A short blog! Maybe...

I had written out this long blog about how this "adventure" blog just turned into my "life" blog and that a life blog is harder for me to share... but then I realized I'm in Alaska and I need to toughen up and blog.  :)  Haha.

Let's see... where did I leave off?  Well, you may know that when I got here, it was arranged that I'd live in the dormitories of a dormant school.  During the summer, I was notified that the dormitories were going to be closed and we were all going to be evicted.  Fun.  Actually, it turned out to be a really good thing.

I've been attending Sitka Lutheran church. In September, I became the organist when the piano player left to attend university in Oregon. I said I'd do it for free since I came up to be a volunteer anyway. A couple members of the church suggested that since I'm a volunteer and I need a place to live, I could just live in the apartment that's dedicated to the church's summer volunteers. Plus, they said I could use the volunteer car! Things worked out nicely.

A couple weeks ago, I ran a 10k. Since then, it has been snowing and I haven't ran. I'm still riding my bike often, however.


I'll now post some pictures.  Have a good day!

Our race went down the road, nearly to the base of Bear Mountain.

We started at Whale Park.

This is right by where I live now.

Bear Mountain hike

You may remember this mountain from some of my early blog posts; its name is Bear Mountain. This weekend I joined a couple of friends for a hike to the very top. We had great weather. When we got above the Alpine tree line it got pretty windy and we had to trek through some snow. The snow was the hardest part for me. We hiked some pretty steep spots with rocks but on the snow I really had trouble staying balanced and thought I was going to slip and rocket down the snow covered side of the mountain.

We reached the very peak and stayed up there for a bit, telling stories and just enjoying the view. On the way down we took a different route and walked quite a ways along the ridge of the mountain. One spot we had to descend one at a time because we were knocking down rocks as we went. We talked about what kind of food we were going to eat that night most of the way down. Actually, I was probably the one that kept bringing that subject back up. When we got back to town we had a nice steak dinner. Thanks, Arlo! :)

Blue Lake

Mt. Edgecumbe in the background and Mt. Verstovia on the right

Some lichen

Water droplets on the lichen

This is a part where it was hard to stay upright walking on the snow

There's a glacier in the background

Patrick, Ben, and I looking at stuff

A crevasse

Getting close to the peak

Self-portrait

Pretty little blue pond

The peak after we started our descent

Walking along the ridge

We were talking about food and this looked like a dish my mother used to make. It was something like cheesy potatoes and I can't quite remember what was sprinkled on top but all I could think of was bacon bits.

A Super-Mario mushroom!