Wherever the road may lead...: It's time to get caught up... December to May in 1 post!

Well I have had 3 people ask me about my blog lately and I've been feeling guilty about not updating it in so long so here goes... December to April in 1 post!

December:

I was finally able to return back to Minnesota to see the family after wrapping up final's week at UAF. We celebrated one of my very favorite Legatt family traditions with a few Aunts and Uncles together at our house. We butchered 3 hogs from family friends, the Gundersons, and made the traditional Legatt family smoked pork sausage. Delish! Here's a video of the gathering :)

Over Christmas my amazing parents booked us a week vacation in Cozumel, Mexico at El Cozumeleno. It was a graduation from college present to my brother and me. Words cannot express how amazing it was to just sit out and nap in the sun on a sand beach after a freezing cold start to winter in Alaska. Destressing... not thinking about research... and quality time with the family! I love 'em!!

First family photo in who knows how long

Enjoying the gorgeous warm weather and the sunset

El Cozumeleno from our balcony

January:

Quick roadtrip to South Dakota to visit a friend... then returned back to Fairbanks to start the semester. Only 1 class, Cloud Physics, the rest of the time I work on research. Pretty inversions and slowly gaining sunlight... still at only about 5 1/2 hours of daylight.

Sunrise and Sun Pillar forming... viewed around 11 AM sunrise from work

work... haha... this is what I do all day :)

February:

Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race starts downtown Fairbanks on the river. Everyone in town shows up to cheer on the mushers as they start the race to Whitehorse, Yukon Territories, Canada. It's a 1,000 mile race along the old gold rush and mail delivery trails.

Here's me (in the camo of course, third from the right) and Lance Mackey (4 time Iditarod and 4 time Yukon Quest winner)

Here's the start

Here's a couple dogs

The Northern lights also gave us a couple awesome shows in February...

February 2nd... midnight showing of the northern lights with an encore show at 2 am
February 10th... clear skies, northern lights appeared around 9:30 PM

March:
I was able to attend the State of the Arctic Meeting in downtown Miami, Florida to present work I did last summer in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The research I presented was about the impact polynyas have on Storfjorden, Svalbard. Here are a couple shots of Miami. Nice place to visit but you couldn't pay me a million dollars to live here!! LOL... I'm a country girl and dislike big cities :)

I was also able to stop in and visit the folks and a friend while I was passing through Minneapolis over the St. Patty's Day weekend. I love it when I can stop in to see them :)

April:
Another month of spectacular northern lights shows... I think we've finally began to emerge from solar minimum people... woohoo!

******* Time lapse Photography taken by another researcher at IARC where I work ******

I also bought my first handgun! A Taurus .44 Magnum to be used while camping and fishing this summer. You have to remember that in Alaska you are no longer at the top of the food chain! haha... And with all of the roadtrips I have planned going solo, it's a good idea to have one :)

May:
End of the semester... my last class... EVER! For my master's degree... ended up with an overall 4.0 GPA for all of my graduate coursework!!! I couldn't do it in high school... I couldn't do it in undergrad... but I somehow managed to pull it off in graduate school... go figure! Here are some randoms from May...