Ok, so apparently this post did not go through the last time I tried it. Here we go again. Sunday we did indeed go for a walk, 3 miles in the pouring rain to test out my aunt's raingear. It works! :-) Went to the gym on Monday, that was amazing. Had a great yoga class, it was a more advanced level than I'd been to before and I was really challenged. I got into a handstand! Yup, I was upside down supported only by my hands. The instructor used the actual names of the asanas (poses) which was confusing but nice.
Other news....I finish my internship on Monday, and I might not be in again before then. We'll see what happens, I'm not going to worry about it and the ball is in her court.
Might be having dinner tonight with Elizabeth's friend's daughter. :-) That should be fun!
Rain again today.
 

Today it is raining. It has been raining since last Wednesday, with occasional breaks for wind and some sun. But today it is realllllly raining. Not much hope for a hike today. Plans? Possibly going downtown (I still have some souveniers to get), maybe working at my aunt's office. Lots of laundry. I am now intimately aware of everything in my suitcase and know when I am missing a sock or a hair-tie. I found both of them today while doing laundry.
Signed up for the Only Fools Run at Midnight 1 mile walk as a part of the 4th of July celebrations. They have fireworks on the night of the 3rd here, and the parade and parties are all on the 4th. It makes sense, since they have to wait till 12 anyway for it to be dark enough to do the fireworks...this way you don't have to go to work in the morning. :-P
I finished my Bio. Anthro. class on Thursday, I'm pretty sure I got a 4.0, but I'll know for sure on Monday. Interning is going kinda slow, but I have enough to do to get me through at least most of next week. Doesn't look like I'll be getting any field time, but oh well. I was still a "Student Intern for Beth Mathews of the UAS Biology Dept."
Sent a bunch of postcards on Saturday, I still have a few more to do before I leave. Wow, this month has gone by so fast...I only have another 10 days or so here. :-( It'll be a packed 10 days though, I can promise you that! Oh by the way, if you wanted to write to me you have until the 30th to get a letter in the mail and for me to get it before I leave. Thanks guys!

The weather lately has been rough, lot's of rain since last Wednesday and the occasional break in the clouds. During one such break this Sunday Elizabeth and I decided to hike the much-talked-about Herbert Glacier Trail. It's supposedly 5 miles each way, over a newly improved surface. In truth, it's 4.5 miles each way, over a newly improved surface. Due to the receeding of the glacier the landscape around that last half mile has changed, and is now a tangled mess of alder-trees and rock. Not fun, especially with limited markings for where to go. I think you're supposed to be able to get much closer to the glacier if you can make it that last half mile, but we decided it was a bit too dangerous to be stumbling around in. When we came back from our last bit of adventure, Elizabeth pointed out a baby porcupine sitting in the trees not far from the beach. The little guy didn't mind me taking pictures, until I was about 3 feet away, then he got his quills up. :-) Still he didn't run off, and scratched his head with his foot for the camera.

 

A few more pictures from West Glacier, sorry it's been a while since my last update. Ok, to recap the past few weeks...
Class is over tomorrow, Thursday the 22nd, and I'm not sure how to feel about that one. On one hand I will have lots more time and less homework, but on the other I've really enjoyed the class and all of the people in it. The material has been fun, even if 1/2 the book was review from Biology 195. I grew to like our professor a lot more over the semester, and I'll miss not being on campus too. I finally went to the cafeteria yesterday, I can't believe I'd been missing out on that one. :-P
My internship is going a bit slow, keep having miscommunication and computer glitches. I'm not too worried about it for some reason, I think it will work itself out fine. Last Thursday I went to Elizabeth's gym, wow! Such a nice facility, I've never heard of a gym with a 'silent room' where they don't have treadmills and you're supposed to keep the noise down. I also took a peak at the scale and apparently I've either been gaining muscle, or I've been eating waaaay too much organic food. I think it's the hiking, personally. I'm going back on Monday with a guest pass to drop in on some yoga and get a traditional workout in.
I finished reading a book called Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, very good. I've never read anything from that time or place before, so it was a new experience in content and style. Once Elizabeth finishes it we're going to watch the movie.
Ok, that's basically what I've been up to lately, homework and hiking!
 

