Or is this just a couple of new vents? USGS isn't sure, but they'll be waiting for the clouds to clear so they can fly up there and get a look. Either way, these new plumes (probably new vents) are fairly close to Augustine. Augustine hasn't been erupting ash lately, but the steam cloud the past week or so has really been visible, and voluminous. Here is picture from the AVO web site, it sure is a pretty sunset picture and both new plumes are distinct.
Here is part of their report, the link on the left will take you to the whole thing.
"On Sunday, September 17, AVO received several reports of two discrete plumes rising from the Cape Douglas area, about 200 miles (320 km) southwest of Anchorage, beginning at approximately 8:15 PM AKDT (0415 UTC, September 18) and continuing until darkness. Analysis of satellite images shows that the plumes originated in the area of Fourpeaked Glacier, located between Fourpeaked and Douglas volcanoes. Photographs of the plumes show that they reached up to approximately 20,000 ft (6,000 m) above sea level. Satellite images show a cloud originating from Fourpeaked glacier area and persisting throughout the night. The cloud does not show an ash signature. The cloud traveled up to 12 miles (20 km) to the northeast."

Ginger People

Yep, it's happened. I found a new addiction. I found these candies in the Summit Spice store in Anchorage a couple of months ago. They were so good I went on line and ordered some more. Now I'm totaly addicted to these Ginger Chews. They're sweet & hot & spicy.

If you see a package in a store, think twice before you try them, you'll get addicted too!

http://www.gingerpeople.com

Toolik

I have some friends (and friends of friends) that I met in McMurdo working at Toolik this summer. For those of you who are interested, Toolik is approx 120 miles south of Prudhoe Bay. It is a research station mostly operate but the University of Alaska - Fairbanks.

Anyhow, Shannon sent me this picture today. I wish you could see it full page. It's gorgeous. It's taken from the lake in front of the camp. You can see all the fall colors on the tundra, and fresh snow on the mountains in the background.

If you want more info about Toolik, take a look at these links.

http://www.uaf.edu/toolik/

http://ecosystems.mbl.edu/ARC/

Arctic Map

This is really an interesting map & web site. I found it looking for something else, but had to stop and play around a little bit. The link to the web site is: http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
Have a look when you have a minute to play around.

Blog Changes

Well, I'm trying to add a picture to my profile. I've actually printed out the instructions this time, instead of quickly reading them and believing I'll remember all of them. Anyhow, in order to post a picture in my profile, I have to already have it on line someplace, so here is as good as anywhere else. Wish me luck :-)
(This one was taken in Dubrovnik, late April 2004.)

Travel to Northstar - it's always an adventure

Bill Rochin, one of the Petroleum Engineers currently on the island sent me these pictures he took this morning. Normal (or maybe semi-regular is a better term) transportation to and from Northstar island is via hovercraft or helicopter in the summer. However it's been very foggy the past week so we've had a hard time getting flying minmums for the helicopter. Yesterday out hovercraft broke something or other, the repair guys are hoping it's just the clutch and have it torn apart to be fixed. But this has left us without a way to get our workers not living on the island, back & forth. So Alaska Clean Seas has come to our rescue today. We've chartered one of their Bay Boats for the day. Here are a couple of pictures. In the first one you can see the fog behind the boat, looking like mist in this picture, but it's pretty thick.

Talkeetna

Last Saturday we drove up to Talkeetna for lunch. It was a great day and I took this picture late in the afternoon from the deck on the Princess Lodge, just outside of Talkeetna. It's a bit cloudy but it's a picture of Mt. McKinley (or Denali, which ever you prefer).

So, take a close look. This is almost an optical illusion picture. You see trees and then the mountains, then the clouds. But if you look closely, you'll see snow covered Mt. McKinley sticking up into the sky between the first and 2nd layers of clouds. It's just a little bit right of the center. of this picture.

When we were on the deck a group of tourits came in. It took their guide about 10 minutes to get them to see 'The Mountain'.

