It was a nice Memorial Day weekend! The daughter of the host family, Sara (12), and I had an impromptu breakfast cook-off on Saturday morning - I made an egg scramble, and she made waffles with homemade whipped cream and wild-picked Alaskan blueberry sauce...needless to say, she won. I spent the rest of the day admiring the fact that the birch trees actually remembered that they usually grow leaves around this time of year. Yes, that's right; Fairbanks is actually starting to green up! Last Friday was pretty ugly, and today is just beautiful and green. It's really that quick. The leaves will probably be full size before the week is out, and all grass and shrubs will probably be green and lush in a week after that. It's crazy how short spring is.

The mosquitoes are also crazy - I was outside for about half an hour on Saturday night, enjoying the last bit of light around 10 or 11pm, wearing sweatpants, a hooded jacket, and gloves (it was 80 degrees), and I was being absolutely ambushed. They're like real-life vampires. I hear it's even worse in Yukon-Charley, the park I'll be going to. Well, I'll just bring 100% DEET, a head net, and breathable outer layers.

Sunday evening I went with my host family to a barbecue at a house on the Chena River; it was a really nice setting, and I had the opportunity to talk a bit with the host of the get-together about going out on the Yukon and the Charley rivers. He had apparently had lots of experience in the park back before his hair lost its pigment, and it was pretty cool to hear his stories.

I'm especially excited for my trip in late June on the Upper Charley river, or, as it's colloquially called, the "Up Chuck." On that one, we'll fly in a bush plane, probably from Circle, a village hut on the west end of the park, into an unmaintained gravel airstrip at the headwaters of the river, at around 4,000 feet, kinda like this. Yes, there actually are competitions to see who can take off and land those planes in the shortest distance possible, because those bush airstrips are tiny. But, don't worry; they're some of the best pilots in the world. Anyway, the "Up Chuck" is class II and a bit of class III rapids that we'll be packrafting. We only have to go 35 miles or so, and we'll have around eight days to do it, so there will be plenty of time to hike off-river, maybe up to some of the surrounding peaks (about 6,000 feet, so nothing huge). We might be able to take an ultra high-def 360-degree panoramic camera with us that we might get on loan from the people down at Denali. We want to try to get up on those peaks and do stuff like this. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah, I thought so too. I really hope I can get to do it.

But, before the "Up Chuck" trip will be a trip with some archaeologists and a little motorboat ride down the Yukon. Should be some good stuff coming my way in about two weeks.

It's still beautiful here, though. On Memorial Day, I took a two-hour bike ride on a big loop, going from where I live on the northeast side of town, up the crown of hills that surround Fairbanks, and in a crescent shape over to the northwest side, where the University of Alaska - Fairbanks campus is. Then I just cut straight back across on a streetside bike path to get home. But, on the crescent, I got a spectacular view of the Alaska Range (home of Denali), something my iPhone camera couldn't really reproduce. Oh well. There will be more bike rides in the future...and hopefully one that will take place on the actual Denali park road! That's something I've been planning for myself on a weekend coming up. Heck, maybe even this weekend. Maybe if you zoom in and tilt your computer screen so that the picture gets darker, you can just make out the muddled mountain range on the horizon that was as clear as day to the naked eye (I swear!).

Anyway, that wraps it up for today.

A week of mostly uneventfulness

It's been about a week since I've posted.

Don't worry. You haven't missed much.

Last week, we were waiting for the NPS office's IT personnel to return to the office this week so that they could create a login for me so that I could use a real computer instead of the bootleg Mac laptop that wasn't on the government network. Well, turns out they're gone this week too. But, a login was able to be made for me. I now can log in to a computer, Photoshop pictures, organize the photographic database, create 3D tours of the visitor center's exhibits (more on that later), and do basically anything...once my e-mail account gets configured. Supposedly that will happen before this week is out. So, next week I'll actually be considered a real employee.

Anyway, for the second half of last week, we kind of twiddled our thumbs, thinking up work I could do until I got a login. I did some online government small-craft aviation training, since I'll be doing some helicopter flights in my first patrol (starting June 5th, more details to come on that as soon as I know them; things run slowly...it's the government bureaucracy doing what it does best: taking forever to get things done). I tried to download Photoshop on the Mac laptop (failed). They gave me this past Monday off of work since there was nothing for me to do. Ah, well. This week has been good so far.

