Caching and the Parks.....

The boys and I have spent the past few days cleaning the house and getting ready for company but we've also managed to make a few excursions out and about. We picked up geocaching from one of our Alaskan friends (thanks again Finley crew) last spring and decided to give it a whirl on our own. Geocaching is using multimillion dollar satellites to find gedunk aka a cache(ammo cans/tupperware) in the woods. A lot of caches are exciting to the boys; they get to trade in small toys for someone else's small toys and learn how to use GPS at the same time. Some caches (generally micro or minicaches) don't excite the boys because they are simply about the hunt and offer no extrinsic reward. The Alaskan wilderness (or not so wilderness in this case) isn't always human friendly as this is the time of year that the mosquitoes feast. So many organisms have short active phases that everything is going wild right now (including the boys). Most of our excursions have taken us through weeds and grasses as tall as the boys. One has whined about bugs while the other clings to mommy's legs. Our searches have also led us to playtime in two new parks (Wonderland-BIG playground and Carter's-ducks). We have also discovered a super cool ice cream shop called Scoops ---The shop is decorated in retro 50s style and offers a game room to rent for ice cream socials.

Happy Father's Day

We spent Father's Day out and about with the boys who received an unexpected treat of balloon animals at the local Mexican restaurant. We then headed in to Anchorage to do a little shopping...so perhaps it wasn't an ideal Father's Day but at least we were all together. We are looking forward to quickly approaching visits from both sides of the family.

San Francisco - SETI/NASA Conference

I returned from the SETI conference on Sunday just in time to see the summer solstice "sunset" at the Anchorage airport. The ASSET conference was a neat experience. We heard talks from many scientists and received training on the VTT curriculum. David Morrison, Kathy McFarland and Jill Tarter (the scientist from the movie Contact) were some of our guest speakers. I really enjoyed the weather and the opportunity to acquire some new curriculum materials for the upcoming school year. I also enjoyed meeting colleagues from throughout the US, including my SFSU roommate from Hawaii. It was really a diverse and multitalented group. We also did a few touristy things like tour Pier 39 and hike the Golden Gate Bridge. I really missed the boys when we spent a day at the California Academy of Sciences. Landon would have really liked seeing the T-rex skeleton. The museum had a "Living Roof" which is bascally a roof top garden planted using about 6 inches of lava rock for soil.

How we spent our summer vacation....

Well, there's still alot of summer to go, but this was my week to be Mr. Mom while Jolene was in San Francisco for a NASA/SETI conference, so I took leave to watch the boys and take care of some things around the house. Spent Monday and Tuesday re-surfacing our driveway - it was only 2 yrs old, but had never been sealed, so I re-surfaced and sealed it. Took all day for the first coat to dry so I had to wait til Tuesday to put the second coat on. Then, Tuesday night I loaded the boys up in the truck and we headed off to the Kenai Peninsula to do some fishing for sockeye (red) salmon on the Russian River. Didn't get there til 11:00 PM and had to wait an hour to get a spot in one of the parking areas. Then, since the confluence of the Russian and Kenai Rivers are usually elbow to elbow with guys "combat fishing", I decided to hike with the boys up to the Russian River falls and fish the fishing holes in that area. I now know why not many people do that, it was 2.7 miles to the fishing holes with Grayson on my back in the backpack and Landon staying right by my side since it was dark on the walk in. The trail is nice, but too long of a hike carrying Grayson and all the fishing gear (waders, poles, gear, boots for all three of us, etc). I was pretty beat by the time we got to the fishing hole around 0230, and it was too dark to fish, so we waited til the sun came up about 0330. Unfortunately, the huge run of reds that had occured the weekend before wasn't a sign of things to come..instead, we think that most of this year's reds all ran up the river in the span of a few days and now there's not much left, so we didn't even see a fish in the river up towards the falls. We walked back to the truck along the trail (nicely kept trail...should have brought the stroller for Grayson) and saw a brown bear on the trail on the way back. The Russian River is famous for its salmon-eating brown bears, and they are pretty accustomed to people, so this one just glared at us and strolled off the path instead of chasing me like the one last month did. The last two pics above show the bear, but I didn't zoom in like I should have and the bear is pretty small in the pics....in reality he was an adult brown bear, and we initially mistook him for a person walking on the trail due to his shoulders/butt being so high off the ground as he walked. Will have to get Jolene down there when she gets back to have the professional photographer in the family get some better pics to post.

Here Comes the Rain Again....

Ok, well since it isn't actually raining perhaps I can't use that phrase. It is more like periods of gloominess with intermittant showers. The boys have taken their activities indoors for "craft" time. We were really blessed with a month or so of fabulous weather and really do need the rain. Hopefully, it won't last the rest of the summer! Grayson has learned another word too

"Dragonfly" They are all over the house and working hard to take care of our resident population of "moosequitoes."