It has been 2 months now that I have been living in Anchorage, Ak. I have had so many encounters with Alaskan wildlife. We have seen bears, moose, sea otters, sea lions, bald eagles, and the salmon running. Our most exciting encounter was in Valdez, Ak. We had the chance to see a sow and her 3 cubs fishing for salmon in the ocean and river. It was so interesting to watch these animals in their natural habitat. We have also been startled by a few bears while scouting and collecting seeds. I did not do the right thing, and went with my instinct to run from the bear. Thankfully, the bear was more afraid of us and didn’t feel the need to chase me down. Ever since that incident, I have been calm in my bear encounters.

Besides our exciting animal incidents, we have been doing our job! We have already made a total of 30 seed collections. This is very exciting for us, since Alaska is very hit or miss with it’s seeding schedule. We have a trip to Nome coming up very soon and we are all very excited to collect up north! Our adviser, Mike Duffy, has already scouted areas in Nome for us and we already have a game plan for when we arrive.

We have been able to see so much of Alaska due to this amazing internship and I can’t wait to see more of it! Here are some pictures of our adventures. Until Next time. Chrissy