Ok so here goes…
I’ll start off with my job. I work for Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society. It’s a non-profit organization based on saving the earth’s oceans. OFS is divided into two parts. The first part is the expedition and film team. They go all over the world filming PBS specials (which some of you may have seen). The one that aired not long ago was about the Amazon. Jean Michel filmed there with his father Jacques (a household name) 25 years ago and so he decided to go back to see if anything had changed. I have not seen this film, but it sounds cool. I met the expedition team when I was doing my training in Santa Barbara and they are all really amazing people. Right now they are working on a film about Orca whales so I’m excited to see it when it comes out.
The second part of OFS is called Ambassadors of the Environment (AOTE). That’s what I am doing. AOTE is an educational program set up in some exotic locations around the world. Its goal is to get kids out into nature learning things hands on. The purpose is to get kids involved and to get them to understand how things work and what humans have done wrong in terms of affecting the earth and oceans, and what we can do to make a difference in setting it right again. As Jacques said, “We protect only what we love, and we love only what we know”. It’s a really cool program and I am really glad to be a part of it.
So what I do exactly is teach a kids program onboard a cruise ship in Alaska. I am on the Regent Seven Seas Mariner, which qualifies itself as a 6 star ship. I live in a passenger cabin with my coworker and old high school friend Laura Ostrov. We get our room cleaned every day and we have a balcony that looks out over the ocean so we can spot animals outside. It’s a pretty lush life. For fun on the ship, we can attend the shows and hang out in the lounges listening to music and such and we can go to the crew bar, which is always an experience. As a naturalist onboard, we get a lot of perks, like free shore excursions and stuff. So that means when we get to port, we go on an adventure. Already I have been fishing, hiking, on a train up a mountain pass, and on a sea otter and wildlife quest (twice). I also got to go out on one of the lifeboats when we went to Hubbard Glacier and get a piece of glacial ice from the water. It was amazing! We got up close to the glacier and some of it was calving. What an experience that was! Then today we went on the sea otter tour again, this time with our first AOTE participants. Unfortunately we only have one kid this week, so he is getting A LOT of attention.
The rest of the week has been pretty laid back, since we only have one kid and he doesn’t show up to all of our activities, we are free to roam around the ports. In Juneau, I went on a helicopter with some of my friends from the Mariner crew. We flew up to the glacier and walked around on it, looking into crevasses and drinking glacial water from one of the ice rivers. Then we flew back and hung out in town. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to see any of my friends from last summer yet, but maybe next week. In Skagway we just went for a hike to a waterfall. It was a nice hike, but I almost missed the ship cause it took so long!
Now we are leaving Ketchikan and today was great! Some of the members of the band on board took Laura and I to a Chinese place in town. We ate to our hearts content and then decided to attend the lumberjack show. I will post pictures of this even cause it is not to be missed! It was hilarious! Men in black and red plaid shirts and suspenders competed in a bunch of events like log rolling, climbing, axeing, and chain-sawing. Then when your team won, they gave out a piece of the wood that they cut. Well, at the end there was a guy who did a chain saw carving of a bunny but he “messed up” and cut off the top and voila! It turned into a little tiny chair! So cute. So I asked him if I could have it. Now out on my porch is my mini wooden carved chair. I think I’m gonna have a hard time trying to get that one home!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
my triumphant return!
So after an eight month hiatus I will soon return to Alaska for more adventures, this time from all the little cities in Southeast (Ketchikan, Sitka, Juneau, and Skagway). Stay tuned for more stories from the last frontier...
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Road Trip
So there is a lot that I have not mentioned about my last weeks in Juneau and I will update you when I get the chance. But right now I am in Anchorage. My friend from college, Liz Mullen, came to visit me in Juneau. She stayed for 5 days with me and got to do some amazing stuff. The list includes: whale watching, flightseeing, white water rafting, kayaking, BBQs etc. We had a lot of fun and she got to meet my man Dan. But at the end of the week, it was the end of the season and time to move on. So come monday october 1, we hopped on a ferry from juneau to Haines and then rode with my friend Spencer all the way to Palmer which is about 40 miles north of anchorage. It was definitely an interesting road trip. He had his brother's cargo van and stole the back seat from a mini-van to put in the back of the van for the thrid person to sit. Also in the back of the van was his motorcycle and all of the stuff he brought to juneau for the 5 month summer. Liz and I took turns sitting in the back but the drive was amazing and worth it to get a free ride to the interior of alaska. There were snow covered mountains just about the entire dive up. It was gorgeous.
