Author: Steve

There is a spot here on the spit called the Fishing Hole.  A lot of people fish it.  We were told the Dept of Fish and Game stocked it.  We took one look and concluded this made no sense!  The Fishing Hole fills and empties twice a day with the tides.  What sense would it make to stock it if all the fish just flushed right out?

Then a thought (a few days later).  Salmon.  Did Fish and Game stock the fishing pond every year with salmon minnows, or better yet fertilized eggs from the hatchery?  Did those eggs hatch and/or those minnows go grow in the ocean for years, then return home to spawn in a fishing hole?  Deceived salmon with no hope of spawning.  Every day, fishermen lining the edges of the channel leading in and out of the Fishing Hole catching them.

The aurora borealis was here.  Special conditions made it visible this far south.  But only while it’s dark.  There’s the first challenge.  It doesn’t get kind of dark until midnight.  It was to be a two-day event.  We heard about it after the first night.  We saw pictures of the northern lights the night before taken from Homer.  So up we stayed the next night.  I made it until 12:30.  Judy made it until 2:00.  Nothing.  I even got an aurora finder app for the phone so we’d know all we could about when it would be where.  Turns out the days are not listed by local location, they’re listed by Greenwich Mean Time.  When we think it’s going to show up on Tuesday, that was Tuesday Greenwich Mean Time, and that Tuesday is already gone.  It’s Tuesday here, but it’s Wednesday there, which is the day after the aurora borealis was visible here.

We play homing pigeon.  Judy drops me off a few miles from the house and I find my way home.  Next thing she’ll probably want me to wear a blindfold until she releases me.

We gave up this million-dollar view,

For this…

Million-dollar view.

We’re back down to the water on the spit.

Kenai Peninsula

Love fresh ingredients.

Judy hard at work in her outdoor kitchen.

And back to the view.

Maybe Alaska is exactly like Hawaii, except in Hawaii there is no snow and cold to chase a person south.

There is something about Alaska that is troubling me though.  Alaska honors Daylight Savings Time.  All summer long, we’re going to bed while the sun is still up and waking up the next morning with the sun high on the horizon.  What’s the point?  What is there to save when it’s daylight all the time anyway!?  You’d think they would reverse the concept and save some of that summer daylight for the winter months when they really need it.

Our Colorado granddaughter, Taylor, is off on an adventure.  She flew to London and spent her birthday touring museums.  Then she got on a train to Aberdeen, Scotland,

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aberdeen,+UK/@59.5960567,-79.6605341,3.16z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4884054c1fd77549:0xe8bb05da5cf4c472!8m2!3d57.149717!4d-2.094278

… where she met up with the professor leading the dig Taylor is going to be working on for the next two weeks.  They’re excavating a bronze-age village.

And another anniversary.  Fourteen years ago today, we bought the 2005 Beaver Monterey Motorhome that is still serving us so well.

A drive in the Jeep on the beach during low tide at Anchor Point.

The Anchor River flowing to the sea.

And all us this will be under ocean after the 20-foot tide claims it.

Meanwhile, Henry is a happy boy.

(The volcano in the background, on the other side of the Cook Inlet, is the one Judy and I flew around just a few weeks back.)

We’ve moved.  It didn’t feel like we had woken up enough times in Homer, so we drove 200 miles back down south.  This time we’re at the Homer KOA up on the bluff to the west of town.

Kenai Peninsula

Our backyard here.

It has a view.

As does my office.

Low tide.

The campground eagle.

And Judy in the wind.

Alaska and Hawaii are so far apart, but we marvel at how much they have in common.  Volcanic topography.  Towering verdant mountains plunging steeply to the sea.  Roads along the edges, winding along the water.  Most of it impenetrable; only isolated places habitable.  We didn’t come to Alaska with any intent of relating it to Hawaii, the comparisons just struck us.

4,219, 500, 56, 138 update

0, 93, 22, 115

Now it’s August, and we’re at 0 miles to go to get to Fairbanks.  Mission accomplished.

93 birds remaining to get to 500 for the year.  Now we only need to see six tenths of a bird a day for the rest of the year to make it to 500.

22 continuing education hours to go.

And still 115 counties in which to report a bird to have all 254 counties in Texas.

Alaska is being very bird-good to us.  Here are the birds we added to the list in July: