Anchors(age) Away!

This past week we took our final trip to Anchorage for the season. We dropped a few items off at our favorite store, Goodwill, and were a bit teary-eyed as we drove away. But we soon returned to having fun and headed downtown for some last minute shopping. Downtown Anchorage is pretty different when it’s dark and past tourism season. We stopped at a few shops for some items we eyed earlier in the season before heading to an Anchorage cornerstone- Humpy’s Bar. We had been told about it several times over the summer and finally had a chance to stop in. Our resident trail crew volunteer, David, worked at Humpy’s on weekends and we finally stopped in to see him. He had a table saved in the corner for us to watch the open mic night. The bands was awesome and the people performing were surprisingly good. We stayed for a while before heading home to warm up by the fire.

Having a great time at Humpy's!

When we arrived home however, we checked the aurora forecast as we usually do and noticed the lights would be active that night. Ashley was beyond excited to try out her new camera tripod and finally capture the magical lights. They wouldn’t be active for a couple hours near us so we set alarms and tried to sleep a little before the show started. Around 3:00 in the morning we headed out toward our viewing decks. We made plenty of noise as we headed into the dark Alaskan night, keeping a close eye on the sky above us. Being out on the deck made us feel much more at ease that something wouldn’t come charging out of the bushes towards us. With the camera set up and our headlamps turned off we watched and waited. It didn’t take long for our eyes to adjust and we saw the faint band of light moving across the sky. We were so excited to see them and even more thrilled to catch the image on camera. The moon was nearly full as well so we took a few photos of that as well. After an hour of gazing at the sky we finally gave in to the chill of the night and headed back to finally get some good sleep.

Photograph of the Stars

The Aurora over Eagle River Valley

Believe it or not this is the moon, not the sun. 

The Aurora over the big dipper!

The next day we got a short hike in to take some pictures of the beautiful fall colors. We sat in the woods for a while and played with the new tripod some more. It was just a nice day to take it easy and enjoy what was right in our backyard. 

Having fun with the tripod

We’ve been having a lot of rain the past week here in Alaska. Tuesday and Wednesday were actually calling for Gail-force winds with gusts of up to 100 miles an hour! Fortunately, the forecast was off but we still had gusts of 70 miles and the wind howled for almost 30 hours. It was especially annoying on Tuesday because we were recruited to help teach a program for a large school group outside of the Nature Center. Ashley was teaching groups about the geologic timeline while Adam was explaining tectonic plates and overseeing a fossil dig. That was not the plan at the start of the morning but plans change pretty quick up here. The A-Team was split up and thrown into the hordes of 5^th graders but managed to keep them entertained. The wind whirled around them and nearly destroyed the activities but the A-Team prevailed and finished teaching just before the rain came in. After that the evening was spent in the cabin with a roaring fire and the sounds of the storm battering the cabin.

Last night was the end of summer volunteer potluck for the Nature Center. The party was so much fun and it was so nice to get the chance to say goodbye to all of our friends that we have made up here before we leave. Our bosses are so incredibly sweet and gave us some Nature Center gifts as an extra thank you for our help this summer. It was bitter-sweet but an excellent end to the season. We found out that two of the volunteers are actually headed the same route south that we are so we'll have friends close by should we need help. That will make the drive back a little less intimidating. We cannot believe that the summer is almost at an end...guess it is time to start packing. 

-the A-Team