Chocolate lily

Fritillaria camschatcensis 

At fishing, that is! One of us has finally figured out how to land the elusive red (sockeye) salmon! It took a few days, but Cityboy has now earned the bragging rights of having landed our first salmon of the season! In fact, he landed two!

This beauty was a big male, about 25 pounds, and put up a great fight!

But in the end…

He and a slightly smaller female ended up on the cleaning table and will soon be on our dinner table! (who needs a dissection kit when you have salmon and a filet knife! What a lesson in anatomy!)

Wow! These two fish netted us 17 solid inch-thick salmon steaks , plus 4 half-pound fillets!

Crank up the grill, we are eating good tonight!

A little salmon lore: according to what we’ve learned from the locals, red salmon do not feed when heading upstream to spawn. They do, however, swim with their mouths wide open. The angler’s task then, is to land a weighted fly just upstream from the swimming fish, hope the current carries the fly into the fish’s gaping jaws, making the fish instinctively bite, then snag the fish in the jaw as the line passes through. No easy task, let me assure you! And very different than the trout fishing I am accustomed to! And if you happen to snag the fish anywhere but the mouth, you must by law throw the big guy back. OUCH! I’ve seen some lovely fish set free due to an unlucky ill-placed hook.

To say we have been keeping busy would be an understatement! What a banquet that has been laid before us! It’s hard to blog about it all, but I will give it a shot…

Fishing at midnight on the Buskin River…

spotting sea otters splashing in the surf off Chiniak bay…

trying one last time for that salmon to hit…

finding little out-of-the-way places to get to know…

swinging!

climbing on a huge piece of driftwood…

exploring the grassy bottomlands where the river meets the sea…

and just taking in all of the beauty of creation. It is almost too much, like a magnificent dessert too rich to eat in one sitting! But so delicious you can’t stop yourself!

Oh, I am getting spoiled!

 Another wonderful day spent exploring!

c

Gotta love this place!

This is one diverse place! Sandy beaches, rocky shorelines, mountains, forests, floodplains, tundra and marshes all within a few minutes drive.

One of the many beautiful beaches we explored is the aptly named fossil beach.

It is flanked on both sides by those tall cliffs, which, as they erode, drop deposits of fossilized ancient seabed onto the beach below. We were able to break open the soft shale and find lots of fossilized shells and such.

You have to watch out because those large rocks you can see sticking out will dislodge and fall without warning! I wouldn’t want to be caught below that!

One common flower along the sandy dunes are these lovely shooting stars (Dodecatheon pulchellum):

They look like flowers turned inside out like a broken umbrella.

And along sunny roadsides are salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) flowers which will soon be lovely salmon-colored fruit to gather and eat or make jam!

The flowers actually range in tone from this pale pink to a rich magenta color. I am not sure yet what causes the variation in color, be it soil or sunlight or just genetic variation. More research necessary! Perhaps I will have it figured out by berry picking time!

Tomorrow: tidepooling in Chiniak Bay!

I finally have the ability to load my pictures onto dh’s computer (thanks sweetie!), so I am excited to be able to finally share our adventure!

Before I get to the nature study I’d like to share a bit about our trip out here:

We left the house at 11 am eastern for a 4 pm flight (long drive to airport).

This was Jbug’s first time on an airplane and she was very excited as you can see!

We spent a good bit of time waiting in various airports:

The plane rides were long, but thankfully uneventful:

We arrived safely in Kodiak at 6:45 am eastern, or 2:45 am local time.  All in all nearly 20 hours of travel time. Whew!What a trip!

Was it worth it?  You tell me!

Superboy seems to think so!

Just in case you are curious, on the sidebar I will be keeping a running tally of the interesting nature we observe here in Kodiak. Honestly, it is just a sampling of the things we’ve seen, but I am trying to at least attempt to keep track of some of it.
I have not yet figured out how upload pics onto this computer, but hope to get that going soon.
Tomorrow a real post.
I PROMISE!

This is just a brief note to let folks know we are here in Kodiak and doing great!  I will do a proper blog post soon, but just to get the ball rolling, we have been here slightly over 24 hours and have already seen whales, bald eagles (they are everywhere!), salmon, dolly varden, sea lions, a leech, numerous birds, fishing boats with huge seine nets, towering stacks of crab pots, wildflowers galore, and lots of other cool stuff.

We’ve been sight-seeing and beach combing and fishing and fossil hunting, and…

I got that cup of coffee by the sea.

I am leaving for Alaska in 4 days. LOTS to do, here. I don’t even know why I am on the computer. So when Erin  of Seven Little Australians tagged me for the 4 and 4 meme, my first thought was “how cool is it that I know someone in Australia!?!”And then I thought “no way do I have time for this meme.”

But then it occurred to me that there are no meme police and I can use this baby however I please. So I am altering it to suit my current situation. Here is my version:

4 things I need to do before I go to Kodiak, and 4 things I am going to do when I get there!

Before I go I need to:

1. Pack. For me and the kids. (No, dear, I have not actually started that yet. I am a procrastinator, ok? You know you love me anyway).
2. Meet with the girl who is going to take care of the horses while we are gone. Show her what to do. Pray she does it.
3. Clean out the fridge. We don’t want any unauthorized science experiments going on. At least not without us here to watch!
4. Drop off Modgirl at Governors school. She will be spending the summer there, playing in an orchestra.  Without me. *sniff*

When I get there I am going to:

1. Give dh a great big, slobbery kiss, or maybe two! (kids, you will just have to deal with it, ok?  Look away if you must.)
2. Give lots of hugs and kisses to my two sweet grandsons! (once I pry myself away from dh, of course)
3. Take the kids whale-watching! Hee hee! I’m getting giddy just thinking about it!
4. Have a cup of coffee with dh here:

Just so you’ll understand if I don’t blog for a few days…

And why I am not tagging anyone.

Big news!

As you may know, one of my very favoritest virtual hang-outs is the 4Real Learning message board. This board is populated by a wonderful group of homeschooling women, mostly Catholic, who are joined together by their common admiration for the teaching methods of Charlotte Mason, and inspired by the real-life approach found in the book Real Learning, by Elizabeth Foss.

Here is the great part:

Elizabeth and some other wonderful ladies at the 4Real Learning boards are finally putting on their very own conference!

I am proud to announce the first annual…

REAL LEARNING HOMESCHOOL

CONFERENCE

August 11^TH 2007

Seton High School

9314 Maple Ave Manassas, Virginia 20110

Schedule

8:30 Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Celebrant: Fr. Thomas Vander Woude

9:15 Coffee and Donuts

10:00 Welcome

The Real Learning Philosophy

11:00 Living the Liturgical Year

12:00 Nature Study

1:00 Lunch and Vendor Shopping

2:30 Break Out Sessions

3:30 A Loving Lifestyle: Husbands and Real Learning

4:30 Question & Answer Forum

5:00 Closing

Break out sessions are  planned for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, homeschooling high school, special needs, math, and time management. You can see that this conference will have a distinctly Catholic flavor, but it is open to anyone who wants to come and learn more about applying and adapting Charlotte Mason principles to home education.

This first conference will be relatively small, I think, and intimate compared to the jumbo mega-affairs at some venues.  To me, this is a benefit because it allows for a more relaxed, personal experience. And the speakers are real folks like you and me.

In fact, one of them is me!

I’ll leave it to you to figure out just which talk I am giving, though it will probably be obvious if you’ve visited my blog (or my home) for any length of time. Lets just say it is a  subject near and dear to my green little heart!

Won’t you think about joining us?

Registration Form