Back to the lower 48

We planned head back to the East Coast once during our 3 year stint here. We spent a week at the end of June with my family in Michigan, arriving just in time for the family's annual canoe trip.  My dad's side of the family must be going on 20+ years of paddling family friendly Michigan rivers.  As our group has grown, we can't fit in to some of the small cottages in prime paddling territory anymore, so we had to find a new venue.  I was sad that we did not canoe a river this year, but we were all happy with a sunny weekend on Lake Huron, and we did paddle around a bit.

It was great to show the kids the lake where I spent my summers growing up, and I was extremely surprised that we were able to swim in the lake so early in the summer considering the frigid winter.

Cousins reunited

We stopped on the way home to meet up with friends, and Kate spent a few hours playing with my childhood beach buddy Laurel's daughter.  Made me feel old but happy as well.

Meg & Kate

In Plymouth, we meet up with more friends, introduced the kids to cousins they didn't know they had, took Kate to see the house where she was born, considered buying it back from the people we sold it to, watched a lot of World Cup, and thoroughly enjoyed the visit all around.

Of course we went for ice cream, 

and Kate even rode a bike Grandma picked up for her in the Plymouth Parade.

Since we spent 4th of July at the lake growing up, I'm not sure I've ever see Plymouth's 4th of July Parade.  I was surprised at how big the parade was, but I suppose I should not have been surprised that the zamboni was featured. Perhaps I'm getting old(er) and sentimental, but I LOVE small town 4th of July.  It's Americana at its best.  It's what made us buy our house in Connecticut, it's the only thing Kate was bummed to miss this summer in Homer, and I was happy to feel choked up, dare I say blessed, to spend it in Plymouth. Cue the Neil Diamond and let's get ready for some fireworks!  

Actually, I don't care too much about fireworks unless you're witnessing your child's first firework experience,which I was not, but we still planned the second leg of our trip to allow us to see fireworks at the beach.  We flew to Myrtle beach and the kids were reunited with more cousins. 

Like me, the kids took off running at the site of the warm ocean.  Happiness is...

This is our third year in Surfside Beach with Brian's family.  We rent a house across the street from the beach with a pool in the backyard. We only get in the car to hit the grocery store or to go out for ice cream, and whenever possible we put all the kids in uncle Andrew's truck. 

Uncle Andrew with three 4 year olds and Kate in the truck blaring ACDC

This year, James locked on to Garrett, or Gary as he likes to call him. He loved having a cousin exactly the same age and they both enjoyed getting absolutely handled in the breaking surf.  Head over heals it didn't matter, they both came up with a smile every time.

Luke really looked up to Kate and she took on the new charge happily as she found Lukie much more charming than her own little brother.

I don't have too many beach photos as I didn't bring my camera, and I'm deathly afraid to bring my new phone to the beach.

Aside from swimming and sunning, which was fabulous, we did watch more World Cup, took Kate to see the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum (like father like daughter), dined at Waffle House, and hosted friends from Connecticut who just happened to be passing through. 

Kate & Alex reunited

When we got tired of the sun, we sat around in our underwear playing legos, well the boys did anyway.

Whiskey Hotel

We drove one day to North Carolina to see Brian's grandparents. As usual, we dined at the world famous Zack's, ate North Carolina BBQ, and allowed the kids to forge relationships with their great-grandparents. The 4.5 hour drive back to the beach took all day because we were with Brian, and because we kept running into cool stuff.

Krispy Cream's B-day.  Can't miss it.

We also stopped in Saxapahaw to show the kids where both Nanny and Mimi grew up.  Then, like an angel in the sky we unexpectedly happened upon South of the Border!

Gotta do it.

Great vacation all around!

Summer is underway

I am hoping to do shorter and more frequent posts this summer so I don't get buried. I still have to go back and post about our epic spring months.

The kids have been out of school a month already, but it just now feels like summer is getting underway. As soon as the ship got back from their spring buoy run to the Kuskokwim River, we made a trip to Anchorage for a family obstacle course/mud run. The kids were amazing. James ran the whole 1.5 miles and Kate could've run the adult 5k as she knocked out the kid run easily.

