My Alaskan adventure has come to a close. I haven't updated all week, but it's because I've been busy just enjoying the last bit of time with my friends there.

We found a new favorite restaurant. We made a couple of visits to Spenard Roadhouse, on Northern Lights & Spenard, in the last week. We got one of those frequent visitor stamp sheets, and Stella, Jensen, and Carla are going to attempt to fill it up by the end of their time here. A $25 gift card with 12 visits within the next two weeks--can they do it?

Bacon of the Month at Spenard Roadhouse: pepper bacon sliders with cumin popcorn

Jambalaya at Spenard Roadhouse

When the sun came back out, we tried to spend as much time as possible outdoors to enjoy it. Part of that meant a visit to another one of our favorite places: Fire Island Bakery. On the walk over from my office, I looked up into the beautiful, blue sky and saw this:

:) I think this was to advertise the airshow that I just missed this weekend

Blueberry compote maple cupcake at Fire Island Bakery

Bob kindly took all of us Yalies out to lunch on one of my final days at F Street Station. It was a fun place downtown that attracted an interesting crowd--it seemed to be a mix of tourists and locals. There was also a big block of cheese that was marked as for display only, yet everyone went by to carve some out to eat. The restaurant was also decorated by many stickers and pictures from places around the world. It seems that the restaurant is a popular stop for pilots who bring tokens from their travels to display. I got the crab sandwich, figuring that I only had a few meals left to get my fill of Alaskan seafood. It was a great choice--so delicious!

Crab sandwich at F Street Station

I may have mentioned fireweed a few times before. This is a weed that is seen all along the trails and highways. It's actually quite pretty and also useful. Fireweed is used in medicine and is also an element in many foods, from jams to ice cream! One of the first ice cream flavors that I tried in Anchorage was a light and floral fireweed honey from the ice cream stand at the weekend market. Apparently, it blooms from the bottom up, throughout the summer. It's like a summer stopwatch: when the tips finally bloom, you know that summer is coming to a close.

Fireweed along the Coastal Trail

One of my first thoughts when I got back to the Lower 48, transferring flights in San Francisco, was a realization of how dark it was. I had gotten so used to the daylight in the Land of the Midnight Sun that it was uncomfortable for me to look out from my gate and see pitch blackness at 9pm. I wondered if the rods in my eyes had forgotten how to function while in Alaska!

The sun lights up the inuksuk, train tracks, and mudflats

I really treasured my time in Anchorage. In particular, my time spent in Alaska showed me a lot about this incredible place that I didn't know much about and had always taken for granted. I will really miss the place and all of the great people who made my experience so amazing. There are still several things that I wish I had been able to do--seeing the Northern Lights, especially, is something that I will have to make another trip back to experience. A winter trip to Fairbanks, anyone? We can relax at the Chena Hot Springs while surrounded by one of the most beautiful natural phenomena in the world!

US & Alaskan flags in downtown Anchorage

I was also sad to miss the annual Yale clambake! I would have loved to have been a part of this fun, huge food fest at Mead's and to meet more alumni in the area. Ah well, another reason to perhaps return one day :)

I had a window seat on the left side for my afternoon flight out of Anchorage. Bob explained that this was ideal: as I headed south, the sun would be shining on everything that I was looking at. It was a beautiful day, and I was able to get a great last look at this place that I called home for the past eight weeks.

Goodbye, Anchorage!

I also got a good look at Fire Island and the wind turbines that recently went up!

Fire Island!

I'm going to miss these mountains

Thank you to Renewable Energy Alaska Project, for offering an internship that allowed me to learn about the incredible state of Alaska, its resources, and its huge potential. A big thank you also to Yale and those who have supported this fellowship, from Bob who coordinated the entire program, to Mead who gave me a wonderful home during my time in Alaska, to the countless others who have given both time and money to make my summer possible. From its air to its mountains to its wildlife, Alaska will be a place that I'll definitely remember fondly for a long time.

The large summer event that I've been helping to prepare for at work is the annual Renewable Energy Fair. Each summer, REAP takes a couple of blocks of the Park Strip and turns it into a large festival with live performers, a beer garden, food vendors, and, of course, workshops and demonstrations about renewable energy, alternative energy, and energy efficiency.

