I spent the 4th of July weekend with the Tans family. We went on vacation to McCarthy. McCarthy is an old mining down nestled in a mountain valley. old buildings, a glacier, mountains, a river and history up the wazoo. well we camped the first night (Thursday) at a camp site along the highway…a state park. the next morning we woke up and started driving more to McCarthy. we drove about 2 hours on a dirt road, over a small bridge that stretched over a gorge. the road was actually the old railroad track to the city, you could still see some of the rail-road-ties in the road covered by dirt. we arrived to the town, set up camp and went walking around the old buildings, people still live in the small town across the river, but it still has the old historical feel. we ate dinner and went to bed, we were kept up until midnight by constant fireworks. we woke up the next day, took a shuttle to the mine (5 miles away from McCarthy) and hooked up with a hiking guide, we were going hiking on a Glacier. Ryasn, Eric, and I walked 4 miles to the glacier with our guide Torry. He told us all about glaciers, the mountains around us and some history of the area. across the whole landscape there where what looked like piles of gravel, it turned out that these rock piles were big mountains of ice covered by a thin layer of sediment. we hiked onto the sediment covered ice and over a hill. Torry told us that we were gonna do a little bit of exploring, immediatly we found a cave in the ice, we hiked in. The cave wasnt very deep, about the size of a large living room, and the cielings were about 15 feet high. the walls were clear as clear can be with the most beautiful tinge of aqua blue. in the walls were suspended rocks and pieces of sediments, it looked like they were floating in water. the walls were rounded into all different flowing shapes. we hiked on over flat areas of solid ice, over tiny ice-melt streams and over hills. we looked deep down into what they call moulains (moo-lahn) which are deep holes carved down into the glacier by water, most had streams falling down into them. we ate lunch looking at a waterfall on a mountain next to the glacier, my hands were starting to hurt it was so cold. after lunch we put on our crampons (things that attatch to your boots with metal spikes on them so you can cling to the ice better) we hiked over bigger hills and back onto dry land. we hiked 4 miles back to the guide shack past the copper mine. we were so hot by that time we unzipped the lower half of our pants into shorts, and took off our sweatshirts. we decided to hike back to McCarthy, 5 miles. we started to hike down the waggon trail and we were bombarded by mosquitos. we started to walk faster, and faster…I stopped to put on the legs to my pants and my sweatshirt, about 20 mosquitos attacked my legs in 3 seconds, i had to run and put on my clothes. after getting covered up we were ok, we got back to our campsite and ate dinner. I took a nap, and then we went to get some ice cream in town. there was a family who lives in town, their parents were hippies who came there way back when and now all their kids and the parents dressed like they were straight out of the 1900’s they got together at night and broke out their upright bass, mandolin, 2 fiddles, and 2 guitars. they played folk music for a little bit while a tall tale contest was going on in a local resturaunt. we went back to camp, slept, woke up and drove home. All together a great weekend.

I have been working at the boys and girls club for a fair amount of time, im learning the kids names. I get to teach an art class 3 days a week, and get to go swimming every wednesday. It is stressful at times, a bit annoying at others, but if I am going to become a teacher this is a good way to see if i should stick with it.