The last frontier and how not to hunt ptarmagan but at least we had some fun

Well back to more alaska stories. Tuesday went pretty well also, went to lunch with lisa at sea galley. The highlight of the day though was the ATS party at snowgoose. They had free food and beverages from 530-930. It was very exciting. We met up with silvy, bret, and dom who got there about the same time we did, so we had a good time. Once it started getting dark we took off and went to flat top to look down on the city. It was freezing cold and raining, but still pretty fun. Wensday was pretty uneventful also, went to lunch with jackie, lisa, and maria, then went back to the conference to watch ryans presentation. That pretty much wrapped up the conference. There was a fairwell banquet which wasnt too impressive, but o well. The house (and our hotel room, we basicly just relocated the house to alaska for the week) went to party with stevens point for a while then called it a night and went back to the hotel. Thursday we went ptarmagan hunting. We didnt really know where to look since all the people we taked to with fws and akfg dont hunt until later in the season. But we wandered around for a while then shot at rocks on the other side of this stream. I even got maria to shoot the .22, she had way to much fun with that. Afterwards we went up the road a bit further to where it was snowing. Stephen had never seen it snow so he was going crazy and the rest of us had fun laughing at him. Then back to the hotel to pack. Turned out the sul ross guys missed their flight so maria and I went to rumrunners and met up with ryan, eric, and ashely until lisa came and picked us up and took ryan and eric to the airport. Friday the rest of TAMU came up to girdwood and the 5 of us plus john and dom went to whitter and walked part of the portage pass trail. It was pretty cool looking down into whitter and the sound on one side and to the glaicer on the other. We took pepper with us and she was pretty tired by the time we were done. Saturday maria and I went back to the sound to go fishing with lisa and john. We limited out in about 2hrs, so definatly a successful trip. Back to girdwood, grabbed pizza from chair 5, packed up our gear and took down my malaise trap, then back to anchorage to catch our flight. Slept most of the way down and got to dfw without any major issues. Baggage claim was amusing since annalise called to see when we were leaving anchorage while I was looking for our bags in dfw. While on the phone with her, mom walked next to me and had no idea i was there. Now if i was my dog dex she would have picked him out right away, all us kids have come to the realization we rank below the dog in my moms opinon. Kinda sad when shes trying to send eddie back to college station with me and keep the dog. All in all a very productive trip to AK, had a good time seeing it a bit differently than normal, but itll be nice to be back up there in the summer. It was wierd seeing it dark up there, I think i saw dark when i was really young, since i went up at the end of august when i was 8 or so. The leaves were also changing, never seen fall for real anywhere.