Changing Tundra

Even though we don't have many trees in Kotzebue (you have to go upriver to be in the trees), we still have the tundra. Surprisingly, the tundra changes colors much like the trees in the Northwest do in the Fall. I took my kindergarten class on our annual berry picking field trip yesterday. I even drove the school bus out to the tundra! (It is a short bus... but still!) I took a few pictures of the beautiful colors of the changing tundra when I was out there. The blueberries are definitely at the end of their season; most of them are quite ripe. Of course, this made the berries a lot more fun for my kids to eat than to put in a bag, so we came back with purple fingers and faces! Cranberry season is just a couple of weeks away.
Even though the tundra just looks like grass, it's really pretty crazy stuff. The permafrost is just a few feet below the surface, and so there are little holes and puddles all over the place. It is quite exhausting to walk across!

Looking towards Kotzebue:

To give you a little perspective, the tall bushes in the picture above are called willows. These willows are covered in snow in the winter. But, they are super easy to get stuck in when we are snow machining, as you can probably imagine.

This is what the blueberries look like in the tundra
(These pictures were taken a few weeks ago; you can see how green the tundra was then)

We are already three weeks into our school year, and many colleges haven't even started class yet! We are all getting settled back into our school routine. My kindergartners are getting more and more used to being at school all day long, which is awesome. Volleyball practice starts in just a couple of weeks on September 22, which I am getting excited for. I am also getting very excited to head to Anchorage on September 17 to watch my sister Anna (who plays for Seattle Pacific) play volleyball again University of Alaska, Anchorage. My mom is also making the trip up to Anchorage (yay!), and I get to see my good friend Marilynn who was a teacher here in Kotzebue last year and now lives in Anchorage. Another exciting thing about going to Anchorage is that I get to do some more grocery shopping... and drink a few lattes!