Happy June! We have had many complaints over the last couple of months that we left you all hanging, wondering if we ever made it out of Madison, WI. Well, yes we did. We made it home to PA, settled back into the "real world," and began the school year. So there you have it... Western Extravaganza III is officially wrapped up!
Now, on to this summer...
Summer feels so close for Alex (2 more weeks until school is officially done for the year) and Dave has already felt the joy of summer, since he wrapped up his school year this past Friday. Dave's summer has REALLY started, as he flew out to Boise, ID, on Friday night to spend a week adventuring with Doug (as seen in Western Extravaganza Part I, II, and III), who has been traveling with his siblings, Carrie and Nick, for about a week.
This year, we decided to do something different... not that we ran out of things to do out west... we have FAR from reached that! We decided that we wanted to spend this summer doing some sort of volunteer program in the outdoors. We searched and applied to several different positions, from maintenance crews on the Appalachian Trail, to tracking wolves in Montana, but Alaska is where we had our hopes held! Our hopes were fulfilled! After Alex wraps up her year on Friday, June 13th, we will hop on a plane the next day headed for Alaska!
We will be working out of a backcountry cabin on Butterfly Lake in Nancy Lake State State Recreation Area. Contrary to popular belief, a cabin does NOT mean running water and electricity... but we are fine with that since we don't have those things when we are out backpacking anyways! On our days off we will have a space to sleep, shower, and do laundry back at the main ranger station.... so don't worry we won't be dirty and smelly all of the time :o) Our main tasks will be to maintain the backcountry campsites and public use cabin, as well as be a point of contact for visitors.
We will try to use the blog to keep you updated, but posts will be more sporadic this year.
Here are some local pictures the ranger we will be working with shared with us...