The other day, I prepared some materials for a kids' workshop at the fair. It reminded me of preparing for CASPY! It was a little crafts project called "Wind Can Do Work," where kids put together a little windmill that lifts a paperclip weight. Of course, I assembled one myself to make sure that the instructions were straightforward and that we had all of the necessary materials. As the windmill turns, a string attached to the end wraps around a straw, and you add paperclips as weights and see how many paperclips a certain amount of wind can lift. Yay, physics! (W = F*d) Something that I actually do still remember!

Kids' workshop for the Renewable Energy Fair: "Wind Can Do Work"

Outside of work, I've just been enjoying my last few days here. We made sure to enjoy the good weather while it lasted, running each day, then eating dinner in the sunroom while watching the sunset. Here's a recent meal that Stella and I made:

Veggies for fried rice

Fried rice -- yum!

And the sunset that followed:

The return of nice weather

As I mentioned in my last post, we went to see the Batman marathon: all three movies back-to-back, from 6pm to 3am. It was a really awesome experience. It was really shocking and sad to hear about the shooting in Aurora the next morning though. We were at a Century 16 in Anchorage ourselves, and I was just in Denver last summer. It's really unfortunate to hear about these kinds of things. The movies were incredible though. It was great to see all of them together, since there were many details that we had forgotten about in each movie and that linked the three.

For those wondering how we fared in this 9-hour event, we went in very prepared! We had a full plan for our marathon. We bought po' boys (yummy Cajun sandwiches) from Gumbo House and brought cookies and banana bread that we baked the night before. With the calories and sugar, combined with general excitement about the event, I didn't even feel sleepy! With six of us (Stella, Jensen, Oisin, Carla, Natalie, and me) there together, it was just a giant party.

Not so beautiful, but most delicious oatmeal chocolate chip walnut cookies

Chocolate chip banana bread

Yesterday, I went down to Seward with Stella, Oisin, Geoff, and Iva, along with the other interns from the various energy organizations in Anchorage: the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, the Alaska Energy Authority, the Institute of the North, and the Renewable Energy Alaska Project. We got a tour of the heat exchange pump system that the Alaska SeaLife Center utilizes to garner heat from the water of the surrounding Resurrection Bay.

Pipes in the heat exchange system at the Alaska SeaLife Center

Heat exchanger

It's a cool project, and they said that they can get a coefficient of performance (COP) of approximately 3, meaning that they can get 3 units of energy back for each unit put into the system. Even though I wasn't an engineer, I could understand and appreciate the concept behind the heat exchange system (a guy on our tour decided that all of us who were not engineers probably struggled to understand anything that was going on and was extremely obnoxious in belittling half of our group).

Since we were already at the SeaLife Center, we also went to check out the animals!

Steller sea lion

In the afternoon, we went to AVTEC, Alaska's vo-tech center, for another tour. It was interesting to see all of the machinery that students learn about. There is also a wind turbine right outside the building. We had the opportunity to climb up the turbine!

Wind turbine at AVTEC that I climbed

Donning climbing equipment, I went in through the latched door, strapped myself in, and climbed up. It was pretty cool, though I realized that I have terrible upper body strength/am too fat, since I struggled to pull up my own weight. Normally, when people climb up the turbine, they would also be carrying several pounds of tools. Despite these sad realizations, it was good exercise and a cool experience to see the inside and top of the turbine.

Oisin and I are ready to climb!

Looking down during the climb up the inside of the wind turbine

We were supposed to head out of Seward around 3:30pm to get home by 5:30pm. As we got our tour at AVTEC, however, we found out that the Seward Highway (the only road back to Anchorage) was closed down. Apparently, someone had kidnapped someone and hijacked his car at gunpoint at mile 69 of the highway, and so it was closed in an effort to search for the car... Being in Seward, we were at mile 0, and Anchorage was 128 miles away, so we were basically stranded in Seward. Finally, a little before 5pm, we heard that we could get back on the road and headed home. It turns out that the man needed to use the bathroom and got out of the car, and the driver was able to get away with a spare key. They still haven't found the hijacker/kidnapper though.

It's now my last week in Alaska. It seems like the time has gone by both quickly and slowly. I'm ready to go back to the warmth and darkness of the east coast, though I do feel as if I've gotten used to living here, in a way.