Arctic Adventures

"Oren, Who's coming to visit?" "Uncle Brenden!?" Oren was pretty excited that Brenden was coming to visit. He told stories about how he was going to go out and catch fish, and see moose, caribou when Brenden gets here. Oren was just fired up when he saw the "Big Airplane" that Brenden came on. He couldn't stop talking about the big airplane and then "neeeuuum!" Brenden got here on Wednesday and we went out first thing in the evening to go fishing. I had a whitefish hotspot lined up that I knew we would be able to get a lot of fish right away. Sure enough we got a pile of them. On Thursday after work we headed up the river a ways to try by Quesooks and Willies we found whitefish and grayling there but no trout. The sun is up until almost 11 so we took full advantage of that.  Trying to See Fish Friday we went on a bear hunt. I wanted to try to get a spring bear to eat. I have heard that they are a lot better eating now than i...

While visiting in Michigan over break, I was asked to share what general life is like in the arctic.  I find this difficult, because all of the things that seemed so crazy and out of the ordinary only 4 years ago, have now become part of the norm for us.  For some of you that have come in contact with our blog AFTER my first year here, I will try to recap some of the big changes we had to adjust to.   1)  Our village is a fly-in village.  We are not on the road system and you cannot drive here by car.  In the winter, people travel by snow-go from Kotzebue which is about 60 miles.  When the water is high enough in the summer, many people boat down the Noatak River to Kotzebue as well. 2)  We order all of our groceries through the mail.  (Grocery stores overwhelm me now!)  We've tried a few different routes for groceries.  Fred Meyer has a "Bush Mail" department to which we can email our order;  they shop for us, box it ...

I had to get on here before Brett, just this once, to tell my side of a story ;) Brett has been looking for a snow-go since this fall, and finally found one that fit his needs.  He drove it up from Kotzebue a couple of weekends ago and has been on the go ever since.  Oren and I have got to accompany him on a few excursions, and I admitted to him that it was alot nicer riding on a machine that was made for 2 people, rather than clinging for dear life on the end of our other one.  Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut. He has been wanting to take a ride out to the flats and decided Sunday was the day.  It was a bit windy, but the trail was sheltered and the sun was shining brilliantly.  Now by a "bit windy" let me tell you that it was absolutely whistling down from the north and in the short trip to the actual trail, I was ready to call it quits.  My boys both have nice, warm fur hats, but not me.  My ear felt frozen, and I'm pretty sure the ...