Polar Bear Plunge

There is this on going phenomenon that I've never understood. We call it the Polar Bear Jump or Polar Bear Plunge. It involves crazy people jumping into really cold water, for no reason other than bragging rights. I'll never understand it... However here are some pictures from the Polar Bear Plunge out on Northstar Island last night. Pam sent these out, I'm not sure who actually took them.

Note: ICE floating just off shore
Note: Rescue standing by in a DRY SUIT.
Note: Hovercraft crew watching from off shore, thinking these guys are nuts.

The crew once they were all good & wet!

New Camera

I ordered a new camera from Amazon.com. I really should buy their stock, I order stuff from them all the time. Anyway, I got a Fuji A400, I really like it so far. I'm just a point and shoot sort of person, I used those box throw away cameras for years. My last 2 digital cameras were Fuji also, they're easy to use and take great snapshots, which is all I'm really intersted in. Plus, they're not too expensive to replace every couple of years. I'm always dropping cameras for some reason.

Here is a picture of the view out my window at work. It's out across the airport runways and FLAT as far as I can see. The dark ridge on the right side behind the runway is a gravel stockpile. The State is having the runway up here extended this summer. The tundra is still brown, but the tundra should turn green next month.

This one is to the left a bit, down toward the Alaska Airlines building and ERA. My view isn't as boring as these pictures make it look. Though in the winter when it's dark all day & night it's pretty much all the same...

My Camera Died

I took some great pictures over the weekend. On our way to Bishops Beach on Monday for a pic nic, we stopped to watch Marge put out a fire with her new brush fire truck. One of her neighbors had cleared a lot and burned the stumps this spring. Monday afternoon the stump pile re-ignited, it was pretty hot & dry. The coals from those stump fires can stay hot enough to re-ignite all winter long. Then when I got home to download them they were blurry. Turns out I'd dropped my camera one too many times and the auto focus no longer works. So...until I get it replaced I thought I'd post a couple of pictures from January. Penny gave me a CD with all the pictures she took. Here are a few.

This one is the trunk of a Rainbow Eucalyptus tree. As the bark peels off, the new bark underneath is revealed, in all different colors. These trees will grow to 200 feet, so a grove of them is pretty amazing.

This is Rambutan, they grow all over Kauai. Peel off the outside and there is a sweet fruit inside, similar to Lychee. Check out http://www.rambutan.com for more pictures and a better discription.
And here we are on the Na Pali Trail. Hawaii really needs to spend some money on trail upkeep.

And One More Picture from Work ...

Here is another pirated picture I decided I needed to share. I don't know if this small picture really gives you a feel for what they're doing. I've put the whole photo in my photo album (6 Spring) on yahoo. Download it and put it on your desktop to get the big picture to open. That slushy sea ice they're working in is COLD!

This is 2 of the divers on our island repair team in the water. They're in the moat that we've dug around one side of the island, so we can replace the gravel that's washing away. Doesn't this look like fun! Here it is, May 22nd, still snowing & slushy & cold. Some days I really can't figure out why I'm still up here, and I work inside an office.
This picture is completeness of Dave Maguire. Thanks Dave!

Just a few Spring Pictures

I've been collecting pictures the past few days, sent to me by various people. I decided I'd share a few of them, just because :-)

Here are 2 taken sometime early this morning, we're doing some construction work out on the bench of the island. You can't tell if it's sunrise or sunset, since they're both the same. The sun doesn't actually go below the horizon right now and pretty soon won't get this close. These were taken by Ray Bonds, one of our crane operators, I thought they were pretty. You can see the ice is thawing, mostly on top. It won't be much longer (a day or 2) and we will have to close our ice road until one can be built next year.

My sister Mary sent me these 2. The first is her husband Bill (with his flying cap on) getting to solo in Chris's Stearman Bi-Plane. It does look like fun!
And this one is my nephew Matt and his buddies going to their Sr. Prom. Mary says from left to right is Jordan, Matt, Bobby, Christopher and Jimmy.

