Monday, October 01, 2007
Fall Trip to Nome
So, a couple weeks ago Jessie and I went back to Nome for the last time on the year. I've got jury duty in October and Anna had a bunch of Barrow stuff going on so we went earlier than usual to Nome. It was pretty much one of the hardest trips of all time. Certainly of recent vintage. You may remember the four wheeler catching on fire back in July.... so, we got it fixed in Nome between trips. Jessie and I picked it up on our way out to Kougarok but we drove it like two miles and it was overheating like before (pre-fire) and so it got ditched. That was the bad news. The good news was we came between storms/ weather systems so the weather was terrific. Plus the fall colors were out:
So, instead of spending a couple days fourwheeling around Kougarok and then wrapping things up and preparing for winter in Council we slogged 25 miles across the tussocks (seriously, no exaggeration there) over four days. So, a couple years ago I timed myself over tussocks and at top speed I can go about one mile an hour. Total top speed though. Can easily drop to a half-mile per hour in the right conditions. So, a long of walking. The scenery was great though. Here's a scene from our 1km by 1km thaw grid out in Kougarok. We measure how deep the ground thawed out during the summer time on this 11 x 11 grid.
So, the walking was a downer but the company was fun. Here's Jessie at the K1 site out in Kougarok after a few hours of hiking. This site has been pretty fertile bear mauling (of the site) grounds in past years but this summer we got off scot free.
So, we survived and came back later than scheduled but in time for me to blurrily get to class Tuesday morning. One final highlight was prices out there. Check out gas station bottled water. A steal at $10 a gallon!
Water
