Life in the Fast Lane!

As always, life seems like it is passing me by here in Kotzebue. So many experiences and events have happened since I have last blogged that it is hard to figure out where to start.  To start out, as a recap, Sam and I picked up and moved into Kotzebue from Kiana. It was tough to move but it was the best choice for us. We started looking for a house, which is extremely difficult in this market. We were finally blessed by finding a house. It needs some work but were decided that we could handle it! We had it painted, we are changing up the floor plan, adding rooms, walls, taking walls away, adding a wood stove we are like a regular HG TV show!






































It was a whirl wind summer, we did a fast trip to the lower 48 during the month of June and we were back in Kotzebue ready to close on our new home June 30th. Unfortunately we did not close then, bank issues, fixing issues, just plain issues kept us from closing on the house until August.
We have had a lot of stuff to move around, a lot of building materials to buy, furniture to move, freezers and refrigerators to move and buy so because of all this we decided to purchase a truck. We bought a 2005 Dodge Dakota quad cab and it has been really valuable in hauling trash, moving nsow machines and even collecting wood in Kotzebue.




















I had a great labor day weekend. I went over 90 miles up the Noatak river from the village of Noatak. It was an amazing adventure. I went with two good friends who live in Noatak. We took a jet boat and decided to go as far as our gas would take us. We camped out on the banks of the river every night. We cooked out food by campfire. It was a great time being out in the wilderness with some great friends. We ended up seeing 9 bears. Had an encounter with a grizzly and had a lot of fun!

School had been going well fro Sam and I. Of course i have have the growing pains of being in a new school with new staff and new kids. It has been ok so far. I was able to teach cold water safety in the Arctic Resource Management class and we were able to go swimming in about 40 degree water while in dry suits.


It's getting colder and colder every day. We are starting to see a thin sheet of ice over the sound Winter is coming. I feel like i didn't get my fill of summer or fall, i feel like the seasons have progressed too fast, but not that winter is coming I want it to be here now! I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and staying up to date with my GreaterNorthernAdventures!

Life is flying by

It has been almost a year since my last post and I find that crazy! I have always heard that once you get married, a job, and start "life" that time will fly by. Well I can attest to that fact! Time has flown by, another year in the Arctic has passed and yet again we find ourselves on the doorstep of summer. This was obviously our first year of marriage and things went great. This year has been challenging with a lot of big decisons being made this year. Let's start with two huge life decisons Sam and I have made.

Decision #1 we have decided that our time in the Native village of Kiana is over for now. We are moving to Kotzebue (the big city). There were many factors that led us to this decision one of which was being offered some great jobs in Kotzebue. Sam will be moving back to elementary school and I will be teaching CTE at Kotzebue high school.

Decision #2 We have decided to buy a house in Kotzebue. Come the end of June we (hopefully) will be new home owners! 892 Caribou St. You can view it at the following link
http://melissaford.point2agent.com/Kotzebue_Homes/page_2534454.html

We have made an offer and it was accepted so we are in "hurry up and wait" mode. Waiting on an appraiser and inspector. Pretty excited to be 1st time homeowners.

Since we made our decisions I spent most of the spring traveling back and forth between Kiana and Kotzebue hauling sled loads of stuff into Kotzebue. We have a friend that was kind enough to let us store our stuff in his connex (shipping container) until we can move into our house. We also had many friends that came out to Kiana to help haul sled loads in.






On spring break I hauled a load into Kotzebue and was then able to go out to the Native Village of Noatak to hangout with a great friends Zach and Lyle. We had a lot of fun and it was a great break from Kiana. Fish had a great time too!





School is winding down for us. Today is Sunday, mothers day, of course you all know I have the greatest mom in the world, love you mom. We have 4 day of official school left. We have been packing our house and getting ready to move to Kotzebue. Every day we play the "what do we have to eat" game. We are trying to clean out our pantry and freezer so we may have some interesting meals ahead of us.
We have a rough summer plan that includes Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Michigan and Alaska all in one month. We have work to do on our house this summer so we will be spending a lot of time in Kotzebue. I hope we get to see a lot of family and friends this summer. We will have a guest room in Kotzebue come visit us! As always thanks for reading about my Greater Northern Adventures.

