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While looking for some information on Marcel Proust, I stumbled onto a wonderful Northern Exposure website. If you loved the Northern Exposure television show, this is a great website to bookmark. I really like how they have organized some of the information, including "facts" from each show. The idea of categorizing Ed's t-shirts, and making note of the films he references, are also great ideas.

I was wondering about bears the other night, about things like how they hibernate, if they ever wake up during the winter, things like that, and then I found this link at NOVA Online where they write about hibernating animals, including bears.

If that link is right, it's interesting to me that bears don't hibernate in the same sense that other animals do. They refer to bears as being in a state of lethargy (kind of like me in the winter), as opposed to hibernating like the other animals do.

Mount Redoubt erupted very early this morning, and continued erupting five times during the early morning hours. Ash has now been detected as high as 60,000 feet above sea level, and the ashes have headed north and northeast, towards the towns of Willow and my former home, Talkeetna.

If it's March, it must be Iditarod time. Here's the 2009 Iditarod page at the Anchorage Daily News with all your update information. Before I go, here's a cute picture of Larry the lead dog. He looks a lot like a husky I used to have named Indy.

I woke up this morning with a bad case of The Call of the Wild, which, yes, is just like the book of the same name. It's that feeling of wanting to be "out there", in the snow, deep in a forest, or climbing a mountain. Just you and nature, mano a mano, one of those times when you have to "risk it all just to feel alive".

Once again, Heather Lende describes the feeling very well in her book If You Lived Here I'd Know Your Name:

Ever wonder what the weather is like in Alaska? Well, tomorrow is Veterans Day, November 11, 2008, and it looks like a calm and mild day all the way from Seward up to Prudhoe Bay (Deadhorse). Here are the brief forecasts for each town in mid-Alaska, starting in the mid-south at Seward, and working our way up to the top.

Seward, Alaska

Rain and snow. No snow accumulation. Highs in the 30s. East wind 10 to 25 mph except east 35 to 45 mph through Portage Valley and Turnagain Arm.

Anchorage, Alaska

Cloudy with a chance of rain and snow. Highs in the lower to mid 30s. Northeast wind 10 to 15 mph except southeast 30 to 45 mph along Turnagain Arm and higher elevations.

Wow, it felt great to be back in Talkeetna again today. For some reason I felt hesitant about going back, but on the road it was like, yeah, this is good, like coming home again. In a way, the whole trip has been like coming home again.

Okay, enough of that mushy, sentimental hogwash stuff -- on to the pictures!

Hello Nagleys grocery store:

Well, it's been a long time since my last update. How things have changed. One day I'll get around to filling in all the details, but here's the spoiler: I'm back in Louisville, Kentucky, very refreshed, enjoying the holidays, and ready to get back to work in 2008.

It's definitely fall in Denali National Park. The colors are so vibrant I don't think these pictures do them justice, but hopefully they'll give you some idea of what it's like.

This first picture is from the top of a hill, looking out over a sea of green, yellow, and orange trees:

The final day of the trip with my mom and aunt lands us back in Anchorage. They're leaving town tonight on a very late flight, so we grabbed a local floatplane tour ride this morning, followed by a trip to the zoo.

The floatplane ride was about as good as any plane ride I've ever had, very smooth riding, with landings so soft you didn't even know you had landed. It cost $245 per person, but I thought it was well worth it.

Here are a few glacier pictures from the plane ride: