This Way to the Exit, You Glacier.

Continuing the Seward madness (much delayed, I am sorry), the three of us woke up Saturday morning, after a night of rain, rain, and rain, to more rain, rain, rain. Well scratch that, we first all woke up in the middle of the night because Kathryn had somehow shifted diagonally and had taken over Kathleen's pillow. Kathleen realized this when her face was smashed up against the side of the tent and a curious chipmunk put his front paws on her face trying to figure out what the odd protrusion coming from the tent was. She then woke me up and I realized Kathryn had gained full control over the bottom half of my sleeping pad with her feet. So we both eventually woke up Kathryn with our laughter. Anyway, around 9am we all woke up for good and intentionally. We packed our bags and decided to go on a hike! Primrose Trail was our destination. Now nothing really exciting happened during our hike except that we made it to Long Lake (which was in fact very long) and while hiking on the trail I kicked a mushroom which turned out to be more like an exploding brick. Do not, I repeat do not kick large mushrooms. After the hike, the three of us met up with the other roomies and Corinna (pseudo-roomie) and chowed on some lunch. Once our bellies were full (which for us campers was much needed and overdue), we headed over to Exit Glacier to do some more hiking! It is beautiful here. The glacier is monstrous! Now it is kinda a tourist hang-out so unfortunately we weren't allowed to climb all over the glacier like we did other places but still totally worth the visit. And here is what we saw...

Approaching it! See those people up there? Yup, use them for a size gauge. This puppy is big. 

And blue! And just a little bit dirty. 

And photogenic! Also apparently full of jokes! Brought giggles to our faces! 

And a great back drop! I could just imagine the prom theme...a night on ice or a night of black and blue with a nice glacier backdrop for the photos. I might sell this idea to walmart... 

Anyway, the glacier was great. It brought all sorts of creatures...ahhh...people together! Here is where I point out the items of clothing we are all wearing...now how does that compare to this? 

Count em! One, two, three different types of camo. 

And...

Ahhhhh...loss for words. But hey, at least she can drop it like it's hot when the glacier gets too cold. 

Seward: the Land of Glaciers, Rain Jackets, and Ocean

Open the flood gates, here comes the Seward series! The big news of the weekend is that my dear, old friend Kathleen Phelps came to visit. Now if you don't know who she is, no worries, here is a photo. 

She arrived on Thursday morning and by Friday morning, Kathryn, myself (we ditched work), and Kathleen were packed and ready to drive down to Seward for some camping/hiking action. Seward is located...

probably the closest I'll get to my love Capt. Sig Hansen. I would be lying if I didn't have hopes of seeing him. Seward is a very well known fishing town. I mean people have things like this hanging from their trees as decoration. 

But that is besides the point. We went down there and sadly the theme of the weekend was water. That wasn't going to get us down though because gosh darn it, we were going to camp! So we purchased two tarps, some waterproof fire starting sticks, and wood (which also happened to be filled with water) in grand hopes of smores and a wienie roast. We discovered a most excellent camp site complete with an awesome tree bench, which was poached slightly from a different site. But we made it our own. 

Now while these hooligans monkeyed around, I got down to some serious engineering business. See that plastic bag near the right corner of the tent? Boom!

Hello Panama Canal, Erin Humphrey eat your heart out. The plastic bag caught our overflow of water from the tarp and filtered it to Kathryn's freshly dug trail. 

We clearly should have been engineers but not definitely not fire starters. We had some issues the first night with our fire capabilities; we had to cook our food on the waterproof fire sticks! The next night though (after buying new wood and going through a pack and a half of fire sticks) we ignited some killer flames! We were able to melt glass in it! 

The aftermath, pretty intense. 

And in true Larissa fashion, we had a photo shoot with the fire. 

That's me! Love, Kathryn. 

Oh Kathleen...Dream big. 

Ring of fiiiiiiirree. 

So I figured I would keep this entry to camping and leave the day adventures for the next ones but we did do this little walk around to discover what was around our camp site and we found this! 

And we found this...dun, dun, dunnnnn

For those of you who don't know, Steel Reserve is the bane of my existence. We broke up a loooong time ago and will never make up. How ironic it is that we found this can when Kathleen has so many stories about me and the good ole 211. Anyway in case you don't think the other posts will be exciting, just look at Kathryn, she is jumping out her skin waiting for them! And who wouldn't want to see our mugs some more? 

Plus, Kathleen says do it! You don't want to make her angry. 

One for the Dogs!

Sorry for the hiatus (again), but it has been a whirl wind this past week. I was in Denali on a site visit from Mon to Thurs and then down south from Fri to Sun! But anyway Denali National Park and Preserve is home to the largest mountain in the U.S. named Mt. McKinley or Denali, "the great one."  The park is located here...

And Mt. McKinley should look like this...

However, it usually looks like this...

Completely socked in by clouds...hard to believe there is a mountain range back there isn't it?

Well folks, let's say while I was there I saw some wonderful clouds! Oh and not too bad of landscape views either!

And I saw a lynx! Very interesting. Seriously the size of a dog. 

