Polar Date 6/25/08
Hurray – I’m in Fairbanks again. It’s very different than it was the last time I was here in March. There are leaves, blue skies, bright sun and people walking around everywhere. This is what the sky looked like at 9:00 p.m. last night.
When I landed at 9:00 p.m. the sky was bright and beautiful.
After breakfast at the hotel, I took a little stroll through the Creamer’s Field Bird Refuge that is literally right outside my hotel room. The woods were dense, the mosquitoes were fierce and the flowers were beautiful. As I stopped to put bug repellent on I saw two Lesser sandhill cranes in the field eating. These very large birds migrate from as far away as Mexico to nest.
Lesser Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis canadensis)arrive in mid-May from their winter-grounds in California, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Mexico. The Sandhill in this picture is one of a pair that were foraging in Creamer's Field.
Afterwards, Janet from ARCUS (Arctic Research Consortium of the United States) picked me up from the hotel and brought me to ARCUS headquarters near the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I worked in the conference room on technical things and was happy to have Ronnie right there to help with the snags and questions that naturally arose. We went to the Farmer’s Market for lunch, then back to ARCUS. I met Vera Alexander, a pioneer in Polar Science and one of the founders of Toolik Lake Research Station. You can find out more about the station by visiting the resources section for PolarTrec.
Early bedtime – tomorrow will be a big day.
Signing off from Fairbanks, Alaska and remember, "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964