After 13 hours of driving we arrived in Palmer and slept on Spencer's parents couch. We woke up to his mom sending out his younger siblings to the school bus and promptly woke up when we figured out that he had not told her he had friends coming with him. We felt a little awkward so we got up, walked around his property, and headed out. His property was incredible. Behind his house there is a creek with salmon running so we watched them for a while, which was an experience. Then we left to get to anchorage to rent a car and drive up towards Denali National Park. Now the interesting thing about Alaska is that it seems as if this state is only open from May 1 to Sept 30 because thats when there is an influx of tourists. So needless to say, a road trip beginning oct 1 wasnt during the high season and pretty much everything here is closed down for the winter. So we stopped before Denali in a town called Talkeetna and stayed the night. It was a cute little tourist town with some quiant little lodges. The next day we drove up farther north to see more of the interior and stopped at a place called Byers lake. There was a 4.8 mile hike around the lake that Liz and I walked but we back tracked a bit so it ended up being more like 6 miles. All along the trail there were moose and bear tracks which was kind of freaky seeing as how us two girls were the only ones on the trail so if anything happened to us then no one would know. On the far side of the lake there were some great views of the Alaskan mountain range and Mount McKinley.
Once the hike was over, we rushed back to Talkeetna to take a flight up to see the Alaskan range and Mt McKinley from the air. The plane ride was beautiful and relatively smooth and in the middle, the pilot landed the plane on a glacier. The way he could do that was because the plane was on skis. It was really amazing because once we landed, we all got out into the snow and played around. It was only 15 degrees outside at the time. After about a 1/2 and 10 frozen tourists, we hopped back into the plane to fly back to Talkeetna. Once back, we zoomed on back to Anchorage to meet up with a friend who was flying back in after working up at the North Slope for a week. I am in his apartment now after a day of running and relazing before the travelling picks up again tomorrow when Liz and I fly out to Seattle.
After 13 hours of driving we arrived in Palmer and slept on Spencer's parents couch. We woke up to his mom sending out his younger siblings to the school bus and promptly woke up when we figured out that he had not told her he had friends coming with him. We felt a little awkward so we got up, walked around his property, and headed out. His property was incredible. Behind his house there is a creek with salmon running so we watched them for a while, which was an experience. Then we left to get to anchorage to rent a car and drive up towards Denali National Park. Now the interesting thing about Alaska is that it seems as if this state is only open from May 1 to Sept 30 because thats when there is an influx of tourists. So needless to say, a road trip beginning oct 1 wasnt during the high season and pretty much everything here is closed down for the winter. So we stopped before Denali in a town called Talkeetna and stayed the night. It was a cute little tourist town with some quiant little lodges. The next day we drove up farther north to see more of the interior and stopped at a place called Byers lake. There was a 4.8 mile hike around the lake that Liz and I walked but we back tracked a bit so it ended up being more like 6 miles. All along the trail there were moose and bear tracks which was kind of freaky seeing as how us two girls were the only ones on the trail so if anything happened to us then no one would know. On the far side of the lake there were some great views of the Alaskan mountain range and Mount McKinley.
Once the hike was over, we rushed back to Talkeetna to take a flight up to see the Alaskan range and Mt McKinley from the air. The plane ride was beautiful and relatively smooth and in the middle, the pilot landed the plane on a glacier. The way he could do that was because the plane was on skis. It was really amazing because once we landed, we all got out into the snow and played around. It was only 15 degrees outside at the time. After about a 1/2 and 10 frozen tourists, we hopped back into the plane to fly back to Talkeetna. Once back, we zoomed on back to Anchorage to meet up with a friend who was flying back in after working up at the North Slope for a week. I am in his apartment now after a day of running and relazing before the travelling picks up again tomorrow when Liz and I fly out to Seattle.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
FINALLY
Ok so first of all, I hope that you guys havent stopped checking my blog for updates since i havent updated in a month. But if you did decided to check it out, I have a lot of things to update you on.
