Goodbye!

Summer is over. School has started. We are back into the swing of things here in the city. The transition home this year has been a strange one. Bryan is with us which is unusual. (He was able to take Emmett to class on his first day of Kindergarten which was really important to him and was totally awesome.) Both boys are in school now so we are getting used to 2 lunches, 2 backpacks, 2 sets of paperwork, 2 packets of homework, etc... The strangest thing for me is that I don't feel like I have missed 3 months of time here. It honestly feels like I went out our back door and a few minutes later, entered our front door. Everything is the same - including the pace of life that we left. That's probably what gets me the most this time around. I TOTALLY appreciate the life we have at camp, the pace, the routine, the ease, the time with family. The boys are happy to be back but overwhelmed at the same time. There are night time fears that weren't there before and tears that come on all of a sudden. All in all though it is good to be home and everyone is rested, happy, and doing well.

Goodbye East House! We love this cabin and will love seeing it again in the spring.

Goodbye guys! You were awesome and we totally miss hanging out and talking with you. Good luck adjusting back into the "real" world and with the rest of the year.

Hello school!

Thank you so much for reading this blog. It was a lot of fun to do. Hope you enjoyed yourself and check back in with us next season. Have a wonderful year and we'll be back in 9 months!

A Side Note

In between Kodiak and Home, we made a pit stop in Anchorage to visit family. The weather was beautiful and we managed to make it to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. This was our second time to the fair and the kids just have a blast! Here are a few highlites. I went with the theme of "Everything in Alaska is Bigger!" (Texas, eat your heart out!)

My sister says that this Ferris Wheel has one of the best views in the world - on a nice day.

This cabbage ended up breaking the world's record if you can believe it!

Miss Piggy was overdue the day we were there. About 3 days later she finally had 11 babies!

The trip home

1. Push the skiff into the water with the tractor.

2. Load luggage into the skiff and hope it stays dry on the ride into the cannery/Larsen Bay.

3. Take the van up to the landing strip. Unexpected situations may arise: high tide, bears, forklift stuck in the only road, etc...

4. Fly to Kodiak on a small bush plane, weather permitting. Flight takes about 30 minutes.
5. Fly to Anchorage and then wait for another plane to take us HOME.
6. It is the middle of the night and time for the last leg of the trip. The shuttle ride!

Wrapping it up!

The end of the season arrived earlier than usual this year. After waiting for more than 2 weeks for Fish and Game to make a decision on whether or not to open again, we made the decision that it was time to go home. Part of the packing up process at camp includes putting the nets away, cleaning out the boats and putting them in the Boat House, winterizing the cabins and engines, taking inventory on any foods or goods that are being left behind for the next summer, pulling up the lines and anchors that are still in the water, and boarding up the cabins. I helped with the inventory and getting our cabin in order. The rest of it falls on Bryan's, Leon's, and the crew's shoulders. They pretty much worked full force after the boys and I left. These are some pictures to give an idea of some of the things that we do to get the camp ready for the winter. As you can see, during the summer the Boat House doubles as an indoor play ground for the boys.

Road Trip!!!!

Before the boys and I left camp, we took a day trip with some friends to another bay. We had beautiful sunny weather the two days before hand but on this day it was grey and damp! Oh well, such is Alaska...

We all met up at a friends cabin and took two skiffs up the river at the head of the bay (Zachar Bay). We went at

high tide since it is marsh land. The skiffs were tide up down

stream a bit and then we walked farther up the river to do some fishing. There were signs o

f bear EVERYWHERE! Bear trails, footprints, scat, half eaten fish, etc... Amazingly we saw no bears the whole time we were there. The day was fantastic! I haven't been up a river for a million years so I was totally enjoying the moment. Everyone caught a salmon including the kids. We had a great picnic with cucumbers from the garden, homemade cookies, smoked salmon, and deer sausage. Definitely a day that we will remember for a long time!

Net Mending

Once the nets are cleaned, the next job is to "mend" them. That means we fix up or patch any holes or tears in the web of the net. To do this we use a special twine and a mending needle. You start with making a granny knot at the beginning of the tear/hole and then with a few more knots, twists, and flicks of the wrist, you end with another granny and cut it loose.

This is probably the job that our crew likes the least (well besides emptying the outhouse - but that goes without saying...)

It is tedious and can be trying for some people. It can be hard to see where to start or sometimes how to finish a mend. In the pictures below, the lighter colored twine is where we fixed a hole. I actually like mending and it is one of the jobs that I always help out with. Once the nets are mended, they are then ready to be put back into

the boat for the next opening.

Cleaning Nets

When we pull the nets out of the water, they are stacked into the skiffs. They are then pulled up onto shore and "racked". Corks on one side and leads on the other. We give them a good cleaning with a power washer and our two hands. After the nets are dry, we then start the process of mending them. This means we sew up any rips, tears, holes, etc. in the web.

The bottom two pictures are our trusty helpers!

Just to let you know, I will be putting together some more posts once we get to Seattle. It was getting to be too slow out to camp. I have lots of stories and pictures left to share.