I was actually able to work on some shots from the Chena River expedition last Tuesday. Three of them are on my website, gregkinmanphotography.com, under Fine Art, entitled "Chena River, Granite Tors, Alaska." After I finished those, I've been working on a pretty cool project that will keep me busy for up to the next week or so.

So, the place I work at, the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center, is basically one of the largest (in terms of throughput) visitor centers in the Alaskan Interior, if only because Fairbanks is the only city that's more than a tiny speck on the map in all of the Interior. There's a substantial exhibit in the Center that has huge dioramas of various things Alaskan: summertime landscapes, autumn landscapes, winter landscapes, spring landscapes, videos of all these seasons, descriptions of what these seasons are like in terms of weather, flora, fauna, mosquito population (hint: high in summer), descriptions of Athabascan Indians (the Alaskan Natives indigenous to the eastern Alaskan Interior) and their customs, fishing, the land surrounding Fairbanks, why Fairbanks even exists (three reasons: Gold Rush, then oil, then the military), and much, much more. My job is to photograph the thing and then assemble the pictures into a 3D environment that can be embedded on the center's website, using a program called Microsoft Photosynth. It's a cool program that senses the 3D environment your panoramic/collaged images were taken in, and can create navigable 3D environments modeling them. It's basically your own guided tour of the exhibits. So that's pretty cool, and I'll be doing that for about a week until it's finished.

Next, I think my boss, Josh, has some database stuff he would like me to do until I start preparing for my first patrol, which is June 5th-13th, I believe. Right now, I know that I'll be flying to Eagle, Alaska for the first day, a little hamlet on the Yukon River that is the jumping-off point for all Yukon-Charley patrols. Then, training (for who knows what) in Eagle on the second day. The next three days will be spend flying around in a helicopter with archaeologists, documenting their digs. Cool stuff. Then, it's a three-day 200-mile round trip to Slaven's Roadhouse, a big two-story cabin on the side of the Yukon in the middle of wilderness. A nice place to stay for both 19th-century gold rushers and modern man. It's 100 miles there by river, which we'll cover in one day on a motorboat. We'll spend one day there and in the surrounding area, and then we'll come back to Eagle on the third day. Then, I go home. That math adds up, right? I hope the government planned this correctly...

Anyways, that's my life for the past week. It recently warmed up enough to melt nearly all of the snow and for me to ditch the old fossil-fuel burning truck and to begin using the calorie-burning mountain bike to get to and from work (and maybe even the grocery store if I can get my hands on some panniers). I might be buying a touring/cyclocross/all-around bike off of a co-worker after my next paycheck, so who knows. The only downside to biking is that when you stop for a breather (only happens when going up the side of a hill to the house where I'm staying), your sweat attracts swarms of abnormally large Alaskan mosquitoes. They're actually huge. I'll probably have to bring copious amounts of DEET as well as a head net to the preserve. Oh well.

More updates when things change/get more interesting/I have more news/information/pictures.

First day of (somewhat) shooting

Took my first few shots today! Nothing special; in fact, all the locals say the place looks pretty ugly right now compared to what it was in the winter and what it will be in the summer in a few weeks. Breakup (Alaska's short version of spring, named as such for the ice "breaking up" on rivers, lakes, and the ocean) is a pretty ugly, muddy, wet, brown, dirty time. All the snow is melting, but nothing is green yet. Yuck. Anyway, here are some shots. They're all straight out of the camera, since I'm not set up on work computers at the office yet and my laptop is way too old and slow to run Photoshop.

I tagged along a scouting/training/orientation trip with the new summer seasonal staff. The purpose was half to orient the staff with the trailheads and campgrounds to which they might be directing inquiring customers at the visitors center, and half to check out the conditions at said trailheads and campgrounds in order to determine their open/closed-ness and whether or not to send said inquiring customers to said trailheads and campgrounds.

Most of them were in that nasty stage between perfectly frozen over and usable for hiking, biking, snowmachines, 4-wheelers, etc. and all melted and ready to go for summer. Which means, muddy, boggy, icy, snowy. A lot were closed for breakup until early June.

Chena River, right by Angel Rocks:

Chena River, across from Granite Tors

Chena River, right off of the Granite Tors trail

View up on the ridge viewing the greater Granite Tors area and Chena River basin

A young, dumb moose just chillin' in the road

A burned-out area on the Granite Tors trail; supposedly burned in the late 2000's

The (still) snowed-over Granite Tors trail...the snowmelt is long overdue, this should have been clear three weeks ago apparently

So, as you can see, breakup is still in full swing. It's usually summer by now, but it's not yet, because Alaska keeps wanting to be cold. It hovered in the high 30's all day today at these places. Usually it's in the high 50's at this time of year.

