodiak brown bear cubs into a holding pen so we could switch them out with the black bears, but it didn't go so well. No one got hurt, it's just that the cubs weren't too thrilled to be herded around there enclosure. We would live to try again another day. It was pretty fun and I got some cool video footage. It was quite the exciting day.
Well, I made a dent on the blog, more to come later!
