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Today was my day to get everything done before leaving for the field tomorrow at the crack of dawn. I ran around, gathering my gear, shipping extra stuff I don't think I will need home, and shopping for food for the road tomorrow. The folk at Alaska Science Support, where all my gear is from, were

Yesterday I took the train from Denali up to Fairbanks. Typically the trek takes about four hours as the train lumbers through the landscape. I was amazed to see some moose, trumpeter swans, sandhill cranes, bald and golden eagles, and a pair of osprey guarding their nest. The train ride lasted an

Unless otherwise noted, all photos in these journals are mine. ##You're doing what? Before I let you all in on the secrets of birdcatching, here's the lowdown on the big picture of the research being conducted here. 1. *Retrieve the loggers deployed from 2016-2017: The team is looking for 30

If you're curious about how and where we work, here you go. We've been leaving our place at 8am to head to our sites, and as a team of four, we split up. Punguk is our local Yupik guide, so he leads us to the further sites and helps with research duties, too. We travel by ATV / four-wheeler, and

Sitting here in Denali, enjoying hot showers and laundry, I am anxious for my time in the field. I am not anxious for the work, rather I am anxious about the water. Toolik has strict restrictions in place. I am allotted two, two-minute showers a week, and one load of laundry every two weeks. With

Today I took an eight hour bus ride through Denali National Park to mile 66, the stop for the Eielson Visitor Center. The first 16 miles of the only road in and out of Denali was paved and had two-lanes. After the 17th mile, the road became gravel, bumpy and dusty, and only one lane, so the bus

The legacy of bad handwriting Seems that locals subscribe to the view that Nome was named thanks to bad handwriting. A British cartographer misread the "? Name" on a nautical chart as C. Nome or "Cape Nome". Others ascribe to the idea that "no-me" is "I don't know" in a local native language, and

Alaska. The 49th was named after the Aleut word, Aleyska, meaning "Great Land." From everything I have seen, it is an understatement. This land is great not only in size, but beauty, resources, wildlife, and adventure. Luckily, I have had the opportunity to travel and take in some of the "great"

Dredges Dredges were considered more than machines. They were mechanical giants with a penchant for gobbling up pay dirt, upending the frozen tundra, processing it, then spitting out the tailings and remnants into piles. These machines transformed gold mining since they could process huge amounts