I am still in Alaska doing my thing...the season ends at the end of september so I only have another 3 weeks at my kayaking job then I'm out on my own again. I have been taking a lot more time off than I did before to enjoy myself here. The perks to being the manager is that you get to do other tours for free. SO I went on a flightseeing tour on a float plane over two glaciers, the Taku and Norris glaciers. It was gorgeous and so surreal. I went on a whale watching tour where the whales were jumping out of the water (or "breaching" is what they call it) and bubble net fishing. Bubble net fishing was one of the few things that I really wanted to see here and the whales did it at least 10 times. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries on this tour so I dont have very good pictures of it, but there is one that you can sort of tell that they were bubble net fishing.
(bubble net fishing, for those who are wondering what I am talking about, is when humpback whales get together to feed. So they dive underwater and blow a ring of bubbles to trap the fish. The fish get disoriented in the net of bubbles and then one whale will swim underneath and trumpet upwards making the fish swim towards the surface. All the whales then swim upwards with their mouths open and catch all the fish. Now the coolest part about all of this is that they all come up out of the water, one in the center, probably about half of its body is out of the water, and all the others lunge around the center one. Up to 15 or so 50 foot whales may be feeding on this same bubble net so thats a lot of weight all breaching the water at the same time...its unbelievable to watch!)
Other exciting Alaskan adventures include white water rafting down the great Mendenhall River. A river guide friend of mine took Lisa, Jack (her dad), and I down the river on a float trip. It really is a float trip cause the tour is about 2 hours long with only about 8 minutes of rapids. It is fun though, and the river guides are ridiculous. I also went Kayaking off of Sunshine cove which is about mile 32 out of 40 miles of road. My friend Dan and I stole a tandem kayak and headed out into what we soon found out was a humpback whale highway. We were surrounded by at least 7 whales. It was amazing until at one point we heard a whale grunt under water and lets just say, its a little unnerving to be in open water and not know where sounds are coming from. We quickly paddled back towards shore at sunset and enjoyed the last minutes of the day on the water before heading back to the car. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience...
I am still in Alaska doing my thing...the season ends at the end of september so I only have another 3 weeks at my kayaking job then I'm out on my own again. I have been taking a lot more time off than I did before to enjoy myself here. The perks to being the manager is that you get to do other tours for free. SO I went on a flightseeing tour on a float plane over two glaciers, the Taku and Norris glaciers. It was gorgeous and so surreal. I went on a whale watching tour where the whales were jumping out of the water (or "breaching" is what they call it) and bubble net fishing. Bubble net fishing was one of the few things that I really wanted to see here and the whales did it at least 10 times. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries on this tour so I dont have very good pictures of it, but there is one that you can sort of tell that they were bubble net fishing.
(bubble net fishing, for those who are wondering what I am talking about, is when humpback whales get together to feed. So they dive underwater and blow a ring of bubbles to trap the fish. The fish get disoriented in the net of bubbles and then one whale will swim underneath and trumpet upwards making the fish swim towards the surface. All the whales then swim upwards with their mouths open and catch all the fish. Now the coolest part about all of this is that they all come up out of the water, one in the center, probably about half of its body is out of the water, and all the others lunge around the center one. Up to 15 or so 50 foot whales may be feeding on this same bubble net so thats a lot of weight all breaching the water at the same time...its unbelievable to watch!)
Other exciting Alaskan adventures include white water rafting down the great Mendenhall River. A river guide friend of mine took Lisa, Jack (her dad), and I down the river on a float trip. It really is a float trip cause the tour is about 2 hours long with only about 8 minutes of rapids. It is fun though, and the river guides are ridiculous. I also went Kayaking off of Sunshine cove which is about mile 32 out of 40 miles of road. My friend Dan and I stole a tandem kayak and headed out into what we soon found out was a humpback whale highway. We were surrounded by at least 7 whales. It was amazing until at one point we heard a whale grunt under water and lets just say, its a little unnerving to be in open water and not know where sounds are coming from. We quickly paddled back towards shore at sunset and enjoyed the last minutes of the day on the water before heading back to the car. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience...
