Robbin and Chris's Alaska

Hello again from Alaska!
    This is your second edition in the soon to be world famous Garber-Slaght chronicles.  We hope that you enjoy it.

    Well we survived the winter, one of the mildest in history thanks to El Nino.  We spent January through March in the village of Kasigluk on the Lower Kuskokwim delta.  You won't find it on a map if you're looking, look for Bethel and head 30 miles west, we were near a big lake out there.  The village had 500 people divided into tow parts about 1.5 miles apart across a river.  Chris did his student teaching in a school with about 80 students, 17 in the high school.  I volunteered in the two schools (one on each side of the river).  In the mornings I commuted via snow machine a mile and a half to the other side of the village, where I helped out for 2 hours then I snow machined back.  In the afternoons I spent 2 hours volunteering in Chris's school.  I also spent a lot of time reading.
    Kasigluk is on the tundra, which is a very flat place with lots of wind and few (no) trees.  The weather there is very harsh.  On our first day in town the wind brought the temperature down to -60.  We flew the 30 miles in a small bush plane, which was blown where the wind blew it..  It took two days for our tiny house to warm up to 40 degrees.  We spent some time on the first day with a teachers who's been there for 30 years.  Unfortunately I got frostbite on my nose on the short walk to her house.  After that day the weather was down right warm.  Some days I walked to the other school along the frozen river.  Everything was frozen until the last tow weeks we were there.
    The week we were supposed to leave the lakes and rivers were beginning to thaw.  The fishermen could finally get a hole all the way through the ice and swans had been spotted on one of the lakes (they hunt and eat swans).  The river, while still frozen had lots of overflow water on the edges.  We snow machined down the center of the ice but we often went through water (sometimes a foot deep).  Right now they're are in the height of the thaw and no one can leave the village because of the unstable ice on the river and the mire at the airport.
    We left Kasigluk in mid-April in a last minute mad snow machine run through snow-less tundra to an airport 3 miles away.  Then we spent a week in Anchorage at the teacher job fair, where they only hired special education teachers.  Finally we spent a week in Fairbanks putting our things in storage and selling our car.  On May 1 our new employer paid for us to fly to Juneau, where we spent 3 days enjoying the scenery.  Then it was on to Gustavus,, where we are now.
    Presently we are in Alaska's southeast region.  We are in the midst of a rain forest.  The temperature here hovers around 60 degrees and it is supposed to rain often.  Happily we're on our 5th day of sun in a row.  Gustavus was originally a homesteading community, then it was a hippie community, now it is a tourist town with a year round population of 300.  Gustavus is the only town near Glacier Bay national park and the only way to get to the park.
    Chris and I are the summer inn-keepers fro Good River Bed and Breakfast (on the web at river@thor.he.net).  It's a small place that our boss, Sandy, built (mostly) by herself.  There are four guest bedrooms and a cabin.  The cabin is very rustic, with an outhouse and wood stove.  She built the entire cabin with only three trees.  The house has running water and many other modern conveniences.  We've spent the past week getting ready for guests.  Now we've finished most of our chores, we just have to wait for the tourists.
    We're pretty far down a dirt road.  We have some gardens planted and are hoping to get chickens (our supplier just lost all of his to eagles).  The house is on the edge of the Good River, which has water when the tide is high.  We hope to fish and crab for our food this summer, and maybe gather some seaweed too.  Bald eagles are here what robins are to Maryland (maybe not quite that many, but there are a lot).
    Thus far we are having a nice relaxing summer in a resort town.  We don't know where we'll be come September, but that's for the third edition anyway.
    I hope you'all have a nice summer.  We'll send pictures when we have some.

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