Weeks 10-12

Flying from Petersburg to Juneau is only around a half hour but it is some incredible views.  Here are two glaciers that are just north of Petersburg in Thomas Bay.  The glacier on the left is Baird and the one on the right is Patterson.  Patterson glacier runs into Patterson lake but that is accessible from Thomas Bay.

Here is another shot of one of the glaciers in Thomas Bay.  This is the Baird glacier.

Here is just another shot of Baird.

August 15-19th I flew down to Seattle to meet up with Therese.  Here I am at Pike's Place Market.  This is the market that is famous for people throwing fish.

This is the gum wall behind the market.  There is tons of gum put on these walls and some people will even make pictures out of their gum using different flavors for different colors.  In the center of the picture someone made mario out of gum.  It is pretty impressive. 

With all the different flavors on the wall Therese could not help herself and had to take a few licks.

Here is Therese's first raw oyster.  We both had our first one's here and we even had them a couple of times.  They are pretty good.  Oddly, the waiter we had here was from Minnesota.  He lived in uptown before moving out to Seattle and he said that he now lives in their equivalent of uptown.

Instead of going into the Space Needle we went to the top of the Smith Tower in Pioneer Square.  It was a great view and a really nice old building. 

This is also taken from the Smith Tower.  Here is the home of the Seahawks/Sounders and behind their stadium is the Mariner's stadium, Safeco Field.

We were lucky and the Twins happened to be playing in Seattle when we were in town.  We had seats in the front row of the upper deck right behind home.  Twins lost but it was a lot of fun to go to another stadium.

I finally caught some nice keepers.  I went fishing at Blind River Rapids and caught a couple of Coho Salmon.  I am smoking them and vacuum packing them to bring home.  I am hoping to get a few more.

Here is half of the Timber Sale Prep crew with their catch.

I have not had very photos up recently because the screen on my camera broke.  I can still take pictures but I have no idea what I am looking at or if it is focused.  I have a new screen on the way so I will hopefully start getting more pictures up.  I am now working in a new area so I have new stuff to look at and take pictures of.  Plus I will hopefully have more fish pictures.

Weeks 8 & 9

I finally caught a fish that I was actually fishing for.  This is a Dolly Varden trout.  This fish was around 12" and was large enough for me to smoke back at our bunkhouse.  I did not have a live well with me, the best I could do was a ziploc bag.

This is the view upstream in Petersburg Creek.  This is where I caught the Dolly Varden.  To get here we had to cross the Wrangell Narrows and paddle upstream.  We timed the whole trip with the tides so the paddling was not so bad.  We had 5 or 6 kayaks and 1 canoe.

This is a little further up the creek.  There are a few small cabins along the banks of the creek.  Supposedly some are still owned privately but they are never visited.

This is looking back downstream.  The guy in the kayak was with us and he caught a few Dolly as well as a Cutthroat trout.

Here is the canoe I took out fishing.

Here is a shot looking south over the Wrangell Narrows.  I was working in a helicopter unit and we had a pretty clear view.  I finally found out about how high up we are working and at this spot I am around 1000'.  The very first unit I worked in was the highest one we have and the top line there is a little over 1500'.

I was pulling flagging from a boundary that needed be adjusted when I came upon a porcupine that was walking on the ground.  At first I thought it was a small bear cub even though it would have been way too small.  Thinking it was a bear cub scared me a little because the mama bear would have been close and I could have gotten in some trouble.  Luckily though it was just a porcupine and all that happened was I scared him down the hill.  I was also walking down the hill and eventually he decided it would be wise to climb up a little tree.  It was not all that wise since he was then stuck around 9' up.  I took advantage of this and climbed up on a stump next to him and got a pretty good look.  I have another photo of him that follows this one and I have a video of him trying to move around on these tiny branches.   

Deer hunting opened up on August 1st and we were told that we should expect a lot of boats at our dock.  So far there have only been a few and this is one of them.  It is a really nice, handmade row boat called a faering.  It is all wood and steel.

This is the float dock where there are two companies with float planes that we contract out for flights. 

This is a Cessna float plane.  I finally got to ride in one of these, it was not this exact one but one that was the same model. 

Here comes the beaver that I rode in to Kake for the Dog Salmon Festival.

Here is the plane I took to Kake.  This is a beaver which is supposedly the workhorse of the float planes.  This one was built in 1956.  The pilot is the one in the picture.  I had my picture taken in front of the plane and while riding in it but I have not yet been emailed those photos. 

This is during takeoff.  These houses are just north of downtown Petersburg.  The plane is really loud and slow but the take off was really smooth.  I guess it is probably because you do not gain altitude very fast and we only got up around 1000' or so.

Here we are starting to head toward Duncan Canal then north toward Kake.  Those islands in the background are the Sukoi's. 

Here is Petersburg Creek at low tide.  This is the creek in the earlier pictures where I was fishing.  You can see why we rode in with the tide and out with it.  Had we stayed too long we would have have to walk our boats out. 

