Every once in a while I see something, or something happens that reminds me that I’m not living just anywhere…I’m living in Alaska. (Which, I know, most of you think crazy the way it is…) Today was one of those days.

I was driving home along the highway (which, by most standards is just a double lane road with a median) which runs alongside the Channel. Suddenly, there was a whale cresting right beside me. And when I say, right beside, I mean RIGHT beside. Those of you who’ve been here know how close the highway is to the channel, so this will mean that much more. He was just cruising along, most likely enjoying all the spawning salmon that come up the channel to the fishery this time of year. The thing with Alaska, especially south east, is you exist WITH nature. You don’t even have to go past your front yard to see deer, bears, in fact, at one point, I had a porcupine living in the tree just off my deck. We went camping last month on a little island only about 20mins by boat off the main land and I spent an hour the next morning watching whales cresting and breaching all around us. This may not be your booming metropolis of a city, but I’ll trade that in for green space and fresh air any day.

(Note to my family: That doesn’t mean I don’t miss home…)

PS This is not the whale I saw today, but I DID take this picture…

Long time since my last post…time flies when you’re having fun!

Indeed, it has been a fun spring. Since my last post, way back in March, I’ve been back to Vancouver for the month of April, which absolutely flew by, and had my formal wedding on the 24th up in Osoyoos. (Some informal pix can be viewed through my Picassa albums.) I arrived back to Juneau on April 30th, just in time for the May 1st start of the Annual King Salmon Derby!! Sadly, however, we’ve only been out 3 times and only caught one measly little 15lb King. I still find it amazing how much meat you can still get off such a modest sized fish!

Spring here has been, apparently, out of the ordinary, but it’s certainly been right up my ally. We have had day after day of cloudless sunny skies and temperatures upwards of 18C, which is understandably not the norm for a rain forest. Typical or not, it has made it nearly impossible to not fall in love with this town with this kind of weather. I’ve even become so domestic as to plant my own little flower planters…we’ll see how long they last in the absence of my green thumb!

I’ve been continuing my attempt of learning to run; A “hobby” I picked up while I was home in April due to a slight fear I’d out grown my wedding gown! What amazes me the most here is how fresh and clean the air is, even after days without rain. Definitely one of my favorite things about Juneau is how little (if any) pollution there is.
Andy has headed off for the weekend (it’s a long weekend here: Memorial Day) with the guys (including my father) for a mass fishing trip. They head over to a massive “island” where there is a little bay called Elfin Cove which apparently has some of the best fishing in the area. It’s a 4 hour, by boat, journey. I haven’t quite decided what I’ll be doing with myself for the next 3 days, but I think I have a fairly good idea…

My latest guilty pleasure has been the Twilight series. I scoffed and how much publicity it seemed to be getting and at how all the “silly” girls were swooning over “Edward Cullen”. Sadly, I have become one of those “silly” girls… Ok, so maybe I’m not the swooning type, but I can’t lie, I’ve definitely become addicted to the sickeningly pathetic romance and suspense. I’ve made it through both of the first 2 books (500+ pages each) and just broke down and bought the last 2 in hard cover because I’m too impatient to wait until August for the paper backs!

So that’s been my last 2 months in a nut shell….I’ll try to be better at more consistent updates, providing life is exciting enough to have something to update!

Something I’ve been hearing about for a while, but never experienced (until last night) are the Taku winds. Because of how the mountains are situated in the downtown and Douglas area (which just so happens to be where I live) wind get funneled down the channel at gale force speeds. Taku wind season apparently is between October and April, and occur on average 4 times during this period. I guess that makes last night one of those 4 times as wind gusted up to 50mph! (Again, my metric friends, that’s upwards of 80km/h) It really was wind like I’ve never experienced before, not to mention the fact my house sort of juts off the side of a hill, making me feel a tad more vulnerable. Apparently, though, you get used to it. My hubby didn’t even flinch all night long as I lay wide awake and worried about our house popping off the mountain and ending up in the channel. (My imagination works in wonderful ways in the middle of the night!) This picture shows what looks like clouds around the top of the mountain, when actually that’s a full blown snowstorm going on up there. (Not unlike a dust storm in a dessert, I imagine…) Wouldn’t want to spend much time on the tops of those mountains during these little out bursts!

Well, I promised updates, and then I go AWOL…what do you do? We all have our weaknesses right? It may because there really hasn’t been much to report recently but I’ll see what I can dig up…

I think the most impressing “thing” (for lack of a better word) that has happened since I’ve come here is the Thane Road avalanche. First, I’ll give you a little background on the roads here in Juneau. Or maybe I should say, the lack thereof…

Although Juneau is not an island, by ANY stretch of the imagination, it is “landlocked”. The main road through Juneau is about 40 miles (64 km for my metric friends…) from end to end. Yes, it ends at both tips. From downtown Juneau, you can head north about 30 miles (albeit beautiful miles) and then you run into the ocean. Or, you can head south about 10 miles and just plain run out of road. That 10 miles is known as Thane Road and as become one of my most feared roads. As you drive out Thane you have the Gastineau Channel on one side and a steep mountain side up the other, and as a result it is known for it’s avalanches. A dear friend of ours, in his mid 90’s, having lived here 70 odd years out on Thane, is able to predict to the day when an avalanche is coming. Apparently, when it snows heavily one and then warms up a few degrees and turns to rain the next, an avalanche is as good as guaranteed, in his mind.

On February 8th that’s exactly what happened. We’d had a huge dump of snow, 8 inches or so, and then it go beautifully warm and yes, poured rain. This is a picture a few weeks later from across the channel, even after a bunch of avalanche shooting and plowing.

