Thanksgiving 2009 in Charlotte NC

what a treat to be with sibs Rich and Elaine. Below is Nana Pearl with her grandkids. They're all strong, good lookin and above average!.

Saint Paul Island Nov Trip for Work

This is the old part of Saint Paul where the
church,
school, school district and
city hall are located. It's a quiet island
of around 450 people, mostly Aleut.
I was invited there to work for the week
and help folks out with Medicare,
Social Security and Medicaid.



















This was my home away from home.
The itinerant quarters
are well appointed and real comfy.
The view, when it wasn't too
windy to see anything, included the cemetery.

























The Saint Paul islanders are very friendly
and warm. Faith, on my right,
was a great hostess, organizer and buddy.















There were some chances to take a walk and
explore a little.
Children play alot of basketball,
ride their bikes around and
play ball outside when they can.
















On my final day here i was able to make a
house visit to see
an elder and help her family
sort out her benefits. ATV's are
the way to go when the wind is brutal.

One of the health care providers.

























This is the TDX wind farm. Or is it the city's?



















This is the medication "vending machine."
A doc at
Southcentral Foundation
okay's the medication and a
pharmacist dispenses it.
It's pretty cool.

halloween dance 2009

10/19/09 Alaska Day Hike- HIdden Lake

This was a day off and after the 3 day training last week and associated prep work, Mike, Wally and I took off to hike at 9 am

We hiked up to hidden lake. Didn't exactly go the most direct route, but had fun exploring just one more ridge until we found this little lake.

There were dozens of moose everywhere.

Turnagain Trail as winter comes

mark, sim, karen, me, alex, mike - there were a few more that also met up at mchugh after an aborted start at glen alps. too much snow/slush to make it up there and we weren't ready to ski.










sim, shannon and me.





















our gorgeous backdrop framed perfectly by karen r.

9/24/09

this has been a gloriously colorful autumn, but it's going to
be winter soon. See the termination dust (snow) on the
mountains? It'll be on the ground in Anchorage one of these
mornings when we all wake up. Then it will be a race to get
snow tires on. What a great summer, though.



Toshi and others hiked from McHugh Creek up a ways towards
Rainbow, turned around in time to get back to cars before sunset
which is 5+ minutes earlier every day now. It's almost the autumn
Equinox when we'll have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of
darkness. Then it's a quick drop to total darkness till Dec 21st the
winter solstice.

Jane and I had our annual fall hike from Arctic Valley to gather
low bush cranberries. We didn't find many.


















But we did find gorgeous views of nearby peaks with snow -
termination dust as we call it.


















Around 7:30 the sun was going down low showing off Mt. McKinley
(Denali) to the left and you can see fire island clearly, too.



















And then to top it all off we hiked down while a wolf nearby
hiked up and along the ridge nearby. Poor shot of the wolf, sorry.

evening chugach hike 9/3/09

This has been my best summer of hiking in 18 years.
nice view here of o'malley peak and the entire ridge to false o'malley.
We hiked from the Prospect Heights trailhead in perfect late summer
weather.


















pretty good view of Flattop and peaks east of it. We were hiking
in real tall grasses.


















This is a large part of the "Toshi" hiking group of Monday evening
mellow hikes and Thursday evening more strenuous ones.

eagle river valley hike 8/29/09

no better way to spend a day than hiking along the south fork of eagle river. here's views of the alaska range- we saw denali and foraker
























there were six of us: mark, mike, vinny, julie, miriam and judith. perfect weather for the 10 mile hike to eagle and symphony lakes.

























blueberries on lichens

berry pickin Rendezvous Peak 8/22/09

what a gorgeous late august day for southcentral alaska. best thing to enjoy it is to hike! and there were patches of blueberries for the pickin. sharay, maureen and kevin and 2 doggies joined the fun.























clouds rolled around but not through us, that was cool to see and cooled us off for a bit.