The last days at Squirrel Camp.

I'm currently at my good friend's homestead on beautiful Vancouver Island. I've had a great time here on the ranch. We hiked a bit, I helped out at a local farmer's market, the Montreal Canadiens won a game, and we had a great birthday dinner celebration for Jill. Tomorrow, I'll take two flights, first to Vancouver, then on to Toronto, and by this time tomorrow night I'll be tucked into my bed back home.

I've had these pictures uploaded for awhile now, but haven't gotten around to writing any captions. So, here goes.

Many mornings, especially when I managed to get out of bed on time, I would wake up to the sunrise colouring the St. Elias Mountains pink. We called these, of all things, Pink Mountain Mornings. One morning I happened to have my camera in my pocket. This probably isn't the best picture, but I think it's one of my favourite souvenirs, just so I can remember how fantastic the view out our front door really was.


During my last weeks I really wanted to find some squirrel babies on Chitty. I didn't succeed, but I did help out with a few other nests. Here's one more nest two pup. I have to admit I sort of miss working with the tiny, fragile squirrel pups.


One of the perhaps hundreds of Arctic Hares that live on Chitty. During the winter months they were snow white, but this one has started to take on it's spring colours.


My morning commute to work. The Old Alaska Highway. I took this picture to show how little snow was left by the start of May. And it was only about 40 cm deep on grid at this point. I was usually off my snow shoes, but still sinking through in the afternoon when the air was warm and the snow crust softened.


Little lichens I found on grid.


Common name is something like, speckled leatherleaf lichen.


A beaver-chewed tree, with sap running out in the sunlight.


This is an actual mosquito. It's actually the same length as my finger is wide. These guys were terrifying. They buzzed so loudly. I'm scared for the friends I left behind in the Yukon. The good thing is that they were very very slow. You could easily squish them out of the air.


A cone rose that I squirrel made for me.


Me and my last five nest babies on Lloyd. Lindsey took this picture. One is trying to escape, but I won't let it.


Lindsey and the same little five. They really want to go back in their nest now, but it's nice out, so we're taking advantage of this photo op.


The very last day at the KPI. I think I just wrote a blog post before Dylan took this picture. I told him to capture the action in the background including the locals you can see sitting on the wrong side of the bar. What a great place.


The musk ox heads and the KPI's solid gold edition of the Law of the Yukon. Posted in every public building in the Territory.


The outside view of the KPI. Doesn't it look like a welcoming place for weary travelers? This is the centre of town. The truck in front of the KPI has a permanent sign that says, "burls for sale". The man who owns it collects giant burls (a lot of trees up here have several witch's brooms, which are actually parasitic growths that create large bumps on the stems of the trees). These burls are used as decorative posts in many yards. I called this man, the Burls for Sale Guy. He liked me because I drank Five Alive every week at the KPI and that was his favourite drink. I may have mentioned him previously.


The town landmark, the Giant Mountain Cupcake. It was designed by a local artist. The blue thing at the top is an explorer. There are all sorts of animals on it.


For my last camp day dinner (and the first Squirrel Camp dinner for the new summer crew), I decided to make a special dessert and replicate the Giant Mountain Cupcake in honey spice cupcake form. I made a tower out of plates and a special little sign for each cupcake. All of the cupcakes were personalized for various crew members.


This ground squirrel was for Julia because she caught a lot of them on Agnes. We talked about that a lot because she carpooled with me and I also caught a lot of them on Chitty. I also made a ground squirrel nature video, which I will post when I get home.


The musk ox was one of my favourites. He was for Frances because she was learning to knit and that's where quiviut comes from. One of the newbies got the "Welcome" cupcake.


The little red squirrel went to postdoc, Amy. She is a great squirrler. And so on.


The sunrise on May 3. Frances and Dylan walk the 1 km stretch of road to Agnes. I head into Chitty. We leave Sasquatch at the pull-out.


That same morning, the frozen Old Alaska Highway, the day after spring blizzard.


Sulphur Lake begins to open, though. And Erin and Julia see otters playing in the water. They came flying up to camp to get up and we all went to see them, but the otters were hiding.


One last ground squirrel, flicking his tail and looking around. Probably for something good to eat. Like peanut butter. Or a blade of grass.


