Road Trip (further) North

The last time we drove from Anchorage up to Fairbanks was a couple years ago. At the time we were trying to convince our soon to graduate, middle son, Will to attend UAF with his older sister. Our plan backfired, mainly because it was snowing in September when we took the UAF campus tour and we were all freezing! He now attends UAA (Go Seawolves!) in Anchorage, which is closer to home and slightly warmer than a Fairbanks winter by about 50 degrees. We love road trips and will be heading up to Fairbanks once again tomorrow. Our eldest daughter Kristen will graduate on Sunday, just the kind of Mother's Day present I like. She absolutely LOVES Fairbanks and has an internship in Chemical Oceanography and is continuing her Graduate work at UAF (Go Nanooks!). The large photo was taken on the last road trip to Fairbanks. It's of Mt. McKinley in all it's Glory. We are always humbled to have such easy access to this beauty knowing first hand that tourists pay thousands of dollars to have this view.

We're taking advantage of the trip North and will hand deliver a wholesale order to one of my favorite customers, the Alaska Bird Observatory located in Fairbanks. I thought the Observatory would be happy to save on the postage and we'll get a chance to check out their facility. We'll also check 

to see which Migrant Birds will be arriving at Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge. If we're short on time, I'll have Kristen make the delivery on Monday. It's a long drive, 6-7 hours one way... Alaska is such a BIG state! ABO ordered wall mounted steel Ravens and the equally popular, smaller Raven Ornaments. I've plasma cut them all out of steel, gave them a flat black enamel finish and will embellish with red beads in their beaks to look like 

berries. Customers love anything Raven and the custom tags I use are appreciated by the shops and customers alike. I sometimes feel guilty doing production work. The assembly-line style necessary to kick-out multiples of anything has always made me a bit uncomfortable as an artist. I can also get fussy and grumpy when I need to do any kind of repetitive work, maybe that's why housework isn't very fun -ha! I admit I cheer up when I type up the invoices and I'm truly giddy when the checks arrive in the mail. I've enjoyed reading about how other artist's cope with production work, and their Blogs 

have provided a wonderful opportunity for a peek at behind the scenes work styles, frustrations, ideas and solutions. I'm off to finish tagging and loading a delivery for Half Moon Creek Gallery then back to package the Raven's for ABO and our road trip North.