Breakup, and, by extension, summer, is late this year.

Day 1 Completed!

So, I finished my first day with the Fairbanks, Alaska Public Lands Information Center (FAPLIC), part of the the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center (MTCVC). A long way to say that I work for the National Park Service, essentially.

But let's back up to Saturday. I took three flights, kept getting interrupted while watching Django Unchained (never got to finish and then my rental expired), but finally arrived at FAI at about 5:30pm AKDT. My oversize bag didn't show up, and, as luck would have it, all my toiletries were in it. So, Josh (my supervisor) picked me up, took me by the grocery store so I could buy some more supplies, and then took me to the house I'm staying at all summer.

The family I'm living with, the Laughlins, are great. It's just a husband and wife and their very animated 12-year-old daughter (and a cat named Luke), so it's not crowded, but definitely doesn't feel empty. They live about halfway up Birch Hill, a large hill northeast of town that goes up a few hundred feet. Here's some crappy iPhone pictures of Luke and the view from their backyard.

It's nestled in some trees on a well sized piece of land. When "go-green" happens, the white birch trees will bloom and join the spruces in greenery. And, of course, bring all kinds of wonderful allergens into the air. Yay for sniffles. (sidenote: this should have happened about three weeks ago; "breakup," when all the snow melts and the rivers thaw, is almost a month late this year because of unseasonably cold temperatures creeping into what should be spring's territory — it was 25 this morning and got all the way up to 33 this afternoon).

Yesterday, I slept late and spent the day getting organized in my living space, buying groceries, and prepping for my first day.

Got to work at 8am today when it was still freezing cold. I chose to drive the Laughlin's old truck to work since it was so cold. Once it gets above 35 or 40 degrees in the mornings, I think I'll dress warmly and bike to work. It's pretty close. I can bring my work clothes to change into at the office; I won't sweat that early in the morning.

(funny sidenote: we all were hanging out in the front office at 7:55, waiting for the overall supervisor, Adia (uh-DEE-uh, as I later learned), to arrive and start the training. She walks in at 7:55 and the first thing she does is stop in her tracks and say, "All of you are here at 5 of 8? ...what the hell?" and walks straight into her office. She has a funny, quirky personality, and she seems like a good leader.

All morning was a staff training meeting for the summer season, since today is officially the first day of "summer" season and summer hours. Even though the Chena River (the river that downtown Fairbanks straddles) out the window of the conference room is still half-frozen. Funny incident: a 55(?)-year-old new seasonal hire had some obvious cartooning skills, and during a team-building exercise during which we all drew pictures, he drew a beautifully drawn picture of, and I quote, "this is what happened to me this morning: my dog took a shit right in front of me as I took a shit in my outhouse, and I reflected on the irony of the situation and decided to draw it." Goofy guy. (sidenote: lots of Fairbanksans have outhouses since a lot of the housing in the greater Fairbanks area consists of "dry" cabins, i.e. cabins that have no water piping to them. This means outhouses and hauling water jugs to your cabin).

We had a staff pizza party and then did some touring of relevant places in Fairbanks. Adia walked us through downtown Fairbanks when it was 33 degrees outside, and she was the one who complained the most about the cold (I certainly would've liked to have complained about the cold; all I had on was a fleece jacket in addition to my button-down shirt and jeans; I hadn't anticipated a foray outside on just my first day). She calls snow "the s-word," and hates the cold. Even she wonders why she lives in Alaska. Funny how life works out sometimes, I guess. Anyway, then she drove us around in a GOV (government-owned vehicle, about which she told a funny story about a former volunteer drinking and driving in it with a minor in the car while on a staff field trip), stopping by all of our partner agencies (BLM, the NPS, DNR, Fish & Game, Fish & Wildlife, lots of other acronyms and names that aren't really relevant to my particular role with the organization...at all). But all in all, it was a nice orientational day to get myself acquainted with the FAPLIC and what it does.

But tomorrow, I take pictures. We have a staff field trip to Chena Hot Springs, about fifty miles outside of Fairbanks. Supposedly it's beautiful. It's also going to be cold, so I'm bringing warm clothes and camera-friendly gloves). Apparently we also can't go to Angel Rocks, which is another apparently beautiful place that is near the hot springs, but is 51 miles from the FAPLIC. We can't go anywhere over 50 miles away from the FAPLIC without filling out a travel authorization, which, in the government bureaucracy that is the National Park Service, takes a few weeks to get approved. Adia forgot about that caveat until a few days ago, which is too late. Alas, we will not be going to Angel Rocks.