It's sort of Spring in Prudhoe Bay

Here ia a fall picture of Toby from a couple of years ago. It was the only local brown bear pictures I could find in my stash of pictures about work. I didn't take it so either Dave or Russell must have e-mailed it to me.

Today was our first day of 'spring' measured Prudhoe style. The weather was sunny and -2 when I came to work a little before 6am. It warmed up just a bit and by 8:30 am the ice fog was so thick the jet couldn't land. The fog is patchy though and by 9:30 am it was clear & sunny. Patches of fog keep drifting through, I hope the rest of todays flights come & go as needed

We actually had the first sign that spring was arriving a few days ago, when Security put out a warning that a brown bear had been sighted on the field. The brown bears do hibernate all winter (unlike the polar bears), so one out and about was the first sign of spring.

Don't let this picture fool you, spring in Prudhoe is WHITE. The snow is just starting to melt on top during the sunny days, and freeze into solid ice at night. Walking across the parking lot is a nightmare, worse then walking on a frozen lake.

According to the Wunderground.com, we're up to 21+ hours of visible light each day and 17 hours & 43 min of actual sun above the horizon. Tomorrow the sun will be up another 10 min and 28 seconds longer then today, so 24 hours of sunlight will happen shortly.

HAPPY SPRING!

Northstar Island Construction

This is a picture of the island from our ice road. Kind of hard to tell that it's and island because the sea ice is currently frozen. The large blue set of buildings to the right is the Nabors Drilling Rig. The tan buildings to the left are the production, warehouse & living quarters. To the very far left you can see the new meeting room model being lifted off the trailer by the crane so it can be set in place and attached to the existing building.

We've been getting ready to do a lot of repair work to the gravel bench that surrounds the island this summer. We also had to expand the facility a little bit. The addition to the the living quarters building is office and meeting space. The module was actually constructed on shore and shipped north, then hauled out to the island over our ice road. Kind of interesting pictures if you're not familiar with this crazy place I call home 2 weeks of every month.
The 2nd picture is the new meeting room module set in place.

The 3rd picture is of a crane being hauled out to the island. On the other side of the ice road (the smoother part of the ice in front) is frozen ocean.

I didn't take these pictures, Dave Maguire sent them to me so I'm assuming he took them. I haven't been out to the island since New Years Day. It's been a bit too busy to run out there, it's about an hours drive where where I work, here in 'town'.

DC April Trip

This picture of the Washington Monument through the Cherry Tree was taken close to sunset. It's dark but I still liked how it came out.
My Trip to DC was a lot of fun. I stayed with Shari & Mark. They’re renting a nice condo out in Dunn Loring, right across the street from the Metro Station. It’s really convenient, that’s for sure. Mary & Bill drove over from PA the day before I arrive. They met me at the airport on Sat morning, and then we all went to a late lunch when Shari got out of her mosaics class. We walked around downtown for a few hours, starting with the Law Officers Memorial and ending with the Jefferson Memorial. There were big crowds in town for the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Here is a picture of us 'girls' in front of the FAA Admin building :-)
And the next one is Mt. Vernon from the river.

Mary & Bill had to get home on Sunday. I spent the next week taking the Metro into town each day and exploring while Shari & Mark were at work. I tried to see most of the big sights, but still only saw a few of the big Museums. I like to walk and walked the Mall several times. I also took a boat trip down the Potomac to Mt. Vernon. The river trip is beautiful and Mt. Vernon was worth a couple of hours.

I guess I’ve been spoiled by my last couple of trips to Europe. In comparison DC was very new, very functional, plane & gray. All the buildings are stone or concrete, but there isn’t much ornamentation or variety. And there isn’t much color; even the metro was very colorless, all concrete. Though it was also without beggers & pickpockets, which was rather nice. There is also a LOT of security and standing in lines, to stand in another line, to see part of something and the rest of it’s closed.
This is the Capital Building from part way down the Mall.
Shari & Mark took ½ days off on Friday and we drove over to PA to spend the weekend. It was really a pretty drive. The grass is green but the leaves on the trees were just starting to pop out. Lots of rolling hills & fields. Virginia is definitely manicured looking, and PA is a bit wilder. It’s a 4 hour drive, which isn’t bad at all. Gio & Vince drove up from Newcastle and meet us for the weekend. We all stayed with Mary & Bill, Katie & Matt. The house was full but we had a good time. Unfortunately Katie & Matt both had to work on Saturday, but the rest of us went into PA and wandered around some of the river sites near the big sports arenas. We finally made it to a market area as it was closing, but had a good time anyway. Sunday after brunch we all had to head home.

