the humidity before the storm...

tropical storm hannah has blown through our neighborhood today. mostly it's just left a lot of water in its wake but the real annoyance of the storm was the humidity on friday and saturday before the rain came. i'm all about sanitary use of public bathrooms and am a big fan of the paper seat covers. however, the paper seats were not my friend as i ventured out for a bit of touristy activity in the city. it was so humid that the paper seats stuck to my seat instead of the toilet seat... a minor annoyance to be sure but an annoyance at the storm just the same.

opening up

ok ok, the restricted blog was too hard to maintain and too confusing for too many people who didn't already have gmail accounts. so we're opening this up to the big wide world. i know i'm overdue for a post... i've got some thoughts cooking. hopefully i'll have something good in the next couple weeks for you. and happy labor day. e

leaving the lower 48...

we flew into fairbanks at 1:30am and it was still light out. a bit dusky but still totally light.

we relaxed at the hirt homestead and saw the sights in fairbanks including the pipeline.

we drove in the rain to fish camp- it was a beautiful drive that i'm sure would be even better with no rain but still was impressive. fish camp is on the copper river. two families have buses that have been outfitted as rv's, the hirts have a camper or two, there's a shelter for filleting, a fire pit, the fish wheel with super steep walkway, a couple of conex boxes for storage, a latrine, and a bath house under construction... and when it's raining, there is a lot of mud- thank goodness for mud boots!

the fish wheel scoops up salmon who are swimming upsteam to spawn (that means lay eggs), dumps them into the hopper where they wait to be scooped up, thumped on the head, gills cut to drain blood from meat, filleted, marinated in papa hirt's secret soy/sugar-based tub o' stuff, and then smooked... not smoked, not cooked, smooked. takes about 8 hours and is duh-licious!

this is the smooker- a wwII era army field cooker thing that papa hirt picked up at an army surplus store. he's so resourceful!

after a couple days at fish camp (with a dismal take but not a complete skunk), we drove to valdez for a night of camping and a halibut charter.

so the charter was well... let's just say good and bad. the 2.5 hour ride out the prince william sound was gorgeous. the 30 min ride through the tidal swells into the open ocean was hell and pretty much set the tone for my deathly ill day at sea. we caught a few fish but only one (a 35lb halibut) was worth keeping. not so impressive. the one bright spot was a huge school of killer whales with a few babies and a huge bull that had a 5ft dorsal fin. the big dorsal fin came within less than 100 yds from the bow of the boat (where i was laid out trying to not puke but still watch my pole).

after valdez, we spent one more quick night at fish camp and then went on our way to drive the denali highway- amazing. we did a quick overnight hike in to landmark gap which was breathtaking. we saw lots of scat (aka poo-berries) but no animals. we did see some moose and porcupines while driving but thankfully, nothing while we were hiking.

despite the frequent rain, mosquitoes and lack of fish, alaska was stunning. the hirt family were great hosts- can't wait until they open their floor-n-breakfast (aka f-n-b)! more photos are in the AK 2008 album- link is on the right. e

happy 4th of july!

here we are, sitting at home while the booms of fireworks are going on outside... it was raining when we came home from the park with a friend and her super cool dog Chase. so we kind of canned the plans to go to the mall and monuments for fireworks. i suppose we may regret it later but it's nice to be dry inside. and we can see a couple sets of fireworks from our window anyways so we're still getting the cultural experience of fireworks on the 4th of july.

you all may be pleased to see we have been organizing photos and posted a link to our albums on the blog. i've mostly been going through my photos so there are more from jared that we need to get loaded. but we've got a pretty good start. i'll work on catching up the stories that go with many of the albums.

we head out for alaska tomorrow- more fabulous photos on the way. can't wait for all that fishing and camping! e

a lot of catching up to do

i don't know if i should start at the beginning or start from today. probably today since i don't really know when the beginning is... maybe i'll start from october 2005 when jared and christy became jared and christy. although i think it started well before then.

i don't think the travels really got rolling until the summer of 2006. that's when i met jared's family in bako, jared proposed and two days later deployed the first time, i went on my annual yosemite trip and a havasupai trip with my spice girls, and i also went to india and pakistan for work. i went back to pakistan in the fall of 2006 right after thanksgiving and stayed for christmas, new year's and all the weeks in between those holidays and came home just in time for jared's homecoming from iraq. then jared met my family in florida and we got married just a couple weeks later, honeymooned in belize, and spent about 6 weeks languishing in our new home. then it was up and running again to england this time for reserve duty, jared met me there and we drove to scotland for a weekend. i wasn't even home from england yet when i got the phone call that i was going to iraq and had 10 days after i got home from england to pack up, prepare and report. enter camp shelby and my flashback in time to wwII era living conditions and playing g.i. jane for 5 weeks. bad got worse with a week in hellishly hot kuwait, or poowait as it's more commonly known in these parts, and 3 days of desert training with some unruly sailors. worse got nightmarish in the transient tents of baghdad but improved somewhat with a trailer after a month. vast improvements came another month later with a move to the green zone, a hard building to live in, and jared for a roommate. fast forward through 14-18 hour days of not much more than sleep, work, eating, exercise (a little) and precious little downtime watching the office to the return to the land of more than just work. one week at home to see mom wallaker and get a little unpacked was enough to get us back out the door for some serious vay-kay-shon. 3 weeks in costa rice, surfing, learning spanish, and basically risking our lives at the base of a very active volcano for 3 days. almost two weeks after costa rica brings me to present day... so now you know where we've been, sort of, for the past two and a half years. see future flashback posts for more detail on many of these events.

i'm doing invite only for the blog- i'm not so keen on randoms keeping up with our comings and goings. email me email addresses for anyone i may have missed on the invite list. photos in nice organized albums are coming soon. e