I have a penchant for exploring seldom-visited, off-the-beaten-path natural destinations, and since most of Alaska is inaccessible by roads, there’s no shortage of adventures I can dream of. Enter Spencer Glacier. I’ve had Spencer Glacier on my radar since we moved to Alaska. It sits 60 miles Southeast of Anchorage, but you have to take…
Currently living/working: As the summer season draws its curtains, I would say we more than earned our keep jam-packing the season with multiple jobs (guiding, cleaning, writing). I guided 15 trips in August, and Justin 18, making for the busiest month for both of us thus far! Current mood: I always mourn the loss of…
Aging is wild and messy, so as an obsessive introspector (not a word, I know) who always overshares, I like to canonize my birthday through a mini aging journal where I unravel my physical, mental and social state of being. We all know I’m not known for brevity, so here we go … If I’m…
Currently living/working: We are in the trenches of a very typical Alaskan life: juggling multiple jobs in the long twilight days of latitude 64. Justin guided 16 trips this month! All while squeezing in a press trip and a smattering of cleanings when he could. Meanwhile I guided 14 trips!! And I took on the…
***This blog post is WAY delayed & was supposed to go up in May, but that was when our website broke!*** Justin & I used to consider ourselves avid bikers. When I first moved to Phoenix in 2002, I was living with 5 others and sharing 1 car, so I opted to bike the 2…
Currently living/working: I guided 9 trips this month, which is almost as many as Justin’s 14. I typically guide less than him since I’m managing the Airbnbs and cleaning, but he was away for a week for Telluride, so I was filling in for him. By day 7 in a row of hitting the alarm…
We have a limit on the number of visitors we can host during our work-heavy summers, so people need to “claim their spot,” ideally by November. Justin’s other sister was next in the line of family visitors, and we loved introducing them to our home–especially our 9- and 10-year-old nephews. They stayed in the yurt…
***You may have noticed that my website got hacked for most of May into June. My website guy said there is no rhyme or reason for why I was targeted, but “they” (not a real person) installed a pretty vicious malware virus that kept self-replicating. Then the backups to the server were taking crazy long…
I mentioned in previous blog posts that I went on a gear testing trip for Outdoor Life from April 24-28. Justin and I have been gear testers since 2013, and had always been salivating to go on a “gear testing” trip. When this one came up, we sort of had to rock-paper-scissors as to which…
Currently living/working: Neither Justin nor I had any deadlines in April, nor any virtual presentations, nor much cleaning, nor any hours working at the library, so it felt like we didn’t work since we didn’t get paid! But, we were pitching and prepping for future projects, which is a very important piece of the freelance…
I mentioned that Justin and I took separate getaways this month, him to Texas and I to NJ. Justin’s trip to San Antonio had the purpose of watching the Valero Texas Open and playing some golf with his college buddy, Jason. I would like to mention that nearly every single person I told about Justin’s…
Currently living/working: I mentioned last month that winter freelance work has been busier than any other winter—between writing projects, virtual presentations, pet-sitting, cleaning, and my library gig. We are grateful!! But I’m personally trying to slow the roll a bit for April, knowing that summertime means double time productivity. I wholeheartedly believe in off seasons,…
Justin & I spent March 9-12th in the tiny village of Shageluk volunteering as “trail crew” for the Iditarod, and it was fascinating as last year’s experience, which I chronicled here and here. I think no two experiences while volunteering for the Iditarod will ever be the same. That’s actually our goal, and why we…
This blog post is selfish. It is more of a document for us to remind ourselves of all the cabin & yurt improvement projects we squeezed in during the summer of 2022! The yurt certainly took priority this year in terms of where we focused our attention, between putting in the outhouse at the 11th…
Currently living/working: I think it’s adequate to say Justin and I have established 2 distinct work arrangements according to the season. In summer, our hours of operation are pretty much 6am-8pm with a mix of guiding, airbnbing and a few writing projects squeezed in. We move slower through the winter, but leverage the freer schedule…
Going from Maui to the commercialized capitol island of Oahu was a bit of whiplash, but we were forewarned. The whole purpose of us spending time in Oahu was to visit Pearl Harbor National Memorial, and it was certainly the highlight of our 4-day trip. It used to be that people just came to the…
Our 8 days in Hawai’i in mid January included 4 on Maui and 4 on Oahu, which—let’s be honest—is just never enough time in Hawaii. Since this was our second time on Maui, we had already done the recon work and were armed with an agenda to explore new-to-us areas. As the second largest island…
Currently living/working: Petsitting/Writing/Virtual Library Presentations/Cleaning. That’s basically the summary of our work this month—a little of everything, but a lot of staring into the glowing screen. Current mood: This month, we spent an amazing 8 days in Hawaii (blog posts coming), where we eschewed the to-do list and stayed out of touch with calendars and…
I mentioned in my last Currently posts that we have a “temporary cat” (aka, cat sitting at our cabin). We’re more than one month in and are in love with Ted, so I thought I’d do a proper intro since she (yes, Ted is a she) will be with us for a few months! So…
I read 28 books in 2022, and that’s a record for me! I set a goal of 25 for 2022, so to meet—and surpass—felt so rewarding. I’ve always tried to incorporate reading into my routines (#1 rule for being a decent writer: you need to read to write). However, my reading habits ebb and flow…