Ok... so it's been a while

So I recently was reminded of the fact that oh yeah I have a blog and people do read it sometimes so I should probably start writing again. Since October, nothing too exciting has happened. Duck season died down, Scott tried to go goat hunting but the weather was horrible, and we've been ice fishing quite a few times but haven't caught anything incredible or worth bragging about (boo). School/ work has been consuming my life lately which is good because I'm getting a lot done now so that in the summer when I want to go fishing I won't feel as pressured by deadlines. Scott and I recently went on a couple cool trips: Talkeetna for a few days with Parker, Allison and Ruger before Christmas, and Hatcher Pass for a day. Talkeetna is a really cool little town and it was a ton of fun just ice fishing (which Scott and Allison caught 2 nice rainbows that tasted quite delicious) eating sourdough pancakes, drinking beer and playing cards. Hatcher Pass is probably the most beautiful place I think I've seen yet. You are in the mountains looking in the distance at mountains while surrounded by mountains. Many people strap on snowshoes, hike to the top of the mountains, and downhill ski down. I want to SO badly but the avalanche risk is high. I told Scott to just watch and call 911 if I get avalanched but apparently he's not that sick of me yet (maybe next winter). Keta is enjoying the winter as much as she can- she loves the snow but we really don't have much! I have been taking her to an indoor dog swimming pool every Friday to keep her busy and excited about swimming- I'm a sucker for my dog, I know. I have friends coming to visit this weekend and then in 3 weeks my sister and (basically non-biological)sister are coming to visit for a week. I am so excited to see faces from home up here- it is really hard being away from family all the time! I definitely took for granted the ability to drive home for a weekend when I lived on the east coast- now it's like "yeahhh, maybe I'll make it home for next Christmas?". But either way, we are still enjoying life up here. It has been such a mild winter- we have almost no snow here because we had a serious melt in January- it was in the 40s everyday for almost the entire month. Now, I enjoyed this, but I was looking forward to some good skiing here, which hasn't happened yet. I cannot help but get excited to live my first full Alaskan summer. I had 2 weeks in 2012 (which I blogged about and still laugh at), 2 weeks in 2013, and now I'm going to have the entirety of the salmon season this summer. I am so ready for good fishing again, it's torture waiting for the salmon to come back! Scott and I have seen the northern lights a few times and got a couple okay pictures- one night they were just going completely crazy but I wasn't home and by the time Scott's camera decided it wanted to work, it was the end of an incredible display. I really hope they are out when my sister is here! That's about all that is going on now, some exciting events will unfold in the next couple weeks so I will do my best to write about them on here!

Morning drive towards Glennallen, AK

Family photo with the glacier behind us

"I wish that I could stay forever this young, not afraid to close my eyes"

In the mountains looking at mountains

Hatcher Pass with my little brat

The ice on the stream edge was blue from the glacier meltwater

Free time: practice shooting dall sheep dummies

Oh and our friends gave us a rack of moose ribs, they were HUGE[and are tasty]!

Kickin Scott's Butt

As I write this, Keta lays next to me on the floor farting loudly and pawing at the "other dog" in the oven. I don't know if she's farting because she's distressed, or if she wants to see if her twin will fart back. I feel inclined to share the experiences that I deal with everyday with a dog-child. Animals are odd (yet hilarious). Anyways, lately on our days off we have just been hunting. A few weeks ago we went grouse hunting with a bunch of friends and I shot the only grouse, a spruce grouse. This is literally exactly what happened: I was walking with my friend Allison and her dog Ruger through the thick spruce eye-gouging death and I just got this feeling that I was being watched and said "I know you're in here buddy. I'm gunna find you I know you're watching me" and just like that, the grouse flew up and landed in a tree right in front of me. So, I blew his whole bottom half off (oops) and Ruger caught her before she even hit the ground. I also saw a hare, but thought if I shot at it, the pellets might hit the boys, so I refrained. Instead I was yelling "Guys, HARE, coming towards you!" So Scott starts saying "BEAR!?" and I'm yelling hare and he's yelling "BEAR??" and then our friend Jeremy chimes in "RABBIT!!" But obviously it was a lost cause by the time Scott associated that I was saying hare not bear. Which, he should have known considering if there was a bear, I would have been yelling "RUN!" or "Oh Shit!". Psh who says boyfriends know their girlfriends well, huh? Anyways, then the Monday before this one Scott and I decided to try fishing again because we were hearing that rainbow trout were hitting hard up north. So, we had our friends watch Keta for the day (she is really a horrible fishing buddy) and headed up to Talkeetna (about 2 hours north). We fished at Montana Creek and brought our guns just incase any upland gamebirds came our way. Well, after not catching jack shit for about an hour, we noticed ducks kept flying over us. So, we ran back to the car and got our guns, and layed on the ground and crawled through the woods to the pool where ducks were landing. The whole crawling process is never fun- and I got a new shirt and wore it (I know, why would I wear a new shirt fishing!? I don't know) and got crawling juice all over it. Anyways, I ended up shooting the only duck [Scott further sucking and not hitting anything], a big fat pig hen mallard. So Scott is like "you need to clean this one yourself" (clearly, he's upset by me beating him twice in a row). So I'm cleaning this duck and I'm like damn this thing stinks. Like, I've basically climbed into the butt of a deer and it didn't smell that bad (if you don't believe me, read one of my first posts about sucking blood from deer). Anyways, this duck smelled rank. I have a strong sense of smell so Scott doesn't believe me. Once, Scott went to Petco while I was in Michaels with Keta and got her a cow hoof to chew on. The whole ride home I'm like "Omg something smells so horrible gosh what the heck did you buy the dog!?" and he's all like "I don't smell anything". Anyways, I made him take a whiff of the cow hoof and he almost barfed. I think he's lucky for having a bad sense of smell, but what do I know. Anyways, 1 week later, we take the duck out to eat and Scott's like "God, this duck smells horrible". Duh, I said that ya know day 1. Anyways, lucky Keta gets more nutritious dog snacks, woof. So that's what has been up. Tomorrow we find out if we got a moose permit, I really hope so! If not Scott's convinced to go mountain goat hunting and shoot one-he can have fun with that because my ass is not scaling a cliff to shoot a goat, then rolling back down to retrieve it. No way, no how.