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Mer's Wedding!
SOOOOOOOOO I took 5 days off of Alaska and headed to Colorado springs for my sister's wedding! We stayed at this gorgeous hotel called the Broadmoor. And Mer and I shared a suite at the hotel. The weekend consisted of arrival in Denver. Lisa and I drove a convertible from Denver to the Springs with our gas station bought sunglasses and cowboy hats. After a nap we had a BBQ and then headed to the Golden Bee bar for yards of beer and some sing-a-long fun. I became an expert at throwing the sticky bees that the waiters throw at people while you are there. The next day was all wedding. After mani/pedi's with mom and mer, we bought some cowboy boots and had a bridal luncheon. Then we moved back to the hotel for the rehearsal and then the girls all came to our room to get a cowgirl'ed up. Off to the rehearsal dinner hoedown with a country band and lots of dancing and a talking moose. The night ended with another bee throwing sing-a-long at the cheyenne mountain lodge (with the singer/pianist from the golden bee). Finally the wedding day arrived. I took pics of mer doing everything on her wedding day. We had breakfast, got our hair and makeup done and got all beautied up for pictures. The bridal party took pictures at the front of the hotel. It was beautiful. Mer looked so great and all the attendants as well. We finished taking pics just in time to get Mer back into her room so Sean could come down and start the ceremony. A few readings later, Mer jumped the gun on the first kiss as husband and wife. She had to wait till the breaking of the glass then got her chance. It was cute. The reception started immediately with margaritas and wine right there on the lakeside patio while the families of the bride and groom waited patiently to take pictures with the new couple. Once those were done, we walked in, announced, to the reception room. Not much food was eaten. I got carded and was not allowed to get a drink at the bar cause I didnt have my ID in my dress. Oh well. Dinner was fabulous, dancing was even better to the lovely grateful geezers! Especially the dance to super freak. I will always remember that and Sean's stunning performance with the washboard. Definitely was a fantastic evening. Cutting the cake and toats were next. Best Man Nate spoke first and when he grabbed his glass of champagne, got his whole tux sleeve covered in icing. I was next with the toast. I think it went well...a little nerve racking, but I was so happy to do it. The fathers made toasts after me and those were entertaining too. More dancing ensued afterwards. I dont think I have ever pulled some of the moves I did at that wedding. After the reception was over, we all hopped on the bus back to the other hotel for a hot tub party at 2 am, got kicked out and eventually passed out at around 4. What a night. Sunday was nice with the send off brunch luau themed. I got to say bye to all the people I have gotten to meet over the years through Sean and Mer and it makes me sad that I dont know when I will ever see them again. Once most people left, I headed to the pool...finally! Got a little tan with Lisa, rode the water slide and swam a bit with the cousins before the lightning storm hit. Dinner with family ended in a night with Riley in bed and an early morning to ride the convertible back to Denver and then made it back to Alaska in one piece. That was a whirlwind vacation that I will never forget.
and here are pics
by mollymojo9
and here are pics
by mollymojo9
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
sorry its been a while
I lost internet at my apartment so its been a while since I have updated everyone! Unfortunately my life hasnt changed much since I became lead guide of kayaks at Alaska Travel Adventures. I pretty much spend my days running errands, such as replacing the headlight on the van that carries all the paddles, getting gas for the chase boat, backing trailers onto the beach, talking to my boss who has no idea what she is talking about, yelling at seals so that maybe they will remember my voice, and teaching the ukrainian guy how to speak english. Thats right, my boss hired a ukrainian guy to lead kayak tours in alaska... how would you feel if you got off of your cruise ship to go kayaking and the guy giving you the tour can barely speak english...lovely! So thats my life right now, I am leaving for 5 days next week for Mer's wedding! I can't wait to be there. Although i look silly cause the sun out here is really bright so you can get a tan very easily, but since its still a bit chilly, I wear long sleeves. So my hands are very very tan, but the rest of my body is always covered and not quite so tan anymore... I think I'm gonna look really nice in that bridesmaids dress!
Monday, July 9, 2007
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