Shari, Gio, Mary, Vince & Mark at Mary & Bill's.



I’ve posted a link to all the pictures. Please take a look if you’re interested.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorijmurray/sets/72157600718361346/
and then look for 6 Washington DC Trip

I’ve also added a new feature to this blog. Over on the left hand side is a subscription box. If you sign up, you’ll get an e-mail when ever I add a new entry to this blog. I know I’m going to be rather sporadic with additions.

Volcano Obsession...

I think I have a bit of a volcano obsession. I have to check the Augustine Web site every day to see what's new and what has changed. It's pretty amazing to watch. AVO has pictures posted that cover over 100 years. The changes are amazing.Augustine Volcano is an island about 75 miles away from Homer. I've marked our locations on the picture above. I copied it off the AVO web sight, it was taken 12/1205. What a beautiful clear day. This is probably a satellite shot. The blue x is approximately where Patty has a house and I bought my lot. If you look closely just under the word Homer, you'll see the Homer Spit extending out part way across Kachemak Bay.

This next picture from the AVO site is from 1896. Look at the shape of the top of the mountain. I know I'm probably violating copyright laws, but all the info about who took these pictures & when is on the AVO site. There is a link to them on the left side of this blog.
This picture is from 1986. You can see the lava dome starting to fill up the current caldera, and still see some of the crater walls.
And then here is a picture from 3/22/06. The lava dome has really expanded and changed the whole shape of the top of the mountain. I'm not sure how high it extends over the top of the old caldera. It will be on the AVO site, I guess I should look it up.

Augustine isn't producing liquid lava to run down the sides of the mountain like Kilaeua is, but it's still pretty amazing to see what it's doing.

OK, enough about volcano's. I'm headed to Washington DC on 3/31. Pictures and stories when I get back.

Mt. Augustine is still erupting...

I couldn't resist a copy of this picture. It came from the AVO web site and was taken on Friday 3/10. Augustine is still erupting, though I haven't noticed any ash fall here in Homer. It could calm down or continue like this for quite a while. Check out their link to the right, AK Volcano Observatory.

I bought a lot so I can build a house!

Well, I said I wasn't going to blog too much, but here is another entry. I signed the purchase agreement today to buy this 2 acre lot. These photo's are a bit blurry, it was so sunny & bright I was having trouble with my camera. I guess I need some sort of filter, but that's a bit beyond my photographic ability.
These first 2 pictures should go side by side, I'm standing just off the road, looking across Kachemak Bay, out toward Halibut Cove.

They do give you an idea of the view I'll have from my front windows, when ever I get around to building a house.

There is also a picture from the where my deck will be, looking out over Patty's house down the hill just a bit. And one of the lot next door. If you want to see more pictures, they're in my photo album, including one of a moose watching me take these pictures.

The address for my photo album is http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorijmurray/collections/ and then look for the album titled 6 Spring New Lot.

Travel back in time...

Lori (blue coat) & Patty (red hat), 1964

Well, this isn't a normal trip report, but I came across this picture when I was visiting mom & dad last week. We were looking for a specific picture of Shari sitting in the cockpit of a U-2 spy plane in King Salmon when she was a kid, and couldn't find it. Dad brought 2 boxes of un-filed & un-albumed pictures in from the garage and we went through them all.

NOTE: Mom only gets blank photo albums for Christmas for the next couple of years, I figure she needs 20 or 30 of them, just to get a good start.

