alexinalaska.blogspot.com: twelve

Fall has arrived in Juneau! The leaves are changing, temperature highs in the 50's, and it's becoming noticeably darker by the day. I noticed the start of the new season just this week on my morning walk to work. It will be exciting to get 2 falls this year considering by the time I get home the leaves will be falling. The last few weeks the rain has been dumping on us. I would come home after work drenched from head to toe, even with rain gear on. We saw the sun for the first time this week in forever which was so exciting. I was getting sick of the rain. However, it left behind a cold bitter wind. It was insane up on the course today. The wind was blowing you from side to side on the ziplines and the platforms were swaying like crazy.

We have half the staff now. It's been quite depressing saying goodbye to so many faces. It's just not the same anymore without everyone. It's hard to believe I'm only here for about 3 more weeks. Work is not nearly as busy. On average I'm taking about 2 tours a day instead of the usual 3 or 4. Though I'm not complaining. Ziplining in the cold, windy, rain is not as fun as you might think. The few of us that are still here plan on watching a lot of movies the next few weeks. Ha.

Last week a group of us hiked to the John Muir cabin for the night. It was a pretty intense 3 mile hike consisting of mostly steps. It took us a couple hours to get up, and we were all drenched in sweat by the time we reached the cabin. Not to mention it was pitch black by then. However, there was an sweet fog that made the hike really awesome. The cabin itself was such a cool place to stay at. It had bunk bed and a loft to sleep in. One thing that was really cool was that it had several notebooks full of entries made by all the guests that have come to stay in it. We woke up early in the morning to heavy winds and pouring rain. We waited a few hours for it to calm down before we hiked back down. The hike down took half the time it took to get up.

Last night we celebrated a pseudo-thanksgiving dinner with the whole company. Erica's parents hosted it at their home. Dinner was delicious and it's always fun getting everyone together for fun events like that. Even though the season is coming to a close, I still have quite a bit to look forward to over the next few weeks. One of the things I'm most excited about is our day trip to Icy Strait in Hoona. There are no cruise ships in that day, so most of us are taking a ferry over there to go on their zipline that's over a mile long.

I'll leave you all with some pictures I've taken out at the site the past few days.