Here's the news from the North...

Tess has applied to participate in the Rose Urban Rural Exchange. I believe you can learn more about the program at their website.

If she's chosen, she'll be one of 5 Chugiak students spending a week in the rural southwest Alaska village of Akiak which is on the Kuskokwim River. I think the population of Akiak is around 300. Once the week in Akiak is complete, 5 students from that village will come spend a week here with us. I hope she's chosen as I think it would be a great eye-opening experience for her. The 300 or so folks in Akiak are mostly Yup'ik (Alaska Native).

In other news, we've been trying to plan our summer adventures. We've got a reservation at a cabin on Nancy Lakes for the end of May and then a USFS cabin down on Russian Lake on the Kenai Peninsula for mid-July. We're hoping to have some out of town guests visiting with us for the Kenai cabin. That one is said to have great fishing and lots of bears nearby. (Okay, so bears and fishing go hand-in-hand in the summer time in Alaska...)

Reservations for the prime cabins are pretty competitive. The federal ones (i.e., USFS) are available to reserve 180 days in advance. They're only $45/night so they get snapped up within seconds of being available. Literally!

Well, I'm off on a date to see The Bucket List.