Moonwalkers-November Edition

This past Friday was the second Moonwalkers hike since my arrival. Moonwalkers is something my church does. Each month on the Friday (or Saturday) nearest the full moon a group of hikers and their dogs gather and designated places. It begins with food at the home of the congregation member who offered to host for that month. After eating, and fellowship we gear up.

Fellowship before the hike

It's a multigenerational event even the smallest of members come

We met at Mike and Desi's house. Mike is big into star gazing and all things space and recently built his very own observatory in his backyard. As you may recall in last months moonwalkers blog update Mike brought along one of his telescopes. This month we got to see his medium telescope and his large telescope.

The medium sized telescope specifically designed to look at the sun

After eating we ventured into his observatory and got to see all the latest gadgets including a telescope that is hooked up to a computer. This means that it can do several really neat things. I can automatically point to over 11,000 places in the sky simply by asking it to. Things like the planets, the space station, and various galaxies. It's all done by GPS which makes it easy rather than having to search with the naked eye and then physically have to change the resolution for a clear image. His telescope can also take pictures. Mike told us that how the professional pictures are taken is not with a single image but by stacking images on top of each other-something that he can also do.

The observatory complete with Desi's own green hide out room (far left)

The telescope

Mike up in the dome

Computer connected to the telescope for GPS and picture taking capabilities 

The dome from outside, complete with snow cover :)

The green room

The observatory and telescope were very interesting but unfortunately it was a cloudy night so we were not able to actually use them, but he promised we would all be invited back sometime this winter to see it in action.


The hike this month was at the Far North Bicentennial Park specifically a trail called Campbell tract trail. It was flat, and beautiful. The spruce trees covered in snow are so picture perfect. Unfortunately there was no moon to be see for us Moonwalkers with the clouds above but we still had a great time.

The dogs of Alaska never cease to amaze me. They are one of the family. People take their dogs in their car to the store, to work, to the bank and this event was no different. Four dogs altogether and they all get along with one another.

Throughout the hike the men thought it would be funny to try to dump snow on the intern, that means ME! It started with Mike who would walk by a spruce tree and lean on the trunk so that all the snow would fall down on the person behind him (which was me, as I was second in lead). So then I decided to hang back and made conversation with Vern. We paused for a moment to let the group, which had split up, and Vern did the same thing this time not only getting snow on me but ALL of us in the group. Well this gave Bill the idea for all the boys to gang up on me. I hung back to speak with some of the people in the back and then ran back up front only to find Vern, Mike, John, and Bill with snowballs and a loaded spruce with snow for me. It was all in good fun but next Moonwalkers boys better look out! :)