The events leading to and included in Summer!!!

Summer break has been amazing! Keeping track of and explaining the events that lead up to our summer break is going to be difficult to describe with some words and pictures, as are most events and stories in my life, but I will try to do my best.

If one was describe the last 2 months of school as hectic, crazy, or insane I would not disagree. They were all that and more just for school. Of course I'm not one to sit idle so I had to create my own complications outside of school. Sam and I decided to buy a boat! I purchased it from a friend in Kotzebue. It was supposed to be delivered via the ice road that the borough makes every year but due to weather that was not able to happen. Instead we pulled the boat off the trailer and setting it on pallets waiting for me my return in the summer to drive the boat out. The trailer we rigged up with some skids a friend had made and used to haul his boat trailer from Noorvik a few years before. We then rigged the tongue into my sled on top of pallets so the weight would be in the sled and not on the machine towing. Another friend Nick wanted to see how his Can-Am 1000 side by side towed in the snow with tracks on it so he volunteered to haul it out for me. It was a great plan until he blew a belt in his rig 25 miles below Noorvik. Luckily he got a ride and a place to stay from a good Samaritan in Noorvik that night. I went down to Noorvik to pick him up the next day, then I went to pick my trailer up the following day with my snow-go, then I had to take him to his rig the 3rd day because another friend was bringing an extra belt for his machine. We got the belt on and everyone went home happy with a job well done. All in the name of a boat trailer.















The next big adventure was a culminating senior trip. This was the trip that we had been fundraising for, working weekends, doing extra jobs, working long nights. The students chose to go to LA for the trip. Sam took the funds we had made throughout the year and booked us plane tickets, reserved hotels, planned events, planned meals, transportation and handled the paper work my wife it truly amazing! I tried my best to help but most of the time it was just in the way but she says I get an A for effort. It was an amazing trip with stops at San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Disney Land, Universal Studios, Six Flags Magic Mountain, LA Dodgers game, para sailing and LOTS of in-n-out burgers. We all had an amazing time. A student even caught a foul ball at the dodgers game! The only awkward moment of the trip was at sea world, the kids kept commenting on how fat the whales and seals were............and how good they would be to eat. ?.....awkward, some people didn't get it, I just apologized and said what turned out to be our catch phrase for the trip "Sorry we're from Alaska"

Once we returned from the senior trip it's was graduation and prom time! Thanks to all the help from staff and community we had a great graduation ceremony. Of course Sam and I planned and executed the activities. I actually pulled my weight for this event as well as prom. Graduation was Friday night and prom was Saturday night. Pretty tight schedule. We made it work with student and staff help.







During this time we decided to make another major purchase, a 4 wheeler! We bought a Can-AM 500 MAX XT with all the bells and whistles. I went to pick it up the day of prom so I could give my honey a ride to prom in style! Looking forward to using it more when we get back to the village.






Once school was officially over we high tailed it down the ALCAN to Idaho to get hitched. We had an amazing wedding! It was a beautiful venue, great food,a amazing day and wonderful people that came from all over the country to celebrate us. Sam looked stunning, she was the most beautiful bride I have ever seen. I fell in love with her all over again as she walked down the aisle and many times after that. We Sam has a full facebook album of wedding pictures if you want to look.


Once we tied the knot I had to go in for minor surgery and I spent my time recovering at the lake. It was tough.



Sam made a side trip to Michigan so I decided to go fishing in North Idaho. It was a great time, I caught some nice west slope cutthroat trout. I also had a new fishing buddy, my dog fish. She did great and we are looking forward to going again.









Well that about brings us to present day. There were many other minor events that took place in that time but I think you get the gist. We are having a great time but are getting ready to back to AK soon, I have a boat I gotta use! Thanks for reading I'm looking forward to more adventures with my new wife!! Take care, God Bless.

Winter! Spring? Winter!!

