Friday Posting -

Ok, I did go out to the Clear Lake mining operation. There is a huge DO NOT ENTER sign across the drive. I decided to obey their wishes and turned around. It was a nice little ride. After getting back I was talking to Jodi. She said they had gone out but they rode across the tundra and were able to see it. My tundra riding days are on hold for the time being so we'll see what else we can do.
I am flying over to UNK today to spend the weekend with Tunie and Mark. I'll see if I can get some pictures of it all from the air. Stay tuned....

Not exactly Michigan Limestone but... bush equivalent

Ok, here's the deal - they are improving the landing strip at the airport in Unalakleet. The gravel they are using is coming from St. Michael. It is quite the process and after working at the quarry, I find it quite interesting to watch. They are using a similar technique... just a much smaller scale. The above picture is of the shovel dumping the already crushed gravel into the bin where it then goes onto the belt.
The belt takes it down to the corner where it is dumped on another belt that heads a different direction. The below picture is the last set of belts that carry the gravel out to the barge.
The bottom picture is where the gravel is actually dumped on to the barge and then put into huge piles so that it can be carefully carted over to Unalakleet.
I've not made it out to Clear Lake yet to see the beginning part of this process but once I get out there, I'll post that as well. By the way, I don't think they would pay Jack to sit in that crusher shack! But I know he would enjoy it regardless! I have no idea what the cost of operations is but going to guess this is an expensive adventure.
I am going to Unalakleet for the weekend so I'll be sure to check that end of things out as well.

Daily Post

Ok, so don't get used to seeing something every day but I am going to try... at least for the first while.
Today I'll tell you about the picture below. Steve, our reliable and trusted custodian, is often our chauffeur. Steve carts us back and forth to the landing strip on a regular basis. (Our airstrip is about 3 miles from town.) Steve had picked nine of us up and we were underway to Unalakleet. About a mile from the strip we met this big ole machine that was grating the road. There were several "boulders" in the roadway. I think Steve was trying to straddle those, however, he didn't do a very good job with that. We heard this loud burst and noticed that the suburban wasn't traveling as smoothly down the road as it just had. Before too long we could smell smoke. When we met an oncoming vehicle our fears were justified. With an apprehensive look on his face, that driver was staring at our rear tire. Steve just kept plugging along, we did have a plane to meet after all. Once we got to the airstrip, we all piled out and scurried over to the driver's side of the suburban. This is what we saw:
Thankfully, Steve had put a new tire on and was there to pick us up three days later! Steve is quite the handyman!!!

Back to St. Michael - School Year 07-08 underway

Well here I am back in Alaska. I made it back to the island Aug. 10th, after spending 3 days shopping in Anchorage. It's good to be back and starting to get things settled here once again. I moved into a new apartment and am still unpacking a couple of boxes.
We had our district inservice in Unalakleet last week and have now officially started the school year! It's good to be back into the swing of things here at SMK. The school is alive today with kids and so far, so good.
I'll attempt to keep you posted on a regular basis - I know, not starting off very well... been here two weeks and this is the first post... anyway... more later -