Fall

Our friend Mollie from Tuscon has been staying with us for a while. This weekend we had a beautiful fall day so Mollie and I went out on the mountain to look for musk ox. It wasn't as warm as Arizona, but we did enjoy the sunshine.

C.O.

Photo of the Day- Tough Sledding

Like most cities Brevig Mission provides a trash hauling service. They also haul "honey buckets" for the people that don't have sewer and water service.

The city workers used to have a special trailer (with wheels) for moving honey buckets, but it has been broken for some time now. The trailer has now been replaced with this wooden sled. It works surprisingly well, even in the summer.

C.O.

The Dague's Visit

Our friends Marlys and Dwight Dague from Minnesota decided they would like to make Brevig a stop on their Alaskan vacation this fall. We were of course very excited to have them and show them around our lovely spot on the planet.

Unfortunately, the weather was pretty awful, rain, cold, fog, rain, cold, fog. In fact, their stay was extended by one day since the planes were not flying due to the conditions mentioned above.

Some people just look like they belong living on the Alaskan frontier.
Don't they look like naturals?

Despite the weather, they came out riding and exploring each day with us. We were able to show them the sand spit near Teller where the seals play, Sunset Creek and the old gold mine buildings that remain there. We also did the basic tour around the village to see the school, church, post office, clinic etc.

Harold and Dwight chatting and walking near the
gold mine at Sunset Creek, about 8 miles outside of Brevig.

We hope they'll come again very soon.

--AnnMarie

Photo of the Day - "Bridge"

This is the "bridge" that I built last week. The two pipes are the water lines that run from the city well to the the water treatment plant. The new road that we were building crossed the pipes and they needed to be protected.

Despite this being a carefully engineered $6,000,000 project, there was no plan for how we should protect the pipes. We had lots of drawings and blueprints that showed every little detail of the road construction, but only one small note on the plans that said "protect pipe"

We looked around town for materials to use and found a big pile of 6"x12" timbers left over from an old tank farm project. We used these to field engineer a solution.

The first vehicle to drive over it when completed was that 40 ton dump truck that you see in the background. The bridge held up to that fine, so I think the typical village traffic of 4-wheelers and snowmobiles will be ok.

C.O.

Photo of the Day - Chainsaw

Here I am at work cutting timbers for the bridge we built. Over the years I have only cut down a few trees with a chainsaw. I have cut a lot of other things, however. The most interesting would be the two days I spent knee deep in a sewage lagoon cutting plastic pipe. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of that.

C.O.

Photo of the Day - Deck Construction

The construction project that I have been working on this fall is mainly a road building project, but I was hired as a carpenter. I was put in charge of building a snow fence, two small "bridges" , and any other carpentry things that came up.

One of the roads that we were building ran through the middle of someone's house. When they moved the house to make room for the road the old steps were destroyed. This 8'x24' deck is what we built to replace them. It is a big improvement over the old simple steps.

C.O.

Photo of the Day - Boating

I helped a friend haul his 4-wheeler across from Teller to Brevig today. We used his boat, which is an extra wide 20' Lund. You should see what it looks like when we use a narrow 18' boat.
C.O.

Bubble Wrap

The very definition of fun:

Clouds

I took this picture right outside our house looking to the east. I thought the finger like cloud formations were interesting looking.

--AnnMarie

Our Little Get Away

While we were in Minnesota surrounded by grandparents this past July, we decided to take advantage of some free babysitting to get away for awhile, just the two of us. We decided to make the Minneapolis / St. Paul area our destination.

When we were dating, I was going to college in St. Paul so we'd spent a lot of time bumming around the city. It had been a while since we spent time there, so we visited some of our favorite spots and took time to see new ones. We started with breakfast in front of these lovely hydrangeas and continued on to a couple used bookstores in Dinkytown. It was then a short walk through the U of M's campus over to the Weisman Art Museum.

To be honest we were mostly interested in the museum because of the building's architecture. (Though we did peruse the art and had a lot of fun.) Last winter we watched an excellent documentary titled, "Sketches of Frank Gehry". So we are particularly interested in his buildings and thought it was pretty cool we could see one in person.



I'm holding my very own three dimensional representation of the building. =)


Here's an example of those famous Gehry sketches. This is printed on the wall at the Weisman. It's the sketch the building was designed from.

And here's a story about why I love social networking. We were in the Minneapolis area, interested in seeing some live music when . . . I logged onto Facebook. Oh look, there's an invitation from C.O.'s cousin, Max to come up to Maple Grove to hear him play. C.O. hadn't seen him in 10 or so years and I had never met Max in person. So, we showed up. It was a great evening and just the sort of musical event we had hoped to see.

--AnnMarie

Photo of the Day - Lumber

Today we received a shipment of lumber for the construction project that I am working on.
C.O.

Photo of the Day - Fuel Barge

From our new house on the beach we have a great view of the ocean. Yesterday a fuel barge came in to delivery heating fuel to the school.

C.O.