RIDE TO POINT BARROW

The sun was shining brightly, and even though it was around 8:00 at night, we decided to take a ride out to Point Barrow, which is as far north as you can go, without jumping on an iceberg. In order to get to The Point, you have to ride out a few miles on a spit. It was pretty exciting because the salmon were running, so we figured we would throw our poles in the water, and try our luck fishing in the Arctic Ocean.

Below is a picture of the spit as we are riding toward the end of it.

A self portrait of the adventurous duo.
This is the very end of the spit. There were actually some polar bear sightings here very recently, so we were very careful to be on the lookout while we were here. Somehow I think that running into a polar bear would not mean good things for us.
One really neat thing is the beach combing. There are a lot of really neat shells, rocks, and odds and ends that wash up on shore.
Nick threw his line in the water, but no salmon took the bait. Nick may have to stick to "catching" caribou and lemmings.

Lastly, there were birds EVERYWHERE. Ga-Millions upon Ga-Millions of birds summer in Barrow.

Anyway, we hope that all is well back home, and know that we are well and safe up on top of the world. We are really enjoying the community here and look forward to a great year!

The Pader's on Top of the World!

For those of you who have not heard, we have moved to the top of the world--that's right, Barrow, Alaska! We would also like to welcome you to our brand new, improved blog. How is it improved, you ask? Well, the answer is that we are actually planning on updating it this year. I know. It is a miracle. We are SO excited to be in Barrow. We have only been here just under three weeks, and already are enjoying it immensely. We are right on the beautiful Arctic Ocean, and the sun has been shining 24 hours. Although that may seem like a hard thing to get used to, we just put aluminum foil on our windows and are good to go!

Below is a picture of the sign welcoming people to the Top of the World. It is surrounded by whale bones.
You can just make out a barge over to the right, which was unloading things that people ordered from Seattle. The barge only comes once a year, and is stationed in Seattle.
I will take some more pics of Barrow, but this is a picture right next to the beach.
We took a ride out onto the tundra. We were joking that they shouldn't call this area "The North Slope" they should call it "The North Flat." It IS flat, but there is an amazisng beauty to it. When you think that the ice only leaves for a few months out of the year, the plants that survive out here are pretty amazing. We were dissapointed to learn that blueberries don't grow all the way up here, but hopefully our friends will send us some berries (hint, hint Damon and Heidi)....
We think that the wood that you can see in this picture had a gas line on it at one time.

You can see the white flowers in the picture above are everywhere. They look like a stem with a big ball of cotton on each one. We haven't seen any fireweed up here yet....

We thought the picture above was really pretty. Some sort of arctic crop circle....

And now for the best part....Caribou! We saw a big herd on our first ride out. You can see them in the distance by the lake.

We are really excited about being up here, and are hoping we have a lot of visitors this year!

Summer 2007

Well, we had a really fun summer fishing in Dillingham and visiting friends and family in Seattle and Spokane. Perhaps the highlight was meeting my nephew Jack for the first time. Jack is ten months old, well technically eleven months now. He is the cutest baby I have ever seen, and I could not resist putting this pic in our first blog of the year. More soon!