Alaska!

Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to one of the most remote parts of the United States, the great frontier of Alaska.  I spent a couple of days in the near-Arctic coastal town of Nome and then another two days in the bustling city of Anchorage for work, getting a small taste of this far-away mega state in the process (see map below).

Welcome to Nome

One of the reasons for my trip up to Alaska was to attend an event that the National Park Service was hosting - a cultural celebration of Beringia, which is the region around the Bering Strait that includes both the United States and Russia. While you cannot, in fact, see Russia from the shores of Alaska, I did learn about the close historical and cultural ties between the people on both sides of the icy, rough waters that separate us from our Russian neighbors. I also got to experience a town most people have only heard about in reference to the early 20th century gold rush or the Iditarod dog sled races. Things I also learned about Nome while I was there include:

• Nome was once the most populous town in Alaska, with estimates ranging up to 20,000 at the height of the gold rush.
• Wyatt Earp once owned the most successful saloon/casino in Nome, earning a good living during his post-Tombstone retirement years.
• Total gold production for the Nome district has been at least 3.6 million ounces

Besides the standard meeting, greeting, and discussing of the issues that I was sent to Alaska to discuss, I also was able to learn about the Inupiat communities in Alaska and Russia, and to see first hand the similarities between them, through their dances, language, and food cultures. 

Unfortunately my busy days of meetings and some misty, rainy weather didn't allow for much time outside of the "mini-conference center" (that is honestly what it was called).  On our last afternoon we did go out looking for musk ox, which had been reported to be close to Nome.  Apparently Nome is one of the few places in Alaska where you can find musk oxen close to a village. But, as would be the pattern for all of our attempts at seeing the wild, we were not successful in our hunt for musk ox. However, seeing the fall colors on the tundra is amazing, and the last blueberries and crowberries were ripe and plenty.

Tundra berries!

Fall on the tundra

After our three days in Nome, I moved on to Anchorage for two days of solid meetings. I stayed at the historic Captain Cook Hotel, which seemed like the kind of establishment from which many an adventure had begun.  Once again, we were told to look out for local wildlife, this time moose, but once again a thorough search came up empty.  All failed animal sightings aside, the trip was amazingly productive, busy, and enjoyable.  Alaska is truly a unique, vast, diverse, and wild place that is a special part of the United States.  But next time I'm going to have to hire someone to find me a bear, moose, or musk ox.

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New York

Prior to this past weekend I had only been to New York city one time, nearly two years ago for Thanksgiving. Being that it was my first trip to NYC, the trip leaned heavily on the main attractions. Our first goal was to catch part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, so my traveling companion and I left DC very early in the morning and found ourselves dropped off in the middle of Manhatten craziness, blocks from the parade route. We spent the three days immersing ourselves in the most authentic of NYC tourist experiences: Santa at Macy's, the Staten Island Ferry, Wall Street, Times Square, Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, pizza and deli sandwiches. It was a great weekend and a wonderful way to first experience New York.

This past weekend was a much different, but no less amazing, NYC experience. I didn't do any of the things that I did on my first trip to New York, yet my experience was no more or no less authentic. The city is like that, all of the big tourist spots are important to the fabric of the city, but there is so much more, so no matter what you end up doing, you are experiencing the place. This time I had the benefit of a Brooklyn native friend as a tour guide and a brownstone in Park Slope as a resting place (complete with home-cooked meals and shopping tips). One thing that is new to both tourists and locals alike is The Highline, an amazing urban park and example of excellent urban planning. Suspended above the city streets on an old rail line, you can stroll for miles along the lower West side, eating popsicles and people watching.

At the end of the Highline we landed at Chelsea market, where we sampled a lovely WA state oyster to fuel our afternoon stroll through lower Manhattan. From there we wandered through the Union Square farmers market, sampling various homemade ice-teas and other local products. Our ultimate destination was Pomme Frites, a Belgian fry mecca with dozens of delicious dipping sauces, but on the way we took a detour through a fair-midway-like street event where I was introduced to the glory that is a "mozzarepa." Combine a sweet Mexican-corn arepa with Italian mozzarella and you have a mozzarepa - amazing. So after splitting the cheesy corn-cake snack and an order of Belgian fries over the course of about 5-6 miles, we were pretty well done with Manhattan. An evening spent drinking beer in Brooklyn and a Sunday adventure in thrift store shopping capped off a perfect NY weekend.

Everything goes in New York

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Into the Woods

For someone whose career is focused on natural resource protection, I rarely actually get out into those natural resources to enjoy the beauty and peace that inspired me to take this route in the first place. This past weekend I traveled a couple thousands miles to get back to my outdoor loving roots and to spending some quality time with the whole family, a feat even rarer than my chances to be outdoors.

After flying into the capital of the Inland Empire, Spokane, Wash., I helped the pack up the truck, camper, and accompanying vehicles with all possible provisions for a 3-day expedition into the wilderness with four kids and four adults. We headed east past Coeur d'Alene until reaching Kingston, ID, where we turned North along the Coeur d'Alene river. This is where cell phone signal ended and I started to remember what it was like to be completely without multiple digital leashes. Our destination was somewhere in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, along a glacial creek at a campsite where we ended up being the only inhabitants.

The whole family spent a couple of days battling the bugs, eating camping food, and enjoying the frigid rivers and streams. Nothing like the great outdoors to get the whole family to agree on something - that the great outdoors can be a lot of work!

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Earth Shaking

The last time I was in a real earthquake was over ten years ago, with a smattering of Central American rumbles in between. So yesterday, sitting at my desk typing away at some VERY important email, the last thing I expected to experience was a decent sized earthquake. The general sense in my hallway, as people stood in their doorways looking at each other, was complete bewilderment. I mean, we knew that it was an earthquake, but that just wasn't possible here in middle of the eastern seaboard. After the shaking stopped, there was not an announcement about what to do, so most of us returned to our desks until instructed otherwise. My coworkers crowded around my computer to witness the wonder that is twitter (a new fangled concept to most of them) as the tweets rolled in from as far away as Boston confirming that indeed, we had experienced an earthquake.

Ten minutes later, a crackly voice came over the ancient PA system, telling us to evacuate the building. It seems that that agency that houses the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS to most of you) should be able to get information to its employees more quickly than the time it takes to update all of my social media and send a few emails, but alas, not so.  That being said, the USGS twitter feed was updated much more quickly.

I grabbed my purse, anticipating that our nearly 100-year old building might take awhile to deem safe, and headed outside. The parks of Foggy Bottom were already packed with excited feds from all of the neighboring offices. The Office of Personel Management, the General Services Administration, the Federal Reserve, and the State Department all mingled with the Department of the Interior as we soaked up some sun and checked our blackberries, updating each other on the tidbits of news that were flashing across our respective digital leashes. About 20 mins passed before people started moving back inside and the Interior folks were told to grab their things, get out of the building, and go home.  Seriously? An absolutely perfect 80-degree, no humidity day in DC and the fates have granted us the afternoon off?

The Feds of Foggy Bottom gladly take a break outside while awaiting word on the safety of our buildings. 

It was too good to be true and this good fortune deserved a drink.  And I was not the only one thinking along these lines. I headed to the closest bar and met up with my partner in crime, where we enjoyed a refreshing beverage alongside a few hundred other suits, all enjoying the perfect summer version of a snow day. Word was that the metro and buses were a mess, so what was the point of trying, right?

Today my building is still closed for inspection, so I'm doing my best to work from home while preparing for a few days of vacation.  The unexpected seismic event was fortunately mild, and so a most welcome break from the everyday.



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