Yet another funny/odd email received

"The telephone in the SRD Archy spot, formally held by Jeremy Karchut, is missing. This position will be filled in the near future and we would like to have this phone returned. If you have it please return it. Thanks."

Little Norway

Last week I traveled for work to Petersburg, AK, also known as Alaska's Little Norway. You can do all sorts of cool stuff ... like seeing a tide water glacier, whale watching, deer watching, hiking, kayaking and tons more.

It wouldn't be traveling in Alaska if there wasn't some sort of story so here goes.

Because I'm an official Forest Service volunteer with a travel budget, I have to fly with USFS licensed/carded pilots. This means they sent a special plane over from Juneau to pick me up. (Which meant more $$ instead of flying over on one of the regularly scheduled commuter flights but hey, our tax dollars hard at work.) After that, I was allowed to fly on Alaska Airlines on their only daily southbound trip to Petersburg.

On the return trip, I was really wondering what was happening as I watched us fly over the Juneau airport. (It's not like you can land anywhere else anytime soon.) The 25-minute flight from Petersburg to Juneau actually lasted 55 minutes. After about 30 more minutes of flying in a holding pattern, we learned the pilot was "in training" and had overshot the runway. (Pretty sad that the flight time was shorter than the time we spent in the hold pattern.)

Instead of flying back to Gustavus, I got to fly in a float plane to Bartlett Cove, 10 miles from the Gustavus airport. This is the cove that I see out of my living room window. Also pretty cool. I could walk home from there, although Robin was there to pick me up because I had 3 boxes of groceries (including 5 dozen eggs).

Hawaii photos

Finally, I was able to get a good satellite connection. I got carried away and couldn't pare down the photos much more so there are about 100 of them.

See photos from our trip to Hawaii.

We spent a day in Honolulu, visiting Pearl Harbor and Waikiki. On Robin's insistance, we tried out the public transit system. We took a bus from the airport to downtown and back. We didn't have exact change, $4, so we put in $5. Boy, did that set off one of the riders! He and Robin had a lengthy conversation about that extra $1 we paid!

On Maui we rented a car from a non-chain car rental company. They send someone to pick you up from the airport and take you to town. Well, Harvey was at least 300 pounds (maybe 350) and had hurt his ankle that day. He could barely walk to get some of the luggage. Robin, Mr. Patient, could barely stand waiting for him to get out of the van and walk over to us. But, Harvey was entertaining and gave Robin some good fishing tips.

We stayed at a great studio apartment in Kihei, the Pineapple Studio. (We would stay there again.) We went snorkeling (Robin snorkeled next to sea turtles several times), took a motorcycle ride up and around the north part of the island, took a snorkel trip out to Molokini Crater, did the drive to Hana, spent some time on the beach, tried fishing from shore and generally disregarded every warning sign we encountered. It was great!

Then we headed to the Big Island, Hawaii (where Robin discovered that Kona coffee just doesn't have the kick he needs). The volcano was sort of erupting and part of the park was closed. (Again, we generally disregarded every warning sign we encountered.) We saw lots of lava flowing into the ocean. One day we took a drive from sea level up to the 14,000 foot summit of Mauna Kea (where troublemaker Robin tried to get us kicked out by the observatory police). We went from 80 degrees or so to 20 degrees and winds of 40 mph -- brrrr!

All in all, it was fabulous. We might even return someday to get married!

Guinea pigs in Iowa

Perhaps the strangest story from my trip to Iowa the other week involved a suspect roadside guinea pig....

My mom and I were driving in the country around my hometown and I saw something beside the road. I asked, "What is that?" We couldn't quite tell what it was but as we got closer, my mom said, "I think it's a guinea pig."

I responded, "What would a guinea pig be doing by the side of the road? I guess those corn-fed guinea pigs get pretty big, don't they?" (The conversation went downhill from there and I could hardly drive I was laughing so hard.)

It turns out that it wasn't really a guinea pig at all ... it was a wild turkey.

[To my mom's credit, she had her wildlife mixed up. What she really meant was a guinea hen, which reportedly look like a small wild turkey. This, according to my sister, who then went on to talk about how Brazil has wild guinea pigs...at which point I could no longer discuss guinea pigs!]

Clothespin shortage

Another uniquely Alaskan occurrance is happening right now in Juneau.

An avalanche wiped out a slew of transmission lines and support towers to a dam that supplied 85% of the city's electricity. Electricity rates soared immediately, going from 11 cents KWH to 50 cents KWH. Residents went running to local stores to stock up on -- of all things -- clothespins.

Read more stories related to this bizarre event:

• Clothespins


• Quintupled electricity rates


• Massive avalanche

Back in Alaska

I am back from my emergency trip to Iowa.

While I was gone, spring arrived and my background check cleared. Today is beautiful: 55 degrees, sunny, gorgeous and I now have Internet access at the office.

I even saw a porcupine waddling across a pile of snow that hasn't melted yet.

Sadness

I'm heading to Iowa for a very sad thing. My brother and his wife had a baby boy, Ryan, on Monday morning. But he was too early and died on Tuesday.

Please send Baby Ryan's family your good thoughts.