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.