A thousand little needles, a sore tush, and now I can't sleep...

I went on the most amazing snow machine ride yesterday! I rode almost the entire day. First, Avery and I rode to church in the morning, then over to the grocery store, then I called up my friend Chris to go out on a ride to one of the villages. We left at around 3pm to ride over to Oscarville, but we got on a different trail about half way there and since it was a heavily travelled trail, we decided to follow it and see where it goes. We knew it would lead to another village, but we didnt know which one. Chris was driving and he was cruising pretty fast and I was hanging on for life! My snow machine has a really bad suspension and it bumped around pretty bad. One time when we were climbing up the edge of this ridge, I was only holding on with one hand because I was holding my camera with the other. We hit a bump and I came crashing down on the side handle bar. Needless to say...I'm sore today. And not just my bum, but my arms and legs and everything.
The pictures above and below show the ridge that we climbed and the breathtaking view from up there. If you click on the pictures you can see them enlarged and really get a better sense for how beautiful it was. It makes me wonder why that ridge is there though. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the ocean must have once come up to that point and has since receded. The ridge goes on for miles. The trail we were on ended up in a village called Napakiak (more on that later). We walked around the village a little, then headed back up the river to Napaskiak (different village). Then we headed over to Oscarville and spent a little while chatting with a couple of our teacher friends there. On the way over from Napaskiak, I was driving and I had taken off my sun glasses because the sun wasnt so bright anymore, but I had the visor on my helmet up because it fogs up too easy. I hit a snow drift crossing the river and all of the snow got kicked up right into my eyes. It felt like a thousand tiny little needles stabbing me in the eye. I had to stop and let Chris take over until I could regain my vision.

We ended up back in Bethel around 7:30. It was a long, bumpy ride and it was alot of fun and I got to see two villages that I had never seen before. I was so tired when I got home that I went to bed pretty early around 9:30 and now I cant sleep. I was up at 5am to get a drink of water and couldnt fall back to sleep, so I just got up. I am going to watch some episodes of Northern Exposure (I started with the first season and have been getting them from Netflix for a couple months now) and grade some papers. Thank goodness I dont have to go to school today. YAY for spring break!