Note how clean everyone is before the run starts.

The Farmer's Market is up and running again with all its silly quirks. Last week, the musical entertainment was ragtime from a van. Can you see him playing the piano in his van in the background of the photo?

Last year we started a Best Homer Hippie photo contest with some friends, but I don't feel like I put forth enough effort. Here is my favorite hippie mobile so far this summer.

Last weekend, I walked all night for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. The family came to kick off the event in the rain. James and his buddies walked several laps.

It barely gets dark here in June, so ideal conditions for an all night walk except for a bit of rain and temperatures in the high 40s and low 50s. I took the above photo around 3am as the sun was beginning to rise (about an hour after it set).

I came home at 6:30am and tagged out Brian who had an invite to go acroos the bay and learn how to clam. The tide was a rare -3.4 feet, so perfect for collecting mussels and digging for clams.

SO MANY MUSSELS!

Brian said digging for clams was back breaking, but the haul was pretty good. Below are the butter clams. We changed their water a few times to help them filter out sand and they in turn sprayed water all over our garage floor. I spent most of yesterday watching World Cup and shucking clams, but we've yet to cook them up.

The mussels, however, were delicious and much easier to get, so I would definitely like to try it out with the kids next time.

We dropped off Kate a few days ago for a week of sleep away camp. She had so much fun last year and is attending with one of her best buddies who is moving back to Virginia at the end of the month. I'm sure they are doing all sorts of cool stuff like horse back riding and launching themselves into a very cold lake via rope swing as I am typing this.

We are a week into World Cup and there is absolutely no better time to be a stay at home mom. We invested in the Panini sticker album help get the kids more involved...and it's really fun to do. James is loving it so far.

We don't have a proper pub here in Homer, but we did paint our faces for the first US match. Although it wasn't pretty, we were happy with the result.

 

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BEARS

I had heard about bear viewing from a friend, but it never really appealed to me.  For one, bears make me extremely nervous (though not as nervous as sharks) and two, the trips run about $600.  My friend's pictures were mind blowing though.  I could not believe how close she was to a mama and her tiny cubs, who of course were standing up on their hind legs being super silly.   I later learned that the bears in Katmai National Park have been viewed by tour groups for the last 25 years.  Since they can not be hunted in the park and there are no people living anywhere near there, they do not associate humans with danger nor do they associate us with food.  We are just other creatures in their landscape.  It still wasn't too interesting.  I could fly to Hawaii for that price.

This spring, the Disney Bears movie was released with a bit of excitement and pride in Homer as Disney used a local company for their flights, guides, and as a base of operation for the filming in Katmai National Park.  I love silly documentaries à la Endless Summer, so I wanted to see the movie anyway.  The kids and I all loved it, and at the very end, during the credits, there were clips of the camera crew so you could really see how close everyone was to the bears.  It was nutso.

Flash forward to a sunny May day.  The Homer Spit is reopening for business, including our favorite restaurant.  James & I decide to meet Brian on the spit for lunch one day while Kate is in school.  I have a little time to kill, so I head into AK Wild Salmon and buy t-shirts for my nephews' upcoming birthdays. Then, I stroll into a bear viewing place to inquire about a locals rate to kill more time.  I have heard many of the companies keep a standby list for locals.  If the plane is not full, they will call you last minute and you can go for a reduced price.  I was thinking maybe 1/2 price.  I still wasn't sure that I wanted to spend the money since I've already seen brown bears.  Side note: We ran into a mama and juveniles last summer at the Russian River and I felt lucky that none of us had our faces eaten off.  The owner of Alaska Bear Viewing and K-Bay Air said it's all based on weight, but that she would love to put a local resident and/or Coast Guard personnel on the trip if the plane wasn't full.  So, I left her my phone number and my weight.  I didn't even lie a little bit about my weight as I did not want to have the plane go down on account of me.  Two weeks later I got a call late at night.  She said if I could be at the airport by 7:30am, the trip was free.  That's right FREE.  The ship is out, so I pawned the kids off on a friend and then proceeded to experience some mind blowing sh#%.

