Merry Christmas from the Oelkers!

Shannon, Richard and Wilco at the top of the South Fork trail in Eagle River

Hello Friends and Family!

2008 has been another whirlwind year. We find ourselves healthy and happy at the end of 2008, which is something to be thankful for.

Shannon & Richard recovering from Shannon's surgery

Some fun things that Shannon did this past year:

Becoming and Outdoors Woman
It’s like girl scout camp for adult women, and I had a lot of fun learning to skin, gut and quarter a caribou, how to cast a fly rod, how to use a map and compass to verify GPS, and of course, went skiing and tubing (sledding down a steep hill on tire inner tube).

XCountry skiing at BOW

We went to Chitna again and had a miserable, rainy, wonderful time with our friends Paul and Jarkko, and netted our full family allowance of 39 Copper River Reds and one slow and ugly King Salmon.

3am on the way to the river!

This summer was also travel time for my job, I did inspections in lots of places, but the most beautiful were Saint Paul, St. George, and Adak. The Aleutians and Pribilofs are so beautiful and wild. The best part of living and working in Alaska, is, well, Alaska!

While Rich was out hunting I made a few baby quilts, started cooking for fun again, and worked hard on getting the house and the yard in shape.

Some fun things Richard did this past year:

In March, Richard went on the Trek Over The Top (http://www.trekoverthetop.com) with his good friend Dan. They had a great time and Richard even managed to win a few thousand bucks playing poker.

Richard went on an out of state trip for work to Galveston, TX and New Iberia, LA. In between he had time to visit his sister and brother in law Kristen and Nathan in Abilene, TX. It was a good trip and a real adventure learning how to eat crawfish. Eating at one of the president’s favorite restaurants was pretty cool too.

Richard managed to go on one camping trip with a rifle and one hunting trip. Richard and his brother Alan went sheep hunting on the north side of the Brooks Range for a week. They arrived just after a snowfall that left the mountains covered in a thick white blanket. Then there was more than 60 miles of hiking with 60-70 pound packs. Weather was cool, getting as low as 15 degrees F at night. On this trip the sheep won. The only rams spotted were sublegal, but they had a great time.

Richard also went on a deer hunting trip with 5 friends to Montague Island in Prince William Sound. The trip was planned for 7 days but ended up being 8 when the boat couldn’t pick them up due to weather. In that time, Richard managed to get two deer to bring home. The venison that we have had so far is excellent! The best part of the trip was spending a week with good friends and having almost enough beer to last the whole time...

Richard has also had a great year at work. Richard has been very involved in some very exciting projects that are improving the safety for the entire corporation. He’s really looking forward to 2009 and getting these projects finished up.

We managed two vacations this year, one to Las Vegas for Rich to attend a conference (and Shannon got to just hang out by the pool and see the sights) and another, delayed a bit, to the beaches of Mexico.

Vegas BABY!

At the top of Nohach Mal at Coba ruins

Finally, at the end of the year, we managed to get off the waitlist we’d been on for months, and we got our first brand new car, a 2009 Jetta TDI (diesel) and the car is AWESOME, and fuel efficient too. Our weekly commutes will cost us literally hundreds less per month!

We continue to see lots of friends and family as they come to Anchorage, and that is really great! So if you’re thinking of coming down, please give us a call, we’d love to see you, and if you need a place to stay we have a very comfortable guest bed. Love, Merry Christmas and a Happy 2009!

Diving at Akumal

Richard and Shannon, sitting in the sea, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

So, for most people, diving wouldn´t be such a big deal. Especially since I´ve been open water certified for three years now, and have plenty of dives under my weight belt. BUT, this dive was my first one post-op. Would my lung be as sturdy as the doc said they would? Would I panic? Would I feel weird with the pressure or the regulator?

In short- NO and HOORAY! A heartfelt thank you to Dr. F for fixing me - 100 percent.

This ray was as long as me! Thankfully he wasn´t the same kind as the one that got Steve Irwin...still I stayed a good distance away. He actually left big scallop shaped dents in the sand, that once you knew what to look for you could trail all over the ocean floor. I so should have been an Indian tracker instead of working for the state. I´ve been obsessed with tracks for the last few years. And I love riding horses and getting the best of cowboys. But I digress...

Can you see the conch?So different on theunderside :) You can just see his wee foot poking out on the bottom edge.

Tulum, Quintana Roo Mexico

So Rich and I are taking our last sunny vacatin for awhile. This is the long awaited and long delayed (from March) beach retreat! We are staying in Tulum, along the long beach towards the Sian Ka´an biosphere (sorta like a Mexican national park). In Tulum they didn´t develop the beaches into non'stop all inclusive monstrosities, here they are all small hotels and cabana´s (much like Fairbanks´cabin scene) and the effect is wonderful. Laid back, lots of small restaurants anyone can go to, and hardly any people, because each place can only host so many. Truly paradise here. Sadly we can see the signs that this beach is now getting cooler, and more popular...which means in five years it will all be torn up and changed into some slick ugly modern resort, where good looking teenagers prance around and offend all the locals that are left. But I am here now, and it is beautiful and wonderful now, so maybe my worst fears won´t come true!


