Pictures

Although we have not been writing much, there has been a lot happening as usual. Here is the super fast update starting with today and backtracking. As of today the snow is almost gone except for some old snow drifts. . .Yippee!! The temperature has been hanging around 40 degrees and I don't think it is getting below 32 at night anymore. The ice on the river is trying to go out and I try to help it as much as I can by watching it closely. . .This is kind of like watching water about to boil, but more fun. There is something fun about watching large chunks of ice float and crash into each other! The river has broken up in front of our house, but up and down still have ice. Somebody was out in their skiff yesterday! By the way, a boat is a vessel typically larger than 20 feet and probably can go in the ocean. Everything smaller is a skiff. That is the definition I have come up with for Koliganek anyway.

Yesterday, Molly and I decided to get a puppy! We had tried to get one earlier this month, but the girls who owned them decided we couldn't have one after we had it at our house for about half an hour. . .Its brother was lonely. Anyway, we noticed that my favorite dog in the village, Luda, was pregnant about a week ago. She is my favorite because she loves to play fetch to no end. For example, Molly and I were walking and she came to see us, not having a stick she tried to take one that was still attached to the ground. Unable to detach this stick, she settled for a rock which she brought to me so I could throw it for her. I did. Molly thought it best to pick a stick for her so she went about breaking a stick off of a nearby bush. Seeing this, Luda got extremely excited and could barely contain herself while Molly fought with the bush for a very long time (maybe 2 minutes?). This is the dog that would put a particular chunk of ice into my hand so I would throw it for her earlier this year. I can only hope that her puppies will do this with ducks and geese!

Back to the puppy, I talked to my students to find out Luda's owner and told them to let me know if they heard that she had her pups. One of our students told us on Saturday that she had her puppies and where we could find them. They were three days old when we saw them and we arranged with their owner to let us take one when we get back from Wisconsin. Now we just have to pick which one we want. They are all black except one brown, which is already claimed. They are labs in case I did not mention this. We basically just need to decide if we want a male or female. Any thoughts? This dog will be part of my bear protection plan while I am hunting and fishing and will serve as a reason to go for walks every day.

As of sometime, I have a boat! Ron and I are buying a boat together from a friend in town. All we need to do is pay for it! Look out fish, here I come!

Molly had a birthday! I am uploading pictures as we speak that include the kids that came to visit her. They all sang Happy Birthday to her outside our window!!

We hiked to Ketok. There are pictures of this adventure as well.

I think that is basically all. I will put pictures of the puppy and boat on as soon as we take them.

Climbing Ketok

A couple weekends ago, just before all of the snow melted, Brian and I took our snow machine out on the river just to cruise around. As we went, we decided to try to get as close to our mountain as possible (it's about seven miles from Koliganek).

We traveled farther and farther and it seemed that we would never reach the mountain. As we got closer we found thick woods surrounding the mountain. We almost decided that we just wouldn't make it when we found a clearing in the woods.

We were able to drive right up to the mountain, and if there would have been more snow, we would have been able to drive all the way up. We parked right at the bottom and began climbing. The incline wasn't very steep, but it was covered with small rock that made it a little slippery. When we got to the top, we found some really neat rock formations that we took a couple of pictures of. The view was amazing! We even saw a group of moose walking along a tree-line. It was such a beautiful day that Brian and I had to leave our snowpants, coats, mittens, hats, etc. in a pile at the top while we explored. The only problem with the weather was that it was a little hazy in the distance. If it had been clearer, we would have been able to see other mountains in the distance really easily.

When we returned from our adventure, we checked to see what the elevation of Ketok Mountain is since it wasn't as high as we were expecting. We found that the highest part is about 1700 feet high. And if you don't know about our mountain, it looks like a pregnant lady laying down. You can see her head/face, her chest, her belly, her legs, and then her feet. We walked along her chest which is the second highest part from her belly. In the picture of me sitting on the rock formation, you can see her belly in the background.

We had so much fun that day! Now we have made plans to do lots of hiking this summer. We want to canoe down the Tickchik lakes and explore the mountains around there! It should be fun!