Misty Morning Return.



I just returned from a week in Salt Lake City and Boise, where the sun always shines and everything seems really nice. It is even nice there in the winter. I always envy places where it seems so much easier to live. When I flew in last night it was raining. I was in a prop plane coming into Homer and, I have no idea where this was coming from, but ice kept spraying all over me. Ice was forming on the windshield. It was very cold and the other passengers on the plane, who were all from out of state, were a little nervous about the plane ride. They clapped when we landed. They were all so excited to be in Alaska and ready to begin their big adventure. Then this morning I woke up and looked out at John's garden and this is what I saw. It is good to be back in Alaska.

Winter Quilt.



Here's an example of what yoga quilting can do for you. I started this quilt in the dead of winter when we had about 5 hours of daylight each day. I just finished it today. Along with yoga quilting I added some fussing and tears to this one. To add fussing and tears you first cut out 395 squares and sew them together incorrectly. Then you use a seam ripper to take them all apart while you fuss and sniffle. You throw them all in a bag and abandon them for months then start all over again. This is a twin size quilt for our daughter. Finally.

Tomorrow I leave town for a week to Salt Lake City. I hear it is hot. More posts next week.

Otter Baby.



John's mother took this picture of an otter mama swimming with a baby on her belly. All together now....awww!

Two Markers Marking.

In the same cove where the canning pier from yesterday's post was shown, we found this marker on a rock on the shore:



It says, "U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Elevation ______ feet above mean sea level. $250 fine or imprisonment for disturbing this mark." The elevation is unreadable or gone. Maybe someone went to prison when they messed with it.

Walking on the beach the other day I found this marker on a log:




It says, "American Timber and Trading Co. 1967 Sumner, Wash." I wonder how long this was floating around in the water before it came ashore here in Anchor Point.

Fox Farms and Canneries.



When we are in Prince William Sound, it seems like no other human has been where we are before. Everything appears to be raw and undisturbed. But when we look closely, there are signs around of the community that thrived there in the 1940s. In Port Audrey remains of a dock still stand guard over an area where a cannery once existed. There are many artifacts such as broken cups, bricks, and big brass valves visible in the water at low tide. It is illegal to remove anything from these areas because they are historical sites. Fox farming and gold mining also boomed in Prince William Sound during that time. The end of the war saw the end of most of these industries.

Moose Marketing.



Last night our marauding moose returned and finished off all but 2 of our broccoli. She snuck through our defenses even though John stayed up half the night waiting for her. We are certain that now that she has eaten through all of our outside garden she will finally ignore our orange rope and stick her head through the plastic that surrounds our garden walls to eat her fill of lettuce. We are on high alert tonight. Even though we are sick about our loss to the hungry moose, that doesn't stop us from purchasing drinks marketed to those who love them. We are simple people, as you can see by the name of our beer. Anyone who buys beer called Moose Drool can't be too uppity.

Golfing With Moose.



The driving range portion of the new golf course in Anchor Point is open. We were treated to a couple of buckets of balls to hit last night. We liked it a lot! The moose did too. He was seen rubbing his face against the flag at the 2nd green.

Our broccoli-eating moose and HER baby returned last night and ate almost all the rest of the broccoli in our non-orange-rope portion of the garden. Yes, we know it is a female moose dining on our veggies, so all those male moose running around out there are vindicated. They are safe until August 20th.

Beer Garden.



We had a new development in John's garden today: a moose stuck his head through the remay and ate two of our broccoli plants. I didn't see if it was a him or a her, but I refer to all offending animals as hims. John noted that it was the part outside the garden that is only covered in remay and has no orange rope. You know he will have one installed soon to deter any moose hankering for our broccoli.



Meanwhile, the rest of the garden and the greenhouse are thriving! We have lots of big green tomatoes in the greenhouse. By the middle of August we should get some ripe tomatoes. Remember that we planted them late and that raising tomatoes in Alaska is as difficult as keeping a good tan.



In the garden our protected batch of broccoli, collard greens, etc. are the garden equivalent of being born with a silver spoon in the mouth. Nowhere are there more pampered plants than in John's garden.



Here's the zucchini that John plans to pick tomorrow. It is a big event that I have heard is approaching for several days now. John spends hours each day fire blasting weeds, spreading out grass clippings, cultivating the dirt with his fingers instead of with a tool so he can better feel the roots, and gazing lovingly at all his babies. I do my share also. I weed a row here and there, but, most importantly, I walk the rows gathering up these:



This is definitely a beer garden.

Reindeer Crossing.



I saw this lady and her daughter walking through Whittier with these two reindeer. A local said that the reindeer were their pets and that they were taking them for a walk. I ran after them to ask some questions and gave up on the other side of the railroad tracks. But then I saw this man in a truck stop her and I thought he was going to ask her about her reindeer. He just stopped her to ask for directions.

Squirrel Attacks.



When I first moved to Alaska, I thought that the squirrels here were really cute. They are much smaller than squirrels in other parts of the country. Then one winter a squirrel found a way into our Moose Cabin and had 8 months of unadulterated, rambunctious fun. He first shredded many rolls of toilet paper and paper towels and made a cushy, big nest under the kitchen sink. Then he decided that for snacks he would go to my storage shed and dine on our white sheets. Come spring we found him and put an end to his party. We tossed out his nest and blocked his way to the underside of the kitchen sink. He was ousted.

When our clients started checking in, though, we found out that he still considered the territory his home. As they would walk down the boardwalk to the front door he would sit in a tree and pitch pinecones at them while barking loudly. We finally had to oust him from his tree. I won't go into how.

