Mount McKinley in all it's splendor!

Day 2
Breakfast at Denali Salmon Bake- yup Salmon Pancakes- Just kidding

We stopped at both of the view points to see Mt McKinley which was absolutely awesome! Usually the mountain is covered in clouds or at least the tip is. Mt. McKinley is the tallest mountain in North America at 20, 320 feet-basically 4 miles high.







Mt McKinley July 2nd 2009

Ten Bears

Sow and 2 cubs-Denali National Park


Day 1
What a way to start our trip with Phil and Kathy. First we missed the 10 AM bus in Denali National Park because Phil, Kathy and I were in the bathroom. Jim said the bus driver wouldn't wait for us!
Fortunately for us we managed to get on the 11 AM bus and saw 10 bears, 25 caribou, 19 Dahl sheep at one sighting and I didn't count the rest of them. The coolest part was the sow and 2 cubs that were walking down the park road. The bus ride into Denali is an 8 hour round trip ride to a Visitors Center that is 60 miles along a moslty gravel road in the park. We saw other bears, mostly sows and cubs, one with 3 cubs. The bus drove around a steep curve and there was a caribou running down the road in front of the bus.

Caribou along side of road

New Widget

I am finishing up the last few assignments of my Web 2.0 class and while learning about pageflakes I came across this widget. Widgets are items you can place on your desktop or in your blogs, and wikispace. These include things like clocks, calculators, daily weather etc. I am trying out a cat widget

Family

My nephew Nicholas Wilkes recently reported for duty in Iraq. My sister Carmen sent me this photo of him. We are all praying that he stays safe while in Iraq.

Nicholas Wilkes in Iraq

Too busy

Seems like too much has been going on in my life for me to write. I am basically done with my mentor program for my student teacher with the University of Alaska.

I still have some work to complete my Web2.0 class and hopefully will have everything done for that class by the end of next week. My next task is to complete an podcast which I'm thinking about doing on snow buntings which are some of the first migratory birds to arrive in Fairbanks for spring.
I am also finishing up some classes called Writers Workshop which are a variety of workshops on writing activities to use with students.

I just finished a 3 day class from AMEREF Alaska Mineral and Energy Resource Fund. This was a fun class where I participated in mining a cookie, where we had to pick out chocolate chips, nuts, and coconut pieces. Each piece we found was worth a certain amount of money. We had to pay for our tools, toothpicks and a plastic fork and then we had to pay for reclamation which means we had to put the cookie back to it's natural state. We lost about $4,000 and I learned that mining for any substance is a complicated process. I really like the idea that the environment was included in all activities where both sides- the mining prospect as well as the concerns for the environment were addressed. Now I've got some great lessons to use with students. AMEREF is a resource for forestry, minerals, fisheries and natural resources.

Equinox and Birthday

It was Jim's birthday on March 21st. We had a nice dinner at the Silver Gulch in Fox. It's been sunny and bright looking from inside the house but is deceiving as outside temperatures are still around 0-10 degrees.
You can see we still have lots of snow in Fairbanks.


Jim's birthday is also right near the time of the spring equinox where in the Northern Hemisphere night and day are nearly the same (12 hours). Now it's quite noticeable the amount of daylight added each day.

Learning how to blog

I am just finishing a class on learning how to blog through the
ASWC blogs and wiki . This is my first personal blog and I'm really excited this.
My thoughts on blogs:
Family blog
student blog
science blog