Admittedly, I was a little nervous about the flight.  I knew the airplane was small and that we were flying over very remote areas.  There is still snow on all the mountains here (June 2) and I read Alive.  Enough said.  In the end, their safety spiel put me at ease (a little).  There was room for 6 passengers including pilot and two planes were venturing off this morning.  I ended up sitting in the co-pilot seat (so cool) next to Jared, a Michigan resident and Western Michigan flight school grad. We didn't talk much as I wore earplugs and he a headset, but that was okay because the scenery was spectacular.  I had been thinking only of bears, but the one hour flight, my first in a bush plane, proved to be equally amazing. 

We took off and flew over the Homer spit and across Kachemak Bay.  We flew along the coastline so I could see the Native communities of Seldovia, Port Graham, and Nanwalek as well some of the bays we have been exploring by boat as a family before flying over the Barren Islands.  We also flew next to Mount Augustine island, a uniquely situated volcano that makes up part of our amazing view from Homer and finally over to Katmai National Park on the Alaska Peninsula.   The park and preserve itself is over 4 million acres and is about the size of Wales.  We flew right over Mount Douglas, one of the park's 18 volcanoes.  

Crater lake at the summit of Mr. Douglas

I feel like I need to mention that I took all of these photos because they will continue to blow your mind as you read on.  I expect National Geographic to be knocking on my door very soon. 

We also flew over several glaciers before making our landing on the beach in Hallo Bay.

This is another bay with similar terrain that we flew over before arriving in Hallo Bay

We flew a few passes over the beach and grassy area before landing. I spotted 3-4 bears and the pilots talked and decided where to land and start our trek.  We headed out on the sand hoping to see two different bears dig for clams.  These brown bears are eating clams and vegetation this time of year and are waiting for the salmon to run in July and August. 

Mama and cub clamming at low tide

As we got closer, we were super excited to see the bear had a cub with her.  Our guides recognized the bear and the mama from the Disney Bears movie.  Unfortunately, when the movie ended happily that both cubs had survived, that was not actually the case. She only had one in tow this year.  Kate and James are sure the yearling cub is Scout, the more curious of the two.  Who knows?  We walked to within about 30 yards and knelt down in our hip waders to watch them sniff, dig, and eat clams.

So tired

I had our guide take the next two photos so you can get a little perspective on how far away we are from the bears.

After a 20 minutes or so we decided to walk a little further to watch another bear dig for clams.  This bear was a little bigger, and we were a little closer.

After watching this one for a while, we headed back to the beach for a snack.  I know eating near bears seems crazy, but we were told not to pack any seafood and that the bears wouldn't recognize any other smells.  There were 11 of us sitting on driftwood eating our snacks when the mama and cub started walking in toward us.  We could hear the cub making little snorting noises and the guides said they were probably coming in so the cub could nurse. Cubs stay with their mom for 3-5 years and nurse the entire time. 

Our guide had to stand up so that the bear would walk around him and give us at least a couple feet of distance.  Luckily, I was number 11 in the lineup, so the furthest away in our group, but check out this guy snapping photos in the front.

Mama bear walked around a bit,

checked to see the coast was clear of predators.  She was completely not phased by our group as I'm sure she was looking for wolves (we saw tracks) and male brown bears.

Eventually they started climbing the bluff in front of us, munching on celery grass and whatever else on the way up.  I could hear them crunching.  The cub played with some sticks and seemed to like making the rocks tumbling down the bluff.

This oddly yellow photo taken with my phone shows the bears climbing the bluff and our group watching.  When they got to the top, a well protected place where no one could sneak up on mom, she laid back and the cub nursed.  We could hear him purring loudly for the first 5 minutes.

They stayed on the bluff resting and relaxing until we decided to head back to the plane and they were still there as we sped down the beach for take off.

A fox ran past us on our way back to the plane.

  

The flight home was even more amazing than the flight over as the sun was shining bright and the ocean was a magnificent turquoise.  There were a few islands we flew over that could have passed for Hawaii.

Kachemak Bay State Park was incredible from above.

We landed safely back in Homer by 2pm.  The co-pilot seat was fantastic!