Made it

Stayed up all night...drank 7 cups of coffee..I can finally check my bag and get through tsa in 28 minutes...longest night ever

Day 16 - Last night in AK

Been at the airport since 5pm...its 10:46 as I write this from my cell phone.  Plane leaves at 6am. . So I'll be here a total of 13 hours.  There's nowhere to eat or sleep.  Im sitting in the waiting area with a few bucks for the vending machine.  There's coffee for $1.50...drank 4 cups already....gonna try to stay up all night then sleep the 6 hour flight to Minneapolis.  It never gets dark here so having no bed, dark, or quite means sleeping won't be possible.  Plus I  dont want to risk missing the plane..anyway gonna gget more coffee....gonna be a zombie tomorrow.

Day 15

June 11th, 2011.  My last night here...didn't do much today, got everything cleaned up.  Gonna be at the airport all night tomorrow and during most of the day.  My plane doesn't leave until 6:00am Monday morning.  Gotta wake up early tho tomorrow because Lee and some guy he has up here working for him are gonna be about making coffee and what not.  Otherwise I could sleep in, oh well, gonna finish packing then pass out.  Lee told me to be ready by noon to leave, which means a I'll be at the airport for a good 14 hours or so...kinda messed up.  Gnight

Days 13 & 14

June 9th, 2011. Boring day, just did a lot of pruning. Lee has a bunch of willow and birch trees around his farm. And around those trees are little sprouts, well some big, that grow too close to the tree for the mower to hit. So I have to cut them all down, as close as I can to the dirt, then throw them in the grass to be chopped up by Lee's big tractor-mower. It might not sound like hard work, but when you're hunched over for 8 hours it gets hard. I went to sleep early, and woke up feeling like I didn't sleep at all the next day…beat

June 10^th, 2011. More of the same, except I stopped after half a day and watered the gardens. Kinda took it easy today. Tomorrow and Sunday I'll be sleeping in, so that’s nice. Feels like I've done 2 months worth of work in 2 weeks. After dinner tonight Lee and I had a good chat. Talkin philosophy and politics…or whatever came up. He likes my cooking. I made chicken, carrots, and rice tonight. But whenever I make burgers he says "You make the best damn burgers" lol. I don't even put anything on em…I wonder how he makes em. I gave one of the horses half an apple today, she ate it up then spit it all out lol. Then ran away like I poisoned her. Then I gave her a carrot, she picked it up then spit it out too. Oh well horses, just live off your grass then. I got really close to the elk today too. Just walked along the fence line pulling grass out of the ground pretending to be eating it like they are. They let me get about 10 feet away from them before a bee got in my face and I swung my arms causing them to run away. Lee's driving away right now, I can see him out the window, I wonder where he goes. He does this a lot and doesn't come back for like 4 hours. He doesn’t drink, and there's nothing to do out here, makes no sense..oh well…gonna drink a few beers and go try to see the elk again. Gnight from Delta Junction Alaska!!!!!!!!!!!!

Randoms

We planted some seeds on sunday...already sprouting...crazy fast.  Below is a barn swallow I beleive...or a juvenile cliff swallow...as you can see they aren't really scared much, I can get about 2 feet from em before they fly away...This one is doing the Gigi.

Day 11 & 12

June 7th, 2011. Had nothing to do today...started off slow. I woke up at my usual time, made coffee, and waited, as Lee appeared to be thinking of something for me to do. He said "Let's go for a ride in the 6x" I said all right (That's his big Vietnam truck)...we went across and through downtown Delta. Saw about 20 people in the whole town. On the other side was a place where we could buy gravel by the yard. We rolled in and he got out and talked to some inbred looking lady. He said "I don't like the way this outfit is ran, the old guy ran it better". So we left with no gravel. Lee is definitely not the type to settle for less. He acts as if his little town isn't rural enough. He notices all the "City folk" all the time, and makes sure to point them out. I kinda feel obligated to defend them because its not like he's in their neck of the woods ever. I don't think this guy's seen a skyscraper since the 60's. People up here are just kind of slow in general...everyone I've met says "I hear your from California"...I tell them "I'm from Oregon, just came from Cali"...they all like to remind me where I'm from lol. These people are very good at living without things, but living with things can be just as hard...they are very judgmental. We might call em hicks or whatever, but we don't think of them as being less...I get the feeling these hicks think of city people as less. Its all right though, we get 20mb/s down and 5 up while they rock the 24kb/s dial up internet lol. We just have more to juggle in the city, the rural communities have more self awareness. These people really are animal like in many ways. One thing I've noticed is they all look around like they have horse eyes (On he side of their heads). Lol, hard to explain what I mean, but instead of twisting their necks to look around they look down...everyone up here does that. And instead of saying "I" they say "A guy". Like instead of saying, "I need to dig up that dirt", they all say, "A guy needs dig up that dirt". Most of em have a dry sense of humor too. Anyway...after we didn't get the gravel we drove down to some town 150 miles south of here to pick up two mules for Lee's lady friend. We were there for about 5 minutes then turned right back around. We were on the road for about 7 hours…got some good pictures driving through the Alaskan Range, which I posted yesterday. We stopped for a burger somewhere in the middle…took a pic (Posted yesteday) of that place…that place defined the rural burger joint. We got back, BBQ'd up some chicken, then called it a night.


June 8^th, 2011. Today I planted the flowers we got from the lady we saw yesterday. Forgot to mention that she gave us a bunch of flowers for picking up her mules yesterday. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, I had to space them out all perfectly so that it looked even. I just tended to the garden and flowerbeds today. After lunch I took a nap, you don't really realize how tired you are until you need to take a nap. I feel like I'm trying to catch up on sleep all the time. I can sit down and nap for 30 minutes now lol, like an old man, I've never been able to do that. Anyway tomorrows what…Thursday?…I'll be back in Cali in no time. If I was gonna be here a while longer the week would end a little quicker. But knowing there's no work to be done, and that I'm about to go, causes time to slow down. I planned on quitting smoking up here, but stopped drinking energy drinks instead. I'm strictly coffee now lol. I drank a Rockstar yesterday and CRASHED hard…WOW…it had been over a week since I've had one…the longest I've gone since high school probably. I'm done with those, they seem dirty now because of that crash. I think I'm not gonna eat any fast food either anymore. So we got fast food and energy drinks gone…I still need to kick the drinking and smoking. Its on my list…I'll get there…but I'd rather not do it while I'm waiting to head back to a jobless, homeless California. Its only been a week and a half since I've left, but it seems like months. Can't wait to get back, but I'm going to miss this place.

Driving Through The Mountains

Above is a nice pic I got somewhere we stopped through the 300 mile drive in the AK Mountains.  Below is the one place during that drive where you can stop to eat...I took a picture to warn travelers.  Its in the middle of the Alaskan Range for a reason, red fox hides hanging on the wall, signs out front reminding you to check your guns, hillbilly bar tender, and some creepy old men sitting in the corner drinking a beer at 11:00am just watching us and not talking.  Odd as all hell.