Pictures 8/29/15

Today, I received a phone call at about 12:30. "Hey! We're going berry picking. You want to come?"

"Sure, where are you guys headed?" I ask.

"We're headed down to the old airport. We'll meet you there!"

I put on my brown pair of Carhartts, put on my Muk boots, grabbed my IPad and berry picking bucket, and headed out to meet up with the rest of the group.

It was a very unusually bright day in Eek, so I thought today would be an excellent day for pictures. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them.

This is my house! It may look a little shabby on the outside, but the inside is quite nice. I'll post a video tour of it sometime soon(ish).

This is the front of the Eek school where I work. The area where I'm standing is known as the play deck.

This gives you an  idea of how large the play deck in front of the school is. Off to the right, you can see my house!

Off to go pick some berries. This is the main road that runs through the village. I'm heading off towards that large tower you see off in the distance. That's where the old airport used to be, and it is still referred to as "the old airport."

Made it to the old airport! This is what the area looks like at the dead end of the road. You may not be able to tell, but the entire area is covered in berries! Mostly cranberries and blackberries.

Another angle of the area. The tundra is covered with bodies of water that vary in size. You can see a very large one just off in the distance.

I found my friends! Follow the orange make-shift fence, then follow the water line, and you'll see some people. They beat me out here to pick at the bountiful amounts of cranberries.

Found some! It's about the time of the season when the cranberries are just about ripe. One of my friends described them as, "little red marbles lying around on a green carpet just waiting to be picked!"

These are the picked cranberries from the last picture. Yummo!

Eek, and the rest of Alaska it seems like, is very cloudy. Today though it seems the clouds decided to let some sunshine through. Still, the clouds ominously wait at the sidelines.

Here's one of the larger bodies of water by Eek. Lots of big clouds, too.

Berry Picking 101: Don't end up like Artax.

This is Misty! She belongs to one of the teacher's at the school. She's a wonderful and playful dog, though she is know as quite the berry stealer. Gotta watch your berries!

Found some blueberries! We thought all of them had shrunk up by now, but these were nice and plump. We ended up just eating them because there were so few of them. But oh how they were so delicious!

More of the surrounding area. It reminds me a lot of the trip I took to Montana: a lot of land and a lot of sky.

The tundra isn't all grass and berries, you know! All kinds of plant life grows on the surface of the tundra, although most of it is very short. The elders in the village have been saying that some of the grass has gotten very long though, and that long grass means a harsh winter. Winter is coming.

You can see off in the distance two buildings. They belong to the new airport in Eek. 

The new airport again, but if you look closely you can see that there is a bush plane that is taking off!

Can you see the bush plane? It's a little further down the picture know, but more up in the air.

Misty coming over to check up on me. I've come to be known as her "best friend" over the last couple of weeks.

A lone raven in the sky. Not many birds can be seen on the tundra, so I thought I'd relish the one feathered friend I found.

These are blackberries. They're shaped like blueberries, but they are a lot darker and don't have a blue tint to them. I was a little confused when they told me they were called blackberries since they look a lot different from the blackberries in Ohio!

 Some cranberries still on the stem.

Woah! Jackpot!

The road back to the village. There's a lot of - what I'm assuming is - cotton tundra, and clay.