Here you can see the famous Kake dump.  Everyone likes going there because it is unbelievable that it exists.  You just drive up to this dug out area and toss your garbage in.  It does not matter what you are throwing out, it all goes in.  This is a popular place to see bears and bald eagles up close. 

The Kake runway is in the distance there but we landed in the water and went to the harbor. 

Kake is home to the world's tallest totem pole.  There really is not a whole lot going on in town so at least they have something to brag about.

Weeks 6 & 7

Here is a shot from the bottom line of a helicopter unit that I was working in.  You can kind of see a blue-green speck in the lower left quarter of the picture.  That speck is our work truck. 

While working in one of our units we realized that we were almost at the top of one of the mountains so during a break we climbed the rest of the way up and it looked out into a valley and Lindenburg Moutain.  This picture is looking at Lindenburg Mountain.  There is a radio repeater at the top but I was not able to get it to come into focus and it kept disappearing in the clouds. 

We have been having some incredibly nice weather lately.  Over the past few weeks we have had only one or two days of rain per work week.  Near the center of this photo you can see a sharp pointed mountain that is kind of being framed by clouds.  That mountain is Devil's Thumb.  It is on the US and Canadian border and stands a little over 9000 ft. 

With how wet the forest is here there is moss growing everywhere and even mushrooms growing out of the moss.

I had to go to the top of a mountain to measure a temporary road that will spur off the road in the picture and this muskeg was at the top.  It looks like a park with these small trees and plants around this small pool and the grass looked well taken care of.

This is another shot from the top of the mountain with the muskeg.  The water in the background is Duncan Canal. 

Like I said earlier, we have been having some great weather.  Devil's Thumb is visible again here.  It is the loner peak just left of the center. 

Here is a sea lion that hangs out at one of the public docks.  This thing is huge.  All day is just sits here and either eats herring that are swimming by or it waits for people to clean their catch and toss in the scraps.  I have seen up to three sea lions swimming around together in this spot at one time.  I was originally trying to take a video of this one so I was sitting on a bench just a few feet away from it and it was just floating there staring at me.  After about two or three minutes it swam away and I realized that I had never pressed record.  

Same sea lion, another angle.

There is lupine all over up here, all of it is purple unlike the variety that we have in Minnesota.

Near the airport there is a hiking trail called Raven's Roost that leads to a USFS cabin that can be rented out.  The trail is 4 miles long and ends at the top of a mountain that is 1,745 feet.  I hiked it with one other person and the trails here are slightly different than those at home.  There are a lot of boardwalks like this which can be nice but with how wet everything is and how shaded the forest floor is they were a little slick.  I ended up wearing my work boots since they have spiked bottoms.

Near the top of the mountain we came across some of remaining snow and ice.

Here is the cabin.  It has a table, oil heating stove, and a loft that can fit up to eight people, although I think that would have been a little tight.  There is a ladder on the far side of the cabin that leads to a hatch that goes directly into the loft and supposedly this is needed in winter because it may be the only way in. 

Here is the view out of the hatch in the loft. 

While we were sitting at the cabin the southbound jet came by.  It is coming from Juneau and stops in Petersburg before heading toward Seattle.  We found out the next day one of our supervisors was on this plane coming back from Idaho.

This is the view from the cabin looking northwest at Kupreanof Island, which is the island that I work on.  Petersburg is located on Mitkof Island.

This is another shot looking across the Wrangell Narrows at Kupreanof Island.  This shot is looking southwest. 

On the way back down from the cabin I realized that you can see town in the distance here.  It is in the center of the page between the trees.

This is another picture from the walk back down.  This is looking into Frederick Sound which lies northeast of town.  The two islands in the sound are the Sukoi Islands.  One a clear day there are a few glaciers that can be seen from up here and because of how some of the landscape is shaped it is possible to see into Thomas Bay.  I will hopefully get to do some work up there in a few weeks and while we are there we may get a chance to walk on a glacier that comes into the bay.

We see porcupines everyday at work.  Here is a small one that was running in front of our truck.  This one was funny to watch, it seemed confused about what to do and then it stepped into a puddle, stopped and looked at its foot and then tried to figure out a way around the puddle.

We see a bears every once and a while but usually they are running across the road pretty fast or in one instance it was running down the road in front of our truck.  This bear was pretty patient with me.  I had time to get out of the truck to grab my camera from my back in the back.  I took a few pictures while driving toward it and we were getting pretty close but when we hit the brakes the sound of the gravel spooked the bear and it ran off.  The day I saw this one I had also seen a lot of grouse, deer, porcupines, and even two wolves.  We hear wolves howling in the woods but it is really rare to actually see them.

I went fishing after work to catch herring for pickling but we had no luck catching what we were going for.  Actually, I have yet to catch something that i was actually trying to catch.  Here I am with a small halibut.  It is a very small one compared to what most people are catching but I cannot complain too much, at least I caught something.