MOOSE

I saw my first moose last Friday. Bout time right?! If I had a dime for every dead deer I've seen on highway 20 I'd be rich. Moose are slightly more scarce I guess.

My friend Karolina and I just stepped outside of our dorm for some fresh air, and this young moose was munching on a tree right across the street!!! It was super close.

Angie and Moose. Taken from Karolina's phone of course.

Within like 15 minutes a bunch of people were ogling at poor guy and campus police came and were like "okay just be calm don't feed it blah blah," duh. It was funny. Eventually he ran back into the woods, but it made for an eventful twenty minutes or so.

Da Northern Lights

...not only a delicious drink at Caribou Coffee, but so much more.

So early in March there was some kind of solar flare or something, I'm too lazy to look up the deets, but basically the auroras were NUTS for a couple days later, around March 8-10. My friend Antonia and I went to Murphy Dome, the top of a big hill basically, to try and catch the action. I borrowed a camera to try and take pics but I had never used a digital SLR before, those thangs are complicated. So I'll showcase a terrible picture I took and steal some from my friends.

By me. EHH. If you can't see the green line, tilt your screen.

This was the night before I went out. By David Broome.

Also by my friend David, he has a knack for this.

The auroras are beautiful. I have learned about why they appear but I still don't really understand the mechanism. They are wonderful to watch while stumbling home from the Marlin at night :)

Anchorage

This past weekend I went on a trip to Anchorage with my friend Kristen, her boyfriend, and some other people. I always thought that Fairbanks and Anchorage looked 'close' on a map, but maps of Alaska are misleading, this place is too big!!! It was about a 7 hour drive each way, but it wasn't that bad (when the sun was up) because the views are so amazing! Also saw a moose and two bald eagles on the drive, wooo!

Anchorage is the biggest city in AK (it's not big) and it's surrounded by huge snowy mountains, and there's also bay areas on the south side. It's way more pretty than Fairbanks. Weather is a bit warmer too for some reason. We stopped for a few photo ops along the highway, and noticed that you could see the low tide taking along all the ice chunks if you look closely, it was pretty cool.

Along the highway

We arrived late on Friday night, and on Saturday went skiing at Alyeska Ski Resort which is AWESOME. Hands down best place I've ever skiied (sorry Breckenridge). You literally are at the top of a mountain that's a mile high and you can see the ocean and all the surrounding mountains...it's so beautiful. And it's just a great facility, tons of lifts and stuff, and the runs are crazeeyyy steep, I was scared at first. The weather was great which made it even more fun.

I lost a screw in my binding and randomly met a rental tech from DUBUQUE to fix it. Small world huh.

Alyeska (phone pic)

After snowboarding all day, we just hung out at the house, Kristen's friend Kaley made us dinner. I ATE CARIBOU!!!!! Two bites to be exact. It was really good, but I didn't want to get a stomach ache. It tasted like deer. I've noticed a lot people up here eat wild game, people in IA do a lot too, but hardly at all in the college population (it seems like). Anyway I like being able to enjoy a little protein from a humanely harvested animal that lived a free and wonderful life (commercial farming is the devil) okay I'm done trying to brainwash you. I have eaten salmon and caribou now, I still need to try moose!!