Anyway, I have all my gear packed for tomorrow, they're giving us free lunch for the second day in a row, I cook myself delicious breakfast, and the Laughlins cook me delicious dinner. All's well up here.

Pictures from Chena Hot Springs to come next week. Because I can't get on computers at the office yet because IT is over in Eagle for who knows what reason. So that beautiful 27-inch iMac at the office will have to wait until next week. But, after then, I'll be churning out some (hopefully good, it's been a while) shots.

Love this place so far. It's so rugged, everyone is outdoorsy, athletic, and loves getting out and enjoying the beautiful lands all over the state. Can't wait to see what this summer has in store for me once we get out of the icebox.

No, I didn't leave the yellow Datsun in a ditch in the desert.

Small update right now. Spent the week packing.

I'm going to have to pay extra for a bag that weighs over 50 pounds - there's just no way around it.

The big black bag houses my backpacking backpack and all the associated outdoor gear, plus some heavy clothing I'll need when I first get up there while it's still cold. It's highs of 50's and lows of 30's right now, but that's on average. I've learned that Alaska and Texas are nearly identical: everyone owns a gun, the state is enormous, and the weather is ridiculously, inhumanely volatile. So, I'm bringing jackets.

Oh, and since I fly back to Dallas two days before I start classes at Rice again for the fall, I had to semi-pack for the fall semester. So basically everything I own is packed away right now.

Then there are my alarms for tomorrow morning:

...it's going to be a long day. My first of three flights takes off at 8:30am CDT, and my last one lands at 5:30pm AKDT (Alaska time; 8:30pm CDT). Then my boss picks me up from the airport and takes me to the house where I'm going to be living this summer. Copious pictures to come upon landing!

I'm going to Alaska.

The Charley River

This summer, I'll spend 15 weeks as a "Photo Media Intern" in the Alaskan interior. (May 11 - August 24; I start classes again on August 26, yikes, cutting it close, oh well, this is worth it). This will be my blog to document the experience. I'll post words here, and maybe a few pictures, but a much higher quantity of pictures will be posted to my Behance page.

I got the job through the Student Conservation Association, a blanket organization that matches up high school and college students with environmental, outdoor recreation, and public lands organizations. A lot of the internships are put on by the federal or state governments, and mine in particular is through the National Park Service. You get to fill out one blanket application, and then you select internships you want to be considered for; essentially, you fill out the same application for as many different internships you want. I chose about 12 internships from a pool of 300 or so, and I interviewed with the Park Service about two weeks after applying. It was really easy compared to other internship shopping I've done. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to do something outdoorsy with their summer.

So, what will I be doing? I'll be taking photos and video of a little bit of Fairbanks and the surrounding public lands, and a LOT of Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, a humongous park that butts up against the eastern border of Alaska, directly east of Fairbanks. A lot of the time will be spent in a motorboat or a packraft on the Yukon and the Charley rivers, respectively (hence the name of the park). The shot up above is one of the Charley river that my soon-to-be-supervisor, a really cool dude, sent me. He has all kinds of blogs of the traveling and activities he's done over the years. I'm excited to work with him.

Anyway, I'll have four ten-day "patrols" packed into June through early August. These involve flying from my base in Fairbanks to our outpost in Eagle, on the border of the preserve. Eagle is the base of operations; it's on the Yukon, so we can boat straight out of there. We can also fly from there via helicopter and land anywhere flat, or we can fly via prop plane and land on a bush airstrip up in the hills, maybe at the headwaters of the Charley (I think those are grass; sounds interesting. But also very fun). May will be spent getting acquainted with Fairbanks and the office portion of the job (photo database management, editing, video editing). Late August will be closing out all my projects. But for the middle two months, I'll be out in the field shooting half the time, living on the trail (or river), traveling by boat, helicopter, prop plane, foot, packraft; whatever gets me to the beautiful and/or historic places. My job is to document everything.

The preserve has all kinds of natural beauty: forests, mountains, rivers, meadows, wildlife, plant life, impressive geologic features, almost ceaseless sunlight, fish (yum), gold rush history, and relics of adventurers long gone.

I fly up on Saturday.