I forgot to mention that E and I went over to Outer Point to check out the tide pools on the afternoon of the 4th. Saw tiny crabs and other invertebrates, and someone before us had left some really cool rock art! :-) Had a great time photographing that!


 

Tuesday, July 4th: Parade time! E and I marched with Juneau Peace Action and the Veterans for Peace carrying huge paper cranes on poles and signs about stopping the war in Iraq. The response was amazingly positive, and apparently very different from 3 years ago.
After the parade E and I wandered around Douglas Island checking out the festivities there, then headed over to her friend Ron's for a party. :-) Had a great time, and then it was home to pack!

 

More from East Glacier.
Columbine flower, ice limit marker 

After the hike we ate dinner and worked our way downtown for a music event at Marine Park and some Pel Meni before the fireworks at midnight. I met one of the state representatives, got a 'green' bag as an alternative to the plastic ones whose remnants outnumber plankton in the oceans (bet you didn't know THAT scary fact, huh?), and had an ice cream with Tlingit art on the cone. The Pel Meni place is a strange restaurant with one item on the menu and hours from 11:00pm-1:30am M-F. Weird. But good, in a spicy Russian dumpling sorta way. After we had gotten our dumplings, the task began on where to sit. Since I can't be inside of a bar in Juneau, we opted for a spot out on the dock where E and her friends could be on one side of the rope and we could pull the table over to me on the other. :-P We had a great time watching the crowd and eventually the fireworks. A great start to my last day in Juneau.
 

Not such a busy day...I slept in and walked the wetlands to get some mileage...hung out with Kaley...just enjoying some sun while it was lasting. (yes, the weather finally perked up!) E came home early so that we could go out to East Glacier Trail and retake some of the pictures that didn't turn out the first time. It was too cloudy the first weekend I was in Juneau, the mountains looked cut off and the glacier just blended right into them. It was really nice to get a good look at how my shape was improving...we made better time and it was just more fun not huffing and puffing all the way. It's a short trail, 3 miles for the whole loop, but with amazing views of the Mendenhall Glacier.

 

A few more from the flying excursion!
 

Sunday, July 2nd
Today I woke up and decided to take Mo's advice: call Des Keisler and see about going flying. He'd said he'd love to take me up in his plane, and I had gotten permission from the family..so it was up to me to call. I thought I would be waking him up at 9:30am on a Sunday, but no, he said he was going to Sitka at 10:00am and that I should come along. Oh man! Thirty minutes later I arrived looking at least 3/4 put together and just a tad nervous about what I was getting myself into. Turns out that Des flys a small turquoise plane and is well versed in cool places to see around Juneau. We went out to a bay that's known for its wildlife, hoping to see some bears/moose/mountain goats...Nothing was out right then, but we did fly over some gorgeous moutains and got a great look at the rim of the Juneau icefield....just breathtaking in person and I don't think I could really capture it in pictures. But these are my attempt anyway. :-) After the short trip out to the Bay we picked up his aunt and younger cousin to drop the boy off in Sitka at camp. Sitka is an hour west and right on the ocean with a population of about 8,000. Our stop was short, we dropped off the cousin and picked up two pies from the airport diner. Apparently they're rather famous at the Juneau airport and Des was instructed not to come back empty handed. Coconut banana cream and raspberry rhubarb if you were wondering. Dinner with Jim and Blair was really fun, they brought a coworker of Blair's named Amanda who's going to be a senior at a college in WA and is studying Art History. She and Blair both work for the cruise industry driving shuttle vans of tourists to and from the sightseeing trips they book while on the ships. We talked and ate and talked and ate for about 4 hours...the salmon, garlic bread, and berry dessert were deliciand we had a great time.

Saturday, July 1st:
Oh man, what a day! Friday I effectively spent the day at the gym, getting there early to do some cardio before an Iyengar yoga class, then coming back for a CoreFit workout later in the afternoon. Subway in between as well as a lazy, time-killing stroll through downtown. Helped my aunt scan a few documents and hung out at her office for the rest of the day.
Today E and I decided that we would try to hike Mt. Jumbo despite the cloud cover and just see how high we could get. The trail starts off just feet from someone's house on a street on Douglas Island and doesn't waste any time getting steep. We made it into and through the first patch of woods, about a mile up, before we came out into a meadow and some serious drizzle. It felt good at the time but posed a serious hypothermia risk if we'd continued up so we decided to hike back down and start over with a new trail. Ended up at Auk Nu, a 3 mile trail with a steady incline and a cabin at the end. :-) Oh, and lots of boardwalk. Lots, and lots of boardwalk. Through the swampy meadows with their shrunken and strange trees, and the woods with the mud and roots it went, springy and dangerously slippery. After a small eternity we made it to the cabin (note of advice: never trust time estimates from a speed walker) and discovered a group of hungover teenagers and a small liquor store's worth of alcohol. They were friendly enough and we didn't stay too long. The bugs were bad and getting worse the longer we sat for lunch. We left the kids to their bear paradise of open food, wrappers, and general carelessness. The view coming back down was spectacular, the whole Juneau valley was visible, but my camera was out of juice and I'm sorry I don't have any pictures.
So that was 8 miles there. After dinner at Hot Bite (yum! fresh fish and chips is incredible!) we headed out to the Nickelodeon theatre to see An Inconvenient Truth....oh man. Al Gore is my hero. Go see that movie if you have to mortgage your house for the ticket price. Ran into some friends of E's, Blair and Jim, who promptly invited us over to dinner on Sunday. :-) Turns out we were all headed over to Only Fools Run at Midnight charity race, Jim was running and E and I were going to do the 1 mile walk with friends. The walk was a blast, people linked together in costume as centipedes and competed for prizes...one group went as a sled dog team pulling a sled and another was the entire 50 states!

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!