Luckily, no one was hurt, but that hasn’t always been the case with Thane Rd avalanches. It is the only road into town for the residents out there. Another good friend of ours had a scare of a lifetime when her late husband was caught in an avalanche and swept out into the channel. Luckily the tide was out. (Let it be noted is was NOT the avalanche that killed him!)

Nothing like adding a little excitement to your drive into or home from work!

So, a little change of scenery on here for you all! I fell drastically off the blogging bandwagon sometime last year and of course lost all my avid fans. (All 3 of you…) However, since starting my new life way up north, I’ve had many intrigued friends curious about what it’s REALLY like in Alaska. Have we bought our slew of sled dogs, is it warm enough in our igloo…you know how it goes! Well my friends, I hate to disappoint, but none of the standard stereotypes hold true. I have moved to one of the most beautiful places on the earth, I am sure of it. And yes, we get winters, we get snow, we get cold…but hey! so does Kelowna, and so far, nothing beats that place! But, when the clouds clear, the sun shines and I lie in bed looking out the window, I see the greatest snow peaked mountain at my doorstep and a bald eagle flying by and coming to rest in the tree just outside. Life could not be more breath taking.

And so, this is now the new theme of my blog. I will, to the best of my abilities, walk you through my new found life in one of the most beautiful, yet best kept secrets of the world.

Welcome to Juneau, Alaska!

The demand has come in regarding my supposed new marital status. Ok, so it’s not “supposed”, it’s for real. *gasp* Corinne Pernisie is finally married…much to the disbelief of many, I’m sure! lol Anyways, here’s the deal. It was actually planned all along. Seeing as I’ve bitten the bullet and agreed to become a local resident in our friendly neighbouring country, there’s this wierd concept called “immigration”. Funny that. We were warned that this process can take up to 9 months to complete, and during that 9 months, I am unable to legally live, much less work in the US. I continue to find it amusing how difficult the States make it for Canadians to come into their country. And the best part is, their fear is that we’re just going to waltz in, use a partner to get our citizenship and then ditch them. As if we’re just DYING to be American. At any rate, I can’t comment on whether it’s much easier for them to come to Canada so I better be nice!

I digress…

So it just made most sense to get married and get the paper work started. Our original plan was to be all coy and keep it a secret until our formal wedding in April. But for those of you already married, I’m sure you can agree that it’s the happiest day of your life and the LAST thing you want to do is keep it a secret. (Besides the fact I’m TERRIBLE at keeping secrets) Our official date was Friday, August 29th, and it was absolutly perfect. We had it at my parents place in front of the fire with my puppy at our feet. Mom and dad, Heather and Kyle and Granny were there. So intimate, so memorable.

Our wedding in April will still go ahead as planned. I am, of course, your typical female. I want the dress, the flowers, the dinner…everything a girl has always dreamed of. It’s going to be in Osoyoos at Nk’Mip winery and resort but again, we’re keeping it small and intimate with pretty much just family. I am still so excited to get everyone together and it’ll be great to be up in the Okanagan one last time before I leave the country!

Thanks so much for all your love and wishes. We are so happy to have started our lives together…the only thing that would have made it better is if we could have done it “normally” and already be co-habiting, but hey! normal is so over rated right?!

Ahhh….just one of things I MAY miss when I leave this beautiful province….

Spent the weekend up at Whistler for a super fun volleyball tournament. It may have been mostly luck that one girl couldn’t make it, so I was called to sub in, but HEY I won’t complain!! Anyways, ‘The Beavers’ had a fairly successful day, losing only one match all day (albeit the first play off match…) but still, can’t argue, those are pretty good odds.

We stayed in a fantastic condo right in Whistler village, stumbling distance away from all the appropriate venues! (Starbucks of course!) lol

Check out some of our action pix and videos on my gallery!

How about some good ole Canadian humor?? This has got to be one of the most classic songs/videos. Doesn’t get much more Canadian than this…those of us from the prairies can attest that! Here’s the Corb Lund Band and Truck Got Stuck 

There is a very very sick person playing a very very sick joke. There was a 6th foot found on the coast of Western Canada today. The fifth was found just last Monday, and they have been mysteriously been showing up on the beach since last fall. I guess there are some suspicions that it has to do with a plane crash off the coast a while ago, which I guess, would be the more pleasant solution (in a very messed up kind of way). But without thinking too much about it, it is actually a little humorous. I mean, how strange is it that severed feet, still in their shoes, none the less, continue to wash up on shore! And even better, all except the one found on Monday were right feet/shoes. Methinks someone has a left shoe fetish! (ew!)

Ok, so I’m not trying to rant on the human race, but, ok, i am.

There’s just some funny things that people do that continue to humor me. Like last night, as I was leaving work, I’m walking past a bus stop and one of the ladies waiting for the bus is literally half way out into the road trying to see as far down the road as possible to see if there was a bus coming. Now, this is really the kettle callling the pot black, because I’ve done it too, but it just strikes me as funny. The truth of it is, when you look that far down the road, you might see a bus, but you can’t read the number so you still don’t know if it’s yours, and if it IS, seeing it half a mile away, isn’t going to get it to your stop any sooner than if you just saw it as it was pulling up. So why stress?? Might as well sit back, plug in your ear buds and count cars. Your bus will show at the exact time it does. (now THAT was profound) Willing it to appear around the corner will have little to do with it. The best part is, Vancouver transit is notorious for running behind so you might as well enjoy your extra few minutes of tardiness!