I'll take you in my backpack

8/22/10 Today I went to Creamer's Field, which just so happens to be very close to where I am staying.  Here is the  Website  if you are interested. At any rate, I stumbled on the Crane Festival...I was more interested in the cranes than the festival. On a side note the festival was more like a large bbq than anything else. Back to the cranes, they come through this area on their migration route and only stay for a very short time, eating in the fields and resting up. I was able to capture some pictures albeit far away since I don't have one of those mile long lenses that so many of the other patrons seemed to have! I felt mildly out of my league! In addition to cranes, there were tons of Canadian Geese...not my favorite animals by any stretch of the imagination, but they were nice an far away, so that's good.

8/21/10 First official real deal of exploring in Alaska and I have to say it was a huge success! I set out with two coworkers and we started at the Hilltop Truck Stop for breakfast. You might have seen this if you watch Ice Road Truckers...they eat there frequently, in fact two of the company's trucks were in the parking lot when we went! After a lovely breakfast we set off for Denali. It was a great day, warm (for Alaska) and sunny! I thought for sure that I would see some amazing wildlife...since I am practically a pioneer out here...by the end of the day I would have been happy to even see a squirrel. NOTHING! Seriously, the only animal that I saw were the bugs flying into our windshield as we were driving home. Utter disappointment on the animal front...scenery was great other than that though, and we were able to see part of Mt. McKinley which I hear is not common (70% of the time you do not) Both on the way out and on the way back home we stopped in a little area called ...

8/16/10 Unfortunately not much has happened in the limited time that I have been in Fairbanks...but I do have some pictures that I took from my iPhone to share...mainly of the high quality vehicle that I will be driving for 60 days until I trade it in for a 4WD one (oh hurry up 60 days!) If any of you have one of these things...I'm sorry...if you are considering buy one...don't...that's about all the review I can give you without really slandering this mousetrap on wheels! On a more positive note, here is a lovely shot that I took from the plane of the mountains (with snow on them) before I landed in Anchorage... Oh yeah, that was also in the evening, you could see the moon (but it didn't come out in the picture!) Cool huh?! More to come when I am able to do some more exploring!

8/14/10 Wow, to say that time flies is an understatement! I feel like I was just preparing for my Japan assignment, and here I am, Japan under my belt, a distant (but never forgotten) memory, preparing for the next adventure...Fairbanks Alaska! Today couldn't have been a better "last" day in New England before departing for a while! The weather was absolutely gorgeous, so Mike and I spent the early afternoon doing part of the Appalachian Trail (Lion's Head in CT). Later on in the afternoon we ventured off to the farm in Alford and picked some blueberries and enjoyed some more sunshine with my dad. Now as I sit here typing this pre-departure blog post, Mike is preparing a lovely dinner of lobster stuffed with Ritz crackers, minced scallops, onion, and some other things (I didn't pay enough attention clearly!). I'm told that I will get to "experience" a good solid 3 seasons while in Alaska, I look forward to it (I say that now!)...I've also h...

7/3/10 Well, here it is, the long awaited Kit Kat collection...pretty impressive if I don't say so myself! Yes I am back in the states, Yes I have jet lag, if you ask me how bad it is, I'm likely to bite your head off as I haven't slept much in the past 3 days (probably about 8 hours collectively)...I suggest keeping your distance for a good week. Until then I will continue to think happy thoughts that this miserable jet lag will pass...puppies, kittens, my extensive Kit Kat collection

6/30/10 I apologize in advance for the lack of decent pictures, the weather was absolutely terrible today! It only cleared up briefly while we were at the lake (a stopping point between Nikko and the Kegon Waterfall). Nikko Shrine was absolutely amazing...had the weather been nice, I probably would have enjoyed it. But since it was down pouring and my raincoat was doing absolutely NOTHING, in fact I think it was exacerbating the problem...it was difficult to really fully enjoy the "beautiful" scenery that the shrine had to offer. There was this really cool part where we went inside one of the buildings and a guy was hitting these two sticks together on one side of the room and it sounded like ordinary sticks being hit together, but when he did it underneath the huge dragon that was painted on the sealing it made a much better sound and reverberated (very different from the other sound). They called it the crying of the dragon. It was amazing! The lake was beautiful,...

6/28/10 Today we started early...mainly because we had a surprise visit from the sunshine and figured that we had better make the most of that time, as the forecast for the next days (including today) stands consistent at rain/thunderstorms...EVERY day! Today was no exception to that but at least it held off until after lunch time so we could get some pictures of our morning adventures! We went to the Hiroshima Castle, part of which we could walk through (of course by removing our shoes...customary here in many places in Japan). There was a shrine within the castle grounds, and somewhere there is a tree that survived the atomic bomb, we couldn't find that tree per se, but we did see a lot of trees (I tried to convince mom to take a picture of one of the many trees to pass it off as the "survivor tree"...she would not) After the Hiroshima Castle (properly called Hiroshima-jo, but since when do I do anything properly?!) we ventured out to the Shukkei-en (Shukkei Gard...