And, last, but not least, one of the summer crew brought Mini Catan to camp! Everyone was too tired to play, so I set up a fake game to take a picture. This is the number one item on my 2010 Christmas List. Coolest little thing ever. I think I would make a little Barbarian ship and expand.


So, that's all I've got for Squirrel Camp. I'm glad I got these all up. I still have to post about my last week in New Zealand. After this I went to Whitehorse for three days, Vancouver for three days, Victoria for a few days, and then out to the country to visit the ranch. I'll be back with a post about the southern Vancouver Island once I recover from jetlag. And we all know that takes me about two weeks or so.

Guten Nacht, Cass

J'adore le Club de hockey Canadien!

(It's easy to love the Habs!)

And the next series against Philly is going to be a great one! 8th place team plays the 7th place team for the conference championships.

This is for my dear friend, Emmy.

I just wish they'd made it from scratch.

There was night. And there was day.

Back to the south yesterday. The amount of flowers in Vancouver right now is sort of overwhelming. I've jogged along Jericho Beach in shorts and t-shirts and ate lunch on the pier in flip-flops.

Today is the day after the Canucks lost to Chicago in the playoffs and the front page of the Vancouver Sun sort of broke my heart:


I've been on the look-out for cheeky hockey signs around the city. Hopefully I can find a few more tomorrow.



Tomorrow afternoon I'm heading for my last stop on this trip: Vancouver Island. I'll catch the bus and take the ferry across. Then I'm visiting Leah and Jill for the week. We're going to hike and have dinners and all sorts of fun things. I'm also going to catch up on my blog posts. Today I went to the Public Markets in Granville and the Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduation Exhibition. I also found some AMAZING giant things in Vancouver, including an installation by Douglas Coupland. And, I went to visit the Olympic Torch.

And that was all before I watch the Habs take the series over Sid and the Penguins. I watched the game at a bar on 4th Avenue with some friends and had too much beer and some tequila to celebrate. My head already hurts. Worth it though. And this next series is going to be a great one too!

Last evening at the KPI.

Today is my last town day. I can't post any pictures because I've spent the day driving to Whitehorse and back. I picked up Dylan at the airport. He's back from his days off. We did a bunch of running around and grocery shopping. Now we've just stopped here quickly to send e-mail and make a few phone calls. We're tired though, so we won't be staying much longer. We did a peanut butter add this week and woke up really early (4:30 am) for morning loc's on nests and stayed up late for feeding loc's. I don't know how the summer crew is going to get through this. I'll have a lot for you next weekend, though. I'm spending a few days in Whitehorse before heading south.

Montreal is on the big screen, but I don't think I can watch this first game against Pittsburgh. They're quite an obstacle.

In other news, my workshop was accepted for Hillside this year. I'm going to do a weaving project for a change from bracelet making.

I'll talk to you all soon, Cass

Come on, Montreal Canadians.

I didn't think I was going to have many pictures from the past few days, but things started happening when I arrived back at Squirrel Camp. It poured rain for the night and a lot of our snow is gone. The next day, we had this fabulous sunrise over the Ruby Range. Lindsey and I accidentally got up at 4:30 am because our alarm clock is ridiculous. It has 5 buttons on the back and they are the most sensitive buttons you could ever make. If the alarm clock gets bumped by anything it will do something crazy like change time zones.


Also, a lot of the lichen is out now. The snow is all washed off the dead stumps and really interesting things have popped up. I search for these everywhere on Chitty.



I think they look particularly interesting beside the snow.





And an exciting thing happened while I was out trapping this week. I caught the first ground squirrel of the year. Apparently, Chitty has the largest population of these squirrels. They are remnants of the Ice Age. Ground squirrels go into the deepest hibernation of any animal. They have to double their body weight over the course of the summer. This is a juvenile squirrel trap and this little guy won't even be able to turn around in there come September.


At first I thought he was a red squirrel, but his tail is different and his ears are tiny, so then I had no idea what he was. Then they told me about ground squirrels.


Also, here are the socks I started knitting in Whitehorse. Almost finished. I've determined it takes me about 5 hours per sock at this gauge.


