Meeting the Brown Family of UNK

A great women de-finning a huge silver salmon for her grandfather

bag full of salmon eggs... caviar anyone? Or you can salt it and use it for bait

Silver Salmon, salt washed and drying until a thick layer of "crust" is on it then into the smoke house!

Ulu in action, I totally need one of these!

Sharpening the Ulu

Salmon babies!!

Salmon guts..

Smoke house

Smoke house

Salmon crusting

The lodge their parents own in UNK

Our tour of Unalakleet

Once we made it to the school we set up our bed and took a tour of the town with a few other teachers. 

This is a picture of the coast line as you can see there is a ton of drift wood all along the beach. It was really cold and rainy when we went out for this walk. I would have guessed it was in the very low fifties.

There is a picture of what we called a fort others said it was a way of drying out the wood to use for fires and heating. I figured there was a not a "No Girls Allowed" sign out front so I investigated!

This was VERY interesting to see. Inside here there are different kinds of fish and salmon hanging to dry! 

There was so much fish! It actually didn't even smell too bad. 

 We finally made it to the store and about died when we saw the price for basic things! Thank goodness eggs were on sale 2/$9.00!

And I don't know if you can see the price on these M&M's but they are 17.55 and the bag of chocolate bars above it are 31.55!!  

This morning (Tuesday) it was really sunny and fall like outside maybe mid-50's so Ty and I took another walk and took more pictures. 

I love this picture! The village was so peaceful and quiet at this time and the views were amazing!

This is the water tower for the village.

We were both amazed by the huge tractors everywhere! 

Another great shot of the beautiful scenery of Unalakleet!

  

 I felt like I was walking in a picture!

This was the village's salvage area

Here are some puppies that were barking at us as we walked by

The supply plane flew in at the beginning of our walk and this was it taking off once we made it back to the airport

Here is Jim Tweto's plane from Flying Wild Akaska

Smith we were hoping you knew what this was.. It was basically the body of an old plane that had a door on the end of it..

Here are the village supplies off the plane. I see TP!

Alaska State Trooper at the Airport.

Eureka we made it to Unalakleet!

 Monday morning we headed for the bus stop at 7:30am. Joe was flying Air Alaska to Kotzebue at 11 am and Ty and I flew Pen Air to Unalakleet on a noon flight. While sitting for a very long time at the airport after saying good bye to Joe, we get a text message from him that reads, “guess who forgot to take the bear spray out of his carry on.” Earlier in the week Joe had bought a large bottle of basically pepper spray for bears. Needless to say when he went through security they didn’t allow it on the plane.

 Once our flight time finally came we had to walk out on the tarmac to board our plane! This was great and all except it meant our plane was very small. Ty and I also got split up on the plane because we said we were fine with performing emergency exit procedures as well. Ty got to sit in the front seat while I was stuck in the middle all by myself. 

 

 Luckily once we took off the very nice flight attendant allowed Ty to come back and keep me company. She told me Ty looked a little nervous at take off and I needed to comfort him! He just needed to return to his seat for landing. 

 

About an hour and a half later we landed safely in Unalakleet! At the airport we were greet by more very welcoming BSSD staff that helped us get our bags as well as bring us back to the school.

This is our baggage claim.. you pick up your bags from a huge pile and load it into the trucks!

Spenard Hostel International and Our Last Day in Anchorage

Yesterday the Welcome Wagon finally came to a close at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. However, last night we still needed a place to stay because our flight out to Unalakleet wasn’t until noon today. So we stayed with Joe at the Spenard Hostel. It was a great experience and everyone there was really nice and welcoming. My favorite was when we were about to leave this morning and a large group of Italians were also leaving. It was amazing to hear Italian being spoken so elegantly. Eventually their cab pulled up just as we made our way to the bus stop. 

 Yesterday to pass time we took a 3 mile walk, which quickly turned into a 5 mile urban hike to Earthquake Park in Anchorage.

 As we were walking we stopped at the pontoon boat parking lot, got lost, found the park,

and ended up near the airport looking at this fun sign.--->













While staying at this hostel we also found Gwennie’s an old Alaskan Restaurant known for their all day long, home-style breakfast.

We originally ate brunch here on Sunday with the after church crowd. We all ordered the fish and chips… I think it was because the other day mine was so good! However, after seeing the breakfast omelets Ty and Joe were hooked and we came back for dinner. I made the mistake of falling for our server’s yummy description of the all you can eat beef rib special. I was disappointed however when the server came to the table the ribs that were dry and seemed to be placed under the heat lamp too long. It also should have been a giveaway that it wasn’t going to be the best ribs when I didn’t get a wet-nap under my basket to clean my hands with afterwards. On the other hand I think Joe’s Reindeer sausage (similar to ring bologna or kielbasa) omelet and Ty’s King Crab Omelet were both VERY yummy!  

 

All and all, I wouldn’t mind staying in another hostel the people are very interesting and come from all walks of life.  I would however have second thoughts on eating ribs in Alaska again. 

It's 11:00pm...

and the sun is finally setting!

Welcome Wagon Anchorage, Alaska

Hello Family and Friends,

I am so happy to finally have the time to blog to all of you. Ty and I got into Anchorage at about 2pm on Monday. We were greeted at the airport with a BSSD welcome sign and smiles from Darla (leader of welcome wagon) and another new teacher Doug. It was a very fun experience to be welcomed at the Airport. Once we made it past the baggage claim we were rushed to the Social Secerity building so Doug could get his SSN and then off to the DMV. The DMV was PACKED!! We left right away and headed to the phone place to get our cell phone and many other places before dinner. We checked into UAA around 9pm that night.

The next few days were blur of running around Anchorage and eating breakfast and dinner at Denny's.

On Wednesday night after Bingo at Applebee's we got the call from Joe! He had made it! Thursday we spent being Joe's Welcome Wagon and getting him his license and groceries. Today was a fun day we spent in Downtown Anchorage. We ate at this pub called Snow Goose that had AMAZING fish and chips! It also had a great view of the bay.

Through out this journey I can say this so far that:
-We have spent more money than I thought we could on groceries= $755.00
-I HATE packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking and finally packing food up to ship out in the lobby of the post office.- So far the sun being out at 11pm hasn't bothered me. It just very fasinating!
- I wish we were in Gambell and not stuck in Anchorage until the 8th
-BSSD staff go above and beyond for new teachers
- We have already meet life long friends!
-I couldn't do any of this without Ty by my side 

 The guys had their cameras out so I had to hold their drinks! They were all very good! Midway Cafe was our favorite stop to get coffee before REI opened!

We spent two days walking around in Anchorage sight seeing. We walked most of it and when we got tired we took the bus and when we got desperate we took a cab!






Here are Joe and Ty waiting for our last bus of the day. We thought that once we figured this all out we will be out of here!