Fall has come and gone

Hey everyone. Sorry for the big delay, but my posts tend to be motivated by wanting to share photos, and I just didn't get any good ones for a while.

It's been pretty busy lately with tasks associated with packing up for the season. Both packing up sound stations and helping others in the office pack up their projects, as well as tearing down the road camps and helping with some last minute surveying projects.

There were lots of applicants for the big job, so now there has to be a hiring committee and interviews, which will probably drag this out for a while. Because of this they have extended my seasonal appointment until Thanksgiving, so I still have a few months.

It's starting to get colder around here. We've had some frosty mornings and most days the temps are in the high 50's, but it's been pretty sunny lately so that helps.

Saturday and Sunday I did the final ATV trip to pack out the station. Weather was pretty crappy, but I did get to watch a pack of wolves goof off in the tundra on the ride home. They were too far away to photo. I heard that later in the evening they killed a caribou. That would have been cool to see...

The first picture above shows the tundra at peak fall colors, taken about 2 weeks ago.

Yesterday while I was out surveying a band of about 10 rams walked by me. I took the head shot with a 100mm lens, which puts me about 10 feet from the sheep. I was wondering if they were going to run me off, but they just walked by and didn't seem to care.

The last pic is to show the guys at Kliengers that I'm putting what I learned last summer to work. We were doing an annual survey of a massive land slip that almost took out the road in the early 1990s. It still moves 1-2 feet per year.

Tomorrow I drive a work truck to Fairbanks to pick up a truck cap (an excuse to stop by the grocery store). Then next week is a survey of a river bar that the road crew has been pulling gravel from. Then a helicopter flight to pack up the remaining 2 sound stations.

Hope everyone is doing well.

-Jared