Well aloha to Hawaii and aloha to Alaska.  It’s been a good couple months since I’ve blogged and so much has happened.  After leaving the dairy goat farm back in May I spent about a month home until I headed back to Portage Valley, AK to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.   In that month that flew by I was able to spend time with family and friends, play some volleyball with Dad, go with Meghan and the kiddies to the zoo as well as attend one of my good friends and sorority sisters wedding.  It was a blast.  No matter how far I go nothing beats a Michigan summer.  I especially love being back in Ann Arbor and East Lansing.

Visiting with Grandma and Grandpa Schneck before they left for Alaska....go figure! 

Little Cat and I at the O'Connors where I stayed most of the month.  Thanks Tom and Christine!

Kevin and I built Bags a new cat tree....and when I say that I mean Kevin built it while I played with Bags haha

Toledo Zoo trip!

              At least they found the monkeys to be more entertaining than the statues around the zoo

Kalani made a friend 

Pooped from the day 

Fishing trip with dad...wait until he catches some big salmon in AK!

Lake day with Grandma and Grandpa Huff 

I missed these two! <3 

The lovely bride Lisa : ) Congrats Lisa and Gary!!

I’ve missed the center since I left last August but to drive down the Seward Highway from Anchorage’s airport to the center really reminded me how much I love and appreciate this place.  The first thing I did once I got to the center was grab Sarah and catch up while calling for Patron.  And she came!!  Boy did I miss that bear.  Since then it’s been a blur of new animals, new people, and getting back into the swing of things.  When I look back at pictures from the last month I realize just how much I’ve done in only a little over a month.

  

 Meet this year’s babies.  We have Jade the red fox kit who was found in Anchorage by a jogger, Wrangle and Chugach who are musk ox calves that came from our own herd, and finally Randi the wood bison calf whose mom died while giving birth.  And this doesn’t include our 11 other wood bison calves and five elk calves that stay with mama and the herd.  Summer is a busy time for the center as we get more and more foot traffic and new babes.  A week after I arrived at the center I started a new position this summer as a narrative tour guide for the free shuttle bus we now offer.  This shuttle bus was donated by Salmonberry and allows us to give visitors a chance to tour the center and receive information as well as a free ride.  I’ve already met so many awesome people in the time I’ve given the tours, not to mention improve daily in the public speaking department.  Thank goodness Eva kept me fresh doing those grand dairy tours.  I must say, I do miss the goaties, farm, and Maui.  This year is a little bit different in that instead of having the interns do half and half with gift store and interning there are four interns that are full time who are assigned a different animal weekly, two returners that are half and half like last summer, and then two narrative tour guides that do tours as well as whatever else needs to be done at the center.  It’s nice to be in a position where you do a little bit of everything…kind of acting as a jack-of-all trades.  I have to say I miss all the animal time but I try and do bottle feedings and feed diets when I can.  It’s so weird to come back after a winter and see the babies from last year all grown up.  Teddy our moose calf has gotten so big!!

As far as the center goes we’ve been pretty busy.  Uli and Kuma have now moved to black bear mountain which was constructed last year and is a part of our B.E.A.R.S. project.  Our bear boardwalk is open as well so you can walk along the boardwalk and check our black bears out.  We’re also currently constructing an amphitheater and boardwalk out at the point.  So many new things are coming!  I can’t wait to see how this place grows in the next five years.

Snickers is tuckered out at his porcupine presentation in Cooper Landing

JADE!

Good thing Claire isn't here this summer to lock me in the lynx enclosure ; )

Crystal (Crittle) feeding Randi our miracle baby

Mike Miller the owner of the center gardening in his backyard

Tractor fun with Sarah and Erin while waiting for the herding of the wood bison

Herding the wood bison bulls to their new pasture.  We move these guys around a lot and rotate them on pastures so the grass can recover.  These guys will strip the grass of about 95% of it's nutrients and are big roamers.  They need to move from enclosure to enclosure often.

Wilson, Teal, and Mike putting up an elk skull on the new intern bunkhouse

Erin and I with some browse (Willow) getting ready to herd the moose and elk

Mike, Katelyn, and I had to grab this small elk calf from the herd and place her in the new enclosure before herding since she was so small.  We were afraid she wouldn't keep up with the herd when we moved them so we took her beforehand with the 4-wheeler.  

Wilson's new hobby.  Walking our fox kit in the evenings around the center. 

Best friends Gilly and Nelson, our two year old moose

Walking Chuckles, our new yearling reindeer this year 

J.B. (Joe Boxer) posing for the camera...what a ham

While Scott and I walked around the center in the evening Fluffy (our only adult male musk oxen) and some females bluff charged us at the fence.  They didn't like that we were talking to Walter, our one year old that we raised last summer. 

Fluffy.  He has a very distinct boss on his head.  Those are about 3-4 inches thick with a couple inches of bone underneath that.  The males will face off in the rut (breeding season) and run at each other at top speeds and crash heads.  They say it's equivalent to a mid-size car running into a concrete barrier at just under 20 mph!

Wilson decided to write the scientific names for the animals at the center on the board to test our knowledge...nerd. 

Kaltag and Venetie were watching me from above as I cleaned up their enclosure and ripped out a dead pine tree.  I'm always keeping one eye on these cats that have been known to swat a few times haha.  Lynx will get to be about 20-30 lbs and have a larger paw than a 200 lb mountain lion.  Try getting slapped by one of those! 

Uli and Kuma on black bear mountain at their 4 o'clock feeding 

We've received some pretty big veggie donations in the last week.  Maria and I filled the entire back of the gator with cauliflower to dump into the bull wood bison enclosure.  They love this stuff 

One of the most interesting and exciting experiences I've had this summer.  Gilly here bumped his antlers on either side (you can see the bent part on the right side by Emilie) 90 degrees and had an infection in his antler.  In order to make sure the infection doesn't go into his blood stream Dr. Nybakken came to the center, we sedated Gilly, and used a string saw to cut off his antlers.  We all got to try our hand at sawing the antler.  It reminded me of cutting Bobby's horns in Maui.  

Don't worry, Gilly got lots of bananas before and after his procedure.

This year we've added a new event called our brown bear banquet where every Sunday we throw in a more exciting meal for our brownies such as a leg or soon here when the hatchery donates, big king salmon.  Here J.B. and Patron are feasting on a big bison leg

Not only has the summer been super busy (there seems to be so many more visitors this year!) but it seems like I haven’t had any days off where I’m just hanging out, hence the long overdue blog.  The weather this summer has been unbelievable compared to last.  It's been super warm and nice out and knowing what the weather could be like we definitely want to take advantage of it.  We've even been able to swim at Moose Flats!!  Pretty crazy when your swimming in Alaska with a glacier in the distance.  Below you'll see some fun things we've been up to this summer.  Jeremy, Erin, Corey, and I also went on a salmon fishing charter (my first one in Alaska!) in Seward.  I caught my limit of three and it was an absolute blast.  Now I gotta catch some halibut...

Trail to Byron Glacier

First hike of the summer!

Welp...maybe we should check the signage more before hiking onwards...

                                                      Pete, MT and I at Crow Pass Cabin

Stef infection 

Raven Glacier at Crow Pass 

                                                           Stef and I at Raven Glacier

We ran into a family of mountain goats on the way down!!  They were so close...mom and dad with 2 yearlings and a kid 

Canyon on the hike where we all dunked our heads in the ice cold glacier water

                                           Amazing view of crow pass hike and mountains

Randy Houser Concert!

Sarah and I....my country music bud

Claire, Erin, and I.  Erin, Jeremy, Corey, Pete, Crystal, and I visited Claire in Fairbanks (remember Claire from interning last summer?!) She's working for Fish & Game doing research on ducks this summer and was staying at a dry cabin with two VERY fluffy dogs which I forgot to take a pic of : ( 

Back of the van fun with Erin (a.k.a. IG...fried green tomatoes anyone?) 

We stopped at Denali National Park 

Stampede Rd.  Where Chris McCandless from Into the Wild hiked to his infamous bus

Erin, Crystal, and I 

The boys!  Pete, Corey, and Jer

The bus used for the movie Into the Wild.  We didn't hike to see the actual bus still off of Stampede Rd. but it's on my bucket list!

Chris McCandless- final goodbye note

 

View from inside the bus

"The Counsel"

Amber, Erin, and I on the Russian River looking for bears!  Unfortunately the salmon wasn't running and no bears were to be found.  But it's always fun to go along for the trip to Cooper Landing for our Tauk Snicker's presentations

My first Homer trip.  Scott and I went out to dinner and I had my first king crab : )  You can see we both thoroughly enjoyed it haha

On the spit where we camped at Homer

Nothing like Moose flats on a warm sunny day

Kara and I using a log as a floaty.  You can see the glacier in the background!

Scott and I at the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert