Ice Treats and Alligator Meat

I know you must be wondering what medical care is like here. There are some unique facets to dental care. There are two main dentists that service Barrow. Ours comes once a month for 7-8 days. He and the staff work from early morning to late at night (Husband has an appointment at 8:30 p.m. next month). I had an appointment today (at the decent hour of 11 a.m., however, it is Sunday!) The dentist normally works in Anchorage. He works these hours in Barrow to serve the needs of the community. And they don't come up June-August (mostly because no one is really here...teachers have gone on vacation and non-teachers are out fishing and hunting).

I've been finding some things around town that I'm beginning to take for granted but that I'm pretty sure you won't. For instance, we went to visit a friend the other day and caught this shot. Just a bunch of parkas and dog leashes in the cunny chuck (qanitchat <--Inupiaq spelling) (that's the outer room or what you may know as a mud room where all the coats and boots live).

Now, here's the neighbor across the street having his driveway plowed. Bring on the big guns! When we plow around here, we go ALL out. No shovel on the front of a pickup truck for folks around here (it would never do the job). This was the weekend after the blizzard I wrote about and the snow drifts were tremendous. The very cool thing was that right after the neighbor had his drive plowed, he had the driver plow ours as well. SWEET!

Here's something I've never seen before here in Barrow. Come to think of it, I've never seen this anywhere in Alaska.  Lest you think I'm making this up, we made sure we also got the local store logo in the shot.

What do you think? Was it fresh meat? Seriously? Where did this come from? And do you think I could find any in the store? I looked, trust me! Not an alligator in sight by the time we got there. Also, a typical price for any cut of meat. I can't wait to ask folks at work if they got a hold of this special over the weekend!

We love our jet service twice daily. It's our lifeline to the "outside". It's a mighty long plane ride going to anywhere from here. For instance, this week I went to a conference in San Francisco (well, they said it was SF, but really

it was in Burlingame). It took 14 hours to get there from start to finish (with just one hour layover in Anchorage and an extra 2 hour delay in Seattle). The delay in Seattle was because SFO was experiencing high winds (hmm...I wonder if their idea of high winds and ours are the same).

Just have to leave you with some shots of our walk on water today. It's March and the ice is front and center. It's a unique feeling to be walking on the Arctic Ocean.
What you probably don't know is that it is not a flat ice. The only mountains we really see in Barrow are the ones formed on the ocean by the ice as it moves along the coast. Some pretty spectacular "ice shoves" as they are called. The dogs just love this walk. They amuse themselves by running from ice mound to ice mound biting off a piece to chew. Husband and I think they find the ice treats a real delicacy (one dog's ice treat is one man's alligator meat, I suppose).