From Akiak to Manokotak

Another travel day:

Plane #1: weather delay (naturally- it happens allllllll the time).  The kind teachers who were helping us transport our stuff and us to the airport invited us over for coffee while we waited for the plane.  We went to a HOUSE!  My staff partner was super excited- she's been out way longer than me and it's been weeks since she's been in a house.  And it was cool for me to see what teacher housing in the villages is like.  However, we were only there a few minutes before the plane showed up and we were off again.

Just as our plane landed another one did too.... a state trooper plane..... strange.... and then about 5 troopers got off loaded some big intimidating guns and took off in the back of the police truck.... what could it be??  Really, what in a village could call for that much enforcement???
SALMON SEIZE.

Here's an article I found about it:
http://www.adn.com/2012/06/22/2516388/akiak-elders-told-families-to.html

State Troopers

Excited to ride shot gun this flight

The GPS view of where we were flying...

The view from the plane

Layover:

Well, we made it to our layover in Bethel.  Now that I'm so familiar with the town and we were actually able to go somewhere.  Made a stop at Lucy's Cache... a little store in one of the airports that has some native art, beading supplies and lots of other junk.  We then made sure to get some 'real' food and enjoy the tv in the waiting area by watching some of the olympics, after all we were on another delay caused by weather.  It wasn't tooooo long before the other team arrived at the airport and we were onto the next flight.

This was in the lobby...... it made us laugh a little

Plane #2:

This flight was cool because there was only one other lady besides us and all of our stuff. Kind of felt like a private flight.

Friends :)

Rachel got shot gun this time around.

Riding along listening to the pilot talk to Rachel, but they didn't know that we could hear everything through the speakers.... it was toooooo funny.

Plane #3:

We were able to transfer pretty quickly over to our final flight of the day... and it was a whopping 6 minutes long.  We had FINALLY made it to Manokotak. 

From the airport we got a ride from this big ol' truck and to our surprise there was a REAL road (well, gravel one).

Bumpy truck ride....

I think this video captured it a bit better:

This was an exciting ride, not only did the road mean I could do some running, but there were trees! and mountains! This village is much farther south and considered the Bristol Bay area which is a bit more scenic than the YK delta.  

We made it to where we were going to be staying and after a little mild confusion about us being there and needing a key, we got in to where we were staying.

 This was our new home for the week.  It was about as luxurious as it looks.  

We then went on to try and find where we were going to be having camp- the church.  We took directions from a 4 year old and naturally ended up going the wrong way.... but a kind lady picked us up on her Honda as she was driving home from berry picking.  After showing us where the church was she invited us over for some moose soup and, of course, we couldn't pass it up.

 Me on the Honda

 Salmon Berries: kind of like a weird tasting raspberry but has an interesting aftertaste.  I wanted to like them, but honestly, I thought they were kinda gross.

 However, the freshly picked blueberries were delicious!

  Eating moose soup- it was quite delicious!  In the big bowl is a backbone of the moose and you cut of chunks of meat to put in your broth.  She also let us try seal oil (the jar in the middle) with the moose meat, which the Yupik use kind of like ketchup.  It was a little weird, but actually kind of good.  

We ended up ending our night lounging on her couch (yep, a reallllll couch) watching the olympics... a great end to a long travel day!