This year hasn't been able to make up it's mind as to whether it wants to be winter or spring. We have had very low snow all year as well as mild temperatures. Finally winter decided to come with temperatures but not snow. We had 2 weeks of average -30 degree temperatures. That was a hard two weeks, snow machines and vehicles wouldn't start, planes wouldn't fly because it was too cold, people (post office) wouldn't go to work. It was pretty miserable. Finally the cold spell let up and warm up it did, we got up to 40 degrees! From -40 to +40, 80 degrees of temperature swing in 3 days! With the warmer weather came the snow. Within 4 days we got about 24 inches of snow! It was wet snow and heavy but at least it was snow! We are now getting colder temps so hopefully the snow will "set up" and become harder so it will nicer to drive snow machines on.







For superbowl Sam and I decided to drive our snowmachines into KOTZ to watch the game with our friends the Martins and their family. Obviously I was rooting for the Seahawks and yes I'm still a fan even after that ending. We had a great time, the game was hard for Sam to stay awake for so I snapped a pic of her sleeping :). It was a short trip we headed down Friday and headed back Sunday after the game.....it was a long ride home. Oh well there is always next year! Before the game we had to drive out to pick up a friends broken snow machine. He was coming in from Noatak when his machines undercarriage broke. So we drove the 33 miles out of town to go pick up his rig. We loaded it in my sled and headed back to the Martins so we could make it for game time.









Sam and I had a very romantic Valentine's Day village style! We had a meal prepared by Sam from OmahaSteaks.com Split Maine lobster tails, chicken pot pies, potatoes Au'grotten and cupcakes. We dined by candle light the we watched a romantic movie.....Star Wars Episode 5 the Empire strikes back. Sam and I thought it was a perfect day.





Trapping has sucked this year there is no other way to describe it. Because of extremely low snow animals haven't been moving around as much searching for food. I have trapped a couple Marten and a few foxes. My trapping buddy Glenn trapped two wolves off a killed moose. One a really big male that we dubbed Hercules. He was a big boy.
Last weekend we went out to the backcountry where we are trapping. While I was trying to make a new trail for my marten line I got into some deep snow and got stuck. It was 33 degrees and raining which made my machine fall right through the deep snow. I dug it out 4 different times to only go about 100 feet each time. Finally Glenn and a a new teacher Aaron saw me and came to help. We ended up digging sbout 50 yards of snow so I could get back to our packed trail. It was hard work digging snow that was thigh to chest deep. Sure was happy I had 2 guys to help! We finally got out and headed home soaking wet and tired with one little Marten.
This last weekend we tried to get to the back country again but we had to cross a creek and Glenn and Aaron got stuck in overflow while trying to cross. Overflow is water that has gotten on top of the ice to form a layer of slush on top of the ice. It can be fairly shallow but this time it was over knee deep in some places. Your machine sinks in the slush usually all the way up to your foot boards or deeper. To battle the overflow we tipped the machines on their sides, filled the hole left by the track with snow, then cut willows and made a bed under the track then packed more snow on top. We finally stomped it down then let is firm up which didn't take long at 20 below. Once our traction/flotation bed was firmed up we rolled the machine back onto it. The idea was to give the machine enough traction to gain enough momentum to "float" on the overflow. Snow machines will act like jetskis in water if they have enough speed and momentum, if you don't believe me YouTube it. Anyways it worked and we got one machine across the creek and out of the overflow. Unfortunately Glenn was almost out of the creek but right on the edge, where the overflow is the worst, he buried the machine again. We repeated the process and we were finally out and safe. Glenns feet got wet so we had to cross the creek again to go home. Luckily I was able to find a safe way across and we crossed without incident. Hopefully as this March wears on trapping will pick up! It better pick up because I have a new skinning gamble to try out!

















Life and the school year if flying by. Basketball season is almost over, testing is coming, and field trips and senior trips are looming. It is a busy time of year but it is a good busy. Pretty excited for the next few months including my wedding! Sam and I are very excited! Fish is growing, not as fast as I would like but she is getting bigger. She is about 22 lbs. now so she still has a ways to go, hoping for about 40 lbs. Well that should pretty much update you on my Greater Northern Adventures as always thanks for reading and being interested!