Dude bolted out into the street while we were driving and then ran back to the woods and hung out here. Crazy and not gun-shy. 

But the main animal of the trip was the dog, the sled dog to be exact. Denali apparently has many uses for sled dogs and so (on work time), we went and checked out a little show about the pups! And pups there were!

Check out the webcam on these little guys - http://www.nps.gov/dena/photosmultimedia/webcams-pups.htm - since it is operated by the park service, we here at work feel it is allowed to be open at all times to observe their adorable puppy ways!

But soon those pups will grow into dogs like these!

Who after running turn into slugs. I tried to entice them by saying "MUSH!" but honestly not even a twitch. 

I even tried to motivate them with smiles and false hopes of treats!

Still nothing...I mean seriously, they look like they just ran a marathon and died. 

But have no fear! We befriended a woman, who worked in Denali, who actually owned sled dogs! So we went out to her dry cabin (no running water - insane) and we walked/ran with her dogs!  It was so much fun! Here were the guys I trotted with! 

Waffles... 

And Zydeco! 

She had 10 in total and was getting 2 more at the end of the summer. We really were quite fortuitous to have been able to romp around with these dogs. Although to be honest, I knew we were going to have the chance to play since I saw Santa Monday and made some wishes. 

Oh you think I'm kidding? Santa apparently stops in Denali before heading to...you guessed it...the North Pole. 

So all in all, this trip was one for the dogs! I was also quite relieved when I returned from my excursion to find Kathryn alive and well. I was a tad bid concerned when I left her...

I was happy to see the trolls under her bed decided to release her. I would be lying if I didn't ask Santa to make sure I didn't have a mess of body parts to clean up when I returned to our abode. I am just hoping now that elves don't reside under her bed with the trolls, or if they do, please leave presents...or a cleaning service.   

Happy Belated Birthday to my Husband/Lover Quincy Johnson who turned the big 26 on the 21st! I know you brought out the dancing shoes.

Contradiction

If you were to look up the word "contradiction" in the Oxford Dictionary right now, it would say this...

"noun

        a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another:the proposed new system suffers from a set of internal contradictions

• a person, thing , or situation in which inconsistent elements are present:

the paradox of using force to overcome force is a real contradiction

• the statement of a position opposite to one already made:

the second sentence appears to be in flat contradiction of the firstthe experiment provides a contradiction of the hypothesis

• Larissa Rudnicki"   

And honestly, there is not one reason why it shouldn't. The roomies and I decided to run a 5K this morning. Of course, we prepared the night before by bowling and drinking...

Kathryn and I had a bet as usual, of which I won. It was surprising, I really am quite a miserable bowler. But I guess when someone adds massaging feet into the equation, I step. it. up. So here are the scores on the lane I was on. Kathryn achieved a 68. I think that says it all. Anyway back to the run. We woke up early (too early) and ran it. We didn't do too shabby either! 

You might be asking "what are you guys wearing?" 

Answer:

It was a Hawaiian theme mixed with 80's. Don't ask. We were the only ones dressed up. But we finished it and so did Kelly and Ashley! Yay! Now since we felt so good going for a run in the morning, we figured we would continue our healthy lifestyle by going to a blueberry festival. Sounds innocent right? 

Wrong! There was a pie eating contest. 

And as usual, I had to partake. The competitors? An Asian boy, two older men with quite the bellies, and me (the token girl). We needless to say, in the middle of the competition I bust out laughing. 

See all that whip cream in my nose? Yup, shot out and sprayed at the small children gathered to watch the "adults" eat pie. The announcer, who already found me to be the brunt of his jokes, loved that move. He said something along the lines of, "give her some room" or "maybe I am supposed to eat the pie." Basically, I didn't need the poncho, the people standing near the table did. In any case, I may have lost the battle (to the Asian boy...I am not surprised one bit - Takeru Kobayashi says it all), but I won the war. 

I mean, hello free blueberry facial. 

Well the festival had other activities as well like hula-hooping! I cannot hula-hoop. Seriously, I am terrible. One rotation and done. There was a boy next to me hula-hooping while eating chicken wings. It really did numbers to my ego. Kathryn is also a great hula-hooper. I mean perhaps not up to eating chicken wings standards but pretty darn good!

I will say though, in the sport of fly casting, I win. Yes, fly casting. There was fella there who was teaching it, so as intrigued as I was, I took the free lesson! 

And it was quite fun. I mean, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. 

I have decided that at any moment, I might quit school and become a fly casting fisherwoman. I mean  I know you all have seen "A River Runs Through It." 

So again, another day full of contradictions. Drinking before running. Partaking in a blueberry pie eating contest post doing run. And discovering that after going through a year of grad school of what I really "want to do," I have discovered my true calling is fly fishing and it is free. Splendid day for the walking contradiction. 

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY DEAR KRISTIN ALLEN!! Welcome to 25 aka hell. 

One last thing to leave you all with. We took a ski lift up to pick blueberries on top on a hill and we asked the dude to take a picture of us as we were lifting off. This is what he did after he just finished telling us how he knows how to use every camera. Also take note of the guy in the top right corner. Priceless.