Alaska!

Kenai Lake from Slaughter Ridge

a cold cold lake near south Denali that Sam and I perhaps ill-advisedly walked around, bushwhacking in knee-deep snow and guessing at the trail.

*Apologies — trying to blog on my phone with mediocre WiFi means the layout is going to suck.

Hey, I’m in Alaska!  My friend Sam and I said this aloud about 27 times the first day.  You look out at some snowy mountains, a pleasingly diverse arrangement of mosses and lichens, fill your lungs with green-smelling air, and can’t help but be wowed all over again.  It’s pretty.  It’s cold.  It’s light out 20 hrs a day.  Kind of makes you think of Antarctica, but with scarier and more mobile megafauna.

Also, hey, I’m a cook again! Got my ill-fitting pants and am measuring eggs and sugar by grams.  I get to listen to Ween and scrub pans and taste-test cheesecake.  And the cookies...let’s just say hundreds will pass my personal quality check each week.

So it’s kind of springtime — there are green things growing, mooses are dropping calves left and right, and the sun is warm on your back.  But we live in canvas-walled tents and it’s close to freezing at night.  There are nightly campfires and unlimited tea, and I scored an extra blanket so I didn’t even have to wear socks all night last night.