Recreating?

Our recreation time in Hope always includes hiking on the various trails. If we are dog-sitting Cooper, we bring him along and try to let him off the leash for a while. Big mistake! During our last trip up the Bear Creek Trail, Cooper discovered the delicacy that is porcupine (stekelvarken). Michiel ran him back home with half a face full of quills and we later had to drive him to the Pet Emergency clinic in Anchorage (1.5 hours away).

The vet put him under (narcose) and removed the quills while we went out for a pizza. He also gave him enough morphine to make him basically comatose for the ride home, the transport from car to house and into the following day.

Over the next two days, we discovered that more of the quills had worked their way through his fur/skin/muscles and Michiel held him down while I yanked them out with needle-nose pliers. Quills are evil things - barbed on one end and about 2 inches long.

All is well now and Cooper is back to chasing black bears up trees.

End of the Season

The tour season ended fairly early this year as we didn't have any bookings for the last week of August. It was just as well, really, because the weather turned gray and rainy (as is typical for late summer).

I had five tours in all - two tours that had little physical activity, which are geared towards those who might otherwise do a cruise but wanted a small group, van tour type experience. For me, these tours are tough because they require lots of driving and eating and very little exercise. I end up the week feeling fat and lazy. However, these tours do end up with a wonderful boat tour in Seward. I normally don't go on the tours, but I had a nice group and decided I'd go along. I was thrilled that I did because we saw puffins, sea otters, Steller sea lions and cormorants (aalscholvers) and we were surrounded at one point in the trip by a whole pod of orcas. We also had a portion of the trip in which we had at least 4 humpback whales (bultrug walvissen) in sight. One of them was playing by flapping its tail against the surface of the water. Excellent!

I also led two day hiker tours, which include 5 days of camping and 1 to 5 hour hikes each day. One of the trips (with Michiel) was great and the other was awful (bad weather and a difficult group, who bonded well with each other, but treated me like a servant. The highlight of THAT trip was getting stuck at a road construction stop and talking to a father and son from the Netherlands (Drenthe).)

The 5th trip was a new 7-day itinerary that included 4 days of camping. The weather was incredible! Hot, clear and sunny in all parts of the state. I couldn't believe that we could see every single mountain, including Denali, throughout the week. We even breakfasted at our campsite while watching the colors of Denali change from pink to white.

Now that the season is over, Michiel and I are enjoying recreational time in Hope and soon, we'll start packing and preparing for our ice departures.

Antarctic jobs!!!!!

Hurray, we have jobs at Antarctica. Our time and money that we invested to reach this goal finally paid off. No more worrying about what would happen if only one of us got an offer, or where to go / what to do if we wouldn't be able to get jobs.
Sheri is going to work for ATO (Antarctic Terminal Operations) and is going to be involved with passenger tracking, loading, etc. Michiel will be working in the Plumbing Warehouse as a Materials Person.
I will be leaving on the 1st of October for New Zealand and Sheri will follow on the 6th.

Earthquake!

Tonight we felt an earthquake!
We were on the bed, watching a dvd, when we felt our cabin trembling. After checking outside to see if it wasn't a bear or a moose rubbing against the logs we concluded that indeed it had been an earthquake. Michiel's very first ever.

We were very curious to see if we could find something on the internet and were surprised that only 3 minutes after the occurrence it was already on the internet. It was a force 4 quake, 12 miles southeast of Hope.
Here's is were we found the info.

On tour with Sheri

I've done quite some traveling with Sheri, but this time it was different. There were 5 more people with us. Sheri's bosses allowed me accompany her while she was working. We did the so called "Dayhiker Adventure tour" and it was beautiful. On our way we visited 3 glaciers, did lots of hiking, saw lots of wildlife (the group was very fortunate on the Denali Park bus, exclaiming upon return that they had seen everything) enjoyed gorgious vistas and had lots of fun. The weather varied from beautiful (for instance when we did a tour (with crampons) on the Matanuska glacier) to rainy in McCarthy.

On our 9 day trip we did some 1000 miles (1600 kilometer) of traveling by van and still we only saw a small part of Alaska. Our fellow passengers were amazed to hear that this distance is 5 times (and a bit) as long as the Netherlands from north to south. Of course I was happy to answer all their other questions about the Dutch.

Seeing Sheri work I must say that my already high admiration rose to a peak. Apart from driving a big van safely for so many hours a day she managed to also give info and other conversation while doing so. She took us out hiking and instructed us on how to do that safely. While camping she cooked/provided every meal (which means getting on top of the van an awful lot of times) and did the dishes. Now I know exactly why she is so exhausted when she comes back from a trip. I was glad that I could make life a little bit more easy for her on this trip.