This morning, for a day off activity we went up to Sheep Mountain or Tachal Dhal, in the local native language. This is where the Dall Sheep live. They are also a remnant of the Ice Age. We have determined that they live on this particular mountain because it melt so early. It is the only mountain around that looks brown. There is probably a lot of lichen growing up there. We watched them though our binoculars, and I took some pictures, but the sheep look very very small. That's okay. I'm really glad we went up there because it was one thing that I really wanted to see before I leave and the drive was definitely worth it.


The crew looking at the sheep.


We also stopped by the Arctic Research Institute. It's on Kluane Lake. The lake is still mostly frozen over, but it's opened a little around the edge. Today is an absolutely beautiful day and we didn't have to bundle up. We just sort of ran around to stay warm. I did sit and knit for a bit though.


We played a rock throwing game where we tried to throw a rock into a tiny rock-sized hole that's way out there. I hit the hole first. It's very satisfying to plunk a rock into the ice and watch it disappear.



This is one of the ice caves we found in the ice heaves along the shore.


More ice melt.



Dried flowers from last season on the beach. Maybe an aster?


Now we're at the KPI. I didn't have soup. I thought they might not have any because we arrived here late after our hike, so I bought a sandwich at Madley's. It was pretty good. There is one minute left in the Montreal game and Ovechkin just picked up the puck! And Montreal held it together!!!!! On to game 6. Amy has downloaded an NHL info application for her phone because she can pick up a signal at camp. Also the CBC keeps us up to date! Let's go, Habs! (Amy has Ovechkin in a pool and is cheering for Washington. I tell her that he just has more games to score points in now).

I received my picture with the Stanley Cup from Scotiabank this week. Unfortunately, it's in pdf format and I can't post it here right now. I'll try to figure it out this week and post it next Friday. It turned out really well.

Also, today I received a package from one of my knitter friends. It's an Alice in Wonderland themed package full of wool and a necklace and hedgehog patterns! I'll have to take some pictures of all the nice things you've sent and put them up here in a giant virtual thank-you note one of these days.

Till next Friday, Cass

I was going to say, "Go Habs!", but now it's more like, "Montreal, pull it together!"

Tonight I'm at the KPI watching the game with the locals. Unfortunately, Montreal is about to lose 5-1. This is not good.

Here is the last bit of my Whitehorse trip.

As you know, I made it to the Wade Davis presentation. It was excellent. He is the Explorer In-residence for National Geographic and the slide show was amazing. Just a series of National Geographic quality shots. The talk was a condensed version of his newest book, the Wayfinders. I bought a copy and he signed it for me.


The next day I went to the Beringia Interpretive Centre with two of the girls I met at the hostel. It is a really well done museum all about the Ice Age in this area. The displays are all very simple and quite beautiful, really. They have all sorts of these giant quotes from local elders talking about their stories. This quote refers to the story about finding the first ancient mammal preserved under the ice.


These little guys were my favourite Ice Age mammal. They are related to antelope and have giant nose sacs to warm the air before it enters their bodies and capture moisture as the air leaves their bodies. These guys actually still exist, in Siberia, I think, but the last two groups are endangered.


This is a fossil of a giant land sloth. There were herbivores. And huge.


I really liked them too, so I took a couple pictures. I started reading Life of Pi the other day and the story starts by explaining a lot of sloth behaviour and it's really interesting.


And, of course, the woolly mammoth.


The Centre also has an ancient horse hide that was conserved at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa. Some of you may already know about this. I couldn't take pictures as it is light sensitive.

The week after I leave there will be a display about the local clothing and dolls. These mukluks were a little display to promote that upcoming event. I would have liked to see that.


This morning one of the girls and I walked all around a part of the Yukon River. It runs right through Whitehorse. The ice is just breaking up and it was a really nice hike with a lot of things to look at.


This boat, the S.S. Klondike, is a local historical site. It's not open right now, of course, but it just received a fresh paint job and looks very nice. The German girl told me that the same boat is also in Dawson City and only half of this boat is the actual boat and the rest is restored. The other half is in Dawson, restored to the same state.


The giant orange paddle wheel.


And we found this along the walk. I'm wearing my Manitoulin Sweater, now known as my Town Sweater, since I only wear it when we go into town on Fridays.



This is the Whitehorse Utilities building. It's nice because it's so blue.


They also make their power with this dam and turbines.


I'm about to head back to Squirrel Camp. Short week, only three days till I'm back in town. Wish me luck, Cass