Full circle to fall

It's been a little over a year, and starting with the first day of school, we are coming full circle to documenting the same events as last year.  Although we attended the wooden boat festival last year, I can't remember if I posted photos or not.  The kids still have their creations from last year on their dressers but couldn't be convinced to send them off as gifts.

Kate working on the tiller 

 

The Wooden Boat Society provides the tools and materials and they even provide several different hull shapes to choose from.  If allowed, James would have painted layer over layer over layer on his boat.

 

 

Creations from 2012 and 2013

 

 

The farmers market really died down after Labor Day.  There are less booths and people, but the vegetables are really hitting their stride.

 

Kate selected romanesco for dinner one night.  It's always fun to cook something new, but I think I loved the spicier cousin to broccoli and cauliflower more than everyone else did.
Our potatoes are everywhere and super fun to pick and eat.  The kids love the Magic Molly purple potato not only for its looks but the taste too.  We also have a few fingerlings and some Yukon gold.

Our crazy potato patch

 

 

James digging and washing some potatoes to share with Kate's class.

 

 

 

Our flowers are doing really well too, but unfortunately the heavy ice that killed the grass also killed most of the raspberries.

 

 

My neighbor tells me these raspberries are on a two year cycle, so maybe the stems that will bloom next year were not affected?  I hope so as we really enjoyed eating the berries last year.

  

 

Also in September... 

 

We made another trip to Diamond Creek.  A perfect hike for the family and a chance for the kids to play in the water (because they're crazy).

 

 

View of Mount Iliamna from the beach

 

 

 

This fall, Kate started running Cross Country after school.

 

Her school is 3rd -6th grade and offers amazing after school activities.  Sometimes they run at the school and in the surrounding neighborhood, but they also run to the beach as well as along a set of wooded hiking/skiing trails.  I helped chaperone the trail runs:  Forty kids would jump off the bus and take off running in the woods. They briefly covered bear safety before leaving school and even gave a few kids whistles once brown bear tracks were photographed on the trail and published in the paper.  So, in addition to a few black bears and moose, there is a known brown bear thought to be old and solitary who lives in the Rogers Loop area as well.  The PE teacher claims no animal would make itself known with all the noise and traffic of the kids....so off they go.  Nuts.  Running in the woods and talking to friends is quite possibly the most perfect activity for Kate though.

One Saturday morning we were driving down the hill from our house for breakfast.  The bay was calm but the waves were rolling in in sets.  Brian and I looked at each other at the same time and said, "It looks like Cape St. Francis out there."  We drove to the beach to watch for a minute, and even saw a local coffee shop owner/surfer checking it out as well.  Brian bought a thick wet suit, booties, gloves, and all in California, and it seemed like the waves were calling him that day.

 

Unfortunately, by the time we finished breakfast and got him packed up, the wind had really picked up.  He went out and caught a wave but said it was an extremely hairy scary experience (although not too cold if you can believe that). There were several people out, mostly with stand up paddle boards.

 

 

 

Brian on the wave below

 

The same day of surfing, we noticed termination dust for the first time across the bay.  Termination dust is fresh snow on the mountains come to terminate your summer.  We should see snow on the ground in Homer about a month later.

View of fresh snow on the mountain tops

 

 

Snow may be a month away, but we are still having fun on the beach building cool structures,

 

lounging,

 

 

and finding coal.

 

There is a lot of coal on the beach here, and sometimes you see people collecting it to take home and burn or using it for campfires on the beach.  James just likes to smash it or write with it.

 

 

Now that James is a student at Paul Banks, he gets to invite Kate to the school's movie nights.  About every 6 weeks, they show a movie on Friday night.  All the gym mats are out and the kids wear pajamas, bring pillows, and eat popcorn.  It's a hoot.

 

The kids also spent the night together aboard Hickory as Brian organized a Hickory kids sleepover.  They are still talking about how the popcorn was served via dumb waiter from the galley to the wardroom.

 

In October, a new figure skating program started that Kate was excited to join.

 

She has been working on her crossovers and more.

 

 

Just before Kate's class starts, James is dabbling in Homer's learn to skate through hockey program.  Learning how to put on all the gear was a learning experience for me

 

Week 1, he cruised around with the pusher.  Week 2, they took it away and he fumbled, fell, and got back up for an hour.  It was painful to watch.  The coaches insist he will just catch on.  We'll see. For the time being we are motivating him with Gatorade.

 

 

Thankfully, James comes off the ice with a smile and a super sweaty hockey mullet.


Not sure if this is a good idea or not, but Kate's Girl Scout troop needed a leader or it was going to fall apart, so I stepped up.  Our first outing was to Soldotna for a hay maze.

 

Being from Michigan, my mind was thinking corn maze.  This was in no way similar.  It was a  3 story maze of tunnels built with hay that will be used this winter to feed the camp's 18 horses.

 

 

The girls had flashlights and crawled right in.  It took them 15 minutes or so to crawl through, navigate the wrong turns, cross a bridge, up a ladder, and who knows what else before exiting via a
slide.


The girls loved it and probably went through 6 or 7 times.  Despite their best efforts to get me in, I found the small tunnel to be suffocating and I couldn't even bring myself to put more than my head in the tunnel. 

Last year, I started a separate page on the blog for sunrise and sunset photos but barely added any photos after establishing the page. As fall rolled around this year, I realize these spectacular scenes are most common in fall.   If I remember correctly, last fall was slightly more amazing in the sunrise and set department. Either way, the scenery really never gets old regardless of time of day.
.