Anyway, back to this picture. We were living in Farewell (it's close to McGrath in the interior of AK. If you have an AK map, you can probably find the general location) at the time it was taken. Farewell was a very small community of 1 apartment building and 3 or maybe 4 houses. It's long abandoned now. Dad shot this moose and had us pose with it. I must have been 5 and Patty was almost 4. I don't have too many memories of Farewell, other than being there when during the 1964 Earthquake, but I've always liked this picture and thought it would be fun to share.

Kauai Trip - Try 3

Hi all,
This is my 3rd try to create a blog posting about my January trip to Kauai. I think I like this site now that I have a better understanding how their photo upload software works, so will stick with it for a while. I'll get yahoo to delete the blog site I tried with them.

My plan is to post to this site when ever I'm on a trip. It will let me share a few select photo's and some comments about the trip. I'll also enclose the link to all of the photo's so you can look through them when you have some spare time.

So bookmark this site and check back occationally!

It's been a long winter for me already, so I decided it was time for a Kauai fix after Christmas. I talked Penny into traveling with me, and we arrived on Kauai the morning of 1/7 after flying all night. The Hawaiian Vacations flight was pretty comfortable as red eye's go. We had a couple of hours in the HNL airport and got to Kauai, picked up our rental car and still got to Eggberts in time for breakfast.

We stayed in Kapaa at Ed's B&B. We had the pool view room. Take a look at Ed's web site when you have time to play. He has a virtual tour of his place that's really great. http://www.waterfallbnb.com

We had 2 entire weeks. The weather was wonderful, low 80's most days, and a few night time rain showers. Though we did have a lot of wind. We didn't really have an agenda this trip so we tended to have long breakfasts talking with Ed and the other guests, then just did short trips around the island, depending on what we felt like that day. We did 2 short hikes on the Na Pali, one from the north and one from the west. The trails were in pretty poor shape (as this picture shows), so we didn't get as far into the park as we wanted.

We also had a couple of beach days, drove down to Polihali one afternoon, and of course, looked a few houses. I'm always looking but the prices keep going up and up!

One night Ed invited some friends over and we had dinner out by the pool. It was great fun. Lisa was in town and came over to join us. I hadn't seen her in years.


This picture doesn't do justice to the scene. It was so wonderful just to sit out side at night a relax with the pool lights on!

We also had dinner with Doris & Bob one night. It was really great to catch up with what's been going on. I'm trying to talk them into an AK cruise then I'd meet them in Anchorage and we'll tour around the state for a bit.

And I met Janis for lunch one day too. We had a great long talk catching up. I do miss living on Kauai, that's for sure!

We spent a few hours one afternoon at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens, the Allerton Garden portion. I hadn't been down there in a few years. They've really cleaned up the destruction after Iniki, it really looks good. I'll post the picture link, I took a lot of pictures while we toured around. If you haven't been to the gardens you should go, it's well worth the trip. There is a pretty amazing collection of plants & different garden rooms to wander through.

We also stopped at Glass Beach one afternoon. I’d never been there and it was pretty interesting. It’s just an old dump site down by Port Allen that’s been closed for years. The remnants of the old bottles are breaking up in the surf and wash up on the beach. Most of the glass is brown or clear, though there are a few other colors showing too. It’s a popular spot and most visitors take a few pieces of glass with them, so eventually most of this will disappear. I took this picture with the macro lens on my camera, it came out pretty well. You can see there is also quite a bit of coral mixed in with the glass, it all floats on top of the sand.

All in all it was a very relaxing trip. It had been 3 years since my last visit and Kauai is really growing. It feels really prosperous now. I guess they've finally recovered from Iniki. Of course the county & state haven't fixed the road (or lack thereof) problems, but I guess I don't really expect that they will anymore.

Poipu Beach Sunset!

The link to my photo albums is http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorijmurray/sets/72157600718372725/.

I have a lot of albums still out there, so scroll down and look for one titled 6 Jan Kauai. Try to use the comments section and let me know if you have any trouble with the photos. L