Now we have another territorial squirrel, but he has claimed a much smaller cabin this time. He has claimed a bird feeder that John made to look like a our Moose Cabin. He sits on guard of his house all day and keeps all the birds away. When our clients check in he barks at them. But this less-aggressive squirrel runs away when they get close instead of throwing pine cones at them. This is a picture of him in ready-to-run-mode.

John is making these bird feeders to order, hint hint.

The Coolest Duck of Them All.



If I were a bird, I would have to be the common merganser. Look at this fabulous duck! This picture is worth clicking on and seeing larger. She looks like she is moving fast even when she is standing still! That hair (technically called a crest). I love it! The male merganser looks, well, common. It's the female that rocks! You tell me what duck looks cooler than that.

Radish Rejection.



John and I haven't mastered the method of planting seeds a few weeks apart instead of all at once. We just harvested about 300 radishes, leaving me with the problem of how to use them all up. Planting a few every week would have been a better plan. I haven't found any recipes for canning them. I've found a recipe for steaming them, which is quite good. I have been making dip out of chopped radishes, garlic and cream cheese. Yummy! The only other recipe I found was for radish top soup, which uses the green tops of the radishes. I wish I hadn't found out that the green tops are yummy to eat because now we know we have 300 radishes and 300 radish tops to use up.

This soup is made with onion and potatoes cooked in chicken broth. Then four cups of radish tops are added and boiled. After that it is all pureed and put back in the pot with some heavy cream. Leo in general doesn't like anything we get out of the garden and he especially doesn't like this soup. He said it looked like throw up. He was right, it did look like barf, but it was really good! Did he eat any? His face says it all.

Pole Purpose?



Notice the orange pole on the side of the road? This is one of many miles of poles that line both sides of the road leading up to the Whittier Tunnel. They continue on for miles. They aren't lights or anything electronic. We have been wondering about their purpose and came up with some theories that are really too silly to even list here. What is your guess? Answer below:















They get so much snow in that area, the snow plows can't figure out where the edge of the road is. These poles guide them.

Fish Off.

When we are out fishing as a family, we of course have some major fishing competition going on. Some catch the biggest and think they won. Some catch the tastiest and think they won. Here's some of entries from this last trip to the Sound:

This is our daughter's trophy yellow eye. This definitely wins in the "Hardest to Catch" category. It also ties with my silver salmon entry for "Yummiest Fish."



My silver -



Here's John's entry for "Biggest Fish." And this isn't even the largest ling cod he caught. He had one that was four foot long, but we lost it when we tried to get it in the boat. I think it also wins for "Ugliest Fish."



And this is Grandpa's entry for "Smallest Fish." He caught other fish, but since I control what pictures make the cut here, this one goes in. Muhahaha.

Chenega Seals.



At the base of Chenega Glacier, there are hundreds of seals that sit on the ice just bobbing along, unconcerned with the enormous ice chunks falling around them. John's mom had her Howitzer, as a friend of mine has named her camera, and was able to get some great up-close shots of the seals.



Seals always look so melancholy. This seal seems to be saying, "Don't make me jump in that cold water, please!" I included this picture because it shows how long and vicious his claws are. Puppy dog eyes, lion claws.



The feet on seals crack me up. Always pointed toes. I can see in this picture that he has a bloody injury under his chin. I wonder what got to him?

Ice Berb Chipper.

When we go to Prince William Sound we first visit Chenega Glacier where we sit and watch ice fall off the glacier into the ocean.



This piece looks like it belongs in Superman's cave.

On our way out of the bay we fish ice chunks out of the water and chip it to put into our coolers. This serves to keep our fish and shrimp cool the rest of our trip.

Yummy Grass.



In the Sound we pulled into a lagoon and John's dad spotted a black bear on the shore. He had his head down and was eating the way a one-year-old eats a birthday cake. He was moving his head from side to side and chomping like he was eating the yummiest dinner he'd ever had. Then he looked up and watched us for a while. His mouth was full of grass. He finally turned and loped off into the woods.

Yellow Eye Piled High.



We made it back safely from our Prince William Sound trip. One of the main fish that we wanted to target was yellow eye. They are harder to catch than the other types of rock fish. We had a boat competition going and our oldest daughter won. Yellow eye are non-pelagic, which means non-open water. These type of fish cannot regulate their air bladder. When brought up from the depths, their air bladder inflates and protrudes out of their mouth. If released, they will float on the surface, unable to dive back down because of the inflated bladder, where they will die slowly at the mercy of attacking sea gulls. Thus, fishermen have to keep non-pelagic fish.

False Start.

We drove all the way to Whittier yesterday for our big trip in Prince William Sound. After a very delayed start, a trip to a congested grocery store along the way, a three hour drive, and a hectic boat ramp, we got our boat launched in the Whittier harbor and we were on our way....for about 30 seconds. The hydraulics line had been pinched in the motor during the drive, causing a hole to form and causing us to have no steering in the harbor.

It was 8:30 on the Friday night of the 4th of July weekend, would we be able to get someone to fix this problem? I asked the Harbor Master this question.

"Well, people here work pretty weird hours," he said. No kidding. The liquor store in town is open for about 15 minutes a day. Seriously. They open at 5 p.m. and stay open until the crowd of people are gone. Then they close. That's it until tomorrow at 5 p.m. We called around boat repair shops and it turned out that no one's 15 minutes of being open coordinated with our boat repair at 8:30. Back home we went.

During the 7 hours traveling I had time to notice this on the interior of the car:



For Leo's background in writing on our walls, scroll down last month's posts. I said to him, "Leo, I see you wrote your name in our car." And he said, "No, that says Lee. Someone named Lee wrote that." I believe it.

Tomorrow we are back to Whittier again for our big adventure in the most beautiful place in the world with the biggest camera in the world. Hopefully no new posts for a few days....