Our place of residence. I like it. Mostly cucharacha and skeeter free, a pretty decent free breakfast, no hot water, and the shower water is a bit salty, but not too bad. The restaurant is, well, blech for any meal other than breakfast. Good thing it´s so near all these other AMAZING restaurants. I´m not sure why, but many of the hotels on this beach are owned by Italians, and they love food so much that for $30 USD you can get a three course meal on the beach that is mind blowingly tasty. I got focacia fresh out of the oven with sandy toes! And they have great wine. What more can a girl ask?




So these signs are all over, in a rainbow of langauges, English, Espaniol, Italian, German, and maybe a few more. Turns out there is a woodland based greyish-black crab that has to cross the road to get to the beach. What does a woodsy crab needs at the beach? Maybe some sun, like me! Anyways, we´re extra cautious and have avoided two of the little guys so far.

Pretty much every day Rich and I walk the long, powdery, palmy beautiful beach, sometimes twice in one day! Ít´s great exercise, and lovely. We walked all the way to the nature preserve once, which was 6+ kilometers round trip (4 miles for you metrically challenged folks).

I´ll post some more updates as we do more cool stuff. Right now we´re just reading, relaxing and getting tanner by the minute. Adios amigos!

Gorgeous Saint George

I really loved Saint George. The birds were still here, and I picked salmon berries and saw all sorts of wonderful things. I kept pinching myself to see if it was all real.

Overlooking one of the cormorant and puffin rookeries

Guess where the pot of gold is?

A great black sand beach. Great weather too!
The volcanic rock was spectacular here. Very cubist in design and structure


I couldn't get over the beauty inside this urchin shell. A quilt may come from this picture...

Tiny fox feet crisscross this island. We saw smoky blue and brilliant white foxes.

Hundreds of gulls nest along this beach
A cave! Just like in Swiss Family Robinson. This whole island reminded me of that favored childhood story.
A Holey Rock
Not the best year for Salmon Berries according to our local friends, but we found (and ate) some nonetheless.

Russian Orthodox graves in the sunlight

The church all decked out for a special holiday with lights and tolling bells calling everyone to worship
A scoundrel! He/She just stole some seal vomit and was rushing away with their mouth full.
Just in case you land along the beach and don't know where you are, link up to your on board wireless and go to pribilofs.com...except there isn't any wireles....
Hundreds and hundreds of birds. It was easier to tell them apart by how they flew then by their color.

Vast puffin rookeries
Seabird feathers from fox kills
Can you see the cormorant perched along the cliff edge? to his left you can just make out two cute puffins hugging the cliffs.
These stacked stones were all over the island. I found out that they are ancient navigation aids from before there were roads. Apparently when the island gets fogged in telling direction is very difficult, so at the top of every hill are groups of stones that somehow tell you which way north is. Some of the stone groupings refer to village sites that aren't there any more, so it was confusing, and the guy explaining it to me said his grandfathers generation were the last to actually use the stones.


Our really nice hotel. Seriously the nicest rural Alaskan hotel I have ever stayed in.

See? Check out this sweet room?!

My chariot awaits
Saint George is a great community

Pretty Saint Paul

I think the pictures speak pretty eloquently as to the beauty of Saint Paul, but I'll add captions. I felt like a kid in a candy store. There was so much to see, and so much more I wanted to learn and do here! A few hours in the evening after work just weren't enough.

Volcanic lava flow into the ocean

The island has many cliff faces, excellent bird rookeries, although we were too late for many birds this year.
Shannon, Queen of Saint Paul

The coastlines are just so breathtakingly beautiful here -
they reminded me of pictures that I saw of New Zealand's coast

Old weathere rocks along the ridgeline of Saint Paul

Fox prints in the volcanic beach sand

Reindeer hoof prints along the cliff top

The beaches are beautiful too

And, like everywhere else I've been in Alaska,

the beaches are chock full of plastics

PLEASE STOP USING PLASTIC BOTTLES

We arrive in time to still catch all the wildflowers

I don't know for sure, but I made some identification guesses based on what locals told me and from what I recognized from other places...correct me if I'm wrong - PLEASE

Wooly Lousewart

No clue - but these were tiny, less than a half inch across

Saint Paul's beautiful Russian Orthodox Church. The bells were beautiful hear, and you could hear them all over the island.

Aargh! A dandelion, even here! And yes, I picked it.

An alder growing along the ground, almost five feet long! The branches and trunk picked up completely off the ground, so it was a true dwarf tree growing horizontally rather than vertically to escape the nasty winter winds.

Yarrow
Tundra Lupine
Arctic Poppy
No clue - it looks like alien pods though
Another Tundra Lupine

A beach plant with tiny electric blue flowers
Me in the middle of an old lava flow
The coolest flower I saw on Saint Paul - it's stem reminded me of an onion...but no clue
Last land until Russia!

Floating fish processors off the coast

The Saint Paul version of a hotel - we rented a duplex

Sunset on the Western coast of the Island -
Note the silouhettes of the two seals (to the right) watching us