My first spruce grouse!

Keta (right) and her buddies Ruger and Marlin

Hunting makes baby tired

 

This place never fails to impress me

Fishing pole and bear control

My tubby mallard

Keta's newest favorite game: what's in the couch?

The Raid on Duck Beach

So I haven't been writing much lately because I feel like I'm just repeating myself- like, oh hey I'm Molly- I go duck hunting, get chased by moose, and am literally obsessed with my dog. But, some of you are still reading so I'll keep blabbing. The other day Keta and I went to the park and we were playing fetch and got chased by a hormone pumped bull moose for about a quarter mile. I locked us in a baseball dugout and fed Keta snacks until the moose walked like 100-200 yards from us (of course, he walked where I would have liked to to get home easily) then we ran all the way home (like a mile). All of this, naturally, happened after Keta and I had already jogged for 45 minutes in the park. Damn moose. So I actually got my duck hunting license and my first day out with it I shot 2 mallards, a fat female and drake. I was so proud of myself since I'm using one of my dads old guns that like, malfunctions constantly. You fire off one shot, knock a duck down a little, and go to finish it with the second shot and oh! the safety clicked on, sorry you suck. It's very frustrating! We went out the other morning with our friends and their pup and there were ducks landing EVERYWHERE by the ocean and I'm all like "lets get em!". Scott's like "See, I created a monster"- Now, I wouldn't consider myself a monster because my killing ducks % is like 5% chance I will shoot one. More like creating another idiot with a gun. So we all go trudging out to the ocean, the ducks see us, and all fly away. So the next day Scott and I go out alone and again, the ducks are all waddling around the beach eating snacks having a jolly old time. Since we learned from our last mistakes, we decided to crawl through swamp hell for a quarter mile to these ducks- talk about exhausting. Getting my ass low enough to the ground is a challenge enough, nevermind going across little rivers while crawling with a gun in your hand. I had to like frog squat and hop across- we weren't messing around. So we finally get to about 30 yards from the ducks, we were going to crawl another 10 yards and open fire on duck beach. I was getting so excited- I could see literally hundreds of ducks waddling around and like, I thought ya know maybe I could get 2 or 3! So we had about 2 more minutes of crawling before we were going to open fire, and all of a sudden BOOM. Some asswad shot at a duck WAY too high for him to shoot and he scared literally every single duck out to sea. We tried to shoot the ducks but they were still too far to get a good shot, especially flying frantically. Poor Keta goes rippin out to where the ducks were and was like "ummmm what happened!?" To say I was pissed would be an understatement- I threw an all out tantrum in the marsh. You know that scene in "I Love You Man" when the guy lets his dog poop on the beach, doesn't pick it up, someone steps in it and he just starts screaming? Yeah, that was me. Full out lumberjack howling in the marsh. Scott's all calm like "aw man shit happens" and I'm standing in the marsh waving my gun screaming "WHOEVER YOU ARE I'M GOING TO SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE! YOU SAW US CRAWLING THROUGH THIS SHITTY MARSH YOU M%#)$&RF*#$%@". I think I may have embarrassed the boyfriend-problem with bringing women hunting: we are emotional as hell. We don't army crawl through a shithole marsh to have someone ruin it for us. I think the guy grasped that there was a very angry woman with a shotgun in the marsh out to get him because I didn't hear another shot all day. He was like "Oh shit, menstral rage, I'm getting the hell outta here!". So we flailed around in the hellhole swamp for 4 more hours after that, Scott shot 8 ducks, I shot 1/2 ducks (wing shot on one, Scott finished it and blew it to smitherines). But, on the cool side, we saw a big ass bull moose the day we went out with our friends, and I got pictures, and he didn't chase me. Win!

