Peace?

We think we've achieved a certain degree of peace between the dog and cat, at least for now. I heard the cat snoring the other day, and went into the living room, and here he was curled up right in the middle of the dogs bed. The dog even lets him eat her food every now and then - as long as its not the first scoop out of a new bag (she gets kind of testy when he tries to eat her fresh food).

Tok Trip

Most of these pictures are just scenery pictures, although there are a couple of swans, and their butts sticking up in the air as they bobbed for food. If a picture is blurry, sorry, most of them were taken out the window at top speeds. :)


Marty the dashboard moose at the end of the trip.... :)

Here's a huey bringing in a plane that had crashed. It was pretty cool - the biggest thing to happen in Tok the whole week we were there.

Tok School, opened the fall we were living there.

Home Sweet Home

I'm sitting here beside the door watching for Brian to pull in any second now - he is heading straight to work at the school, so I have his lunch ready and he'll run into work, but at least he is home. The kids are stopping in Soldotna, looking for suet to mix with the meat when we make the burger and then they will all be home.

While they were gone, I had the dog's bed in my room at the foot of my bed and she was very good. Then this morning, I knew they were on their way, so I moved it back into the living room and she is just freaking out - trying to figure out how to guard the whole house - she just goes from window to window barking fiercely at every little sound. I assume she will calm down when she realizes it isn't all up to her now. I love the way dogs know when to turn up the defenses.

thanks for all your prayers - Charlotte

The Hunters have landed

Well, after much anxious waiting and pleading and praying and calling, I finally got the call at noon that the hunters had been rescued from the woods and were landed in Tok. The meat is at another airport, so they are waiting for it to be delivered to Tok and then they will all be on their way home.

There was a lot of behind the scenes drama that one of the hunting party created by freaking out and demanding that they send in the National Guard to get them this weekend. It's pretty funny, but caused some hard feelings with the air charter people, who happen to be our friends, so hopefully that can get ironed out. I'm pretty sure they realize it wasn't Brian who was making those annoying freaked out phone calls. We have such a history with these guys - the original owners had kids in school with Alicia in Tok, I taught several of them. Anyway, everyone is one their way home, I think. Love, Charlotte

Graduation

On Friday, I "graduated" from physical therapy - we have been driving in 2 days a week to do physical therapy at the hospital. It has been really good for me - I am getting lots stronger - but it seemed to always take 2 full days to get it done, so we are glad to have the time for other things. I will miss Kerri - she has been great. But she is just here for the summer - our hospital has trouble keeping enough staff on, so they hire traveling people whenever they can. It is a great chance for young workers to see the country and make good money.

Anyway, we will still do the exercises here at home with Alicia helping me. We need to order a set of weights, but we can do that. Kerri taught me how to go up and down stairs with a cane, which I didn't have before. So Alicia bought me a cane in Anchorage last week - and it is really a help. I wish someone had thought of that 10 years ago, it is really nice to know I can go up and down when I need to. (it is still pretty taxing for me, but I least I know I won't get stuck half way up and have to crawl on my hands and knees. I don't mind the crawling on the inside steps, but have really hesitated to crawl up the steps that face the highway - I just don't think Anchor Point and all the tourists are ready to see that - heheh).

I'm in the permanent rotation for organ playing at church. It is usually once, sometimes twice a month. It is keeping me on my toes, I practice at least an hour a day. I don't know why I resisted practicing so much when I was young - I really appreciate the break in my day, when I can just sit and devote to music. ( okay, Mother, so I don't do my scales for 20 minutes a day, but I still play them sometimes. I always think of you in the kitchen, yelling out, "I haven't heard any scales yet today. You can't just play fun stuff.") I found an old hymnbook in the church library that has the songs in the keys I learned them in when I was young - some of them are much easier for me to play in that book, so that will be a help on some songs. I just never have mastered playing with sharps, which the newer hymnbook is excessively full of.
Have a wonderful Sabbath day. Love, Charlotte

Waiting for the Meat

Well, Mya, Heathcliff, Scruffy and Charlotte are here at home alone waiting for the meat wagons to get here. Brian called by satellite phone on Friday afternoon and said he needed Justin and Alicia to drive to Tok to meet them Saturday afternoon - they had too much meat to fit in the Durango ( I told him to take his pickup and not my Durango, I was right - although, he pickup is 15 years old and probably too old for the trip). Anyway, Alicia had to teach a class at the scrapbook store until 11:00 Friday night, then they got up early and drove to Tok. When they got there, they found out, there was too much wind to fly, so the guys were still out at camp.