Gerwingk Glacier

As it gets colder we are trying to fit in a few more hikes while we can.  Five of the spouses from the ship had the morale boat drop us across the bay so we could hike to Gerwingk glacier.  It is the most visible glacier from Homer, so we see it everyday from our house, and it is also the most popular hike across the bay.  Three and half miles of flat easy walking to the lake and another 1.5 out, taking a different route.  The hike out had a small steep climb and the rest was steep descent with terrain similar to our China Poot Lake hike last month.
As we left Homer harbor, we passed the Time Bandit, Saga, and Cape Caution from Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch.  They were getting their boats ready for the start of King Crab Season on October 1.

 

 

For some reason, I was unexpectedly taken with these boats.  I know they are almost 100 feet smaller than Hickory, but seeing them up close and then processing what little I have learned about Bering Sea weather and seas is both mind blowing and scary.

It was a very foggy morning and we had to wait a couple hours for the fog to lift before heading out in the small boat.  At first, we couldn't even see other boats in the harbor let alone the mountains across the bay.  Then slowly the mountains came into view, the bay cleared up, and we headed out.

 

Above is a photo of the flat, open hiking to the lake. 

 

 

Kachemak Bay State Park is awesome and has nice trail signs at most junctions in the trail.

 

Approaching Gerwingk Glacier Lake...

We don't get many colors in fall here other than yellow, so this was the best show of colors I've seen yet.

 

We walked a bit around the lake to get closer to the actual glacier and because we didn't have any kids or time constraints.

I really enjoyed the steeper climbs up and down on the hike out.  The views of Halibut Cove Lagoon were great and we did not encounter any bears either.

 

 

On the ride back across the bay, we passed a raft of sea otters hanging out.

 

There was also a regatta of sorts taking place.  Homer has a Yacht Club and a surprising number of sailboats in the harbor.

I hope to repeat this hike with the kids before we leave as I think James will be ready for it in another year or so.

Labor Day

I planned on doing a blog post for every month or every couple of months, but it seems like we've been packing in the activities lately.  We've taken out the ship's morale boats a few times and our adventures never disappoint.  Brian asked if we wanted to go explore China Poot Lagoon.  It's just under 5 miles to cross Kachemak Bay directly from the Homer spit, but once you cross, the coastline is full of coves and lagoons to explore.  It was a rainy day, but the seas were calm and there was no wind.  We knew that "explore China Poot Lagoon" was code for "scope out duck hunting sites," but it seemed like a good idea anyway.

The kids are real troopers in the boat, especially Kate who loves to drive.

We saw the usual sea otters and giant jelly fish as well as a few seals and puffins.  When we got into the lagoon it was very shallow and easy to see sea creatures in the clear water.  There were flounder zooming everywhere.  This seemed strange to me because I have never heard anyone mention flounder before.  Halibut and salmon, yes.  Cod and dolly varden, sure.  But flounder?  When we got home, a quick Google search revealed info on Kachemak Bay's arrowtooth flounder.  A Homer News article titled, "Arrowtooth flounder: A fish so foul it's only good for bait," told me everything I needed to know.

After Brian scoped out his site for the opening day of duck hunting season that would start the next day, we went further into the lagoon.  We know that there is a personal use dip net season in China Poot Lagoon for sockeye salmon.  People hang out of their boats with enormous nets to catch the salmon heading upstream.  We were out of town this year, but plan to dip with a vengeance next year.  This stream is a terminal fishery stocked by Alaska Fish & Game. They put the salmon fry in China Poot Lake, where we rented the cabin a few weeks ago.  The fish mature for a year or two before heading out to sea.  It's another 2-3 years before they return, but a waterfall prevents the fish from returning to the lake to spawn.  Long story short, dip net season ended August 7, so we did not expect to see anything since it's already Labor Day.  Even without binoculars it looked like the water was boiling, so we beached the boat and continued the short walk upstream.  It was crazy amazing.  There were thousands of fish.

 

The banks were lined with dead and decaying fish and many of the fish swimming looked wrecked,

 

but many did not.  We did not come prepared to fish, but this crew is not afraid to make homemade spears to get our fish on.

 

Then, I discovered the freshest bear scat I've seen to date

 

and hauled our cubs back to the boat.

 

 

Next year, we are coming for you.  Salmon beware.

 

We beached the boat a second time because the kids spotted a beach that needed to be explored.  They named the beach and cove and begged to come back and camp there.  Since it would cost  $6,000-$7,000 for the 4 of us to stay 2 nights at the nearby wilderness lodge (this is a different lodge from the one in our July post), even I might agree to camp at Jessie Dog Beach in Pirate Cove.

 

Our scouting work paid off as Brian brought home 6 ducks the next day.  Jessie dog was in her element.  It's been awhile since she's been able to show off her skills and make herself useful. 

 

 

Brian was so fired up about our adventure yesterday and the successful hunt that he wanted to head out again.  We joined him for another trip to Halibut Cove and brought along Kate's best friend from school.  I've been dreaming about The Saltry restaurant and wanted to get in another visit before they closed for the season.  Unbeknownst to us it was their last day.

 

 

Waiting for food and drinks and taking in the view.

 

 

The restaurant is outdoors, but under a roof that attaches to the adjacent rock wall and with the coolest fireplace built in to the rock.

 

 

Again the kids enjoyed manhandling the sea creatures in the touch tank.

 

 

We explored some of the trails this time, heading up to the lighthouse,

 

 

past fields of fireweed starting to send fuzz into the air,

 

 

 

and to the edge of a cliff for some serious scenery.

 

 

Kate and Laura

 

 

 Good times.  We ended the three day weekend with some delicious duck.