Did I do that?

My 2 ducks, and a Keta

Getting chased by moose is tiring..

Scott Parker and pups after an ok morning

Duck beach, empty and barren

Big boy- the one that chased us was the same body size but smaller rack.

Oh yeah, this is where Scott works. Literally, right where the moose is hanging is the shotgun range.

Recent Photos from Duck Hunting Adventures

Keta and Ruger in the blind waiting for some action.

Early morning hunt! They got 6 teals and a mallard!

Back out that night, got a snipe, teal, and northern shoveler

Another round of duck hunting- no luck!

Snow is heading down the mountains

Snowline on the ridge- gorgeous.

Scott and I walking back to the truck at sunset. No ducks.

Scott Parker and the puppies went out this morning. The snow worked its way down to the marsh.

Two excited buddies! They did great today got 6 teals, a snipe and 3 pintails [and I got to sleep in, win]

Ms. Keta was pretty tired and sore after all this hard work- yes, she's sleeping.

Scott and Keta with todays killings (Parker shot some of these and Ruger retrieved some too!)

Not sure what killed what...

Keta is beat and wants belly rubs all day long.

My Thesis Project and Life

So a few cool things have happened recently. 1) I got hired an assistant to help me with my thesis research- this is great because I can get this guy to input all the data I've ever wanted into an Excel file for me and I can continue reading. I'm reading like a beast- I read a 300 page Fish Bioenergetics book in 2 days. Thing is, it still didn't answer my question! So I'm going to keep reading. Basically my thesis project involves paleolimnology, diatoms, and sockeye salmon. To make that understandable to everyone but me and Scott, I'm looking at a lot of dirt, finding copepod skeletons in it, and quantifying nitrogen isotope levels [when salmon die, they are saturated with Salmon Derived Nutrients (SDN), which converts to basically an overload of the isotope 15N]. So in years with a lot of 15N, it can be assumed that there were lots of salmon in the lakes. So what the heck is the point of the copepods? Juvenile rearing salmon eat these copepods before they smoltify (a fancy word for get sick of living in freshwater and make a run for salt water- obviously its much more complicated than this physiologically). So the juveniles eat these copepods then come back between 1-4 years later, spawn in the lakes, die and deposit nutrients with their carcasses. So with my study I'm getting sediment (dirt) from the bottom of lakes and dating it back 2000 years to try to correlate copepod abundance with salmon abundance and climate change. Now this seems complicated, but think about it. Temperature directly impacts phytoplankton, zooplankton, and algae levels. If levels are high, juvenile salmon will have plenty of food to eat while growing and hopefully many will migrate to the ocean (in the lake I'm studying, there are juvenile salmon in the millions). If food abundance is low, many juvenile salmon will die. This means that 2 or 3 years down the road, the adult salmon population will be lower, and therefore less carcasses and less 15N will get into the system. So that's my thesis in a nutshell. Back to my assistant: poor guy probably thinks I'm nuts. Currently I feel like a squirrel before you hit it with your car. Like, one minute its running in one direction, then the next, then the next, oh lights!, then running again. Just so much going on. But I appreciate this guy so much because ya know I can try to organize myself. On a side note, my pup is really snuggling with me and its very hard to type at this angle. And I need to take my  pumpkin pie out of the oven ( I guess I could have bigger issues). So aside from doing thesis stuff, we have basically been working and duck hunting. We went out yesterday morning, this morning, and we are going out again tonight. Since we got a free freezer on Craigslist, we are really trying to fill it! Granted it would take 10 flocks of geese to fill that thing but you get the picture. Keta has been doing good though yesterday morning she really pissed Scott off. He shot at a flock of 3 mallards. Two went down but weren't dead yet and the other duck just landed with them. So Scott pulls up the gun to really shoot us a feast and theres Keta, shredding out to the ducks! He was like nooooo. Good thing he saw her or there would have been a dead Keta, ducks, and Scott after I shot his ass for shooting the dog. Good thing that didn't happen. So we ended up with only 2 mallards yesterday. Oh, by the way, it's been snowing in the mountains and the marsh was frozen yesterday- IT IS COLD! Keta was shivering her little butt off. So this morning we went out with Parker and Ruger and this guy Mike (retired guy, really cool dude!) we got 7 total ( a lot of teals! 1 mallard). This friggin guy was a little north of us and was shooting everything. I just about busted down there and started yelling at him (pull the angry and abusive screaming, followed by crying because we are going to starve this winter- I think I'd be in a cushioned room if I pulled that on him out there in the middle of the marsh). So we are going back out tonight and hopefully bucksnort won't be there shooting up the whole place. Then Alison and I made a big pot of caribou chili and I made a pumpkin pie and we can pig out after  duck hunting-yuum. I'll put some pictures up later from tonight! Also for anyone reading this that wants to keep in touch, um I killed my phone last week so I have no ones numbers so please text me if you want to talk! I'm not ignoring you, I just don't know your number. Also, there are literally no apples in Alaska to pick. I know they are cheap in the east though! Sooo if anyone wants to send me a priority mailbox full of apples let me know, I'll pay you for everything! They are SO expensive here!

