Movies from Girdwood

Funny movies from Girdwood

doing my bid

What a weekend. I did my bid, relaxed as much as I could: Kind of like sleeping in an airport, and finished Desert Solitaire. This morning was cool and damp with the darkness of winter rolling in at 5 minutes and 40 seconds shorter than yesterday. Walking Maggie around 6:30am I heard the frist of the Great Horned Owl calls that I hear every fall in the twilight. Five low, "Who Who Hoo Hoo Who" every 10-15 minutes till the sun started to silhouette the Chugach Range to the East. Then the varied thrushes and robins started their chorus around 7:45am. The cabin is coming along, we have cleaned out the old "grow room", Stained the cedar siding painted the window sills Glacier Blue and next is the tin roof. Soon we will be moving in, by the end of September early October.

Fun guy and gal @ the fungus fair

This weekend Ashley and I hit up Fungus Fair in Girdwood. We went to the formal on Friday night and had a five course meal with each course containing a variety of wild and domestic mushrooms. We met up with some ol' friends and met some new ones. The guest speakers were as entertaining and charismatic as the lectures were informitive with local specialists Kate Mohatt (USFS), Dominique Collet (author)and visting from the east cost Lawrence Millman and author of Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Steve Trudell. We attended a workshop where we each made an Oyster mushroom log to grow over the winter lead by Ken Gill.
By Sunday we had our fill of mushrooms and Girdwood so we packed up the truck for a trip down the Kenai Peninsula to Seward. We camped along the banks of Exit Glacier River outside of Kenai Fiords National Park. The river had resently flooded and most of the surounding forest was still wet and downed woody debris piled against the shore lines made finding a spot in the dark a chalenge. By the time we woke up the next day a storm had moved in on us and the visibility was low with the clouds hanging at ~1500 feet. We bagged the climb up to the Harding Ice Field and did a short walk up to the face of Exit Glacier. It has been so much fun traveling with Ashley as she graciously drives me around. I will miss her during her travels back east to see her family and then down to Costa Rica for two months banding birds.

pink paws, rainbows, and creekside camping

September is here and the leaves are changing. I went up to Hatchers Pass last weekend with Ashley and we camped along the river on the Willow side of the pass. The reds from the Dwarf Dogwood/bunch berry (Cornus canadensis), Blueberries (Vaccinium Spp.)and Fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) and the golden yellow from the Willow (Salix Spp.) and Birch(Betula neoalaskana and papyrifera var. kenaica) painted the mountain side with colors of the burning sunset and rainbow that we saw on our drive in.

Maggie is getting restless as she can anticipate our move to a new cabin as she got into the powdered cure that we use for making salmon eggs into bait so she has a lovely pink color on her face and paws. I just put down the deposit for our cabin up on the mountain side for next year. It is an old A-frame and a dry cabin with lots of blueberries on site. So in the next few weeks I need to dig an outhouse and plan my water system, as well as patch up some insulation and fix the roof. The swans are in at Potters Marsh south of Anchorage and Fungus Fair is this weekend. I have had fun meeting with some of the experts as they are staying in the bunkhouse with Ashley. I saw one of the biggest King Bolete mushrooms (Boletus barrowsii)from one of the guest speakers collections. I'll try to get some pictures up soon.