Alaska Girl

Friday, June 24, 2011

Sleep, Guns and Stampedes

I'm finally getting the hang of the whole sleep schedule thing. The last couple days I've been alert my whole shift, and been able to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time during the day. And yes, it helps a lot. A couple days ago, I headed out the road to take some pictures after I woke up. I was standing halfway up the hill when two cars pulled in that I recognized. My friends had some relatives in town and happened to be bringing them out to do a little target practice. I joined them, and we had a great time. I did pretty good, and the fact that we were using a gun that didn't have much of any kick made it even better. All us gals had our cameras out, so between us we had a bunch of good pics.
The other night I took my cousins out to Pasagshak. As we were standing at the mouth of the river, we heard a dull thundering sound behind us. When I turned around, there was a herd of cattle being driven around the bend in the road. As we watched, they turned and started running down the beach right at us. We took off, and as we got out of the way, the cattle ran right over where we had been standing 30 seconds before. Let me tell you, it's quite the adrenaline rush to have a herd of around 300 cattle stampeding at you full speed! One of the ranchers pulled into the parking lot, saw how close we were, grabbed his horse out of the back and jumped on real quick, and then realized we'd made it out of the way. A bit too close for comfort. It was an impressive sight, and one I've never seen before. There were a lot of young calves running with their moms, too, which was pretty cool. Definitely not a normal occurance on the beach. :-)

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Graveyard Shift

Yes, I'm sure I've complained about this before, and yes, I'm going to say it anyways - graves is not an easy shift to get used to. Particularly since I switched from days to graves, which is by far the hardest adjustment. My body is screaming in rebellion, as it tries to convince me that this is not how it should be. The last half of the shift is the hardest, made worse by the complete lack of any activity by local citizens. I can't seem to get more than a couple hours of sleep at a time, and there is no motivation to do anything else. My excitement for getting out and exploring the island has fallen dramatically as well. I know it's just the shift, and in 3 months I'll be my usual self again. For now, I am hoping to make the best of a difficult situation, and work on adjusting my sleep schedule so at least the energy will return when I'm not sleeping. It's almost the end of the day, and my bed is beckoning. Good night, friends.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Ducks and Dinner

We were sitting inside talking about things happening that seem crazy, but are all in God's timing, when there was a loud thud outside. Yep, a duck had made a crash landing on the deck, and was laying on the steps right outside the door, stunned. A duck? Since when do ducks fly into decks? Kinda crazy! It was gone when we checked on it awhile later.

I decided to go all out for dinner tonight. Cooked up some extremely spicy halibut enchiladas (I accidentally bought the super hot green chili sauce instead of the mild), made some good ol' sweet tea, and put together a big salad with various kinds of lettuce freshly picked from my aunt's garden. Mmm...good!