In The Face

Last night we went out duck hunting (yes, again) with our friends and their lab. We didn't quite know how it would go- miss Keta loves playing with Ruger soo we figured that might be what happened the whole time we went out hunting. We met at the flats around 6. Oh, and Scott and I sucked it up and bought me waders- best decision of my life. It made a HUGE difference. Instead of falling in huge holes and getting soaked in the first 30 seconds, I stayed dry the whole time- so much more enjoyable. So we all get out on the flats and there is this cow moose there (in picture above) and she kept sneaking towards us which was alarming to me because like, theres no way in hell I can run away from this thing if she decides she feels like trampling me.So she's inching closer and closer to us but the boys blasted a duck and she was like oh shit, no thanks! So long story short, it was sunny and beautiful. The guys shot 5 ducks (these assholes that cut us off and walked around us shot at 2 ducks but couldn't find them- karmas a bitch- because Ruger (our friends lab) found both of them. So we left with 5 mallards, a snipe, and a teal. The best part of the day was right when we were leaving. Alison and I (the women took the easier route- good thing because the boys were flailing in chest deep water) were walking to meet up with Scott and Parker and Alison is like guys, duck! Parker shoots the thing, which its wing gets shot out (his ammo didn't put out a good spread) so the duck literally flies right into Scott's face. Like, if he had a bayonet he could have made a duck kabob. It was hilarious. So obviously Scott shot the duck again and the dogs found it. Both dogs did fantastic and it was a great workout for us. We had bacon eggs and pumpkin beer for dinner at 10:30pm and it was the best thing ever. Plus our friends gave us some caribou meat- omg caribou jerky is possibly one of the most delicious meats I have ever had- Keta was attacking me while I was eating it- it's that good.

Beautiful moon

Red mountain tops

Followed by blue

Two awesome dogs and great buddies! Keta on the left, Ruger on the right.

Us and our (tired wet cold) babygirl.

True Life: They Have Pick Your Own Farms in Alaska!

So since I wrote last, I had a ridiculous trip back to the Russian River and went to a sweet u-pick farm (aside from the normal day to day activities including running into moose on the walking path and pissing off random people with my dog). I went to the Russian with my neighbor and his friend last weekend and brought Keta. It is amazing how much a river can change in a matter of weeks. When we went with my dad, it was stuffed with beautiful red spawning sockeye and a few trout here and there. Now since the sockeye spawned, the river STINKS something awful. Bear shit + decaying fish- what a treat for the olfactory. Most of the sockeye are dead or decaying, and there are eggs in the river. Result: HUGE rainbow trout and dolly varden. Now, since the dog was horribly misbehaving and driving me crazyyyyy, I only got to catch 1 dolly varden but it was wicked fat and 18". Parker and his friend murdered the fish (and by that I mean catch and release) and caught some rainbows and dollies well over 2 feet. So, Scott and I are going back without miss difficult crybaby Keta. Also, the belugas are migrating through the Turnagain Arm! We saw hundreds just swimming through on our drive it was so cool. So Scott got back from his sisters wedding (seriously lonely when he's the only person you really hang out with and he was gone for 4 days) and we were told by a friend about this pick your own farm in Butte. I call it Butt but it's actually pronounced bute. Whatever. Anyways, Scott and I went there and picked our own potatoes, beets, zucchini, peas, lettuce, broccoli and turnips and got a ton and it was only 14 bucks. How sweet is that? Oh, and it was beautiful. That's about it. It's fall in Alaska- it's beautiful.

I love my wagon full of vegetables- so cute!

Gorgeous location for a farm!

Happy Fall!