Sunday morning, Brian called Alicia from the satellite phone again, and said the cloud cover was too low and for them to just empty out the Durango and drive back home. They left me a message that they were coming home empty, so I called them back and told them to go back to Tok and wait for Brian to come out. Justin's work is slower this time of year, so he can take a day off and they had been wanting to explore that country up there, so they turned around and went back to Tok. I called the airplane people and she said that they had called them and said the wind had shreded their tent and they were cold and wet and wanted OUT OF THERE -ASAP. So they were first on the list to get picked up as soon as the clouds got separated from the fog. They just needed it to warm up a couple degrees and they thought they could get them out, hopefully this afternoon. It's 3:00 and I haven't heard from them yet, so don't know how it is going.

It is beautiful here, a little fall like, but clear blue skies and just enough breeze to be comfortable. But there are 2 typhoons headed here tomorrow - one after the other, so if they don't get the guys out in the next few hours, they could get stuck in there for a while. Good thing they have plenty of meat to eat - I suppose they can rig some kind of shelter to keep them dry if they have to.

anyway, they got 2 big bull moose, a big grizzly bear and a wolf. (we don't eat the bear or the wolf). The other guys with him are from New Mexico, so I don't know how much of the meat they will take with them - sometimes they like to take a lot, and sometimes, they just come up for the fun of hunting. Brian has been wanting to kill a Toklat Grizzly bear for a long time, so I'm glad he finally got one. He says he isn't going back to this spot to hunt next year, so this might have been his last chance to get one there..... we'll see. He's been going there successfully for a long time. It is hard to give up a great hunting spot like that. But he wants to fly in a little farther north and learn a new country.

So, we got meat for the year - it just isn't home yet. Charlotte

Garden Goose

The goose got into the garden a couple of weeks ago, and ate all the leaves off of the broccoli and some other plants. When he started out the evening he was just eating the leaves off the Brocco-flower, but since no one liked it we just let him eat, figuring that he'd get tired and leave. The next morning dad got up, and Heathcliff had apparently been eating all nigth, and he had eaten almost all the leaves off the plants. So we chased him out, so that the garden could finish growing. Then monday we harvested the last of the broccoli, then opened the gate so that the goose could finish eating the garden. He's been having fun the last couple of days. Now he's moved onto the brussel sprouts. He even sleeps in the garden. :)



When I went out to try and take pictures of him sleeping under the brussel sprouts, he jumped up and tried to pretend he wasn't doing anything, and ran over away from the plants. He's very funny.

Random stuff

This is the bucket of flowers I planted this summer to decorate outside my "new" house, right before Justin and I got married. Just wanted something to brighten up the entrance to my new house.
We painted the railing this last week, and right after I painted a spot I went to the other end of the deck, and then I heard the cat jump down from the area where I had just painted, so I thought there was a good chance he had some paint on him. When we tracked him down later, we saw all the paint. Mostly on his paws and belly. Funny guy.


Here's one of the stellar's jays we get every spring and fall. We put peanuts out for them, then they hide them in their trees and in the garden, and all over the place. They're funny.

More Seward pictures

Pretty stream running off the glacier
Mountain shadows
Spawning salmon in a creek on the way home from Seward
Just a pretty shot of the road as we drove home.

Justin in front of the glacier

My hair doesn't really look like this. There was a really bad breeze that day, I swear! :)
Pretty shadows on the mountain by the glacier.
More shadows.

Seward and the Palmer State Fair

Ocean outside Seward.
More ocean outside of Seward.
Here's Justin. :)
From the other side of Seward, outside of the Seward Dry Dock.
The view of the mountains from the glacier park.

Driving to Seward - look you can even see me taking the picture in the truck mirror.
Turnagain arm, outside Anchorage on the way to Seward (and home).
More of Turnagain arm, this time outside of Girdwood, at the gas station I think.
The waterfall in Seward.
The view of ocean in front of Seward. Seward is to the left from this place.

Justin and I decided to take a little weekend trip and go to the Palmer State Fair, and to see my friend Bobbi and her husband Jason. We went up friday morning and did a bunch of shopping in Anchorage, then went to Palmer for the state fair. We spent the rest of the day at the fair, then went Bobbi and Jason's, visited a while, then spent the night at their house. They have a beautiful home, and they were both really happy. Then saturday morning we decided we'd had enough of the city crowds, and headed down to Seward for saturday night, and came home sunday. Justin lived in Seward when he first came to Alaska in 1989, so it was fun to go with him and hear about the places he'd been, and what used to be where. I think Seward had changed a lot since he was there last. We went up to Exit Glacier and hiked around, the glacier eddy had wiped out the lower trail, so we had to take the longer .7 mile trail, which was more than we had planned, but it was fun. It was a beautiful evening to be out - and if you kept moving the bugs didn't even get you too bad. :) There was a really nice breeze blowing off the glacier to cool us off when we got to the top too. It was a really nice weekend, and we had a good time together. Love you all. Alicia