The other major hike of the weekend was West Glacier Trail on Sunday. It's 3 miles up to a rocky ledge which is officially the end of the trail. Elizabeth hadn't been on the trail in a while and remembered the rocks being much more expansive and so we continued up the trail for 20 minutes or so, wondering when we would come out onto the rocks. It turns out we had passed the end of West Glacier Trail and were now on our way up the mountain. No good. So we turned around and went back to the rocks and had lunch. :-)
The views were spectacular and we took lots of pictures, these are just some of the better ones.
A little rock trail marker, so cute! 

These, my friends, are fiddle-head ferns. When there have been enough warm days in one spot, they will unfurl and look like perfectly ordinary little ferns. I think they're pretty neat because even though on my first day here I saw many of them already open, I keep running into batches of them that haven't seen the sun enough yet.
The best part of Saturday's hike was definitely the cold mountain stream that we stopped to rest at on the way back. We had goldfish crackers and cookies for lunch (which tasted amazing when you're hot/tired/sweaty) and stuck our feet in the seriously cold water. Yes, those are my feet in the last pictures, aren't they cute? :-P

Saturday Elizabeth and I hiked sections of Perserverance Trail and the trail into Granite Basin. The wildflowers were gorgeous, including the Chocolate Lily! Sooo pretty, I took lots of pictures but stuck to posting the best ones. The weather has been gorgeous, in the upper 70s since Thursday, and hopefully it should hold out until Tuesday.
By the way, anyone can comment on these entries now, I had one of the settings goofed up. Sorry!


 

More fun pictures from the East Glacier Trail! (note the tiny stick in between the two boulders on the top picture) :-P 

Sunday afternoon Elizabeth and I set out to hike East Glacier Trail. It passes a few streams that flow into Mendenhall Lake before ending at a lookout point where on a clear day you should be able to see a great deal of the Mendenhall glacier as it spreads 12 miles back into the Juneau Icefield. Unfortunately for us, it was a seriously cloudy day and you couldn't even see the tops of the mountains surrounding the lake, let alone most of the glacier. We've decided it will be worth it to come back another day and get some better pictures. Twas a great hike overall. :-D

 

Okay, so this blogging program that I use through Picassa doesn't always work properly. This is the self-portrait I was talking about.  

I was hiking by myself and so I didn't get to have a nice picture taken of me surrounded by mountains or anything, so I attempted a self-portrait. In other news, this trail was about 1.75 miles from beginning to end, and then you had to take it back, so it's about 3.5 miles total. 4.0 if you count the walk from Elizabeth's to the trail head. :-P
Friday I met Beth Matthews, the biologist I'll be working for at UAS. She studies harbor seal populations and the effects of tourism. We talked about what she needs help with, and I should be doing some data entry and cataloging of the articles she has amassed. Her philosophy is that people who have a connection with the data they are entering make less mistakes, so I'll be going out to do a little field work and get a first hand look at the harbor seals. :-D Also, I'll be learning how to use EndNote, a bibliographic program that allows you to enter bib. data and then just hit a button to transform the information into a reference or citation. Sounds like amazing help, apparently you can use it to catalogue research too. Cooool stuff.
While I was walking I was passed *twice* by a little old lady on a bicycle, who I couldn't resist taking a quick picture of as she passed. I was also passed by many the dog-walker... :-(

 

This post and the next one are pictures I took from the wetlands area behind the airport which is next to Elizabeth's apartment. You can see the sea planes in this first picture, as well as the Mendenhall glacier, which is even more spectacular in person.
The purple flower in the second picture is the Few Flowered Shootingstar (Dodecatheon pulchellum), pretty eh?
Sorry it's been a while since the last update, not many photo opportunities in the past few days. I took these pictures yesterday, and it started raining a few hours later. It hasn't stopped.