The summer of my content happiness

Hello everyone. My regular coffee shop connection has been refusing to upload pictures to this website, so I will simply give an update.'

It's been a busy summer and I am tired, but I have also enjoyed myself very much. This last weekend the Mongolia contingent went up to Anchorage to do paperwork and health screenings, and the mission is now official, and not classified at all: we'll be in Mongolia for about three weeks next month, helping the Mongolian military in the capstone exercise of their UN certification. Our company will consist of our platoon (US), a Mongolian platoon, and an Indian or Nepalese platoon. This should be a wonderful way to finish this interesting summer.

Some recent highlights of my Sitka Sound adventures have been: a largely fruitless abalone hunt on weather-beaten rocks south of Sitka at very low tide (although I do have some cool pictures of undersize abalone, and horrendous scratches on my kayak to show for it), a couple of good hikes on Verstovia, and pretty good birdwatching from the tour boat on board which I now work - the St Michael. I have learned a lot about botany, but still not nearly enough to really know what I am looking at. In fact, I made a pretty embarrassing mistake last week when I triumphantly announced that I had found a rare Botrychium. Matt Goff politely suggested that it was in fact the very same Cryptogramma I had photographed and posted on this blog last winter.

Quick update

It's been over a month - once again I just can't get around to updating this site. I just came back from some training, and when I get settled again I will try to finally post some plant pictures.

Bragging about animals I saw at work

This is simply a list of cool things I saw at work on the boats in the last week and a half or so.

Obviously, this is a mother brown bear with two cubs; they were eating crabs and other intertidal goodies:


And a mink looking for salmon fry at Medvejie:


This is an immature bald eagle:


Here is the back and blowholes of a gray whale:


The back of a humpback whale:


A fantastic bear!


I know; I said I'd post something about interesting plants, but it was easier and quicker to just put this together.

.

Time flies when you're having fun!

I thought it had only been five days since the last entry, yet I am late again! I have been really enjoying myself, though, and days are flying by much too fast for me to keep track. I finally went up a little mountain called Sugarloaf, which is about 45 minutes away by kayak, and took a picture of a few common plant species, such as this beautiful bull pine (or shore pine) Pinus contorta var. contorta:


I also photographed this dwarf dogwood Cornus canadensis:


And this mountain hemlock Tsuga mertensiana, which is one of my favorite trees:


Here is another bear photo from work:


And a seventeen-pound king salmon caught near Long Island:


I also ran the Medvejie half-marathon, and won it in 1:23'07''. It was a good run, very scenic, mostly on dirt road, and it even got exciting when the safety guy on his bicycle had to chase a brown bear off the course.

A few critters

It's been hectic with endless days filled with endless work and play. I just love it here in summer. I only did one long kayak trip yet (no time to write about it), and a few great hikes. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera on the best hike of the year yet, so I guess I just have to do it again later...

Anyhow, here's a sea otter I photographed off Inner Point on Kruzof Island:

And some harbor seals on the Parker Group:



A brown bear, in Silver Bay where we have been seeing them about every other day:


A tufted puffin - one of about 150 we saw off Saint Lazaria Island:


.

Work and training at Allen Marine

I thought I would segregate the things I do a little – this is about my job as a deckhand on the passenger vessel Sea Otter Express, which does tours mostly to the Medvejie hatchery in Silver Bay. In this boat-cleaning picture you can see the naturalist (Ryan), and captain (Russ):

We started the season off with a lot of training; everything was covered from company history to firefighting. This picture is of an evacuation drill, with Alex and Mindy in the foreground:

And here is Pablo, going through fire-fighting practice. We all got to do it, and I thought it was a valuable and fun part of the training:

Finally, here we are in one of the CO2-activated life rafts, after we deployed it in the harbor on a glorious day:

The tour has been good. I am sunburned, and from time to time I find interesting birds, bears, and plants. I even made time to go kayaking, but this is all for another post, when I get around to it.

First post of the 2008 tourist season - finally.

Once again, I am late posting news to the blog. After the last one about three weeks ago, I went back to Juneau to take my final exams and undergo three days of training with the National Guard. The final exams went very well, except for the twelve-page final philosophy paper on the ethics of ambiguity. An interesting topic, but I just ran out of things to say right around the eighth page. As for training, I scored expert on the M16 marksmanship event (it isn’t a very difficult thing to do, really; about 10% of us get expert), we did some counseling, we had a random drug test for everyone, a physical fitness make-up test, and supply issues to sort out. Overall, it was a rather productive week. I even got to work a little bit for a Sitka store that had a show in Juneau and needed help setting up and breaking down.

Birding in Sitka has been very pleasant, with low numbers, but a rather high diversity of migrants. There have been many surface ducks and shorebirds. I am working on the passenger vessel Sea Otter, which does tours in Silver Bay, South of Sitka. We go down to a salmon hatchery and we don’t see all that much wildlife generally, aside from the occasional bear, an eagle’s nest we like to visit, and the jellyfish, starfish, trees, slugs and birds I like to point out to the tourists.

I'll post a few recent photos to see if this internet connection really is capable of uploading, and then if it works I'll go ahead and put up some plants I promise I'll really do it time seriously this time it's for real I swear I'm definitely undoubtedly without fail going to do it.

Trumpeter swan Cygnus buccinator:

Ruby-crowned kinglet Regulus calendula:

I didn’t get a bear photo yet this year, so here’s a track I found up Indian River: